spot up shooting is very easy to improve if one puts in the work. it's all about reps, more reps, and some more reps. creating off the dribble, ballhandling, pull up on a dime, fade and shoot, post game... either you have it already and you can perfect it or you don't. look at brandon jennings for instance. he already has all the skills of a great player. and like you said, he just needs to work on them to "perfect" them. he doesn't need to learn those skills from scratch like ariza is doing them right now. you simply can't do that at his age. ariza clearly doesn't have any of these skills. even if he learns "a little bit," it will always be way below mediocre/average so there's no use in running those plays for him when we have a championship-contending team. trevor ariza does not scream "great" or even anywhere close to "star" potential. AB/cbud/landry/lowry have a better chance of becoming a star in this league than ariza. what ariza needs to do is improve on his strengths: 1) curl/screens (he has shown he can do that, he just doesn't for some reason) 2) finishing around the basket (use that athletic frame, don't just lean it and throw up crazy shots) if he can perfect those 2 things, he will be an extremely valuable asset to us when yao returns (or we sign a superstar).
Agreed aswell, this is his first year here and take as many shots for him to feel comfortable. He's only been recognized as a slasher throughout his L.A years, people understand how hard it is to adjust to a primary scorer or a number one option. I also agree that Adelman should rein on him next year on how he's doing and check on his progress.
Hate to bring up his name again, but a tandem of Tmac and Ariza would have beast potential, way better than TMac and Battier of yesteryears IMO.
I have to agree with this. But the issue would be trying to reign in both McGrady and Ariza at that point, I am hoping McGrady will be able to work better with Ariza then he did Artest when Battier was injured and all of them can share the ball with other players. Nevertheless we need other players to step up besides Ariza, Landry and Scola. Especially for Ariza's sake as I am never a fan of having a player be on the court for nearly the entire game like we've be alternating between doing with Ariza and Brooks when he was shooting well.
From my perspective he isn't the most efficient scorer and I feel ti is because he is trying to be too much. He juts needs to play naturally and instead of trying to be the scorer, just be Ariza.
Dont look now but Artest over in LA is shooting much better than Ariza for the season (except for three throws.) I know Ariza has more free reign to shoot than he's had in year's past. And he's trying to develop into a scorer, something he's never been. But he was supposed to be equal or more efficient from the field than Artest while providing the same D.
Trevor Ariza is just not a scorer. He may have number 1 on his jersey, but it says "Ariza", not "McGrady". I have the feeling that he is forcing it too much. He just can't really create his own shot; in LA, he often got open shots because everybody was concentrating on Kobe or Pau, but now he has to create his shot. I know everybody's tired of the discussion, but T-Mac is just a way better offensive player than Ariza.
Next year? I'm all for giving Ariza time to improve his offensive game, and chances to do it, but not at the expense of losing games. There has to be a balance, and right now the balance isn't there.
Yep, as a 3rd-4th option, Artest is a great player to have. Damn man. With Tracy and Yao healthy last year...who knows?
At the expense of losing games? It's not as if our other perimeter players, Battier/Brooks/Chase, are lighting up the place either. We're quite mediocre in the half court offense. If Ariza's not taking those bad shots, someone else is. And they're not going to be much better if at all. It's not as if Ariza's taking away shots from a Kobe or a Lebron. And so what if we're losing games this year? It's nice to see the Rockets overperforming. But do you honestly think they can beat any of the upper echelon WC teams in a Bo7 series? In the end, this year's a wash short of a huge talent upgrade through trade.
