Jalen's the poster boy for the youth of today spending all their time working on overhyped drills without ever improving when they really should've spent all of their time on a court just hooping and shooting until it became as easy as breathing (like most of the greats did.) He had all the natural gifts and none of the feel, vision or touch he needed to weaponise them. Imagine how different his career is if he comes up in an era where you learned on the blacktop hooping all summer against other solid players, then goes to a great college with a good coach, and then plays for D'Antoni instead of Silas with Harden as his vet? That's a different player entirely I'd imagine, because the natural gifts were clearly there. You don't put up the type of huge scoring games he has under his belt (which many stars never achieve in their career - his peaks genuinely were that high) without talent, he just had none of the tools or instruction to ever utilise it. We've had a habit of drafting players with clear fundamental flaws in their game, as high as our picks have been.
Turner has played the five and is better defensively than Sengun at the position. Trying to put shooters around Amen, who will punish them like SGA at some point if they stay home on the shooters. Guards: Amen, Rollins, Okogie, Holiday Forwards: Bari, Tari, Okogie, Portis, Durant, Turner, Amen Centers: Turner, Portis, Capella
The thing is, that approach hasn't worked out great for us so far. Our best players we've drafted have been those with more than 1. Jalen - A+ Athleticism and insane lateral agility/step, no other skills. Big disappointment (though not an actual "bust" he still got money and a likely starter position for now) Jabari - A+ shooting (well, supposedly it hasn't been) no other skills. Closer to a bust than Jalen. Amen - S tier athleticism, A+ defense, lots of C to B+ skills, best top pick we've had. Reed - A+ shooting (see: Smith, Jabari Jr, crossreference: Rockets kills shooters) no other high level skills. Pretend vert within 1" of Ja. Hopefully not as bad as Bari or Green, but could easily be much worse than both.
Jabari was drafted lower, got paid less, and is better than Jalen. How do you say that he's closer to a bust? That's wild.
The wet dream was to replace Dillon with Durant in last year's +30 NetRtg death lineup (FVV Amen Sengun JSJ Dillon)
I thought you were the numbers guy? Go look at how many points each has scored in their career, Bari's been starting day 1 too. Check out those shooting numbers too, Bari's only key skill is shooting and he's **** at it. I'm not saying Jalen's good either, but he objectively flashed more star level performances in his first season than Jabari's had his entire career, what did you smoke this morning?
Oh do you prefer bricks and scoring less than 10 points in your superstars? Or are you still on that whole TS% being everything despite Reggie Miller still being a pure scrub in comparison to Jordan and Kobe?
Imagine still being obsessed with TS% when the poster boys are Rudy Gobert and Reggie Miller type players. The stat skews to low volume snipers or big men. The only top tier volume scorer in the bunch is Harden and his is MASSIVELY skewed by taking 50 times more free throws than everyone else in history. Morey nerds, gotta love them.
I’ve completely moved to ppg being what matters. That’s why trae young is light years better than bums like hakeem and shaq and curry. Can you believe i used to think guys like larry bird and Hakeem were better than iverson? My god i was an idiot!
I have talked about this for years. People don’t understand TS% and many still think it measures shooting efficiency. It’s simply a flawed metric that attempts to measure scoring efficiency not shooting and skewed for 3 pt shooters
