Comments on: John Hollinger’s praise of Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook and John Wall illustrates why the Pistons have invested so much in Rodney Stuckey

By: christian louboutin pas cher

christian louboutin pas cher — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 11:53:00 +0000

I said that in the preseason when everyone had them as 2nd to the Lakers type stuff for some reason. Wall on the other hand could be better than all of them because his passing ability is superior. He happens to be playing on a team with another one of these PG’s though – Arenas. Another guy on a perennial .500 finisher at best. It’s not that these PG’s aren’t good, it’s that they are all volume shooters. And none of them shoot a fairly high percentage. Rose is the best at putting the ball in the hoop. The rest are terrible, which hurts their teams.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:03:01 +0000

@Laser:
I was a big proponent of Bynum starting, but I think he’s obviously not healthy. His last couple preseason games, he didn’t look as quick and he’s looked worse in the regular season. i think he’s potentially a better playmaker than Stuckey if healthy, but he just doesn’t look good right now.

By: The Outside World – 11/12/10 | Pickin' Splinters

The Outside World – 11/12/10 | Pickin' Splinters — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:22:09 +0000

[...] This is an absolutely terrific post from PistonPowered, comparing Rodney Stuckey to John Wall, Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook. Before you start [...]

By: Laser

Laser — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:00:17 +0000

@pcb: bynum’s not 100%, but i’d still start him. plus, he’s been relegated to such a minor role it’s insane. 13 minutes isn’t a lot of time to operate, and i don’t think he has any better of an idea what his role will be on a given night than you or i could. look at stuckey’s game last night! 2 AST, utterly useless. all he could do when we needed a bucket was force up a bunch of shots with mixed results. nobody on this team has “defined” roles, but stuckey has about as defined a role as anyone besides big ben. he knows exactly what’s expected of him, when he’ll be playing, what his role SHOULD be. and he still can’t deliver. i think bynum at least deserves the chance at a few games where this is “his” team. stuckey’s had that chance for years now, and he’s done nothing with it. may as well give bynum a look. he’s got a good record as a starter with major minutes.

By: nuetes

nuetes — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:43:25 +0000

yes an offensive rebound can negate a missed shot, but if it’s put back in your at 50% shooting. one miss and one make. a missed shot rebounded by the other team is a turnover.

and since i just looked it up – OKC o-reb%: 27.1%; CHI o-reb%: 26.5%; DET o-reb%: 26.8%. and for giggles WAS o-reb%: 22.1%, and seeing as how they have Wall and Arenas jacking up shots I guess they are hurting the worst. In fact OKC, CHI, and DET are the best o-rebounding teams in the league.

I still don’t know how that excuses players from taking bad shots, but it lessons the blow a tad.

By: Laser

Laser — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:11:25 +0000

forgot to finish my bit on stuckey: …and he’s on the cusp of being an EXPENSIVE player. someone is going to offer him a rich contract to be their shooting guard/backup PG. so all these years where stuckey’s supposed to be a “cheap” alternative to chauncey, he’s been anything but a “replacement,” and he’s got one more season of being “cheap.” so, uh… good work there, joe.

By: Laser

Laser — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:07:24 +0000

@feldman: how long are we going to judge stuckey by his “potential?” will we still be trumpeting all this potential when he’s 28? 31? at some point you look at a player and you know who he is. in stuckey’s case, we’ve all seen enough. he’s a scorer. there isn’t a playmaking bone in his body. physical tools are MEANINGLESS to a point guard if he can’t run the offense.

and, if i’m perfectly honest, your obsession with numbers is a bit troubling. numbers are so deceptive in basketball. someone as involved as you are in numbers AND basketball should realize that. it doesn’t take a genius to look at the chicago game and see that when rose entered the game to close it out at the 6 minute mark, he’d been waiting and watching, planning a way to close it out. and that’s precisely what he did. stuckey, on the other hand, was just waiting for his number to be called. he came in, was just another player, and we lost.

you’re a smart guy. watch the games, judge things for yourself. no sense obfuscating things with a bunch of numbers that don’t amount to anything in real life. we all know why the pistons have invested so much in stuckey: they misevaulated his ability and potential (probably using similar standards as you) and jumped the gun.

here’s some fun irony i’ll probably repeat elsewhere, but this one’s a gem: we get stuckey, and he’s a standout as a sixth man/backup PG, so we see him as a cheap alternative to chauncey and blow this thing up. flash forward to the moment where we’ve got to decide if he’s going to get an extension, and yes there’s the issue of the new CBA looming, but the bottom line is that stuckey has yet to be what we need him to be, and he

@nuetes/hayes: a BAD shot can essentially be a turnover. not all misses, but bad ones, definitely. they highlighted one such shot on NBAtv the other day. marcus camby put up a baseline 15-footer with four white jerseys underneath the basket. wouldn’t have been a problem if he hit the shot, but he missed it, and there was NO chance for an offensive board. that was a perfect example, but it happens all the time.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 21:41:06 +0000

@nuetes:
“a missed shot is essentially a turnover. It’s a wasted possession.”
What if it leads to an offensive rebound? The Bulls have Noah and the Thunder have Ibaka and Jeff Green, all active guys who crash the offensive glass. Sometimes the best shots a team will get come off of misses that lead to offensive boards. Not every team can count on those plays, but if they are a good offensive rebounding team or have good offensive rebounding player, missed shots are nowhere near as bad as a turnover or wasted possession.

By: nuetes

nuetes — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 21:09:46 +0000

oats

That’s a good argument for them, but that’s not quite what I was arguing. FG% is a reflection of the shots that they take, and a missed shot is essentially a turnover. It’s a wasted possession. Jump shots aren’t likely to draw fouls. Yes they draw fouls on their drives, and that’s a reflection of their athleticism not their shooting ability. So yeah if all of them decided never to take a jumper again they would all be much more valuable to their teams.

TS% doesn’t reflect wasted possessions like FG% does. If a player is fouled during a miss the shot doesn’t count against his FG%. The shot is considered never taken, but he shoots free throws. Only and1 shots are registered as attempts.

As far as eFG%, which better reflects the value of shots, Anthony registered a 47% eFG% during the 54 win year. By comparison Westbrook and Stuckey have career eFG% of 42% each. Rose has a 44% eFG% this season. So while Anthony was still wasting possessions by missing shots, his makes are more valuable because he can shoot 3′s while the super-PG’s can’t.

By: Oats

Oats — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:57:21 +0000

@ nuetes. First of all, it is a combined 6 years for them. I’m not certain if you caught that or not. Westbrook and Rose have 2 years experience. Stuckey technically has 3, but only 2 as a starter. If you count his rookie season, he’d get credit for the last Billups year, which we both know is unfair. So, those guys not winning in 2 years a piece as starting point guards means it is fair to criticize them for not winning? Or are you arguing it based solely off Arenas? If so, even you have to admit that Wizards management hasn’t been exactly superb during Arenas’s career.

By the way, it’s funny you bring up efficiency. FG% is a flawed method of determining a player’s efficiency. It doesn’t account for fouls. I know the miss on a foul doesn’t count against the shooter, while a make would, but that isn’t what I mean. FG% doesn’t give the player credit for the points he scores at the line. This is especially important for evaluating Westbrook this season, seeing as how he is taking 9 FTs a game, and hitting 90% of them. Admittedly it is only 7 games, and those numbers will come down some, but if he can keep it above 7 FTs a game he will be an efficient player. True Shooting % is an attempt to account for FTs and 3 point attempts when looking at FG%, and in my opinion does a much better job showing a player’s efficiency. He has a respectable 55.7 TS%, despite shooting only 43.9% from the floor. That is actually better than the 54.2 TS% Tony Parker had last year when he shot 48.7% from the field but only took 4.4 FTs a game. A player absolutely can be efficient while shooting a low FG%, if they take and hit a large number of free throws. That doesn’t even consider the fringe benefits of all these fouls, such as getting the other team in foul trouble, which tends to lead to softer defense, and the bonus leads to even more free throws.

I would also argue Chicago and Washington are shooting that high of a percentage in part because of Rose and Wall shooting so much. Teams have to account for those guys, and defenses have to leave their man to help guard them, leading to easy assists. I’m not convinced their low shooting percentage is hurting the team, at least not much. While not definitive by any means, their high assist totals suggests that there may be some merit to my argument.

Oh, just for the fun of it, in 08-09 Carmelo Anthony shot 44.3% from the floor, but the Nuggets won 54 games and made the Western Conference Finals. Admittedly a one year anomaly, but the point is he shot a lot and with that same 44% number you complained about Wall and Rose shooting. He did have a 53.2 TS% that year. In fairness though, his team did also go 9-7 without him that year. They were a pretty good team even without Melo, but better with him.