Yeah, I would still take Favors over Cousins.
Advanced Stats (IT, Tyreke, Thornton, and Jimmer) from Aykis of SactownRoyalty
- Thread starter vikinginferno
- Start date
Yeah, I would still take Favors over Cousins.
Gary
All-Star
In his defense IT did play better PG than Evans did this year. I have watched every game this year, and watched almost half of those in person. I like team stats better and they did show that the team is better offensively with IT at PG. I also used my two eyes...
If this is not a thread about PG play then oops on my part. *runs out and closes door behind him*
The Hammer
All-Star
Haha, no problem Gary. I also think, as the team is currently constructed that IT was better at the point than Evans. But that's actually the problem with the whole stat argument by the OP. Evans playes SF for much of the year... so... ya think that might affect some of the guard centric stats that were chosen. Overall though, anyone who tried to come up with a way to prove that IT is "better" than Evans needs to check their goose, cause it's likely cooked by now.
Who in this thread has said anything about Tyreke Evans being a better PG than Isaiah? I don't think anyone thinks that Tyreke Evans is a better PG than Isaiah. But we do think that the team was winning more games with Evans starting at PG than Isaiah at PG, and maybe that's more due to Tyreke then having to start at SF rather than because IT is not a good PG. The point is, Evans shouldn't be frozen out of the offense. And Isaiah Thomas rarely creates for Evans. Being a season ticket holder and having watched the games you should have noticed that Tyreke was often standing in the corner while IT ran a 2 man game with Cuz. And when Tyreke made his cuts it was rarely IT that passed him the ball. If we were winning more games by just working a 2 man game with IT and Cuz I would have no qualm over it, but well apparently for all our offensive improvement and IT being the PG sent from heaven we still managed to be bottom 5 in the league. There in lies my problem.
Guys - There's a thread in the NBA forum for the discussion of playoff games. I'm moving your astute comments regarding the Jazz-Spurs series there. No need to junk up this thread.
EDIT: This applies to two posts - one by mac and one by Npliam. Just an FYI so they'll know where their posts went. Everyone else feel free to resume your stats discussion.
EDIT: This applies to two posts - one by mac and one by Npliam. Just an FYI so they'll know where their posts went. Everyone else feel free to resume your stats discussion.
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vikinginferno
Starter
We didn't get more wins, but our team was night and day compared to before. The point differential was -7.82 before the switch to IT under Smart and -3.88 after the switch. We lost a bunch of games by a hair with the new lineup, including a number of ones we should have won. All of the offensive team stats got much better. Defensively, we did not improve as that 3 guard lineup without a shotblocker was bound to still be terrible on defense.
Heuge
Starter
I'm sorry, but this is just plain dumb. There simply is no reasonable basis for this. It invalidates anything else you may say regarding basketball.
It isn't. Favors isn't as developed on the offensive end (although he has really improved when given consistent minutes and is very efficient) but he is a much better defender both in one on one situations and in team defense. At the end of the day there are equal # of defensive and offensive possessions in every game and Favors affects both ends of the floor.
Yep. He's definitely a more valuable player and has bigger upside than Cous. Boo.
Why are you still here, both in terms of your desire to frequent a board of a team you don't follow as well as the mods allowing someone who offers nothing of value to remain?
Feel free to disagree with my opinion. Why does it bother you that mine isn't the same as yours?
It bothers me because your whole shtick is getting old. Again, this is a kings board. I think everyone appreciates a good debate but when you come on here with obviously less info and insights into our players and make incendiary statements on a regular basis that have no real benefit to discussing, it's annoying. Isn't there a jazz board somewhere that you can discuss how you feel?
Why do you continue to ignore the fact that this is a KINGS FANS board and you're a guest in our house? If we wanted to talk about Favors or the Jazz, we'd be looking for a Jazz message board. You've just about worn out your welcome.
The Hammer
All-Star
It's not that you have different a different opinion that bothers people, it's that you have one of the most unlikeable personas in recent board memory. Your posts are just so damn annoying. It has nothing to do with your "opinion" being different. I hope you get banned asap. I venture to guess that 95% of the posters here feel that same way.
p.s.- and before you try to whine about this being a personal attack, I'll pre-empt you: I'm not criticizing you, I'm criticizing the persona you present as represented by the amalgam of your posts. It/they are the problem. In person you're probably an angel. That said, go away.
I agree, using 1 statistic to say Player A>Player B is highly stupid. However, Viking uses a variety of stats to tell us who had the best year out of our guards. *****, whine, groan, and complain all you want about it, but IT was the best guard on the team last season. It doesn't make him our best player going forward or even the second best player. However, Stats don't lie. People's perception of a player does
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Prove it! Why was Tyreke better than IT last season? I want actual evidence. Not your own opinion
The Hammer
All-Star
So... between Tyreke stuck in the corner with a point guard who barely passed to him, and a point guard who's been playing the point since he was 2 and was given the ball and the keys to the offense?
Look, I love IT, and he's a great change of pace guard, eventually coming off the bench, but we're talking about two separate classes of players. Do you realize that?
The fallacy here is that there is such a thing as hard evidence when trying to prove these things. It's the nature of the sport that you can always debate it. Not so in golf/tennis/ping pong, etc.
Seriously though in a team game (and especially since politics and marketing got so involved) there is no such thing as hard evidence. It really is just my opinion. But for the record, as I stated earlier, anybody who thinks IT is a more valuable overall player is either family or his agent.
A measure might be this: how many GMs would take IT over Tyreke if they were building a team from scratch?
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Gary
All-Star
haha I thought you were joking.. Favors is never going to be the BBall player Cousins is.
That wasn't my question. Tyreke is without a doubt the more valuable player moving forward. However, IT had the better year this season than Reke at any position
The interesting thing is that people seem to believe Reke got worse and got frozen out when he moved off the ball. In reality, he learned how to become far more efficient and be more careful with his shot selection. I have no doubts that he'll become the player we want once he learns to space the floor.
I'm also a little fed up with everyone trying to delegate IT to a bench role. He's proven he can be a starter and deserves the right to do so. Perhaps my next project will be a comparison of IT's starting numbers to the rest of the starting PG's in the league
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vikinginferno
Starter
Not really. Stats aren't necessarily a good determinant of how good a player could be or his potential, but they can tell most of how good a season a player had. I'm not sure where you have come up with this anti-statistic thesis, but everywhere else you will see NBA players judged by stats. Obviously, they do not account for intangibles and some other things, but it is the best data to look at.
Yes, Tyreke did average more points. He also played about 10 more minutes per game over the whole season. I'm not great at finding stats, but I think IT's PPG after he took over as starting PG was somewhere between 15 and 16, correct? That is pretty negligible in comparison to Tyreke's 16.5 PPG and considering IT was much more efficient, I don't think scoring is something Tyreke did better than IT last season.
Teams do not win in the NBA if they have point guards like IT playing big minutes. He is a scoring point guard with a severe size problem. He will never demand a double team. He is the new Nate Robinson. How many contenders did he start for? Now how many contenders have big ball dominant scoring guards starting for them? Parker, Westbrook, Kobe, DWade, Rose. Look, IT is a nice player and he was a real steal where we got him, but this idea that this team is going to win anything with him as our starting PG needs to go away. He was the best guard on a terrible team this year. Reke carried a much less talented team to virtually the same record his rookie year. Used properly he is capable of things IT could only dream of. I would rather hitch my horse to Reke than IT.
I agree that he learned to be more efficient, but I question the cost. If you don't think we would have won more games or had a better shot at winning games if Tyreke got the ball more then you're essentially saying he has no value to us. If the aim was to teach him to move off the ball better, then Smart should have played him at the 2 and run plays for him to get the ball on cuts. He made some pretty good cuts at times but team mates often didn't get him the ball. It's kinda like baptism by fire. Yes, he certainly learned things from the experience at SF, but I'm sure there were many better ways we could have done it, without affecting his confidence or production.
And for those who feel that wins mean nothing this season, I have no idea what you're rooting for. Lets just continue to lose each season, and say that wins are meaningless as long as our offense gets better and our point differential improves and what not. We don't ever have to make the playoffs. Just increase our assist numbers and Kings fans will be happy.
Note, I am not criticizing Isaiah Thomas in my post at all.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
Mac, I agree that moving Tyreke to the three has a lot more to do with losing than moving IT to the point. There are also many other factors contributing to losing, such as never having a decent three to begin with, not having the size that we once did, having an atrocious bench, injuries that affected the bench, and having a very young team overall. What didn't contribute to losing was having a very efficient versatile point guard.
As far as IT passing Tyreke the ball in the corner, he shouldn't pass to Tyreke in the corner. That would be a very low percentage play and not one a good pg should make. As far as IT not passing Tyreke the ball in general, I certainly never saw IT ignore a wide open Tyreke under the basket after Tyreke made a cut. As I said in another post, it was the construction of the offense that the pass to a cutting Tyreke came from the center or even power forward. That's the way it is.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
Hammer,so if Tyreke doesn't develop an outside shot then do you believe he's a more valuable player "moving forward"?
I do.
The mere fact that teams still have to account for him defensively, even though he was marginalized by Smart's plan, speaks volumes about how they feel about Evans, regardless about how some of our fans/coach feels about him. Nobody had to (or has to) adjust their gameplan for IT. You don't gameplan around a complementary player, because they won't break down your team like Evans or Cousins can.
Yes, but there were times when Tyreke would move out to the elbow area and Tyreke still passed it to the other side of the floor. But alright, let's say Tyreke didn't, and he stayed in the corner. You are right to say IT shouldn't have passed him the ball. So then how is Tyreke to be effective? Only off the ball? But were any screens set for him? When he cut how often did the bigs find him? And in the first place, he wasn't a very good off the ball player to begin with. So why in the world were we playing him at SF, sticking him in the corner? "Limited" as his skills may have been, we certainly did not come close to maximising what we could get out of Tyreke. And there in lies the problem. It's basically equivalent to Keith Smart saying that we stand a better chance of winning when IT or MT is more involved in our offense than Tyreke is (assuming you have to pick one or the other). That is where I feel he was totally totally wrong.
Thomas is a very good player. And because he is a good PG, involving him in the offense shouldn't mean taking away any of the other players' involvement. Instead of adding Thomas to our mix, we added him and subtracted Evans. Why not move Thornton to the bench so that you could have Evans, Thomas and Cuz playing together? We've seen IT get lots of open 3s from Evans' kick outs. Cuz get dunks from Evans' drop off passes. Cuz getting passes from IT, Cuz passing to a cutting Tyreke, Tyreke and IT running good breaks etc. Why not use all 3 of them instead of sending Evans to the corner and having Thomas run a 2 man game the entire time?
Uncia03
Starter
Agree with this post.
The big question here is: Was Tyreke frozen out because he was moved to SF and told to stand in the corner, or was he frozen out because IT was moved to PG, and by default his role was to go stand in a corner?
Regardless, Tyreke standing in the corner is never going to be a winning strategy. So whatever has to happen to ensure that he is a vital part of the offense needs to happen.
If that is playing IT at PG and Tyreke at SG to start of next season, so be it.
If that is playing Tyreke at PG along with T.Williams or some other new acquisition and then playing IT off the bench, then so be it.
As I mentioned earlier, I wish I had stats to see the individual player assist numbers. I would like to see how often Tyreke assisted IT and how often IT assisted Tyreke. In watching the games it looked as if Tyreke assisted IT more, and if that's the case, that is a problem, because if you do bring in a PG and move Tyreke off the ball, than that PG needs to be getting Tyreke easier shots, otherwise what's the point?
We certainly saw a whole lot of losing basketball when Tyreke is not involved in the offense, so something has to change.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
IT can't break you down? I certainly saw him break many down, and split numerous double teams during the season.
Here's the thing. You have to be able to shoot to be a #1/#2 option in an offense as on off the ball player. A few things we all can agree is that IT is the better PG than Reke and that Reke should soley be played at the 2. Once he's in that slot full time and learns how to shoot, you'll see him return to that 20 PPG player except with him actually being an efficient offensive star. I'm with the majority that believe Thornton needs to be traded or move to the bench. However, I suppose Im in the minoirty that IT can the PG on a playoff team as a #3 option.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
I don't disagree that Tyreke should play at the SG. If he does play next year for he Kings I'd be shocked if he doesn't play the SG. Also, it's indisputable that putting Evans in the corner is not a good thing. I can think of no possible scenario where that should happen if Tyreke's shooting percentage remains the same. By the same token, I don't want IT much in the corner either; he's too good a ballhandler to be put in the corner. (Doing it occassionally is ok to stretch the floor and provide offensive diversity, and to give him a breather). I just wonder if the absence of a real 3 that could stand in the corner, shoot the 3, and play good D was too much for this coaching staff to overcome? I also wonder whether it was a failure of imagination on the part of the coaching staff to design an offense that integrated Tyreke, Cousins and IT into the offense. Maybe it was. But then again, Smart came in at mid-season with a very compressed schedule, not exactly great conditions for devising a new offense. Coaching is a lot easier if you have meshing parts. And without a 3, the parts didn't mesh.
Regarding Thornton, I'd love to see him come off the bench. He's a scorer who can't play very good D, so that makes sense. FWIW, I think Kings management knows that the smaller backcourt doesn't work. Reynolds said as much when discussing the GS trade with Ellis. So that's another thing I think will change next year with the Kings. One way or another, we won't have a smallish backcourt. At least I don't think so. We'll see.
Are Tyreke and IT vying for the same position? We need them both starting. If one had a betteryear than the other well I hope they both have a better year next year. IT is a better PG, Tyreke is a better two guard. Tyreke is and probably always will be the more valuable player.
If we start IT and EVans at one/two next year we have a good start on building a team. We have a bigger need to improve at the SF position. We are going to add two or three more players next year, at least and even if we don't spend any money. In order to sell more tickets I think, broke or not, trustworthy or not, the ownership will spend some more money.
It will be interesting to see what happens. If they do nothing the team will continue to lose value. Spend or sell.
If we start IT and EVans at one/two next year we have a good start on building a team. We have a bigger need to improve at the SF position. We are going to add two or three more players next year, at least and even if we don't spend any money. In order to sell more tickets I think, broke or not, trustworthy or not, the ownership will spend some more money.
It will be interesting to see what happens. If they do nothing the team will continue to lose value. Spend or sell.
