Your lost line of thinking was I me lamenting we did not get that stopper 3 and D wing that can slow down the best offensive wings on the other team…….. I never said anything about a 3rd star… Great players can hit shots on the move and coming off screens like Keegan does. They can create shots for others. I think Keegan will get there also but he isn’t a defensive stopper.
a very good 3&D catch and shoot forward hits around 40% on C&S threes. They are not creating offense but you can’t leave them. OG as an example hits 40.6 of his 3’s. Wiggins is 42.5. If you have one of these guys they aren’t a star but you have a key piece to a championship team. If we had a guy like these guys on our team we would be a contender.
A good 3 and D catch and shoot guy to be average needs to be high 35 to low 36% on C&S 3’s. In this range you see guys like Dillon Brooks, Tari Eason, Thybulle and Jaren Jackson. Not great shooters but good enough given their defense and you can live with the percentage. These guys are not stars but are key role players on winning teams. In my opinion OMax could have been one of these guys with potential to be the next tier up. If we were going to trade the pick we had to sign a guy at least on this level. We did not.
Kessler Edwards at 32.1 on C&S 3’s is significantly below average. He becomes a player other teams can just ignore…. In fact, they will leave him and play 5 versus 4 defense daring him to shoot. What you get on defense you lose on offense. I love Kessler’s D but if he can’t increase his C&S percentage he isn’t playable in the play-offs.
Now can Kessler get to 36% which is Barnes level with much better defense. I hope he can. Shooting 0-7 from 3 was not a good start. You aren’t signing one as a free agent at the mid-level exception and we have no 1st round pick next year. This year was the chance to close that hole and Monte failed.
but if you look at overall 3pt shooting (not just catch and shoot) your argument falls apart. Wiggins career average is 35% and last year he shot a career high 39.5%
OG is 37.5% career and shot a career high 39% last year.
Dillon Brooks, your guy, is 34% career and 32.5% last year.
Eason played one year. He shot 34%.
Thuybulle is 33% for his career, though he did shoot 36% last year.
And poor Kessler is better than you give him credit. He has a career average of 34% and shot 35% after the trade to Sac. Those numbers need to improve, but are already better than Brooks and Eason, better than all but a half season of Thuybulle, and 2.5% off of OG’s career numbers.
But the funniest part of your analysis for Kessler. He has played so little that he is truly small sample size biased. His career totals are 65/191. With so few attempts, if he had literally made 5 more threes he would be a career 37% shooter, not 34%. So you are arguing that he isn’t/can’t/won’t be OG on the statistical basis of 5 threes.
How about we let the guy keep developing before we write him off or cap what he can be? The one common thread for all these players is that they all shot better last season than their career numbers. Put differently, they are all getting better. But that is your common refrain- everyone else’s players can get better, but ours are capped out.
