There seems to be some opinion on this fourm, that if one player takes over a certain amount of shots, he is then taking away from another player, and thereby hurting the team. Now I understand that people have their favorite players, and therefore want that, or those players to put up good numbers.
Well Baja, in All-Star games guards are known to hog the ball and chuck up shots while bigs are just there to dunk the ball on lobs. So to argue as if there are an unlimited number of shots to go round doesn't make sense if you ask me. The next issue then is whether (since we all know we're talking about IT taking shots as opposed to Cousins or Evans) IT taking more shots hurts the team. Now I wouldn't simplify it to only IT taking more shots, but him not even looking for others, or completely looking off Evans, who is supposed to be one of our main guys. I don't find it a coincidence that Evans has started out nearly every recent game strong when he's getting the ball, and then goes cold for the rest of the game after Smart benches him and being ignored offensively for long stretches. I still agree that Thomas had a good game and shot the ball well, but he had stretches in the 3rd quarter where he only looked for his shot, and due to poor offensive balance and poor shot selection we ended up giving the Hawks fast breaks the other way. Evans literally did not touch the ball for a good 3-4 minute span. Is that really how you want to see our offense function? Whatever happened to "everybody should touch the ball on a possession"? There is more to team basketball than just hitting shots. Guys get frustrated when they don't get to touch the ball. They start becoming lazy on D, start jogging down the floor instead of sprinting down to stop fast breaks. They start forcing the issue when the ball finally finds its way into their hands. They attack the rim and get called for charges in fast break situations instead of dumping the ball off to their team mates.
Isn't this the whole point of having a playmaker/ facilitator? Isn't this the very thing people criticized Tyreke for? He was averaging 20-5-5 but you get reports of Nocioni and Omri not being happy that they're not getting the ball enough, and our record wasn't very good. How is that any different from what Thomas is doing now?
Also, it really DOES matter who gets the shots. How come Kobe got to take so many shots while Derek Fisher didn't? Even if Kobe had a bad shooting night and Fisher was having a good one, did the Lakers start iso-ing Fisher and ignore Bryant? Naturally Tyreke is not even close to being Kobe, but you get the idea. I believe that there needs to be some sort of shot hierarchy on any good team. Now if you want to argue that IT should be getting more shots than Tyreke that's a different story altogether, but if we say that Tyreke should be more of a focal point of our offense than Thomas then he should not be stuck in the corner while Thomas shoots 3 pointers with 16 seconds on the shotclock, period.
There is of course no way to determine who is right. All I know is that we're not a very good team at the moment, and that I, like you, don't believe that a 5'9 PG is going to lead us to the promise land by leading the team in scoring. The blame for the poor play also doesn't fall on any one player's shoulders. Evans needs to be more aggressive, and he needs to play smarter. Same goes for Cousins. I think that's pretty clear to all of us. But as far as I can tell, you can't be offensively aggressive unless you are getting the ball. If Evans has the ball but misses easy layups and doesn't attack that's on him. Maybe even if he doesn't touch the ball on 4 straight possessions he needs to be more aggressive in calling for the ball. But if he (or DMC or MT when he's in) don't touch the ball for 3-4 minutes, I'm looking at my PG and the coach.
Btw, this is a general post referring to our games in general over the last two months, not the Hawks game specifically.
