I’m not sure what your expectations are here. Outside shooting is high variance. And this applies to elite shooters as well. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, etc pull up their game logs they will have horrible shooting games and great shooting games. LaVine is absolutely elite with his efficiency and the scoring he puts up. Even if he dropped closer to 40% he’d still be elite, 45% is a notch above that. 51% from a guard who shoots a high volume of 3s is wild.
[KINGS] Comments that don't warrant their own thread (Redux)
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I’m not sure what your expectations are here. Outside shooting is high variance. And this applies to elite shooters as well. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, etc pull up their game logs they will have horrible shooting games and great shooting games. LaVine is absolutely elite with his efficiency and the scoring he puts up. Even if he dropped closer to 40% he’d still be elite, 45% is a notch above that. 51% from a guard who shoots a high volume of 3s is wild.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Especially when you rank that shot quality vs. result. Dude's a bucket getter, but yeah, he has to be more aggressive. He flat out deferred at times when the team was probably better off just have Zach launch over the shots they ended up actually getting.
I think this will improve with continuity. He was thrown into a system he wasn’t familiar with, playing with players he wasn’t familiar with midseason. After a year working with these guys and a training camp I’d expect him to be much more comfortable and same with a guy like Domas who the offense runs thru a good amount.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
YES! I think LaVine, a guard, should average 7 rebs a game! In other words, he should DOUBLE his current output. The guy was an absolute wuss in the rebound department. He's a 6'5" phenom of an athlete and his rebounding would be double if he had the grit and the want-to to do it. He consistently ran away from rebounds last year. Consistently! Begone, Lavine! Begone!
Padrino
All-Star
This is... silly. I'm absolutely not LaVine's biggest fan, but there's plenty for which to criticize him without making absurd demands of his game.
Also of note: his rebounding numbers likely saw a modest decrease with the Kings as a function of playing alongside the best rebounder in the entire NBA.
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
you’d also be wasting Lavine’s explosiveness in transition by asking him to crash the defensive glass every possession but, hey, seven boards a game or he’s a scrub!
Did you consider that possibly the Kings coaches instructed LaVine to not crash the boards and to run/leakout in transition any chance he got?
whitechocolate
Bench
The number of times I thought to myself, "I don't know what a good Zach LaVine shot looks like", makes sense now.
bajaden
Hall of Famer
Well, it's obvious to me that your biased and your letting your love for Lavine affect your judgement. OK, just kidding! I personally have mixed feelings about him. I can't argue with his production stat wise, but my question would be, are you going to be there when we need you, because last season, he wasn't. Having said that, last season was a mess, and I'm not sure Michael Jordan could have come into this mess late in the season and looked good.
Regardless of whether you, or I like him or not is immaterial. He's going to be here for a while because no one is going to touch that contract, at least not right now. Screaming and yelling about it isn't going to change that. My hope is that Christi is able to get him to be more aggressive. It appeared to me that he was trying to hard to fit in last season. He needs to go out and play his game. As far as his rebounding goes, there are only a handful of guards in the NBA that average 7 boards a game.
All I would ask of him is to play hard, and play to his strengths. Don't try to turn yourself into a PG. Make the right pass when it's there, but other than that, just play your game and let Christi and Perry decide whether it fits what their trying to do.
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
I’d say it’s his contract, not his game. Can’t make 50 mil in the current era unless you are a top 10 player.
I think it's also incredibly dumb to make sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of a LaVine/Domas duo when:
The HC got fired
The franchise player of 8 years got traded
-The 2nd in command (Wilcox) left mid-season
-The lead assistant (Loucks) left mid-season
-Domas was hurt for a good chunk post-all star break and tried to rush back before he was ready.
Not that I think this is some hidden 50+ win team or anything. But I think the whole squad does deserve to just have the slate wiped clean heading into next year. The Kings could not have had more off-court drama than they did last year; just getting back to a sense of normalcy is going to be a massive improvement for the product on the floor
The HC got fired
The franchise player of 8 years got traded
-The 2nd in command (Wilcox) left mid-season
-The lead assistant (Loucks) left mid-season
-Domas was hurt for a good chunk post-all star break and tried to rush back before he was ready.
Not that I think this is some hidden 50+ win team or anything. But I think the whole squad does deserve to just have the slate wiped clean heading into next year. The Kings could not have had more off-court drama than they did last year; just getting back to a sense of normalcy is going to be a massive improvement for the product on the floor
TaxMan
Starter
The main glaring problem seemed to be Zach is atrocious at running the pick and roll. I mean, just a crazy amount of passes at Domas’ feet, flubs, poor decisions. I guess maybe it gets better with a training camp, but seems like they really need to get Zach out of that quasi-PG role. His role with Domas needs to be more Kevin Huerter and less Malik Monk.
