[Game] Kings @ Hornets - Monday, Jan. 22 - 4 PT

[Kingster]

WCS was horrible on offense and on defense. When you have Marvin Williams guard you and you can't score on him as a center, your team is in trouble. And when you stand in the paint and don't guard Williams at the 3 point line, your team is in trouble. His balance is poor, his patience and BBIQ is poor, his effort from game to game is inconsistent. WCS hasn't proven to me that he should be in the Kings' long term plans. At best he's a 50-50 proposition. He's certainly not making it an easy decision on Divac on whether to give a lot of $ to resign him.

 

[pshn80]

I haven't been able to watch the game, yet (hopefully tomorrow). Once that happens, I will provide my wonderful analysis. As always...

Unless someone wants to take a shot at convincing me to NOT waste my time watching the game...

Can’t help you. I didn’t watch it either.

 

[kingsfan101]

As of now Papa and Skal aren’t even back-ups. Papa is to slow and Skal’s BBIQ is too low.

They don't have to be great, just serviceable. Of course, I have hopes that both of them will grow into lot more than that, but in the modern NBA, few teams play with two good big men. Among the good teams, I can only think of NO (two great big guys), Clips (great once, still quite decent), Spurs (Pau is clearly on the decline. LA is still good, though not great).

Again, all this is predicated on the assumption that we draft a possible star 4/5 in this draft, and Giles is really good. Papa/Skal will see reduced minutes and roles in such a case, and I still have hopes that they'll grow into more than that.

 

[pshn80]

On the bright side we have some hope for the future with our young guys.

The best hope so far for a rotation spot:
Bogdanovic, Fox, Hield, Mason

A step down:
Jackson

A second step down:
Cauley-Stein, Labissiere, Papagiannis

Long shoes:
Giles, Richardson

We’ll lean more about their future over the remainder of the season (except for Giles). It has been and will be hard giving these 9 guys quality playing time. Look for some to show more, some to stay where they are and some to slip back in potential.

 

[YoungBlood]

They don't have to be great, just serviceable. Of course, I have hopes that both of them will grow into lot more than that, but in the modern NBA, few teams play with two good big men. Among the good teams, I can only think of NO (two great big guys), Clips (great once, still quite decent), Spurs (Pau is clearly on the decline. LA is still good, though not great).

Again, all this is predicated on the assumption that we draft a possible star 4/5 in this draft, and Giles is really good. Papa/Skal will see reduced minutes and roles in such a case, and I still have hopes that they'll grow into more than that.

Papa G seems to have a high floor but really low ceiling in terms of his development as a player. Whereas Skal has neither a floor nor a ceiling.

 

[SacTownKid]

WCS was horrible on offense and on defense. When you have Marvin Williams guard you and you can't score on him as a center, your team is in trouble. And when you stand in the paint and don't guard Williams at the 3 point line, your team is in trouble. His balance is poor, his patience and BBIQ is poor, his effort from game to game is inconsistent. WCS hasn't proven to me that he should be in the Kings' long term plans. At best he's a 50-50 proposition. He's certainly not making it an easy decision on Divac on whether to give a lot of $ to resign him.

I'll bring it up again, it isn't just him. Helping in the paint is the system. They even brought up them "tagging" guys in the paint. Sorry, that's bush league college horse crap.

 

[sactowndog]

They don't have to be great, just serviceable. Of course, I have hopes that both of them will grow into lot more than that, but in the modern NBA, few teams play with two good big men. Among the good teams, I can only think of NO (two great big guys), Clips (great once, still quite decent), Spurs (Pau is clearly on the decline. LA is still good, though not great).

Again, all this is predicated on the assumption that we draft a possible star 4/5 in this draft, and Giles is really good. Papa/Skal will see reduced minutes and roles in such a case, and I still have hopes that they'll grow into more than that.

I don’t want to be a jerk but if we are playing Skal or Papa with significant improvement on their part we are in trouble.

 

[jcassio]

You could also pass the SAT with it. 0.4*3 = 0.6*2, no real way around that one.

The only caveat I see is that raw shooting percentages (basically, this is the stat known as eFG%) don't take into account opportunities to get to the free throw line, which are more likely to be granted on a two-point attempt than a three-point attempt. But seeing as we're 29th in the league in FTA per possession (30th in the league in total FTA), it doesn't appear that our very high percentage of two-point shots attempted (73%, third highest in the league) is really helping us there. Nor is our 28th-in-the-league FT%. Nor is our 30th-in-the-league 2P%. In fact, one of the few things our team has going for it is that we are #2 in the league in 3P% - the one type of shot that is most valuable and that we are one of the least likely teams in the league to actually shoot.

Our reluctance to shoot threes is either brilliant sabermetric-based tanking, or it is basketball incompetence at the highest levels. And seeing that it took me like 35 seconds on BB-ref to get these numbers, I sincerely hope it's the former.

My comment about the math is not that the math doesn't add up. It does, obviously. But thinking that our league-high 3-pt shooting percentage would remain constant as we change our offense to ramp up the number of 3-pt shots we take is foolish. Not to mention that changing your offense also changes your defense. So you're making a bunch of assumptions there. Maybe you'll be right, but probably not. When it comes to making bad assumptions, I always think of buying used cars.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

My comment about the math is not that the math doesn't add up. It does, obviously. But thinking that our league-high 3-pt shooting percentage would remain constant as we change our offense to ramp up the number of 3-pt shots we take is foolish. Not to mention that changing your offense also changes your defense. So you're making a bunch of assumptions there. Maybe you'll be right, but probably not. When it comes to making bad assumptions, I always think of buying used cars.

While it's true that if we increase our number of 3-PT shots that the quality of the shot will probably go down, and thus we would expect a bit of a slide, there's a vast gulf between our TS% on threes and on twos. If we assume that all of our free throw attempts come from fouls on two point attempts (not perfectly true, but close enough) our TS% on three pointers is .570, and our TS% on two-pointers is .482. We could afford to take more threes and have our TS% on threes drop down to .540 (which would be the effect of dropping from .380 on threes to .360, which would be slightly below the league average of .362) and still have made pretty massive offensive strides by exchanging out two pointers, which we suck at, for threes, which we are good at.

 

[jcassio]

You're so logical. And I appreciate that! If I were coaching the Kings (and thank God I'm not), I would have several players shooting threes like they were going out of business. George Hill might be averaging 20 pts/game. Even if there was a dip in our efficiency, I'd still let em fly. That's today's NBA. But Joerger is a throwback. He thinks he wants to run, but his players and his system don't excel at it. He just seems more of a grinder. Let's hope he can adapt. Best case scenario is that Joerger is holding back on 3's as a way of attaining Lins.

 

[parker]

You're so logical. And I appreciate that! If I were coaching the Kings (and thank God I'm not), I would have several players shooting threes like they were going out of business. George Hill might be averaging 20 pts/game. Even if there was a dip in our efficiency, I'd still let em fly. That's today's NBA. But Joerger is a throwback. He thinks he wants to run, but his players and his system don't excel at it. He just seems more of a grinder. Let's hope he can adapt. Best case scenario is that Joerger is holding back on 3's as a way of attaining Lins.

Joerger says he wants the team to push the ball. He also has said that he wants them to take more 3s. So maybe as you suggest, his system doesn't optimize those strategies or maybe for whatever reason his players aren't comfortable doing those things. Bogdan and Hill frequently pass up 3s.