piksi said:
No it was not a guess. You do not have any facts either. My facts - would be his steady improvement every year. Every year he getts better at something. He is not done yet.
Let me ask You a question - how comes that somebody (according to you) who is not a gym rat improves steadyly ove a longer period of time - and on the other hand an other players who are supposed to be "working" hard still can not "guard a chair" and only "hit every othe free throw."
I am sure that You remeber Peja when he first came to the Kings. Now how is it possible for somebody to develop so much without working hard. Nobody is really that talented.
Additionally, I have heard Adelman praising Peja's work etics many times.
You can't call Peja a gym rat without proof. By the same principle, I can't say that he's NOT a gym rat without proof to the contrary.
But I will tell you this: Peja just got married to a beautiful woman, just had his first child, and has spent a good portion of his summer contemplating where he'll be playing basketball in two years. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't spending much time in the gym; I wouldn't be upset, either. Life is more important than this game that we all love so much.
That having been said, Peja has improved at things that he was already good at. In Greece, he was already a good shooter, and now he's gotten better. He gets his shot off quicker, and he's even more accurate than he was before. But that's NOT evidence of actually working on his game in order to improve; that's evidence of him playing a lot of basketball and just naturally improving his craft. If you're a painter, you get better with time. But you also get better and widen your area of expertise with actual individual practice, developing new skills and adding them to your repertoire. Peja hasn't shown evidence of that in the past four or five years.
The things I'd like to see him do are develop a post up move or two so that defenders the likes of Bruce Bowen and Trenton Hassell can't take him out of his entire game during the playoffs, become more proficient at putting the ball on the floor, drawing a double team and finding the open man, and rebounding. I don't care much to see him improve his jumpshot or his free throw percentage.
Regarding Webber's free throws, I think his hard work is evidenced by the fact that his free throw percentage went up from 61% (unacceptable!) to 71% (better, not where it could be) in one year. You don't make improvements like that without working at it. And you certainly don't come back from a career-threatening injury/operation in ten months without putting in some gym time. You can criticize a lot of things about Webber, but I don't think taking digs at his workout habits is the route you want to take.