Where do Kings passes go to die?

#2
I was just about to post this lol. I found this very interesting, and some stats no doubt our front office looked at when they were determining whether or not to keep Isaiah, and to go after Collison. With the numbers age upon us, these are what gms are going to be looking at.
 

Glenn

Hall of Famer
#4
I can't believe anyone, especially Fireplug, would be surprised at how IT killed ball movement. Perhaps you see what you want to see and are blind about what disrupts what you want to believe.

The team go better with the subtraction of IT. If you considered IT the third best and think Nik may become the third man, you can see why there are reasons to be optimistic.
 
#6
illuminating statistics, indeed. brick and a few others here at kf.com have already broken down IT's time of possession, passes per possession, and similar stats of relevance, but it's nice to see this view corroborated elsewhere, that assists do not necessarily correspond to a player's willingness to move the ball...
 

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#8
Yep, those are those same stats I am clumsily advanced a few times, but Fireplug took them and turned them into a much more rigorous argument.
 

funkykingston

Super Moderator
Staff member
#11
For years and years I pretty much only frequented bleachermob (posting at TheBigO) as far as Kings forums go. Nothing at all against Kingsfans, just a limited number of hours in the day. Anyway, Fireplug was a big reason why I loved that place. Fantastic analysis that jibes both with some of the analyses here and with what I saw with my eyes last season.

One note on Collison is that he spent about as much time at SG as PG with the Clips last season and thus was playing off the ball a lot, which does change his numbers relative to the other PGs. The same really goes for Tyreke. No, he's not the movement killer that some have said, but he's also not bringing the ball up the court as much with New Orleans.

As I've said in the past, IT often dominates the ball to the same extent that guys like Nash and Rondo do. The difference is that those guys are largely focused on eventually getting the ball in the right player's hands for a bucket rather than scoring themselves. They are orchestrating a PG centric offense. Rubio doesn't surprise me a ton as he is rarely pounding the ball and often is moving it up the court with the pass rather than dribbling it up. Chris Paul is a bit of surprise because I think of him a bit more like Rondo and Nash but thinking about it he does usually make his move or pass the ball pretty quickly rather than holding it for a long time.

Dragic kind of surprised me in a bad way although he's still a step above Curry and Thomas. And speaking of Curry and Thomas, it's easy to see the parallel. Both are primarily scoring PGs who pick up their assists as a byproduct of being a scoring threat as opposed to moving the ball or setting guys up in a more traditional sense.

Thomas scored 20 ppg last season on decent percentages so I can see why he views himself as a scoring PG. Still, Curry shot significantly more efficiently (especially from 3 - 42% vs 35%) and still averaged almost two more assists per game. Yes, he also had 0.8 more TOs per game but when the most efficient/elite scorer from the PG position in the NBA gives up the ball more readily than IT it means there's an issue.

And the issue to me is that Isaiah Thomas should have been put in a position to be Bobby Jackson and not Calvin Murphy. Que sera sera.
 
#12
I can't believe anyone, especially Fireplug, would be surprised at how IT killed ball movement.
Your instincts are valid. ;)

First rule of persuasive argument. Don't come off as a know it all.

Actually, I WAS surprised that IT was SO far down on the list of names but also surprised how little each player touched the ball at all. A lot of key players making $10 million a year touch the ball only 2 minutes a game.

Weird

Thanks all for the plaudits.

And holy crap, good to see you BigO!
 

Glenn

Hall of Famer
#13
Your instincts are valid. ;)

First rule of persuasive argument. Don't come off as a know it all.

Actually, I WAS surprised that IT was SO far down on the list of names but also surprised how little each player touched the ball at all. A lot of key players making $10 million a year touch the ball only 2 minutes a game.

Weird

Thanks all for the plaudits.

And holy crap, good to see you BigO!
I get the point about the surprise that IT was SO far down. I have never been an IT fan for many reasons. Thanks for confirming my distaste. :)

You got no credit for being one of the first posters on KF.com so I'll make sure that people know you helped jump start this site although it was in a different form (and probably not as interesting). Pre-2000 but I don't remember the years.
 

Kingster

Hall of Famer
#14
You only have to look at summer league to see what a difference in ball movement and performance there is with the absence of Isaiah. Or you can look at how great the ball movement was when he was out with injury for several weeks of last year. The scintillating passing of the team was something to behold . Don't you remember? And the wins were aplenty. Don't you remember? Malone told Isaiah to pass, but the little guy said, "No!" Don't you remember? Isaiah Thomas was the problem. Now that he's gone, this team is playoff bound.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#15
You only have to look at summer league to see what a difference in ball movement and performance there is with the absence of Isaiah. Or you can look at how great the ball movement was when he was out with injury for several weeks of last year. The scintillating passing of the team was something to behold . Don't you remember? And the wins were aplenty. Don't you remember? Malone told Isaiah to pass, but the little guy said, "No!" Don't you remember? Isaiah Thomas was the problem. Now that he's gone, this team is playoff bound.
 
#16
You only have to look at summer league to see what a difference in ball movement and performance there is with the absence of Isaiah. Or you can look at how great the ball movement was when he was out with injury for several weeks of last year. The scintillating passing of the team was something to behold . Don't you remember? And the wins were aplenty. Don't you remember? Malone told Isaiah to pass, but the little guy said, "No!" Don't you remember? Isaiah Thomas was the problem. Now that he's gone, this team is playoff bound.
 
#17
You only have to look at summer league to see what a difference in ball movement and performance there is with the absence of Isaiah. Or you can look at how great the ball movement was when he was out with injury for several weeks of last year. The scintillating passing of the team was something to behold . Don't you remember? And the wins were aplenty. Don't you remember? Malone told Isaiah to pass, but the little guy said, "No!" Don't you remember? Isaiah Thomas was the problem. Now that he's gone, this team is playoff bound.
goodness... i'm just tempted to chalk this up to performance art. did you actually familiarize yourself with the statistics provided in the article in the original post? would you interpret them for us? i'd be much more interested in your take on what those stats mean than your silly little strawman...
 
#18
Yep, those are those same stats I am clumsily advanced a few times, but Fireplug took them and turned them into a much more rigorous argument.
naw, you did it better than that guy because your post stuck to point guards, kemba walker and john wall for instance. this guy is hiding that all naPGs across the board have the ball less and pass the ball more.
 

rainmaker

Hall of Famer
#21
You only have to look at summer league to see what a difference in ball movement and performance there is with the absence of Isaiah. Or you can look at how great the ball movement was when he was out with injury for several weeks of last year. The scintillating passing of the team was something to behold . Don't you remember? And the wins were aplenty. Don't you remember? Malone told Isaiah to pass, but the little guy said, "No!" Don't you remember? Isaiah Thomas was the problem. Now that he's gone, this team is playoff bound.
Dude, get it together. You're starting to sound like a senile old man who's lashing out incoherently against arguments no one ever argued in the first place.

Did you even read the article, or are you just at this point railing against anything regarding IT?
 
#22
Dude, get it together. You're starting to sound like a senile old man who's lashing out incoherently against arguments no one ever argued in the first place.

Did you even read the article, or are you just at this point railing against anything regarding IT?
*covers ears* Tyreke sucks IT is the saviour nanananananananalalalalanotlistening!
 
#24
By the way I expect IT to play well in Phoenix. If he plays behind Bledsoe and Dragic he should be in the running for Sixth Man of the year. If one of those starters is not there for some reason things should get interesting for the Suns.