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I admittedly can’t recall many Murray State games on TV to be able to confidently give my own scouting report, but I haven’t read a single breakdown of his game that doesn’t list shooting as a weakness and his outside shot as something that needs work. Looking at his 3 point attempt rate, it’s pretty low for the position, so I’m not sure why you think he’s the 3rd best shooter.Originally Posted by Mythrol
Last edited by NMThreeMVP; 05-23-2019 at 07:01 AM.
His shooting was also extremely inconsistent. He started the season horribly (much like Zion did, actually) and then towards the end of the season he had a couple of games where he caught fire, driving up his averages. If he had missed a handful of those and not had his percentage get driven up late, he would have finished with a 33% or 34% season. For the sake of maybe three games the narrative around him can swing between poor shooter, or perfectly good shooter.
Basketball.
I will also add that I've heard so much blind praise for Morant over the last few weeks (not just on here, but all over twitter, in podcasts - if anyone here listens to The Bird Calls, you know what I mean) that completely ignores the fact that he's a mediocre at best shooter, who can't defend anyone and projects to be a poor defender at the next level too, and who turns the ball over literally 5 times a game.
It's to the point that if this continues until the draft, with absolutely unabashed praise that does its level best to ignore any and all real criticism, I think I might turn down drafting Morant even if I had the #2 pick just out of spite*, cause I'm going to hate hearing his name, seeing his face, etc etc. Even Zion's had more criticism than Morant has, and Zion is a legitimate transcendant talent.
*This is hyperbole, but you get the idea
Zion has really weird criticism.
I don't watch college basketball. I don't have enough time to "scout" players and "watch film". I read what you guys say, TBW, and last night I was bored falling asleep so I googled draft profiles for ten minutes. It seems like they list practically every part of his game as a weakness. He plays great D, gets to the rim on O, but people criticize his shooting, rim protection, etc. Listening to the hype, he's a transcendent player. Just reading scouting reports, he is a defensive player who can lay it in and dunk.
Scouting reports are hilarious.
It's kind of weird. I'm going to lay out his legit pros and cons real quick here, from my perspective.
Pros:
- Insane athleticism and bounce, which basically everyone knows
- Very fast for his size, including laterally
- Plays fantastic defense and is switchable, can guard all 5 positions at least somewhat and helps very well. Extreme strength means he can guard in the post even when giving up multiple inches in height.
- Fantastic finisher around the rim, not just with dunks but with touch in layups as well.
- Crafty ball handler with good (not great) vision and passing skills, is happy to give the ball up: doesn't play selfishly
- Better shooter than he gets credit for, vastly improved throughout his college year
- Moves well off ball, cutting hard to the basket
- Hustles hard, never wastes possessions on offense and very rarely does so on defense
- Reads defenses well, has a very high IQ and knows how and when to attack almost instinctively
- Efficient beyond belief, partially as a result of his excellent offensive rebounding, but also due to extremely efficient isolation scoring, being excellent in the PnR as both the roll man and the ball handler, in transition, etc. Just overall extremely efficient scorer.
Cons
- Though his shooting was improved, his shot is better as set shot: can't really shoot off the dribble
- Mediocre free throw shooter
- Good vision, but as I said, not incredible vision
- Occasionally loses focus on defense, especially if being asked to guard a spot up guy
- Tends to go left a little too often. Improved on this, but still needs work on true ambidexterity on drives.
- Will probably need to cut 15lbs of weight when he gets into the league for the sake of long term joint health, if he is legit 6'7. If he's 6'9 then it's more forgivable.
He attempted nearly 5 3pt attempts a game. That's not "pretty low" by any sense of the word.
Again, my point wasn't that we needed a pure shooter next to Zion and Jrue, nor was I the one who mentioned Morant's name, you did.
My only point was Lonzo is one of the absolute WORST players to put next to Zion. He doesn't stretch the floor AT ALL, he proves zero space for Zion to work in - this is also ignoring all the other side distractions and injuries factor.
Edit: I'll back away from the claim of Morant probably being a top 3 shooter in the lottery. I can see guys like Hunter, PJ Washington, etc being better shooters. That wasn't really my point to begin with since I never brought Morant up in this discussion.
We've discussed this before and you need to stop this nonsense of extremely inconsistent. If we use your logic then I'm going to start saying Culver is actually a 28% 3pt shooter because that's all he shot in 2019. Its a disingenuous take and skewering of the actual facts. If I said about any player "if they missed a handful more shots their averages would be lower" that's not saying anything because they didn't miss.
Edit: I'll back away from the claim of Morant probably being a top 3 shooter in the lottery. I can see guys like Hunter, PJ Washington, etc being better shooters. That wasn't really my point to begin with since I never brought Morant up in this discussion.
Last edited by Mythrol; 05-23-2019 at 10:02 AM.
Zion's only thing that is of actual concern to me is: can his body continue to handle the load he exerts on it over the years? And I think it is a legitimate concern.
The reason I'm sure people are talking about his weaknesses is because they want to talk about Zion as much as possible, and they have to make things interesting before the draft since it's a foregone conclusion that he is going 1st. I remember before AD was drafted that it was much he same. I think you can still find articles people wrote saying the Nola should actually take MKG over AD. It happens when there's that huge of a gap between a single player and everyone else.
Do a thought experiment with me, for the sake of argument. Lets say a random player, called John Smith or whatever, plays 82 games in the regular season. In those games, he shoots 10 three point attempts a game, and for the first 65 games of the season, he hits 3 of them a game. A dead clean 30% shooter from behind the arc for 65 games. That's 195 total threes made.
Then, in the final 17 games of the year, he shoots 8 out of 10 every game. A much smaller sample size, but he's really hot. That's 80% for 17 games, for 136 total threes made in that stretch.
That puts his final total for the season at 301/820 taken threes, which is 36.7%. Basically 37%.
Is John Smith a legitimately good shooter, or is he a poor-to-mediocre shooter who had an insane hot stretch that pumped up his numbers?
Obviously this scenario has exaggerated numbers for the sake of the thought experiment.
Morant's 3 point attempt rate is extremely low for his position (.296). Historically, Lonzo Ball at UCLA had both a significantly higher 3 point attempt rate (.566) and percentage (.41).
Morant's 3 point attempt rate is the lowest of any guard projected to go in the first round.
Dude has not developed an outside shot or been a good shooter at any point in his TWO seasons of college basketball. I like Ja... and would draft him if we made a trade for 3 or 4 and he happened to be there. But I'm not for moving heaven and earth to get him when we're rebuilding and have other needs on the wing that are as critical as the need at PG. If we get pick 3 or 4, we should draft Barrett, Culver, Garland or White... or even 2 of them depending on the deal!
Last edited by NMThreeMVP; 05-23-2019 at 10:50 AM.
I agree it's a legit concern. It's why, in the pros and cons list I wrote up, I mentioned as a con that if he is legitimately 6'7, not 6'9 like I suspect is possible, then he needs to drop 15 or 20lbs for the sake of long term health. That wouldn't necessarily mean cutting too much strength either: Ben Wallace was 6'9 and listed at only 260lbs, and he was strong enough to bang in the paint with anybody.
Do the actual numbers for Morant. Not this inflated BS, because no one shoots 10 3pt attempts a game. This whole narrative of him getting hot at the end of the season is just as much BS as the rest.
It's no lie he started the season rough, his first 11 games (all the games in 2018) he only shot about 29% from 3 on 49 attempts.
But from January 1st to the end of the season he shot 108 3pters and made them at a rate of 39.8%.
So which is the larger sample size? Which is the anomaly? The 49 attempts or the 108 attempts?
Out of 22 games played in 2019 he shot 33.3% or higher from 3pt 14 times. Again, this wasn't some weird hot streak right at the end of the season. Heck he only took 16 3pt shots in the entire tournament. Let's remove the tournament entirely. He took 92 3pt attempts in those games and made them at a rate of 36.9% and *gasp* look what his season average was: 36.3%. It's almost.... As if.... He was actually pretty consistent for most of the season.
First: This needs to be crystal clear - I'm not saying we should trade up or Morant. I didn't even bring Morant up in this conversation. My ONLY point was to address that Lonzo is actually a terrible fit next to Zion. That's it.
Now to address the rest:
You will not be able to convince me that 5 3pt attempts is extremely low. Just listen to yourself with that. His 3pt attempt rate is lower than other guards because he simply carried his team on offense and took a ton more shots. Over 16 a game. Garland for example took under 11 shots a game. White 12.7.
The only guard projected in the lottery even close to Morant on shot attempts (14.5) was Culver and *shock* he actually has a LOWER 3pt attempt rate than Morant.
The mythical Lonzo Ball you're talking about... 9.5 shot attempts a game.
Actually some players do shoot 10+ attempts per game. Harden has done it the last two seasons, Curry has done it 3 times in the last 4 years, Paul George shot 9.8 per game this year, and a couple of other people came pretty close too (Lillard shot 8 point something, I think, this year). But leaving that aside, because I did point out that the numbers were exaggerated for ease of calculation (10 being easier to work with than, say, 6.4), I think it's pretty arrogant to assume that I haven't actually checked Morant's numbers in the first place.
Morant sucked to start the season from deep: you admit it yourself. The first 11 games he was absolutely beyond woeful. He was Lonzo Ball levels of bad; Russell Westbrook levels of bad.
You then point out that of the 22 games coming after the new year, he shot 33.3% or higher 14 times. Why 33.3%? That's still bad. That's under league average. Why not pick a number like 37%, which would actually be a good threshold to meet? Well, maybe you chose 33.3% because it's relatively low, and therefore easy to hit: if you do pick an actually impressive number like 37%, you find that he only shot that number or higher in 10 games. By contrast, he shot below 30% from deep in eight games: pretty close to the same number of times he shot well, 8 in comparison to 10.
If someone shoots pretty well in 10 games, and then shoots like awful trash in 8 games, is it fair to call them a good shooter overall? Or are they actually an inconsistent shooter who has some good games here and there (shot 7 of 8 from three in his final two games), but who is equally capable of putting up some awful, awful games (like the three games in late January, early February where he shot 4 for 18 from deep)?
If you think that Ja Morant is a good shooter overall, then fine, but it's clear that we have absolutely differing definitions of what a good shooter is. For me, a good shooter is someone who shoots the ball well on a consistent basis, and is much more likely to have an efficient game from behind the arc than an inefficient one. That's why, to take the obvious example, Steph Curry is a great shooter: not because he never has bad games, he definitely does, but because on any random night he is much more likely to have a good shooting performance than a poor one. Morant is a coinflip: heads he has a decent night, tails he shoots sub-30%. For someone to be that inconsistent and still gun up 5 attempts a game? There are those out there who would call that a chucker.
Edit: I'd also ask if, by your expectations, we should be calling Zion an excellent shooter too? He also started off the season shooting very poorly, only 17% in his first 12 games, but then he shot 39.6% from deep for his final 20 games. If we're expected to accept that Morant is some kind of marksman because he shot 39.8% on his final 108 threes, are we going to champion Zion as a dead-eye sniper for shooting 39.6% from January onwards?
Last edited by Pelicanidae; 05-23-2019 at 11:22 AM.
First, if you checked and know what Morant's stats are, why not use them? Why make a hypothetical when we have ACTUAL stats? Use Morant's numbers when having a discussion about Morant. Your example was WRONG anyway because you basically divided it like he shot bad for 3/4 of the season and then got hot at the end. That's not how it was, the much larger portion of the season (22 games vs 11) he averaged 39%.
Second, I used 33.3% because I was basing it off of 1 point per possession which is basically average and what you'd want from a basketball shot. Once you start getting higher than that you get into great and then elite territory. So 33.3% was an easy way for me to quick glance at his games and get an idea of how he shot.
I look at overall seasons because I understand shooters go through peaks and valleys. That's why I find your analogy of Zion Williamson silly. Zion finished the season with 33% from 3pt and only 71 attempts ALL SEASON. He also shot 64% from FT (a good indicator of someone's shooting ability in the NBA). Morant shot 36% from 3pt on 157 attempts (over DOUBLE Zion's attempts) and 81% from FT. I'm not the one trying to cherry pick stats to paint players in a certain light. YOU ARE. You would be the one to try and make a silly argument like Zion is a deadeye shooter because of some stretch of games, just like you're trying to paint Morant as a bad shooter based off of how he started the season.
I'm looking at Morant's overall season and seeing he was a good shooter last year. I'm not cherry picking anything. I only ever started subdividing the season to show you how wrong that strategy is and allows people to easily twist stats to do what they want. I'd rather look at ALL 157 of his 3pt attempts instead of just 49 and try and make a judgment based off of ALL of them. The only reason I'd see to try and divide people's stats into smaller sections would be due to injury or changing teams, stuff like that. A guy starting a season slow and then picking up as the season went on isn't him being a bad shooter that got hot.
Last edited by Mythrol; 05-23-2019 at 12:11 PM.
Are you familiar with the general usage of an analogy? It's when you use one thing as a comparison to another in order to draw attention to, or highlight, certain aspects of the thing to which the comparison is being made. I used the thought experiment because, as a hypothetical, it allows you to make a purely factual assessment divorced from your personal like or dislike of a given player so that the definition of the term ''good shooter'' could be made clear, before discussing whether or not it applies to a given player. That would be why I made the hypothetical.
33.3% is not good, or even average from 3. I understand that if you slice it down to 1ppp, it kind of looks like it might be average, but it's not. If a player is shooting 33.3% from three, you tell them to stop shooting threes unless they're jammed into the corner and they're open. League average from deep is generally around 35-36%. Using 33.3% gives you an easy way to look at a game and make a judgement, sure, but it's not an accurate way of making that judgement because it doesn't actually represent the average shooter.
You wanna think that Morant is a good shooter, go for it. Have fun with it.
The real question is are you familiar with an analogy because based off your example you're not. Again, he shot 39% from 3 in a 22 game stretch vs 29% in an 11 game stretch. It wasn't 65 games bad (80% of a season) vs 17 games (20%) like you tried to paint it.
Even removing the tournament where he supposedly got "hot" he still shot 36.9% from 3 from January onward. Not using hypotheticals, not using imaginary numbers, using Morants ACTUAL stats show where he just got hot at the end of the season. You can't. The actual numbers do not support it. He was even by your own words (37% being pretty well) from January onward shooting basically that.
It's not a matter of me believing Morant is or isn't something. It's what the numbers as a whole say for the entire season, not some subdivided section of it. See I can point to 61% TS, 55% from 2pt, 36% 3pt, 81% FT as his shooting numbers and those are his actual shooting numbers as recorded in all the books. Those are GOOD numbers. It takes you pulling out specific sections of a season and trying to point to just those games to try and paint him in any light other than being a good shooter last year.
The question isn't whether I can look at numbers without a player's name attached to them and give an HONEST assessment of the player. It's whether you can do it or not.
Okay. I'm not arguing with you more on this. It's pretty clear we are talking about different things, or at least to different purposes. I've made it very, very, excruciatingly clear that Morant has had pretty much as many games shooting at a god-awful rate as he has had games shooting well. He is a 50/50 chance to go out their on any given night to either be decent or atrocious from behind the arc. I don't call that a good shooter. I just don't. Great shooters are not THAT unreliable. If you want to say that ''oh well, if you add up all the great nights and all the trash nights and take the average you actually get this number which is somewhere in the middle so sure he's a good shooter'' (which yes, before you start, is how averages work) then fine, go for it. I can understand why you would do that, and why that would lead you to think he is a good shooter. But I'm not arguing it any further because honestly, I cannot be bothered.
When I think of a good shooter, I think of someone who I put on the court feeling secure in the assumption that they will shoot well more often than not, not somebody who is as likely to go 5 for 6 as they are to go 0 for 4. If you disagree, and think that as long as the averages wash out at the end of the season then they were good, cool. But we're just not talking about the same thing there.
I think we'd both consider Chris Paul a good 3pt shooter. Not great, not amazing, but just a solid good 3pt shooter. I'll use him because he has roughly the same 3pt shooting % as Morant (36.3 vs 35.8) and similar attempts per game 5 vs 6.
But look at Chris Paul's monthly splits on 3pt shooting. 4 out of 7 months he actually shot below what you'd call "pretty good" and 3 of those 4 months he shot even below my threshold of 33.3% so I'd say bad. 3 of his months though he shot in the rand you'd consider pretty good 36%+.
Kemba Walker had a similar % with a few more attempts a game but he also had 3 months where he was below your threshold and 4 months where he was above it.
Damian Lillard had 3 of his 7 months that were below your threshold, one month even being 28%.
Heck even a guy like Klay Thompson, one of the splash brothers, considered part of the best 3pt shooting backcourts ever had 3 of his 7 months where he shot below your threshold.
Everyone would love consistency in their shooters but even in the NBA and even some players people consider Elite (Klay) are still not as consistent as you'd like. That's exactly why I look at the whole season and not just some section of it.
If someone was trying to argue that Morant was some elite level shooter then you'd have a point, but you're trying to hold him to a standard that even a lot of shooters in the NBA can't live up to, and some of those guys are considered elite. Morant was a good shooter last season in college. That's all I'm saying.
Last edited by Mythrol; 05-23-2019 at 01:28 PM.
I know this isn't popular but Holiday should be traded right behind(maybe even with) Davis. It's better for both sides. We're going to lose Jrue deserves better.
What package would you take for him?
I think what you have to consider is that not all months have the same amount of games in them, so if you just take months it's not really representative of their season. February, missing the all star weekend being a good example, and October starting super late.
Klay played in 78 games this year. He shot at least 37% in 43 of those games. So he shot at least 37% from deep in 56% of his games played this year. That is, when you put him on the court, he is more likely than not to shoot at least 37%, and actually this year was something of a down year for him.
If you take Curry, who played in 69 games, he shot at least 37% in 42 games, which is 61%. Again, clearly more likely to shoot above that threshold in a game than not.
For other elite shooters, the numbers are similar. For Danny Green, it's 63% of his games. For Buddy Hield, that number's 68%. For Malcolm Brogdon, 59%, and for Bojan Bodganovic it's 58%.
For Morant, it's 36% of his games. 12 of the 33 he played, had him shooting at least 37% from deep. That is thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly mediocre. It's about the same percentage of games that Dennis Schroder shot above 37% this season. It's actually less than Kevin Knox hit that threshold (41% of games played) and less than Jordan Clarkson hit it too, (40.7% of games played). Most people would describe Clarkson as more a chucker than a good shooter, I think. Most people argue that Knox has shown extremely little to be excited about. Dennis Schroder is generally considered a poor shooter too.
I'm not saying Morant is doomed. His general shot doesn't look broken, but when you consider that he's barely reaching that margin in college and in the NBA things get harder for a whole variety of reasons, I don't think we should expect him to be an even okay shooter his first year in the league. Maybe not his second year either.
Morant has a slow release but his isn't a bad shooter, there's no way we get the kid tho sounds like Memphis is pretty high on him
Of course not all months have the same amount of games. I used months because that's the easiest way to sort through a players and %'s. That however is irrelevant to the point I was making. Anyone can set some arbitrary range of games and skewer the facts however they want.
My point was simply this consistency that you are trying to hold Morant to as a judge of whether he is a good shooter or not is something even NBA players struggle with as well. It's certainly not a knock on Morant that he can't bring the consistency you'd like from a shooter when guys like Lillard and Klay also struggle with it.
We are all talking about guys with YEARS of NBA coaching and some still struggle with it. Lillard for example was less than 50% on shooting 37% or higher for the season. You compared Morant to a coin flip, well Lillard was that too. Chris Paul was 43% for the season on shooting 37%+. Kemba walker was 44%.
See we can both find guys all over the place with this "consistency" thing. And look, after you get past the slump Morant started the season with, from January on he averaged 37%+ from 3pt 45% of the time. Right in the range of Lillard, CP3, and Kemba.
This is all small sample size we are talking here. Lillard played in 96 games this season, Morant played in 33. Basically 1/3 the amount of games. Trying to cut those 33 game down into small chunks like 11 games, and then extrapolating that to try and claim Morant is a bad shooter that got hot at the end of the season is disingenuous. He absolutely didn't just get hot at the end of the season. From January onward he was on an upward trajectory the entire time.
Okay.
Depends on what the AD trade is and what you could get for Jrue. You also don't want to just overload the roster with a bunch of young guys who all want to play and leave yourself with no reliable veteran leadership to set the culture. You trade Jrue next summer if you have to because you think he's going to walk at the end of 20/21 season. I can't really think of a deal I'd do for Jrue this offseason. Can you?
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