Fg% - 43%
3PFG% - 32%
I predict his overall stat line is somewhere around 14.5 pts, 5 rebs, 4.5 asts, 1.6 stls per game
that is as optimistic as it gets for Marcus this year. Watch: he'll come back from the injury and he wont play as well, then when the reason ends, he'll tell us "yeah, the injury affected me for the whole season". Haven't we heard this story before?
We have from the posters at least.
honestly, i love marcus. i really appreciate all that he does for us on the court. but i'm also not sure whether he is actually gonna develop into anything more than just a role player. sometimes he looks phenomenal, passing the ball well, hitting his midrange jumpers, grabbing rebounds, finishing at the rim, posting up. then other times he just looks awful. horrible 3 pointers, sloppy passing, flopping, fouling and then getting mad that the ref called it on him, not driving to the rim.
Which is the real Marcus? If it's the second version, should we even be committed to him long term? Terry cant run an offense very well (yet), but he looks absolutely phenomenal so far. His shot looks great, he's so quick, blows by guys, mostly solid defense (but he gets beat really really easily on cuts). he has all the makings of a good scoring guard in the nba. Is terry the long term option?
Bingo!!!
I have several concerns about Smart's future.
Lack of quickness / handleFirstly, no matter how much I watch Smart play, I can't help but feel that his quickness and ball handling skills on offense have not improved one iota since college.
When he's bringing the ball up the court, it reminds me of when Rondo was out and we had Pierce playing a lot of minutes at the PG spot. Pierce had excellent BBIQ and was actually a very good passer, but his lack of quickness and handles meant that he often struggled when the defense tried to press or trap, leading to him frequently picking up his dribble or turning the ball over.
Smart doesn't turn the ball over too often, but that's moreso because he's such an absolute non-factor offensively that teams rarely ever apply any type of defensive pressure when he's bringing the ball up court. If he were to improve his offensive game (as he's shown flashes on in the preseason so far) and teams start to apply more on-ball pressure, I'm deeply concerned about his ability to deal with that. I can see his turnover numbers going up as a result of the increase in ball handling errors and bad passes.
Shooting and shot selectionThis is an obvious one and feels like beating a dead horse, but it has to be brought up regardless because it's a huge issue that cannot be ignored.
Smart simply cannot shoot, and yet he consistently takes WAY too many shots for somebody who is as bad a shooter as he is. .
It doesn't matter how many excuses people try to make about injuries, or about the coach encouraging him to shoot, etc. You can look at all of Smart's stats from college, to summer league, to the NBA - doesn't matter what level you look at or what coach / team he's played for, Smart has always been a bad shooter and has always had terrible shot selection. It's two things about Smart' game that have been criticized from day one, and they don't appear to be getting any better.
Not everybody can shoot well, I get that and don't judge him for it. Rondo wasn't a good shooter. Evan Turner wasn't a good shooter. Shaq couldn't shoot to save his life. But those guys have the emotional intelligence to recognize their flaw, and to play to their strengths.
Turner was very effective in the midrange game and only really took threes when he was wide open or late in the shot clock. Rondo was effective getting in to the pait, didn't take a lot of threes - mainly just did so if he was open to keep the defense honest. Shaq never shot threes, period.
Smart, like Sullinger, seems convinced that he is a better shooter then he is...or at least seems to believe that he will get better with repetition of he just keeps shooting. But son, you need to be able to recognize that after two seasons of attempting 5 threes per 36 and shooting at woeful rates, all you're doing is hurting your team.
So the first question - is Smart intelligent enough to recognise he's hurting the team and cut down dramatically on his three point attempts?
Second question - if he does so, can he improve enough offensively, in other areas, to allow him to compensate for his lack of outside shooting? Can he become a killer from midrange like Turner, or become a beast in the paint like Rondo? I'm hopeful, but I have my doubts.
Those right there are my two biggest concerns with Smart in terms of his future potential. For him to take the next level as a player he needs to improve offensively. If he improves offensively, he's going to draw more attention from the defense. For him to be able to handle that extra defensive pressure, he's going to have to improve significantly as a ball handler.
Is he capable of improving in both of those areas by a significant margin, and if not then we he ever become a valuable commodity as a defensive wing who can't shoot?
If you look at past defensive role player wings (Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier, Derek Fisher, Doug Christie, Tayshaun Prince, James Posey, etc) the one thing that those guys seem to have in common is that they could all step out and knock down the open three. Hence the "3 and D" role.
If Smart can do the "D" but never develops the "3", then how good can he ever really become?
Topic: Predict Smart's FG % and 3 pt % this year (Read 2483 times)