The 3-point Conundrum

[REHawksFan]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

A Hunter/Bojan forward pairing might be the worst rebounding pair of forwards in NBA history.

Maybe so but having the top rebounder at the 5 and 2 positional has to help mitigate that. Being weak rebounding at the forward position is not a fatal flaw. Having no shooting is. I'd accept that trade off. 

[Wretch]

3 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Additionally, besides Trae's struggles from 3, we are not getting any 3s from the PF and C positions.

CC and OO (1 taken) - Can't 

JC (24.4%) and JJ (17.6%).

We lack a guy like Hauser that can just launch 3's 

What has to happen to make the Hawks a sure fire contender?  

On 8/17/2022 at 11:40 PM, Wretch said:

Coaching, defense, bench depth, at least 2 quality stars that compliment each other. 

• We'll see what kind of coach we have, there are some things that have me a little concerned...but we'll see.
• Jury is out on how well we gel defensively.  Again...we'll see.
• Jury is out how the changes affect our bench depth.  We'll see.....

So all we can be sure of is that we have is two quality stars that compliment each other.  If I could magically add anything to this roster?  It would be outside shooting.  Another starter that could just feed off of the attention of Trae/DJM...  Not necessarily a star, just a sniper.  Like, if I could go back in time and get prime Kyle Korver or Craig Ehlo.  That would be impossible to defend. 

Swap Bogi for Korver in '21 and we would have WASHED every team en route to the title.

*edit - Now that I think about it...  While it looks like a good fit on paper...we're gonna have to see how it runs against NBA competition with Trae/DJM

*le sigh...

If I had a magic wand right now, I would *poof* into existence an offense that creates space for our supporting cast - along with a sniper in the starting lineup.

[AHF]

1 hour ago, REHawksFan said:

Maybe so but having the top rebounder at the 5 and 2 positional has to help mitigate that. Being weak rebounding at the forward position is not a fatal flaw. Having no shooting is. I'd accept that trade off. 

I don't think we'll have no perimeter shooting all year like we do right now.  JC is a career 37% shooter.  Trae traditionally contributes there.   Bogi is a sniper.  AJ is a sniper working his way into a bigger role.  Justin and Aaron Holiday have been solid to good 3pt shooters in the past.  

The main question for me is whether Bojan can defend big men or not.  I've thought of him as a 6'7'' SF who really isn't mean to go up against bigger opponents.  We already know JC has issues with large bigs and this seems like it would be 3x worse and I can't imagine Bojan doing much in the way of help defense to seal off the basket which is an area where JC has gotten much better over the years.  But this is an open question because I haven't watched him defending at PF.  Our defensive improvement has been huge and I would not want to sacrifice that.

The upside would obviously be Bojan's shooting ability.  It is for real.  Even JC at his best couldn't get the kind of volume and production that Bojan has had over the past several years.  

Time horizon is another issue with JC finishing the season at 25 years old and Bojan finishing the year at 34 years old.  I just have a tough time seeing this happening.

[JayBirdHawk]

2 hours ago, marco102 said:

I just see it like this and this is not directed at you @JayBirdHawk.

Last year, y'all complained constantly about the defense which was putrid.  The front office addressed that and now the defense is improving.  The offense with Trae has always been elite.  This year I think it'll eventually settle around top 10.

No problem. I've already said I'll live with the offensive struggles which I think will improve as long as the defense keeps getting better.

My main point is, I'm just not a fan of Nate's offense, said it last year, same as this year.

[JayBirdHawk]

34 minutes ago, AHF said:

I don't think we'll have no perimeter shooting all year like we do right now.  JC is a career 37% shooter.  Trae traditionally contributes there.   Bogi is a sniper.  AJ is a sniper working his way into a bigger role.  Justin and Aaron Holiday have been solid to good 3pt shooters in the past.  

The main question for me is whether Bojan can defend big men or not.  I've thought of him as a 6'7'' SF who really isn't mean to go up against bigger opponents.  We already know JC has issues with large bigs and this seems like it would be 3x worse and I can't imagine Bojan doing much in the way of help defense to seal off the basket which is an area where JC has gotten much better over the years.  But this is an open question because I haven't watched him defending at PF.  Our defensive improvement has been huge and I would not want to sacrifice that.

The upside would obviously be Bojan's shooting ability.  It is for real.  Even JC at his best couldn't get the kind of volume and production that Bojan has had over the past several years.  

Time horizon is another issue with JC finishing the season at 25 years old and Bojan finishing the year at 34 years old.  I just have a tough time seeing this happening.

Agreed. I think it's easy to forget the defensive struggles when Gallo started at PF last year.

[REHawksFan]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

I don't think we'll have no perimeter shooting all year like we do right now.  JC is a career 37% shooter.  Trae traditionally contributes there.   Bogi is a sniper.  AJ is a sniper working his way into a bigger role.  Justin and Aaron Holiday have been solid to good 3pt shooters in the past.  

The main question for me is whether Bojan can defend big men or not.  I've thought of him as a 6'7'' SF who really isn't mean to go up against bigger opponents.  We already know JC has issues with large bigs and this seems like it would be 3x worse and I can't imagine Bojan doing much in the way of help defense to seal off the basket which is an area where JC has gotten much better over the years.  But this is an open question because I haven't watched him defending at PF.  Our defensive improvement has been huge and I would not want to sacrifice that.

The upside would obviously be Bojan's shooting ability.  It is for real.  Even JC at his best couldn't get the kind of volume and production that Bojan has had over the past several years.  

Time horizon is another issue with JC finishing the season at 25 years old and Bojan finishing the year at 34 years old.  I just have a tough time seeing this happening.

Outside if Trae I don't get the confidence in any of those players.  JC has never avg more than 1.5 makes per game. AJ is a rookie. Bogie perpetually injured. Holidays are role players. 

How are you confident in that?

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[REHawksFan]

4 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Agreed. I think it's easy to forget the defensive struggles when Gallo started at PF last year.

You saying Bojan is as bad as Gallo defensively? Hard to believe. 

Even if so, the lack of perimeter shooting is a bigger deal imo. 

[Final_quest]

On 11/14/2022 at 1:00 PM, JayBirdHawk said:

The lack of spacing has clearly hurt the Hawks offense as stated above. One domino effect has been the Hawks’ lack of ability for driving guards to finish at the rim. Defenses aren’t respecting Atlanta’s 33% shooting from deep and instead are choosing to pack the paint and prevent Young and others from getting to the rim.

Currently, Trae Young is shooting a brutally low 41% on shots at the rim, which places him in the single lowest percentile of NBA players. Young is a good finisher at the rim despite his size, but the effect of the dearth of shooters around him means help defenders can stay home and contest shots.

 

@marco102 This is pretty much what I said a couple days ago.  Trae is not getting clean looks on his drives due to lack of a perimeter threat.  

[marco102]

1 minute ago, Final_quest said:

@marco102 This is pretty much what I said a couple days ago.  Trae is not getting clean looks on his drives due to lack of a perimeter threat.  

Yeah, but when you actually look at his shot quality, he's had more open shots and catch and shoot opportunities than he's had at any point in his career.

I need to find the tweet about it, but I don't have time.  I think it was second spectrum that was tracking it. 

He may have less space, but he's getting more open shots too. He's just missing everything.

[Final_quest]

4 minutes ago, marco102 said:

Yeah, but when you actually look at his shot quality, he's had more open shots and catch and shoot opportunities than he's had at any point in his career.

I need to find the tweet about it, but I don't have time.  I think it was second spectrum that was tracking it. 

He may have less space, but he's getting more open shots too. He's just missing everything.

It's probably saying that he is getting more C&S opportunities and missing a lot of them, but that is totally different than his drives.  He has nowhere to go sometimes.  

[marco102]

Just now, Final_quest said:

It's probably saying that he is getting more C&S opportunities and missing a lot of them, but that is totally different than his drives.  He has nowhere to go sometimes.  

No it was tracking his shot quality. All types of shots. 

[AHF]

4 hours ago, REHawksFan said:

Outside if Trae I don't get the confidence in any of those players.  JC has never avg more than 1.5 makes per game. AJ is a rookie. Bogie perpetually injured. Holidays are role players. 

How are you confident in that?

I’m saying that we have enough upside on 3pt shooting that I’m not willing to throw away our defensive improvements to get back to our 3pt shooting from last year.  If we put Gallo2.0 as our starter I don’t see a path to sustaining the improved defense.  I at least see 4 different ways to improve our offensive 3pt shooting in addition to the possibility of roster tweaks.

I don’t know how good Bojan is defensively.  Just that he is tiny, can’t rebound and has a bad reputation but I haven’t watched him so maybe he is holding his own this year.

[REHawksFan]

9 hours ago, AHF said:

I’m saying that we have enough upside on 3pt shooting

This is where we are missing each other.  

If you take Trae, DJ, Hunter, JC, AH, JH, and AJ's absolute BEST season of their entire careers (and for some that was SEVERAL years ago), you get 11.3 makes on 36.4 attempts per game.  That's 31.0% which is essentially what we are shooting now.

And those numbers would rank 20th in makes and 30th in FG% in the NBA.  And we'd be increasing our attempts by about 8 per game.  

Where is the upside?  

If you want to look at it on a % basis instead of raw makes, the story is just as bleak although we'd be shooting a high %.

Based on each players very BEST FG% from 3pt in their careers, we get 8.9 makes on 22.4 attempts which is 39.7%.  Those numbers would rank 30th in makes, 30th in attempts, and 3rd in % but on EXTREMELY LOW volume.  

The reality is that literally every player will have to combine their career best FG% with significantly higher volume than they have proven capable of in order for the team to be league average. 

Again, I just don't see where the confidence is coming from.  The Hawks have a bunch of guys (outside of Trae) that shoot for high % on low volume but then can't sustain it as the volume increases.   

 

EDIT:  To put this another way, for the Hawk to be LEAGUE AVERAGE in makes without changing their shot profile they need to shoot 42.7% from distance which would lead the NBA by nearly 1%.  Is that even remotely reasonable for this team?  Of course not. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by REHawksFan

[REHawksFan]

19 hours ago, marco102 said:

The offense with Trae has always been elite.  This year I think it'll eventually settle around top 10.

The offense has only really been ELITE the last 2 years.  They were 2nd in OffRTG last year and 9th the year before. Trae's first few years they ranked in the low 20's.  

But here's what led to those elite offenses:

21-22:  12.9 3pt Makes on 34.4 Att for 37.4%.  Ranked 11th / 18th in Makes/Attempts but 2nd in NBA in %.

20-21:  12.4 Makes on 33.4 Att for 37.2%. Ranked 14th / 19th in Makes/Attempts but 12th in %. 

This year:  9.2 Makes on 28.6 Att for 32.2%. Ranked 30th / 30th / 27th. 

They don't HAVE to be tops in the NBA in Makes or Attempts but they can't be LAST in both and near LAST in %.  

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by REHawksFan

[AHF]

1 hour ago, REHawksFan said:

This is where we are missing each other.  

If you take Trae, DJ, Hunter, JC, AH, JH, and AJ's absolute BEST season of their entire careers (and for some that was SEVERAL years ago), you get 11.3 makes on 36.4 attempts per game.  That's 31.0% which is essentially what we are shooting now.

And those numbers would rank 20th in makes and 30th in FG% in the NBA.  And we'd be increasing our attempts by about 8 per game.  

Where is the upside?  

If you want to look at it on a % basis instead of raw makes, the story is just as bleak although we'd be shooting a high %.

Based on each players very BEST FG% from 3pt in their careers, we get 8.9 makes on 22.4 attempts which is 39.7%.  Those numbers would rank 30th in makes, 30th in attempts, and 3rd in % but on EXTREMELY LOW volume.  

The reality is that literally every player will have to combine their career best FG% with significantly higher volume than they have proven capable of in order for the team to be league average. 

Again, I just don't see where the confidence is coming from.  The Hawks have a bunch of guys (outside of Trae) that shoot for high % on low volume but then can't sustain it as the volume increases.   

 

EDIT:  To put this another way, for the Hawk to be LEAGUE AVERAGE in makes without changing their shot profile they need to shoot 42.7% from distance which would lead the NBA by nearly 1%.  Is that even remotely reasonable for this team?  Of course not. 

We are missing each other because I don't follow your math.  Here are the career best seasons for everyone:

Trae 3.1 on 8.0 attempts

JC 1.4 on 3.6 attempts

AHoliday 1.3 on 3.3 attempts

JHoliday 2.6 on 7.1 attempts

Hunter 1.4 on 3.7 attempts

Bogi 3.3 on 7.6 attempts

DM 1.8 on 5.6 attempts

AJ 1.1 on 2.7 attempts (current number)

Frank 1/3 on .875 attempts (minute adjusted for his minutes)

Jalen 0.2 on 1.4 attempts (current number)

That is:  15.53 makes on 35.6%

That would be 2nd in the league on made 3's per game.  But that overstates things since not everyone gets to play every game.

So let's assume you only take 85% of those results (i.e., reduce the makes to 13.2).  That would be tied for 7th best in the league.  The % would be average.

I have no idea why your numbers assume that Bogi will never return and why they ignore the rest of the team when you are comparing the result against full team production of other teams.  I am expecting him to eventually return and don't ignore the small boosts of guys like Frank (who is shooting 50% this year but I did not use that number because it is too high).

More importantly, you are totally ignoring the defensive side of this.  Remember that our record is better right now than when we had the elite offense the last couple years.  

So while I don't think we will maximize everyone, I do think we can get measurably better than we are now and I'm not willing to do something that tanks our defense to hit a bigger improvement.  I want TS/LF to look at things to improve our 3pt shooting while continuing the defensive improvement and regression to the mean, more minutes for AJ, and the return of Bogi are obvious opportunities for improving over our current numbers.

 

[Gray Mule]

What are our starting five capable of?

What are our 2nd unit capable of?

Is this Hawk team, as constructed, capable of making a big % of their shots from three point land?  Are they capable of making a big % of their medium range shots?  Are they mostly dunkers?

Are they playing and shooting up to their skills?  

We musn't expect them to do things that they can't.  Decide what they can do, then do it!

[AHF]

15 minutes ago, Gray Mule said:

What are our starting five capable of?

What are our 2nd unit capable of?

Is this Hawk team, as constructed, capable of making a big % of their shots from three point land?  Are they capable of making a big % of their medium range shots?  Are they mostly dunkers?

Are they playing and shooting up to their skills?  

We musn't expect them to do things that they can't.  Decide what they can do, then do it!

My view is not that this team is constructed to be an elite, high volume 3pt shooting team.  We are just not built that way.  But we should be closer to average than we are today and that should be a meaningful improvement.  Trae and JC are at career low numbers (and not close to previous career lows) which says they should improve.  AJ looks pretty amazing and should get a lot more than the 17 minutes over 6 games he got to start the year.  And Bogi is an impactful addition to our perimeter shooting when he returns.  JJ has no baseline but seems hard to think he can get worse than 14% -- he shot 37.5% last season in the g-league so that seems like it should improve a lot.

The unfortunate reality is that we would be markedly better right now if we had not traded Huerter to get under the tax line but that is the reality and the consequence of that deal.

That doesn't mean that TS/LF shouldn't look at other tweaks they could make to the roster to improve the perimeter shooting but my fundamental view is that we can't let go of the improvement we've made on defense.

[REHawksFan]

5 minutes ago, AHF said:

We are missing each other because I don't follow your math.  Here are the career best seasons for everyone:

Trae 3.1 on 8.0 attempts

JC 1.4 on 3.6 attempts

AHoliday 1.3 on 3.3 attempts

JHoliday 2.6 on 7.1 attempts

Hunter 1.4 on 3.7 attempts

Bogi 3.3 on 7.6 attempts

DM 1.8 on 5.6 attempts

AJ 1.1 on 2.7 attempts (current number)

Frank 1/3 on .875 attempts (minute adjusted for his minutes)

Jalen 0.2 on 1.4 attempts (current number)

That is:  15.53 makes on 35.6%

That would be 2nd in the league on made 3's per game.  But that overstates things since not everyone gets to play every game.

So let's assume you only take 85% of those results (i.e., reduce the makes to 13.2).  That would be tied for 7th best in the league.  The % would be average.

I have no idea why your numbers assume that Bogi will never return and why they ignore the rest of the team when you are comparing the result against full team production of other teams.  I am expecting him to eventually return and don't ignore the small boosts of guys like Frank (who is shooting 50% this year but I did not use that number because it is too high).

More importantly, you are totally ignoring the defensive side of this.  Remember that our record is better right now than when we had the elite offense the last couple years.  

So while I don't think we will maximize everyone, I do think we can get measurably better than we are now and I'm not willing to do something that tanks our defense to hit a bigger improvement.  I want TS/LF to look at things to improve our 3pt shooting while continuing the defensive improvement and regression to the mean, more minutes for AJ, and the return of Bogi are obvious opportunities for improving over our current numbers.

 

I didn't include Bogie because I have no idea when he will come back and if he will actually be healthy.  I think my numbers are still off because it looks like I omitted DJ's 1.8 makes per game in the total.  That's my fault.  

I think you are being WAY too optimistic in assuming that most of these guys are going to even approach their career highs on makes or %.  And that's exactly what will have to happen for them to be better than league average in makes this year.  And while that's not a MUST given the improved defense, I believe it is a must come playoff time when nearly all of the teams are going to excel at making 3s. 

I just can't get on board with this pie in the sky hopefulness that our entire roster is going to all of a sudden take steps forward and approach their career bests. 

Look at last year's numbers for each player in the rotation:

Trae:  3.1 on 8.0 

DJM: 1.4 on 4.3 - he's actually at his career high this year

JC:  1.2 on 3.3

Hunter:  1.4 on 3.7

JH:  2.4 on 6.5 - on 28 min / gm but he's not currently in the rotation

AH:  0.6 on 1.6

Bogie:  3.3 on 7.6 - he's currently hurt with no time frame to return

JJ:  0.1 on 0.6 - nominal 

AJ:  1.1 on 2.7

So that's 7.1 Makes for 4 starters and 4.2 from the bench which improves to 7.5 from the bench IF Bogie comes back healthy.  All total 14.6 makes on 38.3 attempts which is 38%.  That's great.  Except there's zero chance all of that happens with Nate's offense AND all of the questions surrounding injuries / playing time / etc...   BTW....38% on the current attempts is still only 10.9 makes per game which ranks 24th in NBA. 

So while it may sound good to say "there's plenty of room to improve" it doesn't seem all that realistic to me.  

And yes, I know I'm ignoring Vit and Frank and Tyreese and all of the garbage time production.  I'm not sure how to filter that out for other teams but I don't think that really changes the issue any.  The Hawks cannot take and make the fewest 3s in the league and expect to be a contender. And there's nothing about the current roster that gives great confidence that they will move toward league average in each of those numbers, imo. 

Finally, I'm not ignoring defense.  I just don't think the defensive hit from losing JC would all of a sudden take a fringe top 10 defense and relegate it bottom 5 like we were last year.  You seem to be ignoring the defensive contributions of DJ, JH, AH in your calculus.   

[JayBirdHawk]

I'd rather a top defense with the hopes the offense normalizes which I think is the easier path.

We don't need a SF trying to play defense at PF. I posted this in the Buck thread.