And I say the opposite, because he doesn't have a 5-10 year track record then his rookie numbers carry more weight. But no, for his career he is closer to 40 - 30. This year he is closer to 50-40. I hope he keeps trending up.
Including a player's rookie season as part of a 10-year veteran is fine. Using more than half of a young player's game as his "career" is not a good way to judge him. Nobody is calling Sengun a "career" 14-point scorer when he is a 22-point scorer now, improving from 10 to 16 to 22 in each of his three seasons. In fact, even for long time vets, people often say something like "if you take away his rookie season..." or "except for his first couple of year..." That's because judging a player's career by including his formative years' stats is unfair and down right inaccurate. It's like judging an adult's job performance by including how they did as a teenager in high school.
Again, he has only been in the league 1.5 years. When I say his "career" I am not saying it in the sense that he won't improve, obviously. I am just not ignoring what has been the majority of his time so far.
There's nothing wrong with what he said. Jabari is a very very rudimentary offensive player. He gets his points mainly because he's a very good 3 point shooter with some hustle points here and there through offensive rebounding and cuts to the rim. If he wants to bring it to the next level he needs to improve his offensive creation. Dmo was and is a very fundamentally sound low post player with a plethora of moves that worked against an NBA offense before he got injured. The reason he washed out of the NBA is 1 due to injury and the fact that his offense did not justify his lack of defense. DMo's "bag" was actually much deeper than most NBA centers/power forwards. When people talk about "bags", they don't literally mean number of points scored.
Your bag is only as good as your usage and efficiency. D-MO never took as many field goal attempts per game as Jabari has this season. D-MO had good footwork, but he wasn't any more productive scoring from anywhere on the floor than Smith, other than 0-3 feet from the basket. I agree that DMO had better footwork in the post, but the reality is that DMO was as limited or more so than Smith - they just had different games.
really depends on context. Typically you don't really use "career numbers" for a player that is in his second year and actively improving. However I think it's perfectly fair to use "career" stats if there's lack of improvement, ie. Jalen Green. or someone like Andrew Wiggins. Their efficiency numbers were stagnant since rookie year, so it's pretty fair to include it.
Different play styles for sure, Dmo didn't really have a reliable jump shot. He's more of a weaker Sengun in terms of play style. With that said, every PF should have the ability to at least abuse weaker defenders in the post. Jabari do ask for the ball quite a bit when he seals a smaller defender in the post, but his conversion rate is very bad because he doesn't really have any reliable moves once he gets the ball. A lot of times he can't get a clean look or just gets the ball poked away.
It’s like calling Dirk a career below average shooter when he was a rookie or in his 2nd year. Like really bro?
No question there are lots of areas that Jabari can improve at. He has improved in executing within 3 feet of the basket, as he is finally over 50%, but he should and hopefully will get better at doing that. Jabari has actually shot really well from the floor everywhere except that 18 footer to the 3 line. His usage at this point is limited by his strength and his handle - but I do think he can become a 20 point a game scorer in this era without ever having a real handle.
Dude isn't a superstar at 20, total bust. Dirk was a scrub at 20, Harden was a nice bench player, Jermaine O'Neal couldn't even crack a rotation, I could go on and on with a million other MVP level stars at that age. Yet we still have people ready to make a final judgement despite obvious improvement from year 1 to year 2 in virtually every field.
For players within 3 years in the league, the improvement from season to season is much more telling than looking at how they start their career. This is exactly why people are judging Jalen Green much more harshly than Jabari Smith.
I agree. The whole discussion started over projecting Jabari to be a 50-40-90 guy. Thats why I thought it was important to bring in the rookie year. I'm not saying that he can't become good. I was just saying i'm not down with the 50-40-90 projection at this point based on his entire short time in the league so far.
The issue folks have with your posts is you took a (for all intents and purposes) meaningless rookie year where 19 year old Bari was obviously trying to get up to NBA speed while lacking NBA strength and in a horrendous coaching / roster situation and somehow decided it made sense to imply he was WORSE than he currently is. Saying he is closer to 40/30/80 when he is currently 47/38/81 means you expect regression and this is due to nonsensically using a career stat line that involves a paltry 1.5 seasons. You don't feel Bari can make the jump to 50/40/90? That's fine. However, what is even the logic behind trying to using a career stat line for a 2nd year 20 yo player to say he is actually worse than his current performance this season while Bari has very obviously improved in virtually all facets of his game over his rookie season? At the end of the day, Bari is tough, smart, and has been an elite shooter his entire life up until his rookie season. In all honesty, that was to be expected as he lacked NBA strength and conditioning while trying to adjust to NBA pace and physicality AND defending the other team's best players more often than not because KPJ and Green were absolute turnstiles on perimeter D. Since then, he has shown huge improvements in ball handling, cutting awareness, passing awareness, and defensive awareness. With such context in mind, you really expect that dropping ~7/7% going forward is more reasonable than improving ~3/3%?
Jabari and Alperen are a bit Bambi-ish out there sometimes. Udoka has diagnosed the issue and that’s why Steven Adams is on his way to do some hands on teaching in practice. I predict that in the near future, Jabari and Alperen are going to be nasty to play against.
Agree with u Adams will be very valuable for our young bigs, his former teammates JJJ and Paul George was talking about his training sessions and how much knowledge he has about alot of things. I feel like Bari and Alpi will be all ears to learn from him
Obviously he's not a franchise player by any means, but I have no doubts that he is being underused. He's been utilized as a spot up shooter basically, but he can be much more than that. His high release combined with his ability to put together a shot so quickly, even with his feet disoriented to the rim, unbalanced, is what makes him special within the PF position and with that size. There are many PFs who can make spot up threes at a good rate, but there are no PFs who can score like him coming off screens, in movement, with that quickness and that height. Udoka and company have to wake up for the next season. Basically, our current offense sucks, while having weapons to do many more things than we do. (Sengun is highly underused as well).
I am OK with him being reduced to a spot up shooter, I just want him to get more attempts. His value isn't really being a movement shooter, it's with him being a 3 pt spacer and 2 way player. Guys like Al Horford, Klay Thompson and Andrew Bogut earned max deals and all star appearances based on that combination alone. You can find shooting big men like Davis Bertans or CWood, but those guys are usually bad defensively and avoid contact.
Would love to see him pull up from deep more often when he brings it up (which he does often). He always seems to be more consistent with that shot.
He just isn't as good a shooter as I thought he would be. Perfect form, but doesn't seem to have that ability like a Durant, Thompson, etc to just drill open shots with regularity.
lol what on earth are you talking about, he made a 7% improvement in one summer and he's a 3% improvement from being elite. You don't think a 20 year old shooter is going to achieve that? He just doesn't have the experience. In his first 4 seasons, Durant shot the following from 3PT range: 28% (2.6 attempts) 42% (3.1 attempts) 36% (4.3 attempts) 35% (5.3 attempts) So basically 36% for his first 4 years. Jabari is taking more attempts than Durant's first 3 seasons. This is not just easily achievable for Jabari; it is highly likely to happen. Like Durant, he will emerge from his first few seasons an elite shooter in this league and he will still miss open shots sometimes like every other elite shooter.
