Amen Thompson - Point [Forward or Guard?]

Yeah, the free throw thing is real. It's near impossible to find a guy who "learned how to shoot" without being a good free throw shooter. For reference in case others are interested, I looked the numbers up for the guys you listed. Here's what they look like -

JV - 79% career, 79% rookie year
Lopez - 80% career, 79% rookie year
Bosh - 80% career, 70% rookie (76% then 82% in the following years)
Tucker - 75% career, 57% rookie (ultra small/meaningless sample of 14 total FTA, left the NBA for 6 years, shot 74% in his first year back)
Aldridge - 81% career, 72% rookie
Derozan - 84% career, 76% rookie

Amen shot 65% in OTE and 68% this year from the free throw line. His form is also hideous, just going off the eye test, he is not a guy that looks like he can shoot. Obviously I would love it if he did, but I don't think the odds are great that he will ever have a reliable jumper from anywhere on the court.

 

Here are some of the guys who shot under 70% from the FT line as rookies and ended up being legit 3P shooters (some fairly soon, some much later in their careers)

Jason Kidd
Blake Griffin
Rajon Rondo
Trevor Ariza
Pascal Siakam
Jerami Grant

There have also been a few weird dudes who never shot well at the FT line but could somehow make 3Pers anyway, like Bruce Bowen.

It's unlikely that Amen will ever become a great or maybe even good 3P shooter, but I'm not ready to rule out him being able to develop at least a usable 3P shot.

 

Love this list, you've just made me a lot more hopeful. Jerami Grant is a crazy one, I had no idea this guy wasn't a shooter coming into the league. Looking over his yearly stats, his improvement is incredible.

 

Most people with decent athletic abilities can learn to shoot with proper form. The reason why some guys have bad forms most of the times is because they shot with bad forms as kids/youth and nobody corrected them.

When they get to the highest level, they have to unlearn what they have been doing all their lives and develop the shot from scratch. It is a painful process. Lonzo Ball was a good example of that.

 

In the October/early November games the season - Jalen Green would go out, and Thompson would go in, and IIRC do a lot of not particularly impressive dribbling and perimeter ballhandling.

By early March, prior to Sengun's injury, it was Thompson coming in for Smith midway through the first where he could line up in the dunker spot and had 2 lead ballhndlers with him. After Sengun's injury he started in this role as the de facto big man.

That absolutely seems like a position/role switch to me.

 

This. It's obvious many people here just don't know what they're talking about. Even though OTE has some retired NBA players working for them, it's nothing compared to what players have access to in the NBA. Amen's shot will get better because he has great work ethic.

 

Can you give some more examples other than Lonzo? I don't know if I've ever seen anyone make this claim. It seems like there are way more examples of the opposite (guys who were bad and remained bad at shooting) happening, I can come up with a bunch off the top of my head. Some guys just don't have it, even if they work really hard at it.

 

I am talking about shooting form. You seem to be thinking about shooting touch. Those are two different things. Plenty of players have good form but bad touch. Touch can't be taught. It is pretty much an innate talent. With better form and lots of practice, you can improve your touch marginally. On the flip side, guys like Haliburton and Kevin Martin have great touch even though they shoot with terrible forms. Who knows how much better they could be if they had better forms.

Honestly, I can't think of many NBA players who had really bad shooting form like the guys that have been mentioned coming into the league. Jalen Green's shot in his first season looked like it needed some fixing. Maybe he still does. But his isn't really terrible.

I don't know if Amen has decent shooting touch. We won't know until his form is fixed because it is clear that his current form is not working. It is also clear that he doesn't have elite touch or he would have been shooting like Haliburton. But he is shooting close to 70% FT. That seems to indicate that he can learn to be a decent shooter if he works on it.

 

"He loses the ball unforced" is not a sufficient rationalization for your claim. Everyone loses the ball unforced, some more than others, and some situations are easier than others. That's why asst/to ratios can change with trades or roster turnover or defensive pressure or spacing or volume of drives and so on.

A slow half court system against set defenses that can sag off you is undoubtedly more pressure on your handle.

 

We’ll agree to disagree but I hope Amen proves me wrong. I really do. I would love for him to take the mantle from FVv

 

He still has a lot of work to do when it comes to his offense, but his defense alone demands he be a starter next season.

 

I really would rather have Amen then Wemby. Such a stud.

 

We're lucky that we actually have Sengun taking a lot of pressure off the PG (that's why FVV had his best asst/to year). If Green had figured it out that gives us our 2nd/3rd playmaker and Greens handle has improved dramatically since he got here.

We have to make it easy on Amen with where he gets his minutes and we have the personnel to do it. Seems like the kind of kid who has no interest in superficial things and is just a full on pure basketball nerd. I think he'll surprise us.

 

You can’t be a basketball nerd and have no semblance of a jumper. Hes just gifted physically

 

Don't let your career make you bitter about athletic players bro. No one believes Amen is only athleticism. There are dozens of players with insane athleticism each year that will never be a quarter of the defender or passer or rebounder he is. He's obviously a high IQ basketball guy.

 

There is a possibility that Amen's offensive shortcomings make it such that he will be a too much of a liability in playoff series' at some point. He can get away with stuff in the regular season that he won't be able to get away with in the post season (unless, maybe, if he's surrounded by 4 shooters).

All that said.... I'm still in on Amen. We have zero perfect players; all of them could hypothetically be exposed in a playoff series. But I just want to throw out there that I think there's a reasonable chance (50%?) that he'll never develop an outside shooting game at all and players like that really need to be surrounded by 4 shooters, otherwise they kill their team's offense in the playoffs.

 

He strikes me as a well balanced and put together person.

 

Amen Thompson's handles will be fine.

He spent years playing in a league where he did not need super tight handles, and he has already noticeably improved in that area. He was a rookie this season, he still had a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio and his assist percentage is pretty high.

He has the court vision, size, passing ability and instincts to be a high end point guard.

 

If Amen Thompson is the same player in 3-4 years? Yeah maybe, although they would probably just play him at the 4 or 5 and he would be fine. He certainly will not be a guard or a scoring option in isolation until he improves as a shooter..... but I think it is too early to reach that conclusion. If anything I am more optimistic about him because of his rapid improvement during the course of the season.

Guys that make consistent and rapid improvement early in their career tend to continue to do so.