If it's due to health, then there's a simple solution to that. Ime can bench the guy, start Okogie in his place, go back to putting Tari on a minutes restriction(it used to be sub-25 per game), and rest him in B2Bs(they only have 3 left and they're all home-and-home). Hell, he could even go far as to straight up sit the guy out for a few games. The Rockets were able to win without him earlier in the season when Okogie was starting. Either way, simply doing the same thing over and over with the identical predictable result is the one option Ime should NOT go with.
True, but this doesn't change that your non-cherry picked stats that suggest he's an above average starter for the Rockets. I'm not big on cherry-picking. In this case, cherry picking to say Tari absolutely sucks right now is fine and something likely happened that has caused a change in his talent at least in the short term. If one wants to say this is just regression, should probably be using larger samples for decisions as cold streaks can end at any time.
I don't think it's cherry picking to say that the team isn't very good with the Alpi, Jabari, Tari, Amen, KD starting five. Their record is 9-8 which is a fairly reliable sample size of 20% of the season. Is Tari as bad as the 4% 3-point shooter he's been in the month of March? Of course not. But the team IS better with either Josh or Reed starting in his place.
Agreed. Tari is NOT a shooting guard and his role is better suited to be an energy catalyst off the bench
Not according to Tari. Or not according to Tari's Mom, anyway. "Mom, maybe I should just come off the bench..." "No no no, my baby starts, my baby is a starter!"
Tari is one of the best chaos basketball players in the league. Deflections, offensive rebounds, loose balls, semi-transition, random bursts of energy in a the 3rd quarter of a game in December. He is a huge impact player when playing 22 mpg as an energy 6th/7th man. He is, at the same time, a poor halfcourt offensive player and an ~average defensive halfcourt player. If scheme implementation, reliable decision-making, court mapping + awareness, and methodical team concept execution are the ask, Tari does not hold the answer. He will never be a good starter for a playoff team in this league because of that. Either he realizes this about himself, recommits to his calling, and takes an MLE level contract to be that high impact energy rotation guy with us this summer; or he starts an itinerant and almost certainly unsuccessful career as one of a long list of NBA journeymen who refuse to accept a role.
The shooting trajectory is very weird. I don't think we can call it "regression to the mean." Tari was a career 35% 3pt shooter before this season. And the average was quite consistent. To get to the mean, it is extremely unlikely to shoot close to 50% in more than half the season and then drop down to sub 20% the rest of the way. It is more likely that both the hot steak and the slump are outliers. They just happened in the same season. The hot streak was likely a fluke. The slump looks like something is wrong with him, either physically or mentally.
It's probably both physical and mental. He started playing B2Bs right before the break and his average minutes were upped to close to 30 per game. That's when his horrible slump began. There's no way that's coincidental. It's gotta be impacting his body. As for the mental aspect, he had to already be feeling pressure earlier in the season even when he was hitting 50% of his threes since that leg kept him out for over a month. Then add to that him missing another 8 games later due to that ankle sprain and his 3-point percentage declining rapidly since he became a starter and he's gotta be feeling worse and worse with each subsequent game about his free agency prospects this summer.
