The mid-range jumper: Important for shot creators, not so important for spot up shooters

That's fine, you are changing your argument. Before you said they didn't practice it at all. That no offense incorporates it. So if you want to admit that you were wrong that's fine. But don't try to act like you were in the right all a long with a tip jar bet.

That makes no sense. The person who has the highest percentage look at a jumper in the mid-range will be the spot up shooter. Look, you can't just have Harden and 4 Steve Novaks on the floor. Your offense would be too predictable and easy to defend.

One thing the Rockets have to do is keep their offense more dynamic. The basic premise of layups and 3's is good, but it won't work in a playoff series when a team can study our offense and figure out how to defend it by taking away things like passing lanes to the corner 3's. You have to have more outs than lay-up, lob it for dunk, or kick out for 3. That's not going to win in June.

 

The point of this whole argument is that some of us feel that while focusing on more efficient 3's is a good practice, it shouldn't be construed as "only Harden can practice mid range jumpers". That's all.

It's sort of like having an NFL team with only a few Darren Sproles clones as their RBs. Can you win with a passing-heavy offense? Of course you can. But even the Patriots and Packers of recent years had a semblance of a running game. I can't think of any coach that would think having 4 guys spot up behind the 3 point line waiting for the pass from the "primary ball-handler" is a good move. For example, I believe that a former Rocket like Carl Landry could be an ideal "role player" for our team.

 

Guys like Jason Terry, Vinnie Johnson, Kukoc, Kerr, Sam Cassell, JJ Barrea, Ainge were definitely not the stars of their teams. On the GARM, the prevailing logic seems to be that if you are not a "star" then you are a "role-player". Thus they are role players and they all took (and made) their share of mid-range shots. I can't say exactly how many they took but even a guy like Kerr took less than half his shots from behind the arc. I highly doubt that the rest were layups or dunks.