Monster wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 8:20 am
Q-is-here wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2024 1:12 pm
The guy I worry about a bit is NAW. His 3-point shot has been pretty bad dating back to the NBA Playoffs and it appears to have carried over to the Olympics.
He is definitely a guy I thought could regress in terms of 3 point percentage this season. However it's worth noting it's unlikely he completely drops off in terms of being able to hit them at some sort of acceptable rate. He has only had one season 21-22 where he shot under 34% from 3. He took a higher number of his 3's from the corners last season and hit almost 47% of them. He probably won't replicate that and on the other hand he probably shoots better on non-corner 3's.
Another interesting aspect is our dependency on NAW this year. Last year he was crucial, as he was part of our top-3 bench players, along with NAZ and SloMo. The 9th man, whether it was JMac, Shake or Monte, didn't get anywhere near the the minutes per game those first 3 got. Enter this year, we lose SloMo and all those 9th men, but we gain Shannon, Ingles, Rob and Dozier, plus the Minott and Miller (assuming they are not in Iowa). So not only do we have the question of who fills the SloMo/9th man vacancies, but how will their minutes be distributed?
For arguments sake, say it's Rob and Shannon replacing SloMo and the 9th man. Does Rob continue to get 9th man minutes? Or does he earn more minutes, thus taking minutes away from someone else. If NAW's 3-point shooting woes continue into next season, he might be the one winding up with the 9th man minutes. Especially if Rob and Shannon integrate quickly as the season unfolds.