Thad Young’s offensive potential

[MikkeMan]

I have wrote couple of times that Young's offense game reminds me little Shawn Marion's. Both are very good finishing around the rim, won't get too often to free throw line and have quite shaky outside shot. Both players are also good in transition and moving without ball.

I would still like to present some statistics to prove this.

If we look Marion's advanced offensive numbers in his seasons before Nash joined to Suns, they are awfully close to Youngs numbers from previous years. (FGA is per 100 possessions that makes numbers comparable even if team plays in different pace)

Marion TS% USG% FGA Young TS% USG% FGA
01-02 .518 23.6 23.6 11-12 .538 21.5 21.0
02-03 .538 23.3 22.8 12-13 .541 19.8 19.2
03-04 .513 22.7 21.6 13-14 .512 24.1 22.9

Also their shooting numbers were pretty close:

% of FGA by Distance FG% by Distance
Marion 0-3 3-10 10-16 16<3 3P 0-3 3-10 10-16 16<3 3P %Ast'd %Dunks
01-02 .225 .149 .282 . 256 .087 .662 .409 .409 .436 .393 .700 .072
02-03 .207 .139 .205 .200 .248 .651 .397 .405 .410 .387 .589 .070
03-04 .286 .142 .219 .155 .198 .627 .524 .340 .288 .340 .540 .077

Young 0-3 3-10 10-16 16<3 3P 0-3 3-10 10-16 16<3 3P %Ast'd %Dunks
11-12 .389 .255 .156 .195 .006 .682 .417 .327 .425 .250 .651 .073
12-13 .452 .248 .102 .189 .008 .670 .454 .357 .414 .125 .720 .093
13-14 .377 .223 .060 .112 .228 .645 .374 .338 .326 .308 .559 .048

Young has been little better finisher around basket and he has also taken greater share of this shot attempts there. Marion has been more effective other positions especially behind 3 point line. Anyway if you look the numbers from both players they look like that player has already fulfilled his potential and it seems unrealistic to expect much improvement, which is quite logical since both player were 25 at that point of their career.

Let's then look Marion's numbers after Nash joined to Suns

Marion TS% USG% FGA
01-02 .556 21.3 20.5
02-03 .591 22.3 21.0
03-04 .594 19.3 17.9

So it looks like that Nash transformed quite ineffective scorer to almost elite level scorer. And Marion's usage Rate remained still quite high. Let's look Marion's shooting statistics in those seasons if we see how that happened.

% of FGA by Distance FG% by Distance
Marion 0-3 3-10 10-16 16<3 3P 0-3 3-10 10-16 16<3 3P %Ast'd %Dunks
04-05 .344 .126 .164 .100 .265 .667 .417 .434 .333 .334 .681 .119
05-06 .384 .151 .155 .097 .212 .752 .432 .443 .323 .331 .737 .151
06-07 .415 .156 .125 .068 .235 .726 .473 .448 .260 .317 .748 .171

So it looks like that the amount of assisted field goals increased clearly after Nash joined to Suns. Also Marion roughly doubled the amount of dunks from around 7% to 15% from his FGA. He also took more layups and limited the amount of long two point shots by converting some of those to three point shots.
We can say that Marion's scoring efficiency clearly improved when he got change to play with true pass first point guard Nash. This happened even though he had been playing already with quite good point Marbury.

I believe that Young has similar potential to improve his scoring efficiency in Minnesota. He has been playing with quite OK point guards Holiday and MCW but they are not certainly same level floor generals than Rubio. Even though it seems that Young does already very good job on getting his shot attempts close to basket, I think playing with Rubio maximizes his potential there and we see similar improvement in his scoring efficiency than Marion had when he was paired with Nash.

Finally here are my predictions for Young: 35min, 18pts, 7rbs, 2stls and 54 FG%

and since I have been using advanced statistics, I will give my predictions for those as well:
USG%: 21 TS%: .57

[thedoper]

Nice work. Go Wolves. I'd be fine with those numbers.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

I'm 100% with you Mikkeman. Good post.

[alexftbl8181 [enjin:6648741]]

So he's gonna finish with a career year in pretty much every category? Okay Dokey

[alexftbl8181 [enjin:6648741]]

players who scored 18 points+ and shoot over 50% last year

Durant
Lebron
Griffin
Davis
Dragic
Howard
Lee

So if your not a complete down low player (which Thad isn't) then you are one of the best players in the league if you put up those numbers. That doesn't describe Thad Young to me

[MikkeMan]

I don't see that my predictions for Thad would be unrealistic at all.

If we check his stats from last four years and adjust them for 35 minutes playing time with faster pace (Philly has been playing on really slow pace before last year, so I adjusted Thad's stats for Minnesota's last year pace), Thad would have averaged between 7 and 8 rbs per game in all other of those seasons except last year, and between 17.4-18.1 pts per game also in. His shooting percentage has been 51-54% in other seasons except last year.

If we calculate pace adjusted average numbers from last 4 years for Thad, they would be 17.4 pts 7.2 rbs 1,8 stls 51 FG%. So my prediction is only slightly higher what Thad´s averages could have been in last 4 years if he would have got more minutes and Philly would have been playing with higher pace.

[Monster]

I think one of the interesting things about Thad is he has played under various coaches and asked to fill various roles. In some ways he is a known solid basketball player but in some ways we don't know for sure what his upside is especially offensively. I'm really interested to watch him play next year.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Monster, you make a great point that Young has played completely different for different coaches...his year-to-year stats sometimes don't even look like the same player. Take a look at his three-point shooting. Last year, he jacked up 292 threes, or almost four per game...more threes than free throws! In contrast, in three years under Doug Collins, he only tried 34 threes total.

I'm hoping Flip encourages Young to be the Doug Collins version, not the Thad Young from last year. We are not going to be successful if Young is shooting almost 4 threes per game at 31% and only pulling down 6 rebounds. If you watch Thad's shooting stroke, you have to conclude that he is not a long-distance shooter. His form is inconsistent and he struggles to stay balanced sometimes on his release, and if you watch his highlights last year, several of his successful threes were banked in (probably not intentionally)! Flip has already said that he wants Bennett to shoot fewer threes, so I suspect he will do the same with Young.

If Flip can convince Thad to give up the long-distance game and focus on staying inside, rebounding and playing defense, he can put up the kind of efficient stats he put up for Collins in 2012-13...15 and 7.5 on 53% shooting. Flip has to notice (and if not, son Ryan will point it out to him) that Young shot over 50% all three years Collins coached him, but only once in his other four years. Actually, I expect Young to get fewer minutes than he did with talent-challenged Philly, so I would be happy with 12 and 7 in 28 minutes of efficient shooting...that would be a great season.

[Monster]

Monster, you make a great point that Young has played completely different for different coaches...his year-to-year stats sometimes don't even look like the same player. Take a look at his three-point shooting. Last year, he jacked up 292 threes, or almost four per game...more threes than free throws! In contrast, in three years under Doug Collins, he only tried 34 threes total.

I'm hoping Flip encourages Young to be the Doug Collins version, not the Thad Young from last year. We are not going to be successful if Young is shooting almost 4 threes per game at 31% and only pulling down 6 rebounds. If you watch Thad's shooting stroke, you have to conclude that he is not a long-distance shooter. His form is inconsistent and he struggles to stay balanced sometimes on his release, and if you watch his highlights last year, several of his successful threes were banked in (probably not intentionally)! Flip has already said that he wants Bennett to shoot fewer threes, so I suspect he will do the same with Young.

If Flip can convince Thad to give up the long-distance game and focus on staying inside, rebounding and playing defense, he can put up the kind of efficient stats he put up for Collins in 2012-13...15 and 7.5 on 53% shooting. Flip has to notice (and if not, son Ryan will point it out to him) that Young shot over 50% all three years Collins coached him, but only once in his other four years. Actually, I expect Young to get fewer minutes than he did with talent-challenged Philly, so I would be happy with 12 and 7 in 28 minutes of efficient shooting...that would be a great season.

I don't think its going to be hard to convince Thad to give up shooting 3's. I wouldn't mind him taking a few here and there its not like he totally sucks shooting them but yeah I think he will be back to an efficient guy that's more around the pained area than jacking up 3's. I wonder if anyone is going to play 35 minutes per game this year. I think Flip may really play guys and keep people fresh. Wolfson tweeted today that they want to keep pek's minutes under 30 per game. Sounds good to me.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

And we're back at it...

What makes you expect Young to player fewer minutes, or 28 in your estimation? Power forward is our weakest position right now with him being the only body capable of being productive. That's 20 minutes unaccounted for...