If there’s one weakness this roster has on paper, it’s shooting. We don’t have a Koby Brea on this team. Even Travis mentioned shooting as something they could’ve addressed better.
But I think when we look at things in context of the system, shooting will be fine because of one thing: the ability to win off the dribble. How many times last year did we have the conversation about “needing more guys who can get their own shot”? I feel like part of why we didn’t get the volume of 3s up that Pope wanted most games is because it was really easy for teams to just camp out on the perimeter to take the 3 ball away. And you never really forced guys to help off their man, because nobody was really a threat to beat you off the dribble.
This year, we’ll have Lowe/Aberdeen/Oweh/Diabate/Williams/Chandler who should all be more than capable drivers, and Jelavic/JQ/Garrison all have the athleticism to be much more active cutters than Carr. Add in what should be improved offensive rebounding (Kam and Diabate both excel in those out of area rebounds), and I think we’ll get some really good looks from deep this year. Way better than when everybody in the arena was watching Brea get assaulted running off screens up top. So while I think our 3 point percentage may be down, I could see us hitting as many, if not more, than we did last year based purely off of volume.
But I think when we look at things in context of the system, shooting will be fine because of one thing: the ability to win off the dribble. How many times last year did we have the conversation about “needing more guys who can get their own shot”? I feel like part of why we didn’t get the volume of 3s up that Pope wanted most games is because it was really easy for teams to just camp out on the perimeter to take the 3 ball away. And you never really forced guys to help off their man, because nobody was really a threat to beat you off the dribble.
This year, we’ll have Lowe/Aberdeen/Oweh/Diabate/Williams/Chandler who should all be more than capable drivers, and Jelavic/JQ/Garrison all have the athleticism to be much more active cutters than Carr. Add in what should be improved offensive rebounding (Kam and Diabate both excel in those out of area rebounds), and I think we’ll get some really good looks from deep this year. Way better than when everybody in the arena was watching Brea get assaulted running off screens up top. So while I think our 3 point percentage may be down, I could see us hitting as many, if not more, than we did last year based purely off of volume.
