Brobust
Registered User
- Sep 29, 2017
- 6,869
- 6,300
What a joke. Philly gets somewhat relevant again after years of being awful and they get a Thursday night national game right away.
Lets not be the Sens fans of the NBA.
What a joke. Philly gets somewhat relevant again after years of being awful and they get a Thursday night national game right away.
Siakam cannot shoot whatsoever
Jakob Poeltl with the 3 from the corner!
He's had games and spurts where it's been better (ie good enough for what's expected of him offensively) but yeah he's still super raw.
I'll take it though. At least he doesn't have a super-broken Lonzo Ball style jumper.
Let's not sugar coat it. His shooting is atrocious and his percentages back it up. Just check his free throw percentages and his jumpshot percentages.
His jumpshot is definitely broken. His footing is awkward and sometimes you see his elbow tucked in and sometimes you don't.
Poeltl, JV and even Bebe have far smoother shots than he does
Oh for sure the others are better shooters. But it's not quite as bad for Siakam as it looks at first glance. His FT% is completely borked, but some of that is small sample size (he's got the fewest FTA on the team of anyone with at least 300 MP this season (basically every quasi-regular except Bebe). He was a nearly 70% FT shooter last year, which is passable for a non-stretch interior guy.
And his overall FG% is being heavily dragged down by his 3Pt% because he's trying to push himself into the "new culture" Raptors conversation by becoming more of a stretch 4.
His shooting %s are (ranks exclude minimal output of McKinnie, Brown, and Bruno):
His %s would look a lot better if he would stop jacking 3s until he actually learns to do it. If he can. And if he can't, no big deal because that's not his game.
- Overall 2pt: .682 (3rd among regulars behind Wright & Poeltl)
- 0-3 Ft (40% of his FGA): .811 (2nd behind Ibaka) Of note here is that <7% of his overall FGA are dunks, so most of his interior shots are putbacks, tips, and actual short shots.
- 3-10 Ft (25% of his FGA): .485 (5th behind Wright, Ibaka, DeRozan, Poeltl)
- 10-16 Ft (1.5% of his FGA): .500 (5th behind Wright, Poeltl, Miles, Ibaka)
- No FG between 16 Ft and 3pt range
- 3pt (33% of his FGA): .205 (10th, ahead of only JV)
Overall, his jumper issue is that he has a big-man jumper. Like you said his form is inconsistent, and he has a tendency to get his arms and feet out in front of his body, likely because a career of shooting right around the basket means he's never had to learn efficient energy transfer on the jumper, so from range he compensates with a more heave-like, shot-putting mechanic to try and muscle the extra 10-20 feet of range he needs.
The elbow thing you can probably fix if you drill it into him. Getting his feet under him more is probably harder to address, but it's doable. But at least he's marginally aligned and not doing anything super crazy like Michael Kidd-Gilchrist's insane corkscrew over-tuck, or shooting it from his face like Shawn Marion, Josh Childress, the Joakim Noah medicine ball heave, or Lonzo Ball's baffling side-saddle over-tucked, side-spinning "cycling" shot.
Siakam's jumper is problematic. Those other guys' jumpers are broken.
The issue is that you're pairing Siakam with Poeltl (neither with a jumpshot) and then spacing becomes a problem. You can't just have both of them clogging the lane. As well, Siakam is given all these great open looks because he does a good job moving the ball in the perimeter (is a passing threat). It becomes a little embarrassing to be passing those looks up.
Lonzo's shot reminds me a lot of Kevin Martin's shot (who was an excellent shooter). His form can work but I see his weakness like Siakam not being able to transition from catching the ball to shooting the ball well. Martin's shot on the other hand is all in one motion. When Siakam's elbow is tucked in and he doesn't rush his shot, it's alright. His biggest issue, like you mentioned, is getting his feet set. I once saw one of his feet aligned to the net and his other net swayed to the side. It's really weird.
Yeah. I'd like to quietly move Valanciunas for... something and split those two up. Siakam can pair with Ibaka and you can run a Poeltl/Bebe 2nd unit, with Anunoby being able to sub in for smallball in either set. Bebe/Poeltl isn't ideal either, but the Raptors just don't have enough shooting bigs to avoid having at least one cloggy interior PF/C pairing.
Martin almost shot from his hip. He would gather the ball around his abdomen/chest and almost immediately launch into his shooting form straight out from that point up to his shoulder instead of bringing the ball up to his head in order to cock his shooting arm. It made him have a super quick release, but an incredibly blockable shot (but that was fine since he was super good at creating enough space to take his shot)
Lonzo..... I'm not sure what to do to fix him beyond entirely rebuilding his form. You watch him and he almost begins his gather at the opposite hip, then as he launches his arm travels partway across his chest. His elbow is almost tucked in too far to begin. It drifts sort of out to a proper position, but his starting point is pulled over so far that his forearm and hand lag behind the elbow and he shoots from the opposite side of his face (a righty shooter basically shooting off his left cheek). This funkiness means that he has to shoot from a hip-leading, side-saddle position (which isn't bad in and of itself. lots of people can shoot just fine from that set position if they keep everything else aligned) and basically makes it look like he "cycles" the ball across his body as he gathers in front of himself, pulls down and back to his opposite hip, and immediately up and forward back across his chest before launching the shot out in front of the opposite side of his face (the same side of his body as where the ball started). That whole circuit slows him down, gets his arms out of sequence with the rest of his body, absolutely murders his kinetic chain/power transfer, and forces him to try and add back a bunch of power with a harder wrist flick and "pushier" shot from in front of his face (the one part of his motion that I do feel he shares with Martin. But lots of guys, especially smaller ones who don't have strong legs, shoot from their shoulder/face to add strength they can't channel through their jump properly). That lag/pull is also going to cause him to leave a lot of shots short and to the left of the hoop, or to the right if he overcompensates even more. It also slows him down in terms of transitioning from receiving the ball to setting himself to shoot, but I imagine that's something he's never really had to address because he's a lead guard who usually has the ball in his hands instead of playing off the ball and having to ready himself before a catch & shoot. It's so, so, so funky. It's like the unholy bastard child of Martin, Kidd-Gilchrist, Chuck Hayes, and Shawn Marion.
You guy's raggin on Lonzo