JJ is playing very efficiently. People will rag on him no matter what he does. He was good on both ends of the floor last night. He’s playing point better than George. I’m not sure what some people are watching. I think they just want to complain. Kyle and JJ are by far our two best players.
Going into last night Starling had a worse player efficiency rating than George. He's the same player he has been on offense with improved defense.
In my opinion (and as someone already mentioned) his return would be make sum of our parts (ingredients) that much better. He improves our offensive sets by giving us more options. He takes a big man out of the paint giving more space to our center and cutters to the basket. He gives more rooms to our shooters when he backs his man down into the paint area.
The crazy thing too is we all hoped and JJ would take a backseat and he wouldn’t have to be the man. We told him to take a backseat and just score efficiently and defend as best he could. He has sort of did that.
I definitely do NOT want JJ doing more. I'm annoyed he's as big of a focal point as he is and think it may be a reason Kingz cannot get in a consistent groove and George has been flat out awful.
He will definitely make everyone around him much better, including Nait George. Imagine how much better Will Kyle could be, with the two of the playing off each other. Imagine how effective JJ, Kiyan, and Nate Kingz could be with Donnie and WKIII sealing off the lane or bringing their guys outside setting picks, or running an effective pick and roll. All people need to do is look at the stats of the first three games of the season vs. the last two.
Can't blame JJ for George's bad play. Lack of structure to the offense could certainly be a factor. But we are often turning to JJ because George cannot create a damn thing off the dribble this year. Kingz maybe gets hurt by how we use JJ, but he certainly gets hurt by having an ineffective pg in George. Hard to put a sharpshooter in catch and shoot situations when the pg can't rotate a defense.
We don't need any more mid range from JJ. That's for certain. These are JJ's FGAs from 7 to 16 ft from the basket. Pay no attention to the lines, they are not to scale. Keep in mind that most of these end up being rebounded by the opposition.
JJ has a higher fg% than Kiyan Kingz and George. Right now he even has a higher 3pt fg% than those three, although Kingz has his slump at the start of the year holding him back there.
Thing is, though, he gets into spaces to take clean threes, and he penetrates, and he pulls up. He’s the only guy on the team that works consistently on all those levels. His individual quickness sometimes like it makes up half of our alleged ‘playmaking.’
Comparing %’s doesn’t work. Kingz is taking more 3’s. He’s 23-35 from 2. JJ is 29-57. Most of Kingz 2’s are good shots at the rim. JJ is shooting a lot of garbage in the mid range and it brings his efficiency way down.
And he’s responsible for global warming and the reason the Giants haven’t won in the playoffs in years!
I could certainly get behind trying to limit JJs midrange shots, but to go away from him entirely just is not gonna cut it when Kiyan and George are worse than him in terms of efficiency. Whatever kind of chart or stat you have, I would be shocked if George and Kiyan look better in any area. We need to go to Kingz more, but there are two guards who we need less from besides JJ. Kingz and JJ are our best two guards right now in basically any category.
Kiyan is better from 2 also. He’s 35-67. It’s his awful 3 point shooting that is mostly holding him back(9-36).
We don't have cutters in this offense. Birdwatchers maybe.
Against Hofstra he had 15 points on 15 shots.
Stop insulting birdwatchers.
JJ has been more efficient than George against tougher opponents. 50% fg against Tennessee, 44% against Iowa State, 62% against Houston, with his only bad one being against Kansas at 23%. George in those games, 14%, 20%, 30%, and 25%. George in those games had 15 assists and 17 turnovers. JJ had 12 assists and 4 turnovers.
Maybe this has always been the case, but they’re leaving the “you know”s in the quotes now.
Donnie Freeman is making progress from injury: ‘Seeing a lot of improvement from him’
Freeman played four games for Syracuse before going down with injury.www.syracuse.com
There is still no definitive timetable for Donnie Freeman to return to the basketball court for his Syracuse team.
But an encouraging sign emerged before Wednesday’s game against Mercyhurst in the JMA Wireless Dome.
Freeman, the Syracuse sophomore forward, warmed up with his team before the game.
He wore his Syracuse uniform. An SU team spokesman said before the game Freeman likely would not play and he did not. His participation in warmups was an opportunity to return Freeman to game rituals after a four-week absence.
Progress, his coach and teammates said, has been made.
“He is participating in practice,” SU coach Adrian Autry said, “you know, slowly, surely kind of working him back in. He has some conditioning to catch up with and things like that.
“But we do expect him back, you know, fairly soon. I know it sounds like a broken record.”
Short of it is we thought we'd be strong at guard and weaker at center, and instead we're strong at center and weaker at guard.
What's weird is, I felt like the offensive execution improved a lot Red's first year from Boeheim's last year. There was more intention and much better placement on screens and picks.
