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nuraman00
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True, but I'm talking about what I want to have, not what I expect to have. It's just, I can't get myself to say I'd be happy with "4-6 assists per game." It makes me cry in my sleep.
OT: In football, I'm ok with few passing yards if we win the game. In basketball, I don't need a 20+ scorer, just a 6+ assist man. To me, 6+ speaks to someone who is selfless, intelligent, a real general on the court. A guy who plays point guard has to have assists to remark on, or else, to me, we have 2 SGs and a SF on the court. But that might just be me, being raised with Stockton. Funny that I don't mind not having a Malone as long as we win (even though he was a close second for me). When Boozer was here, some expected/hoped for a poor man's Malone, I didn't care, I just wanted a PG (we had) and wins.
Mo Williams should just get 6 assists per game.
I'm just saying that you should look at team AST %. The Jazz have always gotten a lot of assists per offensive possession on a team level. You don't need John Stockton or Deron Williams. Look at the 3 years where Carlos Arroyo and Keith McLeod were the main PGs, from 2003-2004, 2004-2005, and 2005-2006. Individually, no one averaged more than 5.1 assists per game.
But on a team level, the Jazz were 19th, 7th, and 7th in assist %. Which shows they still moved the ball well. It's the system that got the assists, not the PG. Kirilenko himself averaged 4.3 assists in 2005-2006. Hence my observation that Jazz bigs like Kirilenko, Boozer, and even Jefferson last year do more passing and generate more assists. They pass to cutting guards for layups a lot. The Sloan Flex offense generated a lot of dunks and layups, and not necessarily from bigs, but from guards too.
At a certain point, it doesn't matter who's scoring or who's getting the assists if you're still getting the ball movement, as shown with a team level stat like assist %, and you're still getting a lot of close shots at the rim.
I would pull up stats from Hoop Data about how the Jazz take more shots at the rim, however:
1) They only go back to 2006-2007, which is one year too late for the time period I'm examining without an elite PG.
2) FGA attempts per game at the rim is nice, but I would have preferred it normalized as a percentage of total FGAs by the team, so that it was pace independent.
To use your football analogy, I'm saying there's still a lot of passing yards -- it's just that it's coming from other positions like RBs, Tight Ends, and Safetys. Or back to basketball positions, Centers, PFs, and SFs. It's not all about the PG, but rather the floor spacing and the system and guys moving to the spots that the plays call for for those dunks and layups.
Those dunks and layups do come at a price, as the Jazz are always among the fewest in 3-point attempts. But that's been the principle, to go for the closer shot rather than the long shot. Plus I can't recall too many teams that had great 3-point shooters anyways.
I'm thinking that if Keith McLeod, Milt Palacio, and Carlos Arroyo had the scoring talent surrounding this team, the Jazz could have moved even higher than 7th in assist %. All without increasing their individual assists per game much, but the assists coming from other positions.
Assists also depend on one other dependency: Players who catch and shoot or catch and drive.
If your team has a lot of players who isolate and get fouled, then your assists will go down, and instead those players will attempt a lot of FTs. If you had Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant on your team, you may lose a few assists, but those players would combine for 20 free throw attempts per game by themselves and get the other team in the bonus. However, the Jazz seem to be high in free throw rate themselves, as they were 2nd in 2006-2007. My guess is that those dunks and layups attempts that are generated also result in a lot of and-ones or fouls near the rim.
In the Flex Offense I trust. (Which I don't think Corbin runs as much, his offense is a little different).