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He's only been missing in late aprils/early junes tbh.
Seriously RJ! WTF? what are you doing man? where are you? you need to do this more. i blame pop for making him a 3pt shooter.
He's only been missing in late aprils/early junes tbh.
Too many Parker lay-up attempts,the Spurs just don't have the elite play-making guard they need to fully utilize Jefferson's skill set.
Both Parker/Hill and Manu don't have enough of a consistent outside jumper so we have those guys trying to make their own shot instead of set-up and work the ball.
It is what it is...IMHO a bad FO mistake in getting Jefferson knowing the pieces we already had.
Jefferson was like 17 years old in this mixtape.
Jason Kidd is the man...
Hammer: meet nail.
When the Spurs picked up Jefferson, it seemed like they were getting a high-value player for pennies on the dollar. Unfortunately, what they ended up with was a square peg to try to fit into a round hole.
The Spurs offense isn't predicated on the same kind of free-wheeling, run-and-gun, create your own offense kind of game that Jefferson had in NJ when he was being spoon-fed by Kidd, or even in Milwaukee when he was free to take all the shots he pleased.
Instead, Jefferson has to pick his spots in the Spurs scheme. Some would argue that for one, the shots aren't even there for Jefferson to be a star (unless he becomes a bigger focus of the offense). Currently, Ginobili and Parker will control the ball and the tempo, and the emphasis under Pop will always be to hit the open man and shoot from the corners. If you look at how Pop reconstructed Jefferson's game, that was exactly what he'd become.
No longer did he try to drive with reckless abandon, but rather he would try to penetrate, kick, and sit in the corner for threes. Take out that pet alley-oop play and a couple of lucky steals on the break, and that's all you had left. Unfortunately, those long bombs only fell through the first third of the season, and suddenly the whole "revamping" of RJ seemed highly overrated.
Furthermore, Jefferson doesn't have great lateral quickness. He's not a slow player, per se, and has speed in the open court, but defensively he does not move side-to-side well. Therefore, he is terrible at executing another one of the Spurs staples: forcing baseline. This breaks down the interior and leads to a lot of backdoor passing lanes and offensive rebounds for other team (partially because Rich only seems to rebound when he feels like it, or when he's not out on the break).
Pop tried to teach an old dog new tricks last season, and it failed. Jefferson showed signs early, but eventually ended up reverting to his old form. At this point, I don't feel like watching a repeat performance, so I hope the Spurs plan to really work those phones (even though I know nobody will be answering).
Last edited by Dex; 07-27-2011 at 05:34 PM.
At least Jefferson is the second-best Arizona SF in Spurs history, so he has that going for him.
I'm no Jefferson expert but i've always seen him as a volume scorer who could easily get 20ppg on a bad team if he takes enough shots.
Now what the Spurs wanted at the time (i believe) was a big4 like Boston. But Jefferson never was that guy. As i said, he was never particularly efficient(the highest PER of his career is 18.9 and that was 6 years ago) and he's a mediocre defender at best, leaving the Spurs without a replacement for Bowen on one end and with not enough shots for everybody on the other end of the court.
So yeah uh it's not that he's fallen off a cliff, he's just a bad fit for the role the Spurs need him to fill.
The fact that Pop played more of a 3 guard lineup than using RJ in that last Grizzlies game speaks volumes about his current role on the team...
he looks too heavy now. dudes bulked up too much and lost his agility. he needs to drop 15lbs and regain some of his speed. i think he can still ball. pop just has his game all ed up.
He was never ALL STAR caliber.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XjDjpHpwJY
Even though we lost that game...
RJ's a terrible fit for any playoffs team that doesn't have a pass-first PG like Jason Kidd and the playmaking freedom to utilize his athleticism.
RJ has also been going through some kind of personal issues and drama in the past couple of seasons. Not many days before his first season with the Spurs he broke up his marriage at nearly the last minute. Last season he missed a game or two due to personal reasons which never surfaced, probably a family health issue.
But he did manage to turn into a deadly 3 point shooter albeit in the reg season. RJ also started out the gates red hot and had a good 20 pts game versus the Mavs in the playoffs last year. Need more of that!
apparently this guy has been moonlighting as one of the hosts of The Insider, or has been busy making songs:
http://youtu.be/fbGkxcY7YFU
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