MAVS 103, NUGGETS 89

[KillerLeft]

Thanks for the thorough response. 

I thought he looked REALLY good last game except in the two glaring areas that concern me the most:

1) Shooting continues to suck. Career low 53% TS%, is really concerning. 

2) He continues to not be able to get to the rim like in year's past and looks a step or two slower. 

Yes it is only one game, but no KP and better spacing didn't help those two concerning areas. You could be right about their cause, but I feel quite strongly those two areas of concern are largely on Luka's own shoulders and he needs to address them himself.

I think the shooting concern is valid. He’s a lot like LeBron in that area. It’s going to get better over time, but we are just going to have to live with some bad misses along the way. He needs to spend a ton of time working on that, starting with FT’s. 

But that is no different than the last two seasons, and in those seasons his impact was off the charts positive, no?

As for the penetration, he might be a step slower. I won’t quibble with that. But I never ever thought his successful penetration was due to speed in the past. I think he is a master at negotiating screens and using them against the defense. I think he was paired with a genius coach who put him in a variety of positions designed to do exactly that. I thought his penetration last night, while not to the level of the bubble season where he was scoring in the paint nonstop, was significantly improved over the first 30 games of this season in that he was affecting defensive movement to create scoring opportunities for others.