11-14-2022, 09:48 PM
(11-14-2022, 06:36 PM)mvossman Wrote: Sure there is the possibility for improvement. But lets not kid ourselves. This is a career 33% shooter that shot 34% last season and 31% the year before that (skipping his 3 game season). What is the history of roughly 30 year old NBA players going from a below average 3 point shooter to one of the best in the league? His improved shot selection might give him a couple of percent, and he might have improved in skill a couple of percent (although there is virtually no history of improvement once he started playing regularly) and maybe some noise/luck will get him another couple of percent, but the odds of him shooting 46% for the rest of the season at this volume are astronomically low.
Don't kid yourself - that negativity is factually wrong. For a parallel in MANY ways, see Kidd, Jason. Kidd was traded to Dallas at age 34, and his 3P% which had been low 30s most of his career moved to over 40% and stayed there that season and 2 more (46, 41, 43).
I don't argue with your idea that SD's improvement MIGHT only be temporary, based on sss -- but because of the very real changes in circumstance on multiple levels, your view may have failed to capture what's become real. We just have to see what happens.
And your idea that a player CAN'T figure it out, and is somehow doomed to the limits of what he has done in the past, is simply not right. There's nothing in SD's game that says he can't learn or improve a skill, and shooting is certainly a developed skill rather than an intuited (and limited) piece of athleticism.