And Lindsey Hunter had 29..if you look at the roster it was a decent team..Hill, Hunter, Mills, Stack and Laettner with John Crotty on the bench.
I never would have guessed Lindsey. By the way, solid game from MC with 4 points on 33% shooting. You could already tell at that point that he'd be a stellar coach someday.
How are Stuckey's numbers gruesome? 19.8 PER, over 4 win shares already I believe. Nearly 17 points on 45% shooting.
I thought during this game they listed his yearly avg. at 15.9ppg, 3 boards and 3.5 assists or something like that. Maybe I Mis-read........but I was surprised at how low they seemed. I don't know what a PER or win share is.
Stuck is averaging 16.6 this year on a .575 total shooting percentage (highest percentage on the team, almost 20 bp's higher than Monroe). So, the only way that he is going to average more points is if he shoots more- and given his efficiency, that would actually be a reasonable thing for him to try to do. A huge reason for Stuckey's improvement this year comes from his increasing accuracy from long range. He shot .289 from deep last year and is at .373 this year! That is a truly massive improvement. And it's not because he is being more selective. In fact, he has increased his 3-point attempts by about 33%. Since the all-star break, here is what he's been doing: 24.2 points per game .558 eFG% .474 from 3-point range (9-19) 8 FTA per game 5.1 assists to 2.8 tov per game Since Feb 14th, he's had 7 games with 10 or more FTA. 10 games with over 20 points. 5 games with 29 or more points. I'm starting to believe. He's always played hard, but he just hasn't been efficient until recently. Year: pp36/ TS%/ 3P% 2008: 14.5/ .484/ .188 2009: 15.1/ .508/ .295 2010: 17.5/ .479/ .228 2011: 17.8/ .544/ .289 2012: 18.8/ .575/ .373 Career highs in all 3 stats that I really care about in a SG. The first thing to note is that he has improved his points per minute in every single season so far. He has also improved his overall efficiency and 3 point efficiency in every season except for 2010. Since his 2-point shooting and FT shooting are somewhat flat, his 3-point shooting is driving his overall efficiency- especially because he is shooting more 3's when he is shooting them at a higher percentage (no dummy). What is Afflalo doing this year for a SG comparison? 2012: 15.0/ .556/ .378 He's basically having the exact same season, but with fewer shot attempts. $7.6M salary (compared to Stuckey's $8.3M). Stuckey has either improved his form or he has benefited from having Knight take over at the PG position. Stuck might be getting better looks now and not having to take as many shots late on the shot clock.
So maybe the question about whether Stuckey spent some time in the gym this summer working on his shot has been answered. I'd say getting better shots is part of it, though last year he didn't just turn super-collider towards the end of the clock, he started running into folks early too.
another thought on stucks improvement may be the subtraction of Rip, and the inability of BG to do anything at the 2 spot. Kind of takes the pressure off Stuck to outperform them or even battle for minutes. With BK running the point he can just go out there and be agressive looking for his shot and set up teammates when he gets the chance rather than trying to set them up.
I think Knight has helped Stuckey immeasurably by getting the ball up the court so quickly. Not having Rip has helped the entire roster.
I was looking at how the team's shots are distributed throughout the shot clock and how well we shoot in different periods. There are basically 2 differences between last year and this year. 1) We shot more shots in the first 10 seconds of the clock last year (38% to 36%) and had a much higher percentage of .603 last year vs .549 this year. 2) We shoot more shots late in the shot clock now (16% to 14%) and we actually do much better on those shots with .487 vs .456. The middle period of the shot clock is basically the same, except that we are shooting slightly better this year than last year, but it is a rounding error. It's a little counter intuitive that we don't seem to be getting more fast breaks, but Stuckey, Gordon, Jerebko, and Monroe have all been really good late on the shot clock this year.
I think Stuckey is getting more respect from officials now. He seems to be a little more under control on his drives, although he still goes into super-collider mode at times.
Maybe defenders are just starting to shy away from his contact? They know that getting the ball back isn't worth a collapsed lung.
