Bonn1997 wrote:
Give me some historical precedents of guys who had played 8 to 10 years with around a 1:1 A/TO ratio and then showed major improvement. Or are you asking them to do something unprecedented? Carmelo's shown small improvement this year (which he definitely deserves credit for) but he's still below where you'd want your primary play-maker to be, and Amare is way below where you'd want your 2nd option to be. Nalod's brilliant wisdom (paraphrased): "You don't bring veterans in to change them"
First of all, the assists to turnover stat is entirely flawed concerning Amare. Take Paul Pierce, by and large his turnovers and his assists are based on the quality of his passing. Compare that the Amare who is driving the ball to the basket on the majority of his possessions. Many of the turnovers, have nothing to do with the quality of his passing. He just has the ball knocked away before he gets to the basket. So that stat for him is irrelevant as measure of how accurately he passes.
Concerning historical precedents, how about this. Melo who spent years in Denver, had about 3 assists a game and about 3 turnovers a game. This year he is averaging 33% higher assists per game, over 4. Seems to me that is a significant improvement. One would also expect that they more time he spends passing, based on his high talent level, the better he should get. But Melo too has a large number of turnovers that are not passing related. First, like Amare he likes to dribble around to make something happen and he also suffers from double teams which increases the odds of a turnover. So he has already demonstrated that he can create a significantly higher amount of assists if he tried. Plus the turnover assist ratio is inaccurate because on too many instances the turnovers have nothing to do with sloppy passing. Clearly Melo needs to learn that ignoring the fact that he is being double teamed and shooting anyway is a low percentage move.
What your stats do reveal is that Melo and Stat both thrive on drives to the basket, and that the likely result is that defenses will pack the middle, and make driving to the basket much less profitable for our two stars. To make limit turnovers, the Knick's need more consistent shooting from the outside to make their opponents pay for double teaming their stars. Landry, Shumpert, and Steve Novak in particular need to increase their shooting averages from the outside.
