The nice thing about Melo is that he still sees the floor on his drives, Stat mostly is on a one man mission on drives, not really seeing the floor at all.

earthmansurfer wrote:It's not going to be very hard for him to rack assists with Stat on the team. Not trying to take anything away from the fact that Melo sees the floor very well and is a good passer. He is going to get 3 assists a game at least passing to his buddy Stat. There will always be a few more kick outs or the like to other players.

The nice thing about Melo is that he still sees the floor on his drives, Stat mostly is on a one man mission on drives, not really seeing the floor at all.

I was wondering about that. I wish I could find out how many of his assists are to Stat. It seems like he's passing well to all his teammates not just Amare. He's never played with a big at Amare's level though. He should get more assists than he used to though I don't know if he'll get as many as Kobe, Lebron, and Wade do.

knicks1248 wrote:I think it's more of the system he's playing in, a lot of PnR and motion...Felton is yet to post double digits in assist, and he's only avg a couple mins less.

That's it in a nutshell. This system is different from what they do in Denver. As Melo plays in this system more and more, he'll notice that he's got tons of opportunities to pass to open teammates. If you look at Mike's plays, the 3 is actually in position to deliver the pass that leads directly to a score in many situations. As soon as he's fed the ball, the PG is usually free to make a cut to the basket taking his man with him, then the man guarding the 2 is likely to be the guy to come over and help on a driving Melo, cuz Fields would be at the top of the circle. That's a primary pass and of course if STATS man turns his head STAT can cut to the basket of stay put for a midrange jumper. This is also why Mike likes to play small with Williams, cuz he can spread the floor as well and be open for the jumper as the C comes over to try and stop Melo. There are just a ton of openings if he's got his head up.

We didn't make use of this set as much with Gallo, cuz he isn't really a break down 3, tho he started to go to it more often. He was the deep threat and left most of the action up to Felton. Now we don't need to have the PG hold the ball as much and can run things thru Melo more often. So for TD he's mostly there to bring the ball up and let STAT and Melo actually be the passer.