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Originally Posted by nol
Additionally, seeing enough of those types of plays slightly undermines the idea that LSU runs a significantly worse halfcourt offense than what you'd see from most NCAA teams: if I can run a play that with little to no effort generates a completely uncontested 10-15 foot shot for my leading scorer pretty much every time, I wouldn't be overly concerned with what the 2nd and 3rd options are
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Unless your leading scorer is not a guy who takes 10-15 feet jumpshots? It's not LSU's amazing offense that is getting Simmons space in the midrange - it's the fact that the defense is giving him those shots. You've got your opinions and you're welcome to them, but I don't think there's a person in the country who could watch more than a handful of LSU games and think that Simmons was the problem in their halfcourt offense. I would sit there and count the amount of plays in a row that LSU did not seem to even run a set play - it was like watching youth league basketball, swing the ball a few times, then someone iso.
Simmons obviously needs to get at least a FT-line jumper if he is going to be a combo 3/4 in the NBA as you would imagine he projects to be. It's not like his shooting stroke is broken - he's not MKG. It's just repetition. That would be the least concerning aspect of his flaws if I were an NBA GM.
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As a Cavs fan, you should be familiar with the idea that you can run an extremely simple offense and still do okay if you have a player who's head and shoulders above the competition making all the decisions, so I'm less concerned with intangibles (I'm sure this year will be a learning experience and he'll try harder and blah blah blah) than I am with the fact that he doesn't look like that explosive of an athlete who can create something out of nothing (most of his highlights are in transition of course, but even the ones in halfcourt tend to feature him backing his dribble way out and getting a head of steam going against a college PF who likely has little/no experience guarding players on the perimeter) and that he doesn't seem to be incredibly instinctive with defensive rotations, which isn't something that gets magically fixed with more effort or a better defensive scheme.
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Sure you can, if you're lead player is the best in the world at the time..... Simmons is not LeBron James, and he wouldn't have been at Duke or Kentucky. I'm not saying Simmons deserves no blame or whatever because he clearly had some bad games and showed a lack of effort, as I said. But that doesn't change the fact that LSU's offense was completely unimaginative (to be kind) and did not put him in a position to succeed.
There's a lot of guys who just don't perform as expected in college and have games better suited for the pros. Maybe Simmons is one of those guys, and maybe he's not. The skills he does have right now certainly seem to favour the up-tempo NBA game with better spacing inside the arc than they do the college game. I could be wrong. So could you. There's guys out there earning a lot of money who know a lot more about it than either of us, and one of them will pull the trigger on Simmons early.