(...) Kyrie is an amazing player, but he's not really a team guy. (...) The key to all this is that our others play better when they know that they will get more time on the court and that they will see the ball more. Kyrie is not the kind of player who makes his team stronger by going one on one so often. Great player. Not necessarily great for a team.
The way I see it, there are 3 ways to make your teammates better:
- court vision
- defense
- elite shooting --> better spacing
With this in mind, here's how I see Kyrie's game:
- about average court vision for his position
- below average defender
- great shooter
He ain't the ultimate team player, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he is not a team player.
I don't see what any of those factors do with being a team player. I would rate Tatum very similarly to Kyrie in your metric, does that make him a bad team player? Marcus Smart has average court vision is a great defensive player and one of the worst shooters ever, is he also not a team guy?
What I wrote was ''there are 3 ways to make your teammates better (...)''
Basketball is a team game. The way I see it, team players are those who make their teammates better.
Regarding Tatum, I see a lot of similarities with Carmelo.
- great iso scorer
- shoots the long 2 a lot
- slightly better court vision(?)
- better defender (nothing special though)
Hate to say it, but yeah, I don't think Tatum excels in team basketball.
Smart is a pass-first PG who thrives on D. If he were a better shooter, he would have been the ultimate team player.
You give Smart a positive in being a pass first PG but Kyrie has more assists per game and per 36. Kyrie has an assist% 7% higher than Smart's which is a lot. That tells me that by your definition Smart's ability to pass as a pass first PG is worse than shoot first PG Kyrie. So then doesn't that now make Kyrie a team player?
Except Kyrie is our go-to guy, hence he has the ball in his hands a lot more than Smart. It's only logical that Kyrie has assisted a bigger % of field goals compared to any other Celtic (including Smart who is second in this list).
Not to mention the fact that opposing teams focus their defensive effort on Kyrie, giving him more opportunities for easy passes to open teammates. To put it another way, opposing teams are daring Kyrie to pass the ball rather than shoot it. The exact opposite goes for Smart. Everyone is daring him to shoot, which makes it even harder for him to find a good pass.
My way to measure court vision is assist to turnover ratio.
Smart's career average is 2.29 (3.9 ast, 1.7 t/o)
Kyrie's career average is 2.03 (5.5 ast, 2.7 t/o)
Going by these numbers, Kyrie is an average passer whereas Smart is an above average one.
This season's numbers are even more in favor of Smart.
Smart 2.92 (4.1 ast, 1.4 t/o)
Kyrie 2.33 (6.3 ast, 2.7 t/o)
Your factors just don't seem relative to explaining if a player is a team player or not. There are just a ton of players who you could plug into that criteria and be completely wrong about him.
Could you give me an example of a player that fits 2 out of the 3 criteria (especially the first two), yet you don't consider him to be a team player?