Who should take the last shot?

[mmmmm]

Just to chime in with my answer:  My preference would be either Green or Olynyk, leaning towards the former.

If I have one big criticism about the recent 'last shot play call' of Stevens it is not that the ball ended up in Rondo's hands (because the designed first option was clearly for KO to throw the ball in to Green -- something KO _should_ have done).  It is that he is wasting KO's ability as a shooter by having him do the in-bounds toss.   He's done that twice now and I would much rather he start those plays with Olynyk on the floor.

If I were designing that same play I would have sat Bradley in favor of Zeller.  I would have had Zeller do the in-bounds and had either KO or Sully applying the screen to clear Green for that in-bounds pass.   Either he gets clear for it or you have KO popped clear on strong side and the other at the top of the key for jumpers.

Or if you used Sully for the screen, you have KO wide open at the top of the key.

So you still have a 7 footer passing, and three tall targets to pass too (and Green can out-leap anyone else who was on that floor) and four of the players on the court (JG, JS, KO & TZ) are all your best rotation players at drawing fouls as well.  You instruct them all to just catch and immediately shoot and you have everyone else including Zeller coming in from the sideline crashing for a put-back.  Rondo is there as the best bet to chase down any long-carom rebounds and as fall-back to make a play if things break down.

We didn't need a 3PT shot so there was no real reason to have Bradley on the floor.

[Redz]

Do we first need to establish that taking ANY shot is better than not doing so.   

We really don't have a decent isolation player in the last shot set.  There's nothing wrong with passing the ball on the last possession.  Especially if you are locked up in no man's land beyond the 3 point line. 

At this point, I'd say Olynyk is our best bet at getting a decent shot of on his accord.

[LooseCannon]

Do we first need to establish that taking ANY shot is better than not doing so.   

If you have have a 50% chance of getting off a shot that goes in 65% of the time (or less than Olynyk's current percentage on two-point shots) and the other 50% of the time you fail to get a shot off, you would be more likely to score than if you were always able to get off a bad shot that only goes in 30% of the time.

That's a bit contrived to make the math easy, but it should be easy to see that if you do something that leads to either a high-percentage shot or failure to get a shot, that can be more efficient than doing something that will give you a guaranteed shot.  Depending on the percentages of course.

[Redz]

Do we first need to establish that taking ANY shot is better than not doing so.   

If you have have a 50% chance of getting off a shot that goes in 65% of the time (or less than Olynyk's current percentage on two-point shots) and the other 50% of the time you fail to get a shot off, you would be more likely to score than if you were always able to get off a bad shot that only goes in 30% of the time.

That's a bit contrived to make the math easy, but it should be easy to see that if you do something that leads to either a high-percentage shot or failure to get a shot, that can be more efficient than doing something that will give you a guaranteed shot.  Depending on the percentages of course.

Sidebar:  sort of torn with whether or not to waste money and hi see new dumb and dumber.  It can't possibly be good, but the original made me laugh a lot.