one thing i have noticed about this forum is that people vastly over rate josh smith. I watch a ton of games on league pass and i dont understand what people are fawning over. Sometimes I think people just look at the stat sheets. I just dont get it.
Much like many Celtics fans do with Rondo - just look at the stat sheets?
Here are Smith's regular season averages (per 36 Min) for his career:
16.0 Pts
8.4 Reb
3.4 Ass
1.4 Stl
2.2 Blk
46% FG
29% 3PT
66% FT
2.6 TO
Looking at his stats this season, he is actually the only player in the NBA who is averaging at least:
* 17 PPG
* 8 RPG
* 4 APG
* 1 SPG
* 2 BPK
If you remove the blocks and steals, there are only two players in the league averaging at least 17 PPG, 8 RPG and 4 APG, and they are:
* Josh Smith
* Lebron James
Even if I bring the rebound average down by one point (17/7/4) and the list expands to also include:
* Kevin Durant
* Paul George
Bring the assist average dow by one (17/7/3) and the list increases to also include:
* David Lee
* Blake Griffin
You are still looking at some pretty impressive company there.
The only bad stat for Smith is turnovers (at 3 per game) but if you look at the turnover numbers for the othe guys on that list, they aren't much better:
* Lebron - 3.0
* Durant - 3.2
* George - 2.8
* Griffin - 2.7
* Lee - 2.4
It's very easy to see why Josh Smith is one of the better 'swiss army knife' type players in the league, and in the right system he certainly has the potential to be a 20/10/5 player...to achieve this he would need an extra 3 points, 1.5 rebounds and 1 assist per game so very achievable...and I believe only something like 9 players have done tht in NBA history (KG being one of them).
He might not be a superstar scorer, but there are is nobody in the league bar maybe Lebron, Durant and Rondo who can impact a game in so many ways on a nightly basis.
I would love to hear a rebuttle to this post?
Hard to argue with numbers
I'll give it a try.
You mentioned numbers, so let's look at a few that the OP gave but didn't focus on:
29% 3FG: Anyone who shoots only 29% from three-point range shouldn't be shooting threes. Period. Yet Smith does, and it's a part of his larger problem of bad shot selection. The guy basically has idea, after all these years in the league, what's a good shot and what isn't.
66% FT: Terrible. No reason for any player to shoot this low a percentage on free throws. Some CBers are pining for a new big three of Rondo-Smith-Howard ... do they not realize how awful a situation that would create? Opposing defenses could just pack the paint and/or keep sending these three to the foul line.
Listen, I agree that Smith has a lot of talent, but he also has some glaring flaws, and no player exists in a vacuum—you have to consider how that player would fit with the rest of the team, and a Rondo-Smith-Howard triumvirate would make the Cs a horrible crunch-time team.