. . . as if that's a bad thing.
It is not exactly a good one either. I think Frank is the better of the two. in terms of creating his own shot.
I wouldn't be sure about that. According to NBA.COM's stats page the only NBA bigs who scored more points per minutes off drives last season than Kelly Olynyk were Demarcus Cousins, Josh Smith, Paul Millsap, and Boris Diaw.
I consider that to be a fairly impressive statistic. I believe you are underrating Kelly's abilities as a shot creator.
This is where numbers fail to tell the whole story, imo, lol
. Statistically, sure, it looks impressive, but the eye test tells a far different tale, at least to me, anyway.
This is not an advanced calculation, but merely a tracking metric. Your logic is parallel to someone who says someone's ppg and FG% misrepresent their true scoring ability. Railing against the "mystique" of the generalized idea of stats can only go so far. At some point it's appropriate to recognize the difference between cold, hard numbers (C18's proof of KO's shot creating ability) and manipulated ones (PER).
Whoa, whoa,whoa. I don't think Celtics18's stat for Kelly Olynyk proves anything.
First, it's a per minute stat which always breaks things down to the ridiculous and allows outliers. Second it's a stat for drives to the basket which doesn't necessarily translate to ability to create your own offense. That's a fairly large subjective interpretation of that stat. What is a drive to the basket? Is it that you get the ball stop, create offense and drive or is that you receive a pass as part of the play and with an open lane drive and score?
I don't think that stat proves what you think it proves.
NBA.COM defines a drive as "any touch that starts at least 20 feet from the hoop and is dribbled within 10 feet of the hoop and excludes fast breaks."
No, of course, the stat on its own doesn't definitively prove that Kelly is an elite creator off the dribble. Based on my interpretation of the above wording, a "drive" would include either of the scenarios you present.
I agree that a large part of Olynyk's effectiveness as a driver is when he catches the ball beyond the arc and is able to "attack the closeout" to use parlance that they always use in scouting videos.
Does that count as "creating offense" in your book? I don't know. It's certainly not starting the offense, something I don't remember seeing Kelly do very often.
But, the fact that he is able to attack based in part on his effectiveness as a three point shooter and that bigs are forced to guard him out to the three point line makes him effective at creating offense in my book.
There aren't that many bigs who have the kind of skill, not only at shooting from the perimeter, but also at using the closeouts by opposing bigs to consistently get in the lane and make plays.
Kelly has that. It's valuable. If you want definitive proof that his skills are valuable, sorry, I can't provide that.