The Ballstop Trio: Tatum, Rozier, Morris

[Tr1boy]

What about Irving

Who is the king of ballstop

I love the way that you continue to perpetuate this complete myth even after I and many other posters have shown it to be provably wrong.

Literally just bias incarnate

You are pure bias

Irving just cant make a quick play

And always has to dribble a little here and there

Its the same bad habit Rondo has

Sometimes you just make quick touch passes

Get to your spot/open spot and shoot the three

Or just direct guys to make the correct play

[LilRip]

I think you can have two of them on the court at once max, three is too many.

Agreed! Two is fine. You need guys willing to take and create shots. As an aside, it was refreshing seeing the team play without Morris. Plus, the zone forced Tatum to actually move the ball and didn’t tempt him to go iso Jay.

Add Jaylen to the mix, let any of Semi/Theis/Wanamaker eat up Morris’ minutes and were good for the playoffs I think.

[LilRip]

What about Irving

Who is the king of ballstop

I hope someone could run the stats but 1) isn’t kyrie crazy efficient, 2) kyrie actually moves the ball fairly quickly if he isn’t iso-ing his man, and 3) kyrie actually has court vision and thus, hits guys with passes

Here's the tracking data for touches from NBA.com, provided by Second Spectrum. Sorted by avg seconds/touch.



And here's the same list, sorted by avg dribbles/touch.



For context, here's the overall NBA, ranked by avg secs/touch. Kyrie is near the bottom with 4.31 secs/touch (I had to shrink the picture to fit him in).



The stats might surprise some. I'll leave it to others to try to interpret. Keep in mind tracking data is not available for every game.

This is useful info, but ball stopping isn’t just about time of possession.  My issue with Morris is the rate at which his touches end in a shot.  It has particularly bothered me when he fails to swing the ball to an on open guy in the corner, opting instead for the longer 3.

^this! Morris rarely swings to the corner, but instead, usually opts for a longer wing 3. That’s selfish play imo. Give up a good shot for a great shot!

TP and TP to ozgod for the info too

[Scintan]

With the exception of Horford, it's [dang]ed near impossible to find a high rotation player on this team that doesn't play stupid basketball far more often that should be expected, and who doesn't decide to kill the passing game and take things into his own hands.  And, unfortunately, it's contagious when it happens with this bunch.  Kyrie, for example (He's not the worst offender.  I'm just using him as the example because he's supposed to be the engine that makes this car run), starts pounding the basketball into the floor, ignoring his teammates for drive opportunities, and chucking up deep shots that are completely out of the rhythm of the game. 

Soft and stupid has played far too much into this team's season.

[droopdog7]

As far as black holes, it’s rozier as the worst (or perhaps best?), then Tatum, then a little gap to Mook (as far as this year).  Playing with rozier especially has got to be maddening. 

[gpap]

I thought Tatum was pretty good in the Miami game on Wednesday.

There was one play where it seemed he had a lay-up and instead made a fancy, backwards pass to Hayward.

Keep it simple, attack the basket and execute (he's had a habit this season of missing lay-ups.)

I was also reminded during the game that Horford is VERY good at making guys around him better.

Whether it's the give and go with Kyrie, the nice pass to Hayward as he's cutting to the basket or finding Tatum at the right place at the right time, that everyone feeds off Al.

Clearly showing his experience. Can't believe it seemed like yesterday when he was a rookie during that season we won the title in '08 and he gave the Celts fits during the famous Hawks series in the playoffs.

[droopdog7]

What about Irving

Who is the king of ballstop

I hope someone could run the stats but 1) isn’t kyrie crazy efficient, 2) kyrie actually moves the ball fairly quickly if he isn’t iso-ing his man, and 3) kyrie actually has court vision and thus, hits guys with passes

Here's the tracking data for touches from NBA.com, provided by Second Spectrum. Sorted by avg seconds/touch.



And here's the same list, sorted by avg dribbles/touch.



For context, here's the overall NBA, ranked by avg secs/touch. Kyrie is near the bottom with 4.31 secs/touch (I had to shrink the picture to fit him in).



The stats might surprise some. I'll leave it to others to try to interpret. Keep in mind tracking data is not available for every game.

These stats seem useless to me.  Would it make sense that PG would hold the ball longer as they generally bring the ball up and set up the offense?  The leaderboard seems is littered with lead guards.

[ozgod]

Let's try to make the data more meaningful then. I looked at % of shots taken after at least 7 dribbles. The % is out of the total shots taken by the player, so 50% would mean that half the shots the player took came after 7 dribbles. So it's trying to measure how much a player "dribbles the air out of the ball" before shooting. Here's the list in descending order. I only filtered for players who played at least 50 games.



If anyone wants it re-sorted I have the original query here

https://stats.nba.com/players/shots-dribbles/?Season=2018-19&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&DribbleRange=7%2B%20Dribbles&sort=FGA_FREQUENCY&dir=1&CF=GP*GE*50

Now if you look at Boston only clearly Kyrie and Terry are out in front.

[philr13]

I'm not ready to give up on Tatum, regarding being a ball-stopper. He's still young and showing signs of improving at other aspects of the game. He's been passing and drawing fouls a little bit better lately. Most importantly, he seems to realize that more is expected of him than just shooting.

Morris is what he is. When he's hot I think he's great, but when he's not ... eh
In all fairness, I do think he's a better player than he's shown of late. He came up big in last year's playoffs and the first half of this season.

Rozier is a bit of a mystery to me. He's been here longer than Brown or Tatum, but he doesn't seem to care about much about fitting into the system. I may be reading too much into this, but I get the feeling that he expected to be traded to a team that would give him a starting role.

I do think that both Morris and Rozier have been hampered by being in a contract year. Some players don't respond well to that situation.

[nyceltsfan]

There seems to be a lot of hate on this board for Rozier.  I understand that he is not the most efficient player, but he brings something to the game every night.  He is the only player willing to pick up the ball handler full court.  Also, somehow, Rozier (a 6 2" guard) seems to be the best rebounder on the team at crucial points in the game.  In a season in which I have been personally outraged at the lack of boxing out on the team, I feel that Rozier gives us a chance to secure the defensive rebound.  On top of all that, his record as a starter this year is phenomenal.

Once again, I understand the lack of team play on the offensive end being a major issue, but if we are going to criticize him for that, let's give him his due for bringing other skills to the table and for playing hard, which some members of the team have had problems doing throughout the year.

[footey]

There seems to be a lot of hate on this board for Rozier.  I understand that he is not the most efficient player, but he brings something to the game every night.  He is the only player willing to pick up the ball handler full court.  Also, somehow, Rozier (a 6 2" guard) seems to be the best rebounder on the team at crucial points in the game.  In a season in which I have been personally outraged at the lack of boxing out on the team, I feel that Rozier gives us a chance to secure the defensive rebound.  On top of all that, his record as a starter this year is phenomenal.

Once again, I understand the lack of team play on the offensive end being a major issue, but if we are going to criticize him for that, let's give him his due for bringing other skills to the table and for playing hard, which some members of the team have had problems doing throughout the year.

I like good Terry.  I love good Terry. It's bad Terry that drives me crazy.  If he could just figure out when, and when not to, try to take make the spectacular play. He wants to be like Kyrie, but lacks Kyrie's accuracy to do so.

[Rosco917]

Why is it that when you disagree or have a different opinion it's immediately labeled "hate."

Nobody hates Rozier, I like him as a person and realize he came from an extremely hard place in his life. I do feel his game is misdirected at the present time and he is not the player we need at the position assigned to him by the organization. That's it.

This hate label thing is the inability of some to tolerate anyone that possibly disagrees with them.   

[nickagneta]

Let's try to make the data more meaningful then. I looked at % of shots taken after at least 7 dribbles. The % is out of the total shots taken by the player, so 50% would mean that half the shots the player took came after 7 dribbles. So it's trying to measure how much a player "dribbles the air out of the ball" before shooting. Here's the list in descending order. I only filtered for players who played at least 50 games.



If anyone wants it re-sorted I have the original query here

https://stats.nba.com/players/shots-dribbles/?Season=2018-19&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&DribbleRange=7%2B%20Dribbles&sort=FGA_FREQUENCY&dir=1&CF=GP*GE*50

Now if you look at Boston only clearly Kyrie and Terry are out in front.

How does dribbling a ball up the court have to play in those figures? For instance, if Kyrie dribbles the ball up court, sees an opening right away and takes it to the rim, but in dribbling the ball up the court he had 6 dribbles and then 3 more to go to the basket and shoot. Do those 6 dribbles count in the data?

[Fafnir]

I really don't think Tatum is a ball stopper, fwiw. He's made solid progress this year trying to create looks for others out of his drives to the rim or making the extra pass when the ball is kicked to him.

Tatum's always going to be a scorer first, but that's what you want him to do anyways.

[nyceltsfan]

Why is it that when you disagree or have a different opinion it's immediately labeled "hate."

Nobody hates Rozier, I like him as a person and realize he came from an extremely hard place in his life. I do feel his game is misdirected at the present time and he is not the player we need at the position assigned to him by the organization. That's it.

This hate label thing is the inability of some to tolerate anyone that possibly disagrees with them.

I apologize if that came off the wrong way.  I used the word "hate" too liberally.  I was just saying that there is a lot of complaining about Rozier's game on this board, but rarely do I see anything complimentary about his game being posted.  I can tolerate disagreement and welcome it - I apologize if you got a different impression.