Good comp. PJ with better form on his jumper but similar mobility and size.
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Would be curious to see the progression of PJs shot from HS til year 2 of Clemson
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Willing to bet Bliss is starting at the 1 spot by Christmas, follows the “early starting gig” path previously set by London, Kihei, and Reece.
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Yeah Rohde is a good secondary initiator. This groups Devon Hall. Would not surprise me if Bliss is starting at the 1 day 1.
Would also not surprise me if CavsFuture gets an anonymous $1.8 million donation with a note that just says “REECE!!”.
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I hope you are right but the team will be very young next year.
Bliss definitely more of a playmaker than Rohde.
I asked it in this way because I’ve been reading about efforts to statistically categorize roles in basketball (as an alternative to the PG-through-C style of positions), and the work on categorizing offensive roles got me thinking about how the roles fit together.
(If you want to be a nerd, you can read these: Explaining Synergy’s Offensive Roles - Synergy Sports and Offensive Roles - Basketball Index)
At the most zoomed out-level of organization, you can simplify offensive roles to creating shots vs taking shots, leading you to three roles:
- Creating a shot you take yourself - i.e. shot-creator; think isos, shooting as the pick and roll ballhandler; statistically this would show up as making unassisted baskets.
- Creating a shot for someone else to take - i.e. playmaker; think passing out of the pick and roll, driving and dishing, hitting a shooter coming off a screen; this would show up as assists.
- Taking a shot someone else created - i.e. finisher; this can happen at any distance from the rim, so think cuts, rolling to the rim, pick-and-pop 3s, spot-up 3s; this would be assisted baskets.
It can get more granular than that (see the articles I linked for examples), but at a broad level, everyone is doing some number of these things on the court.
The best players are good at all three roles and can do different things at different times, but more commonly, guys do one, maybe two of them at a high level.
On the current team, Reece is the best shot-creator and playmaker, he’s good enough at taking shots others create, but I think the shots he creates for others are significantly better than the shots others are capable of creating for him. This makes me want to move away from the standard multiple-playmaker model for a TB team. So when Reece on the court, I want to surround him with guys who are best suited to taking the shots he creates.
I’ve Taine-washed myself a little into starting him with Reece and IMac; he doesn’t really create shots in any way at all (thus the low usage rate), but he’s finishing open looks well right now. The low usage doesn’t matter when Reece is creating all of the shots.
The Rohde-Eli-Dante triumvirate have not been good as finishers (again, I’m using finisher to mean “takes shots someone else assists”), so I want to mostly play them without Reece to cobble together some shot creation against second units. Rohde and Dante bring some playmaking, Eli can create his own shot.
I don’t know what to do with Bond, so situational defense-and-energy guy is where I’m at with him right now.
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I can help – very limited sample (~38 possessions), but in conference, when we play him WITH RD, our ratings are (overall/off/def) +39/+12.8/+26.1
I was a bit surprised to see him with a negative def rating against the baseline, but that’s basically because he’s not as good as covering 4s as RD is at covering 4s, but not much shame in that.
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Like as a 4 with Dunn as a 5?
I’d have to dig in to those possessions, but I was assuming, 4/3 but I suppose it could have been 4/5.
I know Bond as a 3 doesn’t help your main idea (and btw, I love the main idea / intuition about Reece)
Dug in, you’re basically right. Only 9 of those 38 include Groves or Minor (no Blake), so yeah, it’s a small ball look. Which also means we are pretty selective about when we play it.
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I assume the fire is because you are the one ponying up, right @DFresh11 ? You got a former roommate with $2 million lying around under the cushions somewhere?
I think if we can get comfortable this wednesday and @ Clemson, we could maybe see some experimenting?
I want to see more of the Bond Dunn pairing, and against a team like VT I want to see a 4 guard lineup that we thought we would see in the preseason, before our rebounding deficit was bad. Dunn is doing better on the boards now and we have Minor/Buchanan.
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The fire is I like your approach of going big
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Not sure about “very”. Young, yes, but hopefully in such a way that it means there’s good growth throughout the year.
My “Top 11” for next year pending outbound transfer decisions:
Starters
PG: Bliss (RS Freshman)
CG: Rohde (Junior)
SG: McKneely (Junior)
F: (Upperclassman?)
C: Buchanan (Sophomore)
Reserves
PG: Dante (RS Senior)
SG: Gertrude (Sophomore)
G/F: Murray (Senior)
SF: Bond (RS Sophomore)
PF: Cofie (Freshman)
F/C: Robinson (RS Freshman)
Deep Bench / Redshirts
G/F: Sharma (Freshman)
13th scholarship redshirt candidate (Mallory?)
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I feel like what’s hard to do is weight the experience by the # of players. Like yes we are losing fourth year reece and have a bunch of underclassmen. But having five dudes (Rohde, BB, Arob, Gertrude, Bliss) with their second year on the team is a huge jump in experience. And that does not even count the experience of Bond, Dante, Taine.
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I gotta say, in looking at that, I wouldn’t mind – and might love – a stud, heavy volume, scoring point guard from the portal. (and I say this as someone who really likes Bliss).
Also, here’s our current nitty gritty:
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I can’t find college PER before 2002 unfortunately. I’ll assume Tony was infinite. Here’s what I could find. Key finding - we could use him on this year’s team.
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Brice Cherry, who covers Baylor sports for the Waco Tribune-Herald, thinks we are the 23rd best team in the country. Nice!
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Suit him up!
NC State and Cuse better get up into the top 75 maaaan.
Also I think there’s probably a non zero chance Dante transfers after this season. If he continues to struggle down the stretch and Bliss looks good in practice I could see it. Doubt Big Tone would go for a transfer PG unless that happens.
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Yeah he’s in the position of being able to see next year’s “new” competition in advance. So if he does transfer, it probably won’t be a bad thing for us, because it’ll be a writing-on-the-wall thing.
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