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[SleepingHero]

When Hardaway is gone, you’ll think the next shooter is too hot and cold. After that one, you will think the next one is too hot and cold. On and on. 

Untrue. And not sure why you're even making that statement. I never said that about Seth Curry when he started here. I never said that about Monta Ellis. Vince Carter never got labeled that by me. I watched JET his entire time with the Mavs and while he was hot/cold at times, he was not nearly at the level of THJ at all. JET was a 50/40/80 player in his first season on the Mavs. Always hovered around 48/40/80. THJ has never gotten close to that level of that efficiency paired with that consistency. JET also never took the most inane shots that would make JR Smith blush. I thought we were trying to have a friendly disagreement but it seems like you're taking my factual statements about THJ as a personal attack upon you...? Tell me if I'm misreading tones here. Just want to clarify.
Hardaway is by definition a hot/cold player. Just look at his season this year and break it into 5 game stretches. He'll be a 20ppg guy on 50/50/90 then go down to 16ppg on 32/24/90 (not an exaggeration go look).  

Shooters shoot. Sometimes they miss. The best ones have a very short memory and almost no conscience, and most importantly are ENCOURAGED to shoot by their teams. Hardaway is easily the best catch and shoot player on the Mavs, and he’s one of the better ones in the NBA. The percentages are what they are because he goes into every game with the mentality that he has to get shots up - no matter what. The thing that people don’t understand is that at the professional level, only the best shooters deal in the kind of volume Hardaway does. The percentage should be tracked, certainly, but it’s his ability to get credible shots off at high volume, despite everyone in the arena knowing that’s the goal, that makes him.

Everything you said here is true up until you said credible. You can't sit here and tell me that THJ's shot quality is credible. More than 77% of his shots are generated for him through either Luka or Kyrie. NBA stat tracking doesn't explicitly track unassisted FG%, but we can learn how efficient he is based on the amount of dribbles and if the shot was defined as a pullup, considering most (if not all) of his assisted made shots are catch and shoot shots. 

With 0 dribbles THJ effective FG% is 55.9%. That puts him right around what Steph and Luka are generating for the season. With 1 dribble that number drops to 51.3%, not great. With 3-6 dribbles(the minimum amount to feasibly create your own shot)? He's at 50.9%, which is getting close to bottom of the league territory.  7+ dribbles is 46.7%. That is the 4th worst EFG% in the league. So no, THJ does NOT create credible shots on his own. Now this is NOT an advanced stat that I'm cherry picking. This is merely a measure of his efficiency that weighs 3s more because they are worth more points. Purely based on how many shots he attempts. 

I can without a doubt tell you NBA teams gameplan to make Timmy shoot the ball off the dribble and any time he does they scream with glee. Any shot he takes that isn't a catch or shoot is by definition a below average shot and statistically one of the worst ones in the league. How is he a credible shot maker? I'll borrow the same argument we make for Dwight where it comes to loud mistakes. THJ gets a lot of leeway because he makes the most ridiculous shots. That in no way means he's a credible shot maker nor should it give him a leash to fire away. 

It’s like people think him shooting is preventing somebody better from shooting. That’s pretty dumb, honestly. The evidence is right in front of us – he wants the ball, when so many others are too scared of the moment. Yes, I would much rather the ball be in Luka’s hands, or Kyrie’s, but when it’s forced out and starts to move, there is literally nobody on this team I’d rather it find than Hardaway. I don’t know how people don’t get this, but THJ is shooting as often as he does because that is what the team believes is it’s best chance to score efficiently in certain situations (a lot of situations).

Actually if THJ shot a self created jumper over someone else, then he IS preventing a higher quality shot attempt. I'm not even arguing for the ball to stick even further in Luka or Kyrie's hands, but by in large THJ is an awful 3rd option if we're needing a self created bucket. One could argue if there is even anyone else on the team that could just put the ball on the floor and make a bucket, and there really isn't. Josh Green has great efficiency but the volume isn't there. Hardy is even worse than THJ right now. But I'd say it falls more on the coach and his offensive system that the entire offense degenerates into iso-ball after a single PnR and we're forced to watch an inefficient THJ jumper as a bailout. The coach SHOULD create a system that plays to his players' strengths. Besides Luka and Kyrie, we are not good at iso-ball and don't have the personnel. We need a better, more reliable system. I am not blaming THJ for that. Multiple failures at play here. 

Doesn’t seem like people are wanting to give him credit for the uptick in drives and paint scoring we are seeing this year, so I won’t bring that up. Maybe we can talk about his mid-range pull up game that’s effective all of a sudden.

No? We all just want a scapegoat because we’re bored with the team and mad that it’s not winning? Ok.

My favorite part of this is that once he’s gone, the team will still not measure up to expectations, and there will be another scapegoat, and another. Then, a couple of years later, we’ll start seeing good box scores, and a whole crop of people will appear who wonder “why didn’t it work here with THJ?” We’re seeing it right now with Porziņģis, and tons of the same people who hate Hardaway thought Brunson was overrated and wouldn’t be missed that much.

The Mavs are 20th in the league in drives per game. They were ranked 20th last year. In 2021 when THJ went down, total drives went up. They ranked 2nd in the playoffs in drives per game. 

Mavs rank 27th in restricted area attempts (22nd in made shots). 27th in paint field goal attempts (24th in made shots). Timmy has attempted 60 shots this year at the rim. According to BBall ref, Timmy hasn't attempted more shots at the rim than in the previous 3 seasons. 

My favorite part is that once he's gone and replaced with an actual reliable 3rd option, the team will be much better off. 

Hardaway is not the problem here. They can certainly move on from him if/when something works out, But that’s not gonna fill the holes in all of your bad-fan hearts, I’m afraid. Heck, I don’t even think roster construction in general is the problem. I think this is a young team with a young superstar and a terrible coach. Quite literally, they do not know how to win. That’s it.

THJ is a problem here. He is a black hole on offense that is one of the least efficient players off the dribble. Pair that with the violent hot/cold shooting stretches and you have yourself a pretty inefficient player. Luka and Kyrie (but mainly Luka) hides SO much of the bad that comes with THJ that we've tolerated it. I am sure so many teams aren't gung-ho trading for the dude because they see that Luka is hiding and preventing his worst tendencies and realize they don't have their own Luka to recreate that. 

I'm glad we agree that Kidd is a terrible coach though.