Talen Horton-Tucker Discussion: Growing Pains

Yes.

 

ok coming from guy who thought Westbrook was the answer

 

I never said Westbrook was Allen Iverson, come on. Let's get serious.

 

allen Iverson wouldn't have been the answer either

 

But he was.

 

i think it's funny that iverson became some sort of negative comparison over time.

uh, he was really, really good for a long time and people only remember the nuggets years and the practice rant.

he was one of my favorite players when i was a kid.

 

if he was the answer, what was the question?

 

A poll on ClubSixers as to what to call him …. duh!

 

well that seems unnecessary.

 

How he has fallen in the eyes of many. Still rooting for the kid.

 

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with him because of seemingly zero improvement in his offensive game. Attacks the basket in difficult ways. Afraid almost always to use his left hand at the rim. Can jump decently but for some reason even with those freak arms and 6’4” height … barely clears rim on most dunks. Still can’t shoot from distance. Has no floater or even simple jump shot from mid range …. only one legged close to ground fall back which even gets blocked sometimes. How f****** hard is it to in the off season or on his own time start in close to the basket and jump straight up and shoot from over his head with arms extended. What’s Penberthy doing or Handy that they aren’t on his a** about the need for a mid range game? Especially with his pretty good handles and moves and mass and footwork to be able to create space?

 

When he lost weight, he lost his ability to bounce people off. Both he and AD should have stayed put on what works.

 

his contract isn't huge. it's for one more year, then a player option, and it's sub-MLE.

his shooting has been just absolutely terrible.

here's what's strange. it's a small sample, but in his three preseason games and his first three games back, he essentially shot 40% from three on a decent number of attempts:

Wed 11/17 3-6
Mon 11/15 4-9
Sun 11/14 1-5
Fri 10/8 1-3
Wed 10/6 2-4
Sun 10/3 1-4

12-31 overall ~39%

starting with the boston game, he didn't attempt more than 2 three point shots (and he only attempted 6 total shots in that game in 27 minutes) for several games.

https://www.espn.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/4396991/talen-horton-tucker

then he did a couple times to pretty poor effect. he had a couple games in which he shot and made a few threes against bad teams, then had his epic stinker against phx (1-13 overall, 0-8 from three). in the six games since, he's only attempted 8 total threes (and missed all of them).

i don't know what's going on, but i don't think he forgot how to shoot. i think he re-injured his thumb (and maybe keeps reinjuring it like what happened to kobe a couple times, iirc) and then lost confidence.

i also think he, like many players, shoots better when he gets more attempts, and we don't have those for him.

only time will tell, but it's hard for me to believe he's just that bad a shooter. almost nobody is.

edit: and i checked, his fg% correlates a shade under .30 with his fgas. if i had more time, i'd calculate that across the full league for comparison's sake, but that's not trivial. causal direction is of course an issue there.

 

we're using him wrong, and young players need time to adjust

He's also no longer a secret, so he's scouted well. He has work to do, but the kid is 21. I'm not throwing in the towel, but I would understand flipping him for an asset that helps us win a chip this year. Just bites shipping out ALL of your young talent. But we knew this was going to happen with the closing window of aging vets to win.

 

LOL..come on now, Tucker didn't get anything close to a "huge" contract.

 

Then he has a game like tonight.