re: Finch wants Pelicans to cut out the long 2s

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I've never understood the hate for the mid range jumper. You shoot it when you are open and have confidence you can hit the shot. The greatest players in league history were great mid range shooters. Legends like Jordan, Bryant, Duncan, even guys today like James and Durant kill teams with long 2s. It has to be a big part of any successful offense..

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It is statistically the worst shot in basketball, but guys like Jordan were some of the best mid-range shooters in history.

Even on the Rockets where everybody thinks mid-range 2's are banned, guys like Harden and CP3 are given the green light because they shoot it well enough for it to be a statistically good shot.

It's about efficiency. The mid-range and especially long 2 are not efficient shots for MOST players. But for some players it's perfectly fine for them to take those shots. The league was just taking way too many of them with people who couldn't hit them at a high enough rate in the past. Teams are waking up to taking better, more efficient shots.

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One of the games against the Rockets last year the Pels were actually scoring pretty efficiently but so were the Rockets and when you trade 2s for 3s you lose

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this is an issue.

i dont think the Pels can outscore small ball units on good teams. more shooting would be great, but it's just not there. they have to play defense and then let Davis/Cousins do their thing on the other end

the problem is i'm not convinced their perimeter defenders are consistently good enough, especially with Hill out.

and there is a fundamental issue of Davis/Cousins on defense. if Davis is guarding a small 4 that can shoot, teams will park that guy 23 feet out and make Davis, an elite defender, stick to him. some nights, maybe the Pels can live with Davis leaving that guy open. other nights, like v OKC or Houston, it is a losing strategy.




i know the pair had a great DRating post ASB. that is promising, though a small sample size. i do wonder what it looks like in the 4th quarter when more teams are going small. but maybe their ORating goes up too?

AD is phenomenal from mid range, he will definitely still get those looks

But long 2's are a horrible percentage shot in terms of risk/ reward. And the long rebound usually doesn't go well.