The real reason for our 2-3 start

It’s only one less FGA/36 (I agree, still not good) – and the rest is a function of fouls and injury limiting his minutes.

But I’m baffled as to why you’d want to see a lower TS%.

But I think it’s a really bad idea to draw conclusions about the “why’s” after four games. I’m merely pointing out what’s going on – those guys aren’t hitting shots the way we expect them to, by a substantial margin.

Don’t want to go back to the other thread, but you’re using stats from a 5 game sample size to define the problems of the season?

No. I’m looking at what’s happened over the past five games, and pointing out something that happened over those games.

In fact, I specifically wrote:

After four games each, I don’t think there’s any reason to feel that these numbers represent who these players are.

But I also, from the parts of games (and one whole game) that I’ve watched, don’t particularly buy the “forced to create bad shots.” eg, I pointed out in the most recent game the times that Monta CHOSE to take a bad shot rather than initiate a team offense.

Fans (particularly fans of low-efficiecncy scorers) like to excuse a player’s play by talking about how they had to take shots like that to carry the team, but evidence for such things is alarming hard to find. (In fact, what evidence there is tends to suggest something different: playing with more good players hurts your stats a little, rather than helps them, although the study I saw wasn’t specifically about efficiency). No, I just happen to think that Monta, Curry, and Lee all started the season slow.

I’m sure that Monta’s TS% got a good boost from tonight.

.515 — still a bit below his rather pedestrian career average.

But yeah, SSS. And the passing has been fantastic.

Curry is simply not aggressive or quick enough to be effective inside.

I don’t see any reason to think Curry should be worse than last year, when he was healthy, when his ability to drive was irrelevant to his ability to produce.

On the other hand, Monta has been able to contribute without Curry on the floor.

Funny, because I actually saw the opposite last night. Maybe you should watch the games? Monta became ineffective the moment the Spurs started making a point of taking the ball out of his hands with early doubles.

The notion that Monta can produce when nobody else on the floor is getting it done, while Curry can’t, is just wrong.

Don’t discount the importance of Curry’s fouling issues.

I’m not. However, assuming he’s healthy, I don’t see any reason to think Curry’s going to be worse at fouling this year than he was last year. Furthermore, his bad fouls mostly come on mental mistakes, and I’m optimistic about him being able to fix them for the exact same reason I’m optimistic about Monta being able to be higher efficiency than he’s been – mental mistakes are the sort of thing you expect players to be able to improve.

I think Monta has shown the willingness to share beyond most people’s expectations

I saw a categorical difference in the amount of ball movement last night once Curry went down. Monta made some nice passes, and unlike the previous game I actually didn’t see much (if any) “bad Monta.” He was using his speed to create unsettled situations before shooting, and mixing it up (like the post-up move). If he ever did the patented “dribble it at the top of the key until the defense sets, then drive or jack up a covered shot” I missed it. Instead, when he took an early-shot-clock jumper (and I noted this in the game thread) he took it when his defender was moving backwards, so he had good space, and the general unsettledness of the defense would have meant we had better offensive rebounding opportunities if the shot hadn’t fallen.

But “willingness to share?” I didn’t see that last night. I saw a stagnant team offense, and while Monta did a better job than he often does dishing off the end of drives the fact that the team stopped working to get Lee looks is somewhat telling, isn’t it? Willingness to share isn’t just about assists.

One thing about player stats you need to remember: Its great if a player has great per-40 stats, but from the team’s perspective, if he is limited to 24 per game, someone else is going to contribute the other 50% of the positions stats as they relate to the game.

Yes, indeed. One difference, so far, between this season and the last two seasons is that the guy who took the minutes Monta didn’t play was generally better with them than he was. That’s not the case right now.