Comments on: Layups: The Importance of Your PG’s Shooting Ability

Comments on: Layups: The Importance of Your PG’s Shooting Ability http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=2936 NBA & ABA Basketball Statistics & History Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:56:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6 By: Jason J http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=2936&cpage=1#comment-10782 Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:45:24 +0000 http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=2936#comment-10782 I wonder if this has shifted some with wing players taking on so much of the playmaking responsibilities. If Kobe has the ball and is creating offense it's very important for Fisher to be able to hit open threes. When Reggie Miller (or Hersey Hawkins or Steve Smith or Byron Scott) was running off screens looking to get a quick shot off, did Mark Jackson really need to be a dead-eye from the outside? Obviously it wouldn't have hurt for him to be as good a shooter as possible, but the game plan wasn't to hit Reggie in the pinch post and kick it back out to Jackson for the trey. Exactly the opposite really.

When I think of the 80s and 90s, with some obvious exceptions like Jordan, Pippen, and Drexler, I don't recall a lot of wing players being significant playmakers. Now it's common for a 2 or a 3 to share a lot of the play-making responsibilities with the point guard. Bron, Bryant, Wade, Joe Johnson, Hedo, Steven Jackson, Brandon Roy, TMac, Vince... It's probably due to a combination of a generation of players growing up trying to emulate MJ (and now to emulate Bryant) and the change in hand-checking rules giving greater importance to the drive and kick game in general.

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