Reply To: Bryant – Game 13

[LU65Participant]

SB and Hoops00 bring up a valid and perhaps a worrisome concern when discussing Mackey. He’s not shooting well – particularly from long range as the stats below will show. And, in my humble opinion, he may start to fail us by trying to do too much. In other words, be “Mr. Everything” from leading shooter, assist man, defender, and on court floor general. No on to my knowledge is asking him to do it all. Maybe just stop trying. Something’s got to give and it appears after 13 games to be his shooting. To our pleasant surprise (maybe shock is a better word) we have other and talented scoring options in the guard corps alone – many first year men – able to shoulder the scoring load. Witness: AP 1st in FG% @.440 and 1st in 3FG% @.400. And, CS 2nd in FG% @.436 and 3rd in 3FG% @.351. In fact, MM is 3rd among our backcourt men in FG% and 4th in terms of 3FG%. To highlight the difficulty, seven of Mackey’s 14 made threes came in games 1 and 2. For the last eleven games, he’s gone 7 of 37 (.189).

Maybe spelling MM at the point is the answer to his shooting woes – if, in fact, we look to him for point production. I seem to recall Macky doing quite well at times last year camped out in the corner and coming off screens. It’s not like we don’t have others capable of executing the pg duties. CS, who you might refer to as “MM Lite,” is certainly one. With a career A/TO ratio of 2.18, he won’t hurt you. MM’s similar number thru 3 ½ seasons stands at 1.97. And, then there’s the need to see what we have in MS at the point. Off to a slow start (admittedly a small sample size of 129 minutes in 13 games), the jury is out with an A/TO ratio of 0.69 and a shooting percentage that ranks 4th among the guards.

Guard / AtoTO / PPG / RPG / FG% Ranking

MM / 2.21 / 13.8 / 3.0 / 3rd*
CS / 1.65 / 9.3 / 2.8 / 2nd
AP / 2.00 / 10.5 / 0.9 / 1st
MS / 0.69 / 2.5 / 0.8 / 4th
SC / 0.40 / 2.4 / 1.8 / 5th

MM is 4th when it come to the three-point shot with an average success rate of .298.