Why, because I believe in the philosophy that if a player touches the ball more, he'll naturally be more engaged on both ends?
It's not about taking ball-handling duties away from LeBron and giving them to JR, it's about ball movement, and involving more players in the actions. I've seen JR set Love, TT, and LeBron up on multiple occasions this season when he had the ball in his hands. I'm not saying he should be running the offense, I'm saying he should be utilized better instead of solely being used on spot-up possessions - it's half the reason why he struggles to get into rhythm and why he fades in and out of games.
He's capable of doing shyt like this when given the ball -
I brought him up because he's the secondary ball-handler for Boston, something that should be obvious to anyone who watches Celtics games, which you've made abundantly clear you do not watch enough of. The problem with Smart is, he's asked to do too much with the ball (3.8 minutes time of possession), which is partly because the Celtics have limited options for the running of their system, that he ends up controlling the ball more than he should.
I'm not saying JR should be
that type of ball-handler, I'm just saying he should handle the ball more. As everyone else in the team should, in accordance to their respective skillsets.
Except it does, again, obviously you haven't been paying attention to my arguments in here. His ISOs and the team's were used in argument as blame for their offensive woes.
He's not a "complete player" just yet, give him some cotdamn time! He's not going to figure out everything in one season! He's in his first season with a new coach, new system (well, an actual system), new teammates, new environment and he's without his co-offensive anchor (a lot of their projected plans/outlook for the season had to be altered because of his injury). He's already shown improvements, well I'd say he's shown that his capable of being an effective defender, an effective off-ball player, he's shown the ability to adapt his game to fit into a system and the ability to not rely on ISO activity to score (by cutting down drastically his ISO possessions despite dealing with more offensive responsibility).
Why do I need to keep repeating myself?
Except he doesn't. And even if he did, he doesn't have capable ball-handlers/shot creators to the level where it allows him to only take half as many ISOs as LeBron. You're verging on being patently ridiculous at this point. Explain how Kyrie has all these capable ball-handlers/shot creators yet (to the level that you're stating), yet his second-option is a 21-year-old who's averaging 14 ppg, and when Kyrie's off the court the team's offense is worse than the worst offense* (Kings) in the league?
Kyrie off the court - Celtics 102 ORTG
LeBron off the court - Cavs 108 ORTG
And that's before we take into account the Celtics actually operate in a proper offensive system, and the Cavs don't. So for all these supposed "ball-handlers/shot creators" that the Celtics have and the Cavs don't, why is there such a differential in their offensive production when both players are off the court?
Well, you'd be wrong, cause even Cavs fans were saying prior to the trades that the team was in desperate need of a system/ball-movement.
