I didn’t see much laziness out of Stuckey, he became frustrated at times because his jumper wouldn’t go down, and he couldn’t drive because the defender was sagging off. This made his game on and off, his game fluctauted with the ability to knockdown the open jumper. 1-on-1, he can beat anybody off the dribble, but when the defender sags off, it makes driving alot harder, so he resorted to shooting, which was largely unsuccessful (.295 3pt%). Don’t forget, Curry’s offense was utter garbage, and Stuckey suffered as a part of that. WIth such a young PG in place, the coach has to accomodate by guiding him with plays that better his teammates. (Think of what Larry Brown did to Chauncey).

Stuckey is by no means a shooter yet, I think what you meant to say was “scorer” which is true, but it’s not his only dimension. He’s not like Ben Gordon or Monta Ellis or Leandro Barbosa, he can still playmake, but he’s a better scorer. I would compare his PG game to Baron Davis. BDiddy can score, but he’s also an adequate PG who can set his teammates up off the drive and dish.

You bring up BG as his wingman, I think with Gordon as his backcourt partner, Stuckey will flourish. Detroit was one of the worst 3pt shooting teams in the league, when Stuckey would drive and help would come over, Stuckey would dish it out to the perimiter, but most of the time, this was unsuccessful. Now with Gordon on the team, teams will always be mindful of him on the perimeter, and teams will be less likely to have the help defense converge on Stuckey. If they do, Gordon will burn them with the 3, if they don’t, Stuckey will have an open/1-on-1 layup. Add Charlie Villanueva to the mix, and you have 3 guys that Stuckey can dish to that can score 3s with regularity.

I think Stuckey is ready to lead this team. I recall a freep article that said Stuckey was planning to lead this team, only time will tell if he’s ready.

You mention Billups and Stuckey have different games. Not so. Billups had the same reputation Stuckey has. He’s only a scorer, he can’t playmake, he’s a 2 guard in a PG body. Well we know how that turned out. PG is the toughest position to learn, and Stuckey was thrust into a position that he was destined to fail in. His coach couldn’t help him, and they had a chemistry killer that would never listen to a 2nd year PG. This year is different, and I think Stuckey will improve by leaps and bounds, especially if he can improve his shooting touch.

Detroit plays in one of the slowest offenses in the league. Do you know how many assists Billups averaged in the 03-04 championship season? 5.7, yep that’s it. A measely .8 more than Stuck. His career assist average is only 5.6. It’s like Amare Stoudemire, he can block 2 a game, but is he a good defender? No, not at all. On the contrary, he’s actually pretty bad. Stuckey had a pretty good Ast/TO ratio of 2.2. You can do alot worse for a guy who’s only played in 157 games. (Derrick Rose had an Ast/TO of 2.5)

A better indication of Stuckey’s playmaking skils would be AST%. Which is an estimate of the number of FGs assisted by the player. Stuckey’s was 26.1%, compare to Chauncey Billups’s AST% of 28.9%. In short, Stuck was a big part of this offense, and his playmaking skills were fine. Stuckey needs to develop a consistent jumpshot, as of now defenders don’t have to respect his jumper which takes away his drive. He also needs to develop a better left handed drive, he becomes too predictable going to his right at times. Other than that, the “PG Reflex” will come to him with experience. He can already score, albeit a bit inconsistently, if he can develop a better PG mentality, just wait, he’ll be one of the best in the business