In today’s Free Press, Krista Jahnke notes how Antonio McDyess is prone to letting his success or failure snowball over the course of a game:
“He needs to hit early shots to get into a rhythm,” coach Flip Saunders said.
Tayshaun Prince said teammates engage in armchair psychology with McDyess during games, encouraging him to keep shooting if he misses early. Otherwise, they know he can fade.
“When he misses two or three shots in a row and nobody says anything to him to keep shooting, then he tends to veer away from that,” Prince said. “If he makes or misses his first shot, we constantly stay on him to keep shooting the basketball. Then he’ll keep shooting.”
As it happens, McDyess was a hot topic in the comments of the last game thread, which isn’t surprising considering McDyess bounced back from a six-point, six-board game to score 16 points with 12 boards. DBB reader joejoejoe looked up the numbers and found an interesting correlation between McDyess’ performance and the team’s success:
The Pistons are 24-14 when McDyess shoots less than 50% from the field.
The Pistons are 13-6 when McDyess shoots from 50-59% from the field.
The Pistons are 20-1 when McDyess shoots 60% or more from the field.The Pistons are 29-15 when McDyess scores fewer than 10 points.
The Pistons are 28-6 when McDyess scores 10 points or more.It’s not that McDyess is scoring a ton of points. He scored more than 15 points only 5 times this year. I just think that when McDyess is clicking then it opens up the game for his team as a secondary option.
I agree with his conclusion. McDyess isn’t a prototypical power forward who rarely strays from the paint. Instead, his preferred shot is a 12-15 foot jumper where he’s usually automatic … right? You might be surprised — take a look at his NBA Hot Spot chart after the jump.
Huh. I was expecting something a bit more … red. Two of those gray spots aren’t all that bad — 45.2% and 46.4% — but still, it pales in comparison to his percentages from last year:
Granted, none of this really means anything when it comes to this year’s playoffs, especially considering how McDyess can be one of the streakiest shooters on the the team this side of Jarvis Hayes. But when his shot isn’t falling, I’m definitely going to start paying extra attention to see how many shots he starts passing up and how his teammates react.
There’s no question about it, Detroit plays much better when Mciddy Mackidy is on game. However, you cannot discredit the players that are tediously setting up catch-and-shoot perimeter shots for him. Prince set Antonio up for a few shots of the sort in Game 2, and it looked to be almost as much work as making the 15ft jumper itself.
I’m not taking away credit from McDyess, when he “turns it on”, the Pistons play much better. Obviously so, seeing how he’s arguably the weakest starter. I’d love to see the intensity continue, as well as the great defensive stops that he put to use in Game 2.
McDyess is nothing more than a secondary offensive option…and a not very good one at that. He doesn’t create his own shots, doesn’t score off of rebounds/putbacks and apparently, according to the shot chart off of jumpers either.
The Pistons go, as the other players go offensively.
The starting minutes haven’t made him that effective. He seems less effective. He was much better beating up on the opponent’s 2nd team.
last season dice’s fg% dropped from 53% in the regular season to 35% in the playoffs.
i understand that he sticks out with the starters because he’s the least offensively effective, but I think he’d be more of a problem coming off the bench. the starters can compensate for his lack of scoring, the bench doesn’t have that luxury. besides, other than shooting slumps i think dyess has exceeded expectations this year. how many double doubles does he need to get?
I think people seem to forgetting how much it helps to have five guys that can score instead of just four. Dice doesn’t take the ball to the rack, so if his shot isnt falling and say rip drives and dishes to dice, if his shot isnt falling he passes out and it resets the offense late into the shot clock. The overwhelming majority of oue offense is predicated on jump shots and if they arent falling we can get into some trouble. I wouldnt say that dice has exceeded expectations… I think he is right about where most thought he would be. Dice’s major contribution is defending bigger guys that max can’t and getting rebounds. I think our best bet is too keep dice’s mins down a little bit with him playing the majority of mins, a healthy portion for max, and a little for amir. Especially depending on the matchup. Against younger teams like the sixers a little less dice a little more max and amir. More speciically if he is having an off night. If his psyche is indeed a little fragile then maybee we should make a little more effort to increase his touches/confidence early in games. If him and tay are scoring are team is really tough to beat.
So what do the hot spots tell us.
That for us to have a good chance to win Dyess has to get a lot of layups or dunks during the game, with that one exception.
So what does that tell us.
When Chauncey or Rip are able to break down the defense and get the ball inside and when we are aggressive going to the basket we have an excellent chance of winning.
I believe this is a mantra that Flip has been shouting all season. Makes sense to me.