Hes not that good at it? Debbie downer strikes again.
no...he's not that good at
* in isolation possessions, CJ averaged 0.88 points/possession. That was only in the 56th percentile (44% of the league was better) in the league, and that was 13.3% of his possessions. Dame scored 1.07 ppp in isolation on 18% of his possessions and that was good enough for the 87th percentile
* in PnR ball-handler, which was 36.3% of CJ's possessions, he averaged 0.93 ppp which was only good enough for the 71st percentile. Dame averaged 1.15 ppp which was in the 96th percentile, and that was 52% of his possessions.
those are the two most '
create-your-own-offense' types of possessions. By weight, that means CJ was somewhere around the 66th percentile leaving 1/3 of the league better at shot creation and that actually accounted for about 50% of CJ's possessions. CJ isn't nearly as good at it as you are implying. On the other hand, Dame is elite at shot creation, being somewhere in the 93rd percentile, and that accounted for 70% of his possessions. A big difference is that an essential component of creating offense is creating FT opportunities and CJ is terrible at that. Always has been, always will be
another play type that accounted for 14.5% of CJ's possessions was transition. Definitely a possession that would gauge some ball handling and shot creation. Well, CJ was only in the 45th percentile in that category. That's approaching two thirds of CJ's possessions, plays dependent on 'shot creation', and CJ is hovering around the 60th percentile. That's not impressive. But I don't demerit him a lot for transition offense because the entire team sucks at it
meanwhile, CJ is in the 83rd percentile in spot-up possessions (14% of his shots). He's in the 75th percentile in off-screen shots.
And CJ ranks 8th in the NBA among perimeter players in eFG% on catch-and-shoot. That's elite
but that illustrates the problem. CJ's prowess in creating his own offense is more mythical than real. Yes, he does it a lot, but he's not very efficient. He's much better on plays that don't see him dribbling like crazy, burning shot clock, and stopping the damn ball. His assisted FG rate is half of what it should be. He needs to play a lot more like Klay Thompson and a lot less like Dame. Yeah, every once in a while he'll have a hot game and his fans will point to it repeatedly, forgetting about all his nothing-burger games where he did the same thing but shot bricks while hogging the ball.
and you say he's "
bailed out" the Blazers in games. Sure, he's done that but Portland would not need to be bailed out so often if CJ wasn't such a huge sieve on defense. That's where Holiday would be a big help (he was in the 88th percentile in isolation by the way).
