Some Perspective on Paulus
After listening to the basketball analysts all season and reading the season postmortems on this board, it seems that the book of conventional wisdom on Paulus has been written and it goes something like this:
1. Paulus commits too many turnovers. He needs to do a better job of taking care of the ball evidenced by his low assist to turnover ratio.
2. Paulus showed some grit on offense in the second half of the season because someone needed to step up and fill the void. However, he really isn’t a high caliber perimeter scoring threat in the traditional Duke mold.
3. Paulus is too slow. He isn’t quick enough to take his man and he has poor lateral quickness on defense and therefore gets beaten by his man.
Now let’s take a closer look at each one of these…
Turnovers
Let’s start with the turnovers. Paulus’ turnovers are actually down this year. During his freshman year he committed 3.3 turnovers per game compared with 3.1 per game this year. Still too many you say? Well, let’s put those turnovers into proper historical perspective. Here are a few season turnover stats from former Duke point guards:
Bobby Hurley (Freshman) 4.3 TO/G
Bobby Hurley (Sophomore) 3.9 TO/G
Bobby Hurley (Junior) 3.5 TO/G
Bobby Hurley (Senior) 3.4 TO/G
Jason Williams (Freshman) 4.1 TO/G
Jason Williams (Sophomore) 3.9 TO/G
Jason Williams (Junior) 3.7 TO/G
Tommy Amaker (Freshman) 3.0 TO/G
Chris Duhon (Junior) 3.0 TO/G
(I should mention that Wojo, never had more than 1.8 TO/G and Amaker and Duhon kept theirs <3 in their other seasons not listed.)
So my point here is that Paulus’ turnover numbers are not really that high relative to other PGs in the Duke system. So the culprit with Paulus’ A/T ratio is the relatively low assist total. That is certainly something Greg will need to work on and improve. However we should remember that the PGs listed above had guys like Dawkins, Laettner, Hill, Boozer, Battier, Shelden and Redick on the other end of those assists. Consider the offensive personnel that Paulus had to work with this year…
Scoring Threat
Now let’s talk about Paulus as a scoring threat. When the season started I, and pretty much everyone else, would have said that Scheyer is the guy that would need to try to step in and fill the void that JJ left on the perimeter. Early in the season, that is pretty much what happened. But over the course of the season, Paulus became more and more dangerous from behind the arc. I knew this was the case but I was shocked when I looked at his final season 3 point shooting percentage. A torrid 45.6%! That is the sixth all-time highest single season percentage at Duke. And the five guys at the top of the list are not named Trajan or JJ. Also, his 68 total 3 pointers made puts him ahead of Jeff Capel’s sophomore season, Hurley’s junior season, Trajan’s freshman season, and Dunleavy’s sophomore season. By comparison, Scheyer (and this is not a criticism of him) shot only 36.5% with a total of 61 made.
Speed
It is true that you can’t coach quickness but a couple of former Dukies have proven that you can work on it. Anyone who remembers Wojo’s first two years at Duke knows that he was a step too slow to be truly effective. JJ got off to a great start at Duke but saw his game plateau in his second year due to his lack of speed. Both Wojo and JJ worked their butts off over the summer and showed remarkable improvements in speed as upperclassman. They also learned over time how to play their man on defense more effectively and keep their man in front of them.
We heard stories at the beginning of this year about how Paulus went “JJ” over the summer and had really got into great shape. Well that was all thrown out the window by his injury. Something tells me that Paulus is not going to sit on the couch eating nachos this summer…
I don’t expect this argument to sway all the Paulus doubters. I am sure they could come up with some lies, damn lies and statistics of their own. However, I think those who think that Duke will not be able to be a contender with Paulus at the point and/or who actually think that Paulus will lose his spot to Nolan Smith at some point next year really need to take a closer look at Greg’s game. Consider what he has done, who has been around to help him, and what he has been up against.
Furthermore, Greg showed more leadership down the stretch than anyone on the team. Personally, I think he should be named as the sole captain for next year’s team.
Against ACC competition...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dukie8
let's take a look at what else was going on in the acc:
lawson: 5.6 assists and 2.2 tos
vasquez: 4.8 assists and 2.8 tos
singletary: 4.7 assists and 3.0 tos
gordon: 4.6 assists and 2.3 tos
rice: 5.5 assists and 3.3 tos
crittendon: 5.8 assists and 3.8 tos
so ALL of the point guards on the teams that were either tied or above us in the acc had significantly better assist/turnover ratios, ALL of them had more assists and 4 of the 6 had less tos.
For what it's worth, Paulus had a better A/TO ratio in ACC-only play (1.35) than Singletary did (1.26), but it was worse than the other four listed. He turned the ball over less frequently (as a percentage of possessions) against conference competition than Crittenton, Lawson, and Singletary, and was right about even with Rice.
Also (again for what it's worth), Duke's offensive design, at least this year, was not point-guard-focused in terms of assists. Duke placed 4 players in the top 31 in assist rate (assists-per-teammate's made field goals) - Paulus, McRoberts, Nelson, and Henderson. Only FSU (Swann, Douglas, Mims, Allen) also had 4 in the top 31, and neither of them had as good an assist rate as Paulus did. So our assists were more spread out than those of other teams, which contributes to Paulus' lower assist numbers. Though I admit, there's a little bit of a chicken and the egg argument with that last point (was the spread out offensive focus the cause of Paulus' lower assist numbers, or were Paulus' lower assist numbers the cause of the more spread out offensive focus).
I am not one to quote John Madden too often...
Hi,
John Madden says something along the lines that, "Winning cleans up a lot of stink." If Duke is doing well next year, Paulus will receive less scrutiny. If Duke has another year like this one, as the point guard he can expect to be crucified--justified or not. In a way I am sort of sick of talking about it because the one vote that matters, Coach K's, seems squarly for Greg. So, one can fire up one statistic after another and as long as Coach K thinks Greg should play--he will. Also, it seems a bit strange to second guess a coach with so much success. All those years of going to the sweet sixteen, if not farther, and all of the sudden he can't judge talent better than some guy who has a lot fewer credentials. I am not saying Coach K is infallable or that he isn't stubborn (goodness knows he has been quite stubborn at times and I think can be to the detriment of the team), but I am saying he has earned the right not to be second guessed a lot about this. He sees something in Greg and so Greg is his man. I trust Coach K. I am more into supporting people than tearing them down particularly when they wear the right shade of blue.
GO DUKE!
Assists are made penetrating the middle
A point guard generally does not make assists from the wing or from outside the top of the key which is where Greg was most of the year. Assists come from penetrating the middle down the lane where he can dish it to a big without the big having to dribble before he takes his shot. Much easy way for a big to score and thus the point guard get the assist.
Or if your fast enough as point guard leading the fast break for an assist. Didn't see Greg leading too many fast breaks this year, did we. He usually was walking or trotting the ball up the court.
If we played zone defense his slowness would be less of liability there, but we don't...so.
Coach K sees something in him because we have no one better to play point.
Greg will be much better as a shooting guard really and as a complement to
a true point guard. As opposed to Scheyer whose shot release needs to be much quicker. Greg does have a very quick release and he squares up like JJ. I think he works pretty well coming off picks. But again that's not what point guards do.
I do think he is a leader, listening to him in post game interviews, etc. Much better that Josh. He is a standup man and a fine representative for Duke basketball. I think we all have his back. He got squat for help from Scheyer
and Nelson in the VCU game.