I’ve flip flopped a lot about KAT the past 12 hours. I went from thinking we should trade him and he’s blown the series for us to keep him and improve over the offseason. Overall, in Connelly we trust. But this tweet by Dane was interesting: https://x.com/danemoorenba/status/1795157483796791631?s=46
Work on the offense in the offseason. It was below average and masked by our gifted offensive talents. Make our players more comfortable in the offense and we should be back and better next year, despite how this series finishes.
Wolves in 7.
by iBreakAnkles03
12 Comments
We have a lot of players who are in their heads. KAT tops the list. Honestly hope he can figure it out for his sake. Dude deserves to be more secure.
If KAT is cold the answer doesn’t seem to be shooting more low percentage shots.
He is barely hitting the rim. Not sure he earns the right to shoot more…
There’s no two ways around the fact that KAT has had a very bad series, but I’m continually impressed with how little the NBA fan/media landscape understands sample sizes and variance.
The push to make KAT be something that he’s not (which as been an absolute fixture of his career) is wild. It’s “why the hell is he not shooting more” until the shot doesn’t fall for a few quarters and then it’s “why the hell isn’t he attacking the paint” and then rinse and repeat for ten years.
Shooters need to see the ball go through the net. KAT has the ability to get to the FT line en make jumpers from the short corner. Get into a rhythm. Mix up pop outs to the three point line and flare screens to the short corners. Don’t stop shooting, but don’t blindly start jacking up more threes because analytics.
While I agree that KAT should be performing a lot better, I think it’s also important to remember this is his WCF, too. If we’re using experience to excuse (for lack of a better term) Ant’s performance then KAT also needs it. That said, I realize Ant is getting his fair share of criticism, too.
The team as a whole needs more experience in the playoffs. Making it this far when they’ve only been a play in team and never making it past round 1 is a huge leap, I think.
Honestly, I am happy with this season. Even if they don’t win the WCF or the championship, what they’ve accomplished this season is impressive.
I would prefer he catches lobs and goes to the rim. 0 for 7…
KAT is historically a good enough shooter to punish Dallas’ defensive scheme of selling out to stack the paint and stop Ant drives. The 3 point looks haven’t been overly difficult to come by. I think this is why he had a good game 7 vs. the Nuggets when they did the same thing on D to stop Ant. KAT shot 53% from 3 vs. PHX, 39% vs. DEN, and now 14% vs. Dallas while seemingly getting good looks. We would be winning the series if he was shooting in the high 30% from 3 point right now.
Edit: grammar
Kat just isn’t very smart. That’s the nice way of saying it.
His footwork in the post has gotten worse over the years.
kat has certainly take a step back in his role since ant took over AND we added rudy. now we’re asking him to be a dominant 1b. i think ant is similar bcuz he didnt have to carry our offense to this degree in the regular season, now hes gassed.
We tried forcing more threes for him last year, didn’t work. We’re basically asking him to change how he shoots by making him shoot faster.
He’s not like Klay – he can’t shoot unless he’s properly set. He’d need to develop a faster catch and shoot rhythm which I’m not sure he can, quickly.
I think he needs a better face up post game given he’s getting guarded by smaller players and he often tries (unsuccessfully) to back him down. And then he does a turnaround jumper that is a higher difficulty shot than just shooting it over the defender by using his height
We regularly get him open but his shots are not falling.
Hes just not performing well.