KingSpeed

Everyone is so hard on Jack about turning the ball over, but then I noticed this excerpt in Mike Barrett's blog. He's right. The good players turn the ball over cuz they're out there taking risks. Maybe Jarrett and the fans should chill a little bit. I mean, yes we lost the games in Indiana and Boston because of turnovers, but those turnovers were more out of fear than risk taking. I think it's VERY interesting that we turned the ball over more times per game than we have been doing during this horrible month of February. Ease up on Jack's turnovers!!


http://mikebarrettsblog.blogspot.com/

Clyde obviously has a ton of love for the Blazers, and told me he watches almost every game on League Pass. He talked with passion about the team, about the season, and about some of the individuals. When I talk to some guys around the league about our team, I have to ask questions. With Clyde, he did all the talking, and the subject following the game was turnovers.


He mentioned that it looks like the guys are too tentative right now, and how everyone seems to be hesitating. Clyde immediately brought up the fact that he averaged almost 3 turnovers per game during his career. I looked it up, and indeed, he averaged about 2.8 per contest. He followed that with, "show me a guy who's not turning the ball over, and I'll show you a guy who's not doing anything." Of course, his Blazer teams averaged about 93 shots per game, and this year's team averages just over 78 attempts per game.


He does have a point, about the people who do make turnovers being some of the better playmakers in the league. The leaders in the turnover catagory in the NBA are ranked, in this order- Dwyane Wade, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Deron Williams, and Carmelo Anthony. They are all playmakers, who are agressive, fearless, and are team leaders.


The Trail Blazers are 2-4 in the month of February. In the six games this month, the Blazers have averaged 11.8 turnovers per game. The team's season average for turnovers is 13.3 per game. During the 13-game winning streak this season, the Blazers averaged 13 turnovers per game, obviously more than they have averaged during this month.


It's always been said that two major indicators of a team's agressiveness are rebounds and free-throw attempts. But, shouldn't turnovers also be listed in this catagory? The numbers tell us that a low turnover total isn't necessarily a sign of success. Individually, as shown above, it doesn't mean that much. Steve Nash is always among the league leaders in this catagory, and he's never listed as a careless player who contributes to losses.


I kind of got off on a tangent here, but I think you see what I'm trying to point out. The Trail Blazer team we saw during the winning streak was a team playing without fear, and failure wasn't even considered. Obviously, confidence is a huge issue, and this team isn't playing with confidence right now. There are several areas where this can be seen. I've just chosen to single out turnovers to illustrate this point. Clyde is the one who got me thinking about it, and he knows a thing or two about playing with confidence.

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MAS RipCity

Very true, but it is the blatant, throw away passes that kill me..at the time I was upset about his play against Denver in OT, but after looking back he was just trying to make a play, those ones are fine by me..but make the easy pass sometimes.

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Dan

Eric, you're starting to creep back into Speed mode.

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RoyToy

Jack turnovers are terrible passes into the post generally. That isn't risk taking, it's just terrible passing skills.

alext42083

It's not necessarily the NUMBER of turnovers that Jarrett has, but the TIMING of when his turnovers are, which tend to be during the crucial parts of the game and that probably magnifies it.

I like the numbers Jack has been putting up lately, near triple double vs Denver, 9 or so assists vs. Indiana I think, but when the game is on the line, it seems Jack always makes some costly turnover.

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JFizzleRaider

Please just stop your mancrush on Jack. Jack doesn't fit into the plans of Portland in the long run and you know this. Where is he gonna get playing time at? Hopefully if Rudy comes over he will be the backup SG, and if our PG rotation stays Jack/Blake we are in trouble.

Fact: Jack turns over the ball too much

No matter what anyone says, turnovers are NOT a good thing

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alext42083

Are we really comparing Jarrett's turnovers to Steve Nash? Nash is a two-time MVP, plays in a run-and-gun style that takes risks where turnovers are more likely but Nash is only averaging one more than Jarrett.
Nash also doesn't screw up in the clutch.

Nash makes up for it too with 17 points and 12 assists per game compared to Jack's 10 and 4. That's at least a 23-point difference (7 points, 8 asts=16 pts) that both are responsible for per game, which more than makes up for that one turnover difference.

Clyde averaged 25 per game or whatever, so that made up for that 3 TOs per game.

Jarrett doesn't have as much of an impact as those players, so when he's turning it over, it becomes more magnified.

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andalusian

Care to compare Nash's 3rd year to Jarret this year?

MPG: 31.7 vs. 26.8
FG%: .363 vs. .432
3P%: .374 vs. .345
Assists: 5.5 vs. 3.8
T/O: 2.1 vs. 2.35
Rbds: 2.9 vs. 2.8
Steals: 0.9 vs. 0.6
PPG: 7.9 vs. 9.5
PER: 10.9 vs. 12.58

... add the fact that Nash was a none-factor on the defense while Jarret is at least acceptable...

FWIW - Both are 24 in their 3rd year in the league.

It is clear that Nash had a better A/TO than JJ on his 3rd year - but it is not amazing compared to JJ (and Nash did not play the 2 guard position) and he actually had less of an impact on the game in his 3rd year than JJ has now.

I am not saying that you can expect JJ to be a Nash like player when all is said and done, but the comparison you make between a MVP player in his 12th year to a 3rd year player is really apples to oranges...

FWIW - Nash played on a Dallas team that finished that year at 19-31 - much worse than the current record of the Blazers after about the same number of games - so the comparison is actually pretty valid - as a 3rd year player JJ is actually ahead of the curve compared to Nash...

Will it translate when all is said and done? I doubt it, but people are going out of their way to complain about JJ's struggles - by comparing him to a fantastic player pretty much in his prime...

Perfection

Okay, it's really weird because I touched on this subject in a previous post, but it's no longer there (http://www.basketballforum.com/portl...-per-game.html)

Anyways, turnovers are not desirable, but if you look at who leads the league, it's superstars because they have the ball in their hands a lot. Not only does Jack do some PG duties, but he also is one of the primary attacking forces on the second unit...his style of play turns the ball over more than a James Jones spot up shooter. The second TO guy off the bench is Manu.

Turnovers themselves are not good and nobody wants them, but they are inevitable and realize that the role and style of gameplay Jack has affects his TO count. That being said, he does need to work on his decision making.

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alext42083

But that was the comparison that was originally made in the first post, that because the turnover leaders are Nash, Kidd, Wade, Anthony, etc. that it's OK that Jack turns it over as much as he does.

Those players have a larger impact on the game than Jarrett does.

But really, to me, the number of turnovers don't irk me as much as WHEN Jarrett makes his turnovers, which seem to come at the end in crucial parts of the game.
Also, his inability to run a fast break correctly more times than not is frustrating as well.
I like Jack's defense, he's able to stay with the Wades, the Williams, the Pauls, etc. for the most part more than anyone else on the team. But sometimes his execution and decision making on offense can be a eye sore.

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KingSpeed

I've seen Kidd and Nash make costly turnovers with the game on the line in the playoffs. It happens. You gotta play free and easy.

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KingSpeed