drizzlybear said:
SFCityBear said:
drizzlybear said:
bearister said:
...that now makes Braun and Monty opining Bradley has a puncher's chance at next level.
...I agree with Monty that you have to knock down open shots, but how many times have you seen a good shooter so wide open that you know it is going to be nothing but brick. It's almost like a little bit of D focuses the concentration.
I think MB has a great shot at making the nba. His foot quickness is his weakness (and that's a big weakness to have), but his uncommon strength is a significant and rare asset. I think he gets there.
He needs to be more of a team player, and realize when he is double and triple teamed, one or more of his teammates will be open for a better shot than the one he is about to take, and get the ball to him. Cal would be a better team if he would start doing that, say about 10-20% of the time when he drives. Whether he is under orders to shoot every time he has a possible opening, I don't know. He may be, and he can carry a team, but we continue to lose. Coach Fox needs to encourage Bradley to know where his teammates are as he drives, if he is not telling him that already. And Fox needs to scheme to get Bradley's teammates into open spots, when Bradley takes off on a drive, if he is not doing that already.
I realize I'm probably in the minority on this, but I completely disagree with the narrative that Bradley is not a team player and doesn't pass willingly or well. We just saw him put on a passing clinic in the furd game (I forget which one). Unfortunately, no other Cal players were making shots that night, so Bradley's stats don't reflect the prevalent and effective passing he was doing in that game.
Of course it's not just that one game. In fact, in last night's game here's several passes he made in just the last few minutes of crunch time to create great opportunities for his teammates:
3:12 pick-and-roll pocket pass to Kelly down the lane that leads directly to uncontested corner-3 for Hyder (miss)
2:32 drive to elbow, dish to Kelly for floater in the key
0:22 drive in key, dish to Kelly by the basket (Kelly misses twice at the rim before scoring; no assist)
Also, earlier in that same half I recall Bradley also passing in to Thiemann in the key (LT dropped pass out of bounds).
Matt Bradley is a willing and skilled passer, as he has demonstrated in these examples i can think of just off the top of my head. Bradley is far and away Cal's best offensive weapon. He's not a point guard. Cal needs him to look to score, which he does. But he also still does pass for better opportunities for his teammates, including repeatedly in crunch time as he did last night.
Mike Montgomery, as the announcer yesterday, on a play where Bradley took the ball to the basket against a double team, with another Cal player open, after lauding Bradley as a really good player, said something like this: "Bradley must know where his teammates are. He should look for his teammates more. It is the one thing about his game that he needs to do more." Or something like that. The quotes are mine.
I expanded on what Montgomery had said. If you want to disagree, fine. But 4 passes, one resulting in an assist for the 2nd player, one an actual assist, one not an assist, and one dropped ball is OK, nothing great, and is not typical of Bradley's over all season. He has had only 25 assists this season, less than 2 per game.
He has had only 3 games all season where he got more than 2 assists. The Stanford game you mentioned, where he had 4 assists, and took only 5 two point shot attempts. I think he had to pass more against Stanford. Their interior defense was so tough, no Cal guards were getting to the basket. Against Oregon, he had 3 assists, and took only 3 two point shots. Against USF, he had 5 assists, and took 11 two point shot attempts. (At that point I wondered if Cal might be better with Bradley at point guard. He as the tools, but maybe as I said, Coach Fox wants him to score as much himself as possible). If you take away those three games, in the remaining games, that leaves Bradley with only 13 assists for 15 games, less than one assist per game. He had zero assists against USC, and zero assists against UCLA. 4 assists in the Stanford game is good, but is not exactly a coaching clinic. Bradley makes a lot more turnovers than assists, and his assist/turnover ratio is upside down, at 0.568.
I know statistics don't tell us everything. They don't tell us that Bradley made the first pass which resulted in a teammate getting an assist and a 2nd teammate the bucket. All assists require teammates to get open, Bradley to know they are open and make a good pass, and the teammate has to hold on to the ball, avoid a turnover, steal or shot block and shoot it accurately into the basket. On top of that assists are subjective, an official's judgment. But to average less than one assist per game for nearly all his games, does not impress me, and I'd have to trust Montgomery, when he says Bradley must know where his teammates are and he needs to look for them. As I said above, maybe Fox wants Bradley to score himself whenever he can.
SFCityBear
