Player Dereck Lively

[aiw]

What point in the game was this? I somehow missed it. It must have been either early or late.

I think it was in the last 2 minutes

 

[rome8180]

What point in the game was this? I somehow missed it. It must have been either early or late.

I think it was in the last 2 minutes

Just watched. It was actually our last basket of the game with 1:30 or so left. The pass from Flip was objectively terrible, but it was a nice capper to an awesome team performance.

 

[dukebluedevils05]

It was a terrible pass from Flip, but it got tipped by Edwards, which contributed to the ball not being anywhere near the rim.

 

[LastHearth]

Interesting discussion on this podcast about Derek Lively from a couple guys who are into basketball but neutral on Duke.




Short summary: Lively is now what people thought he would be before the season started, a defensive monster. He has improved quite a bit since the season started. Opponents shoots 46% at the rim against Duke when he's on the floor, 52% when he's not.

But, his offense is still terrible. He shoots 40% on layups, which places him in the bottom 10% of all Division 1 basketball players who has minimum of 20 attempts. He also has weak hands and drops passes more than he should.

Overall, they think he's a low 1st round pick right now, in the 20s.

 

[rome8180]

Saying he's bad at layups ignores that his only layup attempts are postups. When he's not posting up, literally everything is a dunk. You don't want a big like him posting up anyway, so the percentage he shoots on those is irrelevant.

He's shooting 63% from the field for a reason. And for someone who can't do anything but dunk, he's managing to get a lot of open dunks lately. For one thing, he cuts and rolls well. For another he's a great lob target. And lastly, he feasts on the offensive glass. I would count those all as offensive skills, and I think they're going to be far more helpful to him than his layups.

I like Vecenie, but I think this is an extremely bad take by him. If you want to criticize his offense, focus on the fact that he isn't hitting threes. As a rim runner and lob threat, he's showing exactly what he needs to.

 

[Pantone287]

I'd just been thinking about how great of a dunker he is, which is a very stupid sounding sentence. I mean that in the same way that great rebounders get praised for rebounding "out of their area", he gets dunks out of his area. There is such a massive range of Lively starting points and ball-in-the-air locations that end in unstoppable Lively dunks - I'd say even more so than Mark, due to how agile and quick-jumping Lively is. It's such an asset to our offense, and has a sort of similar function to court-stretching shooters.

(And yes, I realize that read like a CHS post, but I'm tired and couldn't figure out how to not say his name three times in that sentence.)

 

[best4heisman]

Wait, what is the point of making a distinction between dunks and layups? Like Pantone said, he is able to dunk everything instead of lay the ball in because he is tall and athletic. It isn't really a different type of shot. He's also shooting 71% from two on 87 attempts, so we're talking about a very small number of misses.

I would generally agree with a late first round grade, though. He can be an impact rim defender and solid lob threat but there isn't enough offense to justify taking him higher.

 

[LastHearth]

I think you guys are missing the point. Of course they mentioned that the majority of his shots are dunks, and that his overall 70% at the rim number is fine. The point is his layups of 40% is not just bad, it's atrocious.
It's in the bottom 10% of division 1 college players, It's alarming that any aspiring NBA player could be among the bottom 10% of college players at doing anything on the basketball court.

 

[rome8180]

I think you guys are missing the point. Of course they mentioned that the majority of his shots are dunks, and that his overall 70% at the rim number is fine. The point is his layups of 40% is not just bad, it's atrocious.
It's in the bottom 10% of division 1 college players, It's alarming that any aspiring NBA player could be among the bottom 10% of college players at doing anything on the basketball court.

It's like saying he's bad at sky hooks though. Who gives a shit?

He's able to generate a ton of dunks due to his off ball movement, screen setting, leaping ability, and rebounding. That's far more relevant to his NBA potential because it's what he'll actually be asked to do. Again, if they'd criticized his 3pt shooting potential I could buy that.

 

[rome8180]

Also, again, he's not bad at laying the ball in the basket. He's bad at posting up. That happens to be where nearly 100% of his layups happen. So I don't think it tells you a damn thing about his ability to shoot the ball off the glass.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

It may be obvious but I think we’re kind of seeing the way that an early season or preseason injury can be so damaging to a freshman season. It just takes these guys longer when they have to get into not only their own flow but the flow of a new team at a higher level of basketball. It took awhile for Lively and obviously Whitehead has had his issues while Mitchell and Flip have been a bit steadier from the outset.

I think Tatum missed the first few weeks in 2016-17 and wasn’t really good for us until like Feb.

 

[TyusStones5]

Lively is a rich man's Tyson Chandler in his prime. Let's enjoy him while we can boys!

 

[Rollins]

glad to be so wrong about this guy in december. thought he was clueless with no bounce or motor.

 

[bdotling]

He always had both, so kind of a weird take, you can see it in how he’s always talking. It was more strength to grab the ball and not get in foul trouble of which he’s improved tremendously.

 

[rome8180]

His passing has always been nice, but I thought the kickahead to Flip at the end of last night's game was maybe the smartest pass he's made this season. He would have gotten fouled and been at the line for a one-and-one as a 63% FT shooter. Plenty of time would have been left on the clock for UNC too. Even if Flip hadn't converted on the runout, the long pass had the effect of taking more time off the clock.

 

[rhfarmer]

Blocked two shots today which he kept in play. Getting smarter.

Nice form on the 3 too.

 

[Pantone287]

He's also gotten pretty good at that quick corner 3 kickout when he gets it on the roll in traffic and too early to just gather and dunk. That's a subtly nice wrinkle to our offense by Jon - he's so tall and long that it's easy for him to catch any roll pass and get to the corner over the helper, and you can't not help on the roll.

 

[rome8180]

Speaking of good at the corner kickout, Filipowski is operating much better on the short roll lately. The last couple games, he's been less of blackhole.

 

[rome8180]

But to come back to Lively, I don't understand how you can watch him and be worried about his layup ability. He doesn't have the finishing touch of Mark Williams, but he's a way better roller. Every single time he comes out and sets the screen, he dives immediately to the rim. And on guard drives, even if he isn't involved in the screen, he's cutting to the rim to be ready for the lob or the putback. I like his offensive instincts in general. Put him with a really good pick and roll guard (Trae, Harden, LaMelo), and he's going to score 13-17 easy points at the NBA level. But he also at least has the potential to be a floor spacer eventually.

 

[best4heisman]

I came here to say that he had a couple non-dunk finishes through contact tonight. He is going to shoot like 70% from the field in the NBA, it's such a non-issue unless you want him to be a guy who creates his own shot, which NBA teams won't.