Viewing Threadzilla from the outside gives me a different perspective and allows me more time to soak in some of the debates you guys are having without being too reactionary.
Some of the posts I've read about Derrick Rose lately have been really, really bad. It makes sense that a group of poker players, obsessed with making good decisions, would underrate dumb players while at the same time usually overrate smart ones. This is the only explanation I could think of for why guys are lauding Gordon Hayward already and Rose continually receives tons of hate. What's funny, is that most of you would probably call Rose a bad decision maker and you'd be completely wrong.
While Rose does have some frustrating flaws in his game, he correctly does a lot of great things for his team, mostly in the form of scoring (which tends to be pretty important). I'm no Rose fan myself, so I'm hoping I can maybe shed some light on his game and stop some of my respected TZ buddies from looking foolish and assigning him labels like "actively hurts his team."
The most common misconception with Rose's game is that he is wrongly taking 2-point jumpers and floaters. While correct that these shots are usually worse than threes and layups/dunks, a quick look of shot locations (via HoopData and assembled into a spreadsheet by Jack of Arcades) shows that Rose is actually fantastic on his floaters.
As someone named JalapenoBag asked in Threadzilla: "i think rose is pretty good. but the one thing i can't stand is his stupid floater. why doesn't he ever just take it all the way?"
The data shows that Rose's "<10 feet" shots are worth 1.15 points per shot. This category excludes shots at the rim, so most floaters definitely land here. For some context, Zach Randolph's "At Rim" shot and Chauncey Billup's threes were worth 1.16 points per shot last year. Given how good Rose's floater is and how difficult it is to prevent, I feel comfortable saying it is one of the best offensive weapons in the game.
Now I assume his haters will point to his weaker, longer jump shots as the problem. Rose took 540 jumpers from 16-23 feet last year. This is second most in the league behind Dirk Nowitzki. That sounds troubling from a guy most would classify as a poor jump shooter. However, Rose shot 44% on them, good for .88 points per shot. Want some comparisons? How about Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, and Carmelo Anthony? All three of these guys took more than 400 shots from this distance and they all shot worse than Rose (Durant .74, Kobe .82, and Carmelo .80). Now I'm not calling Rose as good as these guys, but he's being criminally underrated in the thread.
Rose certainly has his issues too, but I think they're solvable. The biggest improvement to his game could come from either finishing better at the rim, or getting to the line more. These two really go hand-in-hand in Rose's case. If you watch him play, you'll notice he attempts many acrobatic plays around the rim. While these will land him on SportsCenter a lot, they're not really all that helpful to him or his team. If he could learn to embrace contact in his finishing attempts instead of dodging it, he'll get to the line more and become a real nightmare to defend.
It's not fair to hold Rose's TS% against him (compared to guys like Nash and Deron) without crediting him for operating at a much higher usage while turning it over even less. Given how damaging turnovers are, it's annoying that guys that pass a lot (and thus turn it over a lot) get credited with being unselfish and smart with the ball. Just because he isn't a typical point and is very much scoring minded doesn't mean he doesn't belong in the top echelon. His scoring is more valuable than most other point guard's passing. I also do think his assist numbers will improve as he now has some better offensive teammates to work with. Hopefully this comes in the form of more of his passes converted into points and not more passes from him in general though.
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