Collin Sexton | The Young Bull

[Out of the Rafters at the Q]

I think Kemba's a really good comparison for Sexton right now. Fantastic scoring guard--but that's about it. Even at a much younger age, I think Sexton currently looks better than Kemba did after one year in the league.

We'll see if Sexton can add other facets to his game.

 

[NMCav]

I think Kemba's a really good comparison for Sexton right now. Fantastic scoring guard--but that's about it. Even at a much younger age, I think Sexton currently looks better than Kemba did after one year in the league.

We'll see if Sexton can add other facets to his game.

Well Kemba never shot over 40 percent from 3 and has a life time FG% of 41.8 from the field. Sexton shot 43 from the field and 40 percent from deep as a 19/20 year old. If anything hes shown the promise to be more efficient then Kemba.

 

[Cavatt]

One thing that I think gets lost in this discussion is that people just say, "He can't see the floor". Well in a game where everything is sped up for you, you don't see as much and the game does slow down as time goes on. Getting Double teamed by elite athletes, trying to hold onto the ball, and passing it is not as easy as it sounds. I don't think that Sexton can't see the floor at all. He showed it time and again in transition where the floor is more open. He just needs practice. If anything I think some of his passes are ill timed. He isn't getting to the shooter just right or even to the roll man, and they need a dribble tor two to get back into rhythm.

As he got used to the NBA he seemed way more aware of the court and yes this is his best assist game, but I think it is really instructive because of the way they defended him. You will see time and again they are preventing Sexton's drive by sending the double on the pick and roll. As he gets doubled he hits the roll man or pop man repeatedly to negate their defense. He would have tried to dribble through these doubles at the beginning of last year.

View: https://youtu.be/2srOpcjog8s


I don't think he is a Kidd type maestro, but he showed something here that i thought was great. When he got trapped by Charlotte he found the open man. That is what type of passer he is. A drive and kick guy, and when the defense responds to him going to the basket, that opens up his passing game. There were other games where they tried to hard show and hedge on Sexton, but this was the one where they really trapped him and he got 10 assists. The short dump off at the rim to the Big we just barely saw last year, the over the top to the roll man we only saw in the last month, the wrap around to the corner after getting to the rim really started coming along. He can do these things, he just needs reps.

I also know he had plenty of turnovers this year, but he also had a few games with 0 turnovers. He is a better pg than you guys are giving him credit for. Watch out because Beilein is going to be "yelling at him" to make plays for his teammates and that was what they did last year on him taking 3's.

I totally think he needs secondary playmaking because he is not going to be Lowry averaging 10 assists, but I think he can be adequate for sure. Probably getting 5-6 or hopefully better if teams totally sell out to stop him scoring like they did in this Charlotte game where he still scored 18 when they trapped him almost every possession.

 

[Out of the Rafters at the Q]

Well Kemba never shot over 40 percent from 3 and has a life time FG% of 41.8 from the field. Sexton shot 43 from the field and 40 percent from deep as a 19/20 year old. If anything hes shown the promise to be more efficient then Kemba.

I did say "I think Sexton currently looks better than Kemba did," right?

 

[2 For The Brew]

I'm glad we have a player who is about BASKETBALL and not all of the other bullshit we had to suffer through with the likes of LeBron and Kyrie.

This kid had crappy coaching and a bunch of misfit veterans around him last year and STILL improved.

 

[Snowblind]

I think Kemba's a really good comparison for Sexton right now. Fantastic scoring guard--but that's about it. Even at a much younger age, I think Sexton currently looks better than Kemba did after one year in the league.

We'll see if Sexton can add other facets to his game.

Weren't you the one that hates player comparisons and went on a whole rant about it?

 

[Out of the Rafters at the Q]

Weren't you the one that hates player comparisons and went on a whole rant about it?

I said I prefer more quality discussion to multiple pages of player comps for guys who were just drafted and we have no NBA knowledge/film on.

But yeah, this is the same situation.

 

[Cavatt]

I said I prefer more quality discussion to multiple pages of player comps for guys who were just drafted and we have no NBA knowledge/film on.

But yeah, this is the same situation.

I mean Nathan laid out a pretty compelling case of Sexton being similar or further along than a lot of the best guys in the league right now. Why can't Sexton get better passing the ball? Did you watch the video of his 10 assist game? Granted it is a small sample size, but I don't see why those aren't passes he can build on. They were all directly related to how he play's his game and was just hitting the open man.

Curry gets all his assists by hitting the open man, and yeah it is easier to get assists on a team with 4 allstars, but it also just is a good example of how a scorer can use his gravity to get the assist rather than "orchestrating the offense".

Elite feel for the game is important, but saying one 19 year old has it and another doesn't when they have such similar numbers seems unfounded

 

[Out of the Rafters at the Q]

I mean Nathan laid out a pretty compelling case of Sexton being similar or further along than a lot of the best guys in the league right now. Why can't Sexton get better passing the ball? Did you watch the video of his 10 assist game? Granted it is a small sample size, but I don't see why those aren't passes he can build on. They were all directly related to how he play's his game and was just hitting the open man.

Curry gets all his assists by hitting the open man, and yeah it is easier to get assists on a team with 4 allstars, but it also just is a good example of how a scorer can use his gravity to get the assist rather than "orchestrating the offense".

Elite feel for the game is important, but saying one 19 year old has it and another doesn't when they have such similar numbers seems unfounded

Did you quote the right person? Did I ever say he couldn't do anything? Did I ever say one 19 year old has it and another doesn't?

 

[CBBI]

No...that's not my argument. I think the logical comparison is to other players at the same age, and I think college and the NBA are comparable if we're focusing solely on demonstrated passing ability.

Sexton averaged 3.7 assists and 2.8 turnovers per 40 at the NBA level at age 19/20.

Curry averaged 3.5 assists and 3.1 turnovers per 40 at the same age in college.

Harden averaged 4.7 assists and 3.8 turnovers per 40 in college when slightly younger than Sexton, 3.2 assists and 2.4 turnovers per 40 in the NBA when slightly older than Sexton.

Kemba averaged 4.8 assists and 2.4 turnovers per 40 in college when slightly older than Sexton

Lillard averaged 4.6 assists and 3.9 turnovers per 40 in college when slightly older than Sexton

Personally, I think AST% is a more valuable metric to cite than per 40 assist numbers when talking about playmaking. To his credit, Sexton doesn't turn the ball over a lot, but that could also be contributed to the fact he simply doesn't pass all that much compared to the amount he has the ball in his hands.

So let's look closer at the names you mentioned...

-Sexton at 19/20 (NBA rookie): 15.3 AST%

Low turnovers, but a very low assist percentage for someone with such a high usage. And I think the "he had bad teammates" excuse doesn't hold water when Dellavedova, Payne and Harrison all had better AST% last year for the Cavs playing with the same teammates.

-Curry at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 21.32 AST%
-Curry as NBA rookie: 24.6 AST%
-Curry career: 31.5 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +10.2%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +6.9%

-Harden at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 29.2 AST%
-Harden as NBA rookie: 12.3 AST%
-Harden career: 31.8 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +2.6%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +19.5%

-Kemba at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 29.2 AST%
-Kemba as NBA rookie: 30.2 AST%
-Kemba career: 28.7 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: -0.5%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: -1.5%

-Lillard at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 23.3 AST%
-Lillard as NBA rookie: 28.8 AST%
-Lillard career: 29.5 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +6.2%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +0.7%

So outside of Curry, none of the other three guys you listed made big gains from an AST% perspective from what they showed at 19/20 year old.

Harden is the only one to make a massive gain from his rookie NBA season. In all fairness there, Harden did have some major early career struggles as a playmaker, but given his college numbers I think his rough start in the NBA can be directly attributed to the fact he was playing with two 32%+ usage guys while be relegated to an off ball 6th man role in OKC. The moment he got to Houston and got back into a primary offensive role his playmaking immediately spiked back up to what he showed at Arizona State.

Sexton was pretty significantly worse than all of those guys at the same age (granted it was against better competition), so it's hard to be optimistic he'll see big gains as a playmaker. Especially now that the Cavs have added Garland who will presumably be on the ball a lot, perhaps even more than Sexton.

It wouldn't be completely unprecedented for Sexton to make a huge leap, but very few guys do it. I went back and looked at everyone this decade and the only guys I was able to find to make 15 AST% leap were...

D'Angelo Russell went from 21.2 AST% in Year 1 to 41.3% in Year 4.
Devin Booker went from 15.8 AST% in Year 1 to 34.1% in Year 4.

 

[Out of the Rafters at the Q]

Where's an advanced metric to tell us how good of a passer someone is?

Relying on assists is like relying on wins to tell you how good a pitcher is. Shit's antiquated.

 

[Cavatt]

Personally, I think AST% is a more valuable metric to cite than per 40 assist numbers when talking about playmaking. To his credit, Sexton doesn't turn the ball over a lot, but that could also be contributed to the fact he simply doesn't pass all that much compared to the amount he has the ball in his hands.

So let's look closer at the names you mentioned...

-Sexton at 19/20 (NBA rookie): 15.3 AST%

Low turnovers, but a very low assist percentage for someone with such a high usage. And I think the "he had bad teammates" excuse doesn't hold water when Dellavedova, Payne and Harrison all had better AST% last year for the Cavs playing with the same teammates.

-Curry at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 21.32 AST%
-Curry as NBA rookie: 24.6 AST%
-Curry career: 31.5 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +10.2%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +6.9%

-Harden at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 29.2 AST%
-Harden as NBA rookie: 12.3 AST%
-Harden career: 31.8 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +2.6%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +19.5%

-Kemba at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 29.2 AST%
-Kemba as NBA rookie: 30.2 AST%
-Kemba career: 28.7 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: -0.5%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: -1.5%

-Lillard at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 23.3 AST%
-Lillard as NBA rookie: 28.8 AST%
-Lillard career: 29.5 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +6.2%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +0.7%

So outside of Curry, none of the other three guys you listed made big gains from an AST% perspective from what they showed at 19/20 year old.

Harden is the only one to make a massive gain from his rookie NBA season. In all fairness there, Harden did have some major early career struggles as a playmaker, but given his college numbers I think his rough start in the NBA can be directly attributed to the fact he was playing with two 32%+ usage guys while be relegated to an off ball 6th man role in OKC. The moment he got to Houston and got back into a primary offensive role his playmaking immediately spiked back up to what he showed at Arizona State.

Sexton was pretty significantly worse than all of those guys at the same age (granted it was against better competition), so it's hard to be optimistic he'll see big gains as a playmaker. Especially now that the Cavs have added Garland who will presumably be on the ball a lot, perhaps even more than Sexton.

It wouldn't be completely unprecedented for Sexton to make a huge leap, but very few guys do it. I went back and looked at everyone this decade and the only guys I was able to find to make 15 AST% leap were...

D'Angelo Russell went from 21.2 AST% in Year 1 to 41.3% in Year 4.
Devin Booker went from 15.8 AST% in Year 1 to 34.1% in Year 4.

What about when they took the ball or if good hands with Knight and he maintained or slightly elevated his playmaking.

What about when Nance would decide he was the pg? How many starting lineups was Sexton in? Once he got into the starting lineup, he was the only one there the whole rest of the year. Everybody else was in or out.

Half team was traded and the best player was hurt. Only had an all time rookie year, but not enough assists to blossomgame

 

[Cavatt]

Did you quote the right person? Did I ever say he couldn't do anything? Did I ever say one 19 year old has it and another doesn't?

Well sure you can ask me questions in response to questions about how I asked you the question, but it doesn't answer my question.

There is no content to your post in other words.

 

[CBBI]

Where's an advanced metric to tell us how good of a passer someone is?

Relying on assists is like relying on wins to tell you how good a pitcher is. Shit's antiquated.

A lot of passing stats here: https://stats.nba.com/players/passing/

Passes Per Game
Potential Assists
Assist to Pass Ratio

Stuff like that.

What about when they took the ball or if good hands with Knight and he maintained or slightly elevated his playmaking.

What about when Nance would decide he was the pg? How many starting lineups was Sexton in? Once he got into the starting lineup, he was the only one there the whole rest of the year. Everybody else was in or out.

Half team was traded and the best player was hurt. Only had an all time rookie year, but not enough assists to blossomgame

Sexton’s playmaking certainly didn’t elevate when he got moved into more of a timeshare/off the ball role once Knight got into the starting lineup.

Sexton without Knight: 15.9 AST%
Sexton with Knight: 15.3 AST%

But Knight’s AST% during that same stretch as a starter was only 14.3% so it wasn’t like he took on some crazy playmaking burden. He just brought the ball up sometimes and initiated some of the sets.

One thing that I’ll never really understand is why Nance became a whipping boy for trying to expand his game during a throwaway season. The Cavs won less than 20 games. That is literally the perfect scenario for a guy like Nance to try new things because there’s no real harm if ends up not being able to do them effectively. He started taking 3s for the first time (20.5% of his shots compared to about 5% before he got here) and he started making plays for other people without dramatically upping his usage. These are both good developments! Yet people were somehow angry and frustrated with Nance all year for freezing Sexton out? Don’t understand that.

I wouldn’t say Sexton had an “all time” rookie year by any means. He shot the ball very well and starting adjusting his shot selection as the year went on which was great to see, but he was a bad passer and an absolutely miserable defender all year.

The shooting is certainly encouraging and there’s plenty of reasons to be optimistic, but we don’t need to over sell what he actually accomplished either.

And I say again, the bad teammates thing really doesn’t hold water for me because Delly literally doubled Sexton’s assist rate with the same poor teammates and two legitimate scrubs in Payne and Harrison were still able to make more plays than Sexton too and neither of those guys can play dead.

 

[Nathan S]

Personally, I think AST% is a more valuable metric to cite than per 40 assist numbers when talking about playmaking. To his credit, Sexton doesn't turn the ball over a lot, but that could also be contributed to the fact he simply doesn't pass all that much compared to the amount he has the ball in his hands.

So let's look closer at the names you mentioned...

-Sexton at 19/20 (NBA rookie): 15.3 AST%

Low turnovers, but a very low assist percentage for someone with such a high usage. And I think the "he had bad teammates" excuse doesn't hold water when Dellavedova, Payne and Harrison all had better AST% last year for the Cavs playing with the same teammates.

-Curry at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 21.32 AST%
-Curry as NBA rookie: 24.6 AST%
-Curry career: 31.5 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +10.2%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +6.9%

-Harden at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 29.2 AST%
-Harden as NBA rookie: 12.3 AST%
-Harden career: 31.8 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +2.6%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +19.5%

-Kemba at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 29.2 AST%
-Kemba as NBA rookie: 30.2 AST%
-Kemba career: 28.7 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: -0.5%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: -1.5%

-Lillard at 19/20 (NCAA soph): 23.3 AST%
-Lillard as NBA rookie: 28.8 AST%
-Lillard career: 29.5 AST%
Total AST% change from age 19/20 to NBA career mark: +6.2%
Total AST% change from NBA rookie year to career mark: +0.7%

So outside of Curry, none of the other three guys you listed made big gains from an AST% perspective from what they showed at 19/20 year old.

Harden is the only one to make a massive gain from his rookie NBA season. In all fairness there, Harden did have some major early career struggles as a playmaker, but given his college numbers I think his rough start in the NBA can be directly attributed to the fact he was playing with two 32%+ usage guys while be relegated to an off ball 6th man role in OKC. The moment he got to Houston and got back into a primary offensive role his playmaking immediately spiked back up to what he showed at Arizona State.

Sexton was pretty significantly worse than all of those guys at the same age (granted it was against better competition), so it's hard to be optimistic he'll see big gains as a playmaker. Especially now that the Cavs have added Garland who will presumably be on the ball a lot, perhaps even more than Sexton.

It wouldn't be completely unprecedented for Sexton to make a huge leap, but very few guys do it. I went back and looked at everyone this decade and the only guys I was able to find to make 15 AST% leap were...

D'Angelo Russell went from 21.2 AST% in Year 1 to 41.3% in Year 4.
Devin Booker went from 15.8 AST% in Year 1 to 34.1% in Year 4.

Weird to leave out Sexton's 27.8% AST% as an 18/19 year old NCAA freshman...right? Very similarly to Harden, and in contrast with the others, he came into the NBA fairly young, and as a result was not a primary ballhandler right away, and saw his assist percentage drop. But I think it's reasonable to believe that with more experience, and given the opportunity to run the offense, he could in time be a ~30% AST% guy again. Again, not guaranteeing it, just saying it's on the spectrum of realistic outcomes.

Agree with what you're saying about Nance, fwiw.