Alot of American BBall fans don't see things that aren't flashy... They think Kyrie is this brilliant player (in some ways, he can be) but can't see that just by his ball hogging nature.. they will NEVER win a title under Kyrie Irving.. He would rather drive through 3 defenders to attempt something pretty then to pass to the open man.

Delly, if anything is Kyrie Irvings polar opposite. Delly will do the things that need to be done that don't light up a stat sheet.. the hustle on D... the obvious open passes.. playing smart and within his own talent. Many american's could never appreciate a Dellavedova, or a Dillon Boucher type.. or Vukona... They basically tend to think unless you are literally beasting all over the court, you are no good. Which is not true... Its all about who can help your team WIN GAMES... and in that much, I would take Delly over Kyrie ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.... One is a winner.. the other is a show pony.

Actually, it is a brilliant comparison of something often overlooked by the average basketball punter...

Bill Simmons article is very interesting on Kyrie this week - the guy has won less than 35% of his games in the NBA. Doesn't think you can talk about him as a legit star until he actually leads his teams to wins.

Thats exactly right Libertine.. some fan ran out on court today with a "please kyrie don't leave" T shirt. LOL. I would probably buy the guy tickets to go!

I think he is capable of great things, but right now.. he is a show pony whose ego is bigger then his game. If he was put on a better team... who could afford to bench him as a disciplinary thing.. he could become a great... Until then, I actually don't like the guy... Comes here talking like he might play for the Boomers "Child.. PLease!"

Always thought Kyrie was overhyped.

The over-commercialisation of his game through the Uncle Drew advertisements was one factor.

Mad handles but some people forgot that it takes more than flashy.moves to get wins in the league

Delly is a great team player, great at the intangibles and makes a lot of hustle plays. I can't help but wonder how much better he'd be if his shooting technique wasn't so ugly. He can hit the open shot but being able to pull up off the dribble would just add another string to his bow.

Wondering why that wasn't ironed out at the AIS...

Come to think of it Exum is another AIS guy who's brilliant in so many facets of the game but lacks fluid shooting mechanics.

Jez, I have to agree that the AIS is producing some funny looking shots. Not big noting, I am an amateur, never even had so much as district training however my jump shot is text book.. its reliable.. and its a fluid motion that is automatic. How is it there are guys going into pro league who havent mastered this?... I feel like somewhere a long the line, whilst looking at team play and defense the Aussie game has forgotten the most elegent and one of the most important parts of the game SHOOTING!

Rob Beveridge would agree with you GWB

Delly has the best plus minus for rookies and 13th in PER.
http://hoopshype.com/articles/hoopshype/how-are-2013-draftees-performing

whoops that only shows PER and how much players have changed from their draft position

Does Young not shining, shine a good light on NBL? It's a better league than most give it credit for.

It is also apparently good for upsetting anonymous posters who may think they know something about something but may not be intelligent or knowledgeable enough to realise it yet...

014, such wisdom. What stat line would you prefer? PPG? Lol

Just to support what GWB had to say about poor shooting in Australia:
https://www.bevocoaching.com/index.php/bevos-blog/14-high-shooting-percentages-equals-winning

Interesting that he says that players just arent spending the time shooting... when guys like shane heal and gaze would shoot all day every day. I would tell any kid who wants to be a Boomer to put in an extra 2 hours a day on his shot...

Maybe the AIS takes the view that they don't want to screw with anything which caused them to pick up the player in the first place.

Perhaps they'd rather take a 40% flawed shot than take it apart and rebuild it into a 60% shot, kind of thing.

Thanks for that link, D4444.

I know Team USA would get the best looks from outside, but they knocked them down.

The NBA as a whole is actually underrated when it comes to the three point shot.

The thing you notice with most Americans is that their techniques are usually pretty flawless, very fluid and natural in their shooting mechanics. I'm sure playing a lot of pick-up games also helps with 1 on 1s and their pull-up game.

Are Australian kids over-coached and over-worked? Some play for their school team, club team, rep team etc., over-complicating the game for developing players, and they become too mired in learning different systems, cutting, defensive plays etc. at the expense of developing a fundamental offensive skill base.

I think before taking too much from those juniors stats you would have to watch the games to see how they were reffed, and compare the stats from past eras to see if they were any different.

The physicality plays a huge part in how well people shoot, even from the free throw line. This time last year the FG, 3pFG and FT stats for the NBL were 42, 32 & 70. At the moment theyre something like 45, 35 & 76.

Nine of the top 10 foul shooters were in the league last year, and 7 of 10 three-point shooters and field-goal shooters. What's changed? The reffing.

I think developing shooters is vitally important, but developing young refs to emulate what's happening at NBL level is also crucial.

Interesting comment Jez... I read some one a while ago somewhere saying that Australian Basketball players were like robots... very solid and pragmatic in some areas but hugely lacking in ability to create shots and hit them. I would think for most players that aren't Ingles, Mills or Goulding that is probably spot on.

paul, how do you access all these stats?

Are you actually Paulo Kennedy?

^^^ Yes he is that one and the same person.

Interesting how this post has drifted onto the topic of 'junior Australian player's shooting techniques'

Since we have done so, I will add what I have observed over the years of watching Australian juniors at all levels.

But first we must understand that Delly is one of our juniors and has come through our program, secondly that he is an Aussie kid and not born in the USA.

Why is this significant? Well, if we care to have a think about our Aussie juniors (boys in particular) and think about their general skill sets growing up in a footy/cricket dominated world we will better understand what I mean...

Your average garden variety Aussie boy will grow up playing back yard cricket and footy in the park, he will learn to bowl, mark, kick, hand-ball, (pass in the case of rugby) and do all these things with style and on the move, just like his idols playing in the AFL/NRL etc...

In the USA kids will play backyard gridiron games, and throw a baseball with dad, but by and large a huge swag of them will pick up a basketball and go one-on-one with their mates.

I am generalising, of course, but this shot technique issue is more than just something we need to teach our kids, if we are to compare our juniors with those from the USA it is a cultural difference and something they are brought up with.

In the USA and in Europe basketball is huge, the kids will look up to their superstars and copy them, imitate their swagger and style, the way they shoot and move on the court!

Now back on topic, what I have seen here is less emphasis on the individual technique and more on the results or the stats. Not saying it is wrong, we just don't have enough coaches who can take the time to spend on a kid one-on-one to correct the techniques early enough, and we all know how hard bad habits are to break.

Then, once the kids are in their late teens, we may be stuck with the style or technique of the individual, too hard to change it unless it is completely wrong and someone is dedicated enough...

Our juniors are talented and dedicated, but lets remember it is not the main stream sport here and the money, facilities, coaches, support is not as broadly available for basketball as it is in some sports.

All things considered, I think our juniors are doing very well and on the improve, just the same...

Oh, and I forgot one more really important factor, IMO anyway...

Junior coaches down here seem to be, by and large, more concerned with their win/loss ratio than with development and teaching of the game for mind.

Confidence in coaching will reflect the confidence in playing! Spare us from the unsure, uneducated, angry coach, please...

Ask yourself (if you are a junior coach), do you sub a kid for a mistake instead of letting him/her work it out?

Do you yell at a kid for their mistake instead of teach them how to correct?

Do you give up on them to bring in the next big thing so you can win now, or encourage them to keep trying and not worry about their errors too much as they are learning the game to improve down the track?

As a coach, do YOU have a fear of losing that grips YOU so hard that YOU forget to loosen up and focus on the courage and risk taking needed to win?

Team rules and running YOUR plays is important, but... Building confidence is also letting all your kids shoot it occasionally, letting them drive and take it to the rim, letting them go coast to coast, encouraging them to dunk and to perform their spin moves, but not giving them a bake when it doesn't always come off...

If we want our juniors not to be robots and fearful of expressing themselves on the court, then we have to adopt a coaching approach which is less about flogging them, or punishing them and more about encouraging and developing them, IMHO!

Some of us say, 'where are the players with style?'

I ask, 'where are the coaches with style?'

Bit of a tangent there 'Bear' but towards the end I think you hit the mail on the head. Many kids are told there roles in junior comp, rather then allowed to find there own.. the team has its preconceived star and within that it gets hard for another kid with potential to develop. This, I feel is why we have always had world class roleplayers but NEVER have had what could be considered an NBA STAR. an NBA Go-To-Guy. Bogut looked like it in college... but hes just a very good roleplayer... Exum/Simmons could be that, but seeing is believing and I wont believe until I see..

If you look at our two perimeter players in the NBA theyre shooting 45 and 39% from deep, and our two perimeter guys in the Euroleague are shooting 48 and 38%. Our U19 men have been first in 3p shooting at the last two WCs.

In the NBL around 1-in-6 players are hitting over 40%, pretty much the same as the NBA and Euroleague. Im not sure we are such a bad shooting country. In fact, imports who come here talk about how well players here shoot the ball.

What we're not as good at across the board is shooting pull-up shots etc, and I think Bear hit the nail on the head with that one, not enough time just playing one-on-one.

Funnily, Ive learned much much more for my (rather average) offensive game as a journo than I did through my juniors, watching players here and abroad do their thing. Again, Bear nailed that when he spoke about kids watching pros and emulating them, it doesnt happen enough here.

+ - is a joke, Steph Curry went stats today were 43 9 6 with 2 blocks yet was only +3

Yet in the same game Speights off the bench went 0 on every category, played 1 minute yet scores -5 on + -

Get off the keyboard basketball nerds and play a game for once in your lives, you will realize that + - is for fools

Stats geeks talk about other metrics if they have them available. +/- is just one thing that can be useful if considered in the right way. Unlike anon above looking at one game and where a player barely played.

quite the opposite anon, Delly has been getting some serious minutes (14 mins pg) for a rookie, let alone an undrafted rookie.

the object of the post was not to glorify +/- stat as the benchmark stat to measure greatness, but it has a use, and is a good indicator to show a players contribution to a team especially for players who are often overlooked like Delly who do a lot of the intangibles that really help a team, rather than say being a ball hog or over dribbling, but getting on a play of the week.

I think +/- is useful on big sample sizes, but also when there is a big discrepancy between one or two players and the rest of the team, that tends to tell a tale.

In terms of the Cavs, it is no surprise that three of their top four line-ups for +/- (and 15 of top 25) have both Dellavedova and Varejao, their two most selfless players.

Statistics such as +/- in themselves used as a singular component combined with other variables and evidence based figures that include information analysed from intangibles and those efforts we can't often present in simple form is what should be considered to complete the picture.

IMHO, the +/- is a good starting point, then we include the one per centers, the impact a player has on the opposition, how he makes his team mates better, what he does off the ball and other factors like attitude etc...

Delly is proving he is what he is, a damn good basketball player and one who makes his team better when he is on the court, period!

The +/- stats just prove it as a starting point, but are not the defining or final picture, they are part of the overall equation.

Is a guy who just keeps chucking up shots while playing no defense, yet racking up stats the best player on the team? Probably will look flashy and get good numbers, but we gotta delve deeper I believe and studying game tapes is the only way to do this because the game is so quick...

They've got some relevance for players playing big minutes regularly not trying to spin them as important for guys like Delly that don't play as the OP was trying to do.

Not a stat worth worrying about in particular situations.

Nice write up by bleacherreport on why Delly has been the best of the Cavs rookies

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1882295-why-matthew-dellavedova-has-been-cleveland-cavaliers-best-rookie-so-far

When you say "judge that by his output" that's the crux of the question, how do you judge output? Traditional stats dont tell the whole story, look at players like Damian Martin, Mika Vukona and Dillon Boucher.

Well, if over a long period of time the team outscores opponents when a particular player is on the floor in a number of different combinations, that suggests his output is high.

Public stats dont cover deflections, box-outs, screens, tipped rebounds, hockey assists, one-on-one defensive stops, defensive denials, help defence provided, help defence drawn or shots altered.

A team that does all those things well will probably win the game.