Neeva wrote:shrink wrote:Towns has been excellent in the first six games of the playoffs, especially with ridiculously hard defensive assignments and coming back from injury early.
But it doesn’t take more than two losses for people to ignore that, and jump back to “KAT sucks in the playoffs!”
For the record, in 24 Playoff Games, Towns is .487 FG%, .413 3P%, .805 FT%, 10.6 RPG, 2.3 APG, 18.7 PPG
He needs to score more, and stay out of foul trouble, he is played like a superstar he needs to show why.
Here is a thing that bugs me.
Towns is definitely a unicorn: can shoot threes with great accuracy, can postup, can drive, can rebound and can defend a bit. But if I try to say his patent move that he can use to score in clutch there is not a single one. Here is why:
1) bigs usually uses postup to score, but in more perimeter oriented game this skill disappeared or to say better it is now more and more responsibility of all players to explore advantage in postups. Once a postup player Towns moved away from this in course of his career. Jokic is a good example of using quick decisive postup to score or create for others.
2) true wings can create his own shot or attack closeouts with drives. Towns was a very successful slasher in five-out system in first Finch years. Also team have started to use against him a wing to prevent from driving, with a big roaming in paint. Also Towns is prone to commit all kind of offensive fouls. Giannis is an example of slashing big. Towns slashing game is also predictable because he is a straight line driver who favours heavily finishes with right hand. See Jokic who is an elite finisher from short range with very weird long floaters.
3) bigs usually set and use screens as advantage, which can flow into DHO game, see Sabonis as example. But screens and passes is not Towns strength, because he is prone to set moving screens.
4) pure shooters can use screens as advantage, see Murray as example. Because of different body type Towns has never been a movement shooter.
5) another go-to move for big can be mid range shooting. Embiid is great at it with his hanging dribbling, Jokic has grown from mid range shooter to three point shooter. For some reason Towns never receives the ball in such situations, and when he receives it turns into least efficient postups from 18 ft.
6) Towns has great right hand, he can finish difficult layups, but his footwork is mediocre at best, which I believe limits his ability to earn free throws. Embiid and Jokic both have great timing, great footwork, making referees job easier.
I can sum up all things from above and I can't ONE go-to move that Towns can use to create scoring situation for himself in clutch. But I remember another great bigs who usually delegated scoring in clutch to his teammates: Tim Duncan and KG. But both player were description of fundamentals both offense and offense.
A-Rod mentioned that Towns had 17 technical fouls last season and 0 this season, also Towns showed extreme dedication and maturity in recovering from injury and keeping himself in excellent physical shape. This is basically the best version of Towns. Can Towns improve even more? I think big difference between Jokic and Towns development is that Nikola had as side kick for four years Paul Millsap a veteran who was one of the smartest PF, and right after DEN got Aaron Gordon. So Nikola has been playing for many years in almost ideal development environment, while Towns had probably the worst development environment in his first six years, plus multiple personal dramas. One thing that Towns certainly has been doing well is that this season he executing within team defense and offense. He does not have clutch DNA, nor feeling, but at least he is executing well when our coaching staff has prepared a game plan.
