Name: Giovanni Fernandez
Grade: 8th
Age: 14 yrs old
Height: 5 "9"
Position: True "PG" Lefty
School: Will attend HS @ St. John bosco HS with coach Derrick Taylor
Featured: JuniorHoops.com, Bball Spot Light, ihigh, So Cal Hoop Review.
Note: Class of 2016 player (Among Top Prospects in CA) from Southern California (Los Angeles area). This 8th grader (Lefty PG) has flown under the radar being that he has spent 2 years playing 15-16U (JV-Varsity).
When good basketball players finish their workouts, great basketball shooters begin their nightshift shooting routine. It is the extra time invested in the hardwood that makes a great shooter. But before the hard work begins, great shooters first pay close attention on learning the fundamentals of shooting. Although every shooter has their unique style of shooting, all great shooters share the fundamental techniques upon which they build their own delivery style. It is a solid foundation in technique that separates the streaky shooter from the consistent solid shooter.
The great shooters bring a work ethic that is difficult to match. They train on the art of shooting before and after team practices and games. The great shooters establish a must do routine of training their shot that is accomplished every day regardless of distractions. But the one most important element that differentiates great shooters from the average basketball players is that great shooters do not just rely on being spot-up shooters, they work on their overall game so that they are complete players in order to contribute to the team with both shooting and every other aspect of the game. Great shooters are team players by passing the ball when it is appropriate to do so, driving to the basket when the lane is open and shooting with confidence when they are open for the shot.
Great shooters look forward to crowd excitement and anticipation as fuel that energizes their shot. They are completely confident in any situation to include crowd size and pressure of the game at hand. All this is par for the course for great shooters because they are prepared through countless hours of training so that the shot is no different than the breath they take. Shooting is automatic. Great shooters seek out the moment to shoot and even create it off the dribble when necessary. It is a confident approach that is driven by the need to exert leadership when most would wither and/or be intimidated. The next game for great shooters is like adrenaline that drives even more shooting training and overall preparation. Great shooters are simply unstoppable.
Weapons to be feared.
When evaluating a point guard's success, the statistics everyone looks to first are assists and turnovers. These two statistics become the focal point because they demonstrate how well the player is able to distribute and protect the basketball. Widely considered the two most important factors in a point guard's role offensively.
The issue with these two stats is they don’t take playing style into consideration (possession-based analysis). If a team's offense is designed around ball control in a half-court offense, then it doesn't create as many opportunities for assists. Whereas, if a team's offense is designed around pushing the ball in a fast paced offensive style, the point guards turnover numbers will likely be inflated. These new metrics equalize assist and turnover numbers across the board so it is easier to evaluate and compare guards from different teams. First, let's take a look at the strengths of assist/turnover ratio.
Assist/Turnover Ratio
• Assists = number of total assists by a player or team
• Turnover = number of total turnovers by a player or a team
Assist to turnover ratio is important because it measures how well a player distributes the basketball while still considering the player's ability to take care of the basketball. A good example of this is Demetri McCamey from Illinois. If you were looking strictly at assists, McCamey is one of the best in the nation at distributing the basketball. In 2009-2010, McCamey finished second in the nation by averaging 7.1 assists per game. However, he turned the ball over at a high rate, averaging 3.4 turnovers per game. These turnovers dropped his assist to turnover ratio to 2.1 for the season. Not a bad number, but not on par with his assists ranking.
Now, let's take a look at the statistics that account for the holes in assist/turnover ratio.
Assist Percentage
The goal of assist percentage is to help level the playing field amongst all teams, regardless of offensive system. What this does is calculate the percentage of assists a player is credited with out of all of the team’s assist opportunities, or made baskets. So if a team doesn’t get up a lot of shots, a point guard isn’t really punished for it. For example, if a team only gets 20 shots and a point guard gets five assists, his assist ratio is the same as a point guard who gets 10 assists on a team that gets 40 shots per game in a faster system (assuming they both play the same amount of minutes while taking the same amount of shots). Here, we see McCarney led the nation during the 09-10 season with a 40.8 assist percentage. From that, we are now able to see why both McCarney's assist and turnover number's are so high.
Turnover Percentage
Turnover percentage can be calculated both for an individual or a team, with the formula staying the same. Turnover percentage is the same as assist percentage in that it attempts to equalize turnovers by taking pace and the number of possessions a team has into consideration. The more possessions a team creates, the higher the chance is of turning the ball over. Let's look at two hypothetical teams that play in two different games.
Where Team A turns it over 7 times in a game in which they create 50 possessions and Team B turns it over 8 times in a game in which they create 70 possessions. By just looking at the box score, one would conclude Team A did a better job of protecting the basketball. However, with total number of possessions taken into consideration, you know Team B did a better job limiting their turnovers.
Lastly, we look at turnover margin, which takes in to account both turnovers and turnovers caused for a given team.
Turnover Margin
Turnover margin is used to determine how well a team protects the basketball while taking into consideration it's ability to force turnovers. This is an important stat because it does a very good job of evaluating both offense and defense at the same time. By using turnover percentage rather than turnovers per game, it makes it easier to evaluate teams with different playing styles
