Point To The Point Guard
When the Sixers traded for Ish Smith, the thought is that the best the Sixers could hope for is a player who could cover the position well enough to feed a basketball to other players well enough to develop other players. But a funny thing happened on the way. Point guard Ish Smith arrived better than advertised. Since arriving, he’s averaging 16.8 PPG and 8.3 APG. Those number have sewn up his starting role at the point.
The rest of the story? T.J. McConnell is a young man who is learning how to be an NBA point guard. He had a good jump start on the position early in the year, outplaying Los Angeles Lakers D’Angelo Russell early in the 2015-2016 season. But as the season lengthened, his minutes were curbed. His minutes dropped from 27 minutes per game (mpg) in the first two months of the season to 15.4 mpg in January 2016. Surprisingly, his assists per game have increased to 5.3 apg in January from a season average of 4.9.
Brett Brown called Sixers "land of opportunity," and TJ McConnell has grabbed his opportunity by throat. pic.twitter.com/BMt9VvUcGA
— brianseltzer (@brianseltzer) January 19, 2016
And so it goes on a team with young players learning to play NBA basketball together. As a team, they are building one another up, and tearing one another down, as a team. When the Sixers addressed the point guard position, that
Nerlens Noel believes that with Ish Smith in mix, and TJ McConnell confidence improving, point guard has quickly become impact position.
— brianseltzer (@brianseltzer) January 19, 2016
This is what the Sixers have been hoping for. When the team has a veteran paired with a young player, they learn how to play, how to react, and most importantly, not to panic. That has resulted in some very impressive play from McConnell. Right now McConnell tops all NBA rookies with 212 assists. That’s better than the 159 dished out by Denver Nugget Emmanuel Mudiay, and the 140 tossed around by Los Angeles Laker D’Angelo Russell. McConnell is humble enough to award his play on watching how Ish Smith does it.
"“I think Ish has done a tremendous job since he’s gotten here. I’m just continuing to learn from him. I think in the beginning of the year, point guard, it was good, but Ish has taken it to another level where I can learn from him. When I go in there, I just try not to let our team skip a beat, because he does so well. He’s been great. Just the pace that he plays at, and how calm his is, no matter how the game’s going. I’ve tried to kind of mimic how calm he is, whether something’s going good, or something’s going bad. He kind of told me, we’re going to have a rule throughout the season, you have to stay even-keeled throughout the whole thing. It’s been tremendous having him around.” – T.J.McConnell speaks about the mentoring provided by starting point guard Ish Smith"
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