:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/2845739/20121105_ajl_sc6_188.0.jpg)
NBA Regular Season 2012-2013, Game 5:
Los Angeles Lakers (1-3) @ Utah Jazz (1-3)
Player Focus: Mo Williams
x
Okay. I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that we could, for the first time in a long time, have our leading scorer be a guard. And it's not that he's the only dude on the team. No, we have a number of bigs who should be getting the ball early and often; and scoring. That said, right now, it's Mo Time.
He's the only guy killing it for our team on offense. And he'll be going up against their second string guy right off the tip. It's gotta be Mo. And because Synergy finally rolled over and updated (no sign ups yet, sorry folks) . . . we can look at how he's doing it.
Right now Mo is ranked #45th best in the entire NBA in terms of Points per Possession. He's shooting .469 / .368 / 1.000 right now. He's getting to the line 4 times a game, and making (on average) 2 of his 5 three point attempts a game. (1.8 / 4.8). And right now, at the age of 30, he's taking 16 shots a game, which is a career high.
He's okay in isolation (and we've seen him make a few of those "no, no, no, no, nooo (pause) YESS!" shots; but that's not really what our offense is structured around). He's much better finishing plays off the ball. On Spot-ups he's getting 1.38 PPP. Off of cuts 1.33 PPS. He's shooting 50 fg% off screens. And he's hitting 50 3pt% of his threes in transition. He's shooting really well.
And it should open up a lot of other things for him in the halfcourt -- particularly with faking the shot out of the triple threat (a fake out on a spot up), then penetrating, drawing defense, and dumping it off to one of our bigs. Tonight we're going to need our bigs to play big. But they don't seem to want to do it on their own. I know guess it's up to Mo to fix their problems too. I guess that's what Leaders do. He is our leader, and he's leading us in both points and assists by a wide margin.
And while he's our focus if we need to win; I suspect the Lakers -- and their suspect defense -- will also try to focus on him. I'm not worried about jinxing Mo. He's a vet and savvy enough to know how to draw guys in to pass for dimes.
So gimme Mo' Mo' Mo'