[Whitehead] The Spurs’ most productive action based on points added this season is… a go-to Zach Collins post play, to no one’s surprise!
Each team's most productive action so far this season. pic.twitter.com/xfUK0I5OlX
— Todd Whitehead (@CrumpledJumper) February 19, 2024
by Feisty_Pride_1408
5 Comments
The one thing Zach has done really well is that little hook shot out of the post. It’s actually not that surprising.
If he only was a bit better defensively and could actually shoot 3s he would be a starting quality big…
I hope Zach gets his groove back after the short break. He could be such a deadly backup center if his shot was falling and he was playing with more defensive effort.
I think he just needs one game going 2/2 or something from 3 pt range. We saw what he could be last year; he just needs to find that edge again.
Actually not super surprising to me.
Everyone has been extremely hard on Collins this year. And let’s be honest for a good reason. The guy has just pretty much regressed across the board in practically every department and some of the things we, and likely the coaching staff, were very optimistic about him improving on, mainly shooting and rim protection, have crashed and burned spectacularly.
But whenever someone brings up in a game thread asking what exactly it is that Zach Collins is good at at this point, the two things I always bring up are his ability to hit cutters on passes from the top of the key (which he’s genuinely one of the best in the league at) and scoring in the low post.
It’s actually been pretty automatic, particularly early in the season, when Collins can seal a defender and catch the ball within 5 ft of the rim. That little push/ hookshot of his has been practically a guaranteed bucket.
The issue is he hasn’t been consistently good at getting position and often will call for the ball only to have to reset it and send it back out because he can’t get to his spot or gets pushed off it, and as good as he’s been when he does get a shot off down there all the other parts of his game have been so dire that it’s hard to justify keeping him on the court simply because he’s really good at scoring on low post hook shots.
Lol it’s funny cause everybody wants to ship him to China and then this data comes up. 😹
I’m not actually surprised. Zach in the low post hasn’t been that bad, we just don’t go for it often. Generally he’s trying to operate on the high post where everything is much less efficient. There really isn’t any one action that we do that’s particularly good other than Devin’s recent surge hitting 8-15 foot jumpers. This doesn’t mean Zach has secretly been really good, it just means that action produces more than the other stuff we do, which is damning with faint praise.