Here's an excerpt from Hollinger's recap of Smith's 07-08 season. I picked this out because the main criticism I hear regarding Howard is that he too often falls in love with his jump shot.
Quote:
2007-08 season: Smith is an All-Star caliber talent, and might have been tabbed for the game last season if somebody had grabbed him by the lapels and shaken him while yelling "STOP TAKING OUTSIDE SHOTS," and not quit until he agreed.
There are worse shooters in the league than Smith, but they know it and don't shoot. Smith is a fairly bad shooter but converts just frequently enough that it encourages him to keep launching, so any time he's left open from outside he fires away. Let's check out the results, shall we?
Smith made 30.4 percent of his long 2-pointers last season, the second-worst mark in the league among players with at least 100 attempts. At least there was symmetry to it: on 2-pointers that weren't layups, he was the worst player from the left side of the floor (28.0 percent) and the second-worst on the right side (29.1 percent); if we include all 2-pointers that weren't layups, only two players were worse than his 28.9 percent, and Smith had more than three times as many attempts as either of them.
In fact, among players with at least 150 attempts on non-layup 2-pointers he was the only one to make fewer than 30 percent. It's not like he was having an off year either -- Smith only made 30.6 percent of his non-layup 2-pointers the year before.
Wait, there's more. Smith also took 99 3-pointers and made just 25 of them. That was -- you guessed it -- the worst percentage of any player who attempted at least 80.
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Like Cuban said in the Galloway interview, sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.