Of Tyrus Thomas and jumpers
I’ve been on Tyrus’ bandwagon since he joined the Bulls, I complained about Skiles not giving him enough minutes and slowing down his development, I defended him when he was compared to LaMarcus Aldridge and called a bust. Now that he’s starting to show what he can do, what I always knew he could do, it’s time to talk about him some more.
During his short career Tyrus has been acused of a lot of things. Little by little he proved the critics wrong. With increased playing time came increased production, a lower fouling rate, more consistency, better FT%. But now the thing I hear the most is:
Tyrus should stop shooting jumpshots
To which I say: bullshit. When Tyrus came in the league he didn’t have any offensive game other than the dunk. He was way too light as a PF to back down his opponents and get dunks and layups out of it. His defenders sagged off him to cut his penetration giving him a jumpshot every time, knowing he couldn’t make them.
Last offseason Tyrus stated he’d work on his jumpshot and you can actually see the results. The form of the jumpshot is good, and he improved his FT%. Since having a rough start of the season (2-22 FG combined in the 2nd and 3rd games), little by little Tyrus improved his game, especially his offense. He might have an occasional bad shooting night but is not because he’s taking bad shots. It’s just that his shots are not falling, and this happens sometimes. It looks like it’s more a matter of confidence than anything else. He needs more reps and that will help improve his confidence. In the meanwhile, his improving jumper allowed him to become a much better scorer. As a result he averaged 15.3 ppg in February and brought his scoring average for the season to double digits.
What he needs to do is to keep working on that jumper so it becomes automatic when he’s left alone. This will open the dribble penetration, which usually results in a dunk or a foul. The only thing he should avoid is falling in love with his jumper, cause I still want to see him dunking the ball everytime he can. If he keeps working on his game and he gets around 35 min/game he could average 15 points and 8.5 rebounds with a couple of assists, a steal and around 2 blocks per game. Usually players take a big jump in their 3rd season, but considering Tyrus has been playing few minutes in his first 2 seasons, he might make the jump in his 4th season. And if he does, his numbers could be even better than those.