The man is a dead-eye shooter who needs an inch or maybe two to get his shot off. Not since Dell Curry have we seen a marksman of his caliber and yet he manages to get lost in the Raptors offense which is designed almost exclusively for the three point shooter. After going through a dreadful drought last spring Kapono managed to pick himself up in the playoffs and had a post-season that made us fans re-think just how valuable he could be to this team.
Kapono came off a decent year in Miami and basically conned Bryan Colangelo into giving him a huge contract. It surprised a lot of us and the fact that it happened on the first day of free-agency made some of us question Colangelo’s priorities (remember, defense and rebounding were problems back then too). Since he’s come here there’s been a constant ebb and flow in his game which borders from being anonymous to lighting it up, there’s very little middle ground. Despite all the inconsistency I think I speak for most Raptor fans when I say that we’d rather have him on offense than any one of Jamario Moon, Hassan Adams, Willie Solomon or Joey Graham. We know his shooting is an asset for us but how much are we willing to give up on the other end?
I personally think his problems on defense are highly exaggerated and we can and should be able to do things to increase his floor time while still being able to make a half-decent defensive stand. Listed at 6′ 8″, Kapono has more than enough size to stay in front of a shooting guard and take away the dribble penetration by laying off of him. He doesn’t have the quickness to take away the jumper by playing tight but 1 out of 2 ain’t bad here. The same holds true when defending SFs except they have posted him up with great success. We obviously need to provide him help here just like we did with Jose Calderon or Anthony Parker. Kapono’s case is no different.
Sam Mitchell has generally done a terrible job of hiding player weaknesses on defense and Kapono is Exhibit A. Kapono started 7 out of 81 games last year precisely because Jamario Moon happened to be a better defender. Keep in mind that this is on a team that has trouble getting off to good starts. Instead of allowing Kapono to have an impact on the game Mitchell often became gun-shy and chose to err on the side of caution by not playing him in favor of Moon who proceeded to miss countless jumpers in the fourth quarter costing us games aplenty. There’s no doubt Kapono has defensive issues, he doesn’t have great lateral movement or great speed but we knew that before signing him. There has to be an effort on the part of Mitchell to utilize Kapono and hide his weaknesses by clever double-teaming, cutting off baselines, forcing his man in an uncomfortable direction or even some ball denial. We saw none of this last year, the reaction to Kapono being posted-up was usually always a double-team coming out of nowhere which segued into an open three. C’mon, we need to be smarter and stop using the “bad defender” label to waste his offense. It’s very mid 90’s New York Knickish.
Kapono’s showed in the playoffs that he’s got the ability to be crafty and score in ways you wouldn’t have thought he could. His leaners, floaters, mid-range jumpers and even drives to the rim are something neither Jamario Moon or Joey Graham could dream of doing. We beg Moon to drive to the rim but ignore that Kapono’s only 3% behind him (Moon, Kapono) when it comes to “Close” shots and has a higher eFg. Granted the rebounding numbers aren’t there but starting next season when the rebounding duties are off-loaded to Jermaine O’Neal, why not play Jason Kapono even more?
Kapono’s major problem is that he’s very cautious about his FG percentage and shot selection, almost to a fault. Instead of taking his changes with a semi-contested three he’ll fake the shot, dribble-drive, do some more Reggie Miller fakes and then end up passing the ball. After such plays you just wonder how bad shooting the ball early on would’ve been. Leo Rautins asserts that this quality is a great one which keeps the defense honest. If you look at his playoff performances, I agree, if you look at the second half of the regular season, I disagree. You have to ask yourself what changed between the regular season and the playoffs. The answer is not a technical one, it’s simply that that Kapono started to assert himself on offense and started to look for his. If we can get a full season of his playoff performance last year I don’t think any one of us will mind whether Tracy McGrady goes to town on him in the post as long the Raptors as a team are doing their best to circumvent the situation.
Jamario Moon may be a better defender and come up with some spectacular plays on occasion but how many times have you seen him get absolutely burned by the likes of Bonzi Wells, let alone McGrady? The point is that if Moon is 5 apples better than Kapono on defense, Kapono is 10 apples better than Moon on offense so overall Kapono’s got 5 more apples. It’s time we recognize that and switch the playing time of these two players around. The result of this switch will not affect our perimeter defense to the degree most people think it will and more importantly, it’s imperative for the O’Neal experiment to succeed. As I mentioned in my previous post, we can’t afford to let the defense seduce Jamario Moon into jump shooting.
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