I feel like I speak more in this thread than anyone, so if this is not directed at me, and I’m seeing myself as a main character here for no good reason I apologize
I have literally never ever suggested he was “not a core player for the Magic” and my constant “question” has been whether he can evolve into the second best player on a top team - and I think I have generally said “yes”. He has had fits and starts along the way, if anyone here cares to argue he was awesome last year, I am sorry, but they are wrong. He was pretty good! Was he close to an All Star? No. And that’s not just “yay points” or however you want to make fun of me or anyone.
He is doing awesome this year. That doesn’t make things said about him prior to doing awesome wrong, given that I don’t think literally anyone ever said he can’t be an all star.
And for the record, I’ve probably seen him play 50+ games over the past three years and I will hazard I saw literally every minute he played at Michigan, a number I imagine dwarfs anyone here who doesn’t live in Florida, so I have absolutely “watched him play”.
We were all watching the FIBA/Olympic games and Franz was playing incredible and I posted this and it got some blow back if you read down from that thread.
I just don’t think it is surprising that he’s playing well when Banchero is out. We’ve talked a ton about how usage is a role stat, his usage didn’t go up because he got better, it went up because his role changed w/o PB.
And then usage/ORtg or usage/TS% or BPM or darko or whatnot is just the stock price for what he’s done.
The watch thing is just that we’ve all had the chance to watch a huge part of his growth.
He impacts the game in more quiet ways – I think I heard May use the term “invisible stats” recently – than any other player of the Beilein/Juwan era that I can remember writing about during their time at Michigan. And I’ve watched a lot of them. Just an incredibly fun player who does so many things well.
I think it is surprising he has increased true shooting while dramatically increasing usage, yes. I am also surprised that he took his assist rate from “third creator” territory (17-18%) to primary creator territory (30%+) AND decreased his turnovers.
That’s not a Franz thing, it’s a “doesn’t often happen” thing.
My recollection is that the thrust of that conversation was “why is he the driving force behind one of the best teams in international competition while being the 2nd best player on an NBA 5 seed?”
Yeah I don’t see how this is “yawn I totally expected this from Franz” when his game has changed a ton and very suddenly. And none of these things are invisible stats. Really obvious when guys are passing and shooting more.
I LOVE that Franz is tearing it up all of a sudden. He’s always been good, this is all-league level. It is pretty surprising to see all of his stats seemingly improve when Banchero went out since that seemed to mess him up in the past.
I’m never a fan of an iso step-back three as your hopeful chance to win a game…but love it when Franz does it on Lebron!
