More Breakers Free Agency: Haere Mai Lamar Patterson, Haere Ra Scotty Hopson
Doings remain afoot at Breakers HQ, as two-time All-NBL First Team wingman Lamar Patterson has signed a one-year deal with the club to fill the first of their two import slots. Amazing pickup from a talent standpoint, don’t doubt it, although it does come with the trade-off of not retaining Scotty Hopson under the This Town Ain’t Big Enough principle. Which is already being stretched as things are... but if you’re going to miss out on your number one priority then getting a guy like Patterson instead is literally the next best thing to do.
So what’s up with Lamar Patterson? Two seasons for the Brisbane Bullets where he bossed the show both times. First season he comes in and averages 17.8 points per game, a dominant player capable of running an offence with a silky shooting motion, plenty of strength, and the kind of smooth way of moving around the court that means he never looks more rushed than he wants to be, rolling towards the basket like waves upon a shore. The Bullets wanted him back and after a long offseason of haggling they eventually got their man and he came in and was even better the next time. 21.4 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.6 assists... shooting at 46.1% from the field.
He’s not massively efficient, shooting threes at around a 34% rate in the NBL, but he’s as talented as anyone in the league. Dude was NBA-drafted in the second round back in 2014, he played 40 games for the Atlanta Hawks. He’ll only be 29 years old when the season begins. We’re talking a pretty similar skill set to Scotty Hopson too and if it wasn’t Patterson then it would have been Hopson so that’s all good. Bottom line is that as far as talent goes, the Breakers could hardly have been expected to do better. They’ve got an excellent player who is proven quality in this league. That’s just good business.
Haaaaving said that... there are two reservations here. One is that Matt Walsh has been saying all along that Scotty Hopson was priority numero uno and yet they haven’t gotten him. There are a couple ways that could have gone, Hopson still harbours NBA dreams/plans and you’d imagine a G-League season will happen eventually if he’s keen enough... not to mention that his outstanding play down the stretch last season will have boosted his cash value. He’s waiting for other dominoes to fall but there’s only so long the Breakers could hold the line.
From what Walshy had been saying it was beginning to sound more likely than not that Hopson would return so this did come as a bit of a surprise, to be fair. I s’pose it only matters if he ends up signing with a different NBL team. That’s already happened once under this ownership with Shawn Long and DJ Newbill. You don’t really expect NBL teams to retain imports but the Breakers said Hopson was their top target and they missed on him and the club hasn’t actually retained an import since... Cedric Jackson, pretty sure. Feels like a whole era ago, that one. Because it was. They could still get Brandon Ashley back though.
The other reservation is that the Breakers have gone from the player with the second highest usage rate in the league last season in Scotty Hopson (29.7% according to Spacial Jam) to the player with the highest usage rate in Lamar Patterson (32.3%). There may be one fewer import this season but there’s still only one ball. And Hopson’s best work came once he had a free reign in the second half of things, after he’d recovered from injury... and also after Corey Webster had left.
Hopson w/Webster: 5 GM | 15.0 PTS | 2.6 AST | 2.0 TO | 44.7 FG% | 45.5 3PT%
Hopson wo/Webster: 15 GM | 20.5 PTS | 5.5 AST | 3.6 TO | 47.8 FG% | 38.6 3PT%
Corey Webster in 2019-20: 19.5 PTS | 4.3 AST | 2.3 TO | 48.0 FG% | 39.8 3PT%
Don’t take that to be conclusive evidence or anything, Hopson only played five times alongside Webster and most of those were at the very start of the season when Hopson was new to the club, Dan Shamir was new to the club, there were injuries around them, etc. Also those numbers don’t include the game in which Hopson got injured, when he played only ten minutes. Obviously Hopson’s role changed significantly without Webster as he took the ball-handling duties a lot more, hence the boost in assists. The absence of a frightening player like Corey Webster on the edges combined with that focal point status probably affected his looks from range as well.
However you wanna cut it, the individual stats tell a story but not as much as the stat that the Breakers were 2-3 in games that both Webster and Hopson played, 1-5 in games that only Corey Webster played, and 11-4 in games that only Hopson played. That’s not meant as a criticism of Webster because God knows that there were plenty of other dramas going on at the club at that time but the way in which Hopson ran the show on the back end does make you wonder about the wider fit when you’ve also got Tai Webster coming in, a ball-handling point guard who is a tad inconsistent as a shooter – he hit 34% from range with Galatasaray last season but that varied drastically from game to game, hitting his threes at 55% in the EuroCup but going at 29.5% in the Turkish domestic league for example. It makes the brilliant second half of the season from the Breakers a fair bit trickier to continue smoothly onwards from when you’re gonna be looking at a very different offence.
Hey but as far as problems go, this is a nice one to have. On no, there’s too much talent! How ever can we make it work so that all the talent has room to be talented! The Webster Bros have an existing combination from Tall Blacks camps and from... you know, genetics. Lamar Patterson has the benefit of being able to play off that... because let’s be honest here and admit that the biggest problem in getting the offence churning early last season was having a teenaged point guard. RJ Hampton can do some incredible things and he’s a lock to be on an NBA roster next season but as far as facilitating things... Tai Webster is a much better fit. Having a PG who has spent the last three seasons in Europe and who has played in major international tournaments is pretty handy. Yes, there’s a significant issue with the balance of that offence. Probably defensively too to be fair. But Dan Shamir was hired because he’s a clever bastard, he can figure it out. Us fans often get a bit too analytical with all these matters whereas I think most coaches will tell you: give me the raw ability and I’ll make it all work.
Rightio then, how to make it work? It seems that the whispers are that Corey Webster will play off the bench as the sixth man. That gives you Tai Webster and Lamar Patterson in the backcourt, with Tom Abercrombie and Finn Delany in the forward positions and either Rob Loe starting at the five or more likely an import big man – Brandon Ashley is still a possibility to snap the non-returning imports streak but we’ll see how that goes. You’d also have Jarrod Weeks and Dan Trist coming off the bench too. There’s that other import still to follow and one more local player, plus it remains a high possibility that they add another Next Star (although they won’t be a starter this time) and there’s room for another development player alongside Kyrin Galloway and Terry Li.
If there’s competition for shots then you fear for Tom Abercrombie. He was the club’s MVP last season which felt like another of those times that the regime used Abercrombie as a decoy for public relations reasons. Abercrombie was very good, and always reliable, but Scotty Hopson was the MVP. Come on. Anyway, TA has often had the trouble of not being assertive enough in these things and now he’s looking at being the fourth option at best. Then again, he knocked down his threes at 46.5% last season so all he’s gotta do is get open and hold his hand up so fellas know he’s there.
And... that’s where we’re at for now.
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