AJ Abrams

M C Orange

M C Orange

100+ Posts
lights out tonight buddy, made some key shots, key 3's..... props to you my friend
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i was all over him after the a&m game but he rebounded with a solid game against baylor and a great game tonight. great job AJ, keep it up
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He's the most selfish player Barnes has ever had at Texas. This team would be so much better if he ever consistently looked for his teammates, not to mention he's a defensive liability for the most part.

He is one hell of an offensive player when he's on track, however, and he deserves all kinds of kudos for his unbelievable improvement in scoring efficiency inside the arc from last year.
 
I'm kinda with SLX. When he came in during our nice tourney run two years ago, I thought he would be more of a distributor, use his speed, and take the open shots. Like a Hollis Price without the Soonerness.

Now it seems like his only role is running behind mediocre screens and jacking double-digit threes up until he hits enough to give the team a mental boost. And when he's off, he's off.

His points per shot has decreased ever since he stepped on campus. If he used his speed the way Augustin does, slashes more, and takes the occasional charge, we're easily a top-7 team.
 
AJ should combo guard, dish off and drive more. Instead of throwing up jack, take higher % shots. Its seems like he gets fouled everytime he drives the lane. Use it to our advantage.

Nice work last two games though AJ, please keep it up.
 
If a guy is hitting 50%+ from downtown I don't mind him shooting the ball. He was on last night and I was happy to see it.

Now, when he's in a funk...I don't like the "shoot out of it" mentality too much.
 
Wow, really? How many times a game do we ever have a good interior pass from anyone on this team?

The best interior passes I've seen this year have mainly come from AJ when he drives. Albeit, its not that often, but AJ looks for teammates when he gets into the trees while DJ is more likely to put up an off balanced or fade away jumper. Yes AJ has a lot of catch and shoot moments and I wish he would catch and drive more often but when he does drive the lane, hes the only one of our guards that seems to look for an open post player.
 
I don't know if the halting of our standard proceedure of ignoring open passes into the post during the couple of years we've had an lottery pick post player counts as altering the offensive style.
 
Wow, some of you guys never cease to amaze me. AJ is one of the major contributing factors to two straight conference wins (arguably the team MVP in both games), and you take that opportunity to rip him on our boards? He played 40 minutes last night, scored 22 points, grabbed 3 rebounds, and had 4 steals and 2 assists with ZERO turnovers, and he's "the most selfish player ever"? Why do you think Barnes runs him off screens? To catch and dish? No, he's the SHOOTING guard.

Look back at his stats during his freshman year, when he played backup PG. He had a 2.5 to 1 assist to turnover ratio, because his job was to distribute the ball. Now, in his junior year, as the shooting guard on a team without a lot of offensive weapons, his job is to shoot and score. Listen to Barnes talk about AJ--he'll tell you AJ's one of the smartest players he's ever coached. AJ isn't being selfish out there, he's doing what his coach tells him to do. Maybe that's why Barnes hasn't brought him off the bench like many of you have clamored for over the past couple of years. If he wasn't in the starting lineup against Baylor, we may have been down by 20 in the first 5 minutes.

I expect these types of posts after a loss, or after AJ has an off-shooting night, but for them to come now, is just unbelievable.
 
So my opinion is supposed to suddenly change when AJ has a good shooting night? Which is worse, to put my opinion out there when he's had a good game, or drive some kind of agenda when he's had a terrible outing?

Barnes commented on Abrams last week during his Longhorn Sportsline radio show. He didn't throw Abrams under the bus or anything, but he did say Abrams would be better if he'd look for his teammates and wouldn't always be so quick to shoot it, and that there were plenty of times when he was forcing shots --- so this idea I'm pulling this out of my *** and Barnes doesn't share any of these feelings whatsoever is groundless.

Abrams' best games are when he's letting the game come to him, and looking for his teammates, especially with the way teams are trying to defend him. As far as I'm concerned, his worst games are when he's looking to shoot every time he touches it, regardless of whether it goes in or not, because as we know, at some point he's going to go cold, and then the offense is ******.

The ironic thing is the kid shows vision and passing ability when he chooses to.

As far as being a shooting guard, I understand that part of his responsibility is to get open off the ball, but shooting isn't his SOLE responsibility. Do you realize he's shot 310 times with 33 assists? Alexis Wangmene is the only player on the team with a worse ratio.

Find me another shooting guard in the country with a worse ratio than 310/33, with at least 100 attempts. I've tried.

You're involved with AAU ball, rtw21. I find it difficult to believe you can't comprehend how it might be detrimental to whatever kind of flow an offense is able to manufacture when the leading shooting guard --- who is averaging over 35 minutes per game --- is making an assist for about one out of every 10 shot attempts.

It's not just AJ. DJ plays like a selfish player this year, too. The two of them combined are a problem, not a solution, and as far as I'm concerned, Barnes bears all the responsibility for it.
 
so slx and bob, i know you guys like RB from past posts.

would you go as far to say this season isn't one of RB's better coaching jobs?
 
i tend to agree with slx to some degree about AJ, but this season, even as good as he has been, i see the problem of "selfishness" being more related to DJ. Although, i always feel that way during the game and yet at the end i'm suprised to see 6-7 assists. i guess he's stealthy about his contributing. at least for me.
 
I think it's his worst by far since he's been at Texas.

He had a team playing like a juggernaut, but he called them *******, yanked players when they made any kind of mistake, rewarded AJ for not looking for his teammates, put the whole burden on the success of the team on DJ, and generally completely wrecked the chemistry and swagger they were showing at the beginning of the year. He crushed the freshmen one by one.

I will say the team has looked better against Baylor and OU, although they're not even close to the level they were at the beginning of the year. Atchley's elbow injury was a problem, too.

I still love Rick Barnes. I love his hard *** attitude, his willingness to say exactly how he feels. I just think it's some of those same qualities that have been detrimental to the team this year. They started off great, and all Barnes wanted to do is hammer away at the things they weren't doing well, calling out their manhood in the process.
 
We'll have to agree to disagree, LazyEngineer. I don't agree that PJ Tucker was more selfish than AJ Abrams --- by a long shot --- and I don't agree that some form of pouting is necessary for a player to be classified as selfish. A player that puts up shots while never looking for teammates even when they're open is selfish in my book.
 
hippie, I would have given the young bigs more time. He's certainly done better with teams that were similarly young.

I agree that it took some determined hammering to take this team from the penthouse to a muddle in less than a month.

Now he's lightening up. Hopefully, it's not too late.
 
Maybe selfish isn't the right word. I'll have to resort to what we called it when I was a kid. AJ is a ball hog. D.J. is to some extent as well. If you define ball hog as someone who continuously chooses to shoot a difficult shot when someone else has a much easier shot then D.J. definitely fits that billing.

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