FanPost

Thon Maker update

In a previous post about a year ago, I compared thon and giannis' per 36 stats when they first entered the league.

https://www.brewhoop.com/2019/2/6/18213405/thon-and-giannis?_ga=2.196175148.1025012820.1581734602-1827067539.1524489235

Before anyone strawmans me, I never said thon will be as good as Giannis. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that they came into the league with a similar skill level. Giannis had the advantage of getting more minutes in his first year than thon did in his first two years combined. In year three for Thon, he was still stuck on the bench, before getting traded to Detroit. In detroit, he was stuck behind Drummond and Blake Griffin, only getting 16-18 minutes per game. But now that both are not playing for the Pistons, thon has been giving an opportunity for the first time in his career to get proper minutes as a starter.

In four games since the Andre Drummond trade, Thon has enjoyed 28.5 minutes per game, scoring 14 points per game on 58.75 % shooting, adding 1.5 blocks and assists per game, while averaging six rebounds. For February, he is shoooting 38% from three. Obviously a small sample size, only including one game against a playoff team (which was his best of the four against OKC), but it's a good start.

Thon's skillset is looking more and more like it suits this decade of the NBA, with his ability to defend 1-5 if he's right defensively. I think that if he gets serious minutes every night, he will become more and more consistent on both ends, perhaps becoming a plus defender with maybe an 18 ppg 10 rpg in a couple of years.

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