Season Stats:
62 GP, 18 GS, 26.4 MPG, 12.0 PPG, 2.0 RPG, 1.0 APG, 0.1 BPG, 0.7 SPG, 53.1 TS%, 13.12 PER
Preseason Outlook:
With Brook Lopez gone for two months and the Nets lacking a presence in the middle, Morrow needs to elevate his offensive game beyond spot-up shooting to be the second or third option for this team.
Evaluation:
Anthony Morrow has given exactly what we’ve expected from him. We expected Morrow to be a dead-eye shooter, who stretches defenses and makes opponents pay double-teaming Brook Lopez. Though Lopez’s injury thwarted that thought, Morrow still proved himself to be one of the best shooters the NBA has to offer.
Morrow’s hair-trigger quick release means he does not need lots of space to get his perimeter shot off effectively. It also means that he did not always need to be “open” under the traditional sense to shoot, which helped the Nets offense, because Morrow did not many plays ran for him and instead could launch his heat seeking missiles off of the free-flowing playmaking that Deron Williams provided.
Morrow also added a slightly different dimension to the Nets offense: With Deron Williams often being too much of a physical matchup for opposing point guards, and thus forcing the opposition to cross-match, Morrow found himself in favorable situations, matched up with a smaller guard. When this match-up presented itself, Avery Johnson was not afraid to run the offense through Morrow who used his size advantage in the low post, at times abusing his weaker defender.
Despite these positives, Morrow was far from the complete guard the Nets desperately needed. His defense was porous again this year and forced the Nets into their own matchup issues and forced Avery Johnson to use DeShawn Stevenson in offense/defense tandem late in games. Also, Morrow at times was inconsistent: At times, when Morrow’s shot was falling he was a difference maker and a viable secondary scorer, but there was also far too many games in which Morrow’s shot wasn’t dropping in which case his other deficiencies made him a liability.
Still, 2011-12 was not a wasted season for Morrow and I suspect there was a slight amount of development in his game. Morrow took on a larger portion of the offense and if fitted with players that could consistently command double teams, Morrow would be a keeper.
Final Grade:
