I’m still waiting for Nikola Jokic to develop the lob chemistry he had with Kenneth Faried with Jerami Grant. I’ve been waiting for almost two whole seasons now, and maybe they’re more comfortable with each other on the court in general, but I can’t see any evidence that the amount of lobs has increased since day one.
Granted (heh heh), Grant is not and will never be the type of lob-catching threat that Faried was. But that doesn’t mean that Jokic isn’t good enough to get him free lobs just by existing. Who is at fault here? Grant for not being better, or Jokic for not being better? Or both? Or is there no fault to be assigned here at all, and the amount of lobs that happen between them is exactly the amount of lobs that one would expect?
The problem (if you could even call it that) could be somewhat rectified if the ‘Ggets did the right thing and just straight up signed Faried right now. I know that technically rosters are supposed to be solidified at this point, but I was actually just talking to Adam Silver about this, and he was like “I think we can make an exception if it means more Manimalistic slams from the Manimal”. He knows what’s up, and what’s up is that playoff viewers want to see bigtime slams on a regular basis, something that Grant can do, but not at the level of Faried.
On the other hand, has Faried ever scored 25 while shooting a bunch of threes? Fans may want dunks, but coaches and teams want threes, and Grant somehow turned himself into a premier shooter of them while still retaining the ability to really whack it if he wants.