(January 6th) This profile is, unquestionably, an improvement over the last one. It basically retains all the strengths of the initial stretch of the season, posting the same elite assist and steal numbers, while cleaning up some of the early struggles with Saint not claiming enough volume for himself.
The points are up – 22nd percentile to 35th. The efficiency is up – 27th percentile true shooting to 31st. The foul-drawing is up – 1st percentile to 10th. There is absolutely still improvement to be had in all of those regards, but just like you can’t make up a 15 point deficit in one shot, you can’t recover rate statistics all at once. If Saint continues improving at this rate through the rest of the season, his passing and steals should more than shine through because those weaknesses, if they’re still even incorrectly viewed as weaknesses at all, will have been thoroughly mitigated.
(December 12th) Saint Thomas’s player profile is difficult to parse, even as someone who looks at a lot of these profiles. Saint is currently setting others up at an elite level – he’s in the absolute top percentile for assist rate – but is struggling to score for himself, especially with regards to getting to the line for easy points. While the numbers cannot make a definitive statement on the question, it is extremely rare to see a player with such a large gap between his percentile for shot possessions (51st) and his Box Creation (95th). Those are both measures of offensive role size, but one of them accounts for playmaking directly. There’s two possibilities with that kind of gap: either Saint is over-prioritizing creating for others and completely sacrificing his own game to his own detriment, or Saint is reacting to early scoring struggles by trying to make up for it as a playmaker, but deprioritizing scoring means that he doesn’t get a chance to catch on to hot streaks which level out his efficiency. In either case, it is important that Saint prioritize his own scoring a little more than he currently is. The 19 points he put up against Washington are a great start, but that needs to be the norm. Things don’t have to be like they were at Northern Colorado, where everything ran through Saint – for that matter, they can’t be – but Saint definitely does need to be more aggressive in pursuing scoring opportunities.