2. Cut Back On Turnovers
Last season, Bledsoe committed a grand total of 274 turnovers — the fourth most in the entire NBA. According to NBA.com, his 1.8 assist-to-turnover ratio was nearly last among starting point guards who played at least 60 games last season, ahead of only Michael Carter-Williams. Simply put, committing 3.4 turnovers per game (10th most in the league) isn’t going to cut it.
This isn’t really a new problem for Bledsoe. In his first (half) season with the Suns, he committed 3.3 turnovers per game. There’s no question that Bledsoe has been underrated as a passer, since he’s capable of throwing laser passes from time to time.
But he has two major flaws as a floor general that usually lead to the vast majority of his turnovers: his jump passing, and his tendency to put his head down and drive to the basket out of control at full speed.
When you have athleticism on your side as Bledsoe does, sometimes his most dynamic passes come from plays where he drives to to the rim or on the baseline, draws in the help defense, jumps to create separation, and whips a dart back out to a teammate on the perimeter for an open jump shot.
But many times, that tendency of jumping when he passed got Bledsoe into trouble. Help defenders began reading his passes, jumping the route to intercept what might have been as assist and turn it into a turnover instead. Sometimes Bledsoe would get caught in midair, seeing the defender ready to intercept his pass, and lob the ball into an open space as a last resort pass that was quickly collected by a defender.
Sometimes the ball would just rocket past the intended target and out of bounds. Either way, Bledsoe’s jump passes led to far too many turnovers, and it’s a bad habit that he needs to cut down on since 152 of his 274 turnovers (55.5 percent) came from bad pass situations, per Basketball-Reference.
My problem isn't that Eric Bledsoe turns the ball over - it's that so many of his turnovers are unforced errors.
— Scott Howard (@ScottHoward42) February 27, 2015
The rest of Bledsoe’s turnovers occurred before he even got to the jump pass stage of his playmaking. With the Suns being the worst three-point shooting team in the league after the All-Star break, Phoenix severely lacked the kind of perimeter threats needed to spread opposing defenses, which allowed them to collapse on Bledsoe’s penetration without consequence.
This led to some easy steals for the defense and plenty of lost ball turnovers for Bledsoe, either dribbling right into the defense or bobbling it out of bounds. Per Basketball-Reference, 81 of Bledsoe’s 274 turnovers came in lost ball situations, meaning that the bad pass and lost ball scenarios we’ve laid out accounted for 85 percent of Bledsoe’s turnovers last year.
With another playmaker in Brandon Knight and more three-point threats to spread the floor this year, Bledsoe should have more open lanes to the basket. But when those lanes close, he needs to be more composed with the ball and avoid jumping to pass in order to cut down on those turnovers — an area he acknowledged needs to improve during exit day interviews.
Next: No. 1