Adrian Autry’s longest and almost certainly deepest relationship with any player on the Syracuse roster is with J.J. Starling. As the story goes, the head coach met Starling as a child and their relationship grew closer and stronger as the years passed, eventually culminating when Autry became the head coach of the Orange and persuaded Starling to return home to play at SU after spending his first year at Notre Dame.

After stepping into the starting lineup as a sophomore, Starling was one of a handful of players to remain with the program after the 2023-2024 season and had the most experience of anyone in that group. The best returning player, he slotted into a leadership role this past season on a roster blended together through almost equal parts returnees, transfers, and incoming freshmen.

As a result, Starling also came into this season as the undisputed go-to guy for the Syracuse basketball team. Not only the first option on offense, he eventually also took over the reigns as the team’s de facto point guard in January when Autry shifted his starting lineup to include Elijah Moore over Jaquan Carlos.

As such, Starling dominated the ball this season, ceding primary ballhandling duties only when Carlos shared the floor with him. The basketball, however, almost always seemed to end up back in his hands on offense.

It is not really clear if this was a good thing for the Orange, as Starling’s minutes per game this year are virtually even with his sophomore year mark while his field goal attempts increased and his shooting percentages suffered, both inside and outside the arc. Of course, being the go-to-guy comes with the responsibility of manufacturing something when the shot clock nears zero, so there are invariably some tough contested shots that are part of Starling’s stat line.

Yes, “someone has to take shots”, but should it automatically be the player whose shooting percentages have slid from 45.8 percent to 40.7 percent overall and from 32.4 percent to a team-worst 26.8 percent from 3-point range when he became the guy taking most of the shots?

To compare him to a teammate, Chris Bell received plenty of grief this season about his missing offense compared to last season. He also shot 40.7 percent from the field. By knocking down 35.3 percent of his shots from 3-point range, Bell also surpassed Starling from by far from long distance, as well as easily besting him at the foul line (77.5 percent to 68.5 percent).

That poor perimeter shooting is more than norm in Starling’s career than anything else. In fact, during a 15-game span including December, January, and the first game of February during his sophomore season, Starling shot 28-of-70 (40.0 percent) from long range. If you remove that stretch, Starling is a career 27.1 percent shooter from beyond the arc in his collegiate career.

Part of Starling’s problems come from his shot selection. Again, he takes a good number of attempts late in the shot clock, when getting an ideal look is hard. But, he also makes things harder on himself than he has to.

In addition to his team-leading total of 3-pointers attempted while missing seven games, Starling has taken over 70 percent more shots classified as “far 2’s” by T-Rank as anyone else on the Syracuse roster. His shot diet heavy in running floaters and mid-range jumpers is extremely inefficient, as he made 37.4 percent of them, which is seventh among the eight players on the team averaging at least one attempt per game.

If Starling would at least drive all the way to the basket more often, he would be a lot more efficient by both taking shots more likely to be made and also drawing more fouls. Among Syracuse players, Starling’s free throw rate is only ahead of Lucas Taylor and Elijah Moore. Even Bell, thought of as a 3-point shooting specialist, has a comfortably higher free throw rate than Starling.

Most of Starling’s made field goals are unassisted, as well. Per T-Rank, under 15 percent of his baskets at the rim and just over 12 percent of his other 2-point baskets are assisted. Things are different outside the arc, as 29 of his 38 3-pointers have been assisted. All told, Starling has made 169 shots from the floor and 118 of them have been unassisted.

In simpler words, the lion’s share of Starling’s scoring comes from one source – Starling playing one-man basketball. And he plays a lot of it, especially for someone who is part of a team whose coach wants his charges to play positionless basketball.

Despite missing seven games, Starling leads the team in field goal attempts by far. His 415 attempts come in at one total attempt shy of 16 shots per game. As a reference point to show how many times Starling hoists the rock, Eddie Lampkin is second with 260 field goal attempts, but the center has played in every game, so he averages 7.9 eight shots per game.

The only player at Syracuse to average at least 16 field goal attempts per game in the last 20 years is Buddy Boeheim (16.4 in 2021-2022). In other words, Starling shoots the ball more than pretty much any player you ever thought shot the ball too much, much less someone who is doing so while concurrently playing some semblance of point guard.

When it comes to playing some semblance of point guard while shooting a lot, in the last 35 seasons of Syracuse basketball, the most field goal attempts per game by a player who also led the team in assists was posted by Gerry McNamara, who attempted 14.0 shots per game as a senior in 2005-2006. McNamara was flourishing as his career ended, as he set career highs with 207 assists and 5.9 dimes per game, including an assist every 2.37 field goal attempts despite taking a career-high 490 shots that season.

As a freshman when playing on a national championship team with Carmelo Anthony, Hakim Warrick, and others, McNamara averaged an assist every 2.35 shots. The following season, McNamara only had an assist every 3.37 field goal attempts even though Anthony was the only major offensive loss to the team. But, McNamara clearly evolved his game over the last two seasons of his career, lowering that number to 2.58 field goal attempts per assist to 2.37 field goal attempts per assist despite taking an increased number of shots per game.

In short, McNamara evolved from a complimentary player on a deep team headlined by Anthony to a point guard who had to figure some things out and eventually helped boost Warrick to All-American status, then into a court general capable of getting his own when his young team needed it while still setting up those youthful teammates. Cue the Jim Boeheim “ten games” quote.

J.J. Starling has not shown the ability to evolve in that way during his career. In fact, Starling averaged 5.68 field goal attempts per assist on the season this year, including an astronomical 7.21 field goal attempts per game per assist in the dozen games when the starting point guard.

McNamara’s sophomore season mark of 3.37 field goal attempts per assist is the highest in that last 35 years by a Syracuse player who led the team in assists. Starling exceeded that rate by nearly 69 percent overall and more than doubled it when starting at the point. He does not actually qualify for that stat, though, as Carlos led the team in assists.

The Syracuse coaching staff has repeatedly stated that Starling can play the point, but all the evidence suggests that while he brings the ball up and initiates the offense, little else he does is classified as the work of a stereotypical point guard.

In those last 35 seasons, the Orange have been led by point guards of all types. There have been traditional point guards who primarily set up their teammates (Lazarus Sims, Jason Hart, Michael Carter-Williams, Tyler Ennis), scoring point guards (Adrian Autry, Jonny Flynn, Judah Mintz), undersized two-guards who played point guard (Gerry McNamara, John Gillon, Joe Girard III), and even a small forward-turned-into-a-point guard (Michael Gbinije).

Of the team leaders in assists in each of the last 35 years, the lowest per game assist total belongs to Frank Howard, who had only 2.9 assists per game in the 2018-2019 season. Howard was never a true point guard at SU, but in that season, he also led the team with a 1.42-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

In 14 games as the starting two-guard this season, Starling has handed out 45 assists against 37 turnovers. In 12 outings as the starting point guard, he has totaled 28 assists and 24 turnovers.

Starling’s assist-to-turnover ratio is 1.22-to-1 as a two-guard and 1.17-to-1 at the point. Neither number is good enough and the move to point guard has resulted in a him playing even less of a stereotypical offensive point guard role.

The stereotypical offensive point guard he replaced in the lineup, Jaquan Carlos, handed out 104 assists against 41 turnovers per game for a 2.54-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio in as a starter. Overall, Carlos logged 134 assists against 60 turnovers for a 2.23-to-1 ratio, the fifth-best mark by a Syracuse point guard in the last 35 years.

This has been a lot of words and a lot of stats to ask one simple question:

With him having shown to be focused on being a one-man operation, is Starling the right player to be a senior leader of a roster heavily comprised of youth and new faces coming through the transfer portal who has the ball in his hands?

The evidence says “no”. The question is if Autry will say the same.

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