It was as if Nature, planning an Andy, had said to itself: "We will do this thing well. We will not skimp."

Anderson Varejao embodies many things. Effort and energy, heart and hustle, grit and grind. He's traditionally been described as something of a dirty tertiary player -- the most common depiction of Varejao is that of a feckless flopping savant, a play-actor miscast in the sport of basketball. The spitting image of the "European" big man -- floppy, long haired, and oh-so-annoying. Cavaliers fans have traditionally balked at this -- or at least, from personal experience, I have. There's so much more to Varejao than just a few flops. Summarizing his game as such made sense years ago, but things are different -- players change, and Varejao is no exception. The man has completely revolutionized his game over the last few years. The problem I've always had arguing against the idea that he's simply a flopper is that the image is simply very enduring. Fans of opposing teams have certainly seen Varejao flop on a dime before -- everyone has, even his own fans.

It's not that it never happened, it's that he's developed new facets to his game that have eliminated entirely his absolute dependence on the act. He still flops, from time to time, but it's more spice than main course. The garnish atop a multifaceted game, not the game itself. But people's minds are hard to change. Few things are more intransigent than a once-true impression. It's why people maintain friendships with childhood friends they can hardly stand. It's why repenting felons can't get jobs. It's why everyone cautions to make a good first impression. It takes a particularly enduring new image to make wholescale alterations to a now-false impression that was once gospel. And although I've tried for years to come up with a better impression, only yesterday did I finally think of one that's flexible enough to really describe and embody the talents of the big Brazilian.

Anderson Varejao is, above all things, the NBA's smile.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

• • •

As one gets older, they start to lose a bit of connection with their roots. I'm still young -- very young, in fact -- but I've already started to feel some of the inevitable drift of time. Years ago, I could flip through bundles of old drawings and remember exactly where I was when I drew a thing, no matter how droll or meaningless. I could recall exactly what I was feeling, thinking, experiencing. I can't really do that anymore. I can only remember impressions and colors, the broad strokes of life as-it-was. Life's funny that way -- as we remove ourselves more and more from the context that only we knew in the first place, we lose sight of these facts that not a single other being knew with our intimacy. Our personal secrets fade and our connection with our past becomes an echo, a reminder of the booming closeness that we once knew and loved. But there's one thing in life that transcends this. A single action that in one fell swoop brings us back to the best moments of our roots and our fledgling moments.

That single thing, above all else, is the unfettered joy of an uncontrollable grin.

The shortest distance from the cradle to an elder is the involuntary smile. We're trained, in some ways, not to give in -- we try so hard not to! We're too old for that, too serious. We try to quash it. Nope, nope. Not today. Can't be childish, can't experience that sort of incessant and inexplicable giddiness that befits a much younger soul. But the bad joke is just too awful. The coincidence is too funny. The moment is too perfect. And we have to smile. The dread grin spreads across one's face, and in that moment of beaming elation, the mind empties of all its worry and woe. The concerns of the old fade for that single childlike moment, before we counteract the grin and terminate the feeling. We are young again. The connections to our younger selves reemerge, for a fleeting moment, and we're as we once were. A laughing child, unaware of what exactly we're laughing at. Unaware of anything but the fact of the happiness itself.

We naturally stifle the involuntary smiles, the laughter, the joy. Internally deem the acts childish and unbecoming. And I suppose, when you get down to brass tacks, it usually is. But I reject the idea that "childish" is always a bad thing, especially when it comes to this. This hearkens back to one's best moments, the effortless happiness of the young and the innocent. These aren't moments to quash. They're moments to treasure.

• • •

Anderson Varejao plays basketball, but he plays it like a child's game. We tend to call out basketball as a "man's game" -- the phrase being rather inextricably tied to notions of sports as man's ultimate domain. It often has sexist implications, implications that tend to be the only problematic undertone that bear notice. But it also implies something else that's a bit problematic -- the idea that basketball is a grown-up game, far removed from a child's sport. True at times, but I'd argue it isn't necessary. Basketball doesn't need to be an adult's game any more than it needs to be a boy's only club, or any more than golf needs to be a white's only club. A "man's game" is a playstyle, but it's never been_ the only way to play the game. That's an invention. It's like our aversion to uncontrollable laughter or our inherent desire to stifle an involuntary smile -- we don't _need to stifle ourselves, we just feel an obligation to.

We don't need to play basketball like adults, we just feel an obligation to.

Thankfully, Varejao doesn't feel that obligation. His personal filters, insofar as they ever existed at all, are gone. His game embodies a sort of childlike wonder. Most of Varejao's havoc is wrecked on plays that he never was supposed to be involved with in the first place, lunging in from halfcourt to slip between two players and ace a tip-in nobody realized he was looking for. Jumping a passing lane to gum up a possession nobody realized he was paying attention to. Taking a flat-footed 20 foot jump shot that nobody realized he had in his arsenal, then punching himself repeatedly in the head to emphasize how little he thought about it. It's the off-ball movement, the breakneck defense, the floppy hair. And it's almost all done with a smile -- when things are going well, few NBA players spend as much time on the court with a vacant grin as Varejao.

There is little grace in joy alone, but that's partly the point. Anderson Varejao's game is hardly graceful. It's blocky and tentative, flopsy and energetic. But everything he does is wreathed in drops of happiness. There's that ADD tendency of a small child -- he flits from play to play, doing tons of different little things on every other possession. He does it all well, too, regardless of the happiness -- even though he rarely flops anymore, he's still got that actor's joy when he does it. When he shuts down a big man in the post with his pesky in-your-face stylings, he's doing it with a smile and a wink. When he grabs 20 rebounds in a game, he grabs every one of them with this infectious and indescribable enthusiasm. It's hard to be down in the dumps when you watch a good Anderson Varejao game -- the enthusiasm creeps upon you, and shakes you by your scruff with the vigor of a younger man. "Hey! Don't worry!" it says, scuffing your hair. "Life's cool! Things are rad! Now let's play a game, OK?"

Joy is essential. Life's too short for it not to be. Anderson Varejao's game reflects an advanced understanding of that. It's a game above all else -- a serious game, a "man's game", a game with breaks -- but it's a game all the same. And for that, I will never cease to love and enjoy his game. It makes me smile. It makes him smile. He is a smile, personified. And as he gushes with his graceless artistry, I come around. Anderson Varejao isn't a player to quash, flopsy though he may be. Varejao doesn't need to be young to live young. He's a cracker-jack treasure, his style an unyielding echo of youth, bellowed from a canyon and left to peter out in perpetuity as a happy reminder of the days we've left behind.

• • •

• • •

• For more capsules on members of the Cleveland Cavaliers, visit the Cavalier Capsule Directory •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the leaves turn frosty, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last full week. Not quite done yet, but close. Today we continue with Alonzo Gee, Anderson Varejao, and James Jones.

• • •

Follow Alonzo Gee on Twitter at @GeeAlonzo.

Alonzo Gee wasn't an excellent player last year, but he was definitively a rotation guy -- that means a lot, when you're coming from his league background. He went undrafted in his would-be draft (2009's), despite a relatively dismal state of second-round talent and a decently promising stretch played at the University of Alabama. He was picked up as an undrafted free agent by the San Antonio Spurs, who relegated him to their D-League unit (the Austin Toros). Gee acquitted himself well in the minor leagues, averaging 21-7 in 36 games, eventually earning himself a 2010 call-up to the Wizards, followed by a 2011 call-up to the Spurs and a later call-up to the Cavaliers. The main problem with Gee, in his first few stabs at NBA relevance, was a relatively bare skillset. He had decent if not a bit fledgling defense, an exceedingly shaky three point shot, and poor rebounding. That was about it. Until he got the defense ironed out, he didn't really have much of an upside in the league as anything at all -- in the same way any piece of new technology needs a killer app, if Gee hoped to have any staying power, he was going to need to have a skill that really cooked. Finally, after a few years of wandering, he seems to have found that.

For him, it's his defense -- his offense is still relatively dismal, as he's one of the worst finishers in the league among all wing players (a fact that surprises many Cleveland fans, but it's true -- Gee is simply awful at the rim compared to most of the league, finishing on 58% of his at-rim plays, well within the bottom 25% of all wing players) and his long range shot is charitably described as "average at best" (32% from 10-23 feet, 29% from three). His only real offensive skill is that he's a good free throw shooter and he's good at drawing them -- that's legitimately it. He's not a high usage offensive player, and his tertiary stats have never been particularly compelling -- subpar rebounder, atrocious passer (resulting in a sky-high turnover rate given his usage), and few other talents. But his defense is quite decent. Versatile, with the ability to guard players from large point guards to small big men, and a decent sense of spot-up spacing and a general insistence on picking smaller players up full-court. Draws a lot of good steals that way, and puts applies some nice pressure that the player generally doesn't expect. This isn't to say he's a starter in the league, even if he plays one for the Cavaliers -- you didn't really need to be an NBA-level starter to start as a large wing for last year's Cavs, you simply needed to have a pulse. But he's definitely a rotation guy as long as he sticks to his defense, albeit best suited for a role as a bench stopper.

As a somewhat unnecessary aside, I really enjoy how his Twitter handle (@GeeAlonzo) can be read like this colloquial hard luck statement. "Gee, Alonzo, you really messed it up this time!" It's sort of like that one kid from the Magic School Bus who always used to mess everything up (Carlos, for those wondering), except it's actually his name. Just a huge plot twist. If there was an NBA-themed Magic School Bus, Alonzo would necessarily be the Ralphie character. I think Doris Burke would be Ms. Frizzle -- not just because Burke is a wonderful woman, but because her lectures on basketball are by and large the most entertaining and magical of the national announcing crew. She's great. Danny Green would be Ralphie, I think. As for Arnold, who else but JaVale McGee? I was just about to ask why nobody else has ever thought of this before, and then I realized that the venn diagram for people who were both "interested in the Magic School Bus" and "big fans of the NBA" intersects for exactly one individual on the face of the earth: me. Whoops. This still amuses me greatly. "Gee, Alonzo!"

• • •

_Follow Anderson Varejao on Twitter at __@VAREJAOANDERSON.___

I was completely stuck on this one until about 10:30 PM last night. Skip to the capsule if you don't want the backstory -- I think it's kind of funny, so I'm going to share it anyway. I was going to go on a nice date today, and I was quite looking forward to it! But the date got cancelled due to pesky snowstorms happening in and around Maryland and awful driving conditions in her hometown. I was sad last night for two reasons. First, there was the whole "cancellation of the date" thing. I like spending time with her, and that makes my week significantly more boring. I really wasn't THAT sad about it, because we'll obviously see each other eventually, but it was kind of a bummer. The far more pressing sadness came from the fact that I had no idea whatsoever what to write about Anderson Varejao, and I was running out of time. He's absolutely one of my favorite players in the league, and I wanted to write a good paean to his game and style. He's an extended essay kind of player. But I wasn't getting that succinct summary of the way Varejao's game "feels" that's so important to the longform versions of these capsules.

Then I happened to get a message from my date regarding nothing in particular, and I simply couldn't stop smiling. Trust me, I tried. It wasn't a long message, it wasn't super-heartfelt, it was just really adorable for some reason. I try my best to be even keel about everything, but I found myself overcome with this odd giddiness. It was excessive, childish, and absurd. So much so, in fact, that it made me wonder if my mind was trying to tell me something. Sometimes, when I find myself excessively emotional about something completely casual, there's some implicit effort on the part of my head to get me to come to a realization. And then it hit me -- THAT'S the feeling was what I was looking for! That's the hallmark of Anderson Varejao's game. Not the flopping, not the energy, not the freneticism. It's the joy. The unfettered, unadulterated joy with which Anderson Varejao plies his trade.

Today, I try to describe that.

Anderson Varejao embodies many things. Effort and energy, heart and hustle, grit and grind. He's traditionally been described as something of a dirty tertiary player -- the most common depiction of Varejao is that of a feckless flopping savant, a play-actor miscast in the sport of basketball. The spitting image of the "European" big man -- floppy, long haired, and oh-so-annoying. Cavaliers fans have traditionally balked at this -- or at least, from personal experience, I have. There's so much more to Varejao than just a few flops. Summarizing his game as such made sense years ago, but things are different -- players change, and Varejao is no exception. The man has completely revolutionized his game over the last few years. The problem I've always had arguing against the idea that he's simply a flopper is that the image is simply very enduring. Fans of opposing teams have certainly seen Varejao flop on a dime before -- everyone has, even his own fans.

It's not that it never happened, it's that he's developed new facets to his game that have eliminated entirely his absolute dependence on the act. He still flops, from time to time, but it's more spice than main course. The garnish atop a multifaceted game, not the game itself. But people's minds are hard to change. Few things are more intransigent than a once-true impression. It's why people maintain friendships with childhood friends they can hardly stand. It's why repenting felons can't get jobs. It's why everyone cautions to make a good first impression. It takes a particularly enduring new image to make wholescale alterations to a now-false impression that was once gospel. And although I've tried for years to come up with a better impression, only yesterday did I finally think of one that's flexible enough to really describe and embody the talents of the big Brazilian.

Anderson Varejao is, above all things, the NBA's smile.

For more on Anderson Varejao, please visit today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

Follow James Jones by becoming a terminating 3-point gunning robot

James Jones was born in rural Mississippi, forced adrift on the mean streets of Kosciusko. Life was hard, back in the day -- Jones had a single mother, money was tight, and Jones often had to wear dresses made of potato sacks. Children were ruthless, and made fun relentlessly. But Jones persevered. Through the struggles of moving north to Milwaukee, Jones eventually chose to run away from home at the age of 13, living with the biological father who focused Jones' life on education. At the age of 17, Jones attracted the attention of a local radio station, one that eventually offered up a spot doing the news part time. James Jones accepted, which was a sign of the path his life would eventually take. Jones became an anchor, eventually rising to significant popularity and moving upwards from Nashville to Baltimore to Chicago. In Chicago, James Jones developed a productive friendship with Robert Ebert, which eventually blossomed into a contract that produced The James Jones Show. Amazing! From then on, it was money for miles -- Jones' sense of empathy, understanding, and plainspoken folksiness enthralled millions. While the show recently ended (nearly 20 years after it began!), Jones now owns J: The James Jones Network. James Jones is one of the richest people in the world, a billionaire of billionaires, and an inspiring story for all to cling to. You may not like the show, but you can't knock the talent.

...

Alright, hold up. In case you haven't realized -- yes, I was trying to write a capsule about Oprah. The probably-forgotten reason:

Look, you guys weren't careful. Simple as that. This all could've been avoided.

As for writing about Jones' actual game... because I just spent an obscene amount of time trying to write a capsule about Oprah's actually-absurdly-inspirational life, I'll make this as short as the comprehensive list of James Jones' NBA-caliber skills. Which is pretty short, since that list is exactly one item long. He's a three-point gunning robot. That's the long and short of it. Last year, Jones took 76% of his field goal attempts from three point range. That ranks as the 14th most lopsided 3PA/FGA season of all time, which is relatively absurd. Funny enough, though, he wasn't even top three in the league last year -- of that list's top 15, a startling 10 of them came within the last two years, including four from last year. The list, for the curious:

Note that James Jones' last three seasons all make the top-15 all-time leaderboard, here. He's the specialist to end all specialists. His defense is crummy, his passing is laughable, and he can't finish at the rim to save his life. But he can make threes. Actually, that last fact leads me to another fun James Jones tidbit -- he didn't make an at-rim shot last season. Or this season. Or the season before. In fact, he hasn't made a shot at the rim since the 2009 playoffs. James Jones made a shot at the rim with 3:00 to go in the 3rd quarter of this atrocious game from the worst playoff series in the history of the human race. It may very well end up being the last shot he makes at the rim in his entire NBA career. But let's consider this. When James Jones last made a shot at the rim, Mike Brown was coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers, Obama had been inaugurated exactly 3 months prior, and I was 18 years old. That's... pretty phenomenal, given that he's played 3386 minutes since that basket. James Jones may not have many uses as an NBA player, but let's be fair -- first, he's a really good three point shooter, and at least he doesn't try to go outside his talent. Second? He's apparently an endless well of hilarious NBA trivia. All in all? Thanks, James. Have to honestly say I enjoyed writing this one.

(You too, Oprah.)

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Good work to wul.f, for his 2/3 guess. Down to the final 10. Times they are a'changing.

• Player #361 is one of the few players with an actively updated Tumblr page. This may be because he's out injured for the year, tho.

• Player #362 is Alex Dewey's muse. Avid Gothic Ginobili readers should have no trouble figuring this one out.

• Player #363 is Russia's most terrifyi--... OK, no, he's not terrifying. He's adorable and confusing. Love you, Player #363.

Happy Thursday, everyone.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the leaves turn frosty, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last full week. Not quite done yet, but close. Today we continue with Rasheed Wallace, Zach Randolph, and Marcin Gortat.

• • •

Follow Rasheed Wallace by yelling "BALL DON'T LIE!" at your next office potluck.

“You know, I say what’s on my mind, speaking my freedom, and I get fined for it. It’s a catch-22 with that (expletive), man. See, they think they can control people with money. Everybody don’t live like that.”

Did Rasheed Wallace care?

When you examine Wallace's game, you find a man whose talents were generational. He had the opportunity at several junctures to be one of the greatest to ever play the game. And don't scoff -- it's true. Rasheed's combination of post dominance, defensive acuity, and outside game were absolutely unfair. He was one of about 3 post defenders in the past decade who could cover Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan one-on-one. When he locked in, he was an excellent rotating defender. He could reign in his errant shooting in a tense playoff situation, and when he actually focused on taking it down low, he was excellent. His only flaws were those of effort -- he never quite seemed to care exactly as much in the regular season as he did in the playoffs, and even in the playoffs, there was a certain devil-may-care attitude that permeated his game and demeanor to the point of sabotaging his public persona. At least to some extent.

There's a reason fans of Portland's Jail Blazer era generally don't love Rasheed as much as everyone else does, and it's certainly not baseless racism. As good as Rasheed Wallace was in his prime, there's this lingering sense that he could've been quite a bit better. It's the same sense people get when they look at Shaquille O'Neal and wonder on how good he could've been if he hadn't eschewed practice and come in out-of-shape every other season, or the same sense people in Toronto get when they look at a player like Hedo Turkoglu or Vince Carter. The allure of unearthed brilliance is great -- there's a deep disappointment to be had when you see a level of play within a player's grasp that they never cared to reach. There's a sad, hollow death knell to a career riddled with those kinds of questions. All careers have a few things the player never finished -- few careers have quite as many unanswered questions as Rasheed or Shaq, and as such, they inspire our lament. But it's a compelling lament. It's one that makes you think, and makes you wonder why exactly he turned out that way. Did he simply not care?

When I examine his personal bent, though, I come to a different conclusion. He cared. Rasheed Wallace is a cult phenomenon for a reason, and it isn't his dominant generational talents. It's the way he composed himself, and specifically, the philosophy behind it. The classic conception is that Rasheed Wallace never cared what you or anyone else thought of him -- on the contrary, I propose he cared a lot. He simply didn't care how you thought of him. He simply cared that he was thought of at all. He cared that he'd be remembered for his larger-than-life personality, no matter what that meant exactly to his reputation. Rasheed Wallace, when all's said and done, didn't want to be Kevin Garnett. He didn't want to be Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon, or Moses Malone. He wanted his imprint on the league to be distinctly Rasheed-shaped, Pilsbury style. Yes, he could've worked harder and gotten into shape and demanded the ball more. He could've been a better player, certainly. But Rasheed Wallace got his ring. He was the best (or second best) player on years and years of great teams. And you know what? That's enough.

When you're an enigma, a riddle, and a man who simply wants to be remembered on his own merits, you don't need any other validation from a basketball perspective. You simply need the one thing your basketball skills can't give you -- a platform for ideas. They don't need to be good ones, they don't need to be philosophically consistent, and they don't need to be well presented. You don't need to enact change, either. I profess that Rasheed Wallace -- more than basketball, more than any particular ideology, more than anything -- simply cared about impressions. Not what they were, but simply the object of making them. Everyone has an opinion about Rasheed Wallace, and he's left us reels and reels of cult-strengthening tapes and hilarious truth-to-power antics. He inspires essays in honor of his greatness and essays in honor of his laziness. He's succeeded in the primary thing Rasheed Wallace really wanted to do in the first place -- he's furrowed his way into the NBA's sands of time. Not as a good player, not as a star, not as a generational lightning rod.

He'll be remembered as the very first (and very last) Rasheed Wallace. That's all he ever needed to be.

• • •

_Follow Zach Randolph on Twitter at __@MacBo50.___

"You don't look bad on nobody because somebody went to the penitentiary or somebody did this. You treat everybody the same because everybody's got skeletons. Some people just hide them more. Some don't get brought to the light, but ain't nobody perfect. Nobody." -- Zach Randolph, 2012

Although his numbers last year don't show it due to his injuries, Zach Randolph is a really good player. Reminds me -- in a lot of odd ways -- of Karl Malone. He's an exceedingly good scorer when he has a hot night, with seemingly infinite range and this eldritch sense of inevitability. Of course Randolph would hit that three. Of course he'll can the fadeaway with two men on him. Of course he'll get the key rebound. The same was always true of Malone -- even when he'd take an absolutely terrible shot or try to go one-on-four in the post, it always seemed to work out for the best. He'd make do. There's a reason Malone averaged 22 points a night at the age of 38. You could make him take terrible shots all you wanted -- it didn't matter, he'd still can enough of them to scuttle your team. Ever since his Memphis renaissance, Randolph has had that same sort of feeling -- he may ballhog at times and he may slow down the offense, but in the end, you're usually comfortable with whatever the hell awful shot he puts up. Because by and large, he'll make enough of them to make you feel that way.

The thing Randolph's current incarnation has that Karl never quite embodied? A thirst for the boards unlike few who've ever played the game. In Memphis, Randolph's averaged a rebounding percentage of 19% -- that's obscenely high for a four year average. Consider that in Malone's career, he never had a single year above 17.4%! They filled different roles, but per-possession, it's inarguable that Randolph is a better rebounder than Malone. And it's also inarguable that Randolph's nowhere near as good of a scorer as Malone, even if their scoring feels similar to me -- in his Memphis years, Randolph's put up a usage percentage of 24.3%. Malone posted only two years below that usage percentage -- his rookie year and his final year, the bookends of his career. Malone took a far more active role in the Utah offense than Randolph has ever taken in the Memphis offense, and he maintained higher efficiency. Despite relying heavily on a long range shot that always looked to be teetering on the edge of "completely broken" (especially in his waning years), Malone was one of the most effective scorers of all time. Randolph certainly isn't that. But again -- it's a matter of feeling. It's a matter of reflections and shades. The way Randolph scores elicits shades of Karl Malone. The craftiness, the cheekiness, the smooth and subtle dominance.

The other big differentiator between Malone and Randolph? Prior to Memphis, Randolph was known (perhaps unfairly) as something of a basketball menace -- a ballhogging jerk who'd gun for numbers and mess up locker rooms with the people who'd surround him. He was dumped from Portland to New York for almost nothing, then dumped from New York to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to Memphis for virtually nothing. Nobody wanted him -- they wanted the numbers he'd give, sure. But they didn't want the other stuff. The ties to his spotted past, the disinterest on defense, the ball-dominating and the overshooting. They just wanted him to settle down a bit, get comfortable with the team and the city, and really contribute. Put his heft behind the game. He couldn't ever find that balance in Portland, and he certainly couldn't achieve it in New York or Los Angeles. But in Memphis, he finally did. He reached that internal balance that turned the ballhog into a great. The one that Malone found in Utah, and the one that allowed him to finally free himself and emerge into the player he'd always threatened he could be. A star, if only just.

Zach Randolph is a good player. Maybe he's a good person, too. Or maybe he's a bad person -- he hangs around with the wrong crowd, for sure, and when he was younger he put quite a bit of heft into a lifestyle that he now admits wasn't the best. But it doesn't really matter, in the end -- just look, once again, at good ol' Karl Malone. Malone will always be remembered as one of the best power forwards to ever play the game, regardless of his personal sins. Like abandoning children, impregnating 13-year-olds, or baselessly slamming Magic Johnson for returning to the game with HIV. Just because he was a upstanding Christian soldier doesn't make his sins any less pressing than Randolph's -- we judge his game on its own merits because the game is all we really have to judge him on. We're sports analysts and fans, not person fans. When it all comes down to it, the people Randolph breaks bread with and the past he's begun to abandon means as much as we want it to -- and we shouldn't really want it to mean anything. If we can't bring ourselves to care about Malone's past, there's hardly any reason for us to bother with Randolph's. Malone's a great player because that's how he played the game -- and for Randolph, the sweet embrace of his late career renaissance may be enough for us to view him kindly.

Unless you're a Portland fan. Isn't it funny that he and Sheed were placed beside each other?

• • •

_Follow Marcin Gortat on Twitter at __@MGortat.___

Marcin Gortat's an interesting nut to crack. I'll get to his off-court antics later -- they need further examination. But his on-court ones? He's a really good player, all things considered, and one of the more slept on quasi-stars in the western conference. First, a statement that goes contrary to most people's conventional wisdom -- we don't live in a league with any real dearth of quality big men. Some people highlight Gortat in a fundamentally insulting way, snidely proclaiming him a decent center but noting as well that his quality as a center "doesn't mean much" in the "modern" NBA, given that he's up against such dismal competition. That's not really true. The NBA's quietly underwent something of a renaissance from the frontcourt down, and I'd argue that the league has reached a new state with fewer quality wings than it has quality bigs. Lots of good point guards, lots of good bigs, but an absolute scarcity of good wings. You may not believe me offhand, and that's OK. But let's take a look at the top 10-15 big men in the NBA, in no particular order, separated by their general career status.

• The Old Standards -- Players who remain phenomenal top-tier big men despite being well past their golden years. (Includes: Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett.)

• The Prime Ribs -- Players who are top-tier big men in the primes of their career. (Includes: Dwight Howard, Anderson Varejao, Marcin Gortat, Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson, Al Horford, LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Bosh, Tyson Chandler, Marc Gasol, David West)

• The Sub-prime Crises -- Players who are top-tier big men but are a bit short of their inevitable primes. (Includes: Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, Brook Lopez, Serge Ibaka, DeAndre Jordan, Omer Asik, Anthony Davis, Roy Hibbert, DeMarcus Cousins, Greg Monroe, Ryan Anderson)

• The Wildcards -- Players who are top-tier big men when circumstances are right, but who aren't quite there right now due to Reasons. (Includes: Andrew Bogut, Andrew Bynum)

I'll count those up for you. That's three immensely high-quality old standards, eleven extremely solid big men in the prime of their careers, eleven big men who've yet to reach their primes who are already very good, and two injury-related wildcards that are as good as anybody when they're healthy. That's 27 players, enough for almost every team in the league to have an extremely good big man. And this doesn't even get into a few of the fringe cases, like Andrea Bargnani, David Lee, and Pau Gasol. There's hardly a dearth of quality big men in the league, there's simply a dearth of recognition for the big men we have now. These players are good. NBA bigs don't get more than two or three games "off" in any given year -- there are vicious scorers from everywhere, and given hand-check rules, they now have more responsibility to guard pick and roll plays and dives to the rim. It's tough, but these guys persevere and prosper. The NBA's modern big doesn't look exactly like they used to, but that certainly doesn't mean they're bad, or that the league is in some crisis of absent bigs.

As for Gortat? Again, he's really good. He's a solid individual defender who has a talent for showing on the pick and roll and containing the action, and he learned a heck of a lot more from Dwight Howard than most people realize. A bit thin in the post, so post-up centers can spell his demise, but he's not bad. He supplements his decent defense with a highly effective post-up game, with a nice 4-8 foot hook and a knack for creatively getting open for under-the-rim layups. One other huge positive for Gortat that rarely gets mentioned is his aversion to turnovers -- the man posted the 3rd lowest turnover ratio among centers last year, and anyone who watches Dwight Howard in the post would understand how important that is when you're a center who wants to be a primary offensive threat. He supplements all of that with a solid long-shot. No three pointers, mind you, but his range extends to about 20 feet and he's got enough mobility that opposing centers need to come out on him, which helps the Suns put together plays where they draw the defense out effectively even with Nash gone. He's not the best at any of this -- there are better post-up centers, better defensive centers, and better midrange shooters. But he's extremely good at all these things, and as an overall package, Gortat represents one of the best centers the league has to offer.

Off the court, Gortat is hilarious in a lot of ways. He's responsible for the song that's (for my money) the most hilarious NBA-related rap ever, this Polish sojourn to Gortat's "story". He drives the most ostentatiously hilarious car I've ever seen (see above), although I'd also caution that I'm 90% sure that automobile would be against several billion car regulations in the united states. Also, he isn't wearing his seat belt, which is curiously poor conduct as a role model to millions of 7'0" tall Polish children everywhere. Great smile though. He can also sing Bon Jovi, although he probably should stick to basketball. I'd like to see a mix tape with Redick and Gortat -- have a feeling that'd be classic. No, I like Gortat's off-court personal quirks a lot. He's funny and his antics make me smile. But I can't lie and say it's all roses -- I'm starting to get legitimately concerned about Gortat's comically poor grasp of how to compose himself around the media. Our Polish correspondent Adam Koscielak has always pointed out that his devil-may-care media attitude is endemic to the Polish spirit. I'm open to that as a fact, but at some point it's also a bit ridiculous -- there's absolutely no reason for Gortat to be spilling the sorts of comments he did a few weeks back.

Worst part? This isn't anything new for him. Don't call it a comeback -- he's been doing this for years. Proof, in case you've forgotten, lies here. That was soon after he was traded to Phoenix, where he essentially called his teammates lazy slobs and slammed his own team as the "worst defensive team in the league" straight out of nowhere. Hate to break it to Gortat, but teams have bad nights. They weren't a wonderful defensive team, but they certainly weren't as bad as he was saying. Eviscerating your compadres gets old after a while, and I have no idea how his teammates put up with him if this is at all representative of how he acquits himself in the locker room. Polish spirit or not, there's a point where you're simply being an offensive jerk with no regard for the people around you. Gortat clearly has some trouble staying away from that point, and until he deals with it, he's going to have trouble getting the playing time his production implies he deserves. Learning to build working relationships with the people around you is part of any job. If you can't do that without blasting everyone you interact with, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on when you complain about not getting a chance to prove yourself. No matter how good you really are.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Only one guess yesterday, from A. Luckily it was a 2/3 guess. Good work, A.

• Player #358 is a reclamation project that actually got reclaimed. By a team that isn't in Texas, too! Imagine that. Tomorrow, you won't have to.

• Player #359 is the most underrated semi-star in the NBA. He's on a brilliant value contract and he's one of the best 3 players at his position. And nobody seems to notice. Player Capsule Plus, maybe.

• Player #360 took more threes than twos last season. In fact, a LOT more.

Happy boxing day, folks. I'm wearing a bathrobe to work.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the leaves turn frosty, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last full week. Not quite done yet, but close. Today we continue with Hedo Turkoglu, Francisco Garcia, and D.J. Augustin.

• • •

Follow Hedo Turkoglu on Twitter at @TasMelas.

There are many mysteries in the world. For a race that's traversed the moon and sent probes beyond our galactic borders, it's both startling and unnerving that we've fallen so short in investigating the Mariana Trench. We have quite literally no idea what goes on in the absolute depths of the ocean, nor do we have the slightest clue how to model and predict things as close to the grain as the movement of our tectonic plates. We fathom them, but we don't truly understand whether or not tetraquarks and pentaquarks can truly exist. We've built monuments to honor acts of dubious greatness without ever acknowledging the undercurrents that brought together the great men and women to produce the act itself. We do not solve every murder. We do not understand something so fundamental and key to the person as the human brain -- nor do we understand, insofar as we even accept it at all, the concept of a soul. Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries. They challenge and quarrel. They wheeze and they whisper. They flit back and forth in our vision, the answers tantalizingly close but so dreadfully far to task. In the NBA, too, there are mysteries. Confusing idiosyncrasies we'll never quite grasp. One, given today's subject, rings above all others. At least for this guy.

Why on Earth have we all forgiven Hedo Turkoglu?

Perhaps my assessment is wrong on its face. That's quite possible. I don't know a ton of Raptors fans, and the Suns fans I do know don't tend to care much about the little microcosm moves like Turkoglu's acquisition. But for a sport that tends to treat with ill repute players that blow off their franchise and squander their new contract, something about Turkoglu's general avoidance of blame in the mainstream media bugs me. He's Hedo Turkoglu -- the wacky, fun-loving Turkish schlub with a penchant for silly chatter and fun in-game passes. But he's also Hedo Turkoglu -- the complete jerk who completely blew off a Toronto team that broke the bank to sign him, forced a trade out of Toronto, then proceeded to play arguably the worst ball of his life next to Steve Nash eventually necessitating yet another pennies-on-the-dollar trade. To say that he's played poor basketball since signing his $52.8 million dollar contract is to understate it. You know how everyone has that devil-may-care uncle that tells stupid jokes and gets on everyone's good side anyway? Hedo's been compared with that. His play could also be compared with what would happen if you took said uncle -- with no training, preparation, or exercise -- and told him to play in the NBA. It'd be a bloodbath. Much like Hedo's last three years.

And again, I remind you -- this is on a $52.8 million dollar contract! He did a good job with Stan Van Gundy in Orlando, and he was a big asset on those late-aughts Magic teams that were stronger contenders than most people ever accepted. But he's just completely wilted since getting his new contract, and not only has he wilted, he's harmed locker rooms and dismissed team requests and orders like there's no tomorrow. He's taken games off for "illness" and gone clubbing seconds after the game ends. He was brought to Toronto in hopes of inspiring Bosh to stay as a brilliant second banana. He instead was one of the main reasons Bosh simply had to leave. Has he had injury troubles? Sure, a bit. But nothing really excuses his conduct in Toronto, which was unprofessional and tawdry at best. And nothing really excuses the fact that his awful contract messed up Toronto's books and ruined their chances of keeping Bosh, nearly ruined Phoenix (until they were able to snag Gortat out of his wreckage, which was a pretty big coup on their part), and continues to put a stranglehold on Orlando's books.

It'd be one thing if he actually looked like he cared at all. He doesn't. So why exactly do we just give him carte blanche? Is it his love of pizza, a love I admit to sharing? Is it an internal desire to be like Turkoglu -- a millionaire making obscene amounts of money who pays no heed to tact or convention? Do we all just want to be Hedo on the inside, chowing down on pizza and partying for rehab? I don't get it. He's obviously a talented guy, and he's quite a smart player. In his prime, he played a key role on several really good teams. But the way he's conducted his personal affairs in the last three years has been awful to the point of dark comedy, and as a commentariat, we probably shouldn't be quite so willing to look past that just because of a few wacky Youtube clips and a likeable exterior. I'm not, at least.

... also, unrelated note. Why on Earth is Ilyasova doing the same thing?

• • •

_Follow Francisco Garcia on Twitter at __@cisco32.___

Francisco Garcia's game doesn't really deserve a capsule. He's extremely frustrating to watch. Give him his excuses, if you want -- he's still something of a disappointment, even if you accept that his career has probably ended a bit prematurely on account of his exploding exercise ball injury (real thing, please click that, it's hilarious). His shot hasn't been falling in what seems like 4 or 5 years. He's been a three point sniper without a scope. A rudderless assassin that can't bring himself to kill a fly. His only real offensive talent, as of late, has been his free throw shooting -- he's made his free throws, although he virtually never drew them, so the whole ordeal was sort of damning with faint praise. He's still played 16 minutes a night on account of the Kings' horrific depth, but he's been depressingly washed up for a few years now. He looked like he'd be much more early in his career, and it's sad that he never quite made it.

The reason I bring him up at all is that he's simply a really good leader, and there isn't enough around-the-league appreciation for the impact a legitimately good leader can have on an NBA team. As bad as his game's been the last few years, he's been sterling -- he wasn't named Team Captain this year, but if I'm remembering right, he spent 3 years in a row as one of the Sacramento captains despite his flagging play. He's an actual, legitimate locker room leader. He was the first player to return to the Kings' practice facility when the lockout ended. He's been known to give advice to younger players and has been instrumental in pulling Tyreke back from the unnamed problems he dealt with during his dreadful sophomore season. He's made a huge mark on this Kings team, and not in a negative way at all -- he's been arguably the only real light in the darkness on a personal level for a group that's been dismal and out of sorts for far too long. Kings fans will be sad to see him go, regardless of how poorly he's played. Because he's simply valuable.He's a good guy. And he's helped keep a modicum of stability in one of the roughest locker rooms in the league, at least right now.

There's another reason, too. I've gone over ten Kings players in this series. They've run a wide gamut of quality -- solid players like Cousins, dismal players like Salmons, curious players like Evans. But one of the main goals in this series is to try and find things to appreciate about players and teams that most people don't know about. With the Kings as low-down as they are right now, that's more important than ever, and it certainly applies on a franchise-wide level as well. Francisco Garcia isn't a phenomenal player, and his rampant three-point chucking isn't going to win him any awards for entertainment value. But he's one of the league's biggest examples of the fact that you don't need to be a good player to be a role model. You don't need to be a big name to help calm an errant locker room, nor do you need to do everything right to find your real value. He's found his calling. Not as a player, obviously, but as an assistant coach and a locker room guru? It's hard to do much better. And as incompetent as people think the Kings may be, that doesn't mean everyone in their locker room is incompetent, nor does it mean it couldn't be worse without guys like Garcia to reel in everyone's worst tendencies.

So, yes. Garcia deserves a capsule. He deserves your respect, too. If you can believe it.

• • •

Follow D.J. Augustin's season if you would like to cringe.

You know that one movie? You've seen it, I'm sure. I can't seem to recall the name, but I know you've seen it. It's about this group of unsuspecting poorly-acted teenagers who amble off to do some in-retrospect-stupid but normally innocuous thing together. The group enters into an unwitting bond with some unknown phantasm that proceeds to make their lives -- what's left of them -- alternatingly miserable and horrifying for the duration of the film, culminating in the untimely demise of each and every one of them. There's some weird equivocation about morals that doesn't fit the movie at all and some odd stabs at relevance beyond the grotesque -- it's in your best interest not to heed these. It's a slasher flick. It doesn't do "meaning". Oh, I remember what it's called. I'll go with Any B-List Horror Movie Ever for $1,000, Alex. It's a tried-and-true formula, one that makes a predictable amount of profit on an exceedingly low budget. It's dirty. It's corny. It's unmemorable. But it's entertaining, at least in small doses, and it preys on the bases instincts of the moviegoer to make a quick buck. Quite reflective of the industry that produces them.

The reason I bring it up at all is simple. I've become convinced the only possible way to understand D.J. Augustin's 2013 season is to assume that he's an internalized version of a B-List horror film. Because that's exactly how bad it's been. To frame it in the same way I wrote above: the Augustin Horror Story starts when this collected group of unsuspecting basketball talents amble off to change their scenery and join the Indiana Pacers, with expectations low. In retrospect, maybe he should've stuck in Charlotte. But he didn't know that at the time. But Augustin and his group of merry talents made a mistake. They made a deal with some ghastly off-screen ghoul, somewhere in there -- the second he reaches Indiana, he starts to notice things missing. The handle he once had is shaky and unreliable, found victim of a chance heart attack. His shooting talents are found, but unfortunately, they're dead in a ditch. Shot 20 times and carved in twine. Yikes. His defense was found hanging from a bannister, riddled with stab wounds. And his demeanor? They haven't even found the body for that one yet.

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Augustin's, so the amount I care about his struggles is relatively slim. In a vacuum. But my God has he been bad. The horror movie thing is only the slightest of exaggerations. Augustin has shot -- I kid you not -- 27% from the floor this year. Couple this with 22% from three and you begin to see the outlines of the problem. His assist rate has been middling (and roughly the only part of his game that's even that), but his turnovers are up and his rebounding is down. His defense -- never very good -- is even more obvious in the Indiana scheme when he steps in for George Hill. He's never been a phenomenal player, but he's certainly never been an abysmal one either. Until now. The only way to properly contextualize and understand his season is to understand him as a horror film, because that's frankly the only way I can make any sense whatsoever out of it. It's this bloody, nasty slasher that you can't stop watching because the train wreck simply gets so all-encompassing. You can't bear to look away.

I mean, cripes -- the man's a career 36% three point shooter, and was a career 37% three point shooter until this season. He averaged 41% from the floor and 88% from the line. He simply has completely lost his ability to shoot, and none of his shots look like they'll even hit rim. He can't seem to run any of Vogel's sets successfully, he doesn't seem to have any idea what he's doing out there, and his demeanor is so negative and tawdry you can't imagine ANY team wanting to put up a flyer on him after this pitiful performance. That's the other thing. Augustin is 25 years old this season -- he just turned 25 in November. He's not exactly Jrue Holiday, but the boy's not old -- he's a young player who just signed a one-year contract in an effort to earn a larger extension when he was out of the Charlotte grind. Instead, he may have played his way entirely out of the league -- he's averaging 12 minutes a night and he probably won't get a whole lot more. Over his last 7 games, in fact, he's averaging just 10. I'd like to have some kind of moral or connective close that sheds light on why this happened, or makes some highly insightful comment about Augustin's struggles. But I've got nothing. Because in the end, it's a slasher film with no coherent moral, rhyme, or reason. And pretending it means anything more is a disrespect to the basketball talent lost to the dread seas.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. In-deed -- updates on Christmas AND Christmas Eve! Next thing you know, I'll be telling you I might put up another update later! ... Wait, actually, I am planning on doing that. Dunno if I'll succeed, but we'll see.

• Player #355 has a cult, basically. If you don't like him, most people on Basketball Twitter will despise you. I'm not his biggest fan, but I can appreciate him from time to time.

• Player #356 has a spotted past, a confusing present, and an uncertain future. But right now he's the 2nd best player on one of the best team's in the league. So I suppose we can ignore it, for a time.

• Player #357 likes saying stupid things to reporters when he thinks other people aren't listening. News flash, man -- word's global now. Catch up.

Adieu. And have a wonderful Christmas.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. __As the leaves turn frosty, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last full week. Not quite done yet, but close. Today we continue with Tiago Splitter, Gerald Wallace, and MarShon Brooks.

• • •

Follow Tiago Splitter on Twitter at @tiagosplitter .

Tiago Splitter isn't what he was supposed to be.

I know, I know. Not really fair to burden a player with expectations they neither asked for or sought out. This isn't some LeBron-level "Decision" scenario, here. Splitter barely even hyped himself up at all -- he was (and to some extent remains) a young, wide-eyed kid who's been utterly elated to learn the NBA ropes from Tim Duncan and elated to help his team. But on some level, what really is fandom beyond unreasonable expectations for people you don't really know to accomplish things they never really could? The Bobcats fan who's disappointed that the Bobcats aren't making the playoffs. The Mavericks fan who's disappointed the Mavs couldn't repeat as champions. The Lakers fan who's annoyed that Kobe hasn't passed Jordan yet. It's the connections you build, sure. But it's also the unreasonable expectations you levy on those you profess to root for. The slow-drip dissatisfaction as you seethe over players who've never quite panned out the way you hoped. That's an important and often understated part of being a fan. He was to be the next-generation Duncan, the next star big man in the San Antonio legend. He hasn't been. Why?

Main problem is this -- while he's not soft, he simply isn't a great defender on an NBA level. His first season showed flashes of defensive promise, but he hasn't totally lived up to that. Yet. Splitter has decent instincts, but he's never been able to put on the strength to body-up big men in the post to any real success. His height should make him decent at guarding shooters (in theory) but his lack of speed makes him slow to recover onto the long shots he tries to guard, which makes centers like Pau Gasol quite deadly whenever Tiago has to cover them. His mobility on the pick and roll is atrocious -- he simply doesn't have the lateral mobility to make the decision fast enough, and usually just ends up half-lunging for the roll man without really putting up any resistance to the shot attempt, but putting himself just close enough for the player to jump into him and draw a ticky-tack foul. It's excruciating to watch, and by far one of the most annoying tics that this current Spurs team has to rely on. Tiago Splitter isn't an awful defender -- as I said, he has decent instincts and he can make some good plays on switches, if you give him the chance. He also doesn't go for superfluous blocks, which will help him later in his career if he ever gets any actual respect from the NBA officials, as he'll avoid the sorts of dumb fouls that take most players out of the game. And if he could move just a tiny bit quicker on defense, you get the sense he'd be beastly -- he was an excellent defender in the Euroleague, where you didn't need to have that extra half-step to close space against the faster, more athletic beasts that call the NBA home. Unfortunately, you need that half-step in the NBA. And Splitter doesn't really have it.

As for his offense, that's not really the problem. Although there are a few issues. On a personal level, exogenous to his fit on the team, he's a phenomenal offensive player. He has an excellent nose for the rim, sneaking within holes in the defense I can barely comprehend to get easy at-rim layups most players wouldn't realize they had. His two-man roll game with Manu Ginobili has always been phenomenal, and out of all the offensive talents of any Spurs players on the bench, none are quite as dependable as Splitter's ability to create relatively open shots on-the-move at the rim. One wonders if Memphis will defend it quite as well as they did in 2011 if they meet up again in the playoffs -- Splitter is older, and the majority of his NBA driving game seems to have emerged in the last year or so. He has a decent-if-not-spectacular hook shot, as well, which he uses to post-up guys underneath the basket when he gets a favorable matchup. It's not a wonderful shot, but to his credit, it's one of the more effective hook shots in the league. He compounds all of that with both a talent at drawing free throws and a substantially above-average knack for making them -- teams fouled Splitter intentionally in last year's playoffs, which has led to the common misconception that he's bad at them. News flash -- Splitter broke his off-hand in the 2nd game of the playoffs, which messed up his genuinely solid form (he's been around a 70% free throw shooter these last few years). His percentage absolutely tanked for the duration of the playoffs, leading teams to intentionally foul him. It wasn't yips. It wasn't jitters. It was an ill-timed broken hand that betrayed his general free throw form, to these eyes. And barring another broken hand, it probably won't happen again.

The only real issue with Splitter's offensive game is simply a lack of versatility. He finishes at the rim, posts-up with his hook shot, and draws fouls. That's really it. He's a good passer, which helps, but he has absolutely no outside shot. The Spurs understand that and don't force him to chuck from distance, which is good, but one really wishes he could -- the primary reason Duncan/Splitter is such a difficult lineup to play is Splitter's inability to do anything outside 6 or 7 feet. He can't make a jump shot to save his life, no matter how good he is at his flat-footed free throws. In any Duncan/Splitter lineup, Splitter is necessarily forcing Duncan to play the role of outside-shooting-specialist and generally taking Duncan out of the at-rim area, where he's best at corralling offensive boards and defending the point of attack. Duncan/Splitter lineups -- in theory -- should be amazing. But Splitter's game detracts from Duncan's and makes those lineups a struggling proposition on offense, requiring the 3-man guard unit to take up the bulk of the team's offensive responsibilities while Splitter and Duncan try to cram two generally ill-fitting skillsets together into a working mesh. It makes the Spurs a bit easier to defend, and a bit less dynamic -- even if it improves the Spurs' defense a touch and makes Spurs fans long for the day it'll actually work as it's supposed to.

So, I repeat -- Tiago Splitter isn't quite what he was supposed to be. Is it because he's a bad player? Hardly! Players who have roll games like Splitter don't grow on trees, and while his rebounding is a bit lacking and his defense a tad slow, he's a solid starting center in the NBA. John Hollinger noted in his profiles that once his Spurs contract runs its course this offseason, Splitter is likely to garner some high contract numbers on the open market. San Antonio fans may be shocked, but the man was absolutely right. Splitter's put up monstrous efficiency numbers for the past 88 games now, and on a team with a better spread-option besides him, he could get even better! He just isn't quite what Spurs fans hoped for when they saw the Spanish League MVP coming over off being a a 3x champion of his own league, with visions of a Duncan successor dancing through everyone's head. It's not fair, it's not entirely reasonable, and it's not an accurate reflection of how Splitter was ever likely to turn out. But it's sports fandom. Which makes it patently reasonable, whether or not it's strictly fair.

• • •

_Follow Gerald Wallace and go fishing. No, not figuratively. In his backyard.__

---

Full disclosure -- I love Gerald Wallace. Not in a romantic sense, obviously. But I adore his game. Wallace embodies just about everything I love to see in an NBA wing player. Gritty devotion to the game, emphatic rebounding, intensely physical defensive dominance. Some people like to see sweet-shooting Jordanesque guards or dominant Shaq/Howard style centers. I've never been one of those people. Give me a defensively dominant big a la Duncan or Bogut any day, but if you can't give me one of those, I'll take the "gritty star wing with a chip on his shoulder and a knack for the boards" any day. Love watching the energy, the hustle, the vicious challenge they pose to the man tasked with scoring on them. Simply can't get enough of it. Wallace -- to me -- is the best reason to watch the Nets.

How does he play the game, on the offensive end? Not amazingly well, but not horrifyingly poorly either. He posted one of the lowest at-rim percentages among all wings in the NBA last year, which was partly a problem of volume -- very few players took more than 100 shots at the rim last year, but Wallace took an outright astonishing 312. His layup conversion skills were solid, if not phenomenal -- his problem was simply that he doesn't have the ability to get up and dunk 2 or 3 times a game anymore, and his finishing (while, again, solid) balks a bit when called on 5-6 times a game. Anything does. It's the same principle with decent long-range shooters -- very few players take 5-6 threes a game, because eventually they stop leaving you open. Teams know Wallace is going to the rim and they do their best to cut him off at the pass or bother his rise. He's done his best over his whole career with dunks and strong finishes -- in his all-star 2010 season, he had 71 dunk attempts! Last season he had 16. Which sort of gets to the unfortunate heart of the matter. As he gets older and loses his legs, his offensive game will continue its gradual falloff. Which is a shame.

What's really impressive about Wallace -- and what makes him a semi-star, even despite his flagging offensive skillset -- is his defense and rebounding. The man's defense is simply wonderful -- contained drops of aggression in what generally amounts to a constant onslaught to the opposing team's offensive system. He's at his best against teams with a scout-able system and a great deal of tape to sift through. He watches the tape, finds the point of least protection, and anchors his defense to the sole purpose of eviscerating the opposing offense whenever they reach that point of attack. This does lead to a few unfortunate downsides -- he's never been a phenomenal man-to-man defender, focusing his talents on defending a full team or a full possession rather than focusing on a single player. It's not that he can't do man-to-man defense -- he can, it just isn't his strongest suit. This leads to the second, perhaps more important downside: he gets injured a lot. The man lunges with abandon over the court, disrupting set plays and blowing up the other team's comfort zone -- this leads to a lot of short-cuts around possible ankles to trip on, and occasional moments where he's completely off balance. Which generally ends in either an injury that takes him out a few games or a lingering malady that detracts from his game while he plays through it. He puts it all on the floor for his guys, and while this is utterly respectable, it does lead to some occasionally ill-timed periods where he's simply something of a nonentity, whether literally due to injury absence or figuratively due to lingering injuries sapping his play.

Net and net, the guy is a wonder. His rebounding is viciously effective, and he's been one of the best pound-for-pound rebounders in the NBA for the last 7 years running. He's the best player in the Bobcats' franchise history, and while some would scoff and use that as a put-down for a dismal franchise, I'd tell them to kindly stuff it and appreciate a player who's been way better than most think over his career. He's one of 30 "best players in franchise history" in the history of the league. Appreciate that. He's getting older, now, and his game is falling a bit. Some effort-lapses on the defensive end, some lost mobility, his somewhat shiftless at-rim game. Et cetera. Off the court, Wallace is a soft-spoken family man with the best voice in the NBA. Well, that's what Holly MacKenzie says. I think it's a toss-up between Wallace and Patty Mills, but he's definitely up there. Fun fact: his favorite show is Popeye the Sailor Man. He's a country guy at heart, one who had a 2.5 acre lake built in his Alabama backyard so he could relax and fish during the offseason. Wonderful stuff. I wish I had more to say about a player I've adored for so long, but I consistently miss the mark on how exactly to approach presenting Wallace to others. He's not a superstar, which may be the unfortunate depiction that my enthusiasm has given you -- he's certainly not a top-50 player at this point in his career, and he's falling off quickly as his athleticism wanes. But he's still a joy to watch, and he's still a wonderful player. Next time you turn on a Nets game, focus in on the little things Wallace does.

It's so fun. So much joy. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

• • •

_Follow MarShon Brooks on Twitter at __@Marshon2.___

What's happened to poor MarShon? The kid started off his rookie year scoring in gangbusters, averaging 15 points a contest over his first 16 along with a nice string of 11-straight double-digit scoring outbursts. He combined that with about 5 rebounds a night, an excellent total that underlined a player with a heck of a lot of potential. He played almost 30 minutes per game as a rookie, averaging 12 points per contest -- he's one of only 196 rookies in the history of the league to reach 12 points a night and 29 minutes a contest, which translates to about 3 or 4 rookies a season. Impressive stuff from a 25th pick out of Providence that nobody really expected anything out of. Entering 2013, this was as close to a no-trade player as Brooklyn had on its supporting cast -- he was the only real promising young player Brooklyn had to offer, and Brooks was one of the main pieces in any theoretical Howard trade.

So much for that. He's averaged just 11 minutes per game this season, and while it's partly due to the tendinitis he suffered in preseason and an ankle sprain he suffered in mid-November, his playing time has vanished even considering that. In his rookie year, he had zero games of <8 minutes played -- this year, he has seven, and that's not even counting games missed to injury or DNP-CDs. The reason is simple. With the new Nets roster, Brooks is a man without a position. He can't really play the three, despite having ample length to -- he doesn't have the strength yet and he doesn't really have the ability to comfortably stick with the stronger players he faces when he's tasked with guarding large wings. But he's not what the Nets really need at the two, either -- the Nets offense relies on spot-up shooters and catch-and-shoot players to augment the passing brilliance of Deron Williams and the passing decent-ness of Joe Johnson -- for now, Jerry Stackhouse has utterly obliterated Brooks in the realm of spot-up shooting, which has made him the far more reasonable play for a team that's trying to win now. While nobody disagrees that Brooks will be better than Stackhouse in a year or two, Stackhouse fits better now.

That really isn't a good omen for Brooks' future. It belies a big problem with his game that he needs to figure out -- namely, his personal inability to score efficiently off the catch-and-shoot. He's a positively dismal catch-and-shoot scorer, and if he needs to have the ball in his hands and time to operate to get a decent shot off, he's not going to be very long for the league. There aren't going to be many teams in his career where Brooks will get to be the primary scorer, or a superstar-tier possession-eating gunner. Essentially, he's at a crossroads. As a player, Brooks does nothing particularly well other than score -- his rebounding floats around position average, but otherwise he's a decidedly poor passer, an awful defender, and a turnover-prone fiend. If he combines that heretofore lacking tertiary skillset with a scoring game that simply doesn't fit on good teams, it's hard to really see a way forward. He was a promising scorer as a rookie, at least to begin the season (he had a relatively underheralded swan dive after he broke his toe in late January, and played 3 months of terrible, sub-replacement-level ball after the hypetrain left the station). But if Brooks can't either develop some off-the-ball skills or restructure his scoring game to be a better fit to a less self-centered offense, he's not going to last very long as a scoring talent. Just about everyone in the NBA can score if you give them carte blanche and tell them they can make as many mistakes as they want -- it's the guys who can fit into varied systems and don't make common mistakes that write their own check in this league. Brooks is a promising guy, but he isn't that kind of a player yet. It's incumbent on him to become one, if he'd like to stick around.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Nobody did better than 1/3, indicating I did a rather poor job of composing the prior riddles. Alas. Props to our several 1/3 guessers -- Sir Thursday and Chilai, namely.

• Player #352 is a lazy pizza fiend who inspired the only drunk capsule of last year's series. Screw this guy.

• Player #353 is a locker-room leader in the most dysfunctional locker room in the league. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but he's a good guy.

• Player #354 IS SO AWFUL THIS YEAR HOW CAN A POINT GUARD BE SO BAD HOW CAN THIS EVEN HAPPEN BLEAUUUGHHH

Welcome to the last full week of capsules. I hope you've enjoyed your stay.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Josh McRoberts, Aaron Gray, and Spencer Hawes.

• • •

Follow Josh McRoberts by eating big macs and grinning like a bro.

I feel like I've said this hundreds of times -- I'm not Duke's biggest fan. By extension, I tend to be quite low on Duke players in the NBA. Other than Kyrie Irving and Grant Hill (both of whom I consider myself a big fan of) it's hard to think of more than a handful of Duke guys in the NBA I enjoy watching at all. J.J. Redick is okay now that he's finally dropped most of his Duke persona and become more of a 3-and-D guy, as he always should've always been. Gerald Henderson's defense has always impressed me and his old school game is somewhat interesting. Luol Deng is a phenomenal person and a true baller. But what about anyone else? I've never loved watching Elton Brand (even though I appreciate him), Shelden Williams is skin-crawling, Mike Dunleavy bores me, Chris Duhon is infuriating, Carlos Boozer is Carlos Boozer, I'm the only person on earth who doesn't love Shane Battier, and Austin Rivers is possibly one of my least favorite players in the history of the league. Dear lord.

Despite all that, there's still something special about Josh McRoberts. I just viscerally can't stand watching him. It's probably the fact that, translated to an NBA level, he's an exact carbon copy of the classic Duke fratty pickup lemon. Let me explain. I played pickup ball occasionally at Duke, and there was this classic frat boy archetype that'd often enter the games. Different people, but they could all be described as gym rats -- in phenomenal shape, and by the looks of it, they were going to be great. So you'd always want him on your team... until the game actually started. You'd immediately be dissuaded of your previous view, owing to several things. Lots of blown layups, even really easy ones they shouldn't be missing. Absolutely no outside shot to speak of, not that it stops them from jacking threes every now and again or taking a lot of long two pointers. Remarkably bad grasp of the game's fundamentals, with absolutely no acumen at free throws and substandard rebounding despite being stronger than the guys he was boxing out. Worst of all? Lots of weird bro-talk "communication" on defense that never made any sense and often actively confused the entire team. Ugh.

It's phenomenally unfair that I can't really separate Josh McRoberts and his NBA game from these idiots who used to ruin pickup games. But I can't. At an NBA level, he's kind of their equivalent. Ton of blown layups -- especially last year, where he had one of his worst career years at the rim. He's great at dunking and all, but once you remove his dunks from the equation, McRoberts has a relatively slim set of skills -- he can shoot a three, if you get him open enough (which ironically would've made him pretty useful next to Dwight for the Lakers in the D'Antoni system), but he's bollocks between the paint and the three point line. His free throw form has always been really bad, and his rebounding has been substandard for a big over his entire career. As for the defense, characterizing him like the lemons is totally within my imagination -- I've read and heard absolutely nothing implying that he communicates poorly on defense whatsoever. He just kind of looks like one of those guys, so it makes it easy for me to imagine it. See? Really unfair. In an attempt to be less unfair, I'll state that he really isn't that bad. Seriously. He's young and he's had a bad season-and-a-quarter over the last 12 months -- if he can recoup over the next few months and land on a decent fit team next offseason, he could turn things around a bit and become the talented second-off-the-bench big man for a decent playoff team he's always been hinting he'll be someday. After he finishes extolling the virtues of Slug and Atmosphere, of course. Or talking about that ridiculous rager he had last weekend.

... yeah, I'm physically incapable of being fair to Josh McRoberts. Let's move on.

• • •

Follow Aaron Gray by being Graydon Gordian.

Here's a semi-comprehensive list of things Aaron Gray is very good at.

• Aaron Gray is very good at lay-ups. He converted 63% of them last season.

• Aaron Gray is an excellent rebounder. His per-minute rebounding numbers were crazy last year.

• Aaron Gray is very good at having the correct spelling of "Aaron" as his first name.

• Aaron Gray is very good at being the next Brad Miller.

Here's a semi-comprehensive list of things Aaron Gray is not very good at.

• Aaron Gray is not very good at defense. Really -- the Raptors were a decent defensive team last year, for the most part. Not world-beaters, but reasonably solid. This didn't apply when Gray was on the court. Looking at the tape, it's kind of easy to see why. Gray is a poor cover for centers despite being 7'0" -- far too easy to outwit in the post, quite frankly, and he's just too lumbering to really impact the game. He's a willing help defender and he clearly was trying to enact Casey's schemes, but he just doesn't have the mobility or the intuition to crack it.

• Aaron Gray is not very good at controlling the ball. A lot of Lakers fans I know complain incessantly about Dwight Howard's inexplicably bad habit of turning the ball over every time he has to do a serious post move. I don't disagree that Dwight's turnover problem is bad, but I entreat you to take a look at Gray in the post before you kill Dwight for his flaws -- Dwight's bad, but at least he isn't quite as bad as Gray.

• Aaron Gray is not very good at anything offensively beyond layups. He doesn't get many dunks (despite being 7'0", which will continue to confuse me greatly), and the entire rest of his offensive repertoire is underwhelming. Pretty awful at hook shots, no real jump shot to speak of, and his free throws are gross. 53%? Really, man? Not cool.

• Aaron Gray is not very good at the color spectrum. This is because he's Gray. (This is a strong, strong contender for the worst joke I've ever told in my life. I would like to thank everyone who made this moment possible.)

Any questions?

• • •

_Follow Spencer Hawes on Twitter at __@spencerhawes00.___

This is probably going to sound weird, but Spencer Hawes represents one of the main reasons Bynum's absence frustrates me. On one hand, I don't like seeing Bynum out because he's a good player who's always worth a watch. On the other, I don't like seeing Bynum out because Spencer Hawes is so much less interesting without Bynum there. Really! Before the season, I was looking forward to watching how in the world Doug Collins was intending to make his preferred Hawes/Bynum lineup work. The basic understanding I had was that Hawes would act in the Pau Gasol role, playing the outsized C-as-PF role while Bynum played his Los Angeles role with significantly higher usage. They'd take advantage of Hawes' passing to form a good two-man game and take advantage of Hawes' surprisingly solid jump shot (note the high percentage from the midrange and the long two) to space the floor and give Bynum room to operate. I don't know if this configuration was fated to work very well. Defensively, Hawes has limited mobility and the Sixers were going to have to lean heavily on Bynum to help on defense and keep their schemes from falling apart without the luxury of letting Hawes float in the post/paint as a defensive C. Relying on Bynum to put up strong help is a tough thing to rely on.

And although Hawes is a decent jump shooter, he's like almost any big man -- he's better if you let him use his decent hook shot and take shots in close. And his jump shot numbers are a bit misleading, too -- they mostly came during an insane early-season stretch where Hawes looked like the league MVP for a few weeks. Hawes shot markedly worse after the all-star break, although to be completely fair, he shot just as well on jump shots in the playoffs as he did during the season, which tends to indicate he HAS actually made a decent hop forward as a jump shooter. One might note that his shooting percentage declined in the playoffs, but that ignores the fact that his percentage on-jumpers stayed even. The main problem he faced was that his shot distribution changed in the playoffs -- the Bulls and the Celtics were eager to let Hawes shoot outside jumpers and forced him to make them the majority of his offense, even if it meant giving up a few slightly open ones. He did an admirable job on them, especially from the midrange, but they never gave enough respect for the other Sixers to get open at the rim or from three. Which stifled Hawes' passing game and generally stifled a not-very-complicated Sixers offense.

Anyway. Bynum/Hawes is interesting primarily because, theoretically, it could work pretty well. A nice jump-shooting big man with some playmaking talent and a 7'0" frame next to a ball-dominant 7'0" center? Sounds like "exactly what the Lakers did", except in the Eastern Conference, where you don't actually need to add Kobe Bryant to make that a contending team. But I'm afraid it doesn't really matter to me if it works well or not, it just seemed interesting. Hawes trying to be a four is a fun thing to watch no matter who's next to him, but if you put him next to a quality player like Bynum, I have a lot of interest in seeing how that could work out, whether it succeeds or fails. This also ignores the main reason everyone should want to see it -- I refer of course to how we're all looking forward to the two of them combining to make the NBA look like the 70s again. By resembling, uh, "adult film" stars. Taste the 70s! ... no, not literally, oh God, you're gross.

Off the court, Spencer Hawes is a card-carrying Republican whose pre-draft interviews indicate a man thoroughly unconvinced by An Inconvenient Truth. He IS convinced that the entire media is an overexaggerating liberal mess that overstates everything, though. He's at least half-right about the exaggeration, at least when it comes to political media and sports media. Not quite sure about the liberal thing. He has a "God Bless George W. Bush" bumper sticker, and he often goes on hilarious rambling twitter rants that imitate those of the ubiquitous uncomfortably vocal grandparent we all seem to have. He also might pull a Chris Dudley and run for office someday! Maybe Romney will throw him a thank-you endorsement. Beyond his politics, there isn't a ton to point out -- he, like Aaron Gray, is the most-likely-answer for the question of who exactly is going to take up the mantle as the NBA's next Brad Miller. Some would say Chris Kaman, but I'm with Trey Kerby -- Chris Kaman is the first Chris Kaman, which is a lesser Brad Miller, but distinct enough to be his own person. Hawes and Gray are more "Milleresque", so to speak. But Hawes has a ways to go before he truly proves his worth as the NBA's next Brad Miller.

Also: his nickname is "Ball-Friendly." Never forget that, folks.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Nobody got 3/3 yesterday, mostly because of my Colbert-themed shout-out for Spencer Hawes. But alas. Dr. No got a 2/3, so I suppose he gets to be Dr. Yes for a day.

• Player #349 is exactly as effective this year as he was last year. And just like last year, he's not quite what his team needs. Almost, but not enough. Needs more D, more rebounding, more versatility. Could be a shockingly good piece in the right situation, though.

• Player #350 is one of my favorite non-stars. Nobody's ever going to confuse him for one of the greats, but he's been a defensive joy ever since he crashed on stage years ago. And that rebounding, my god.

• Player #351 looked like a promising scorer to start his rookie campaign, but he's been absolutely brutal ever since. His rotation spot just got stolen by what essentially amounts to a literal zombie. He's having a rough year, OK?

Until next week, weary travelers.

• • •

Continue reading

For the last two seasons, watching LaMarcus Aldridge go to work offensively has been an absolute joy. Aldridge owns one of the most unstoppable pet post moves in the league, and represents one of the few joys that classical post aficionados can get from the modern NBA. He does this exceedingly graceful hard right shoulder fake followed by a soft jump hook. If the defender doesn't overplay it, of course -- if they do, he simply shakes them off and explodes to the rim for a dunk. Sounds a touch unimpressive, perhaps, but it's remarkably effective -- Aldridge converted on an absurd 63% of his hook shots last year. Extremely high. It isn't quite Kareem's skyhook, but it's still almost impossible to stop. He folds that in with an excellent long range game -- albeit absent threes -- that takes his defender out of the post and some of the best free throw shooting from his position (81% from the line, on an above-average FTA/FGA to boot). To a man who likes watching big men work for their own offense, Aldridge is sublime -- he hearkens back to the days of McHale and Olajuwon, with a touch of a modern flair.

As for his defense, it's just about as impressive -- he's never going to be confused for Kevin Garnett, but he's been consistently excellent on that end for Portland He's better at covering the pick and roll than almost anyone in the league (excepting, of course, Garnett and Taj Gibson) and he's a solid defender in the low post. His length makes him a decent spot-up cover when he's engaged, although at times last season he looked a touch lost when he had to float on his man outside the paint. I'd attribute that to the general miasma around last year's Blazers before I really impugn Aldridge, though -- he's been an excellent defensive player for years and one of the top defenders at his position since 2010. His only real flaw, defensively, is his relatively disappointing rebounding -- Aldridge is per-possession one of the worst rebounders among any star big man, and he's never going to average the eye-popping rebounding totals that a Kevin Love or a Blake Griffin type player puts up. That's not necessarily to say he doesn't help the Blazers on that end -- the Blazers have traditionally rebounded better as a unit with Aldridge on the floor, and part of that is for the same reason Epke Udoh improves a team's rebounding despite anemic personal rebounding numbers -- he often blocks out the other team's best rebounder, and he's rather adept at tipping out boards to the Portland guards.

Here's the thing. On offense, you have a superstar player who produces blisteringly efficient offense on a silky-smooth classical style unlike anyone else in the league today. On defense, you have a stick of pick-and-roll dynamite whose slim frame is misleading to his actual defensive value, and whose defense is far and away the best out of all the rising star power forwards in the league. His contract is a laugher, paying him around $13 million annually for one of the few legitimate superstar players in the league. He's humble. He's smart. He's got a compelling personal story and a lovely family. He supports his teammates, loves Andre Miller, and stays generally absurdly healthy despite playing in one of the most health-luckless franchises in the league. Without adding a three to his game, it's almost beyond the realm of possibility for Aldridge to be more efficient or multifaceted offensively. Without a front office that can surround him with talent that at least approaches replacement-level, it's essentially beyond the realm of possibility for Aldridge to single-handedly lead a defunct roster to contention in a brutal conference.

I put the question to you. What more does he need to do to be appreciated?

• • •

Kevin Garnett's something of an old hand in the NBA. The grizzled, worn veteran who's been through bar fights and wars and the proverbial wringer. It manifests partly in his comically over-the-top persona, where he inexplicably cusses out rookies and makes fun of hairless jerks. It also manifests in his ubiquity -- Garnett isn't just an old hand in terms of his play and demeanor, he's an old hand in terms of his experience and knowledge. Nothing is going to take from Garnett the fact that he's the highest salaried player in the history of the league -- given the salary cap, he's likely to remain the highest inflation-adjusted paid NBA player in the history of the sport for the sport's existence. And having spent years toiling away on dismal Minnesota teams, he provides a unique perspective for stars in LeBron's position a la 2010, or Love's position a la now.

People forget about it, but through the rough exterior and absurd persona, Garnett is actually a pretty intelligent guy. He's compassionate, and in his slavish devotion to this general act of cruelty and indifference to end his career, he's managed to make almost everyone forget about how he was before he went to Boston and won his ring. Because he was different. He was the kid. He was an NBA shout-out to the legend of Sisyphus, toiling under the weight of an overwhelmingly poor roster and a constant barrage of double-teams. Sisyphus was forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down as soon as he got to the top. For eternity. Given this context, his persona had a markedly different flavor back in Minneapolis -- before he actually won, it just manifested as an earnest reflection of a man who wanted to win but couldn't. The stresses and hopes of an impossibly incompetent franchise and a depressingly downtrodden fanbase took a toll on the man, and the toll was commensurate with the intensity of the feelings. Perhaps he went over the line occasionally, perhaps he didn't really think about what he was doing. But there was never the appearance of spite. Just a man shut down by circumstances relatively beyond his control. Then he went to Boston and became intolerable. Because he was actually winning and still acting the exact same way.

But that's beside the point, kind of.

Garnett is misunderstood, in a general sense. He made his money, which is fine, and he made his choices -- it wasn't predestined that he stay with the Wolves, and to some extent, the writing was on the wall relatively early. But it's also hard to look at it in hindsight and get a good sense of what Garnett was thinking at the time. And it's hard to really look at his career and think "oh, well, this guy was properly appreciated!" It's difficult to watch his defensive dominance in his mid 30s and say "dang, he really didn't have a supporting cast in Minnesota, did he?" It's not easy to examine Garnett and come to any other conclusion than that of a lost career -- a player whose statistical production is peerless and whose visual impact seems greater still, yet a player whose best years were his waning ones and whose statistically dominant years were almost completely squandered. And a player who was never really appreciated for the sheer depth of his production, or the way he made his team so much better. His array of post-moves -- enfeebled now, with wizening skin and creaky bones -- were dominant in his prime. His defense was dominant too. But basketball isn't simply a game of who's-the-better-player. Even if we like to respect players on good teams as though they're playing one-on-five. The zeitgeist has never quite caught on to the idea of properly appreciating a player whose team forces them to actually play one-on-five. Not quite there yet, I'm afraid.

• • •

LaMarcus Aldridge gets no respect, and it kills me.

Think of it this way -- I don't love Kevin Garnett. I've always been a Duncan guy, even back in the day. Something about Garnett's numbers never quite sat right with me. But that's besides the point. I can't in good faith deny the truth. For 10 years, Garnett's statistical production the 1b to Duncan's 1a. And they alternated, year-in and year-out. The difference wasn't some internal tough-juice concoction hearkening back to Jordan from Space Jam. It wasn't some mental wrinkle Duncan had that Garnett never did. It wasn't the style of the jersey, the shear of their hair, the cut of their jib. It was the names that flanked them. It was comparing Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker with Wally Sczerbiak and Stephon Marbury. It was comparing Gregg Popovich with Flip Saunders. It was comparing R.C. Buford with Kevin McHale. Duncan is phenomenal. He's great. Garnett was too, though, and simply defaulting to the idea that he "figured it out" when he got to Boston is analytically lazy and incoherent-at-best.

As for today? In-the-now? I'm a bit afraid that the exact same in-the-moment forgetfulness plagues our analysis and our general appreciation for yet another star-crossed terrible team. Chris Bosh is a good player. Blake Griffin is a good player. This late-career rendition of Dirk Nowitzki is a good player. Today, LaMarcus Aldridge is better than all of them. He's an infinitely more multifacted offensive player than either Griffin or Bosh, with defense that takes either to town in a moment flat. He has more post moves than any active young star in the league, and his absurd versatility makes him good enough to act as a go-to option on all but 4 or 5 teams in the league. He's not the offensive player Dirk is, even at Dirk's age, but his intense defense fords the gap and then some. Aldridge is not Kevin Love, no -- his range isn't quite as far out, and his rebounding will continue to dock a few points. But even with me being one of the few who thinks Love's defense is underrated, Aldridge is a far superior defender, and that counts for a lot as a big man in this league. If you put Aldridge next to Pekovic, you really have to ponder what wonders that defense would produce. It's an open question, and it's a good one.

In the end, the key differentiator between Aldridge and the others has nothing to do with how they play or how they rate out on an individual basis. Aldridge is worse simply because his franchise has done an abjectly terrible job of surrounding him with competent pieces. The Blazers currently have one of the worst bench units in the history of the league. Even with Aldridge having a bit of a down season, the Blazers are 16 points per 100 possessions better when he's on the floor so far this year. Not a typo. The Portland bench has been about as bad as humanly possible, and even with Lillard's brilliant breakout year, the key to the Portland puzzle -- in the times it looks competent -- has always lied within their underrated superstar.

He's mettled with flawed rosters and poor style-fits. He hasn't necessarily been put in a position to succeed, but he's always done his best and he's done an inarguably great job. The burden of proof isn't on Aldridge or Garnett, and it never was. They did their part -- or in Aldridge's case, he's doing it now. But the burden to watch, examine, absorb? More than anything, appreciate? That's our burden of proof, as viewers and fans. Not theirs.

• • •

• • •

This post is dedicated to Caleb Kent, a Portland-dwelling friend of mine whose life's difficulty always seems to be inversely proportional to how ridiculously awesome he is as a person. Keep rocking, Caleb. You're the best. Legitimately.

• • •

• For more capsules on members of the Portland Trailblazers, visit the Blazers Capsule Directory •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with LaMarcus Aldridge, Brad Miller, and Shelvin Mack.

• • •

Follow LaMarcus Aldridge on Twitter at @aldridge_12.

I'm generally pretty proud of this project. I've worked really inordinately hard on it, in ways that may not be exceedingly obvious if you just read a few of them every now and again. Each of these stupid things goes through an excess of increasingly ridiculous editing, an excess of scouting, and an excess of thought and consideration before I push them public. But here's the thing. Even with all that, even with the amount of effort I'm putting in here? Some of them kind of suck. Not many. I'd say out of the 345 I've written so far, about 10-15 could really use whole-scale rewrites. And only 3 or 4 come to mind immediately as ones that I wish I had back. There's one I emphatically regret, though, and one I've been considering rewriting for a while. That one? Kevin Garnett's.

The reason his capsule turned out badly -- at least in my view -- is relatively simple. His capsule came to task quite literally the day after Tim Duncan's, and with Duncan on the mind, I found it impossible to avoid talking about Tim Duncan for what amounted to the absolute entirety of Kevin Garnett's capsule. Not on purpose, but simply because it was on my mind and I didn't really have any idea what else to say. I think I finally figured out how to make amends to the spurned Garnett fans, though. Not another capsule, not a full-scale rewrite. Instead, I'm just going to sequester some analysis in here. I gotcha, Celtics fans. I decided to eschew the normally-obtuse metaphors and the efforts in recontextualization I usually put into my Capsule (Plus) posts. I'll abandon the odd ideas I was floating around for this one and go with something significantly more traditional. Today, I write about LaMarcus Aldridge. But I also write about Kevin Garnett, and pose a bit of a question: who here really needs to prove their greatness?

Here's the thing. On offense, you have a superstar player who produces blisteringly efficient offense on a silky-smooth classical style unlike anyone else in the league today. On defense, you have a stick of pick-and-roll dynamite whose slim frame is misleading to his actual defensive value, and whose defense is far and away the best out of all the rising star power forwards in the league. His contract is a laugher, paying him around $13 million annually for one of the few legitimate superstar players in the league. He's humble. He's smart. He's got a compelling personal story and a lovely family. He supports his teammates, loves Andre Miller, and stays generally absurdly healthy despite playing in one of the most health-luckless franchises in the league. Without adding a three to his game, it's almost beyond the realm of possibility for Aldridge to be more efficient or multifaceted offensively. Without a front office that's actually committed at surrounding him with talent, it's somewhat beyond the realm of possibility for anyone to put together a playoff-caliber team, with the possible exception of LeBron James.

I put the question to you. What more does he need to do to be appreciated?

For more on LaMarcus Aldridge, please read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Brad Miller on Twitter at __@TreyKerby.___

Last season, Brad Miller retired.

This was met with an incredible amount of fanfare and sadness for a player who averaged -- over his career -- 11 points and 7 rebounds on 28 minutes a game with shaky defense and less-than-sterling tertiaries. There was never a team in history that said "oh, man, we really need Brad Miller, he's the best center in the league." There was never a team that said "without Brad Miller, we are misfit children with no jobs, no hope, and no cash." There was never a team that said "Brad Miller is really attractive and we shouldn't sign him because he'll steal all our wives." Actually, there was a team that said that. It was my work pickup team last year. But that's beside the point. Point is, he's not essential from a basketball perspective and he played 146 minutes last year -- 146! Why am I writing a capsule about him? Who cares, and why would anyone care about Brad Miller?

Here's the thing. You don't need to be an amazing player to be a memorable one. Look, I love basketball, and I love analyzing the NBA. But in 10 years, I'm not going to pretend like I'll remember who the 4th best point guard in the league was in 2012. I won't remember Raymond Felton destroying Portland. I won't remember what seed the Celtics got. But I WILL remember when legendary journeyman Roger Mason Jr. tweeted the "how u" botch on Twitter. I WILL remember Mike Miller's absurd season-ending game that should've been the capper on a sad career. I WILL remember this classic exchange from yesterday on Twitter.

... okay, no, there's absolutely no way I'll remember that. Need to stop getting carried away here.

Point is, basketball is about more than basketball, in the same way that anything we follow in life is about far more than just the outcomes or the philosophies that lie behind it. Sports fandom is a microcosm for examinations of the self. Examinations of society. Examinations of the beer you're drinking. Examinations of yelling at friends. Examinations of bros. The inherent meaningless undertone to sports and fandom makes the process and the way you choose to enjoy it that much more important -- everyone has a hobby or two that they enjoy despite knowing it's incredibly useless, an absurd waste of time, and ultimately completely tertiary to everything you wish to accomplish in life. Sports means whatever you want it to mean, when you get down to brass tacks. It can mean the search for truth, it can mean the search for hot wings. World's your oyster, all of that.

Which brings us back to Brad Miller. He was never a phenomenal player, although he was better than anyone had a right to expect -- per Basketball Prospectus, upon his retirement, Brad Miller had accumulated 72.6 Wins Above Replacement, which ranks him 111th all-time in the modern era. Which isn't bad for an undrafted player -- 3rd best undrafted guy ever, as a matter of fact. But what he gives fans isn't really the way he plays or the way he held up a team. It's the way he inspires brilliant scribes like Trey Kerby. Or, well. Me, kind of. The way I'd describe my enjoyment of Brad Miller is thus -- he awkwardly pump faked his way into my heart long ago, and he never left. His absurd hobbies and general doofiness made him as much of a must-watch player for me as Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant ever were. And I thought about it for a while, and ruminated on it, and wondered if -- perhaps -- I was missing some objective truth by enjoying Brad Miller's markedly inferior game more than the games of two generational greats. And I realized I wasn't. You enjoy what you enjoy. Same is true about politics, art, religion, et cetera -- the only difference with sports is that everything's so transient to begin with that there's no real reason to feel bad about it. As Kerby said -- "he's just a dude. He doesn't need a narrative."

And that, more than anything, is why you should care about Brad Miller.

... Well, this too.

KEVIN GARNETT: "This is it. It's for all the marbles. I'm sitting in the house loading up the pump, I'm loading up the Uzis, I've got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I'm ready for war."

BRAD MILLER, ASKED ABOUT... THAT: "Oh. Cool. I'm bringing my shotgun, my bow and arrow, my four-wheel drive truck and four wheelers and run over him. It's going to be the ultimate battle. He's a warrior, and that's how I like to play when I step between the lines."

This is the greatest media exchange any two competitors have ever had. In the history of sport. Ever.

• • •

_Follow Shelvin Mack on Twitter at __@ShelvinMack.___

I actually liked Shelvin Mack at Butler quite a bit. Ever since the 2010 title game, I've taken a weird interest in the Butler Bulldogs, for two reasons. One, I like their coach and think they're a good school with a good program. Two, I constantly call the school "President Butlerhands". That's really fun to say, and it gives me an excuse to discover increasingly strange reasons to feign interest in Butler's sporting prospects and watch their teams. That probably isn't the best reason to like a school, but it's as good as any reason and I don't like my alma mater. I don't see the problem! Anyway. I liked Mack at Butler. He was something of a bulldog defensively, and showed some serious shutdown chops at the NCAA level. Unfortunately for the universe, NBA players are larger than NCAA players, so his ability to act as a shutdown defender has been sincerely compromised. Part of his advantage in college was simply an athleticism advantage and a size advantage over most NCAA point guards -- he doesn't have that in the NBA, and as such, he can't really be a shutdown guy all game. He's a good defender, but not an exemplary one.

His NBA career has been... well, even worse than that, to say the least. He might be a backup point guard someday -- that's kind of his best-case-scenario. He struggled with just about everything last year, shooting the ball as poorly as humanly possible (well below the position average from every range on the floor) and posted a sky high turnover rate. His assist production was solid, and it wasn't all bad -- he had great rebounding for a guard and drew a surprising number of free throws. Not to mention his passable defense. But his shooting was so awful it overrode everything he did right, and shackled him to the bench on an awful team. To add insult to injury, after featuring him to end the year and trying him out as an eternal backup for John Wall going forward, the Wizards waived Mack before opening night this season. This was sad for two reasons.

1. It's always sad when neat dudes get waived.
2. John Wall is out and he actually was first on the depth chart.

The Wizards waiving Mack has led to the Wizards playing Jordan Crawford -- "he who shall not defer" -- at the point guard position and signing Shaun Livingston. Which I like. But it's sort of sad to see them give up on Mack before he even got a chance at a sophomore season -- point guards are notoriously low-production enterprises for their first few seasons, and they need a bit of polish and experience before they cut the turnovers and learn how to operate at an NBA level. He's currently with the Maine Red Claws, and I'm hoping he gets a call-up from a team at some point -- even if he never recovers as a shooter (which is unlikely -- he was a decent shooter in college and there's virtually no way he'll stay as bad as he was his rookie year), his defense and passing ability should let him play some meaningful minutes on a lottery team or as a perennial backup. Not glamorous, but still.

As for the main reason I want him back? I need an arena to play this during his first game back. Need it.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Tuesday's riddles were apparently the easiest thing ever, since they were answered correctly by... Sir Thursday, wul.f, J, A, and Mike L. Five people! FIVE PERFECT GUESSES! FIVE CHAMPIONSHIP RINGS. MAMBA OUT.

• Player #346 looked pretty decent for the Lakers in stretches of last season, but all things considered, they're probably happy to have him gone. His new team isn't quite as happy to have him arrive.

• Player #347 comes very early when you arrange players by their first names. Won't stop him from being gloomy and midtones, though.

• Player #348 is America, and so can you.

Bless you, child.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Samuel Dalembert, Jason Smith, and DeShawn Stevenson.

• • •

_Follow Samuel Dalembert on Twitter at __@sammyd76erz.___

I've never been a huge fan of Samuel Dalembert's game. It's not any personal failing of his -- it's mainly just his skillset, which I've always found a bit of an ill mesh. When it comes to passing, he's got hands of stone and has never in his career been able to master the art of passing. Whether that's a dump-down, a post entry play to pass out to the open option, or even just a simple inbounds pass... Dalembert isn't great at it. If Boris Diaw is one side of the spectrum (blatant and unnecessary overpassing due to significant underlying talent), Dalembert is decidedly the opposite, and not for lack of trying. He does try to throw passes every now and again, but it rarely works and it's rarely pretty. Additionally, while he's a large man, he's no overwhelming force of nature a la Shaq or Bynum. This leads him to often settle his post-ups for shots that are a bit too far out -- he takes more 3-9 foot chippies and 10-15 foot midrange shots than almost every big man in the game, and while he produces an admirably above-average percentage from those ranges, that still means he's only shooting about 40% on his offense with absolutely marginal spacing gains. Not totally what you like seeing from your center, offensively. He's a very good free throw shooter who never draws contact. A decent post player who's rarely tied to the post. A phenomenal rebounder who... no caveats needed, really -- he's just a phenomenal rebounder, let's be honest.

Defensively, Dalembert is good but a bit overrated. He puts up gaudy block totals, but he fouls quite a lot and subjectively doesn't get great post position against bigger guys. Which isn't that common, it's worth noting -- he's 6'11", and he does an excellent job of swallowing up players smaller than he is. But when a true 7'0" comes to call he tends to be a bit of a poor cover, and his rotations often seemed more focused on following the ball for a highlight-reel block rather than a fundamentally sound defensive attack. His size, length, and general fluidity make him a valuable defender, but watching him you tend to get the sense that he's leaving a bit on the table by being so focused on the blocks rather than the whole picture. He's still good, just not quite as good as he could be, and that bugs me at times. On the other hand, Dalembert is essentially the embodiment of all NBA players that are far better people than they are NBA players. Really, really great guy. He's from Haiti, and was intimately involved -- through both financial contributions and trips out to Haiti to help out -- in the cleanup from the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake that most people have inexplicably forgotten about. He seems like a great guy from all accounts.

I don't have much else to say, other than register my personal confusion that Skiles has yanked around Dalembert's minutes so much. The Bucks picked him up for a reason, and while he's getting up there in the years, he's still been a rather effective player for them. With the exception of the Bucks' win against Chicago a few weeks back, I haven't watched Bucks games with the thought Dalembert really looked actively bad -- he's doing his job, certainly. But he's still getting his minutes yanked around as though he's playing like absolute crap. Which I think I've mentioned on five to six Bucks players in a row. For reasons unknown to me. So, yeah. I don't understand Skiles' rotations. At all. Even before this excellent Point Forward highlight of the ridiculously changing rotations, I was wondering what was going on -- the animation just made it all the more befuddling. Perhaps he's just thinking about basketball on a plane of thought far beyond that which I am capable of. But it makes no sense to me whatsoever. Alas.

• • •

Follow Jason Smith by seeing things that happened, things that will h--wait, that's the Dead Zone.

Jason Smith is a classic example of a player whose status as a lesser offensive player on a very bad team gave him a shot to improve a few facets of his game on the sly with none the wiser. I refer to his at-rim game, something that had been exceedingly below-average for the majority of his career but completely blew up last season. Smith shot a startling 80% at the rim last year, exceeding his previous career high by almost 15 percentage points. Several reasons that happened. First, he went 27/27 on dunks in 40 games last season -- in the previous 133 games combined, Smith had only taken 24 dunk attempts. He showed a better adeptness at cutting to the rim and a better general understanding of space last season, which is sort of funny if only because it's incredibly silly that he shows this sort of versatility right after Chris Paul left. Still. Fun stuff. More important than the heightened incidence of dunks, though, was the heightened conversion of layups -- he was simply getting himself into slightly better position and getting a lot more of those benefit-of-the-doubt rolls than he used to. He shot 70% on layups last season after 50% the season before and 57% the season before that. Combine those two things -- which started in last year's preseason and maintained all year -- and you have a player mixing up a bit of previously absent offensive value.

The key problem to keep in mind with Smith's advancement is the same one that dogs every player who has a quantum leap in one area of their game -- it may be sustainable in a vacuum, but the NBA isn't a vacuum. Subjectively, most teams didn't really make much of an effort to guard Smith much at the rim. He's traditionally been a floor-spacing midrange-type player, and when you're that kind of a guy, teams don't exactly make a strong show of running you out of the post. In fact, they often get lost on you when you enter too closely, almost as though they're assuming you can't really finish -- now that Smith has shown he can, scouting reports will begin to adjust to that reality. Last season, the Hornets were a pretty bad team. Bad enough that you can't subjectively see teams guarding Smith all that differently. That's because teams don't scout every team exogenous to the quality of the team -- if you're playing the five win Hornets, your coaching staff isn't going to get quite as deep-in-the-weeds into scouting your opponent and digging out nuggets like Smith's improving at-rim game as you would be if you were scouting a very good team with the same player. This is (incidentally) one of the reasons it's so hard for rookies on good teams to play well -- other teams simply spend more ink and tears scouting the better teams in the league, and when you have a weak link like a rookie, they're much better scouted on a night-to-night basis and they aren't usually allowed more than 6 or 7 games before scouting starts to catch up with short-lived trends. On terrible teams, the scouting is less prominent and the rookie doesn't necessarily need to contend with micromanaged adjustments meant to completely change the way they're playing the game. Hence why they're a bit better.

For the first few years of his career, Smith played tentative and boneheaded basketball on the defensive end of the court. He finally seemed to make strides to that end last season, when he heavily bought in to Monty's rotations and defensive philosophy. He made himself genuinely useful on the defensive end. He became sharper on his rotations, as Coach Williams gave him a more direct and set series of areas he wanted Smith to focus on defensively. Additionally, he stopped backpedaling quite so much and learned to move laterally to cut guys off -- this helped him cut down his previously-quite-high foul rate, which also helped him stay on the court and get into a better rhythm with the players around him. He isn't anything to write home about, necessarily -- a bit slight for his height, a bit slow, a bit lacking at rebounding -- but he certainly isn't bad. Which is essentially all you can say for Smith as a whole. He's decent. Nothing revolutionary, nothing amazing, but not bad at all. And on his current contract, he's a steal -- the Hornets locked him up at $7.5 million over three years in the 2011 offseason, which seemed like a possible reach at the time but increasingly looks like one of the best contracts in the league. He's putting up midlevel production on less than $3 million dollars a year right now. Crazy nice stuff. A good trade chip, too, if the Hornets choose to go that route. Nice finagling, Demps.

• • •

Follow DeShawn Stevenson to the club using his ATM machine.

Last season, DeShawn Stevenson may have been the worst player in the league. It's been coming for a while, honestly, and although he was just a lockout removed from being a contributing piece on an excellent title team, he's been on the verge of toppling over for a while. His perimeter defense has always been decent, but it's been falling off somewhat poorly for years, as his mobility leaves him and his strength turns brittle. He still takes charges with the best of them and tries to stay with his man, but it's not all that difficult to simply run him off a screen or fool him with an awkward pump fake. Offensively, though? Lord almighty. A few facts about DeShawn Stevenson's 2012 horror-show.

• DeShawn Stevenson took 7 layup attempts in the entirety of last year's 66 game season. He made two. (The five missed layups were all hilarious, by the way. If you have Synergy access, go look at them. Wish I had the video know-how to share it.)

• DeShawn Stevenson has not even attempted a dunk since March 8th, 2010. This... this is only scarcely related to 2012, but it's still sort of hilarious. He's small, but he's strong. The man simply doesn't have a vertical anymore. Not "a small" vertical. He does not have one.

• DeShawn Stevenson shot three 3-pointers per night in the 2012 season. He made 28% of them. That's barely one in four, which would stand to reason that the man had several games of zero-three-pointers made. Turns out to be a true story. DeShawn Stevenson had 28 games (out of 51 games played) where he didn't make a single three. He's a 3-and-D player. That... that is not very optimal, I do not believe.

All that said, this year he hasn't been nearly as bad as last season. Sort of damning with faint praise, but there you go. He's been a passable three point shooter (currently at 42% on the year), and he's been staying out of the within-arc region of the floor on offense. Which is good. In fact, to that end, Stevenson has taken just 12 shots within the three point line over his 16 games this year. He's only made 4-of-12, but when you're cutting back that severely, you can live with percentages like that. His defense has been useful too, helping the Hawks replace Joe Johnson by-committee. He's 31, and it's unlikely he stays in the league for that much time after this season ends. But one has to respect the fact that he's still grinding at it and doing a passable job of it.

Off the court, Stevenson is much more interesting. Most people know roughly about his feud with LeBron James, which ranks to me as one of the most hilarious feuds in the history of the league. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it, and point out the obvious -- how delightfully absurd it is that DeShawn Stevenson considers LeBron James his basketball rival. That would be much akin to me considering Usain Bolt my sprinting rival, or Cliff Lee my pitching rival. It's just so remarkably incongruous with reality and their skillsets it boggles the mind. He's also a funny guy off the court. Smarter than most people assume -- everyone thought the ATM machine was for his own use, but it was actually just so he could skim off the top when his NBA buddies needed cash to burn. And it worked! His business model, insofar as it is one, makes sense. He probably makes a nominal profit on it, assuming it's used often enough for the fees to cover maintenance costs. He's able to increase the surcharge because he can j-- ... Okay. Gonna stop myself here. I don't think anyone ACTUALLY wants to know the mechanics of how he can make a profit out of his ATM machine. But I do know how ATM machines work and why he is profiting off of it. Just saying, TBJ Army. Totally open to being an expert witness on the subject. I know a guy, and the guy is myself.

Mamba out.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Good work on a 3/3 guess from Andrew Kieser.

• Player #343 is the most underrated star in the NBA. He's on a brilliant value contract and he's one of the best 3 players at his position. And nobody seems to notice. It's not easy being red and white. Player Capsule Plus, most likely.

• Player #344 has a pet named Yams and a heart the size of ten goliaths. Wait, that's Trey Kerby. Sorry. They look the same.

• "Return of the [Player #345]. / Once again, Return of the [Player #345] / Top of the world, Return of the [Player #345] / Here I go."

I am on Day #7 of this year's "no soda, no caffeine" purge that I started on a complete whim for no reason whatsoever. It's been... a thing. This morning I saw doughnuts with names that sound like prostitutes and feel like my brain is being whipped with razors. That said, I am near the end of this particular sonic journey. And perhaps when it ends I'll be able to sleep, perchance to dream.

Godspeed, hoops populi.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with DeJuan Blair, Bill Walker, and Goran Dragic.

• • •

_Follow DeJuan Blair on Twitter at __@DeJuan45.___

Good ol' DeJuan Blair. Let's not bury the lede -- it's pretty cool that he's still playing basketball at all, let alone having a relatively decent career. A lot of people forget or tend to overlook this given that he's been in the league 3 full seasons and has enough experience that he's essentially a veteran at this point, but DeJuan Blair has no ACLs. None whatsoever. The real knock on Blair coming out of college was that his lack of ACLs was going to eventually turn him into a useless NBA player, a man whose body would break down halfway through his rookie year and who'd whittle away the rest of his minutes an injury-tattered bust throughout the duration of a short and meaningless NBA career. And, well. No. That didn't happen. In fact, Blair has been almost preternaturally healthy in his time in the league -- no real knee problems of any note have resulted from his lack of ACLs, and his only injuries that I can remember include a nose injury from an errant Hibbert elbow late last season and his recent sprained ankle. That's it.

In over 3 seasons of play, as a nominal big man? That's insanely healthy, and while he's registered some DNP-CDs in there (three so far, in the regular season), it's really rather remarkable that Blair was able to put together over three seasons a bill of health that clean. A credit to him and a credit to San Antonio's medical staff. Good show, all. As for the pick itself, a lot of people praise the Spurs endlessly for it. That's never made much sense to me. Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, George Hill, Kawhi Leonard -- those are good picks. Those are ones where they found something others weren't paying attention to. Blair, though? He was one of the most obvious picks the Spurs have ever made. As long as you as a franchise had any faith in your medical staff, he was a no-brainer pick from about #20 onwards. Apparently, of all the franchises in that duration, only San Antonio really had any faith in their medical staff. It was an obvious choice that virtually every other team in the league simply refused to make. Simple as that. There are a lot of examples of the Spurs as an excellent drafting team. DeJuan Blair -- the obvious choice to end all obvious choices -- is not that example, even if it's the easiest story to remember and retell.

On the court, Blair is quite the mixed bag. He's got a lot of hustle, but the man's a poor defender in every respect and needs to learn to use his weight to set proper screens. That's one of the keys, to me. He's never in his NBA career been able to consistently set good screens and I don't really see why -- he's short, sure, but he's an emphatic widebody. Look at Diaw's screens, when Diaw's locked in. Look at Chuck Hayes. Look at ANY slightly tubby-but-short center -- there are ways to set your weight to make the screen formidable even if you aren't a great defender. It's a skill he needs to master. He's a value big with the length of a Barkley-type and an insane amount of rebounding talent, although that talent seems to have been scouted better by other teams throughout the years. His passing game is extraordinarily underdeveloped for a guy with arms and strength like he has, but his post game is a bit underrated and he has the exact skillset needed to make tall and lanky defenders look foolish -- he pushes against them with his weight, uses his low center of gravity to get them wobbling, then creates enough space to create a layup with his wide reach. Which is nice, offensively, and makes him a useful offensive player against lineups like Oklahoma City (where Ibaka and Perkins trade off on him, both of whom are susceptible to his offensive moves) and Los Angeles (where Gasol is exactly the sort of defender he always goes off on).

The big problem with Blair is that he gives most of it back at the other end, where he's a remarkably bad defender. Doesn't maintain position, barely rotates, fouls a lot. As his rebounding has slowly fallen off, his defensive value (formerly higher when he'd vastly improve the Spurs' ability to rebound every miss) withers away and leaves him with nothing. Which is bad. I'd like to think Blair's endgame is going to be a far less talented Barkley-type with less-than-Barkley-but-more-than-nonextant defensive chops, but he has yet to really show me what I feel he needs to on the defensive end. Can't really pencil him in for any defensive talents if he doesn't show any off, you know? Most likely, he'll end up a bench player now-and-forever. Which isn't the end of the world, although it's annoying that his size is just small enough to make defense so difficult for him. He's a nice dude, no doubt, even if following him on twitter is a bit confusing. Mentions of "P.O.P." abound, with all-caps LOLs after virtually every tweet. Funny at first, eventually becomes tiring and confusing, but alas. He also has an incredibly hot girlfriend who once did semi-pornographic shots of her in a painted-on DeJuan Blair jersey that I refuse to link to. (Speaking of which, when taken in context of some of the personal drama that's surrounded the Spurs the past few years -- Blair's girlfriend posing semi-nude in Spurs garb, the Crawford photo, the public Pop/Stern feud, Tony and Eva, Pop's feud with team USA, Stephen Jackson doing anything, etc... aren't the Spurs actually becoming oddly counterculture? This is strange to consider. I'm just going to leave this thought here and abandon it for a bit.)

Anyway. I like Blair. Don't think he has much more upside than "decent rotation guy", but I'm emphatically sure he can be that. And that's a pretty big accomplishment, all things considered, given his knees and the expectations -- which is a fact that absolutely shouldn't get lost when Spurs fans get disappointed he's nothing more.

• • •

_Follow Bill Walker on Twitter at __@sky12walker.___

Bill Walker's an interesting one, and just between you and me, I'm a bit sad that he hasn't found his way back into the NBA yet. He's one of those NBA disappointments whose career's foibles are neither his fault in any way nor really under his control -- he's a victim of circumstance and timing, and both may have conspired to end his NBA career before it really had a chance to begin. A long time back, he and O.J. Mayo were two of the top prospects in the country. Many actually thought Walker the superior of the two. It was like the Leon Powe & LeBron James dynamic, actually. Walker teamed up with Michael Beasley at Kansas State during his college years, leading the Wildcats to their best season in school history and generally making mincemeat of the undersized mess the NCAA sent out to oppose them. Unfortunately, Walker suffered injury problems even in college (including a nasty ruptured ACL his freshman year, which is a terrifying thing to recover from that young), and he ended up dropping from a definite lottery pick all the way to #47 after suffering yet another knee injury in a workout with the Warriors.

Walker's not a bad player, although he's never been anything phenomenal in the NBA. He started his career with the Celtics and didn't show much, finally escaping Beantown in mid-2010 as a skid-greaser in the trade for Nate Robinson. Funny enough, he might've been the best player moved in the deal -- he had a breakout of sorts in New York, proving himself to be a relatively decent rotation player with a neat blend of not-completely-incompetent defense and excellent spot-up three point shooting. He had a few good years with the Knicks, alternating haphazardly between moments of sublime quintessence and baffling incompetence. One minute he'd be draining threes like he had no other care in the world -- the next, he'd be shanking easy dunks and getting lost behind a set of extremely simple screens. I don't quite agree with the supposition made by Ryan O'Hanlon at The Classical earlier this year -- that is, the idea that Bill Walker "never learned how to play basketball." He makes his threes, he rebounds well, he hustles. Yes, he has his problems. He turns the ball over obscenely much for a non-ball-dominant tertiary player, and his passing is remarkably poor. He barely ever draws fouls and he barely ever does anything beyond rim-rocking dunks and well-timed three point shots. Which made him an excellent target for Jeremy Lin during the height of Linsanity -- he got about a bucket-per-game from Lin's hand while Lin and Walker were together, and they seemed to have a nice touch of on-court chemistry.

Still. I find it hard not to root for the guy. He has a lot of work ethic. Nice guy, pretty funny, and seems pretty smart. The Classical piece on him is well-done, and covers a lot of good points -- no, he didn't need to learn "how to play basketball" in the traditional way, and no coach really challenged him to learn fundamentals like ball-control or defense. But I'm in some disagreement over the article's general tone, implying that Walker never learned these things, or that his career is somewhat lost at sea because he hasn't seemed to fully internalize them yet. If you watch footage of Walker from last year, and look at how his career's progressed, I don't see how you can really deny that he's trying, and that he's definitely made strides -- his defense has gotten quite a bit better over the years, and he's developed from an off-the-dribble player to an off-the-catch type. He's a better three point shooter than the numbers imply -- he shot an absurdly low percentage on corner threes last year despite being a generally excellent corner-three shooter both in college and in 2011. He'd make a good addition to any playoff team in need of three point shooting on the wing from a defender that doesn't kill you, like the Grizzlies or the Celtics. He probably can be had for a minimum deal. I'm not sure why he hasn't gotten a call-up yet -- the man's just 25 years old, he's relatively healthy, and while injuries have sapped his game, they haven't eliminated it. Generally I prefer D-League callups to vets, but when the vet is as young and potential-stricken as Walker (and comes so cheaply!), I can't help but hope he comes back.

He's also responsible for my single favorite Seth Rosenthal series ever. Missing you, Bill.

• • •

_Follow Goran Dragic on Twitter at __@Goran_Dragic.___

I don't dislike Goran Dragic. I have bad memories tied to him, sure -- Dragic single-handedly kicked the Spurs when they were down in the 2010 playoffs, as the Suns experienced the sort of franchise-wide catharsis that only comes once in a lifetime and swept what then appeared to be Tim Duncan's last chance at a championship team out of the playoffs in embarrassingly lopsided fashion. Dragic was, as most remember, almost solely responsible for the Suns' win in game three of that series -- he scored 23 points in the fourth quarter of the contest, which I like to contextualize by stating that Dragic scored more points in that fourth quarter than LeBron James scored in every single fourth quarter of the 2011 finals combined. It was a good night for the kid, let's just say. The 2011 Brandon Roy night before 2011 Brandon Roy's night, so to speak. Game of his career? Game of the century? Game of my lifetime?

Okay, none of the above. Perhaps the game of his career, to-date, but I've got a feeling he's got more in him than that. Just because it's the best he's got so far doesn't mean it'll stay that way -- Dragic is actually a really solid player, and chances are pretty high he'll reach a bit higher someday. We'll start on the end of the court guards aren't usually known for -- Dragic is one of the better defensive point guards in the league. He's adept at shadowing his man despite so-so quickness. He's got a highly developed sense of when to dive into a lane and cut off a pass before the players put them up. As said, not incredibly quick... but it doesn't really matter much, as Dragic tends to get physical enough that you don't really have a chance to take advantage of the lacking quickness. He reminds me a bit of a highly souped up defensive-prime Vujacic, in a smaller frame and a more effective position. Physical, mushes you, gets you inflamed and making terrible decisions on the daily. That's how he approaches defense. It helps that he's a tad large for a point guard, measuring up at around 200 pounds at 6'4" -- he's lanky, but a bit large and with a wingspan longer than the average. It helps. He's a good match for just about every non-freak guard in the league and can safely cover most if not all bench point guards, which is a nice feature.

Offensively, the story's more mixed. I hear a lot of people give a ton of praise to Dragic's passing game, and while I agree that he's decent, I'd stop short of saying it's anything to write home about. By the numbers, he has a slightly above-average assist rate for a point guard (good) and a well above-average turnover rate (not so good). Aesthetically, his passing isn't Rubio-esque nor is it Arenas-level drab. It's all just very average. No next-level court vision, but no insignificant talent either. As for his personal offense, again, it's a bit mixed. His shot still leaves a bit to be desired, despite being quite improved last year. He helped himself quite a bit by sticking to an extremely efficient distribution of shots (over 2/3 of his shots came at the rim or behind the 3 point line), and that led to high overall scoring numbers and composite efficiency. But break it down and you still see a few of the problems with his scoring game -- he doesn't spot up well (and tends to create more offense for himself than one would perhaps appreciate), his three point shot is neither phenomenal nor below average, and he's an average-to-poor midrange shooter. On the other hand, he's a FANTASTIC finisher at the rim, one of the absolute best at his position. And the ability to stick to an efficient distribution of shots (something he's done throughout his career) is an underrated talent in the league. So perhaps I'm just being a bit too hard on him.

Ironically, before last season, I'd assessed Dragic's upside as "a starter for a noncontender a la Kyle Lowry." I'd amend that to say that after Lowry's breakout 2012, I'm not sure that's really fair to Lowry. And after Dragic's breakout 2012, I'm not sure it's fair to Dragic either! I could see him putting in time as a Mike Conley-type figure later in his career, if he can take control of his turnovers and make his way to the right team. Conley is absolutely essential to what the Grizzlies do -- I could see Dragic do the same, later on. Just needs to improve his handling a bit and take better care of the ball. And improve his shot. And keep his defensive intensity. And... well, alright, now I'm manually realizing that I'm underrating Mike Conley. Is there no point guard I can properly rate? Wait, I got it. Mike Bibby. That guy sucks. There. Done. Faith in my own abilities restored. Off the court, Dragic's your average everyday foreign guy -- a bit brash, a bit silly, fun to follow. He also was the star of one of the league's all-time best feuds, the feud that began in 2010 when Dragic insulted Sasha Vujacic's mother and called Vujacic a "very low human being." It's hilarious. Read about the feud, if you get the chance -- it's absolutely worth your time.

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At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. I was kind of shocked that so many people got perfect scores on yesterday's riddles. Are these getting easier with so few players left to go? Good work to Dr. No, Alex, and Mike L.

• Player #340 was the centerpiece of one of the most confusing trades of the summer, for me. I kind of get what they were doing, but have no clue how his new team thought he'd be a key piece for them at his age.

• Player #341 isn't quite Ryan Hollins, but he's close. It's__ really hard__ to be 7'0" and average less than eight rebounds per 36 minutes in the NBA. But he's perservered.

• Player #342 has probably seen Lincoln. He should've made a cameo in it, I think.

Due to my missing a day, I may need to double up capsules sometime in the next few weeks to finish on my desired closing date. But we'll see. We've got just 31 players to go -- just two full weeks of capsules. Crazy stuff, this.

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