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 a foreign-born rogues gallery -- Luis Scola, Manu Ginobili, and Leandro Barbosa.

• • •

Follow Luis Scola on Twitter at @LScola4.

It's worth noting -- before one mentions his NBA foibles -- that Luis Scola's international career is fantastic. He was a key contributor on Argentina's golden generation of Olympic teams, and while many will remember Manu Ginobili for his unprecedented three-year triple crown of a Euroleague title, Olympic Gold Medal, and NBA title, few will recall that the exact same thing wasn't too far from happening with Scola. He was actually on the team that pushed the Ginobili-led 2001 Bologna team to a full 5-game finals, and they came within 8 points of winning the deciding game. He also led the Baskonia teams that made three straight Euroleague Final Fours in the mid-aughts. And consider this -- had Scola's team beaten Manu's team, he'd be the one with a gold medal and a Euroleague championship, and had his buyout talks NOT blown up, he could've potentially been on the Spurs roster for the 2007 title! Which would've given him the triple crown that -- currently -- has only ever been achieved by the immortal Ginobili. How ridiculous is that?

... while pretty ridiculous, it's also kind of a stretch. Scola has been great internationally, but he's hardly the player Manu is -- there's a reason people compare Manu's international cred to Jordan's stateside cred. But it's hard to understate how utterly and completely different it is to watch Luis Scola in the international game as opposed to the NBA. Absolutely night and day. In the 2010 FIBA World Championship, Scola didn't just look solid -- he dominated all comers and was about as hot as a player could reasonably be. He destroyed EVERYONE on the boards, made a dizzying array of impossible shots, and led a strikingly talent lacking shell of an Argentina team to overachieve the entire tournament. He moved the ball, worked on defense (insofar as he's able), and generally looked like a superstar. He was the runner-up tournament MVP to Kevin Durant, in my eyes, and nobody was anywhere close. Luis Scola is a brilliant player, one whose international dominance has to be seen to believed. Especially if you watch him in the NBA. The half of Luis Scola you see in the NBA is like a shadow of his international half -- a lesser shadow that has never quite lived up to his statistics and never quite had the right pieces around him.

Despite being a relatively skilled offensive player, the net result of Scola's NBA offense tends to be relatively shaky. Take last season, for instance. Despite shooting an above-average percentage from every distance of the floor, Scola rated out in the bottom 50% of all power forwards in shooting percentage. Because unfortunately for him, his offense is utilized in a way that's naturally inefficient -- he takes an incredible amount of long two pointers and 3-9 foot post-ups, and while he's good at everything individually, his offense lends itself to the sort of broader distributional concerns that make players like Jamal Crawford and Nick Young immensely frustrating. Simply far too many inefficient shots to be an overall efficient offensive player, even if he's relatively decent at every shot a team could ask him to take offensively inside the 3-point-line. He doesn't mitigate his case through bundles of free throws, either -- Luis Scola averaged less than two free throws per 10 shots taken, which is an absolutely horrible number for a big man in the modern league -- he converted well when he got to the line, but he got to the line so rarely it was hardlya huge asset. Combine that with his turnovers -- which were numerous -- and you don't have a particularly huge asset on the offensive end, at least not anymore.

This is especially glaring given Scola's lack of talent on defense, and essentially disintegrating ability to corral strong rebounds. His rebounding has gotten worse three seasons in a row, and has approached levels of startling ineffectiveness for a large player -- Scola averaged just 7.5 rebounds per 36 minutes last year, a number that put Scola among rebounding peers like Jared Jeffries, Jonas Jerebko, and the ghost of Lamar Odom. Not really names you want to be reading about. Scola's also a bit old -- he's 32 this season, and given the ridiculous miles placed on his aging legs in the Euroleague and as Argentina's Olympic/FIBA stalwart, that's not a young 32. His defense looked marginally better than usual last season, but at his age, strong defensive years are rarely going to be built on -- more likely, he regresses back to his mean as a pesky but not-particularly-effective defender. And there's nothing particularly wrong with that. Marginally useful offensive players with shaky defense and subpar rebounding aren't exactly hot commodities, but they aren't useless either -- with his general skills on offense, a team like the Spurs or the Celtics could have a better use for Scola by using him differently and putting him in a more international-style offense.

Which, ironically, speaks to the most unfortunate thing about Scola's time in the NBA -- the team that drafted him (the Spurs, of course) was always the team that could've used his talents the best, even in Scola's prime. Running international-style offense with Manu off the Spurs' bench was always fated Scola's best fit, and sat down next to Fabricio Oberto and his good friend Manu, it's possible the Spurs could've drawn a bit more of his defensive talent and tapped a bit more of his international magic. Alas. His team refused to lower his buyout to any reasonable level, the Spurs couldn't bring him over, and they ended up trading his rights for a player who never suited up in a Spurs uniform (Vassilis Spanoulis) and a player who's a 10-15 minute a night guy at best (Nando De Colo). The Spurs front office doesn't tend to make many mistakes, but trading away Scola ranks as one of the biggest they've ever made. A regrettable turn of events for the big Argentine. But he's made his money, and he has a strong and storied international career to fall back on. As well as his league-best impression of Dikembe Mutombo.

And sometimes, that's all you really need.

• • •

_Follow Manu Ginobili on Twitter at __@manuginobili.___

I'll admit, today's longform piece is probably the weirdest thing I've tried to write for the capsules yet. The Mo Williams capsule might approach it in general audacity, but I spent so long with writer's block on this one I ended up going with the absolute most ridiculous of my several prospective ideas in hopes that it would rouse me to write a piece that was as good as Manu Ginobili deserved. Don't quite know if I succeeded, but alas. Hope it suits someone's fancy anyway. Join me on a short joust through expressive fiction and fable as I attempt to rationalize out the aging process and the grind of life with Manu Ginobili, the personification of Death, and the chaos that Manu Ginobili brings the Spurs.

Death approached the entrance to Manu Ginobili's childhood home. The lonely ghoulish figure rapped his skeletal fingers on the door, as per his usual -- once to notice, twice to affect, thrice to open. Tap. Tap. Tap. The locked door swung open on its hinges. He slid into the house, closing the door quietly behind him. A cat hissed. A gesture was made. The cat fell softly into a good night's sleep. Death was not cruel. He would not kill, at least not indiscriminately. He was tasked only to take, to claim what was rightfully his. That is Death's dictate. His curse, as some say.

Manu Ginobili had been a great player for a long time. But nothing lasts forever. No player is immune to age, to the slow churn of skills lost and injuries accrued. And Death was there to exact his dismal calculus. Another withdrawal from a major athlete's bank of tricks. Sometimes a player's bag is so full that his taking is imperceptible. Nash, Malone, Duncan. Other times, he goes a bit overboard -- he will never forget his mistaken sleight of hand with the great Muhammad Ali. Tonight, he needed to make a large withdrawal -- Manu had dodged him for several years, predicting his approach and hiding out away from it all. The game was growing tiresome.

As Death stepped through the home, he could find no sign of the man he knew was there.

For more on Manu Ginobili, read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Leandro Barbosa on Twitter at __@leandrinhooo20.___

Leandro Barbosa -- the Brazilian Blur. Arguably the fastest player in the game (even at the age of 30!), Barbosa is a limited player who's quite good at a few things and quite awful at many others. We'll start with the good. Barbosa may very well be the fastest player to ever play the game -- when he turns on the jets, he's faster dribbling a basketball than the average person is in a heavy sprint. Which is absolutely ridiculous. The amount of talent it takes to be as fast as Barbosa is while dribbling is enough to make any scout salivate, and if he'd ever had a very consistent shot, it's possible he could've been a star. Could've. The problem Barbosa faced -- throughout his whole career, really -- is that he's a profoundly true-to-form example of a rhythm shooter. It generally takes him some time in a game to find his shot when he's not able to get immediately to the rim, which is deadly when you're a player who tends to average around 20 mintues per game -- if it takes you 5-10 minutes on the floor to find your rhythm, you're punting about half the time on the floor in search of it, offensively. Not great news.

His speed makes him good at driving, but it also tends to cover up that he's not particularly excellent at finishing -- which is something of a problem when your shot is sketchy and your game is built around your getting-to-the-rim speed. He's also positively atrocious at drawing contact, drawing (as with Scola) roughly two free throws for every 10 shots he takes. It's a terrible number, one primarily a function of design -- he doesn't like injury, which is wholly reasonable, but in his desire to remain uninjured he shies from all contact and contorts his body in consistently absurd ways to avoid it. His poor perimeter defense has been substantially harmful to his team throughout his whole career, and his lack of tertiary skills (relatively atrocious passing talent, decidedly poor rebounder, high usage despite his poor efficiency) makes him relatively tough to play for big minutes. This is doubly so at this stage of his career, after having suffered several minor injuries over the last few years that have sapped his speed (if only just) and left him -- while still arguably the fastest in the league -- with far less a lead over the #2 or #3 players than there used to be.

Off the court, though? He's a really nice guy, and he features an incredible life story. Grew up in abject poverty in Brazil, with a family that never quite had enough money to buy him a pair of good basketball shoes -- getting Nikes or Adidas cost his family roughly two months of salary. He rose out of it to become the first drafted Brazilian player in NBA history, which makes him essentially a national hero, among young Brazilian basketball players everywhere. It's really cool. Lots of great stuff. If you want to read more about him, there was a phenomenal series of posts back in Truehoop's early days that does about 200x more justice than I ever could at presenting Barbosa's story. It's a 10 part series titled "Rolling with Leandro", written by a journalist who found Barbosaand brought him to the U.S. to work out for teams and try to get drafted. He was basically his personal manager and his personal translator -- it's an extremely long piece, but if you ever have some time to kill and want a kind of hilarious and awesome take on what it's like to (essentially) bring an nba player into the league, this is your jam. Includes tales of Jerry West telling Barbosa he's "blessed by god", Barbosa being so obsessed with blondes that he only becomes happy about Phoenix when he realizes there are lots of leggy blondes there, and Hubie Brown cussing everyone out for no reason whatsoever at a random Grizzlies workout. If you've never seen it, I'd check it out as soon as you can.

• • •

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. MGallop and J are the two who got 3/3 right on today's players, although Chilai probably would've gotten Scola had I not been a little bit hyperbolic in the Scola riddle. My bad, Chilai.

• Player #283 will likely improve his team's defense this season simply by dint of being a larger player than the trash he's replacing. This is kind of funny, because Player #283 is a downright horrible defender.

• Player #284 looked really good as a young player, and after his performance in the 2010 World Championships, I was all in on him as one of the future mainstays at his position. It appears I was... uh, potentially really excruciatingly wrong.

• Player #285 has a shot release that's ALMOST as quick as Korver's. He's a deadly three point shooter, although he can't do much else. And yeah, his contract may have been a bit too long. But for that price, can you really fault them?

Don't forget to check out our two pieces from earlier this morning -- Alex Arnon's 3rd edition of Small Market Mondays, and Adam Koscielak's scoop on a Polish interview that sheds some light on Marcin Gortat's quiet frustrations.

• • •

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 John Wall, Andrei Kirilenko, and Iman Shumpert.

• • •

Follow John Wall on Twitter at @John_Wall.

John Wall had decent numbers last year, in the vacuum of the traditional box score. He posted averages of 16-5-8, which are downright excellent for a point guard, in 36 minutes a night. He started in all 66 games, which isn't actually as common as you think for points -- most tend to miss a few games here and there. Last season, only four guys did it! He put up excellent passing numbers (which is all the more impressive given the awful players he was passing to), showed positive signs defensively (watch him on defense when you get a chance -- promise you'll be happily surprised, he's a far better defender than anyone seems to realize), and showed the same electric energy he did his rookie year despite suffering through a lingering injury to his left patella. When healthy, he changed the game for a dismal Wizards team. When injured, he still changed the game for a dismal Wizards team, because he was just that good.

Except, well, his shooting.

The one flaw in Wall's game -- and yes, it's a really huge one -- is that he can't shoot to save his life. John Wall shot 62% at the rim last season, which was well above average for point guards. He took almost 45% of his shots at the rim, which was (again) well above average. So all that is very good. But Wall shot 42% overall because he was utterly horrible from every other area of the court. He made 3-of-42 threes -- 7%! He made 72 of 252 long two pointers -- 29%! He shouldn't have taken that many, but that's what the defense gave the Wizards -- if you played off Wall in the pick and roll and goaded him into a wide open long two, the general strategy of 90% of teams last season, he'd inevitably shank it. If he got caught on an island outside the arc with no defenders within 7 feet, he'd miss the three. Badly. When he gets to the rim, Wall's athleticism and skill take over, and he destroys anyone who tries to block it. But when he's trying to take a shot, he has a strange hitch and a bad penchant for fadeaways-where-unnecessary that completely destroys his angle. He can't get a consistent arc and he can't get anything to go down consistently. If he could develop even a remotely passable jump shot, a la Derrick Rose in his third year, Wall could be a perennial all-star. But he needs to develop that shot to do it -- his passing, defense, fast break talents, leadership, and at-rim mastery are fantastic, but none of those things are Rondo-level transcendent. They don't make up for his poor shooting, they just bring him from a poor player to a decent one -- to take that next step, he needs a shot.

We all blame John Wall for his own shooting struggles, and to some extent, the criticism rings true -- he's got a way's to go until he's a "true" superstar, and he's clearly not a transcendent talent to the level of Kyrie Irving or Chris Paul. But I'd stop short of a lot of the criticism after watching the follies and foibles of this year's Wizards team. The kid's shooting was, evidently, a bit above par for what this Wizards team could produce in the first place -- just look at their shooting percentages without him this season, which are worse from almost every area of the court. Apparently a terrible (but open) John Wall long two pointer really WAS the best option. Who knew? Watching this team struggle to produce any offense whatsoever without Wall on the court makes me wonder just how unfair our treatment of Wall has been. If John Wall has been carrying these guys to anything BUT an 82-loss record, how is he considered to be 'underperforming'? He's a 22 year old point guard who, at least right now, looks like he's provided the difference between a team that's among the worst to ever play the game and a team that's a garden variety poor unit. That's about the distance between, say, a semi-contender with playoff aspirations and a low seeded team bound for a first round exit. We've exalted and built legends out of players for far the second -- so why is Wall's accomplishment in making that dismal roster look even remotely passable ignored?

I'm not sure he's a max player, and I'm not sure he's even got the potential to be one of the great ones -- but this abhorrent start by the Wizards has to inspire some searching on our parts to determine why, exactly, so many people are so prone to jump on Wall as part of the problem rather than the only realistic road to a solution. Off the court, many people decry his "immaturity" and put him down with the fact that his Kentucky roots make him one of those "wink wink nudge nudge" pay-to-play types. Even disregarding my belief that athletes should get paid if they're making their team money, I have absolutely no idea how this image of Wall has maintained for so long. I know that there are some disgusting sleazebags who perpetuate ridiculous things about Wall's father, and I know there are some people who simply will not let the pay-to-play thing go. But after two years in the NBA with absolutely no incidents whatsoever, wouldn't one think that Wall would be off the hook? Especially given the quality of his interviews and warmth towards fans and the press -- watching Wall give pre-draft and camp interviews coming into his rookie season was extremely entertaining, because he simply wasn't at all the person I'd expected.

After a short college career of getting endlessly slammed by people at my university and under the dripping tendrils of the Coach Calipari machine, I did expect some sleaze -- but I was wrong and I'd readily admit that. There was nothing there except an earnest, honest guy with a great sense of humor and a great sense of perspective. John Wall is about as mature as anyone in the whole league. He composes himself and acts far older than his age, and he's one of the few NBA interview subjects I go out of my way to watch. So why does that incredibly flawed portrayal of Wall still exist at all? The only real reason I can think of is the general idea that Wall's critics simply haven't taken the time to watch him actually give interviews or relate to people/the press. At all. They're working off an image that's entirely created and perpetuated by its own momentum rather than any basis in reality. That's all I can think of. Which is a bit depressing -- when I'm critical of something, I try to give it extra focus to make sure my critique is actually grounded in reality.

I don't really get why critics of Wall's person can't do that too. But I'm an idealist, I suppose.

• • •

Follow Andrei Kirilenko by buying an AK-47 and then throwing it away because WHY DID YOU BUY AN AK-47.

There was -- and, to some extent, remains -- no real way to properly isolate what Andrei Kirilenko will bring this Timberwolves team. Even when healthy, Kirilenko is something of a mystery -- there's no telling what one year out of the league was going to do for his NBA conditioning, his general command of the NBA court, and his aggressiveness on an NBA level. More importantly than his year in the wilderness, he's a year older -- while players can be productive after the age of 30, they rarely get more productive. And Kirilenko's last season in the league left quite a bit to be desired. His shooting fell off, his tertiaries all came back to earth, he turned the ball over more than he'd done in years, and he looked a step or two slow on defense. He wasn't bad, per se, but he certainly wasn't the Andrei Kirilenko we'd come to expect. The Utah defense actually was worse with Kirilenko on the court in Utah's lost 2011 season, and although he helped grease the skids on the Utah offense, it wasn't enough to bring his usual and expected impact. He was good but not great, and there was no real reason to expect he'd come back at a level beyond that.

But never fear, Timberwolves fans. He has! In international play, Kirilenko has always shown tastes of what life would be like if he was a dominant, superstar-type talent in the NBA. He showed the same in the NBA, early in Deron Williams' career, but it's been quite a while since AK-47 has been the best player on an NBA team. Evidently, his Euroleague MVP season for CSKA Moscow and his solid Olympic jaunt reminded him exactly how to do that -- he's been Minnesota's best player in their shockingly strong start, and it isn't really close. With Kirilenko on the floor, the Wolves have an efficiency differential of +6.9 -- with Kirilenko off, they have an efficiency differential of -7.6. The distance last year's Spurs to last year's Wizards, essentially. He's played 75% of all possible minutes for the Timberwolves, and he's looked absolutely phenomenal. He's shot 6-12 from three thus far this season, put up his highest assist rate in 7 years (seriously! Look it up!), connected on 62.5% of his two point shots, and put up the best per-possession rebounding numbers of his entire career. He's combined all this with a general return to form on the defensive end -- he hasn't been up to his gaudy mid-career standard, but he's been good, and his defense has been eons ahead of anything the Timberwolves have gotten defensively out of the large wing in years. It's been great to watch.

How likely is it that he continues? I'm honestly pretty unsure. While Kirilenko is a great player, the reasons I outlined for concern in the first paragraph haven't vanished. He's still old, his conditioning may not be quite up to snuff, and he isn't used to playing this role on an NBA level -- at least not in the last 5 or 6 years. Which isn't to say this isn't fantastic for the Wolves. It is. If the Wolves could play God and get the big guy to pick a stretch of the season to plop down a Kreedence Kirilenko Revival tour, now would be the time -- even if he does fall off later, it's quite a bit better in a competitive conference like the West to eke out wins now and let Rubio/Love take the reins on their return than to struggle out the gate and then suddenly dominate all comers for a few fleeting months. In a playoff race as close as what we're expecting, a game or two could make a world of difference. There are a few signs for concern as well, beneath his excellent season-starting tear. Such as his sky-high turnover rate and his perhaps-too-low usage rate. As the season goes on, his shooting may regress to the mean and he may lose a bit on his efficiency and legs. But to say he's done anything but impress in this most recent stretch would be a mistake. If he stays at this level, and this Wolves team adds a fully-healthy Rubio and Love within a month or two? This is a seriously dangerous team. One that could make some noise in a higher-than-expected playoff seed, and at the very least, provide some of the most entertaining league pass fodder for the next few months.

Assuming, of course, that they don't lose every single player on the roster to injury. (Not a given, apparently.)

• • •

_Follow Iman Shumpert on Twitter at __@I_Am_Iman.___

Iman Shumpert is a good defender. He isn't a great defender... yet. Hm. Okay, wait a second.

...

Sorry, had to shoot a few rounds at the rampaging, semi-zombified hordes of Knicks fans descending upon my apartment. I kind of expected that this would happen, but I thought I'd actually have to publish the capsule first. I didn't realize that the second you wrote something even remotely negative about Iman Shumpert, they perk up and start clamoring out of the hipster bars in a death-shuffle towards your present location. Really didn't realize this. It's a good thing I still had that AK-47 I bought for the stupid Kirilenko joke in my bedside trashcan, or I'd be screwed. Anyway. Iman Shumpert is an interesting player. His defense is really fun to watch, and there's obviously a lot of potential there. There's a lot of covering for the mistakes of others in his defense, which doesn't necessarily show up in the box score. Excellent help rotations that don't compromise his own man, passing-lane troubleshooting that doesn't put him too far out of his coverage, et cetera. And he does a good job shutting down his man, although he's significantly worse than the league's best shutdown wizards, like Andre Iguodala, Tony Allen, Avery Bradley, and Ronnie Brewer. He's not awful or anything, but he's nowhere near the level of any of those guys. Yet. Just a second, sorry.

...

I really hope these fans stop coming at some point. I'm going to run out of ammo eventually. Anyhow, it's not really worrying that he hadn't developed into that kind of a guy yet -- after all, Shumpert is a rookie, and rookies usually are abjectly terrible on the defensive end. For Shumpert to be decent at all is a good start, and he was well above average. The problem with Shumpert is the problem that plagues most defensive stoppers -- he isn't quite good enough on defense to offset how sincerely awful he is offensively. He shot well below average from every single shot distance, he turned over the ball more than 80% of his fellow shooting guards, and he was seriously awful on the boards, even relative to most guards. He's a nice guy, and he seems totally awesome off the court. But his offense is pretty woeful, and until he develops any above average offensive talents -- seriously, ANYTHING -- he's going to have some problems.

Net and net? Shumpert has promise. A lot of it. But things are going to depend pretty heavily on how he comes back from his varied injuries -- it generally takes several months for a player coming off a knee injury as bad as his to come back to full form, and even then, it often takes a full season to fully return to their defensive highs. And with Ronnie Brewer in the fold, it's not essential that he's back on-time. In fact, it could actually hurt the Knicks a bit -- if they force minutes for Shumpert and Amare solely due to reputation when both are coming off medical woes and could be punching well below their weight upon their return, it could really mess with their chemistry and threaten their health to begin with. Woodson really needs to manage their minutes carefully. For the Knicks to continue to contend going forward, they're going to need Shumpert to continue developing and Amare to improve, if only just. But that's for the future -- for now, Shumpert is a good player, not a great one, with several massive flaws to work on and several prominent places for improvement. He'll probably get there, at some point, but coming off the injury it'll likely be a season or two until Shumpert really comes back str--...

Wait, what's that sound? ... Oh my God! Dubin got inside!

CRAP! HE'S ON MY BACK AUGH SOMEBODY HELP AUUUUUUUUGHHHHHH

WHY DO ZOMBIES HAVE SUCH STRONG JAW MUSCLES HOW IS THIS EVEN PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

• • •

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. Der_K and Mike L got 3/3 with this last set, with Mike L aptly noting that Kirilenko couldn't possibly be an answer because he didn't play NBA minutes last season. Mike L is correct, except that I tried to make sure to put in 1 or 2 of the returning-vets when they had NBA footage I could watch. So he's one of three players to get added to the list despite not having played a minute of NBA ball last year. Good eye, though.

• Player #280 hasn't been terrible, and he certainly was one of the better amnestied players. But he's going to need to figure out defense at some point if he wants to REALLY contribute to his new squad.

• Player #281 has been atrocious so far this year. And it hurts me. Will be a Capsule (Plus).

• Player #282 can't pass the ball particularly well, which makes him a pretty awful backup point guard. He's entertaining, though, and even at his old-for-the-league age he's still got a lot of that speed that made him so dazzling in his prime.

Assuming I get over this gigantic bitten hole in my back, capsules will return on Monday. See you then.

• • •

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 Tyler Hansbrough, Tracy McGrady, Larry Hughes.

• • •

Follow _Tyler Hansbrough on Twitter at @THANS50.
_

Tyler Hansbrough has lived atop the mountain. He was never the most athletic, astonishing, or brilliant of all the players. Never quite had that 'whoa' factor. But he WAS the best player in college basketball, and for one year of Hansbrough's life, records fell and lay vanquished in his wake as his team completed a seemingly predestined romp through the world of college basketball. That Carolina team wasn't undefeated, but it certainly felt like it -- there was an air of dominance and dismissive cruelty to a team that combined one of the greatest college players ever in Hansbrough with a cast of blue-chip talent and the devil-may-care destruction wrought by Ty Lawson's might. The ACC wilted, the contenders sloughed away, and the Tar Heels won the title in such a steadfast march that the Triangle was rocked for months. Hansbrough knew what it was like to be dominant, to have his ad contracts, to be in vogue and in demand. That was then. He was picked just inside the lottery, typecast as a hustle player, and set down to show his skills in the big leagues.

The thing with Hansbrough? He's not nearly as tough on the NBA level as his collegiate career would lead one to expect, which has led to a rather amusing disconnect between what announcers say about him and how he actually plays. Listening to people describe him, you'd think of some fundamentally sound hustle player, this rebounding beast with a knack for tip-ins and loose balls. Good hustle defense, always puts forth a great effort, always working. But reality doesn't always match the storyline, and in this case, it simply isn't quite so. Hansbrough hustles, a bit, but it's somewhat misleading. Ask any Indiana fan and they'll tell you the same -- Hansbrough may go for loose balls, but when he gets the ball, he's about as selfish as it comes. Far from being a willing contributor in a pivoting offense, Hansbrough takes (and rarely makes) about as many terrible shots as is possible for him to take. Reality check -- do gritty hustle players tend to take 40% of their shots from 16-23 feet, making 33% of them?

... No, Virginia. They don't tend to. Among big men, Hansbrough has one of the lowest defensive rebound rates in the game -- part of that is his occasional minutes with the currently missing rebounding whiz Roy Hibbert, and part of that is that he simply can't shoot off a defensive rebound. Why get engaged if he's not taking a shot? His offensive ball dominance leads him to have a higher rate of free throws drawn than most players, which exemplifies the "gritty" narrative (look at all those free throws!), and ends up being the only truly positive impact he has on the floor for his own team. He defends poorly and tends to make stupid choices when ballhawking, and essentially plays like a larger version of Monta Ellis. The man's a human shot vortex. If you brought him to your 21st birthday party, nobody else would get drunk. And for all his supposed "hustle", you often have to wonder if the announcers who praise and highlight it are living in an alternate reality. A reality where Hansbrough actually passes the ball, keeps his offense to a minimum, and does the little things that actually help the team. Instead, he's a defensive sieve who dominates the ball as badly as any chuck-happy shooting guard, rebounds poorly, and finishes at the rim atrociously for his size. If that's what a hustle player looks like, I never want to see a hustle player again.

• • •

_Follow Tracy McGrady on Twitter at __@Real_T_Mac.___

It's a simple fact that's become a tired, worn-out meme. "Tracy McGrady has never won a playoff series." Hah, look at that guy! He never won a series! What a schlub! It's a very apt little statement, until one considers the context in which the statement occurs and realizes the inherent absurdity of it. Oh, context -- the bane of armchair analysts everywhere. For the sake of completeness, I'll go ahead and list off every single chance McGrady had to win a playoff series in his NBA career.

• 2000: #3 NYK vs #6 TOR. McGrady was a 20-year-old third year when this series occurred. The Raptors were obvious underdogs in the series, having finished the year with a negative efficiency differential to the Knicks' +1.3. McGrady had a poor series against a stout Knick defense, although nowhere near as poor as Vince Carter did. I've only seen the concluding game of the series, but just about everyone looked completely outmatched against an underrated Knicks team that was a few bounces away from making consecutive NBA Finals. Underdog loss.

• 2001: #2 MIL vs #7 ORL. McGrady played extremely well in this series, putting up an average line of 34-7-8 in a fruitless sweep to a dramatically better team. The East was a two-team conference that year, and Milwaukee happened to be one of those two teams. McGrady played all but 14 minutes of the series. Underdog loss.

• 2002: #4 CHA vs #5 ORL. This is the first legitimately disappointing result in McGrady's playoff career. The Magic played quite a bit better than the Hornets did during the regular season, and had everyone but Grant Hill available for the playoffs. McGrady played some amazing basketball, but they still got swept. And once again, McGrady played all but 14 minutes of the series. Despite his solid performance, they should've probably won this one. Legitimate disappointment.

• 2003: #1 DET vs #8 ORL. Alright. This one deserves some special note. This tends to be the go-to when people talk about Tracy McGrady as a disappointing no-results wonder. McGrady's 2003 seasons ranks among the best individual performances any NBA player ever gave the league -- he averaged a stunning 32-5-6 on 46-39-79 shooting despite effectively playing one-on-five offensively and being doubled virtually every shot. He led the league in usage percentage. He assisted on 30% of all baskets scored while he was on the floor, posted one of the lowest turnover rates in the league that year, and led a hilariously bad Orlando roster to a winning record. HE WAS GREAT. For which they earned a first round matchup with a 50-win Pistons team. What happened next is obviously well documented -- McGrady went supernova and brought the Magic to the brink of the second round before Tayshaun Prince shut him down defensively and ended the Magic's season in an excruciating three games. Yes, McGrady said (and I quote) "It's nice to be in the second round" after going up 3-1. He shouldn't have said that. But he still dragged a team with a negative efficiency differential to a strong series lead on a team that was one year away from winning an NBA title. That's pretty excellent. Overachieving underdog loss.

• 2005: #4 DAL vs #5 HOU. If you don't remember exactly how stacked the West was in the mid-aughts, let this matchup jog your memory. In the 4-5 matchup, the 51 win Rockets faced a 58 win Dallas team that had a higher efficiency differential than the Dallas team that won the title in 2011. The Rockets actually had the 5th best efficiency differential in the NBA that season, behind fantastic years from McGrady (who played an obscene 40.8 minutes per game that season -- look it up) and Ming. McGrady stepped up in the playoffs, playing 44 minutes a game and averaging 31-7-7-2-1 on 45-37-82 shooting. It wasn't enough, though. Because even though the Rockets had the 5th best differential, the Mavericks had the 3rd best. McGrady's team was the underdog in a relatively even 7-game series. AGAIN. Underdog loss.

• 2007: #4 UTA vs #5 HOU. This is another "could've been" series -- the Rockets had an efficiency differential two points higher than Utah, and ended up with home court advantage as the #5 seed. The Jazz lost relatively close matches in their first two and blew the Rockets out of the building in the second two, before the Rockets won a close game five and put the Jazz on the brink. But the Jazz demolished the Rockets in game 6, and game 7 ranks as one of the more compelling-yet-forgotten game sevens in recent history. The game was actually tied with 4 minutes left to go -- but Deron Williams set up flurry of Okur threes that effectively sealed the game. Still. McGrady played great in the series (and at the age of 27 played 40 minutes per game in the series, yet again), but this was a disappointment. Legitimate disappointment.

• 2008: #4 UTA vs #5 HOU. And yes, this is partly why 2007 was so compelling. The tables were turned, this time -- Utah still didn't have home court, but they were the markedly better team by any and all statistical measure. The 2008 Jazz actually are one of the more forgotten elite teams of the recent decade -- they didn't rack up an insane number of wins, but their efficiency differential of 6.87 was good for 3rd in the league behind the Lakers and the Celtics. They were a very good team that, in most years, would've been a good bet for a conference finals berth -- instead, they lost a ton of close games and ended up never seeing home court advantage at all. A pity. Anyway, McGrady dug deep and performed even better than he did in 2007, but it wasn't enough. The superior Jazz curbstomped the Rockets in Houston to take a 2-0 lead, split a pair at home, then disemboweled an unsuspecting Houston team in game 6. Welp. Underdog loss.

• 2012: #4 BOS vs #5 ATL. Does this even count? McGrady wasn't a major contributor for the 2012 Hawks, and he wasn't their star. And in fact, I think the Hawks punched a bit below their weight in this series -- it was a winnable series for them that they would've dominated if Al Horford had been on the floor for the whole series. But that certainly wasn't on McGrady's account, who posted decent numbers in spot minutes and played active defense. The main issue with McGrady's playoff performance was the turnovers, which were far too high -- that was mostly because the Hawks were strangely intent on using him as an enormous backup point guard against one of the best ball-hawking guards in the league. Odd. Nevertheless, this is sort of a push -- disappointment, sure, but it certainly wasn't McGrady's fault.

So, what's the count? Two legitimate disappointments in seven chances (or 3/8 if you count Atlanta), and only one of those was a truly embarrassing one -- it's hard to really call a 7-game series where the last game was tied with four minutes to go a vast disappointment. For the vast majority of McGrady's career, he's been cursed with pretty atrocious teams. You could say "well, his numbers are empty", but I don't buy that. As Zach Harper once noted, McGrady was a legend for the majority of the last decade -- he played incredible ball, dragged awful teams to decent records almost singlehandedly, and suffered some of the toughest breaks any star could suffer. But it's hard to see what else he could've done to improve his playoff position. Over his pre-Hawks playoff career, McGrady averaged 42 minutes per game, 29-7-6 averages, a playoff PER of 24.7, a turnover rate of 10.7%, and a usage rate of 35%. Here's a complete list of players whose playoff usage/turnover totals match McGrady's, in those insane minutes.

1. Michael Jordan
2. Tracy McGrady

So, there's that, I suppose.

People should remember McGrady for more than just his playoff follies -- especially given that the follies are more related to the dismal talent that surrounded him than any extreme failures of his own. They won't, but alas. These last few years, McGrady has been a decent-if-not-amazing player -- a shadow of his former self, for sure, but with flashes of brilliance and an admirable lunch-pail dedication towards doing things right. He was a worthy superstar who, through no real fault of his own, has a sad distinction of being the only 1st team all-NBA player since 1990 to never win a playoff series. As well as the sad distinction of having tied Shaquille O'Neal and Chris Webber for the most distinct teams played for by an all-NBA first team player. This article is a few years old, but updated standings give a top 5 of:

1. Tracy McGrady (6 teams -- TOR, ORL, HOU, NYK, DET, ATL)
2. Shaquille O'Neal (6 teams -- ORL, LAL, MIA, PHX, CLE, BOS)
3. Chris Webber (6 teams -- GSW, WAS, SAC, PHI, DET, GSW)
4. Gary Payton (5 teams -- SEA, MIL, LAL, BOS, MIA)
5. Tim Hardaway (5 teams -- GSW, MIA, DAL, DEN, IND)

And that's the way the story ends. Not with a stalwart, but a journeyman. Safe trails, T-Mac.

• • •

Follow Larry Hughes by calling it a comeback even when it's not.

Larry Hughes is a defensive stopper that cannot play defense anymore. This is something of a problem. In his prime, Hughes was mildly notable for his excellent rebounding, his noteworthy assist totals, and his general command of the well-timed steal or the rotating guard-block. But his real value came from his defense, somewhat of a peppercorn grinder to the spice and flavor the NBA's best and brightest placed on the floor. Absolutely solid defender, and while many decried his selection to the 2005 All-Defensive team, I'm pretty alright with it -- it's sort of the terse engraving on the tombstone of Hughes' career that represents his defense to later generations. Too bad he hasn't played anywhere near that level in almost 3 years -- his defense has been slowly falling off the deep end, and his offense (bad since 2006) has reached levels of disgusting ineffectiveness that boggle the mind and disturb the soul. The man hasn't converted better than 55% at the rim since his 2009 stint with Chicago, and last season posted a turnover rate of 33% -- that means that one out of every three times he touched the ball, he turned it over. That's, uh, not really how you play basketball.

The bigger question with Hughes is less what he can do now on an NBA level (rather obviously nothing, his pre-lockout comeback dithering notwithstanding) but what he could ever do. A constant joke among the media and the fans when looking at the 2007 finals is to note that Hughes started two games -- he didn't play at all in the last two, but he started the first two games and that's pretty dang awful. The thing I'd say to rebute, though, is that he wasn't exactly useless with the Cavaliers. He wasn't great. Don't for one second think I'm saying that. He took roughly 878 more shots than he should've taken in his 3 years as a Cavalier (overall total: 878 shots), and was a clear net negative on the offensive end every time he was on the floor. But you know what? His defense was pretty useful, at least in the macro sense. Hughes has a decent reputation for being a good defender, and in Cleveland, he played at or near his career best defensively. He helped the Cavs perfect their stifling perimeter attack while he was there, and did a damn good job of it. Mike Brown is a good defensive coach, but the personnel you inherit helps a coach develop their style, and it certainly helped his case that the Cavaliers had defenders like Hughes around to help him build his schemes up in the first place. Just like it helped D'Antoni's case to coach an offensive player like Nash. Something to keep in mind in the back of your head, as you watch him clank jumper after jumper after jumper after ... oh for God's sake Larry please stop oh my God.

• • •

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 anyone but Hansbrough right last time, so shout out to me for making riddles that suck.

• Player #277 needs to get back on the court. His team needs him, his city needs him, and watching his team without him is much akin to slicing your eyes out with a rusty steak knife.

• Player #278 is playing like a superstar right now. May not last, but my GOD is he an upgrade for his team. He's played almost unsettlingly well to-date.

• Player #279's hair is playing like a superstar right now. He is on the bench injured. But... THAT HAIR... OH MY GOD.

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. Will inevitably happen again, but alas.

• • •

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 Chandler Parsons, Thaddeus Young, and Keyon Dooling.

• • •

Follow _Chandler Parsons on Twitter at @ChandlerParsons.
_

It's hard to find a rookie from a big name school who had fewer teams clamoring for him than Chandler Parsons, at least last season. While many jumped all over each other to try and figure out what was wrong with Kemba Walker, fought through the crowds to interrogate Tristan Thompson, or applied a critical eye to Jan Vesely and tried to figure out what happened... Parsons went generally unnoticed, both on draft day and throughout the season. A rookie forward out of Landon Donovan's (... uh, Coach Donovan's) school of the Floridian Arts, the Rockets picked up Parsons to no real fanfare with the 38th pick in the 2011 draft. There were a lot of nice signs -- NBA shooting range, legitimate NBA height for his natural position, and a fantastic handle for a guy his size. There were also a lot of middling-to-poor ones -- as a 4-year college player, Parsons had never really set the world aflame and had been present for several years of underwhelming Donovan teams in a row. His free throw shooting was an issue. And would he be able to put on the bulk to become an NBA player?

While all of those concerns still seem reasonable, at this point it's hard to look at Parsons as anything but a big draft day steal. Houston isn't completely finished in their steps to team building, yet -- they have room for another max player, and if they can plop someone like Josh Smith neatly into that role, they'll be much improved. But they have a magnificent core in place and Parsons is a large part of that. Parsons was underheralded as a rookie, taking a starting role with Houston just six games into the season and never relinquishing the honor. He did a lot of great stuff. Even looking beyond the threes, which could potentially be a fluke, Parsons fit the bill for virtually everything a team could want a rookie to do. He held his own on the defensive end, using his height and length to alter shots and keep offensive players off balance. He finished plays at the rim quite well and featured an extremely low turnover rate for a rookie starter. And perhaps best of all, Parsons refused to overreach -- he didn't try and act outside his comfort zone or dominate the ball with a series of ill-informed long shots or idiotic post moves, and he played to his strengths as a player. No matter where you are in your NBA career, that's a big asset -- when you're a rookie trying to prove yourself, that's downright incredible.

There are a few concerns, still. While he's put to rest any concerns about his conditioning or NBA-readiness athletically, Parsons could stand to rein himself in a bit on the defensive end. Namely by putting on a few pounds for post-D purposes and reining in his tendency for poor-decision steals. His steal rate was very high last year, well within the top 10% at his position. But watching tape on his steals you can see many of them where he sort of lucked into the ball, as well as failed attempts where he got quite out of position to watch the ball and gave up an exceedingly open shot. His shooting was overall pretty solid -- he was in the top quarter of all small forwards at his long two point shooting and slightly above average in three point shooting -- but there's a distinct pall on his numbers by his absolutely abhorrent midrange and low-post game. Parsons shot 21% from 3-15 feet last season, and my lord, it looked bad. Wooden release, poor sense of his shooting space, everything. To his credit, he didn't force it -- he took barely 12% of his shots from that range, far fewer than almost anyone else in the NBA. But he really does need to at least make that shot remotely passable. 30%, perhaps? It would help him get more open to convert at the rim, which is where the majority of his offensive value comes from.

Still. Big-picture, those are all relatively minor concerns -- in his rookie year Parsons was an asset from just about every angle and a fantastic pick by the Houston Rockets. For all the crap Morey gets, at some point, one needs to actually appreciate the fact that the man is very good at drafting players at lower-than-expected picks. He misses, sometimes, but everyone does -- getting a player like Parsons in the second round is doing some serious due diligence on the draft board. In general, you'd think a player who managed to start 57 games for a near-playoff team with good defense, decent shooting, and a sweet handle would get a bit more noticed by the world at large. But alas. Them's the breaks. When Houston's fighting for the 1 seed in a few years with this core and Parsons remains a key member of their starting rotation, perhaps then Parsons will be in line for the notice he deserves.

• • •

_Follow Thaddeus Young on Twitter at __@yungsmoove21.___

Funny story. First time I watched Thaddeus Young, I thought he was a small forward. Seriously. Don't remember the game at all, or even what year it was, but when he walked onto the court and matched up against a power forward I thought the Sixers were playing smallball. I was confused. And then they just kept doing it! Over and over again, Young would be banging in the post with these players that were just obscenely larger than he was. And it seemed to work just fine -- his height made it funny to watch, but Young really did look just fine. He got up into the larger player's grill, he put pressure on the ball, and he used his solid vertical to both block and finish with aplomb. His offense was fantastic, as well -- he was one of the best finishers at the rim last season. A crafty forward, Young uses his short stature to help navigate the post and leverages a phenomenal knack at taking care of the ball to keep the offense flowing when he's used as a pivot to redirect the ball. No three point shot to speak of -- at least not anymore -- but Young has a solid long two pointer and a reasonably good post game. He's a bit of a scant rebounder, due to his size, but he holds his own.

On defense? Picture's more interesting. Young raises a similar value proposition on defense to the one Matt Bonner raised last season (regular season only!). When Bonner was on the court in 2012, teams tended towards an absurdly single-minded offensive strategy. It was simple. Take Bonner to the post, back him down, make the shot. He's a poor defender, right? While this was (and will remain) true, opposing teams used this strategy so damn often that it became completely useless -- Bonner wasn't a phenomenal post defender (and never will be), but he was good enough that the Spurs rarely had to send a specific double team to handle Bonner's post option. Which meant the opposing offense was acquiescing any double-team worthy offensive strategy in favor of allowing the Spurs to run easy single-coverage and stay in prime rebounding spots. And with Bonner being a better-than-most-teams-realize post defender, the distinctly overuse of the "POST UP ON BONNER!" play call (teams ran it 3-4 times a night when Bonner stepped onto the floor) meant that the Spurs were actually more effective defensively with Bonner on the court.

It wasn't even all Bonner that did it. It was the general NBA strategy where 25 of 30 teams just decided to hammer at a perceived weakness that wasn't nearly as weak as they made it out to be. The predictability was what killed it. And Young performs a very similar function. When he comes in the game, teams try to hammer on Young in the post. After all, he's quite undersized for a big man and coaches look at it as a big weakness. But that's the problem. It simply isn't. Young isn't exactly a franchise piece defensively -- he's an asset, but he's no phenomenal shutdown defender. But Young is nowhere near bad enough that constantly going to the "post up Thad!" offensive strategy exogenous to every other option is actually going to help your team. Letting a team as chock-full of athletes and imbued with the power of Collins' defensive teachings play one-on-one defense as a play call is a stupid idea. And it's exactly the idea that NBA teams have in mind when Young enters the court, for reasons I have never quite been able to understand. Unpredictability in the offensive set is partially what separates creative offensive dynamos like the Spurs from solid offensive teams like the post-Melo Nuggets. Why are coaches so consistently intent on playing predictable offense and allowing the other team to constantly float easy one-on-one possessions? I simply don't get it.

Anyway. Your fun fact: Young isn't even 6'6" in socks. Seriously. He's an NBA power forward. World's wild, folks.

• • •

_Follow Keyon Dooling by being open with yourself, even when stuff sucks and life's hard__.___

While Keyon Dooling has never been a phenomenal player, he's always been at least somewhat serviceable. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but it isn't meant to be. It's not a trivial accomplishment to be a serviceable NBA player when you're a thin 6'3" guard with a suspect handle, poor passing form, and a shoot-first mentality without the requisite shooting talent to back it up. Dooling's main skills are relatively common among NBA players. Reasonably solid long-range shooting (nothing incredible, as aforementioned, but decent enough to make a living), patently decent ballhawking defense, and a talent at driving from the left (if not a bit predictable, since he absolutely never mastered driving right). He stuck in the league a long time due to solid defense and a great personality off the bench. There's not really a ton to say about Dooling's game that hasn't been said before -- he was solid, not spectacular, and now he's gone. Alas.

The main thing I'd like to reflect on here and show appreciation for is for his relatively recent public reveal of the repressed abuse he's suffered in his life and the psychological issues it caused him. I don't want to go too deeply into the actual facts of the case -- many writers have given it better treatment than I've the time to right now. For instance, read Freeman's piece, which is relatively short but gets into it a tad more. But I wanted to voice some general support. Abuse is a terrible, terrible thing. I've been very close to others who have suffered silently through it, and I've undergone a fair share of trials in my life as well. I can't possibly vocalize strong enough support for the people like Dooling. It takes a whole lot of bravery to combat society's general dismissive air towards the maladies of the mind. There's nothing easy about reaching out to get help, and there's nothing easy about sharing it.

There's a dark pall of ignorance around the entire concept of abuse and mental illness that blankets the public consciousness. It's a pernicious sense that illness of the mind is somehow fundamentally distinct from illness of the body, and this idea that people with mental illness have a greater ability to fight it on their own simply because it's "all in their head." Dooling's public reveal helps push the collective consciousness -- if only just -- and continue the slow crawl towards acceptance. The more strong figures like Dooling come out with their problems and put them on the table, the more the unrealistic "in your head" sense shifts to the reality -- mental illnesses are illnesses. They are of no more fault to the sufferer than a rare disease is to a patient. It's hard enough dealing with the ramifications of these problems as is, and I would not begrudge anyone who cannot, will not, or feel unable to share their pain. There is nothing wrong with that. But those who do are heroes, to me, and they always will be.

So thank you, Keyon Dooling. Know that you're a hero to at least one person beyond your awesome family.

• • •

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. Mike got yesterday's set within about 10 minutes of my posting them (clearly using some of his Small Market Monday sway) and @MillerNBA once again got them. I think Miller has gotten like a week of these shoutouts in a row. Dude's good at this.

• Player #274 was a phenomenal 4-year college player -- now he's a worse-than-you-think NBA player with a proclivity for incoherent ballhogging and atrocious shots.

• Player #275 took the league by storm earlier in his career, and not more than 5 years ago was a key cog in a media-anointed superteam. It didn't turn out that way, people left him behind, and now he's gone. Missing him, tho.

• Player #276 is nominally still in the league -- he was waived, but because he was on the roster during training camp it'd be a slight misnomer to say he is definitively retired. Very low chance any team actually takes a shot with him at this point, though. Offensively woeful defenders who can't actually defend anymore aren't really in high demand.

Whoo. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

• • •

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 Anthony Randolph, Kyle Korver, and Lou Amundson.

• • •

_Follow Anthony Randolph on Twitter at __@TheARandolph.___

Have you ever suffered through an intense period of unrequited love, fandom, or friendship? A long and pronounced period of irredeemable obsession that is simply never returned? Whether it be loving a person that doesn't love you back, adoring a sports team that refuses to do the right thing, or attempting to befriend a nice person who's having none of it... there is a certain asymmetry natural in all interpersonal relationships, but in certain relationships, it goes beyond the normal asymmetry and becomes absolutely absurd. Almost as though the other party is simply mocking you. While it's never quite this stark, it often ends up appearing as though the other party simply can't stand you. "You dare to invest your soul into me? Pfah! I spit on this! I spit on that! I refuse to engage in such revelry!" This is common in sports, occasional in love, and more-often-than-most-admit in friendship as people change and friendships fade. We are all aware of unrequited love, through some form or another, and usually some personal experience.

I described that for a reason. Anthony Randolph is, by all accounts, a decent person. He's worked hard to get to where he's at in the league, and while he's never been fantastic, he's been an OK player. But the appreciation his game and per-minute statistics inspire is hilariously inordinate and absurd. He's the white whale of many NBA analysts -- he's this mystical player whose per-minute production is befitting of love songs and sojourns but whose overall product is virtually always incredibly disappointing. A ridiculously large margin of Randolph's playing time comes from garbage time minutes, enough so to call into question his always absurd advanced statistics. Consider last season -- Randolph only began playing 30+ MPG once the year had reached the end, just as he had the year before. The Wolves lost every single one of those games, although Randolph showed (once again) the sparkling per-minute production that makes him so alluring. He's averaged 22-10-2-1-3 in the past 11 30+ minute games he's played in, over a total of three years. The last game Randolph played 30+ minutes for that his team actually won? 11/24/2009, in a game where the Warriors upset Dallas. Randolph had 9 points and 6 rebounds in 30 minutes, shooting 3 of 10 from the field. It's positively ridiculous. Every single one of his statistically brilliant 30+ minute games came in a loss, and in every game his team happened to win where he played that much, he was a tertiary factor at best.

There's obvious potential in Randolph's game. Don't get me wrong. If only he could make a few less mistakes on the defensive end. If only he could parlay his electric at-rim scoring into any sort of outside game. If only he could put less emphasis on showing off his own numbers and more on devoting to a team concept. Randolph has all these ridiculous talents -- electric finishing, a controlled dribble, more athleticism than anyone has the right to have. But he's never been able to transform these skills into a well he can tap with any sort of regularity. He's been a phenomenal asset to have in lopsided losses, able to show off against third-string players to his heart's content. But it's been three years now since any coach has attempted to make Randolph a key piece in their rotations. Many balk, and say that perhaps his coaches are simply making a mistake -- I have my doubts. If it was just one season of being passed over, I'd probably agree. But Randolph has found himself passed over for three years, and has contributed next to nothing in the interim despite his obviously incredible per-minute numbers. His current contract fits the bill for a reclamation project, which is absolutely absurd -- the man is still in his early 20s! But that's Randolph for you. Here's hoping he finally figures it out in Denver -- when Randolph's on, he's too electric NOT to hope for it, honestly.

• • •

_Follow Kyle Korver on Twitter at __@KyleKorver.___

While Kyle Korver isn't really the best in any aspect of the game, there's one aspect about him that -- in my eyes -- makes him inordinately valuable. This lies in his unconventionally high shot release, a rarely-discussed aspect of a shooter's game. Namely, the asset is speed -- his odd release gives him the most reliable quick release in the entire game. This is evident when you watch a lot of Korver threes over and over again, but to try and look at this from a non-Synergy angle, here's a tape of him canning five threes against the Miami Heat. To discuss each three individually...

• SHOT #1: Here you can start to see where the release really helps his game. He catches the ball on a curl, hoping to get free of Chalmers in transition. Despite running well and getting to his spot, he didn't. Chalmers was up on him the second it was obvious he'd receive the ball. But it didn't matter at all -- by the time Chalmers had a hand in Korver's face, the ball was already at Korver's high-arcing point of release and leaving his hand. Here, even though the defender stayed very close to Korver, he still made the shot -- had he a normal release, he probably would've shanked it.

• SHOT #2: This one's significantly more open. He runs free off a screen, catches, and takes his time. Of course, to Korver, "taking his time" is still faster than most shooters in the league, and he's able to have the ball completely in the air by the time Miller hustles around the screen.

• SHOT #3: This one demonstrates another of Korver's skills -- ridiculously great off-ball movement. He'd be insanely good in OKC, that way. Korver gets an open shot here entirely by running back and forth and confusing both defenders that were near him, conflating their assignments and making both of them think he's covered by the other guy. The defenders don't even try to challenge him when he rises for the shot -- for good reason, as it would've been impossible for either to have really altered the shot at all for someone with his release.

• SHOT #4: The fourth three is a bit of a longer shot, but it also demonstrates just how valuable that split second can be. By stepping back behind the arc just one or two feet, Korver puts a slight delay in Miller's ability to get back on him, even though Miller knew exactly what Korver was doing and was sprinting towards him even as he caught the ball. It's the slow and steady grind of accumulating minor advantages -- the speed of his shot combined with the delay of those last few feet combined to make what would've been a highly guarded three into a wide open long shot for a hot shooter.

• SHOT #5: At this point, Korver's playing the role of a tiger, fooling around with his food and picking away at the entrails. He's well behind the arc, well guarded, and it looks like he's got little chance of getting any airspace. But this situation is precisely where his shot release really comes into play. By the time his defender realizes he's shooting and goes to raise the arm, Korver's motion is already almost done. By the time the defender has fully obscured Korver's vision, the shot is released, and the defender has nothing to do but helplessly watch it sink. Having a release that quick means the defender needs to always be ready for the shot -- arms up, in his grill, and ready to contest. Because if not, Korver can just do this and make the defender look like an absolute schlub.

As you may have surmised, I quite like Korver. He's not the most phenomenal player in the world, of course -- he has absolutely no at-rim game to speak of, and last season, he took the "shooting specialist" title hilariously literally. Kyle Korver took less than 10% of last year's shots from within 15 feet, taking 66% of his shots from 3-point range and 25% of his shots from 15-23 feet. If the defense can force him to move inside (rare, due to his stroke, but bear with me) Korver becomes next to useless. He does have a few nice talents, though. His assist to turnover ratio is exceedingly high, which is great -- he doesn't tend to lose the ball and he's good at catching the open man if he does chance to be inside the range where he doesn't excel. Defensively, Korver's no stopper, but he's not chopped liver -- he doesn't have a particularly broad set of skills but what he does he does well. Quick hands, a lot of effort, and a knack for staying with his man off-ball that matches his knack for losing his defender when he moves off the ball on offense. I don't know how great he'll be with the Hawks -- if there's even the slightest decline in the efficacy of his release, at his age, he's going to find it hard to compensate. But Korver's an increasingly useful asset in a league that's become extremely reliant on producing the best three pointers possible, and a career 41% three point shooter with Korver's shooting fundamentals is exactly what almost every team would want.

• • •

Follow Lou Amundson by hustling every day.

I'm not Lou Amundson's biggest fan, but I can't deny that the man works his heart out and deserves just about everyone's respect. Amundson is one of the NBA's key undrafted talents -- he was passed over in the 2006 draft, and despite a few opportunities abroad, decided to try and hack it in the D-League to open up some NBA doors. He excelled defensively in the D-League as a hustle grit-n-grind type, and eventually, he was called up from the Colorado 14ers. He didn't play for his first team (Sacramento) but he got a series of 10-day contracts with Utah. Those didn't lead to much, but as soon as he got done in Utah, the Sixers called him up and signed him for the rest of the season and the next year. He followed that up with a trip to Phoenix, where Amundson really blossomed -- after playing 154 minutes in his first two years in the league, Amundson played 2212 minutes in two years with the Suns, proving to be every bit the energy backup the Suns needed to contend in 2010. He wasn't a major player, but he was an important one -- there's a distinction between the two with rag-tag groups like that 2010 Suns team, and Amundson's pet combination of relentless energy, obscene rebounding, and solid at-rim finishing combined to make those two years an incredibly effective one for old Lou.

Since then, he's been a bit less effective. Last year in particular was disappointing -- it's one thing to be disappointing on a Warriors team that wasn't really counting on him for much, but last year's Pacers had enough semi-decent players that Amundson's waning production became a problem -- after a decent spell in the wake of Jeff Foster's retirement, by the end of the year Amundson was down to well under a quarter of playing time a night. One of his biggest issues is that he's simply not very effective offensively from any range anymore -- he shot just 53% at the rim last year, which was one of the worst marks by a center in the entire league. He also shot well under 30% from all other ranges, which... is not very good. His rebounding rate was slightly above average, and his steal/block rates were high. But unless Amundson can recapture some of the offensive talents he displayed during his vital Phoenix tenure, he's going to have a lot of trouble staying in the league more than a year or two longer. That includes a decrease in his sky-high turnover rate -- the season's quite young, obviously, but Amundson has turned the ball over on 44% of all possessions he's handled it so far, which is patently absurd.

Still. At least when he leaves the NBA he'll still have his oil paintings! ... No, really. He will. Lou Amundson does oil painting and plays the guitar. This is a real thing. If I ever get the chance to interview him, I'm going to ask him about that. I honestly want to see his work -- I feel like it'd be interesting to see what he paints about, especially knowing what players like Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, and Lance Thomas paint about. Also, outside of the NBA, Amundson is working on a second degree in finance. So that he can better manage his money after he leaves the NBA. Yep. A lot of fans think hustle players have to be dumb. And a lot of fans are very, very wrong.

• • •

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 quite figured the Kyle Korver riddle, but one guy got Lou and A-Rad. Good show, @MillerNBA.

• Player #271 started in 57 of 63 games last year. He was a rookie. He's got a shot to be something really good, even if he didn't get much fanfare for his troubles last season.

• Player #272 started a single game last year, and he should've started a lot more. His coach seems to hate him, inexplicably. He draws more charges than most players and posted solid efficiency numbers on high usage when he was on the court. Very good on the offensive glass, too.

• Player #273 is retired. It was an unexpected retirement after a relatively solid season for him, but he's getting up there in the years and

Barring traumatic events, I should be good to have 6 sets up this week. We'll see. Join us later today for Alex Arnon's second installment of his recurring Small Market Mondays feature.

• • •

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 Ramon Sessions, DeSagana Diop, and Kenyon Martin.

• • •

Follow Ramon Sessions by driving into a tree.

I've had an inordinately large appreciation for Ramon Sessions for quite some time -- he's no fantastic, amazing player... but he's really quite a bit better than most people think, and he's fun to watch offensively. He's a guard who tends to play the percentages. One of the most efficient ways to run an offense on a team with is to drive into the teeth of the defense, pass out for (hopefully) a shot, get the ball back, and continue to do that until a crease shows up. It's not necessarily incredibly effective, but if you don't have next-level court vision (which Sessions does not) it helps build plays and find the defensive creases, and virtually every night he gets it going, a team is going to need to make some adjustments. To many of his detractors, Sessions' seemingly senseless drives represent the creatively challenged scrapings of a guard with no real goal. To me, they represent the opposite -- a pick and roll point guard who's figured out a way to draw the defense in and decode its problems, who uses the driving as a manner to get his own points too. He had a career year from the three point line, but he's never going to be a very good three point shooter -- it was a Trevor Ariza-type year from three point range for poor Sessions, and expecting him to do it regularly will never end well.

As for his prospects going forward, I don't love Charlotte for him, but I don't hate it either. I don't love the fact that he's likely to spend most of his prime backing up Kemba Walker, nor do I think he'll really thrive with the "offensive options" of the Bobcats surrounding him. The only thing "offensive" about Charlotte's options is that they're pretending to be NBA-level offensive options. (Yuk, yuk, yuk.) On the other hand, that does have a positive side for Sessions -- as I said before, he's no next-level passer, and if at all possible he prefers simplicity -- and the simplest outcome of a drive is to just get to the rim and score it as opposed to any pass out. On Charlotte, he won't just be able to do that, he'll be asked to do that. On a team bereft of options, a wild Sessions drive to the rim becomes an exceedingly efficient offensive choice. Now, the problem of losing the offensive options that surrounded him in Los Angeles should hurt. His lanes certainly won't be quite as open. But it's not like Sessions is customarily used to being surrounded by fantastic offensive players. His best season came as the first option for one of the worst teams of all time, and he'd never been on a team that was anywhere close to serious playoff contention until his 2012 trip with the Lakers. Sessions is, for better or worse, used to playing on teams with scant talent. He's used to playing no defense and playing his brand of constant-drive pick and roll. It works decently well, and he racks up stats admirably.

He's a nice, humble, likeable guy on the side -- nothing incredibly dramatic with Sessions, as the L.A. media discovered last year. Me, personally? As I noted, I've always had a soft spot for him, and I hope he does well in Charlotte. Most Cavs fans hate him, but I find that rather misguided and a bit ridiculous. What else was he supposed to do, exactly, with the offensive options the Cavaliers gave him? So he can't thrive at the off-guard -- neither can Kyrie Irving, or most NBA point guards. Point guards like having the ball and they like controlling the floor. Kyrie does it, Sessions does it, and even Boobie Gibson does it. It was less on Sessions for vastly failing Cleveland than it was on Byron Scott for putting him in lineups where neither he nor Kyrie had the ability to really operate. He can't defend whatsoever, but neither can most NBA point guards. And he puts in his effort, night-in and night-out. Nobody's saying he's one of the five best point guards in the NBA, but he's an above average option with his own varied set of positives and negatives. I suppose it's just me, but I simply don't get the hate.

• • •

_Follow Desangana Diop on Twitter at __@sagana7.___

"I did good in classes, but I am still not so sure about Hamlet." -- DeSagana Diop, 2002 interview.

The story of Gana Diop isn't quite finished yet, but it may as well be -- Diop hasn't been a productive NBA player in 2 or 3 years now, and the scale of what he provides on the court has been dramatically lessened. In his prime, he was a decent defensive player, if nothing special -- he's a huge player who moves naturally in a large frame, with a certain fluidity that lent itself well for screening and hardline post defense in his prime. His career highlight, when all's said and done, is probably from Game 7 of the 2006 Mavericks' second round deathmatch with the San Antonio Spurs. He broke his nose in the first play of overtime, battling through it and playing excellent defense throughout the final frame to shut down Tim Duncan and win the Mavericks the series. Beyond that? Not a huge number of career-highlight moments. Especially not last year, where he shot 35% (not a joke, seriously) and averaged more turnovers than the average center despite a usage rate under 10%. Yikes. With his play falling off and his general abilities lagging, there won't be many more opportunities to use this fun fact. So I'll share it one last time. The absolute best fact about Diop (and one that, regrettably, is likely to change in the next few seasons) lies in his time with the Mavericks -- Diop has only played in the playoffs twice, and his usefulness was situational at best for a generally poor defensive team. But in that time, he had the good fortune to start six games in the NBA Finals. Thing is? Dwight Howard started five, in 2009. So, yep. As of this moment in time, DeSagana Diop has started more games in the NBA Finals than Dwight Howard. Charlotte: land of the tenured!

Off the court, he represents one of your average everyday NBA stories with Diop, although it's worth pointing out that it's a nice thing that it's average at all. Came from a relatively poor area in Senegal, and grew up playing soccer. When he grew to be enormous, at the age of 15, he was told to try basketball -- he's always said that he had trouble learning how to dribble at his size, which I suppose makes sense. One of the nice things that American-born NBA players tend to get that foreign-born NBA players don't necessarily get is younger coaching. It's easier to learn how to dribble when you aren't already 7'0", you know? This extends to his hands, which are some of the clumsiest in the league. Finds it difficult to catch passes of any type, whether good or bad, and his finishing is a comedy of errors. But again, that's not necessarily his fault -- the man started playing at the age of 15, and people really tend to underrate how difficult it is to properly learn how to catch and dribble when you're already that kind of a size. Food for thought. Best thing about Diop, though? This lost piece of internet lore drummed from the murky depths by the siren sing-song typing of Hardwood Paroxysm writer Sean Highkin. It's a two-fan take on Kriss Kross' "Jump" that's based around the soothing defensive talents of DeSagana Diop. I'll leave the explication to Highkin, as he does a great job of it there. But go read his piece and listen to the song. It's phenomenal.

• • •

_Follow Kenyon Martin on Twitter at __@KenyonMartinSr.___

Kenyon Martin is not in the NBA right now. This isn't by his own design, or a forced retirement -- he's just remained unsigned, and if he wants to know why, he should probably start by talking to his agent. In a recent interview, Martin expressed dismay that he had remained unsigned, saying that he'd once hoped to latch on to a title contender but would now accept a role on any team that wanted him. The thing that confused me about his dismay wasn't necessarily that it existed at all -- of course he wants to play! -- but that it runs so counter to the reports that were coming out earlier this summer. Just about every contender had an interest in Martin. The Heat, the Lakers, the Spurs, the Celtic... basically everyone but the Thunder. The issue? Martin was demanding (per reports) the mini-midlevel, or at least an optioned multiyear deal. These teams balked at that -- they either didn't have the money or didn't want him that much. The story goes that they sent him proposals of a veteran's minimum offer, his agent rejected them, and he's left where he is now -- stating publicly that he'll accept the minimum as long as a team sends him the offer.

What does he offer a team, at this point? Some value, but not a ton. His defense is still solid, although significantly less so than it used to be. He's never been the greatest help defender, but his help defense has fallen off to replacement-level or worse last year. He's far better working one-on-one in the post, with similarly sized power forwards. That's a very situational role to play in the modern league, with few post-up forwards remaining and most forwards moving outside the basket and working as floor spacers -- Martin's perimeter defense isn't bad, but his primary defensive role is definitively that of a bulldog post defender. On offense, he's a pick-your-poison type. For his own team, that is -- he tends to hog the ball a bit more than his efficiency would demand, although he showed an admirable amount of offensive restraint in his limited burn with the Clippers last year. His main issue has been the gradual loss of his former rebounding talent -- he was never a phenomenal rebounder, but at this point, he's embarrassingly bad. Barely scraped a rebounding rate of 10% despite the Clippers insisting on playing him as a small center for over half his minutes. Rough times. Going forward, he'll be a situational player, but as a one-on-one post guy he could derive a decent amount of additional value. I'd expect he'll get signed by a very good team, if he lowers his expectations fully and accepts a minimum deal.

A lot of people think Kenyon Martin is a bad person. It's not difficult to see why -- his on-court defensive style is a bit dirty, and he's known for getting into scrapes with other teams and having some manner of tantrums off the court. Although his off-court tantrums are usually a bit much, they're hardly coming from nowhere -- this particular tweet arose from a ton of personal attacks on Twitter. And when he got enraged over a former friend and Nuggets employee filling his car with popcorn as a practical joke, most people didn't mention the fact that the butter probably ruined the finishing of the inside of the car and would lead to a several thousand dollar repair job. (Although his getting the employee fired doesn't get reported much either, so perhaps it evens out.) He had a highly publicized spat with Mark Cuban and has previously been suspended from his team for screaming at his coach. He still blows up at opposing players from time to time, and has been occasionally known to call fans who needle him "fat stupid white boys." In short -- he gets mad.

I don't love Kenyon Martin, and I don't love the way he plays. I often read interviews with him and shake my head. But he isn't THAT bad. I didn't realize this until recently, but Martin is one of the most charity-driven guys in the league. Consider -- he's on the board of directors for the American Institute of Stuttering. The Karl blow-up was so long ago it's hard to really use it as evidence of anything -- since that happened, he's started his own foundation for underprivileged youth and he's donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity. And he's spilled a bit on a few things that recontextualize his temper, at least for me. It's hard to avoid feeling awful for Martin as a kid who stuttered -- because, little known fact, he did! I had a slight stuttering problem as a child that was connected with my lowest moments. It still comes up when I'm exceedingly nervous. It's absolutely a tough thing to get through, and even the toughest kids get teased for it if they do it. I dealt with getting teased differently than Martin, but I can't really blame him much for responding to the teasing by getting tougher and acting rougher. Some people ride with it, some people build shells -- Martin built a shell, and while it's a bit abrasive and a bit mad... life's tough, and I can't begrudge a man for dealing with it differently than I do. Good on him for dealing with it at all.

• • •

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. Just about everyone got 3/3 yesterday -- @MillerNBA (once again), Itachill, Der-K, and Chilai. Let's see if these are quite as easy.

• Player #268 is a player who teams should probably give up on at this point. They won't, but they probably should. Per-minute stats do not a rotation player make, not in the way he's gotten his.
• Player #269 has, in my opinion, the fastest shot release in the NBA. Steve Novak's close, but this guy releases the ball SO fast.
• Player #270 serves decently well as an energetic backup center on a not-very-good-team, although he's doubtful to ever be much more than that. Was pretty awful last year, even though he was part of a mistakenly praised bench unit for a not-particularly-deep team.

Sorry for the late-ish capsules -- internet was down at work. Have a good weekend.

• • •

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 Gary Neal, Jose Calderon, and Bismack Biyombo.

• • •

Follow _Gary Neal on Twitter at @GNeal14.
_

Yesterday's end-of-post riddle, used to describe Gary Neal, may surprise many who are aware that I'm a Spurs fan.

Player #262 has no conscience, and will take shots regardless of the in-game situation or his likelihood of making the shot. He's still extraordinarily effective at it, though, and will probably get a very nice contract next offseason after he playing a strong bench role on a very good team this year.

"What? A Spurs fan basically calling a Spur a chucker? You wouldn't!"

Well, yes, I would. Because it's true. Gary Neal is a good player, and over the last two years he's been among the most bang-for-your-buck contracts in the league. The man's been making less than a million dollars a year to put up Jamal Crawford-type numbers, with better percentages and a bit of a stronger handle. But none of that truly hides or obfuscates the fact that "no conscience" is exactly the way any seasoned NBA scribe would describe him. And none of this is really a bad thing, in a vacuum. I don't love Neal's split-second decisions with a massive amount of time left to run the offense, but in the aggregate, they help. Neal's insane split-second decisions are often incredibly stupid, but they work. They make the defense doubt itself, and help instill fear of the offense into any solid defense. Suddenly, the defense is overcommitting a shade to try and prevent another random basket out of nowhere. They tighten. They make mistakes. The creases appear. And then the Spurs offensive machine goes to work and takes advantage.

While that's all true, I also didn't say it was a bad thing. I wasn't kidding when I said he was extraordinarily effective at it -- he is. Neal has the lovely distinction of being one of the least-assisted guards in the league despite being one of the best three point shooters around. To wit, here are the top ten 3 point shooters in the league with a minimum of 3 attempts per game:

1. Stephen Curry -- 45.5% on 4.7 shots a game (78.2% assisted)
2. Ray Allen -- 45.3% on 5.1 shots a game (93.4% assisted)
3. Brandon Rush -- 45.2% on 3.4 shots a game (94.9% assisted)
4. Jordan Farmar -- 44.0% on 3.2 shots a game (83.6% assisted)
5. Danny Green -- 43.6% on 3.5 shots a game (93.1% assisted)
6. Kyle Korver -- 43.5% on 4.2 shots a game (93.2% assisted)
7. Jerryd Bayless -- 42.3% on 3.4 shots a game (77.3% assisted)
8. Richard Jefferson -- 42.0% on 4.6 shots a game (96.3% assisted)
9. Matt Bonner -- 42.0% on 3.8 shots a game (99.0% assisted)
10. Gary Neal -- 41.9% on 3.5 shots a game (54.2% assisted)

Notice anything funny about Neal's line, there? It's the percent assisted, which I demarcated in red. That measures how many of their shots were assisted on behind the arc. Neal's percentage assisted is supernaturally low -- the only guard with a lower percentage of his threes assisted in the top 30 than Neal was Kyrie Irving. The man can shoot, and he makes them at a top-10 clip despite taking an insane amount of them off the dribble and outside of any set play. He's the yin to Matt Bonner's yang, and quite literally the exact opposite of what Bonner gives the Spurs on the court. Whereas Bonner represents the threat if a team lets a set play execute to completion, Neal represents the threat of what happens if a team doesn't. What happens if you force the mismatch and the Spurs have to chuck one up? Well, they have Neal, a fearless and patently absurd pressure valve that helps make defending the Spurs less a matter of shutting down plays and more a manner of shutting down fate -- the difference between the offensively solid and the offensively elite. So good on you, Gary Neal.

The one issue with Neal -- and it is a relatively tricky one for his prospects as more than a pressure valve -- is that he can't do all that much else. And what's worse, his defense is absolutely awful. The Spurs have been a consistently worse defensive team with Neal on the court during his career, and that's not for no reason. To compensate, the Spurs have tried to develop his skills as a backup point guard. This hasn't worked particularly well, however, and while he's a remotely passable backup point guard in certain situations he's no great shakes at setting up offense for players who aren't named "Gary Neal." Which means he can't really share the court with anyone who's better than he is at offense. Which will be an issue going forward. Another issue is that he simply doesn't rate out well on the tertiary statistics, even compared to his position, where few players do. His rebound rate was pathetic (even for a guard, he was below par), he rarely drew charges (in his rookie season, Neal drew zero charges in 1,683 minutes of play), and his steal/block rates are bad enough to be hilarious (he has blocked 6 shots in his entire NBA career). A player that shoots like Neal does will be a highly valued member of just about any NBA team, and my guess is the Spurs will end up flipping him in a trade sometime this season for another defensive big off the bench, in anticipation of Neal getting an offer sheet the Spurs can't reasonably match in restricted free agency. But I suppose we'll see -- personally, I thought they'd do the same with Dejuan Blair last season.

• • •

_Follow Jose Calderon on Twitter at __@josemcalderon8.___

Although Jose Calderon has his issues, I'll start with something most don't realize -- Calderon is one of the top passers in the league. Really! He posted one of the highest assist rates in the league, putting up the 3rd highest rate among point guards getting more than 20 minutes a contest. It's very fun to watch Calderon pass, and his personal offensive talents make it even easier for him to do his job distributing. If Calderon wasn't one of the best shooting point guards in the league (which he is -- deadly shooter off the dribble from just about everywhere on the court), he wouldn't ever draw double teams -- if he didn't draw doubles,__ it'd be far more rare for him to get a chance to dazzle with one of his patented bounce-out-of-the-double passes or needle-threading dishes through two defenders to a cutting Raptor. His offense is brilliant, and it's a pity that at his age he has too much trouble generating his own to resort to it often. He rated out as one of the lowest-usage point guards in the NBA, which would be fine if he wasn't so incredibly efficient that even just a few more shots would've dramatically helped his dismal offensive team. He's got a perhaps worse problem than Rajon Rondo -- Rondo doesn't generate much of his own offense because he's not fantastic at it. Calderon doesn't generate much of his own offense because... he's old? Other than a general inability to get into the paint, aptly noted by John Hollinger in his own player profiles, Calderon's passivity on the offensive end given his efficiency has always been a bit annoying, and the one bugaboo that keeps his offense from being as elite as the numbers imply.

But that all ignores the biggest problem with Calderon. That is, defense. People get on Steve Nash's case for his poor defense, and that's fine. Nash is not a good defender. But Jose Calderon is much, much worse -- and what's worse for Calderon is that he's gotten absolutely no better as the defense around him has improved. It was a bit easier to say "well, perhaps it's the surrounding personnel" when he was on Triano-led teams that were shiftless and useless on the defensive end. It's significantly harder to blame the supporting cast when, like last year, the team was defensively solid overall but still awful with Calderon on the court. The issue here is partly one of reputation -- Calderon has developed a deserved reputation for terrible defense, which has caused opposing teams to take advantage of his blown coverage more often on an in-game basis than they would if there wasn't five years of scouting backing it up. You don't see most coaches making a similar effort to force their guards to challenge rookies nearly as much as they force challenges to Calderon, and that's simply because there's a much higher margin of error on how the rookie will defend. The rookie could be good, or could be bad, or could be so average that it doesn't impart a serious defensive advantage. But Calderon has been doing this so long that everyone who knows anything about the league knows about his matador defense, which makes it an attractive target and an over-leveraged strategy on the defensive end against Toronto. Or, at least, it would be over-leveraged... if it didn't keep working.

• • •

_Follow Bismack Biyombo on Twitter at __@bismackbiyombo0.___

Bismack Biyombo had a pretty subpar rookie season, at least on the offensive end. While the broader struggles of the Bobcats tended to demand a more singular focus in their historic futility, few people understand just how bad Biyombo was at producing even a minimal amount of offense. Biyombo didn't have a single above-average shooting range in his rookie year -- he was below the position average at the rim, from 3-9 feet, from 10-15 feet, and 16-23 feet. Often by quite a bit, too, as he rated out the 13th worst center in the league from 3-9 feet and the 4th worst from 10-15. Pretty rough. He compounded those miscues by posting a top-tier turnover rate (not in a good way -- he was among the bottom 25% of all centers in controlling the ball) and an awful rebounding rate. Add to that his absurdly poor assist rate, and you don't really have the recipe for a good year. About the only thing Biyombo did well was get to the free throw line, posting a top tier FTA/FGA mark for a center. Unfortunately, even that wasn't really his doing -- his percentage from the line was sub-50%, so desperate defenses would often succumb to the temptations of Smack-a-Bismack to send him to the line and avoid playing defense.

On defense, Biyombo was passable and promising. He was probably the best defensive talent on the Bobcats, although I caution that such a statement is hardly saying much. His block percentage was extraordinarily high, rating out as 5th overall in the entire league. I'm always a wary man when it comes to conflating a high block percentage with a solid defensive skillset, but frankly, he does have a solid defensive skillset and it goes far beyond the blocks alone. His wingspan is enormous and his spindly mobility is well-suited to cause havoc if he develops correctly. His weakside defense was already relatively decent. His big problems? Defending one-on-one, and blowing up plays that were directly sent his way. He was shiftless at disrupting the pick and roll last season and relatively poor in the post. With time, those should improve. But if they don't, his block totals aren't going to really help his team all that much, as last year's results tended to indicate -- the Bobcats were actually a worse defensive team with Biyombo on the court than off it, which is absurd to conceptualize in a vacuum given how poor their defense was overall.

In my view, the nicest thing I can really say with respect to Paul Silas' work on the 2011 Bobcats was rooted in the fact that Biyombo and Walker finally began to earn the minutes they should've been playing all year as the year wound down. I understand that when you play as poorly as Biyombo played, it's hard to get you minutes. That's reasonable. But the team was quite literally one of the worst teams of all time, and Silas (to his credit) eventually realized it. After a certain point, it's really hard to get that much worse, and you might as well start giving your super-raw rookies a ton of burn as you assess what they bring to the table. Silas seemed to get it in the abstract, and Biyombo's minutes did get larger as the season went along. To wit: Biyombo averaged more minutes per game every consecutive month of the season -- he averaged just 10 MPG in December, 13 in January, 24 in February, 29 in March, 31 in April. I do think they should've gone up a tad more and a tad earlier, but Silas deserves a lot of credit for catching on at all. All too often, coaches never realize their players need more minutes. He still continued his aggravating trend of pulling with early foul trouble and generally keeping Biyombo on a short leash even after he decided to start him, but we'll let that slide. For now.

• • •

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. Today's sole 3/3 comes on behalf of @MillerNBA, who is good at this game.

• Player #265 has broken the hearts of many-a good team. Well, one good team and a few terrible teams. He's back on the "terrible" end of the spectrum now.
• Player #266 has started more NBA Finals games at center than Dwight Howard. This is without question my favorite piece of non-Trey Johnson NBA Trivia. He only started 9 games last season, so he's falling off (HEH), but it's still hilarious.
• I don't really get why Player #267 decided to play hardball with his contract until training camp ended -- few contenders are really going to want to try and meld him into their schemes without any camp burn. AND he probably won't get a bigger contract than the minimum anymore anyway! Good work, dude.

Was hoping to get 6 sets done this week. Looks unlikely, but 5 should be possible.

• • •

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 Zaza Pachulia, Jason Thompson, and Nene.

• • •

Follow _Zaza Pachulia on Twitter at __@zaza27.___

Zaza Pachulia isn't a fantastic player, but he's patently decent -- a proportionally-sized center in a league bereft of them. Last season, due to injuries to seemingly every big man on the Atlanta roster, Pachulia was forced into double duty -- quite literally double, as he played roughly double the minutes per night as he played in 2010 and 2011 combined. Without Pachulia stepping up in increased minutes, the 2012 Hawks could've been a serious disappointment. But they weren't, and Pachulia's strong defensive contributions and ship-steadying efforts were absolutely essential to that team's success. On offense, he's hardly a low-post wizard -- Pachulia shot 55.8% at the rim, which may seem fine at a glance, but ranked well within the bottom 20% of all NBA centers. His 3-9 foot post-ups were even worse, relativistically, and he isn't generally a great midrange guy (although he posted VERY good numbers from midrange and the long two last year that were probably a bit fluky). Where Pachulia really helps a team is on defense, where he isn't afraid to get a bit dirty and muddy the game up. It's a useful change of pace on a team that generally was a bit soft, pre-Ivan Johnson, and by playing as much as he did last year Pachulia totally changed the defensive tenor of the Woodson-era Hawks to a new normal. Whether the Hawks resign him or not, he WILL make money next season as a good defensive scrapper with passable offense. And a nice dude.

Really. Off the court, Pachulia seems to be a genuinely nice guy. Most people know him for his patented combination of a dubious command of the English language with hilarious passion for the game, and honestly, that's a pretty decent summary of it. This all is best exemplified in one of the best postgame interviews in the history of the game, where Pachulia was interviewed after the Hawks pulled the surprising upset in Game 6 of the Hawks' 2008 first-round series against the Celtics. Pachulia had a great game that night, going almost 30 minutes (less than a minute shy of his season high) with fantastic defense and electric hustle to force the would-be champs to a winner-take-all final contest. So, for the first time in his career, Pachulia was interviewed. His response? Ignoring the interviewer's single question, instead taking the mic and screaming to the crowd in a stream of incoherent emotion and love. It was great. It is great. One of the best basketball interviews, for sure. And he seems to be a really nice guy outside of that one moment -- in 2011, there was a single game where Pachulia was given a totally mispelled "Pcahulia" jersey. An Atlanta Hawks blogger promised to give anybody his house if they sent him the mispelled jersey -- Zaza proceeded to send it himself. Pachulia noted that he actually read the blog (!!!), thought it would be a nice gesture to give him the jersey he loved so much, and didn't even want his house!

Modern day saint, I swear. God bless you, Zaza.

• • •

_Follow Jason Thompson on Twitter at __@jtthekid.___

Jason Thompson is an extremely rarely-discussed player, although not without reason. He's started 204/300 career games, but few NBA fans would be able to pick him out of a crowd or say virtually anything about his game offhand. Partly this is a function of his playing style. He's not exactly the most flamboyant of players, and his general style is similar to that of virtually every other nameless bench big in the league. He's also had a relatively small role (despite all the starts) on a team that's been among the worst in the league over his entire career. A related, not-so-fun fact: Thompson has, in his career, been on the court for just 86 wins and 214 losses. Despite being in the league for 5 more seasons than Thompson, LeBron James has only been on the court for 249 regular season losses -- just 35 more than Thompson! That should adequately clue you in as to how Thompson is so unknown after 4 decently productive years. Didn't help that -- as Basketball Prospectus recently noted -- Thompson came from an incredibly small college program at Rider University. When you weren't well known in college and you only arrive to toil in obscurity on one of the NBA's worst teams... yes, you'll generally evade discussion.

His accomplishments last season were rooted in a discovery of distribution -- Thompson finally figured out that he needed to take the ball inside a bit more after years of decently effective long jumpers and one-move finishes, and it caused a lot of good things to happen. One thing that the folks at Cowbell Kingdom mentioned that the tape absolutely bears out is that Thompson finally figured out how to convert with either hand last season. That added skill left him with a significantly easier time getting an open shot at the rim, and forced teams to essentially rewrite the book on how to guard him. The old scouting reports were out of date, so to speak -- most teams either didn't catch on or didn't have a good answer last season, which left Thompson the opening to have his most personally efficient season ever. This spread to many other parts of his offensive game as well -- by taking fewer long range shots, he shot better on them. By actually showing a stronger threat at the rim, Thompson drew more defensive attention and had more opportunities to pass to open teammates, which led to his highest assist rate of his career. He stopped turning the ball over in the post quite as much as he used to, posting a career low in turnover rate.

Defensively, the picture's more negative. Thompson emphatically straddles between positions -- he can't really guard fours well, as he's not quick enough, but he's too lanky to provide a solid post-up defensive threat. He was defensively neutral last season on one of the worst defensive teams in the league, and had no clear position of defensive strength. His defensive footage didn't look awful to me, but it screamed average at best with a tendency towards physical mismatches. At the age of 25, it's tough to really see how he improves on this end -- it's common for big men to build former shaky strengths into better defensive assets as their careers age, but it's quite rare for a big man with no active defensive strengths to do so. Just not much to build on. For this reason, I'm pretty down on the 5-year $30 million dollar contract the Kings extended him during this offseason. It may not sound like that much ("$5 million a year? Not bad!"), but even if he remains at his offensive peak of last season for the duration of the contract, his lack of a place on defense will sabotage any dreams of a larger role. Also: it's early, but the offense itself might've been a bit fluky -- he's had trouble finishing to his left this year, in an extremely small sample. Fans would be best served paying attention to that going forward -- if that talent evades him, his contract has the potential to go from bad to worse extremely quickly.

• • •

Follow Nene by naming your first son Maybyner.

For the longest time, Nene was extremely underrated. The man was one of the best offensive big men in the game for quite some time, with relatively decent defense to boot. When healthy, Nene's got every component of a well-rounded offensive skillset you want a big guy to have -- passable midrange shot, decent longball, and an extremely effective at-rim game that a team can count on for 5-6 shots a night that puts opposing defenders in a blender. His defense has always been decent, if nothing phenomenal -- he's never led a particularly imposing defensive unit, but Nene-led defenses are rarely worst-in-the-league on that end and regularly overachieve. That's primarily due to his excellent habit of switching onto guards and causing havoc in their passing lanes, even if he's no great shakes at guarding strong post-up players that are significantly larger than he is (that is, most centers) or pick-and-pop based offenses. He's no great shakes at blocking shots or rebounding, either, which definitely detracts from his usefulness as a player -- without very strong rebounders around him, Nene's teams have a lot of trouble securing rebounds and generating extra possessions. Which is clearly not ideal. The biggest issue with Nene to me is one of position -- never in his career has he been a particularly effective "true" center, and he's far more of a burly large forward in his sort of game and orientation. In my view, Nene's height and size compared with most NBA centers could be the reason he's spent so much of his career injured.

He's simply very undersized compared to most centers, which led to Nene having to put on more burly muscle and leads to him overcompensating for his lack of size every dang night in the post. Eventually, this takes a toll on your body -- constantly overcompensating for his generally low vertical, his lower center of gravity, and carrying the extra weight to bang in the post has got to be stressful on the body at large. And make no mistake -- more than any other aspect of his game, Nene's injuries are the one that detracts by far the most on-court value. Nene's a good lock to miss 10-15 games a year with various minor bone bruises and nagging injuries he's never quite been able to fix, and that matters a lot for a contending team. Nene should be in or around his prime, but there's a legitimate question as to whether his injuries have artificially closed his window, per se. Will he still be in his prime when he finally plays an uninjured season? Nobody really knows, which is the main reason Denver chose to trade him for the peril and promise of Javale McGee. Which, by the way, I still think was a kind of silly trade even understanding their reasoning. They signed McGee for far too much money without any real knowledge as to what McGee would provide going forward, and if they really wanted to keep contending and knew they were willing to spend that much on McGee, they should've just rode out Nene's injury. He isn't making THAT much more, only a few million a year. Or at least tried to get something better than McGee for him, as they traded him at the absolute nadir of his value. Minor quibble, I suppose, but seriously -- I don't think I like that trade at all from Denver's side.

Most everyone is aware of it, but it's always worth repeating: it's pretty astonishing that Nene is still playing at all. In early 2008, Nene took a sudden and unexpected leave of absence from the Nuggets, with few having any idea why. Three days later, Nene had a tumor excised -- turns out, he'd developed testicular cancer. He came back a few months later, and most of us now look over that fact in passing as we're so vastly separated from his downtime. But it's still pretty amazing. We often forget that one of the bright spots of playing in the modern NBA (for the players, the fans, and society in general) is the constant and mandatory doctor checkups -- it makes it significantly more likely that a sports star's major illness will get caught, were they to develop one. Had Nene been anywhere but a well-funded major sport, it's no given that he would've been able to get treatment as quickly and effectively for the cancer. Sports is an ephemeral, meaningless pastime to many people. And that's fine. But it's worth recognizing that the increased medical attention and focus on health can -- and does -- save lives. It's what kept Jeff Green from playing on an arrhythmic heart, what found Tyson Chandler's foot problem, and (of course) what found Nene's cancer and ensured the big-hearted Brazilian would remain on this Earth for a longer time. And in the big picture, more than any fleeting ring, the lives helped and enriched by Nene's saved one is where the virtues of sport take on the most clarity. At least to me.

Also, there's this...

• • •

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.

• Player #262 has no conscience, and will take shots regardless of the in-game situation or his likelihood of making the shot. He's still extraordinarily effective at it, though, and will probably get a very nice contract next offseason after he playing a strong bench role on a very good team this year.
• If you rewrote "La Cucaracha" around the name of Player #263, you wouldn't need to change much. Would still have a pretty decent rhythm! Great passing talent, too.
• Player #264 is about as raw as raw gets. Personally, really hoping he sees more time this year -- his team sure isn't going anywhere.

My apologies if these start taking a turn into some sadness over the coming weeks. I'm really, REALLY trying not to do it... but it's becoming sort of difficult. Until tomorrow.

• • •

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 Kosta Koufos, Luol Deng, and Nick Young.

• • •

Follow _Kosta Koufos on Twitter at @kostakoufos.
_

It's a bit funny. The Denver Nuggets have a vast surfeit of depth, or so we're led to believe. They've got more wing talent than you can shake a stick at, several decent point guards, and a veritable army of big men. All of them are above replacement level, all of them have their individual strengths, and (in theory) a bench unit comprised of such players should be blowing every team off the court. But there's a problem with simply assessing players as above or below replacement level without properly contextualizing their stats, and the Nuggets (to me) seem to embody this gap. First, replacement level on defense is extremely situational and hard to assess without seeing players on the court together. Simple as that. A good rotating pick and roll defender is still going to look pretty bad if he's surrounded by players who can't defend worth a damn, while an individually solid post defender who's asked to protect the rim is rarely going to get a chance to show off his talents. A shutdown wing who has to roam instead of key in to a superstar may look worse than they'd look if they were acting as a shutdown wing. And so on and so forth. The role you play on defense is a lot more valuable than we tend to give heed, and can completely change how you look on defense in a scheme poorly suited for your defensive talents. Or, conversely, can make you look a lot better than you are.

The problem with Denver's roster right now isn't that they lack of good players. They have a great many solid offensive players, and by the end of the year, I'd be shocked if their offense wasn't floating around top 10 (although I still think spacing will be an issue without acquiring another three point shooter). The issue is their defense, which is currently completely rudderless -- and if I'm honest, I don't see that changing for a while. And I think the fact that Kosta Koufos represents their biggest hope on that end is a good indicator why. While the Nuggets have a ton of big men who are above-replacement-level and solid offensive players, only one of the Nuggets' big men is currently a plus defender -- Koufos. The other Denver big men can stumble into good defensive plays, from time to time (see: McGee's block average, Faried's occasional possessions of post brilliance) but none have been able to solidly capture that defensive intensity in a manner that screams "build the defense around me." And frankly, neither has Koufos. He's a decent pick and roll defender that appears to fall apart when matched by someone larger than he is. He doesn't do one-on-one coverage very well, but he can help defend plays. Unfortunately, given the other defensive frontcourt talent on the Nuggets, he doesn't JUST need to defend plays -- he also needs to do man-to-man post defense, and he needs to try and protect the rim, and he needs to do so many things to make this team hum defensively that his actual defensive skills get buried in the miasma.

It's not all bad for Denver. Iguodala's defense will come back, and that will help. But you cannot build a positive defensive team around a single positive defender that isn't defending the paint -- not against an NBA where 30-40% of each team's shots come around the rim, not against an NBA where slashing and paint scoring is the path of least resistance to putting a lot of points on the board. And so Koufos sits. He's a decent offensive player, I suppose, in a limited role -- he converts well at the rim and has a nice little baby hook he employs with some success from short range. He has absolutely no offensive game outside of 10 feet, and thankfully for Denver, he doesn't pretend he does -- ceasing to pretend you have a midrange game when you don't is one of those steps that good players take that indicates both the merits of self-restraint and a better self-awareness than most. He's an excellent rebounder, although it is worth noting that last season's excellent rebounding numbers come with the caveat that he played scant minutes and has rarely had to rebound against starting-caliber bigs. Still. Koufos is a good player, if a bit of a situational roleplayer. The fact that Karl looked at his big man rotation and assessed Koufos the starter isn't necessarily a knock on Koufos, but more a knock on the Nuggets' frontcourt as a defensive unit -- at their best, the Nuggets will hum offensively as few other teams in the league do. But the defensive troubles that allowed Miami to post an offensive rating of 126 points per 100 possessions against the poor team aren't going away as soon as Iguodala comes back to full form.

• • •

Follow _Luol Deng on Twitter at __@LuolDeng9.___

You can ask friends of mine, if you want. They'd all tell you the same thing -- I may not be a fan of the Bulls, but I am a completely unabashed Luol Deng fan. I think Deng is one of the best small forwards in the league, and believe him to be a target of too much unjust criticism for things he can't really control. He finds himself dogged on both ends -- criticism of his lower-than-expectations offense override the context in which he gets his numbers, while his defense is considered "nice" but a step below that of Iguodala or LeBron. His contract is constantly referenced as a gigantic, frustrating overpay and an albatross. He's constantly mentioned as trade bait. He plays injured and plays often, pooh-poohing injury in an effort to help his team out -- but because his statistics take a dive while injured, he tends to suffer the ill effects of his injury twice, both in the disappointment of having the injury and disappointment in his statistics. It's not fun. But let's discuss each of his trouble points one-by-one.

• Poor offensive player. Not really. His percentages aren't great, but Deng does have some skills. The biggest issue Deng faces isn't really his skillset causing problems but the Bulls' relatively flawed offensive scheme to begin with. Thibodeau's understanding of offense tends to lead him towards a halfcourt, grind-it-out offense that relieson wings popping for long twos and bigs flashing to accept short passes (which, incidentally, raises his assist rate -- he's a bit above average in that department). It's fundamentally similar to the Boston offense around Paul Pierce. The problem? Deng isn't Paul Pierce -- he's no midrange wizard. When Deng's healthy, he's a good three point shooter (36% last season!), and he's quite good at slashing to the rim. But instead, Thibodeau's general offensive schema has essentially forced Deng to take an absurd excess of midrange shots in his time as a Bull, which has laid to waste his efficiency numbers given how absolutely awful he is at them. Now that he's injured, his shot has a very bad wrist-related hitch, and his aggression in getting to the rim is harmed by his difficulty dribbling. So now the critics can point and go "Hey! Look! Deng sucks at offense!" Problem is he doesn't, and the falloff is essentially all related to his injury. But keep saying that, sure.

• Not super-elite defensively. I have to question this. Do the people that say this watch Deng play defense? The man's a beast, and although he's not quite the shutdown wizard Iguodala is, I'd argue that he's about as valuable as LeBron James in the regular season. What really differentiates Deng (and Tony Allen, to be fair) from Iguodala and James and the rest of the NBA's best large perimeter defenders is that Deng's motor never, EVER stops. The man has never taken a defensive possession off in his life, for better or worse -- he hustles up the court every possession, whether it's a fast break or a halfcourt grind-out. He's ubiquitous, surveying the court with an eagle eye for any defensive breakdown he needs to assist. He doesn't quit, and for as good as Thibodeau is at putting together defensive schemes, without Deng his defense would be far less potent. He's the best one-on-one defender in the Bulls' starting five and makes the whole defensive system move correctly when he's on the court. He's far more important to the Bulls' defense than most give him credit for.

• Overpaid relative to his production. Honestly? I just think this is wrong. Plain and simple. Yes, he's a bit under the league's best wings -- he's no Kobe, he's no Harden, he's no LeBron. But which of the sub-elite wings is he that much worse than? I'd assess him to be clearly superior to Rudy Gay or Danny Granger, two players with marginally better offensive games but significantly worse defensive games (although they're still positive defenders). Pierce is better (for now) but also gets paid $3 million more per season. Luol Deng signed a $71 million dollar contract, but it was pre-lockout and it lasts for 6 years. That's a touch over $12 million a year. Big money, but for Deng's defensive and offensive production and the NBA average contract size, it's not THAT egregious, nor is it so out-of-sorts as to seriously merit griping. Not to mention the elephant in the room -- Deng is consistently among the top 5-10 players in the game in terms of the minutes he's on the court, plays through injury, and simply gets way more burn than many of the players with contracts commensurate to his. The fact that the Bulls don't really need to price in a serious backup for Deng (not with the minutes he plays) has to be a relative value-add to the contract as well, even if I (and many others) feel he needs to stop playing all those minutes.

So, that's that. This isn't to say that Deng is absent of problems, obviously. He should've gotten surgery on his torn wrist ligament during the offseason, and while I realize he wants to play tough and help his team, without Rose this Bulls team is relatively shiftless. It'd be far more valuable to his franchise and his life as a whole if he just got the surgery, recovered, and came back without the injury-forced hitch in his shooting stroke. I realize he wanted to play for his country, and quite frankly, I'm glad he did. But immediately after his Olympic play ended he should've gotten the surgery. Yes, he'd be out a month or two. No, I don't think anyone knowledgeable on the face of the earth would begrudge him for it. And as I mentioned -- he plays more minutes than just about anyone, which is both a value-add and a curse. It's a value-add because you don't need to worry about getting a particularly competent backup -- when your backup only has rotational room to play 5-10 minutes a night (considering smallball/largeball lineups), the franchise can fill it with minimum guys and experience little-to-no dropoff. It's a curse because Deng's offensive statistics (and occasional defensive possessions) may be significantly more inefficient than he'd produce if he played the 33-35 MPG nights of is peers.

While I love Deng's game, I love his off-court endeavors and past quite a bit more. He's one of the most likeable talents to ever attend Duke University (in a group with Kyrie Irving and Grant Hill), and he's lived through more than you or I could ever dream. Deng was born in a nine child family in the war-torn nation of Sudan, moving to Egypt at a young age to escape the ongoing civil war. After he got out and got his NBA contract, it would've been pretty easy for Deng to simply throw money at it and look past it. He doesn't. He's been personally extremely involved in Sudanese charities, with a special emphasis on the Lost Boys of Sudan. The "Lost Boys" part refers to one of the tens of thousands of boys of the Nuer or Dinka ethnic groups displaced or orphaned during Sudan's grisly civil war. I don't know if any of you have ever read Dave Egger's book, "What is the What" -- it's not commonly assigned reading. But if you haven't, I strongly suggest you carve out some time for it. It's the story of one of Sudan's Lost Boys who escapes, makes his way to America, and is mugged and troubled. Among other things, of course, like his history and the road he traveled. It's a great work in more ways than one, and it's rather representative of the program Luol Deng has put his heart and soul into helping. And there's a good reason for that, as well -- Deng is of the Dinka tribe, so he himself is technically of the lost boy designation.

Deng escaped the brunt of the horrors his peers underwent, but they're widely considered the most traumatized large-scale group of children to ever survive a war. They often had to walk -- rarely with shoes -- for years, searching for safe refuge in a journey where their journeying peers fell to death around them to starvation, wild animals, and soldiers. Then there were the lost girls, taken as hostages and sexually assaulted by massive armies before being sold into slavery. The worst part about the plight of the Lost Girls (relative to the Lost Boys) is that as they were sold to different families, they "technically" aren't eligible for the same supported resettlement to America that the Lost Boys are (through the charity foundations Deng supports). Which is pretty awful, much like virtually everything related to that period of Sudanese history. It's an incredible gift that we get to watch Luol Deng perform at this level, and it's a gift that Deng has achieved the success he has. He's established his own charity foundation, one that works to build schools in Sudan. He and his family visit Sudan yearly, often helping with government work and the establishment of a new independent state in south Sudan.

He's a hero, plain and simple -- one of the best people in the NBA, for sure. And for all the whining and hand-wringing about him being "overpaid"... can we all step back for a second and admit that a man who builds schools by his own hand to help build back a war-torn nation probably "deserves" about as much money as the world can give him? Yes? We can be on the same page for a minute? Good. Now go ahead and return to calling him an overpaid fraud-star, if you'd like -- just know that you'll hear virtually this entire capsule restated in the course of a minute if you say that to me personally. Fair warning, you know.

• • •

Follow _Nick Young on Twitter at __@NickSwagyPYoung.___

The nice thing about having a few of these left for the NBA season is that, occasionally, I'll see a player do something that absolutely needs to be in their capsule. Must be there. A singular moment in a random game that just exemplifies that player's style or general approach to the game. Today, for Nick Young, we have one such video that was taken from last night's game between the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers, Young's new team. The place? Philadelphia. The time? First quarter, right around the end. The action? SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS.

But I repeat myself. Please watch this.

Look, I usually try to avoid putting too much into a single play, but this is the single most representative play I've ever seen in my life. I have to have watched it 10-20 times at this point. Look at Young's complete and utter clock awareness -- he turned away from the arena shot clocks with almost 15 seconds on the clock, then ran into the corner without ever coming close to setting his feet or checking the clock again. The Sixers deserve some blame for passing him the ball in the first place, but my assumption would be that nobody on Earth really would think that a pass to someone as closely-guarded as that would actually lead to a shot. Young turns, and before he can even see the basket, he jumps to shoot -- not straight up, as one would generally expect, but backwards heading towards the corner. It's a Dirk-style fadeaway, only from so far into the corner that he's essentially taking it from behind the basket. After the shot, he doesn't seem to make any emotional gestures or faces that would indicate any awareness of what he's done. Just a sort of a shrug, and a slow "I guess I'll get back on defense... even though we had the last shot with enough time to run an actual play."

That's Nick Young for you. The man has never met a shot he didn't like. Ever. I don't know whether he was born this way or whether Gilbert Arenas -- one of Young's best friends in Washington -- helped bring out his latent chucker. But that's what Nick Young does. He makes Monta Ellis look like a willing distributor, last year posting one of the lowest assist rates in the entire league. For all his love of shots, the only real assist Nick Young enjoys is one that has a chance to go into the basket and score a bucket for Swaggy P himself. He's a massive black hole, essentially. Repeat after me, NBA friends: don't pass Nick Young the ball. Because if you DO decide to pass Nick Young the ball, be prepared -- Nick Young has the paperwork signed and notarized to adopt the ball as a child and put it under protective custody. You are not seeing that ball again without supervised visits, bud. To Young's credit, he's a bit more efficient than most chucking guards -- he shoots around 38% on his career from three point territory and he's not that bad from the long midrange. The problem is, he has no sense of self-control or ability to self-regulate his shots to eliminate all the bad ones. He takes more contested midrange shots per-minute-on-the-court than almost anyone in the league, doesn't play defense (or, rather, doesn't play effective defense -- he puts no effort in staying on his man and ballhawks without the ability to actually convert on steals). He's a 6'6" guard that rebounds as poorly as Earl Boykins, and has a handle that's high enough that he has trouble controlling the ball in pressure situations unless he shoots it within 2 or 3 seconds of getting the ball. (Hint: he will do that.)

As for why the Philadelphia 76ers felt they needed to get rid of Lou Williams only to pay Nick Young a higher salary? I... I really don't know. I covered this in the Lou Williams capsule earlier this year, but Williams was somewhat of an underrated player. He was a good passer, a solid shooter, and (although he tended to isolate a bit much in crunch time) so good at handling the ball without stupid turnovers that you felt relatively safe with Lou Williams running crunch time offense, especially since Holiday wasn't quite ready to do it yet. Nick Young? I'd feel about as safe giving him the keys to my crunch time offense as I would giving him the scalpel to perform open-heart surgery on an ailing grandmother. ESPECIALLY when dealing with an offense where you really want Andrew Bynum taking your shots in crunch time -- does anyone seriously think Young is going to pass to Bynum when the game's on the line? Or, perhaps more aptly, does anyone seriously think Young is going to pass to him if he's open? Maybe he's not, in which case Young will pass to him in order to "prove" that Nick Young needs to be the one taking the shots. I don't know. But in any event, he's a Sixer now. So I suppose we'll have to see if the Philadelphia organization's faith in Young is worthy.

• • •

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. Bunch of 2/3 guesses yesterday, but nobody got Luol Deng. (Seriously, he's the best player on the Bulls. Why does nobody realize he exists? WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABOUT HIM?!) Anyway. Good job to Chilai, BaronZbimg, and J for good guesses.

• For Player #259... NOTHING IS EASY WHATSOEVER.
• Player #260 had high hopes going into this season. Through 4 games, though, he's been pretty awful. His decent career per-minute rebounding numbers have balked, his scoring has been inefficient, and he's been abhorrent defensively. One hopes he'll get better soon, or else his team will go from cellar-dweller to "worst in the league" very quickly.
• Player #261 is injured. Again. Contract looks bad. Again. But he's pretty solid when he's healthy, and could be a big asset in a push for a better position in their conference if he comes back. They need him. Because this one looks like a very bad team without him.

Adios, amigos.

• • •

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 Mike Miller, Tony Parker, and Andrew Bynum.

• • •

Follow _Mike Miller on Twitter at @m33m.
_

Mike Miller, in recent memory, has not a very productive basketball player. In fact, Miller serves as evidence to an angle that rarely gets much media play. The Miami front office did a picture-perfect job putting their big three together. Obviously one of the greatest offseason coups of all time. But most people don't give much credit to the fact that just about every move they made immediately afterwards has turned out poorly for the franchise. Right after signing their triumverate, the Heat made moves to lock up Joel Anthony, Udonis Haslem, and Mike Miller. Their deals were each for 5 years, meaning that each would still be under contract when their big three reached their ETO decision in year 4. The deals take each player to a state well past their primes -- Anthony to 33, Haslem to 35, and Miller to 35. Haslem's is for $20 million, Anthony's $18 million, and Miller's $30 million. In theory, all are relatively small sums. But when you combine the three contracts, the picture's more grim -- the Heat have three contracts that effectively make up a 5-year $68,000,000 deal. That's almost $13.5 million dollars a year for a group of players that were arguably past their prime when the contracts were signed in the first place. The gravity of this mistake became exceedingly clear in last year's finals, where the $68 million dollar men combined to play just 127 minutes in five games -- or 25 minutes a game across the three of them. Anthony got only two minutes of burn in the entire series and Miller was the only one even remotely resembling a decent NBA player (in his game 5 outburst, of course -- prior to that, he'd played around 5 ineffective minutes a night and missed every single three he took).

What an outburst it was, though. Seven of eight threes, a steal, five rebounds? Insane shooting, by anyone's standards. It was far and away Miller's best game in a Heat jersey, and one of the best of his career even ignoring the added gravity of the Finals. It does need to come with a grain of salt, though -- hard to bury it with praise without noting the inconvenient truth that he was atrocious in the first 120 games of his Heat tenure, prone to over-passing and often actively refusing to shoot when open and passed to. His shooting outside the arc has still been pretty good, but it happens so infrequently it's hard to make much of it. His rebounding has been good, but he brings virtually nothing else to the table. He can't make his own shot particularly well -- 80% of his shots were assisted, and as you watch him, you wonder if that understates it. It's not really his fault that he's fallen so far, mind you. He's been prone to massive back problems in Miami and his game has fallen off considerably, even going back to his fractured thumb and torn ligament he suffered in practice before he first took the court in a Heat jersey at all. His laundry-list of injuries would cause even the most medically inclined to cringe, and watching him labor up and down the court is one of the saddest things in the entire league right now. His injuries have sapped everything. His creativity, his aggression, his overall abilities... everything.

He's still gritty and smart, but that has its limitations as well -- his defense, where his grittiness should help him, is let down by circumstance. He tries the good try at making his rotations, but his lack of speed makes it pretty easy for good offensive teams to exploit his lack of lateral movement. He can still stick to his man pretty well when the Heat face slow-pace halfcourt offense, but good luck defending with Miller when the pace speeds up and he's forced to make quicker decisions. Which is all fine and well, if he wasn't making around $6 million a year during the next three to ply his trade, and in a state where everything's downhill from here. There are three years left, for all of these three guys, with player options and no team-side method of termination. It's true -- the Heat had no way of knowing for sure that Miller and Haslem's injuries were worse than expected, nor did they necessarily have the capacity to predict that Joel Anthony would be rendered utterly obsolete by the Heat's dominant 2012 gameplan. But looking back, the whole thing is retrospectively sad, and something probably worthy of more note. If the Heat find themselves unable to keep either LeBron or Bosh due to either terminating their contract in search of a better situation, the extent to which these three contracts tied the Heat's hands could end up being the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Kept them out of the running for most serious roster upgrades, took up three roster spots, forced each of their stars to play larger-than-necessary minutes in the regular season to compensate for the lacking talent, et cetera. We'll have to see, of course. But right now -- affable and kindly though he may be (and he is; Miller's a great guy) -- Miller is one representative of some of the worst-luck decisions the Heat franchise made in the last decade, and that's not a look that suits him well. Alas.

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Follow _Tony Parker on Twitter at __@tp9network.___

For today's Tony Parker capsule, it took me a while to figure out how to say exactly what I was looking for. Full disclosure: I'm not Parker's biggest fan. I wouldn't exactly say I'm a card-carrying member of the "TRADE TONY PARKER!" brigade, but I will say that I definitely don't appreciate Parker as much as I do a player like Tim Duncan or Manu Ginobili. On a personal level, I don't think it's at all unusual to prefer both of them to Parker -- but on both an aesthetic and a productive level I prefer their play to his as well. Manu plays with this breakneck energy that Parker never has quite embodied, and Duncan's defense is (probably) my favorite thing to watch in the entire league. Parker is simply there, and although he certainly works his heart out against certain matchups, there's no sense with Parker that he's really laying bare the contents of his soul in order to win the game. And he's not THAT productive, statistically. But for the capsule I watched Parker more closely than I've ever watched him before, and watched a ton of backdated Spurs tapes in an effort to expand my frame of reference. And, as tends to happen with these larger capsules, I felt I gained a far greater appreciation for Parker's game than I had before I started. Perhaps that's all that Tony's critics need to do. Perhaps a lot of game tape and a more understanding eye is all a Parker-loving individual need prescribe for the hater in all our souls.

... or maybe he's just kind of a douchey French guy. I dunno, could be either.

Isn't it kind of funny that a point guard with such a conventional toolbox forms the basis of the Spurs' current offense? This isn't an insult -- just consider Tony Parker. No, he doesn't have a three point shot. Yet. But Parker is, at his core, a pick and roll point guard with a strong slashing ability, an excellent floater, and a decent midrange shot to keep defenders honest. Parker's archetype is hardly one without compare in the league's annals -- look at Andre Miller for a modern example. It's a well-worn, conventional toolbox. Parker puts it in a blender with his unique blend of speed and control, it's true, and Parker's finishing may be among the best in the history of the game from the guard position. Which is what makes the trade-bait stuff a bit too wild for my tastes. But nobody is going to argue that Parker plies his trade with a surfeit of insane athleticism or game-breaking shooting talent. We've come to expect this in this generation of point guards, and Parker subsists without.

For more on Tony Parker, visit his Player Capsule (Plus) at 48 Minutes of Hell.

• • •

Follow _Andrew Bynum on MySpace to discover that he was a hilariously normal high schooler._

One of the more interesting questions of the season -- and one that looks to be regrettably delayed -- is the simple question of whether Andrew Bynum is going to be better or worse in Philadelphia. It's not as easy to answer as one would think. There's a natural inclination to assume that Bynum, a highly efficient offensive center who played a tiny bit better with Kobe off the court, will be better in a starring role. Perhaps a bit more inefficient, as per the usage-efficiency tradeoff, but a more prolific scorer with his customarily dominant rebounding. Theoretically. But the Bynum question is more complex than that. Bynum was great with Kobe off the court in Los Angeles, but the majority of Bynum's non-Kobe minutes came with Gasol on the court. This helped grease along the ongoing development of their pet two-man passing game, one of the more enjoyable Laker hook-ups of recent memory. Of Bynum's 103 assists last season, 35% of them went to Pau Gasol buckets -- similarly, of Gasol's 279 assists, 25% of them went to Bynum buckets! They passed to each other beautifully, and Gasol's expert passing helped Bynum flash past pesky double-teams and convert a heck of a lot more wide open baskets than a man his size had any reason to get.

This isn't to say that he didn't face doubles -- for large stretches of Bynum's tenure as a Laker, Bynum faced more doubles than Kobe Bryant did. He was the Lakers' most efficient and most effective option, which led many of the smarter teams to double him viciously. Unfortunately for his new team, when Bynum was doubled in Los Angeles, it tended to work. Last season, Andrew Bynum was faced with 250 double teams in the post. He turned the ball over on 62 of them; 25% of the time. To contextualize how bad this is relative to Bynum's norm, realize that among all possessions where Bynum wasn't double teamed in the post, he turned the ball over only 10% of the time. Huuuge gap. Bynum was doubled quite a lot in Los Angeles, and it's a testament to his efficiency elsewhere on the court that he was still such an incredible offensive big man. The big problem lies in the fact that Bynum, despite his many skills, is one of the worst ballhandlers in the league. Whenever Bynum needs to take more than 2 or 3 dribbles in the post, awful things happen. He's lumbering, and he telegraphs his motions far too much -- with even the most cursory of scouting, it's relatively easy to tell what Bynum's going to do when he has to make a move in the post. Beckley Mason went over it aptly: a banging shuffle baseline, totally overlook the incoming double, spin to the middle, and... turn the ball over. A lot, as the tape indicates.

So, how is Andrew Bynum going to acquit himself in Philadelphia? I'm not entirely sure. His rebounding should be welcome addition to this Sixers team -- he's been among the best rebounders in the entire league over the last two seasons, and last year's Philadelphia team was already excellent on the boards. With Bynum improving their team rebounding, they could very well be best-in-class at rebounding other team's misses and keeping the opposing offense to a single possession. Which should in turn help their defense set. He draws a ton of free throws, which should help the Sixers generate more points from the line than they used to. But he's going to find himself doubled quite a bit more in Philadelphia than he did in Los Angeles, which is a pretty bad state of affairs for the efficiency of his offense -- he may still put up misleadingly high field goal percentages, but with a menu of more double teams, expect his turnover rate to skyrocket and provide harm the Sixers' league-best turnover rate from last season. And then there's the defense. One of the staples of Philadelphia's defensive attack last season was the infectious effort Collins got from all his players. Bynum isn't a bad defender, but his effort level on the defensive end is consistently pretty poor, and while he tends to be a decent defender despite that, it's an open question to wonder whether Bynum's laissez-faire paint protection isn't going to clash a bit with Collins' high intensity style.

Still, all of this is pretty theoretical. We don't know exactly how this is going to play out, and I for one can't want to see how it turns out -- Bynum is a relatively excellent player despite his myriad flaws, and while the pressure of starring for a team may exacerbate many of them, figuring out what of his skillset properly translates and what doesn't is going to be about as interesting an experiment as the Harden-to-Houston shocker. None of this is to say that I like Andrew Bynum. I don't. To me, Bynum is more defined by his bush-league hits (see: this, this, or this!) than his quality play. He doesn't seem to care about that, either -- he personally thought the Barea hit "wasn't a big deal." Compound that with his outward refusal to work on his game (and his general disinterest in the game of basketball in general), and you don't really have the blueprint for a player I like on a personal level. I do admit -- his off-court focus on tinkering and electronics is absolutely wonderful, and if you've never read about it, you need to click this right now. One of the coolest little sub-stories of any NBA star. If he was a bit less focused on murdering the opposing team's players I'd probably like him a lot more. Then again... the dude builds state-of-the art computers, gets paid tens of millions of dollars to play a game he doesn't care deeply about, and parties at playboy mansion. Sincerely doubt Bynum gives a crap about what you or I think of him. Just a hunch.

• • •

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. Props to Greg for being the first to figure out Miller to complete the trio, and props as well to Der_K, Jacob Harmon, Geezer, and Okman for hitching to the right bandwagon (albeit lesser props.)

• Player #256's team has one of the deepest big man rotations in the league, but he's the starter for now. Kind of funny, because most people could pick him up in the last round of fantasy -- essentially nobody wanted to draft him.
• Player #257 is the best player on his team right now. His team is much-discussed. I've seen -- quite literally -- ZERO articles about him at this point. Only best-player-on-his-team who never gets discussed? Perhaps.
• Player #258 has swag. Unfortunately, he has very little else. At least he can shoot threes. Honestly can't believe his team let his predecessor go only to pay this guy the same amount.

Hope you enjoyed today's capsules. This Wednesday, I'll be attempting to post up two sets of these things. Need to get ahead if I want to keep to my Christmas Eve schedule. Fingers crossed.

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