As one of our mainstay features, Aaron is writing posts highlighting every single player in the NBA. Role players, superstars, key cogs, or players who are barely as useful as ballboys -- none are exempt from the prying eyes of our readers. Check the index for a lowdown on order, intent, and all that jazz. Today's player is Kevin Durant, a player important and interesting enough to warrant his own long post.

• • •

[007] Durant, Kevin

Originally, this post wasn't really all that long. Durant was actually the fourth player when I originally rolled these out, and his post was about 300 words long, if even that. I didn't really see myself getting through 300+ of these if I wrote long ones back when I started, so I tried to keep my first dozen or so extremely short. Now that I'm going back over them, I'm extending some of the early ones that didn't quite get their due. Durant's up, and he deserves a better post than I wrote before. So let's talk some Durant.

First off, I think it bears repeating that Kevin Durant is 22 years old. That's young, even for basketball players -- there were only 56 players in the league younger than Durant last season, and only 15 starters younger than he is. He may be entering his 5th season, but he's got quite a few good years left. How good? Well, according to Chris Palmer, he's basically the fast track to the hall of fame. After all, a top fiver at the age of 21? Pretty great. Via twitter:

thechrispalmer
Six Best 21-year-olds ever (Revised list): 1. Kareem 2. Kobe 3. LeBron 4. MJ 5. T-Mac 6. @KDTrey5
9 hours ago

Something about this seemed wrong to me, though, after last season. So I looked at the numbers to see where all of them ranked all-time among seasons at the age of 21. Here's a table showing the 10 best 21 year old seasons, by win shares. Perhaps that'll shed some light on why I felt somewhat uneasy with signing on to that.

=========================================================================================
============================ TOP NBA SEASONS BY WS AT AGE 21 ============================
============================================ FG% STATS ========= PER GAME ===============
.................... YEAR ... GS MP ..... FG%   3P%   FT% ... PTS   TRB   AST ... WS/48 .
1  Shaquille O'Neal  1994 ORL 81 3224    .599  .000  .554     29.3  13.2  2.4     0.252 .
2  Kevin Durant      2010 OKC 82 3239    .476  .365  .900     30.1  7.6   2.8     0.238 .
3  LeBron James      2006 CLE 79 3361    .480  .335  .738     31.4  7.0   6.6     0.232 .
4  John Drew         1976 ATL 77 2351    .502  .000  .744     21.6  8.6   1.9     0.216 .
5  Michael Jordan    1985 CHI 82 3144    .515  .173  .845     28.2  6.5   5.9     0.213 .
6  Kobe Bryant       2000 LAL 62 2524    .468  .319  .821     22.5  6.3   4.9     0.202 .
7  Adrian Dantley    1978 TOT 79 2933    .512  .000  .796     21.5  7.8   3.2     0.199 .
8  Andrei Kirilenko  2003 UTA 11 2213    .491  .325  .800     12.0  5.3   1.7     0.199 .
9  Tim Duncan        1998 SAS 82 3204    .549  .000  .662     21.1  11.9  2.7     0.192 .
10 Tracy McGrady     2001 ORL 77 3087    .457  .355  .733     26.8  7.5   4.6     0.189 .
=========================================================================================

First off, the omission of Kareem is no error whatsoever. Kareem didn't play in the NBA at age 21. I suppose you can make the argument that his 1969 UCLA season was worthy of being put on this list, but that's somewhat outside my pay grade, given that he won that title when my father was entering college. And I'm assuming Palmer primarily has him there because he saw 21-year-old Kareem in person. Frankly? Kareem doesn't get enough love. So I'm fine with that. I'm more interested in the players I've seen, so I'm going to glance over Dantley and Drew. First, Durant at #6 is reasonable, if not low. The omission of Shaq and Duncan, both of whom were great on D their first few seasons and single-handedly guided their franchises from irrelevant seasons to fringe contenders, is a bit jarring -- very for Shaq, less so for Duncan, who was amazing (and whose D makes him top 5 or 6 easily) but not quite legendary yet.

Overall, looking simply at age 21 numbers, Durant is perhaps underrated by the stats and team record aspect of his performance -- he had an amazing 2010 season, becoming the youngest scoring leader in history on decent percentages and nigh-legendary free throw form. His defense was lacking, but other than Kobe, so was everyone else on the list. Kobe's defense, by the way, might not really be enough to push him to two -- yes, he won a ring that year, but he only played 62 games because of injury, shot less than 33% on threes, and in general rode beast-mode Shaq's coattails to that particular ring. Not all three, but 2000's title? Yeah. If I had to make my own top five list, after looking at this? I'd still omit Kareem due to my lacking NCAA knowledge and my lack of having seen any footage of Kareem at that age. I'd say the five best 21 year old seasons are Shaq, LeBron, Durant, Jordan, Kobe, Duncan. I didn't watch Jordan's, Shaq's, or Duncan's all that extensively -- but I've seen games from those seasons and I know how they played as they age, and I think I have a reasonably good sense of how those numbers would work with each player's skillset. And that would seem to undermine my general thought that we should stop short of naming Durant our savior. Until we look at the same table for seasons played by 22 year olds, that is.

===========================================================================================================
============================== TOP NBA SEASONS BY WS AT AGE 22, PARTIAL TABLE =============================
============================================ FG% STATS ========= PER GAME =============== CHG from 21-22 ==
.................... YEAR ... GS MP ..... FG%   3P%   FT% ... PTS   TRB   AST ... WS/48 . ( WS/48,   RK) ..
1   Chris Paul       2008 NOH 80 3006    .488  .369  .851     21.1  4.0  11.6     0.284 . (+0.109, + 12) ..
5   Shaquille O'Neal 1995 ORL 79 2923    .583  .000  .533     29.3 11.4   2.7     0.230 . (-0.022, -  4) ..
6   Dirk Nowitzki    2001 DAL 82 3125    .474  .387  .838     21.8  9.2   2.1     0.224 . (+0.101, + 36) ..
9   Tim Duncan       1999 SAS 50 1963    .495  .143  .690     21.7 11.4   2.4     0.213 . (+0.021, +  0) ..
12  Oscar Robertson  1961 CIN 71 3032    .473        .822     30.5 10.1   9.7     0.210 . (     --     ) ..
13  Derrick Rose     2011 CHI 81 3026    .445  .332  .858     25.0  4.1   7.7     0.208 . (+0.108, + 50) ..
15  LeBron James     2007 CLE 78 3190    .476  .319  .698     27.3  6.7   6.0     0.206 . (-0.026, - 12) ..
16  Dwight Howard    2008 ORL 82 3088    .599  .000  .590     20.7 14.2   1.3     0.200 . (+0.043, +  8) ..
17  Kobe Bryant      2001 LAL 68 2783    .464  .305  .853     28.5  5.9   5.0     0.196 . (-0.006, - 11) ..
22  Kevin Durant     2011 OKC 78 3038    .462  .350  .880     27.7  6.8   2.7     0.189 . (-0.049, - 20) ..
24  Tracy McGrady    2002 ORL 76 2912    .451  .364  .748     25.6  7.9   5.3     0.189 . (-0.001, - 14) ..
26  Lew Alcindor     1970 MIL 82 3534    .518        .653     28.8 14.5   4.1     0.187 . (     --     ) ..
===========================================================================================================

So now I see it. With the exception of a few players that took stratospheric jumps their sophomore season, these are the players we saw before. This isn't a strict top players list -- the number to the left is their actual rank among all 22 year old seasons. I took out some for readability, and added a differential. For the most part, it's chalk -- Shaq, Kobe, and LeBron all got worse. Duncan was the only member of the top six to get better. Dirk, Rose, Paul and Dwight take pretty huge jumps to enter the top 20. And Durant? Durant got worse, moreso than anyone else on the list. He didn't exactly fall off a cliff -- he was still a star, and he went from a very solid 30-8 with great percentages kind of prime Dirk pure scorer to a 28-7 player who took more shots for less return, turned the ball over more,and didn't improve on defense. Which isn't bad. It's still a franchise table stake. And he led them to within three games of a finals, which is better than the Sonics ever were with Ray Allen. So it's impossible to say he's a BAD player, strictly. His last season, rather, just revealed him to be an incomplete player.

Which leads me to my basic point. We don't really know what Durant is going to show us, yet. His season at 21 was one of the greatest 21 year old seasons in history. There's not much to refute that. But he fell back to the pack last year, hard. His game is primarily built around getting easier shots than most volume scorers due to his height and length. He isn't a great passer, he is a substandard rebounder (though, to be fair, has thus far stepped up his rebounding incredibly in the playoffs, indicating he may just whiff on it in the regular season to conserve energy), and he doesn't have many go-to moves yet. While many of the players with great seasons at 21 had some fallout when they turned 22, Durant's is both more statistically concerning and more noticable when you simply watched him play. He looked like a star, but an incomplete and unfinished one -- whereas he went into the season a serious MVP candidate he left the season as an afterthought. After his lights-out performances for Team USA (which Alex and I discussed in great detail in an earlier blog project) it looked like he was on the fast track to being a legend.

But at the moment, he really isn't one. He's one of the 10 best players in the league, sure, but he's closer to 10 than 1. And the gap between a player like Durant and a player like Dwight or LeBron now looks a lot more massive than most of us are comfortable admitting. The general consensus seems to be that we're a step short of anointing him to the hall of fame. Really? I don't think so. I think he's got a ways to go. And given that he's by all accounts the nicest and most humble superstar the NBA's had since, well, ever? I'll be rooting for him to be a legend. I'll be rooting for him to be Kobe's killer instinct with Dwight's playfulness, LeBron's talent with Dirk's folksy charm. I'll be rooting for Durantula to be as great as we all imagine him to be. But I'd caution you from thinking he's already there. Given how we tend to look at him, it isn't much of a stretch to say that we see Durant only in his possibilities and potential -- his demeanor and his talent demand it so.

But the journey is half the battle, and I'm pretty sure Durant would tell you the same thing.

Continue reading

As one of our mainstay features, Aaron is writing posts highlighting every single player in the NBA. Role players, superstars, key cogs, or players who are barely as useful as ballboys -- none are exempt from the prying eyes of our readers. Check the index for a lowdown on order, intent, and all that jazz. Today's batch includes Antawn Jamison, Glen Davis, and Carl Landry.

• • •

[004] Jamison, Antawn

For more on Antawn Jamison, see Aaron's player preview at Fear the Sword.

I don't really know what to say about Antawn. He's a class act. Really really nice dude. Watching interviews with him is usually heartwarming and he seems like a genuinely awesome, humble man. When the Cavs got him, I wasn't obscenely excited, because I always thought he was a tad overrated, but I was really glad I'd get to root for a class act like Antawn on my favorite team. A character guy like that? On that stacked Cavs team? Awesome. I thought. Then I had to spend a few games watching him. And let me just say: never again will I assume watchability based on personality. EVER. Seriously... I don't even know where to start. When he was on the Wizards, I didn't pay all that much attention to him. It was mostly all Gil, or Caron, or whoever the Wizards were playing. And rooting against them. Antawn always rather faded into the background for me.

But when he's playing for your own team you end up watching him pretty closely. And when you do that, you discover a lot about Antawn. And post-discovery? Christ, do I hate him. Not a single more frustrating player in the league, though Anthony Parker's chuck-friendly game comes close sometimes. Tawn's game is an amalgam of everything I dislike about modern NBA bigs -- big men thinking they have infinitely more range than they do (attention Antawn: you aren't a three point gunner no matter how many times Austin Carr sings his praises for your three-ball shot, get the hell inside), big men refusing to get position and lock down rebounds (I'm not exaggerating when I say that Antawn Jamison is the worst player at completing a simple box out in the entire league), and big men who cannot defend anyone (his defensive incompetence was bad before Cleveland, but the 2011 version of Antawn Jamison was a bold new talent in allowing every single opposing big man to score billions of points every fucking night). You'd know if you watched more than 50 of the 2011 Cavaliers' games. Which I did. Torturously. Jamison was without question the least enjoyable player to watch, night-in and night-out.

Do you remember that whole Yi Jianlin vs the world his team's chair debacle? The chair's defensive acumen is far beyond Jamison's. He is an actively horrible defensive player whose defense quite frankly GIVES the opposing team buckets. The man can't play within any defensive system with any success. There's a reason he's never been past the second round, you know. And this all isn't to say that he doesn't have some really nice pieces to his game -- the main one worth talking about is his ridiculous command of banking angles and his ability to get acrobatic, sideways roll shots through the hoop better than mostin the league. Because he does have that, and it's pretty cool to watch him make those crazy shots a few times a game. Sometimes. But there are so many goddamn flaws, you know? His game is the epitome of an empty lottery team stat-padder, which is a shame, because as dude he's a stand-up guy and it'd be pretty cool if his game matched the quality of his character. I'd feel a lot more sorry for him if I hadn't watched the 2011 Cavs. Now I just feel absolutely horrible for anyone who has had to consistently watch this guy over the course of his career. Yeesh.

• • •

[005] Davis, Glen

Glen Davis isn't a great player. But he's boisterous, high energy, and entertaining -- all the requisite pieces to be a fan favorite and an overrated fan-loved tertiary piece for a contender. He's a minus defender on his fundamentals, but he makes up for it by being dependably in the right place and taking a lot of charges. His offensive game has seen a lot of turbulence in the years since he entered the league -- Davis has transformed from an inside player to a big man whose J is essentially his only weapon. To wit, examine a small table I cooked up. %SHT indicates the percentage of his shots that came from that range, and FG% is how well he shot from the range on the shots he took.

========= AT RIM ======= JUMPER ====
....... %SHT   FG% ... %SHT   FG% ..
2008    0.61  0.54     0.39  0.33 ..
2009    0.33  0.59     0.67  0.40 ..
2010    0.48  0.52     0.52  0.37 ..
2011    0.30  0.63     0.70  0.39 ..
====================================

See the pattern? Essentially, Davis spent his rookie year trying to be an at-the-rim player. He only took 37 jump shots in his entire rookie season. The next year, though, he began to lean heavily on his improving jumper and for the most part quit forcing things in the post. That pattern has held relatively constant going forward, which is where the crux of his value comes into play. Davis is an extremely poor rebounder on both ends of the court (though he's a better offensive rebounder than a defensive rebounder), he's not a great man defender, and he isn't a reliable back to the basket presence. But he hustles, he can make a midrange shot when Rondo gets him open, and he sets decent screens. He knows the Celtics playbook and most likely has about 2-3x more value for them than he does for any other team in the league. So I'd normally think he'd be a lock to get resigned by the Celts once the lockout ends. Not positive that happens, though -- Davis has been sort of a jackass to the Celtics organization since the playoffs ended, and has confusingly stated that he wants to play starter's minutes (which... he's already playing for the Celtics, actually) and that he wants to get back to "Glen being Glen" instead of giving up his game for Boston's stars. So he may be heading out when the lockout ends. Personally, I don't think that would be such a bad thing for Celtics' fans -- I get the sense most of them think more of Davis than they should, and have visions of him as their big of the future. News flash: no. And that's all I have to say about that.

Off the court? I'm not one to talk about NBA players being dumb. Frankly, I think most athletes are given a horribly raw deal by a predominantly white media collective that loves to talk down to their intelligence and assume they're little more than mental midgets. Most NBA players are reasonably intelligent, and while we rarely consider it, the smarts it takes to master the mechanics of a basketball-playing body to become a good defender or a good shooter would be a significant mental asset if applied to any other field. What's more, modern NBA players tend to be businessmen, and while they hire people to help them out at the end of the day NBA players are making big decisions with large sums of money. Tim Duncan wrote a published thesis on the psychology of interpersonal reactions to excessive egoism. Steve Nash is a marketing genius who makes more money in a year on marketing than most people will ever make in their lives. Stephon Marbury may be a headcase, but even he built a more successful business operation than 95% of the world is capable of building. Intelligence isn't just how book smart you are, and NBA players have a lot of business intelligence, marketing acumen, and -- yes, Mr. Simmons -- plenty of intellectual capital to spare. Just because they have muscles doesn't mean they don't have brains.

Having said all that, Glen Davis strikes me as being, well, sort of dumb. His twitter is one of the most incomprehensible streams of idiotic babble this side of Dejuan Blair (a player I love, but who strikes me as a bit lacking in smarts). He's a funny guy, sort of, if you like humor like that -- me, personally, I always feel like I'm laughing more at him than with him, which makes me feel a little sad because I'm positive that's not his intent. Still. His relatively low mental faculties do lead to some funny quotes. Like the aforementioned "Glen being Glen" quote, in which he refers to himself in the third person not once, not twice, but five times in the span of three sentences:

“I just want to make sure I’m Glen Davis wherever I’m at. I think I can be Glen Davis wherever. It just depends on the system, the people around the system, who’s going to let Glen Davis be Glen Davis, not make Glen Davis something they think he should be.’’

That much third person is quite an accomplishment, really. If you're honest.

• • •

[006] Landry, Carl

Man. This dude fell off a cliff. He's been rather poor the last year and a half. Though, it wasn't always this way. In fact, at the time Kevin Martin got traded for Landry, I actually thought Landry was the best player in the deal. I was then proven so incredibly wrong it's hard to fathom how I ever thought that -- while Kevin Martin was an all-star quality player last year, Landry was barely replacement level. If even that. Regardless. We know how that turned out. Back in Houston, Landry was a 6MotY type burst scorer off the bench. He had an eldritch talent for drawing free throws, a decent post up game if he can catch his defender off balance, and a knack for snagging the contested offensive rebound to try a putback. He had a good sense of space on defense and although his size (extremely short for PF or C, his natural position) puts him at a disadvantage in a lot of cases he's decent at getting past his size. He uses his size to impose a quickness advantage versus the usual big men he faces -- in doing so, he becomes a tough individual defender, as his man can't regularly drive past him or lose control of the ball for fear that he'll hawk it.

The negatives? Well, first off, all that described his Houston game -- after he went to Sacramento, he became a tentative and nervous player who played passive on offense and rarely used the efficient burst scoring that made him an effective sixth man in Adelman's schemes. If he's not playing with a decent point guard who has some chemistry with him and can set him up with easy baskets, he tends to play as though he's having a bad night and eschews shots in order to keep out of the core offense. He's also a terrible help defender -- while he covers for his own size-challenged defense by funneling his man to the help (hence why he was so effective playing alongside Emeka Okafor, a great help defender) he gets lost on rotations and has trouble following guards. His biggest flaw, though, isn't any of those things -- it's his rebounding. He is quite possibly the least interested rebounder in the league, on the defensive end. While he's on the court, expect his man to get plenty of offensive rebounding opportunities -- he doesn't have the size to box out nor the will to contest, most of the time.

So, overall? You get a poor rebounding, undersized big man who doesn't have the ability to create his own offense or stay aggressive unless he's being set up by a guard he has a lot of chemistry with. Not a particularly good recipe for success. When he's on? Very efficient. Great sixth man. But not really a great player. Off the court, though, one has to give their due -- Landry is tough as nails. In mid 2009 he got shot in one of the stranger attacks I've heard an NBA player have to go through -- his car got slammed into on a city street, and when he got out to survey the damage and trade insurance information, the occupants of the offending car got out, shot him, and sped away. They only got his calf, but Landry was in a relatively remote location and ended up walking several miles to find help. With a bullet in his leg, and a dislocated finger from the accident. Pretty amazing, really. He also came back to the court less than three weeks after being shot, which is absurd as hell. Knock his game for how badly it has fallen off since his Houston days, but give the man his due -- dude is tough as hell.

• • •

To conclude, one last Big Baby quote. This time on the subject of why Big Baby hates Kobe Bryant.

“He just pisses me off on the court. You stress him out and he might speak some Spanish to you and you’re like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I know you’re from Italy or somewhere, but his charisma and just the way he’s so poised, it just gets under my skin.”

Continue reading

As one of our mainstay features, Aaron is writing posts highlighting every single player in the NBA. Role players, superstars, key cogs, or players who are barely as useful as ballboys -- none are exempt from the prying eyes of our readers. Check the index for a lowdown on order, intent, and all that jazz. For the starting five, we'll begin with Joakim Noah, Shawn Marion, and John Salmons.

• • •

[001] Noah, Joakim

Joakim Noah – starting center for the Chicago Bulls, and starting stoner in the hearts of NBA fans everywhere. Widely known because of the fact that he’s incredibly and hilariously unattractive, NCAA hoops fans would remember the fact that he won back to back titles under Billy Donovan at Florida. People who actually watch real grown-up basketball (just kidding, NCAA fans -- sort of) would remember the fact that, when healthy, Noah is among the best help defenders in the league. He's also surprisingly competent offensively – Noah doesn't have that many moves, but he's quick, huge, and rather good at establishing position. For all the dap he gets over his solid defense, Noah is also a relatively underrated cog in the Bulls offense, too -- his pivot passing really smooths out the holes in their offense when things are going well. Which wasn't very often under Vinny Del Negro, but as last season showed, things go well quite a bit more often when you aren’t, well, coached by Vinny Del Negro. For much of last season, Noah was actually more important to the Bulls' offensive flow than he was to their defensive flow.

He's also way more fast than a dude as ugly and large as him has any right whatsoever to be -- if you watch him stride down the court, he is actually fast enough to outrun the majority of the bigs in the NBA. This was made explicit in the classic Bulls vs Celtics series from 2009, wherein Noah had 3 or 4 hilarious fast break dunks where he shocked the world by taking the ball up the floor. If Thibodeau ran more fast break plays, and Rose was better at outlet passes on the break, he could establish position and score a great deal of points on the break. As is, though – he’s a very good player. Great defender, though perhaps a tad overrated – while he’s a great help defender and among the league’s best, he’s a not-particularly-special man defender and his overall impact on the Bulls’ team defense was a bit lessened last season both by Noah’s constant injuries and the Bulls’ bench bigs breaking out with some unexpectedly great defense. When you're backed up by Omer Asik and Taj Gibson, your defensive contributions are less noticeable.

If he can stay healthy sometime in the next 3-4 years I believe the Bulls will have a serious shot at another 65 to 70 win season. Which is pretty odd – the Bulls are suddenly really well-established for the future, and given the shitshow that Chicago underwent over the past decade, that’s strange to me. I've gotten sort of used to the Bulls being a bit of a punchline and having them go from "may challenge for a marquee free agent" to "oh my god they got Boozer sorry Chicago" to "...wait, they're still elite? What?" in the course of a season surprised me a bit. I would say, though, that his injury history has to be considered in any appraisal of Noah’s present and future value. And given it? He may very well be the most expendable core starter going forward for the Bulls. Ignoring Boozer because Boozer’s contract is absolutely untradeable, look at the Bulls' core pieces. Luol Deng’s durability has been questionable over his career but if last season is any indication he has a better chance of being an iron man going forward than Noah. He’s also far less tradeable, as his contract (fairly or not) has Luol seen around the league as a giant financial anchor. Rose is the franchise cornerstone. Taj Gibson and Omer Asik are both extremely young and talented bigs that were dependable and grew as the season went on – I’d be very hesitant to trade either if I were Chicago, especially given the price they've got their services at for the forseeable future.

For a team that absolutely positively NEEDS an upgrade at shooting guard and a second scorer to take the pressure off Rose, Noah may be their best bargaining chip. They’ll be drafting in the bottom ten for the foreseeable future, so lottery talent is going to be unavailable. The Bulls are, frankly, a pretty poor drafting team historically anyway. (Though you have to give them dap for Taj and Omer. Still. What they need is a miracle trade that retains Noah and trades their pu pu platter of awful off-guards with every draft pick they can possibly give up away for someone like George Hill, Courtney Lee, Delonte West, or any strong young guard talent. That sort of a trade isn't going to happen particularly often, though, and it's doubtful any team in the league is going to bite on that. The best chance they have at upgrading their two guard is probably to part with Noah. Which may seem like a steep price, but building a championship team is hard, and when you're a player away and you have a deal to get rid of one of your repeating pieces for that piece, you usually have to consider it. Outside of his game, though, Noah is generally known for -- yes -- being kind of a stoner and having a really hot girlfriend (you can google the pictures yourself if you really want to). He's also incredibly outspoken. In 2010 he said Cleveland sucks. As someone who roots for the Cavs and whose mother's family is from Cleveland this basically eliminates ability to root for Noah, ever.

So, screw you too, Noah.

• • •

[002] Marion, Shawn

Shawn Marion, starting small forward for the Dallas Mavericks. Shawn Marion is most famous for the fact that his shooting motion has and always will be a strong contender for the most awkward and hilarious shooting motion in the league. He basically crosses his legs, pops up like Michigan J. Frog, and has this ridiculous hitch in his release that's pretty much impossible to describe. In fact, just go watch it. Seriously, look at this. It's fun to watch.

In his heyday, Marion probably should have been known for more than his hilarious shot. He was by far the best defender on Mike D'Antoni's 55+ win Phoenix teams in the mid 2000s, and basically was tasked with defending players of any position on a nightly basis to cover for how D'Antoni never had a clue how to operate his teams on the defensive end. Opposing team's best player was a point guard? Whatever, D'Antoni would stick Marion on him. A center? Stick Marion on him. Shaq in his prime? Stick Marion on him and cry yourself to sleep as you lose by 200 points. Granted, those Suns teams royally sucked on defense, but they were never absolute last in the league, and some weren't even in the bottom 10. Given D'Antoni's limitations? That's a huge accomplishment. And that was basically entirely thanks to Marion's work, as seen by Phoenix's imploding pretend-defense after he left.

One thing that's worth noting and rarely gets mentioned by the commentariat who use Gentry's performance with the post-D'Antoni Suns as evidence that D'Antoni isn't as clueless as Gentry on defense is that D'Antoni's departure and Marion's departure came at roughly the same time. Gentry isn't good at coaching defense, don't get me wrong, but the fact that Gentry has done a worse job with the Suns roster on defense than D'Antoni ever did isn't a credit to D'Antoni, it's mostly a credit to Marion's ability to cover up for D'Antoni's defensive incompetence and his rather awesome ability at his peak to defend every position on the planet. Not necessarily amazingly well, but that versatility was an integral part of the run-and-gun Suns and deserved a lot more recognition than he got for it.

Regardless. Now he's more of a past-his-prime journeyman, but he's got some skills. In the Mavs' magic run to the 2011 title, Marion was a key low post presence who was one of the main beneficiaries of Kidd's remaining passing ability -- he has great chemistry with Kidd, who has Marion's Dallas offense better than it was in Miami by leaps and bounds. Still. His defense has fallen off quite a bit, which detracts from his value a lot. He's not a insanely big factor anymore on D, as he was in his prime, although he did do a reasonably good job on LeBron in the finals. I'd say he did better, but I don't think he was a factor on LeBron as much as LeBron was a factor on LeBron. If that makes sense. So that's Shawn Marion. You can also call him "The Matrix." You know. If you're an asshole.

• • •

[003] Salmons, John

John Salmons was the starting shooting guard for the Milwaukee Bucks last year. He was to be again, until the Sacramento Maloofs decided that they really really wanted to move down in the draft to acquire the glorious talents of John Salmons. Which... might rank as the most idiotic draft day trade I can remember in a while. Seriously. The Kings moved DOWN in the draft in order to acquire a chucker with poor shooting numbers who likes to think he's really swag but who actually kind of blows. They also gave up Beno Udrih, a decent stopgap point guard who has a lot of value as a bench guard. For John friggin' Salmons.

Salmons, though? He's basically the epitome of a contract year player. He plays really well right up to when he has to sign a contract, at which point his shooting percentages magically fall off a cliff, his decisionmaking falls to about 1st grade levels, and his demeanor on the court goes from desperate and high energy to a sort of "fuck you got mine" kind of aimless shot-hogging style that torpedoes his teams more often than not. His defense is abhorrent regardless of whether he's in a contract year or not. He'll occasionally make "big" shots, but frankly, he takes so many of them it's less of a skill and more of a "he has to make a few, right?" proposition. More often than not, Salmons will simply chuck his way to oblivion. He is named after a fish because he is not a crab. I don't actually know what I just said, but I'm not going to delete it, as pressing the backspace key to erase that sentence would take more effort than Salmons puts in for the first two years after he signs a new deal.

I'm just gonna leave it at that.

• • •

That's all for now. More tomorrow.

Continue reading