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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

But that's beside the point, kind of.

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

• • •

LaMarcus Aldridge gets no respect, and it kills me.

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

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

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

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

• • •

• • •

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

• • •

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

Continue reading

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

• • •

Follow LaMarcus Aldridge on Twitter at @aldridge_12.

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Brad Miller on Twitter at __@TreyKerby.___

Last season, Brad Miller retired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

... Well, this too.

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Shelvin Mack on Twitter at __@ShelvinMack.___

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

Bless you, child.

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

_Follow Samuel Dalembert on Twitter at __@sammyd76erz.___

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

• • •

Follow DeShawn Stevenson to the club using his ATM machine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mamba out.

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

Godspeed, hoops populi.

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

_Follow DeJuan Blair on Twitter at __@DeJuan45.___

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Bill Walker on Twitter at __@sky12walker.___

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

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Goran Dragic on Twitter at __@Goran_Dragic.___

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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 Ronny Turiaf, Anthony Parker, and Andray Blatche.

• • •

Follow Ronny Turiaf on Twitter at @RonnyTuriaf14.

Ronny Turiaf is one of the few Clippers I enjoy watching, although there's always a touch of sadness when I consider the state of his career relative to how I would've hoped it'd be years ago. Always a treat and always an asset, in his youth and prime. He's reached a somewhat young fall-off period, now, as the slow churn of injuries has made him unreliable and (in some ways) somewhat unremarkable. I'd say some of the promise that was there when he was young has been squandered, if only just. Whether you attribute that to injuries or simply not being as good as he looked is up to you. Regardless, Turiaf is one of the more amusing backup big men to watch in the entire league, period. Everyone knows the whole "energy big off the bench" trope -- Turiaf goes far beyond the trope, and makes the players that embody it look like dozed-off hobos. He's constantly, CONSTANTLY moving. All the time. Forever. He's out to prove the scientific law that particles are always moving. He revs himself up every day by internally repeating the laws of particle motion -- "cmon, be the particle, Ronny. Leggo. Prove it." This may sound really nice to you, and aesthetically, it definitely is. But it's worth noting that this constant breakneck energy isn't always something that manifests in a good way, and there ARE good reasons he's not always in high demand -- after all, Turiaf's energy leads him to foul indiscriminately, occasionally lose position, and can be considered partially responsible for Turiaf's spotted injury history. So that's not great.

Still, Turiaf is a good player, and better than a lot of people think. He's a downright excellent defender, and has always had brilliant instincts about when to help off his man and when to stay home and bother. One of the main reasons the early-2010 Knicks (with Amare, Gallo, Felton and the rest of the misfit children) were such an engaging team was Turiaf's presence -- his command of the rotations helped him act as sort of a miniature Tyson Chandler, and while the Knicks obviously are better off now with Tyson, it's worth noting that when Turiaf is healthy and clicking he provides similar qualities on defense. Phenomenal weakside blocking, killer screens, and a ready-made stick of pick-n-roll dynamite that blows up the most conventionally successful play in the league. He's quality. Even though he hasn't played a ton this year, he's definitely helped the Clippers in this respect -- they've been a markedly superior defensive team with Turiaf on the floor, and he provides the best play-out-the-string big man the Clippers have ever really put behind Jordan and Griffin. And as many note, when you play as few minutes as Turiaf does, the constant fouling is less of a serious problem. Turiaf's real issue? No offense whatsoever. His offensive game is completely bare, and unlike Chandler, he can't simply throw his size around and get buckets through effort alone. He doesn't really play an important role as an offensive threat, given that all he can really do is finish at the rim every now and again so long as he doesn't need to create the shot or need to move creatively off-the-ball to establish position. Which makes his teams traditionally offensively flawed when he sees too much court time. Which is why, despite being a massive impact player on defense, he'll probably never elicit 20 MPG again.

Off-the-court (and on-the-bench), Turiaf is an entertaining man. The man watches anime with the best of them, which might be one of the reasons I like him -- I'm no anime fan myself, but I hung out with a lot of people in high school who loved the stuff and as such Turiaf tends to remind me of my best childhood friends. Which is all great. He's probably the single best towel-waving big man off the bench in the league, with his on-bench stylings a must-watch whenever his team does anything even remotely impressive. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons Turiaf-on-the-Clippers was a hilariously good idea from the get-go. The man goes crazy for dunks, and while the whole Lob City appellation was never quite the truism it was promised to be, Los Angeles is a great team for him. Just look at examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 for why that is. Finally, the man has a rather wild backstory of his own -- Turiaf's battled through heart problems throughout his career, and actually had to undergo open-heart surgery just to get healthy enough to enter the league. Which is pretty insane, and worthy of a whole lot more respect than he tends to get. I like Turiaf. Pay him some attention, next time the Clippers play your favorite team -- he might impress you, really.

• • •

_Follow Anthony Parker on Twitter at __@_AnthonyParker.___

I'm not Anthony Parker's biggest fan. Although Parker has always been a relatively effective shooter, he's also (for my money) been overly prominent in Cleveland over the last few years -- I didn't really have strong feelings one way or the other about Parker until he came to Cleveland and started taking more shots than he really needed to. Especially pull-ups -- he's a solid shooter on the catch, and you rarely felt that bad about a Parker three as long as it came at the end of an actual play-call. Far too often, though, Parker ended up going one-on-one and trying to hit off-the-dribble pull up shots (regularly from inefficient long-two range as though it would validate his career as a shooter if he could master those shots). He couldn't, for what probably are obvious reasons, and Cavs fans were left watching a possession or two every few games get lost to a doomed Anthony Parker "I CAN ISO! I SWEAR!" possession. Given that Parker's defense hasn't been anything to write home about for almost four years now and given that he's never had any real tertiary value beyond his shooting, these random possessions of taking over the offense for a pull-up fadeaway two bugged me a lot. You're on the court to finish plays and take open shots. You aren't on the floor to dribble around and create shots, no matter what Austin Carr says.

Still. Parker is part of a rare, elite team of NBA players, a group that doesn't get nearly enough dap. I refer, of course, to the group of NBA players whose sisters are infinitely superior basketball players. Candace Parker -- child rearing constraints aside these last few years -- is one of the WNBA's brightest stars, and one of the more entertaining WNBA players ever. The only other NBA player who I can even argue fits in Parker's elite company on this respect is Reggie Miller, whose sister Cheryl was (by the personal account of virtually everyone who played both of them) superior at basketball and likely good enough to be a star in the NBA, had she been given the chance. So, there's that. Beyond those two, there's the Rashad/Rashada McCants duo (neither of whom, I admit, I ever watched closely enough to really assess comparative value), Ime/Mfon Udoka (yeah, uh, "same"), Rudy/Marta Fernandez (Rudy was better) and the Pamela/JaVale McGee duo (well, that one's mother/son, but still -- JaVale is probably a hair better, if only because of superior staying power). Which makes Parker and Miller alone in their tower of "being inferior basketball players to their ballin-out-loud sisters." This isn't really notable, but it is kind of cool. I am one of the lonely few NBA bloggers who doesn't mind the WNBA at all, and in general appreciates a good WNBA game far and away above a college basketball game and (often) an international game. So I'll be sure to keep monitoring sister/brother pairings. Someone has to do it.

With Parker about to exit the league, there's a single thing I'd like to highlight before he goes. No, not a facet of his game -- I'd rather take my best efforts to forget it, thanks. No, not his time in Israel -- Noam Schiller noted that (and the reasons one should care that he retired) better than I could ever hope to for Hardwood Paroxysm last summer. No, I'd like to highlight something different. Namely his Wikipedia page. Just... just look at it. I have no idea who wrote it, but whoever did has to be the world's biggest Parker fan. Or his wife. Or Parker himself. Seriously. It reads like a fan-page. Just look at some of the wording, here:

• "In his first season with the Raptors, Parker helped the team clinch their first ever division title, first NBA Playoffs berth in five years, and best regular season record in franchise history. He helped the Raptors reach the playoffs again in the 2007–08 season, before becoming a free agent in 2009." (This wouldn't be notable, except this is describing his career in the intro paragraph. Because we need to introduce him with everything the Raptors did while he played there, natch.)

• "In a season that was fraught with lengthy injuries to a number of his team mates (such as T.J. Ford and Chris Bosh), he managed to play in all 82 regular season games and ensured that Toronto made the 2008 NBA Playoffs, albeit as the sixth seed." (Good thing Anthony Parker was around to 'ensure' Toronto made the playoffs, or lord only knows what would've happened. Might've lost 25 straight or something.)

• "Cleveland General Manager Danny Ferry said of Parker: "Anthony will be a solid addition to our roster. He is a very good, intelligent all-around basketball player. Our coaching staff will especially appreciate the good shooting and solid defense that Anthony brings to our team."In a bid to ensure that James had his best shot of winning a title before he could potentially become a free agent after the season, Cleveland also acquired Shaquille O'Neal and subsequently, Antawn Jamison, both of whom were veteran superstars." (This is one of my favorite blurbs ever. "The Cavaliers acquired Anthony Parker, and Danny Ferry said THIS about him. Isn't that great?? Oh also they acquired Shaq and Jamison but shush your face Parker was 'The Diff.'")

There you have it. Anthony Parker: the greatest shooting guard of all time. Meet the new Jordan, same as the old Jordan.

• • •

_Follow Andray Blatche on Twitter at __@drayblatche.___

Contrary to popular belief, I don't have a ton of animosity for the Brooklyn Nets. I don't think they're a great team (and I'm still quite hesitant about their defense going forward), but they're clearly much improved and they're doing some really phenomenal stuff on offense. When Johnson and Williams start playing up to their names, sparks will fly. And even on defense, watching Brook Lopez evolve into a "remotely passable" defensive player is a treat. Absolutely a treat. It's always nice to see a long-struggling team right the ship, as I'm sure Ben Swanson will say when the day comes that the Lakers finally catch up to the Bobcats. I don't mean for half the Nets capsules to be negative or jerky.

But I can't bring myself to praise Andray Blatche in good conscience. I'll admit a few things, first -- he has been playing very well this year. His currently-top-10 PER dramatically understates his defense (which has been abhorrent, even still) but it accurately describes the ridiculous level he's been performing at on the offensive end. He's brought his game mostly inside, as he's more than cut in half his rate of shots outside the paint in favor of at-rim jams and offensive tip-ins. His rebounding has gone from sickeningly substandard to startlingly sweet, and he's cut his turnovers to a career low. Blatche is a fringe 7'0" big man who's spent his entire career playing like a 6'5" shooting guard. He finally seems to have remembered that he's a big guy. It's worked, and he's having his best season ever. Nothing else is even close, for him.

Here's the thing. The Wizards have an obscenely poor grasp on player development. They don't really know exactly what they're doing. They've squandered many careers and messed up many player primes by screwing up simple things like putting a player in a role where they have any possibility of succeeding, hiring adequate skill coaches, or finding coaches that actually know what they're doing. They don't draft very well. And their medical staff -- lovely though their attempts to keep Nene's time constrained may be -- isn't anything to write home about. But I refuse -- actively, actually, acutely refuse -- to blame them for Blatche. Seriously. The man was horrible in DC. He's been one of the least valuable players in the league for about 7 years running. He's had some of the worst on/off splits in the entire league, consistently -- his defense has been awful, his offense has been worse, his rebounding has been as tepid as humanly possible for a man in spitting distance of 7 feet tall. But he's amazing right now. This is insane to me.

Look, I didn't think Blatche would give anybody anything this season. You'd think the fact that he very much is would change the picture for me, but I don't think it does. If anything, this makes me even more inclined to dislike him, because it puts his DC years in a more confusing context. Where in God's name was this effort and energy in DC? Seriously! The Wizards did nothing but feature Blatche -- they were letting him start games for a playoff team from his sophomore season onward. It's hard to get 20+ MPG in the NBA, and they managed to give him that every post-rookie year of his career. He was never in want of playing time, shots, or offensive sets that put a spotlight on his unique skillset. They paid him. They hired coaches to help him. They tossed their hat in and made him one of their featured players. And not one bit of it mattered. He still chucked almost half his shots from beyond 15 feet, showed an absolutely insane disregard for his teammates and coaches, and generally made a complete mockery of the Wizards' faith in him. Now he's in Brooklyn, dazzling the world as he makes good on his potential and shows the basketball world what he's actually capable of. The Wizards -- as the team that amnestied him -- are still paying his salary and getting to watch as Blatche does exactly what they wanted him to do... elsewhere. Insofar as they exist at all, the Basketball Gods have a demented sense of humor.

Well... that, or Blatche is just a total jerk. Either/or.

• • •

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. Dr. No, Wul.f, Mike L, Matt L, and J all aptly received their very own 3/3 on 12/12/12. Next thing you know, they'll be doing it at 144/144/144/144/144. (I'm bad at jokes.)

• Player #337 is one of the most annoying yet enticing twitter follows in the league. P.O.P. every day. Also: a hot girlfriend never hurts.

• Player #338 is better than you'd expect but worse than his fans think he is. Wait, okay. That's probably not quite true. I'm not sure he really has fans. Still, I'm actually a bit surprised he hasn't made a team yet this season. Perhaps he needs to talk to Vader.

• Player #339 enters the dragon nightly. I have absolutely no idea what that means, but ever since the 2010 second round, I try not to think about it.

I like how my body is only now beginning to tell me "HEY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. STOP." in regards to my insane sleep schedule I've been doing for months in order to do this series and hold a more-than-full-time-job. Related note: sorry about the miss on yesterday's capsules -- hopefully I can get a day or two ahead this weekend to make sure that doesn't happen again. This does almost guarantee I'll be doing two sets on Christmas, though. FUN TIMES. Also: only 34 capsules left. Yikes.

• • •

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 Brandon Rush, Dominic McGuire, and Chris Wright.

• • •

Follow Brandon Rush on Twitter at @KCsFinest4.

Yet another Mount Zion Christian Academy product, Brandon Rush attended the same Durham prep school attended by Amare Stoudemire, Tracy McGrady, Marquis Daniels, and John Wall. He went to college at the University of Kansas under Bill Self, a key member of the 2008 Kansas title team that outfoxed Calipari's last great vacated team. Sort of ridiculous to remember, as I always think "seasoned vet" when I watch him, but Rush is just a 5th year player -- he was an exceedingly minor piece in the Pacers' scheme for 3 seasons until finally finding a reasonably open role in Marc Jackson's Golden State system last year. Being featured in the offense a bit more and given a bit more room to show his skills, he acquitted himself admirably well -- he ended the season with by far the best offensive numbers of his career, and while his defense was really nothing to write home about, he wasn't exactly Jose Calderon on that end. He stuck with guys, and he worked his tail off. He wasn't bad. Several Warriors fans I know are intensely obsessed with the idea that Rush was an amazing defender, and good Lord, no he wasn't. He was easy to pin on screens and he was a bit too much of a ballhawk without the requisite quickness to make up for it. But he put in the effort and on a team of dismal defenders he was one of the better ones. You know. The average stuff.

On offense, he's intriguing. Rush ranks among the absolute best three point shooters in the league, having shot the lights out in college and settled in as a career 41% three point bomber in the big leagues. That's downright excellent, especially considering the number of years he spent playing poorly designed offensive sets in the O'Brien system (insofar as the O'Brien house of horrors could be called a system). Last year, freed from the shackles of Indiana's former-lottery-pick expectations and with virtually nobody paying attention to him, he put up a phenomenal scoring season efficiency-wise and showed that he's still got quite a bit of potential as an above-par NBA roleplayer. A 3-and-D guy without the D but with a more multifaceted offensive game. Good at cutting, and in something of a shocking twist, he ended up being one of the top offensive players in the league (by the numbers) at isolation situations last season. This is all with the caveat that his usage was extremely low, and few of these (with the sole exception of his wonderful three point shooting) look to hold up well with added usage. But he's definitely a solid role-player offensively, and his $8 million for 2 years looked like a very solid contract to me when he signed it. Good for both parties.

Then, in the 2nd game of his burgeoning 2013 season, he was pushed in the back on incidental contact and ended up absolutely destroying his knee. As with the Marquis Daniels injury I discussed yesterday, I absolutely refuse to link to video -- it's grisly, it's grim, and just grotesque enough to keep me from spreading it. But if you want to find it, it won't be that hard to track it down. Originally it was thought to be an ACL tear and little else, although anyone watching would've probably been skeptical of that diagnosis. Later, when the media circus died down a bit, the Warriors continued their semi-dishonest injury reporting tactics by hiding the important reveal that Rush also tore his MCL, meaning what looked like a season ending injury wasn't just that, but an injury that could very well take out a portion of his 2014 season. Which is, suffice to say, absolutely heartbreaking. Even moreso when you read articles like this, and read how down in the dumps he is about the whole thing. He's realistic, and he's taking his rehab seriously. But he's understandably pretty depressed about it. And I'd be sad too -- basketball is a profession for an NBA player, but it's also a labor of love. Scarce few members of the league don't love the game, and scarce few players don't always want to be out there. Proving people wrong, showing what they're good for, et cetera. May not be his biggest fan or anything, but here's hoping Brandon Rush makes a full recovery and comes back strong next year. Curious to see what he does with a bit more usage, you know?

• • •

Follow Dominic McGuire because you can easily turn his name into "McGuido".

Dominic McGuire is a brutal offensive player. Simply brutal. People can laugh and chortle and make little jokes about how their guy is a poor offensive guy. People whose teams employ Dominic McGuire can't do that. Because Dominic McGuire isn't just a "poor" offensive guy, he's an abjectly horrifying one. What number do you want? Do you want his spot-up efficiency? The guy scored 0.56 points per play on spot-up attempts, and watching them, they were almost all completely open. Dominic McGuire scored 1.00 points per play on transition attempts, which included several hilarious layup misses, a missed dunk, and other hilarious possession failures. Dominic McGuire scored -- again, this is not a typo -- 0.47 points per play on offensive rebounds. BRUTAL.

That all said, he's very g... alright, no, he's a pretty bad player. I really don't know how else to put it. If you're going to make up for offense like that on the other end of the court, you'd better be one of the best defenders of your generation. He isn't. His defense is decent, although it's nowhere near as good as most people hype it up to be. By his size, he's a perimeter stopper -- by his habits, he's a big man stuck in a little man's body. Lots of fronting, some unnecessary ballhawking, a bit too eager to block shots, et cetera. He's not bad, mind you, and one has trouble isolating any one-on-one defensive attributes that look particularly defunct in the game footage I watched. But he simply isn't very phenomenal on that end. His biggest sin, defensively, is sort of problematic -- he may have decent one-on-one stopping capabilities for several positions, but he doesn't fight around screens very well at all, which makes getting an open shot for a star off McGuire not exactly rocket science. Run a few screens, he'll get lost, and suddenly your best perimeter guy has a wide-open jumpshot. Boom.

He was recently waived, which is sad, I suppose. Sort of hilarious that it happened less than two weeks after Dwane Casey called him the Toronto Raptors' primary perimeter stopper, but I'll withhold the chuckles for now. He's a decent defender and those get undervalued. Although once again, when you're as dismal offensively as McGuire is, you aren't long for the league unless you're one of the single greatest defensive players of your generation. I don't have much personal investment in McGuire, so I've got trouble looking incredibly sympathetically on his plight. He's made it to some degree based on his status as a veteran and his decently sized role on the last few decent Wizards teams. But alas. I'm one of those jerks who likes seeing D-League guys (like our next player) try their hand at new roles -- I don't tend to particularly love when middling-to-poor players like McGuire get constantly revisited and called back up instead. I like the new-blood thing. But that's just my cup of tea, I suppose. There's obviously some value in his knowledge of NBA economics, dynamics, and the rest. I probably underrate that. And again, he's a decent defender, so maybe his sticking around reflects NBA decision-makers starting to figure out defense a bit. Maybe.

But, look, come on. He stole my name. Geez, Dom. Get it together.

Ed. Note #1: More accurately, seeing as how Aaron was born in 1990, he stole it from Dominic.

Ed. Note #2: I really don't know why I referred to myself in the third person in Ed. Note #1.

Ed. Note #3: Why are these editor's notes in the first place? What am I doing?

• • •

Follow Chris Wright b... wait, Chris Wright? What?

Commenter wul.f, having correctly predicted that Chris Wright was today's 3rd, asked the following:

Why would you do a capsule on Chris Wright, though?

You know what?

I have absolutely no idea how Chris Wright made the final cut.

I'm serious. I have no clue. I thought I'd taken out most players around Wright's minute-level that I knew virtually nothing about (even if the strict exclusion criteria was > 100 minutes & > 4 MPG last season), but I must have simply overlooked the guy. Which sounds roughly similar to how Warriors games happened last year for me -- I suppose was vaguely aware of his existence, but until I watched some Synergy scouting on him last night and asked a friend who went to his college about him, I honest to God couldn't have told you a thing about him. Or recognized him. I just overlooked him, I guess. So, thought I'd state this upfront. I don't really have a ton to say about Chris Wright. I'm not sure anyone else does either, but alas.

Anyway. I'm not referring to the 1989-born Georgetown point guard currently playing in the D-League -- I'm talking about Chris Wright, the 1988-born hometown Dayton kid who went to the University of Dayton and made their team a little bit more relevant for a year or two. According to the guy I know who went there, he's really remarkably beloved in Dayton -- much like Jeff Foster in Indiana (I see you, @MillerNBA!) or any other beloved home-town hero, Wright grew up around the Dayton area and stayed at the University for the full four years, which basically guarantees he gets a beer or two on the house for free in Dayton for the rest of his life. It's one of the underrated fun facts about some guys like Wright -- no matter how badly they may end up washing out in the NBA, no matter how scant their NBA talents, they're still -- in some respect -- hometown heroes to a certain town. ESPECIALLY when they go to their hometown college and lead them to minor respectability.

As for a scouting report... look, what do you want? Seriously. In college, he was a rim-wrecking beast of a player who dominated the A-10 for a few years and put Dayton on the map as a basketball school. As players tend to do, if they're remotely NBA caliber. And he is that, as long as you make sure not to leave out the "remotely." On an NBA level he struggles to score in any consistent fashion beyond transition buckets and gift-wrapped at-rim jams, and beyond his free throw rate (which was obscenely high for reasons unknown to the world), there simply wasn't much to write home about. He's a tweener wing/big who can't shoot but can't really guard big men effectively either. He posted one of the worst assist-to-turnover ratios I've seen, turning the ball over 8 times to just 4 assists. Which is obviously a huge sample size and worthy of massive analysis, let me tell you. Of his 23 NBA field goals, 13 of them came on dunks -- most of them rim-rocking, several of them fun. His understanding of the game is, as IQofAWarrior put it at Golden State of Mind, exceedingly raw and exceedingly in need of some better basketball education. Would be pretty interesting to see Wright make it out to the Austin Toros and see if the Spurs system can't extract a bit more value out of him. Although, again -- he's a tweener wing/big with minimal shooting talent. So I'm not really sure the Spurs system gets that much out of him, unless Engelland beasts it once again and gave him a shot. So that's that. He got waived before the season, and now he's back with the Maine Red Claws.

He'll be back. Probably. Maybe I'll recognize him next time.

• • •

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. Yesterday's riddles were abjectly terrible on my part, but that didn't stop a few people from getting them all right -- Mike L, Cash McNeil, and wul.f in particular.

• Player #334 is the best high energy anime-loving center in the NBA. Related story: he's the only one.

• Player #335 is retired. There are many reasons people like him. I couldn't stand him on the Cavaliers, but I guess he was OK sometimes. Rousing endorsement, I know.

• Player #336 having a good season now after his years as a Wizard just goes to show that any God that exists has a really demented sense of humor.

See, I can still put these up on time! Every now and again.

• • •

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 Marquis Daniels, O.J. Mayo, and Delonte West.

• • •

Follow Marquis Daniels on Twitter at @Marquis_Daniels.

The story of Marquis Daniels is something of a sad one. It's not that he's a bad player -- he really isn't, when healthy, despite most people thinking that he is after a few years of injury-tarred uselessness. Sure, he's not exactly brilliant -- he's a hustle defender who doesn't really have strong shut-down capabilities, and he floats in-between positions with the muscle (and, unfortuantely, the lessened quickness that often comes with it) of a larger man and the height of a smallish wing. He'll get you hustle rebounds, he'll draw charges if he's healthy (so, uh, he won't draw charges...), and he'll put his best effort into throwing off whatever offensive player his coach dogs him into guarding. Won't always do a fundamentally good job, but he tries his best and doesn't ever make a ton of obvious mistakes. He passes relatively well, too, which is a nice little addition. The main issue with Marquis is that his offensive game has declined to the point where he's among_ the worst offensive players the game's ever seen_ -- last season, for instance, Daniels shot 56% at the rim despite taking almost half his shots there, shot 22% from 3-9 feet, and 18% from the long two. He made zero threes. He drew free throws about as scarcely as Stan Van Gundy did last year, and he turned the ball over on a simply startling 16% of his possessions. Despite all that? Usage rate of 18%. That's rough. And shouldn't really happen. His defense is solid, but lord, he needs to learn to defer on offense.

The big knock on Marquis, NBA-wise, is the fact that his main NBA talent over his career has seemed to be "getting ridiculously injured." Suffice to say, that's not an NBA talent most teams aim to optimize. Many injuries stand out in a career as riddled with them as his, but few are as disturbing as the simply too-grisly-to-link injury that prematurely ended his promising 2011 season. At the time, he'd played 41 consecutive games without missing a single one to injury, which was (believe it or not) by far the best stretch in his career to that point. He then proceeded to fall badly after Gilbert Arenas got under him on a shot attempt, slipping off Gil's back and slamming his spine into the garden floor. Daniels was paralyzed on-the-court, with emergency personnel and teammates (Paul Pierce excepted, for some completely unknown reason that has always confused me deeply) surrounding him in this horrified silence that was palpable even in the broadcast. Nobody really knew what was going on. I absolutely refuse to watch this again, and thus, I refuse to get you a video of it -- if you know what game I'm talking about, you know why. And if you don't, just trust me -- you really, REALLY don't want to see it. Simply don't. Final prognosis was a bruised spinal cord that ended his 2011 season and threatened to end his career -- he came back fine from it, but lord, it could've been so much worse.

Off the court, Daniels seems like an excellent guy in interviews and subjective assessment of his off-court pursuits, which makes the injury problems all the more heartbreaking. People forget this, but for 3 years, Daniels was a really good bench player for a really good Mavs team. He was an important cog on the also-ran 2006 Mavericks, and while he's never really approached the levels of quality play he showed under Don Nelson his rookie year, he's never really been healthy enough to assess what he could've really brought the league. He founded the Q6 Foundation early in his career, a charitable foundation focused on fighting sickle cell anemia and helping underprivileged youth. The reason I bring this up is because during the lockout, I distinctly remember wanting to either cover live or get footage from this event from his foundation, primarily because it included a celebrity kickball game that would've included Rajon Rondo, Tony Allen, Marquis Daniels, Vince Carter, and Tracy McGrady. Like, can you imagine that? Best kickball roster ever. Seriously need a box score or some highlights or something. Anyway. Support his foundation. When he's not standing up for underprivileged youths, he's ordering black diamond Jesus head necklaces and dr--... wait, wait, hold up. Really? Am I being serious?

Yeah, no, that's a thing that actually happened.

Man, what.

• • •

_Follow O.J. Mayo on Twitter at __@JuiceMayo32.___

O.J. Mayo is going to be a starter in the NBA for quite some time, and this year serves as an excellent example of why. While Memphis couldn't really be happier to get rid of him, there was always a lot of promise in Mayo's game -- he's proven over his career to be about as good at three point shooting as any specialist has ever been. The issue in Memphis, as far as I could figure, was the same issue that dogs good shooters on poor-shooting teams -- they simply attract an inordinate amount of attention from behind the arc, being that they're the only real threats to hurt you from that range. Teams throw perimeter stoppers at them willy nilly, and without shooters besides him, there's no real incentive for their man to play off them. Ever. This year, in Dallas, he's been blessed with several decent three point shooters around him and a coach who's good at running get-the-man-open plays -- Carter's had a good start from range, Marion's always an asset, and the Mavs spent some time running sets with Troy Murphy filling the role of quasi-Dirk that have been keeping opposing teams defending the Mavs with the same gameplan they used to use when Dirk was on the floor. (NOTE: Murphy was cut. This is not happening anymore. I should stop doing scouting/notes for these things at midnight.) It worked out relatively well for Mayo, and with a slightly more open shot to subsist on, Mayo's been brilliant -- 52% from beyond the arc to date, and that's not a typo. Not much else there -- high turnover rate, low assist rate, middling rebound rate. But when you shoot the three THAT well, you'll find NBA minutes.

Still, despite his three point marksmanship, there are some flaws that somewhat doom his ability to become more than a decent starter. Chief among them is Mayo's general fear of the rim -- on his career, he takes a well-below-average percent of his shots at the rim. This made some sense when he was on a Memphis team that pounded the ball down low with Gasol and Randolph so often he was rarely able to get daylight. It makes significantly less sense on a Dallas team whose best low post threat is Christopher Zane Kaman. Then again, maybe it does make sense -- over his career, he's also been among the worst at-rim finishers in the entire game, well within the bottom 25% of guards in at-rim percentage in each year he's been on the court (which does extend to this year -- even with his torrid start). His turnover rate has always been high, and perhaps worse, he's been cursed with extremely poorly timed turnovers at every stage of his career -- just ask Grizzlies fans, because most can name a turnover or two that Mayo coughed up at extraordinarily poor momentum-changing moments. In 2012 over 33% of his turnovers came in the 4th quarter, and it just seemed like he was constantly quashing Memphis momentum with a stupid travel or a lazy pass attempt. It wasn't great. Compound this with his often lazy defense (high upside though it may be, as his quality playoff defense demonstrated) and his aforementioned troubles at-the-rim (which extend to trouble drawing fouls -- he's been around league average at foul-drawing his entire career despite being good at throwing his body into defenders on jump shots, and that's primarily because he's so bad at driving to the rim and getting calls under the basket), and you can put together a decent case why he'll never be much of a star and probably won't fully live up to whatever large contract he gets from his Dallas successes.

That said, this is all to ignore perhaps Mayo's biggest asset -- his nigh-superhuman durability. He's missed just a single game to injury over his entire career, with his only other absence coming in a 10 game suspension during the 2011 season. And that durability has him in a relatively neat position -- with 535 threes through 321 games, Mayo stands an outside chance of pole-vaulting Ray Allen on the three-point-makes leaderboard later in his career. It would require him eventually building up a few tertiary skills to go alongside his three-point talents, and he's yet to get the green light to shoot quite as many threes as Allen had in his early career. But it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility -- Mayo is currently running a bit off Allen's pace, but it's only 50 or so three point makes outside of Allen's and Allen had a few injury-hobbled years in his late 20s. Part of the reason Allen has made so many threes over his career is that he's been relatively durable, long-lasting, and minutes-sopping -- it remains to be seen if Mayo can last quite as long as Allen has, or if he can (in his prime) soak up quite as many minutes. But it's certainly within the realm of possibility, given his ridiculous injury history and his absurd ability to play through minor scrapes, and it's one of the few storylines around Mayo's career that's still somewhat interesting to follow.

• • •

_Follow Delonte West on Twitter at __@delontewest.___

Delonte West was a really good NBA player, once upon a time. Let me take you back to 2009, when West was one of the best players on one of the best teams in the entire league -- West's perimeter defense was crucial to Mike Brown's schemes, and his general ability to bother and pester the best perimeter player on every other team in the league was one of the primary cogs in the Cleveland defense. West is one of the rare defenders who actually uses a smaller frame to his advantage -- he's small but sinewy, and his size helps him gets over and around screens better than many larger defenders. Combine that with his decent lateral quickness, and you end up with a beastly difficult player for a perimeter offensive guy to lose. It's one of the reasons the 2009 Cavaliers were a legitimate title favorite at many points of the season. Virtually every contender featured a star perimeter player -- Kobe, Pierce, Parker, Melo -- who Delonte could bother and frustrate. And with those players out of sync, none of those teams were quite as good as they would normally be. This, unfortunately, did not apply to the 2009 Magic. None of their perimeter players were of any particular quality, they were all just "very good" and reliant on a lot of three point shooting. Which made Delonte's role as a stopper somewhat ambiguous, and helped cause a lot of confusion on the part of the traditional Cavalier defensive schemes.

But alas. West was a phenomenal stopper on those late-aughts Cavaliers teams, and throughout his career, he's almost always been an asset of some sort on the defensive end. And on offense, he's not nearly as bad as most people think -- he's something of a jack-of-all-trades swiss army knife, combining boatloads of passing acumen with decent guard-position rebounding and about as much hustle as you could possibly put in his slight frame. He was a joy to watch, on offense and defense -- there was never a sense West was ballhogging, nor a sense that he needed to shoot more -- there was simply a perfect equilibrium, a sense that he was both as featured as he should've been without a single shot more. I don't think, in West's career, he's ever really reached that equilibrium since -- he's always been either underutilized (2010 Cavs, 2011 Celtics) or overutilized (2012 Mavericks) with scarce distance in-between. His defense has been as fun to watch as ever, although as his personal life has gotten in the way of his career, it's been clear that he's gotten more and more distracted and shiftless on defense. Despite this, he's still probably the best player bumming it without a contract right now -- his defensive intensity has been spotty at times with his personal problems, but it's never been poor, and he's never a huge threat to hog the ball when in a good system.

I like watching Delonte West play ball. His intensity is absolutely wonderful, and there's a certain edge to his game that I don't see in a lot of other players. I also respect the way he's fought through his mental issues, even if it's often been public and terrifying. Would we get along in real life? Highly doubt it. While we've both gone through some of the same mental issues and from his interviews I get the sense that our struggles aren't as far apart as they may seem, they're still relatively far apart -- he's a feisty NBA player who came from a hard past and a rough future, I'm a thrifty Jewish mathematician with self-image problems and an aversion to help. But that doesn't make him any less of a hero to me for his time spent trying to better himself in the NBA, or battling his demons without the anonymity that eases the burden for many. Delonte West is a funny, stand-up, problematic guy. These things are often seen as being mutually exclusive. They aren't -- you can have serious problems and still be funny. You can be a stand-up guy without ruining your sense of humor. You can come from hard times without letting them destroy you. I wish Delonte West was still in the NBA, and even with all his troubles, I really hope some team takes a flyer and brings him back. I think he can still be a productive player, and I think any team with an understanding medical staff and a smart coach could do well with him.

I could be wrong, though. That's kind of the point. Mental health isn't really predictable. Overcoming mental problems isn't an easily pigeonholed condition with a set treatment pattern or a regular recovery pattern. It's a long journey with twists and turns you can never really see in advance, and given the high variance, I can see why teams might be shaky on him. I can see why teams don't want to introduce that kind of a potentially harmful presence on a team if they feel they're good enough to possibly contend without him. But it breaks my heart to see him go unused when the man's such a useful player. He may have trouble practicing, he may not always be there, but when he's on and locked in he's one of the better perimeter defenders in the NBA, a useful offensive filler-piece, and one of the funnier personalities around. He's a high variance bet, and he's getting up there a bit (not 30 yet, but he's not too far out)... but he's a bet I wish someone would make. League's better when my boy Delonte's out there killin' it.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Props to Matt L and Geezer for 2/3 guesses.

• Player #331's season is over. Which sucks, because he was really solid last year and really looked to be turning a corner in a contract year. Hope he comes back strong next year.

• Player #332's still being in the league surprises me. Also confuses me, when I hear my name repeated whenever he comes on the court.

• Player #333 has the Wright stuff. (Yes, this riddle sucks. Sue me, I'm tired.)

Was a struggle to get this set out today. Bad case of the Mondays. Good case of the "giddy over a girl", tho, so I can overlook the Monday blues for now. Au revoir, and #SmallMarketMondays drops later.

• • •

Continue reading

“Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless." -- Euripides

On November 23rd, 2010, the Duke Blue Devils obliterated the Kansas State Wildcats by a score of 82-68. The game was hardly as close as the score makes it seem. It was a really impressive victory -- the Blue Devils (then ranked #1) were playing against a #4 ranked Kansas State team that featured player-of-the-year candidate Jacob Pullen, one of the most electric scorers in the college game and among the best shooters in the country. The Blue Devils were favored in the game, but only by the slimmest of margins and most thought it essentially a road game for Duke despite the neutral site locale. It was thought of as a given that Pullen would drop 20-30 on a permissive Duke perimeter defense, helmed by rookies and youngsters that hadn't quite grasped Krzyzewski's defensive system yet.

Not quite. Pullen shot 1-12 for 4 points, posting what may have been his worst game as a collegiate athlete. And Kyrie Irving? The 18-year-old jitterbug was phenomenal. Beyond phenomenal. A revolution, a revelation, a reincarnation of all that's good in basketball. A vertical Rothko in three shades of blue, disrupting almost every single shot Pullen took and making everything he touched work better. He even had a poor shooting night, missing his two threes and numerous wide-open jump shots off his pet pick and roll sets. It didn't matter. He still dominated. Nothing he did in that game was anything short of a wonder. He had four games of college experience. Four. He was facing one of the greatest scorers in the history of the college game, in his first true away game as a pro. He had jitters, as he later admitted, but it simply didn't matter -- sometimes you're just too good for jitters.

After the game, what was the topic of conversation? It wasn't really about Irving at all. Some highlights, some features, some general pats on the back for a game well-performed. But little focus on how dominant Irving was in the contest, because that simply isn't how Duke teams are traditionally understood -- instead, commentators sprung for the usual well-worn cliches, continuing to beat the drum on the idea that Duke was the most talented team in basketball and nobody was really anywhere close. Unbeknownst to most at the time, this wasn't true. At all. Without Irving, the 2011 Duke Blue Devils were a lacking bunch with scant cohesion, flawed chemistry, and a tenuous grasp of the defensive end of the court -- and even Nolan Smith's flukishly-good season didn't obscure that once Irving went down. By the time he came back at the end of the year, the 2011 Blue Devils had been exposed as something of a fraud, and Irving was relegated to being an everyday Duke player -- good, decent, and maybe a perennial all-star. Perhaps. With his dominance forgotten, his flaws overstated, and his game misunderstood, people continued to assert rank inferiority of a draft class that's ended up being (potentially) quite a bit better than the 2 or 3 that came before it. And Kyrie Irving sat, in wait, ready to be the transformative player that he knew full well he'd be.

Can you be a star when they don't know who you are?

• • •

To most, the world of Mathematics represents a world of abject certainty. The word "always" is key. One plus one always equals two. One gallon of milk will always contain exactly 16 cups. Avogadro's number will always describe the constituent particles of a single mole. Always this, always that. There's nothing inherently wrong with this stance, and indeed, it's a satisfactory description of the lower-level mathematics covered in high school and the lower rungs of college. In that sphere -- the sphere most contend with -- math is little more than a series of stark truths represented through numerous immutable rules. The broader picture, insofar as it's revealed at all, is inevitably watered down. But ever since reading an excellent piece from the always-recommended folks at Berfrois (this time the imitable Barry Mazur, a Harvard mathematician), I've come to finally put words to a thought I had throughout my studies. Once you get to a high enough level, Mathematics isn't about any of that.

It's more about hunting giraffes.

What? No, that's actually what I meant to type. Giraffe hunting. The key to understand here is the exact core of Mazur's point. Much of mathematics can be distilled to the logical skeleton that composes those previously outlined truths -- everything most people need to know, really. But there's a level far beyond that, and in the seedy and sordid world of higher mathematics, the questions become far less concrete and far more intangible. Even if you accept the proposal that the formal structure behind mathematics is inert and extant in the highest and most complete form it will ever be, as most do, you'll be hard pressed to find a mathematician worth their salt that believes the absolute meaning of these structures is comprehensible to us and entirely within our grasp (although some believe computers will eventually fully comprehend it). Yet, at least. Scrabbling to find that meaning is the core of higher mathematics. And when you apply enough abstraction to the thought, you come to an almost existential crisis -- if we're ascribing meaning to structures we've yet to fully comprehend, at what level have we really established that abject certainty mathematics is known for? Sure, one plus one always equals two, if you're working in base ten in the traditional coordinate system. But so much of higher math involves reorienting systems to solve problems too complex to describe in the traditional frame we spend so much time explicating in our youth.

It's something like this -- as a child, you learn how to shoot a perfect free throw. You are shooting 100% from the free throw line. It's beautiful. Amazing. But then the blindfold comes off, and you realize there are an infinite number of other points on the basketball court that your exacting and perfect free throw form can't make a bucket at, and that you need to be able to take the framework of your shot-making from the line and turn it into a flexible monster that can attack from every isolated space on the court, in an all-engrossing infinite sphere of possibility and wonder. You've established one single thing -- you can make a free throw. Now you need to establish everything using the basis of that single thing. It's terrifying! It's challenging! And it's beautiful, in a way. When you're a young and rising mathematically-inclined student, you're given this broad structure and this set of rules, and tasked to analyze them to their absolute completion. You do so. Life goes on, you work hard, and you finally come to some level of satisfaction with this structure. Then a teacher cracks you in the head and makes you realize the almost-too-hilarious truth. Those rules and that structure you'd been taking for granted in all your work? Indeed, those are the problems. The things that are flexible in higher math aren't the values of the numbers or the forms of the equations. It's the rules you used to get there in the first place.

And that's where the whole "giraffe hunting" tidbit comes into play. In Mazur's piece, he describes a giraffe hunt he observed in a documentary. Four men hunt a giraffe for five days, pursuing without adequate food or water their quarry for as long as it takes to catch it. He describes it as "exhausting yourself in the ecstasy of it", getting lost in your hunt. Finally, when you catch the giraffe, you use everything. You thought you exhausted yourself catching the giraffe? Hardly as much as your former prey will be exhausted for meat, bones, ears, hooves, and skin. That, right there, is what you do with higher mathematics. You hunt for the perfect framework for your perfect proof, and once you find it, mathematics cannibalizes your structure and creates dozens of offshoot proofs in attempts to explain increasingly different phenomena. Mathematics is the process of slowly ascribing meaning to the inert structures we can't quite explain or understand, arrived at through the everlasting hunt of various proofs and logical stabs. These proofs inch us closer to a truth that means nothing until we can explain it. The hunt is what defines broader math, and until the blindfold's taken off by an amused old hand late in our undergraduate career, it's rare for one to fully comprehend the enormity of it.

• • •

This isn't meant to be an anti-Cleveland screed. Really isn't. As many are aware, I'm a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers. I have a Zydrunas Ilgauskas jersey I sometimes wear in support while rooting from my couch. I have Cavaliers pencils. I have a Cavaliers calendar. Kyrie Irving is one of my favorite players in the league -- top 5 at a minimum. This isn't an essay meant to state some sort of snide, backhanded "fact" about Cleveland being a poor showcase for its young star's talent. Think of it through the whole story, instead -- Kyrie Irving went to Duke University, one of the most over-exposed basketball schools in the country. There are millions upon millions of jokes, and most of them hold water. Duke is held up as a standard-bearer, plastered on national television for almost their entire season, and given innumerable extra coverage opportunities that most other schools simply do not get. He plied his trade at college basketball's equivalent of the Lakers.

Despite this -- despite the overexposure, the massive coverage, the big games -- virtually nobody realizes how good Kyrie Irving was as a college student. Seriously! Nobody! When the 2011 NBA draft approached, there was a serious question that floated on talk radio for some time as to whether Derrick Williams or Kyrie Irving was the better bet as an NBA player. Serious questions, by very smart analysts. This was absurd to me, as someone who watched every single minute of Irving's college career and a fair bit of his high school career. I'm not one to exalt Duke players above everyone else, but by GOD, Kyrie was preposterously good. In college, Irving shot 90% from the line, 46% on threes (almost exclusively unassisted!), and shot over 70% on plays off the high pick and roll. You're reading that right -- 70%, with a seven and a zero. He did this all despite using 30% of Duke's possessions when he was on the floor, playing reasonably solid Krzyzewski-style defense, and being the primary target of virtually every team's defensive schemes. Kyrie Irving may have been injured for much of his college career, but he put up numbers that were legitimately historic. One of the best offensive seasons in college history. There shouldn't have been any doubt whatsoever that the man was the real deal. But everyone was shaky on him, and everyone used the "health" card to explain their doubt.

Then you get to his rookie season. Kyrie didn't play a ton of minutes his rookie year -- topped out at just over 30 per game, and he missed bits of the season with a few minor maladies -- but when he played he was undeniably phenomenal. He threw passes that were steps ahead of the defense, often setting up the ball straight in the cradle of an offensive player's shooting motion for a beautiful dish only ruined by the fact that the offensive player was Samardo Samuels. Whoops. His dribble remains one of the most inexplicable wonders the league has to offer, and Irving's speed with the ball is virtually peerless. The form on his shot was legitimately immaculate, and Irving was a few trick shots at the rim and a few injury-tarred games short of a 50-40-90 season -- as a rookie, remember. His defense was poor, although to my eyes, he started the season relatively well on that end. He defended reasonably well in the preseason and only begun to fall off significantly after a minor sprain early in the year, which gives me some manner of hope that he'll recoup strong and rediscover the bulldog defensive tendencies he displayed at Duke.

In short: Kyrie Irving was all manner of remarkable. He was also nowhere near an all-star spot despite playing significantly better basketball than Deron Williams, Luol Deng, or Joe Johnson. National fans seemed to have virtually no investment in his game. He lived in the shadow of LeBron's rookie season, which was ludicrous for many reasons, not least of which being that Irving was putting up the best rookie season since Chris Paul's, and one of the best rookie years for a point guard in the history of the sport. His rookie year OBLITERATED LeBron's in statistics and standard, with about one tenth the hype and one twentieth the recognition.

But I repeat myself.

• • •

The key thought that connects Kyrie to my missive on mathematics is the idea that, on some level, the idea of Kyrie Irving is a relatively inert function. Just like the broader structures we can't quite describe yet. The more I watch of his dazzling NBA play, the more I'm inclined to believe this as an underlying truth rather than a happy coincidence. If Kyrie Irving is an inert function, his own floating Sealand-style island of NBA bliss that exists under its own flag, it stands to reason that on some level it doesn't really matter that we haven't totally figured him out yet, as a collective of NBA fans. Sure, we've got some appreciation for him. But on a broad level, I've always gotten this feeling that the overexposure of Duke in no way properly highlighted the sort of a player Kyrie was for that Duke team. Nor did the overexposure of the 2012 Cleveland Cavaliers in the light of LeBron's all-universe season do all that much to properly highlight the sort of player Kyrie was as a rookie.

And this year? We're staring at a guard who, as a 2nd year player, is poised to finish the year as a blisteringly efficient 25-ish points-per-night scorer that runs a Cavalier offense with brutally poor pieces alongside him like a whirring, well-oiled machine. And yet appreciation is still, as with mathematics, shaky -- there's a vague understanding of Kyrie's structure among the basketball literati as a general collective, a weak understanding of the qualities he brings to the court. It is a weak understanding of what exactly he does that's so phenomenal. There are the little highlight films that show off his beyond-all-reason handle and his "teenage girls weeping" wet shot. There are the little publicity stunts, the Uncle Drew ads and the mushing with Kobe to give people a taste of his brilliant personality. And there are the accolades; the Rookie of the Year voting, his likely All-Star spot this year, et cetera. Each of these inches us closer to full understanding of Kyrie Irving's inherent truth, and the things that make him whole. But none of us quite inch the collective to complete understanding -- not quite.

It does not matter, in mathematics, that we've yet to come to a full consensus or fully discovered the underlying structure we're studying. Some mathematicians are further along than others. Some are still comprehending the basic groundwork they'll need to get any farther -- they're examining the remains of the giraffes that have been hunted before, discovering things that will help them on the next hunt. So too are we, as a people, learning just how we interface on a collective level with a player as good as Kyrie Irving. People have yet to quite grasp how good he is, and indeed, mathematicians have yet to quite grasp the whole truth of the structure that underlines the discipline. And perhaps they never will. But the true joy of examining and following a player like Kyrie is the same as the joy a mathematician derives from his craft -- the joy of a sailor in the age of discovery, setting anchor ashore in a steppe untouched by man and faithfully taking in the details and oeuvre of their surroundings. And that feeling -- that taste of discovery, that thirst for more -- is exactly what keeps a mathematician hungry. It's what keeps the ecstasy present in their exhaustion, the guiding light that sends them off to prove the new proof and discover the new rules. And this elation, this ecstasy of discovery? This sense that the best is just around the corner, imperceptible to even the most hardy of eyes?

That's what it's like to watch Kyrie Irving -- the showman, the structure, the star.

• • •

• • •

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

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the 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 Kyrie Irving, Wesley Matthews, and J.J. Redick.

• • •

Follow Kyrie Irving on Twitter at @KyrieIrving.

Today, in a special extended capsule, I had the pleasure of going over one of my favorite players in the entire league. It took me a while to figure out how exactly one could best cover Irving's game -- he's an extremely unique player, and I've got the unique experience of having covered him thoroughly at Duke in my failed stabs at a Duke blog, met him a few times, and watched him at every step in his meteoric rise. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord", insofar as Kyrie Irving is a Lord of the Australian Empire. (This isn't true.) Still, it took a fair bit of thought to come up with a suitable frame for presenting my personal take on Irving's brilliance. Lots of sifting through Berfrois, etc. And then, a few days ago? A random discussion with friends Matt and Mike about the philosophy of mathematics set the wheels turning and made me figure out exactly what I needed to do. Today, I discussed Kyrie Irving, the meaning of mathematics, and the limits of public perception. I enjoyed writing this piece quite a lot. I quite hope you enjoy reading it.

On November 23rd, 2010, the Duke Blue Devils obliterated the Kansas State Wildcats by a score of 82-68. The game was hardly as close as the score makes it seem. It was a really impressive victory -- the Blue Devils (then ranked #1) were playing against a #4 ranked Kansas State team that featured player-of-the-year candidate Jacob Pullen, one of the most electric scorers in the college game and among the best shooters in the country. The Blue Devils were favored in the game, but only by the slimmest of margins and most thought it essentially a road game for Duke despite the neutral site locale. It was thought of as a given that Pullen would drop 20-30 on a permissive Duke perimeter defense, helmed by rookies and young players that hadn't quite grasped Krzyzewski's defensive system yet.

Not quite. Pullen shot 1-12 for 4 points, posting what may have been his worst game as a collegiate athlete. And Kyrie Irving? The 18-year-old jitterbug was phenomenal. Beyond phenomenal. A revolution, a revelation, a reincarnation of all that's holy. A vertical Rothko in three shades of blue, disrupting almost every single shot Pullen took and making everything he touched work better. He even had a poor shooting night, missing his two threes and numerous wide-open jump shots off his pet pick and roll sets. Nothing he did in that game was anything short of a wonder. He had four games of college experience. Four. He was facing one of the greatest scorers in the history of the college game, in his first true away game as a pro. He had jitters, as he later admitted, but it simply didn't matter -- sometimes you're just too good for jitters.

After the game, what was the topic of conversation? It wasn't really about Irving at all. Some highlights, some features, some general pats on the back for a game well-performed. But little focus on how dominant Irving was in the contest, because that simply isn't how Duke teams are traditionally understood -- instead, commentators sprung for the usual well-worn cliches, continuing to beat the drum on the idea that Duke was the most talented team in basketball and nobody was really anywhere close. Unbeknownst to most at the time, this wasn't true. At all. Without Irving, the 2011 Duke Blue Devils were a lacking bunch with scant cohesion, flawed chemistry, and a tenuous grasp of the defensive end of the court -- and even Nolan Smith's flukishly-good season didn't obscure that once Irving went down. By the time he came back at the end of the year, the 2011 Blue Devils had been exposed as something of a fraud, and Irving was relegated to being an everyday Duke player -- good, decent, and maybe a perennial all-star. Perhaps. With his dominance forgotten, his flaws overstated, and his game misunderstood, people continued to assert rank inferiority of a draft class that's ended up being (potentially) quite a bit better than the 2 or 3 that came before it. And Kyrie Irving sat, in wait, ready to be the transformative player that he knew full well he'd be.

Can you be a star when they don't know who you are?

For more on Kyrie Irving, please read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Wesley Matthews on Twitter at __@wessywes2.___

Wesley Matthews is stuck in an odd sort of purgatory -- while he's one of about four currently NBA-caliber talents on the Portland Trail Blazers, he's clearly the weakest of the four and clearly the most tertiary piece. Which would stand to reason he'd be on the trading block in an effort to land the Blazers multiple fill-in pieces. The problem with that? He's not quite promising enough to net much on the trade market, and he's displayed a few issues that have sapped his game in the last little stretch. Of all these issues, perhaps the most pressing last year was the sudden and complete absence of Matthews' at-rim finishing game. Matthews shot just 50% at the rim last year, rating out as one of the league's absolute worst finishers -- as John Hollinger aptly noted in his player profiles, that number made him the worst finisher in the league who didn't play for the Charlotte Bobcats. This is partly a dig at how incredibly poor several Bobcats players were at the rim last season, but it's also partly a massive indictment on Matthews. He shouldn't be that bad. He can't really finish at the right side of the basket, but he still shouldn't be that bad -- it should NOT be this easy to force Matthews right. He's spent most of his career as a below-average converter from the rim (with the sole exception of his 2nd year), but nothing quite as harrowing as last year. Beyond that, he has a few other things that hurt his efficiency. He's rather poor at drawing free throws, which is awful in the long run because he's blessed with one of the most consistent free throw strokes in the league. Really wish he could do that more often.

His rebounds and assists were paltry, and while his three point percentage was decent, it's worth noting that he had a well-below-average usage rate for a shooting guard. Well-below average. When you cull the list of guards to players in Matthews' minutes range (IE, players with 30+ MPG), only three shooting guards used the ball less than Matthews did in 2012 -- Gordon Hayward, Ray Allen, and Courtney Lee. Which may really constitute Matthews' main problem. This all can be rather problematic when you're looking at a team that only features four definite NBA talents; it's important that Matthews takes more shots when he's on the court with the Portland bench, which rates among one of the worst in the league for a reason. I'm not a fan of cliches, but one fits here -- he's an NBA shooting guard. He doesn't really rebound and he doesn't really pass. Which means__ the man needs to shoot.__ Simply has to. Matthews isn't some fill-in off the Spurs bench that can stay off-ball all the time and focus on his defense (at which he's solid, but not remarkable) -- he's a shooter with scoring talent that needs to be featured when the Blazers put out a lineup where he's one of the best two guys on the court, a situation that happens for 10-15 minutes each night. They don't need Matthews to be "that guy" all game, with Aldridge and Batum and Lilliard there to take the load. They do need him to be "a guy", though, and oftentimes he floats off-ball to the point where he really isn't. He doesn't make himself a factor in the play. Part of this was Nate McMillan and Kaleb Canales, but it's not like Stotts has done THAT much better. He simply needs to find a way to get the ball more often. His efficiency can take a dive and he'll STILL be an infinitely better choice than a Sasha Pavlovic pull-up two point fadeaway. Come on, Stotts.

It's not all bad, though. Really. At 249 games through his NBA career, Matthews has yet to miss a game. He's been almost preternaturally healthy despite Portland's overall injury troubles, which is a testament to both his durability and his generally reliable presence. His three point percentage isn't quite as sizzling as his nearly 41% mark in 2011 would indicate, but it is decent -- around 38% on his career, despite getting assisted on a lower percentage of his threes than many NBA shooting guards. Matthews is a decent defender -- as I said, solid but not remarkable -- and while he can't shut down elite wings with anything remotely approaching regularity, he takes smart chances on steals (at which he owns one of the league's highest rates) and he takes charges like a champ (about one every 3 games last year). He virtually never turned the ball over, which is partly a result of him rarely having the ball but partly a result of him not trying to do too much when he's passing or dribbling, which is usually a good thing. He doesn't shoot as many midrange jumpers as most wings, which is good, because they're (as stated roughly two hundred seventy nine thousand times in these capsules) relatively inefficient shots. So good on him. And the problems with usage aren't necessarily his fault, per se. He's not great at moving without the ball, but he's never really been guided into a situation where it's made obvious to him that he needs to get great at it. And his defense really is solid -- no stopper, but the kind of solid defender who's going to be an asset on that end for virtually his whole career. He may never be much more than he is now, but that's OK. The Blazers don't really need him to be.

They just need him to, you know, shoot. Every now and then, please?

• • •

_Follow J.J. Redick __on Twitter at @JJRedick47.___

The career arc of J.J. Redick is a strange and wonderful one, an arc more akin to a bird swooping into the ocean to pick up a fish and shooting back up into the sky than the semi-normal parabolic arc. That's to say that Redick spent college looking like a dominant all-universe shooter, entered the league only to have his shot wrenched out from under him and his lack of any supplementary game disturbingly exposed, and then recouped through hard work to a level where he's at now. His current state has him at a point where he's completely remodeled his game to become a far more versatile version of the end-state most saw as his natural role when he entered the league in the first place. It's a beautiful little story, and for Magic fans, it's been somewhat fun to watch -- Redick has effectively transitioned all the way from reviled to ridiculed to redeemed in his 6-year career, and it's seriously hilarious to watch. Even as someone who's never much liked Redick, as he came before my time at Duke and seemed to reflect in many ways the parts of the university that made my time there so aggravating.

As for last season, Redick made a genuinely big mark on a Magic team that was rather lacking. He wasn't just the Magic's best three point shooter, he was one of the best in the league -- 42% from three point range is patently solid no matter which way you slice it, but it gets even more ridiculous when you realize Redick took 46% of his shots from three -- in essence, he always took threes, opposing teams knew this and guarded him like it, and Redick still made a phenomenal mark on them. Excellent work from the guy, although (just as with Matthews) someone needs to call out the fact that Redick needs to shoot more. He had more of an excuse than Matthews, since he was on a team with a few actual NBA players, but my lord. Low usage for amazing shooters bugs me sometimes. Somewhat ironically, he's not really a HUGE passing talent (above average but only just), which tends to be obscured by the fact that he always seems to develop a few exceedingly obvious pet two-man games that announcers love to point out in great detail. Last season, it was Redick to Ryan Anderson, as assists to Anderson baskets made up almost a third of Redick's total assists. In 2011 it was "whoever plays center", as Bass and Howard combined for almost 40% of his assists. You get the drift. The one nice thing about Redick's passing is that his handle is relatively pure -- a team can deal with Redick handling the ball without the team falling apart at the seams, as he's not one to make a ton of stupid turnovers in pursuit of a pass that isn't really there. Still, he's more of a pass-before-the-pass kind of guy, and not the most creative passer on the face of the planet. Alack.

One place where Redick may still be a bit underheralded is his defense, which has been a legitimate asset for almost 4 years now. He's much like Wesley Matthews on that end -- not quite good enough to be considered a wing stopper, but he plays a consistent and solid style that's not going to wear down anytime soon and provides a legitimate asset to a team's perimeter defense. One thing that always bugged me about the usual "Dwight Howard dragged a bunch of nobodies to defensive brilliance" meme was that it never quite accounted for this -- Redick is a legitimate asset defensively, and under Van Gundy, most of the perimeter pieces were excellent at rotating and cutting off space. Yes, I know -- you can construct the argument that they only had the levity to do that because they had the confidence Dwight would cordon off the rim. I get that. But look at the Lakers' attempts to do the same thing -- part of it is Dwight, but part of it is simply that the Magic perimeter defenders weren't as bad as people liked to gripe. Redick is a legitimate asset, Richardson wasn't easy to get around, Carter was on-and-off but tended to be fine, and the only real position of defensive weakness to the Magic's perimeter attack tended to be the point guard. Which, it should be noted, simply doesn't matter very much -- in the wreckage of the hand-check, NO point guard can guard point guards. Dissing the Magic's perimeter defense on the basis that the point guard can't defend is silly, because you can diss virtually every defense in the league by this metric. And watching as Los Angeles struggles to put together its own perimeter defense with Dwight behind them and a few solid pieces (Kobe, Artest) to boot has been a bit validating to what I've always thought has been a substantially unfair characterization of the Magic's efforts.

As for off-the-court, you can't knock the man's work ethic. In a somewhat underreported fact, over the last 3 years, Redick has been the single best-conditioned member of the Magic in virtually every internal team competition -- strength training, endurance, et cetera. When he came into the league, he was an absolute twig, but he didn't let that stop him from grinding it out and getting better at it. He rates highly in the "players who got my ex-girlfriend to swoon" category, being one of only 2 or 3 guys in that category at all (other members of this exclusive group: George Hill, Ricky Rubio). So, he's clearly pretty attractive, right? I don't really know how to gauge these things but I'm going to assume he is. Heck, even my friend Brian wants to (direct quote) "suck his anything", which sounds awfully crass but supportive of my girlfriend's general attraction, although I am 100% positive it isn't a sexual love, because Brian is married and OH hello there Brian's wife how are you doing today YEP I'M GOOD I hope you are OK please enjoy your stay at the capsules and no Ma'am Brian isn't propositioning J.J. Redick do not worry. Phew. Finally, let no man tear asunder this the bonds that tie Redick to this poem, a sample of J.J. Redick's attempts at poetry when he was a student at Duke University.

No bandage can cover my scars
It's hard living a life behind invisible bars
Searching for the face of God
I'm only inspired by the poems of Nas
Because the truth has carved my life's patterns
The reality of pain, and the joy of laughter
My hopes and dreams shattered
by the miscalculation of my own situation

Brings a tear to my eye. Laughter, maybe, but a tear all the same.

• • •

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 wul.f, Matt L, and__ @MillerNBA__ for their almost perfunctory 3/3 guesses. Gonna put me out of business, those guys.

• Player #328 looked like a likely candidate to be completely out of the league multiple times in the last few years, through no fault of his own. Injuries suck. But he's recouped, a bit, and playing a decent role for a surprising team. Good for him.

• Player #329 looked like a likely candidate to get a max contract as a rookie. Then he had disappointing year after disappointing year, to the point that he signed a one year deal last year in the contract year that he was supposed to deserve a max in, long ago. He might just be playing his way into that kind of a contract, tho.

• Player #330 is one of my favorites. Which makes his current fall from grace all the more jarring and sad to me. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It SHOULDN'T be like this. Not with his talent.

That's a wrap. Enjoy your weekend. Mine's chock full of exciting things to do. Hope yours is too. Adieu.

• • •

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 Sundiata Gaines, Marcus Thornton, and Martell Webster.

• • •

Follow Sundiata Gaines, because he looks like a stock car.

I readily admit that I've personally taken a mildly selfish interest in Gaines' career-to-date. I've been interested in how he's faring ever since he broke the hearts of Cavs fans everywhere during that one incredible moment from the 2010 NBA season. Not entirely out of regard for Gaines as a player or person, no -- he's a compelling story, no doubt, but I wasn't all that intensely interested in that. I simply wanted him to turn out well so it would validate that Utah/Cleveland game winning shot going forward. You know, make future NBA fans think "oh, yeah, Sundiata Gaines! The second best player of his era, of course he'd upset LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Of course." ... Alright, that was probably an unreasonable expectation. But you know what I mean, right? I feel like this is a relatively ubiquitous feeling among sports fan. This odd desire to see a bad team that beat you -- or a subpar player that beat you -- succeed solely to justify the loss you've suffered. When your guys lose to the worst team in the NBA, you want that team to go on a 2-3 game winning streak so you can say you lost to an "upstart" team thatreally is playing their best ball of the season, come ON guys, it's NOT A BAD LOSS! Et cetera, et cetera. Natural result of being a fan and all.

Anyway. Point is, I've followed Gaines more than I follow the normal NBA player, primarily by dint of that curious need for validation as a sports fan. It's sort of absurd that I of all people still experience this itch, because I'm a professional statistician. I understand intuitively the randomness of the NBA, and on a mental level, I don't usually get caught up in the vagaries of complete randomness in any other sphere of life. But a player's one good game out of 100 or the one time an impossible shot goes in? I'm ruined. Just brutal stuff. As for Gaines in the time since that shot, he's been a mixed bag. He spent the 2011 season bouncing from franchise to franchise, with few realizing that he ended up playing time for three teams during the season, getting waived by two -- the Wolves, the Raptors, and the Nets. He finally stuck in New Jersey, whether because he fit with Avery Johnson's coaching style or a fit with Deron Williams or who-really-knows. Last season he put up relatively decent numbers in New Jersey for a backup guard, and earned enough trust that he played his way into over 80% of the Nets' games and put up a cool 14 minutes a contest besides. His scoring efficiency was about as dismal as one could possibly expect -- about average from three point range, for a point guard, and grotesquely low percentages from every other range of the floor. His free throw shooting in particular boggles the mind -- a stocky 6'1" guard should be able to do better than low-60% from the line. He just should. It's actually funny, because he drew quite a few trips to the line and rated as one of the best guards in the league from a "FTA/FGA" perspective. If he was a good free throw shooter, that skill could've added 2-3 points to his total a night. But alas.

The Pacers made a decently large deal about signing Sundiata Gaines during the offseason, hoping that Gaines and Augustin would put together a good enough season that they'd fill in everything Darren Collison brought the Pacers on a lower contract and a lesser investment. Things didn't quite shake out that way -- Augustin has been an abject horror with the Pacers, and Gaines was rather inexplicably waived before the season. Instead of waiting around for another NBA contract that might not come, Gaines decided to throw up a middle finger and sign in China. Out of all the places a player could sign overseas, China has always been one of the more restrictive ones -- it's a nice guarantee of a salary marginally higher than you could get in Europe, but if you want to get back to the NBA, you need to wait for the CBA playoffs to finish, and if you can get into an NBA team you've only got a few weeks until the season's over anyway. Still, I like the move for Gaines. He's clearly at that crossroads where he's not quite good enough for an NBA rotation but not nearly bad enough to retire from the game. If he puts up a solid season for his current team (the currently 3-1 Fujian SBC Sturgeons, which is a hilarious team name), he could garner a bit of NBA interest next season and play a potentially larger role. And if not? He's got a good setup with a profitable overseas game. Seems like a win-win, although I'm sad we don't get to see him for a while. I don't have much more to say about Gaines. In the LeBron capsule, I wrote of the moment Gaines sunk the shot to help frame the whole story. Here's the link, if the reminder makes you itch for it.

• • •

_Follow Marcus Thornton on Twitter at __@OfficialMT23.___

There are exactly two things that Marcus Thornton does well. He scores well and he doesn't turn the ball over much. That's basically it. Thornton is a bit of a machine when it comes to scoring -- his percentages as a shooter won't wow you, necessarily (34.5% from three is decent if-not-great and his midrange numbers are quite pedestrian), but you can't really mention his offense without noting with relish the fact that Thornton takes a seriously hilarious number of shots off the dribble or in relatively contested territory. The man has a Bryant-esque adherence to taking the tougher shot when a simple shot would do the job. Much like the Kings team itself, it has to be a bit frustrating for Kings fans. It's nice to see that Thornton has the confidence to take the shots, but there's_ got_ to be a serious case of "NO NO NO okay fine"-type rumblings at Sacramento bars every single time he gets the ball. The knock on Thornton is as I mentioned earlier -- the man can score and he doesn't cough the ball up much, and that's just about it.

He ranked as one of the highest points-per-minutes guards of any kind last season, which is nice -- he also ranked in the bottom 25% of all guards in both assist rate and assist-to-turnover ratio, which is even more impressive given how rarely he turned the ball over (per-possession, at least). He was a poor shot blocker (obviously, he's 6'4"), he drew fewer fouls than his adherents would've hoped, and he's a surprisingly poor rebounder. Which surprises many. But one thing you need to understand about his numbers -- the Kings played a DRAMATICALLY faster pace with Thornton on the floor, posting 6-7 more possessions (pro-rated over a full game's time) with Thornton on the court than with Thornton off. His numbers all rate out relatively high among his peers because of it (his rebounding in particular is top-5 among guards), but if you adjust out the pace difference and examine his per-possession statistics, he's a relatively poor rebounder who's decent on the offensive glass but absolutely dismal on the defensive glass. He also is, as I noted, a very low turnover player -- the 1.6 turnover per game average is another ill product of the pace the Kings played with him on the court more than a true reflection of his ball control. Defensively he's a nonentity, but the man's scoring skill and general control over what he's doing would stand to reason that

One last observation. I could be totally off the mark here, but I noticed something while doing my Thornton scouting last night. Is it just me, or do the Kings have a really permissive statkeeper? I was watching some of Thornton's assisted shots, as I was somewhat surprised at his being assisted on 60% of his shots last season -- that didn't seem intuitive to me and I felt that was a really high number, as that's around the average for NBA shooting guards and he always seemed like a very focused off-the-dribble player. He creates a LOT of his own offense, you know? So I started looking at buckets he'd been theoretically "assisted" on. And you know what? More often than most, he'd take 2 or 3 dribbles and create a completely different shot, only to have it still count as an "assist" for another player by the Sacramento scorekeeper. This is hardly some crazy sin or anything -- statkeepers everywhere do it all the time. But I found this a somewhat exceptional case, because it seemed significantly more obvious here than it does for most teams (other than perhaps Boston and New Orleans, both of whom are notorious for it). The Kings are traditionally a poor passing team, and last year, they went 26th overall in the league with 1271 assists. Is it possible that the Kings have been so bad at setting up legitimate shots in recent years that their statkeeper decided to lower the bar on assists, for at least a year? Seriously -- go watch some of Thornton's assisted shots on Synergy. I may be seeing things. I probably am. But I feel like this is sort of darkly humorous caption to the 2012 Kings season, if it's really a thing.

• • •

_Follow Martell Webster on Twitter at __@MartellWebster.___

Last season wasn't a great one for poor Martell Webster, who had another injury-riddled season in a career replete with them. His three point stroke comes and goes with more randomness than you tend to see in a player (he's a career 37% shooter, with single season numbers wobbling between 42% and 33% depending on god-knows-what), and while he's a decent defender by the eye test he's nothing spectacular. He turns the ball over quite a lot relative to most guards, and didn't fix that with a lot of tertiary accomplishments. Poor rebounder for his size, poor passer, low-usage player who gives no guarantees of efficiency despite the low usage, et cetera. He's been very solid this season for the Wizards, and one of the one or two bright spots on a team that's been relatively absent them. The positive aspects of the current Wizards season can essentially be summed down to "beating the Heat", Martell Webster's minor renaissance, and Jordan Crawford's development. That's about it so far.

Off the court, Webster seems like a pretty great guy, enough so that it's not really fair to assess him solely on his injury-riddled and occasionally lacking game. Blazers fans who watched him tend to root pretty hard for him, and in a general sense, the most adamant fans of the teams that Webster plays with love him. The more you see Webster in interviews and learn about him, the more you realize why this is and like/root for him yourself. I recommend checking out this great interview between Webster and Kyle Weidie at Truth About It. He's mainly just talking about his role on the team and some exactitudes of a close loss against a good team, but he also drops some nice quotes, like a bomb late in the video where Weidie asks if Webster would be a good coach only to elicit a stunned, chuckling response of “No! ... I have three kids, man, I’m already a coach. Coaching a whole bunch of knuckleheads… can’t do it. I can’t do it.” Valid point. And well-stated. He generally spends the interview being respectful, talking about the importance of working for his role, and spilling some good points about strategy and general approach to changing the pace of an offense. It's a great watch.

Really, I don't know how best to describe Webster. You could call him a "bust", strictly going on his production (which has been lacking for a lottery pick, it should be said), but that doesn't really sit well with me. Mostly because he's an inspiring enough human being that distilling him down to his game being less-than-exceptional is necessarily reductive and depressing. The guy has been through things most people never even imagine -- his father abandoned his family before he was born, and his mother went missing when he was only 4 years old. Many theorize she was murdered by one of Washington's most historically prolific serial killers, and her body has never been found. Being able to overcome something like that shows strength enough -- his ability to overcome ADD as a youth and find the strength to reject a medication that changed him as a person in favor of a harder road to find his true self is inspiring. His love for his coaches, the game, and his teammates is unparalleled, and it's hard to find a guy who works harder. Does that mean he's a great NBA player? No. But it DOES mean he's one of the better people in a league with a lot of great ones, and it does make him worthy of your respect.

Also, there's this story, which honestly never fails to crack me up.

• • •

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. Everyone got 2/3 yesterday, probably owing to just how obtuse the Sundiata Gaines riddle was. But props to wul.f, Matt L, Alex, and Booze__Cruise.

• Player #325 was one of my favorite players the second I saw him suit up for my college. That's right, folks -- I'm a Player #325 hipster. I liked him before it was popular, damnit! Will be a Capsule Plus... if I get off work on time today, that is.

• Player #326 is one of the only real NBA-caliber players on a team with few. He's acquitted himself relatively well -- great three point shooter, very low turnover player, decently efficient. Doesn't really do anything else, but I mean, he IS a shooting guard.

• Player #327 looked, at first, like he'd be a sweet-shooting three point gunner with no other discernible skills when he entered the game. He's put a lot of work on his game, though, and his passing and defense are both high quality now.

Just realized I'm down to the last 40-something. The homiest of home stretches, here. Until next time.

• • •

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