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 Shaun Livingston, C.J. Watson, and Samardo Samuels.

• • •

Follow Shaun Livingston by recouping in an impossible situation.

Shaun Livingston was traded to Milwaukee over the summer of 2011 as a piece of fodder in the curious Sacramento trade that managed to accomplish the rare trifecta of sending out a value player, moving DOWN in the draft, and ALSO taking on an onerous salary burden. I love talking about this trade, not because I dislike the Kings in particular but because doing all three of those in one trade is almost literally impossible. To fail in negotiation to the point that you are extracting quite literally no added benefit from the trade in either value players added, draft position, or salary space isn't just remarkable -- it's almost unprecedented. It isn't a very common thing. But this is a player capsule, not a "hilarious trades that make even less sense in retrospect" capsule, so I will regrettably sally forth beyond that. Livingston was traded to Milwaukee as part of the deal, as some of Charlotte's odd salary fodder to make sure the numbers worked. He entered the season with no guaranteed role in Milwaukee's depth chart. I'd say he did reasonably well, although there were a few causes for concern. He started the year with a string of good games that built Scott Skiles' trust in him, giving him a spot as one of the first few guards off the bench. Then Livingston's playing time and production lagged in March and April due to fatigue and Beno Udrih's strong finish to the season.

While Livingston didn't provide a massive impact for the Bucks, he was a steady presence and his offensive game (though scantly utilized) had several neat wrinkles. He remains one of the better at-rim finishing guards in the league -- he shot 64% at the rim last year, an excellent mark among NBA point guards. He continued his career-long trend of absolutely destroying point guards in the post, for the rare times he actually found himself matched on a point guard. He also displayed a reasonably good midrange shot, and averaged slightly more FTA per FGA than most point guards. On the downside, he produced these numbers while being woefully rarely utilized, even when he was on the floor -- he had one of the lowest usage rates among all NBA point guards and few were even anywhere close. His defense was strong, although it was far stronger when he matched up with point guards. The biggest issue with Livingston came less from his play and more from the way he was used -- the last two years, Skiles, Silas, and Brown have been unreasonably obsessed with playing Livingston as an off-ball shooting guard. He played 75% of his minutes with Brandon Jennings last year, in fact! It's mostly for his benefit, part of a concerted effort to get him more minutes to showcase his skills.

But therein lies the problem. He's really not a shooting guard. He has the size, but none of the fundamental skills really fit. His long range shooting is -- as mentioned -- awful. His passing is far better when he's got the levity to move with the ball and probe the defense himself, as he's not really used to pivot passing. He's bad at moving off the ball and awful at getting himself open when he doesn't have his dribble to rely on. And he's highly prone to turning the ball over on the catch. A lot of these issues either recede or become less noticeable when he's playing the point. But they also point to fundamental problems with Livingston's current incarnation of his game. The pivot passing problem isn't just one that plagues him off-ball, it also plagues him when he's running the show -- he's poor at plays more complicated than the simplest give-and-go, if he has to receive the ball again. And the lack of long range shooting can be problematic, especially when he's in a lineup that lacks serious outside shooting talent. Teams feel free to pack the paint and force him to chuck up long shots -- and generally, they'll either get that or a turnover.

This all conspires to sabotage Livingston's chances as anything more than a situational backup point guard at this stage of his career, with little upside as he begins to enter his past-prime years. It's not that he's a poor player -- he's solid, and he has a decent mix of talents. So long as you play him at point guard. But his borderline career-ending injury in the 2007 season (which I'd like to avoid talking about -- it still makes me really queasy) has altered his game to the point that he's never going to be all that much more than a backup, and he's got the regular issue where he's far better with the ball in his hands but almost any team that actually needs him has better players that need it more. Alas. It's a great story that he's been able to come back at all, but anyone hoping that Livingston sees a grand rekindling of his former talent may be waiting quite some time.

Just want to cover something before I leave the topic. It can't just be me, here -- doesn't Shaun Livingston now look like the spitting image of a young Andre Miller? I mean, it's uncanny. Here's a picture comparing the two -- sure, Miller has a few more wrinkles and a slightly more defined face shape due to his age, but it's INSANE how similar the overall facial structure is. Ears are similarly sized and shaped, eyes have the same general curvature, cheekbones the same height, beard the exact same style, lips the same size, and the proportions are all exactly the same. I don't know. In any event, I'm freaked out by how similar they look, and now suspect that Andre Miller was cloned in order to ensure the league would never be without his old-man game. All that needs to happen is for Livingston to stick in the league long enough to start spitting old man game. Here's hoping he does.

• • •

_Follow C.J. Watson on Twitter at __@quietstorm_32.___

I'm not a huge C.J. Watson guy, and to be completely honest with you, I think Watson's departure and subsequent replacement with Hinrich and Robinson was probably the only tangible depth upgrade the Bulls made last season. There are several reasons for this. First, his individual numbers were pretty bad. His excellent three point shooting season continued to obscure the fact that anything else he tried to do on offense ended in horrifying fashion -- he didn't even sniff 50% from the rim, and made only 24% of his 3-9 foot shots. He didn't draw fouls, and despite his offensive woes, he had a higher usage rate than 55% of all point guards -- which is absolutely absurd. His rebounding was poor, his overall tertiaries were awful, and he generally looked outmatched. Granted, he was being compared to Derrick Freaking Rose, but still. His passing needs work, too -- he's gotten better over time, but he still rates out as scarcely above average in assist rate and watching video on his passes makes you wonder how exactly he ever gets away with them. There isn't a lot of creativity there, and there's a lot of pass telegraphing that either goes unnoticed or that teams simply don't care enough to scout.

Second, though? Look at the team context. Because the Bulls looked horrendous with Watson on the court last year. Part of this was due to lineups -- Watson shared a lot of time with Boozer (around 70% of his minutes), who was also pretty awful last year. But you can't attribute everything to lineups -- in a pure starting swap-out of Watson for Rose, the lineup of Watson-Brewer-Deng-Boozer-Noah found itself outscored by a point per 100 possession over 270 minutes on the season. That's slightly difficult when the team was a really good team who -- overall -- outscored teams by about 7 points per 100 possessions. The general on/off stats bear this out -- the Bulls outscored teams by about 14 points per 100 possessions with Watson off the court and outscored teams by just two with him on the court, which is about the difference between being one of the greatest teams in the history of the league and being a borderline playoff team. Some of this is attributable to his defense. Unlike Lucas or Rose, Watson has no real ability to stay with point guards or cut off angles to the rim, and against Watson most NBA point guards found they had the ability to get to the rim with incredible ease.

But another large part of this is attributable to bad luck, as many guards had some miracle shots go in against Watson. And the last -- and largest -- part of this is the Occam's Razor answer: he simply isn't that good. In any event, there are some positive omens for him in Brooklyn. As the team is set to be significantly more offense-first, it's likely he'll have far better offensive players on the court to pass to at any given time. His poor defense will still harm the team, but probably not quite as much as it did when he was playing on a team that relied on next-level defense to blow teams out. If he can adjust to being more of a spot-up shooter -- and chucking a bit less than he does currently -- he could have a far nicer place on this team. Watson is 28, now, so his prospects of getting all that much better are minimal to none. On the plus side, he seems like a nice guy and he recently finished getting his degree. Always warms my heart a bit to see NBA guys finish their degree so they'll have something to lean on when the league passes them by.

• • •

_Follow Samardo Samuels on Twitter at __@samardo24.___

I've seen a surprising number of people openly ponder why exactly Samardo Samuels did not play more minutes last season. Although I suspect these people are secretly relatives and confidantes of Samuels rather than sincere fans of the man, I'll give these folks the benefit of the doubt and address these concerns honestly and fairly, in tried and true bulletpoint format. (I am using bulletpoints to represent, in exceedingly opaque fashion, the loaded "guns" Samardo Samuels is "packing" on the daily. I am stating this outright such that you will understand my pithy quip. I smile. You smile. There are smiles in this life.)

• Samardo Samuels shot in the bottom 25% of all big men from every range except midrange, on a dizzying array of "moves that do not work." From the midrange, he shot 9-of-15. In his career, he's an 13-of-29 shooter from that range. He was the Subway Sandwich Artist of NBA scoring.

• Samardo Samuels registered a top-7 turnover rate among NBA bigs last season. He did this despite barely ever even attempting to pass, which (when watching Synergy footage of his turnovers) makes his Synergy reels a hilariously prime candidate for wholly excessive Yakety Sax drops.

• Samardo Samuels understands defense only insofar as he understands that a player gets six fouls a game, and that fouls are an important part of the game that must be utilized at all costs. It is very important to use these fouls. #YOFO.

I hope this cleared a few things up.

One of my favorite summer storylines (in an odd way) was the unfettered glee of Cavs fans over Samardo Samuels' conditioning. And it's true -- he looked impressive. Sort of. He'd finally sloughed off his last layer of puppy-fat, and looked (if not phenomenal) at least slightly improved in summer league play. This was it. This was to be The Year of Samardo, as penned by Al Stewart and performed by Nick Cave. This hope and dream did not happen. At all. And while I was never really on-board the Samardo Express, I was interested to see if the hype would actually mean something. It did not. It emphatically did not. Which gets at an actually important point -- when you're in a league like the NBA, being in incredible physical shape isn't a marginal advantage, it's a necessity to even have a chance at being decent. The chance can still fail, and often does. When, like Samuels, you are short for the position with poor rebounding instincts and no defensive accomplishment? You can be the best-conditioned man in the gym. You're still not going to hack it on an NBA level if you don't develop your key NBA skills -- you just have a slightly higher shot at actually making it, is all.

And now, I present to you an old blog post from happier and more innocent times. It was the best of times, abreast of times. Back when we all sat in our dens and cardboard boxes and moon rovers and supped orange soda and dreamed a better life for our children. Back when nobody knew algebra and everyone knew about Alger, brah. In those days, we wondered aloud the question on the minds of a nation. "Samardo Samuels, do you partake in sex with men?"

Oh. That's good to know I guess. I was being really facetious, tho, I don't think anyone was actually wondering th--

... wait, what?

I won't spoil the whole story here. Too many sordid twists and turns. For more on Samardo Samuels coming to terms with his sex addiction, please take a closer look at Angelo Benedetti's hilarious blog post on the subject. "Keep it too urself tho."

• • •

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 Sir Thursday and Josh for collaborating on the riddle-solving and getting all of these folks right.

• Player #292 made two threes in last year's WCF that basically broke my back. Brought back images of 2010 Goran Dragic to float through my head. Awful stuff.
• Player #293's career depresses me greatly. I love him, but he probably shouldn't be back. Sometimes the body simply doesn't cooperate.
• Player #294 had a nice, long, prosperous NBA career. He never made a ton on a per-year basis, but when you stick around for 14 years, the cash adds up -- he made ~ $50 million large.

Also, Sir Thursday -- I'll try to update the directory today. It is actually getting a bit out of date, heh. I may try to post a final update for the week tonight, depending on how long I'm out of the house today. We'll see. If not, have a good weekend -- if so, see you later today, I suppose. (Have a good weekend anyway, though. That's required.)

• • •

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 Serge Ibaka, Jon Brockman, and Gerald Green.

• • •

_Follow Serge Ibaka on Twitter at __@sergeibaka9 .___

I understand the distaste for blocks. I really do. There are a surfeit of cautionary tales in the NBA, highlighting legitimately atrocious defensive players that have been lionized as defensive masterminds for the vast majority of their careers. Look at JaVale McGee, a player whose gaudy block totals utterly miss the point on his defensive failings. Look at Marcus Camby in his last few years, with his athleticism waning and his ability to cover pick and rolls fading. Look at Tyrus Thomas, whose high block rates have consistently hidden the fact that he's a relatively awful defender. Blocks are by definition useful -- it is a statistical fact that the opposing team shoots 0% on shots that are blocked. But it's more accurate to think of blocks as a matter of position, and a matter of percentages.

If you have a player like JaVale McGee, for every shot he blocks he has several each game where he got into position for the blocks but didn't get it, leaving the opponent open for a shot that any NBA player worth his salt could convert 70% of the time or more. Which is why being a good shot blocker isn't necessarily a positive thing for the defense -- that 0% on blocked shots is neat, but if they're shooting 70% on shots that player guards that aren't blocked, it becomes a matter of which they have more of. And even the NBA's BEST shot blockers only block one shot for every five or six field goals they guard. And if, like the defensively flawed block-masters, they're giving up easy position and easy buckets on the block attempts they don't convert? Well, that creates the equation:

You probably are aware of this already, but in case you aren't -- allowing 58% shooting is not a very good outcome for a defensive player. And these numbers will happen regularly to a shot blocker who hasn't learned how to keep his position and guard off the block. When the player keeps position well and can challenge for the block without substantially losing position -- like Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett -- they begin to add a lot more value. This is the dismal calculus behind the defensively moribund group that blocks a lot of shots but gives up open ones when they don't succeed, and this is why they don't really help a team's overall picture. A block -- in and of itself -- is a very useful tool. As I said -- the opposition shoots 0% on a blocked shot. By definition. But if a shot blocker's block position gets him out of position defensively, it can be hard to justify going for the block -- most players can't shoot 55-58% when they're guarded, and in the aggregate, it'd be better for most of these folks to focus on improving the all-around defense at the expense of the obvious block highlights. Fewer box score stats, sure. But it'd help the team, even if it isn't as visually jarring.

The thing that gets me about Serge Ibaka is that he's hardly the defensive sieve most take him for -- he's certainly not as good as some people think, but he's certainly not bad. There is a significant distinction between a player whose defense is poor-to-average and a player who's average. While Ibaka isn't in spitting distance of an elite defender -- yet -- he's a strong player with solid defensive fundamentals. His block totals are inflated and do include some questionable calls -- Ibaka's block totals are slightly better at home than away, and that's partly because he seems to get more leeway on goaltending calls when the Thunder are home. But if you look past the goaltending, Ibaka is a reasonably good defensive player close to the basket. He doesn't tend to let his block-hungry ways put him horribly out of position when he's defending a player one-on-one in the post, and that's the first step that a block wizard needs to take to become a positive defensive player in the aggregate. His main defensive problem is, ironically, the same exact problem that's dogging a rapidly aging Pau Gasol -- while Ibaka can guard close to the basket quite well and does have decent instincts to blow up weak-side play coverage with his blocks and steals, he simply cannot guard perimeter big men. At all. They either drive past him with impunity or bury a barrage of long range shots, and until he figures out a better way to defend them (or spends more time as the nominal paint-protecting center next to Nick Collison), he's going to run himself into trouble defensively. Despite his solid post defense, his inability to guard players like Bosh and Dirk and Jefferson consistently dogs him.

THAT is why he wasn't DPoY last year -- it wasn't that his block total was particularly false or unremarkable, or that he spends so much time hunting blocks he had no other defensive talents at all. He does. Watch him in the post, watch how he keeps position when he goes for block attempts -- he's improved dramatically, and he's approaching very good levels there. His problem is lacking defensive accomplishment on perimeter players and getting drawn outside the basket, not anything he's doing in the basket range. It's an important distinction, as one indicates a player who's merely average all over and the other indicates a high-quality defender with one key easy-to-exploit weakness that will hurt the Thunder until he figures it out. Also, he's an underrated offensive player who lacks a go-to move but who has a phenomenal long two point shot, electric finishing, a decent array of post moves, and a nose for scooping up offensive boards without ceding his ability to get back on defense that's absolutely crucial to the Thunder's offense -- without the extra possessions, they'd be somewhat pedestrian. But the extra possessions really help bring them over the top. Oh, also. Serge Ibaka made 12/12 shots in the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.

... now, please excuse me while I go out back and vomit.

• • •

_Follow Jon Brockman on Twitter at __@MrJonBrockman.___

I'm really glad Jon Brockman made the cut. I have a TON of things to say about Jon Brockman, so it's good to finally get them out there. Brockman is the classic hammer-not-a-toolbox player -- he has a single skill. Not "oh, well, he can do ___ but also ___ a little worse" type. He legitimately can only do one thing. He can rebound. On an NBA level, he can't really do a damn thing otherwise, and last year put a strong and present emphasis on that fact. Jon Brockman:

• Shot 11-for-27 at the rim. That's... that's 40%. AT THE RIM.

• Was blocked eight times on the season. He registered one block himself. ... Not quite optimal.

• Posted a turnover rate of 16.2, one of the highest in the entire league.

On the other hand, the kid can rebound. Quite well. He earned playing time his rookie year in Sacramento by being relentless on the boards, and even as his playing time has evaporated in the last few years, his rebounding skill has remained. On his career, he's averaging an offensive rebound percentage of 15.2% (ridiculously good) and a defensive rebound percentage of 19.4% (also ridiculously good). If he had a single other skill -- just one other wrinkle to throw in with his rebounding -- he'd probably be in line for a decent post-rookie deal. But as the bulletpoints sort of indicate, he's quite lacking otherwise -- and that's only on offense. On defense he's been improperly miscast as a center the last few years, which has predictably drained his playing time as coaches realize he can't jump to contest and his lateral movement is low-tier for an NBA player. His rebounding is based more on hard work and effort than inherent athletic skill, and that effort doesn't translate well when he's guarding players that have 5-6 inches on his 6'7" frame.

He was traded this summer to Houston's veritable army of oddly sized fours, and actually ended up getting waived right before the season began. This made me sad, a bit. Not because Brockman is great, or even a good fit -- he was a good choice for a waiver by the Rockets, as he's a situational player whose situational skill is fully covered by Parsons and Asik. It made me sad because he missed much of training camp after a freak injury where a workout elastic band slipped off his foot and recoiled to hit him in the eye. He had to be hospitalized and missed much of camp, which is always sad to see -- you never like seeing roleplayers like Brockman miss camp with freak injuries, knowing that the only way they really had available to make the team in the first place was to prove that they'd improved with a good training camp. This also makes me sad because I like using the "Brock Ness Monster" nickname, even if it is incredibly played out.

And that's all she wrote. Good luck getting back into the league, Nessie.

(By the way, the intro was a joke. As probably became obvious about 5 sentences in, I had -- and still have -- virtually nothing to say about Jon Brockman. Alas.)

• • •

Follow Gerald Green by hitting the trail on the iron rail, way out there alone.

Gerald Green did a very good job on the court last year. He did a good enough job that most people don't fully recognize how ridiculously above expectations he was playing. Here are some facts about Gerald Green's patently ridiculous performance in his 5th year as a classic journeyman: Green shot in the top half of all shooting guards from every single one of the Hoopdata "cardinal ranges" -- at the rim, from 3-9 feet, 10-15 feet, 16-23 feet, and three pointers. This included 71% at the rim (the only guard/forward who took more shots and shot better than Green from that range was Manu Ginobili) and 64% from 3-9 feet. The 3-9 foot mark is good enough it deserves special mention. Most people expect that NBA players convert a lot of their shots from 3-9 feet -- it's reasonably close to the basket, and classic post move territory.

In practice, this assumption is ridiculously false. NBA big men average 39% from 3-9 feet, NBA wings average 35% from 3-9 feet, and point guards average 36% from 3-9 feet -- if you go by league averages, shots of the 3-9 foot persuasion are actually less effective than long midrange jumpers or midrange shots. Significantly so. There were 168 players last year who averaged over 25 minutes a night -- only 11 of them shot over 50% on 3-9 foot shots. The 3-9 foot post-up is an aesthetically pleasing sight, but it's one that has been becoming less and less useful over time. Which makes Green's mark last season all the more impressive -- shooting 64% from 3-9 feet completely blows away the shooting guard average of 35%, and makes the 3-9 foot shot a legitimately useful offensive weapon. Green made the Nets offense a full 4 points per 100 possessions better when he took the court last season, and being able to turn traditionally atrocious offensive ranges into legitimate threats was one of the main reasons why. (It also didn't hurt that he, again, shot above-average from every single place on the court. Wanted to space the floor? Send him out for his improved perimeter game. Wanted to get in close? The man rocked rims like a high school battle of the garage bands, wouldn't you know.)

If you really wanted to nitpick, you could find a few things wrong with his game last season. His defense was -- while statistically proficient -- partly backed by playing the weakest perimeter player the Nets could safely hide him on. It was also backed by his dismal backups -- your on/off court stats tend to look really good when your backups are completely awful, and with noted sieve MarShon Brooks behind him, Green's defense tended to look a bit better by the numbers than it actually was. Not that it was bad, just not quite as good as numbers would indicate. You also could nitpick about his sticky fingers -- when Green got the ball last season, he barely ever passed up a shot, and posted one of the lowest assist rates among all the guard/forwards in the league. But you could also nitpick by saying his usage was a bit low for someone who was having an offensive season as lights-out as Green was, so taking that criticism in context of the assist rate criticism, you get a less-critical look that's far more leaning to the side of Green doing everything he could possibly do to use offensive possessions at the expense of teammates that simply couldn't make a shot.

Pretty crazy stuff. Unfortunately for him, some of this can probably be safely considered a fluke. If Gerald Green can consistently make that sort of a percentage from 3-9 feet, he may end up being the best short-range finishing guard of this generation. I have a distinct feeling that's not going to happen. And as efficient as he was, it's also worth noting that absolutely nobody was struggling when facing the late-season Nets last year. The Nets were atrocious, and it does to some level remain to be seen what Green does on a team where other teams actually feel the need to scout for him. So far, the verdict hasn't been great out of Indiana -- his struggles have been one of the main reasons the Pacers have struggled, and while I highly expect him to rebound, it's definitely an inauspicious start for the poor guy. But I wouldn't dwell on it much -- it's doubtful he will. Green is used to far more substantial problems than a ill-starting slump on a new contract, as he's one of very few players to have been cut in every league he ever played for. He was cut by his high school team, despite being a McDonald's All-American. He was cut by the Houston Rockets. He was cut by an overseas team after 3 years abroad, and had he not gotten a D-League call-up in the middle of last season, he may have abandoned basketball altogether.

But he got called up, he performed incredibly well, and now he's a key rotation piece on an Indiana team that (while poor now) should end the season playing quite good ball. The man has fought back from a dismal start to his career and made something of himself. I have a lot of respect for Gerald Green's struggle, and while I get that Indiana fans may be disappointed with him so far, give him a chance -- the man's a hard worker who has more than put in his time. Let him prove his worth.

Good luck out there, Gerald.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Mike L, Chilai, Der_K, and Sir Thursday correctly isolated the 3/3 guess. Good work fellas. (I believe you are all fellas. If I am wrong, I greatly apologize.)

• Player #289 looks exactly like Andre Miller now. EXACTLY. I was really confused when I started watching his new team the first game after they signed him.

• Player #290 is one of the few players Chicago lost that didn't really matter -- he was not a very good bench player and they probably upgraded on him. He's been even worse to start this season, too, so that's... that's a thing, I guess.

• Repeat after me: Player #291 went to St. Benedicts. Ergo, he does not have sexual feelings for men. In a similar story, I'm afraid of spiders, so I cannot safely use the World Wide Web.

I'm in Arizona now. Feels weird, bro.

• • •

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 Brook Lopez, Eric Gordon, and Steve Novak.

• • •

Follow__ Brook Lopez__ by engaging in chill time with the Green Lantern.

It took a while, but I've finally bought in. Thanks to constant bickering with @uuords and other Nets fans, I've come to believe something I never thought I'd say -- over the full season, Brook Lopez has a reasonably good shot at__ improving the Nets' defense. I had to watch a bunch of tape to really buy into the idea, especially since I still don't think Lopez is a positive contributor on that end. Because I don't. At all. Lopez is flat-footed and oftentimes virtually immobile on the defensive end. He covers pick and rolls about as effectively as I'd cover a whale, and his shot blocking -- while decent by the numbers -- tends to vastly overstate his ability to defend the post. He blocks shots, but he doesn't really get good position on any of the blocks, and he's got a bad habit of letting slick big men slip behind him for easy off-hand layups. Compounding the problem, Lopez is consistently slow to get back in transition, and that's not a skill that's likely to get much better any time soon -- in dealing his somewhat tricky foot problems, the chances of Lopez seriously going all-out to stop a transition break end-to-end on a regular basis are minimal to none. As with any seven footer, actually.

But here's the thing. I'm a big fan of analysis by replacement, especially when dealing with teams like this year's Nets, who are featuring key new pieces and a generally completely revamped roster. And while I think Lopez is a pretty poor defender, I also think he's dramatically better than anything the Nets put on the court last season at the center position. Consider -- the 2012 Nets were a team that was giving Johan Petro, the hollow husk of Mehmet Okur, and the shadow of Shelden Williams serious burn at the center position. On offense, Lopez -- a legitimately talented post player and a serious midrange shooter despite his enormous size -- is an obvious upgrade to anything the Nets put out in the frontcourt. But on defense, despite his faults, Lopez is STILL an upgrade. Consider his intrinsic skills versus any of those three players:

• Johan Petro is exceedingly slow -- he's as slow as Lopez, but without any of the strength. His pick and roll coverage is quite literally just as bad, and unlike Lopez, he isn't even a largebody center to make up for it. He's 7'0", but clearly stands a shade under Lopez and fouls roughly once every 7 minutes on the court, a pretty ridiculous rate.

• Mehmet Okur finally lost it in 2012. He was playing injured, sure, but the man simply couldn't move at an NBA level anymore. He couldn't jump adequately, he couldn't pretend to front a man in the post, and his pick and roll coverage was confused and hesitant.

• Shelden Williams is 6'9". According to his team-reported height, at least. I'd venture he's more of a 6'8" or 6'7", watching him on the court and comparing him to guards and the centers he'd face. I entreat you -- go find someone who you've got 5-6 inches on and see how effectively he fronts you in the post. And... yep, that's the joke.

Lopez is an exceedingly disappointing defender for his size. His mobility is such that you really wonder how high his ceiling is on that end, and his rebounding (which is excruciatingly disappointing for his size and skill level) tends to indicate a player whose defensive engagement is decidedly less than it should be. But even with his foibles, even with his flaws? I cannot in good conscience say that Brook Lopez is going to do a markedly worse job defending the post than the Petro/Okur/Williams pu pu platter Avery Johnson put out last season. Simply can't. None of those three players bring any discernible defensive skills to the table -- at least Lopez is 7 feet tall with a strong frame and a decent head on his shoulders. And now that the Nets have a team that actually has a good cast around Lopez and Williams, chances are reasonably high they can develop a system around those several "talents" that at least improves the Nets a slight bit on the defensive end. I'm dubious about claims that they'll be above average, but they could scrape league average with Brook Lopez manning the middle. Especially if they keep developing new schemes like the ones they showed off in their first game.

Some fun facts about Brook Lopez. Off the court, he's best described as a "chill surfer bro who likes comic books and jokes." Emphasis on the comic books, actually. Do you remember when the NBA commissioned Marvel to draw team covers based on various superheroes? Lopez does, and due to his being a massive comics aficionado, ESPN's J.A. Adande interviewed him to prove whether Lopez really was a comic guy or not by quizzing him on the identity of some of the more obscure covers. Shockingly, Lopez got them all without skipping a beat, including some obscure comic named "Alpha Flight" that I had honestly never heard of before. So good on him. He and his brother are also writing a comic book, which makes me think I really need to meet up with Lopez and give him some tips. I once wrote and drew a comic book approaching Rod Blagojevich through the lens of "The Grand Inquisitor" and Joe Biden's thirst for humanity's ever-present end. This, I feel, makes me an expert on the subject and a clearly credentialed advice-giving gentleman in the field of comic books. So, yeah. Hit me up whenever, Brook. I have some great tips for you.

• • •

_Follow Eric Gordon on Twitter at __@TheofficialEG10.___

When healthy, Eric Gordon is a max-level player. Most people don't remember quite how good he was with the Clippers, but it bears repeating -- in the pre-Paul era, the Clippers were 48-70 with Gordon and 13-35 without him. He vastly improved the look of that Clipper team, in a way that neither Blake Griffin or any of the Clippers' other players could. What most people don't quite understand, though, is that his main use isn't necessarily on the offensive end -- Gordon is a phenomenal scorer, and absolutely one of the best scoring guards in the game. But he's even better on the defensive end, where he has a borderline perfect combination of grit, footwork, and weight to effectively challenge just about any perimeter player in the NBA. Despite being a bit short for a perimeter player, he plays defense in the Avery Bradley mold -- gets up in a player's grill, uses his speed to stay with him without lunging, and uses his surprisingly heavy weight for a little guy to body guys up if anyone tries to post him up. What's more, he has a genuinely excellent sense of when to poke the ball away and when to stay put on his man -- he recovers well off of steal attempts despite regularly converting more of them than almost anyone in the league.

As for his scoring, he can kill you from anywhere -- his shot looked pretty off last year, but when healthy, Gordon is an absolutely lights-out shooter. His three point shot is one of the purest of any young guard, and he's traditionally been great at it -- over 35% from three in every year but last year, and a high-usage 37% on his career so far. He generally shoots an above-position-average percentage from every range on the floor, despite having spent most of his career as the primary scoring option on his (albeit awful) teams. Even if the team is awful, it takes a seriously skilled player to put up an efficient and comprehensive scoring package when faced with the number of doubles and traps that Gordon faced with the Clippers in his first few years and the Hornets last year. Additionally, he's gradually improved his ability to get to the line, which has helped his efficiency even more. I don't think there should be any real doubt that Gordon -- when healthy, exogenous to all personal complaints -- really does deserve his max deal. He's one of the better bulldog perimeter defenders in the NBA when he's locked in, he's the best shooter under 25, and he's been gradually making his game more efficient. Gordon is really, really good. And extremely slept on.

Of course, then there's the injury thing.

... And the "selling out your coach and team" thing.

... And the inexplicable comments he's made to the media lately.

So, there's that. I have a friend who went to Illinois who absolutely despises Gordon, and has spent the last 2 or 3 years vehemently insisting that eventually the NBA would be made to see what a jerk he was. I didn't really believe him, but I can safely say I was mistaken -- the Eric Gordon saga has gone on to the point that I can't reasonably assert otherwise. On a smaller scale, he's essentially doing exactly the same thing Dwight Howard did in Orlando -- he's putting unreasonable pressure on the Hornets to not only give him the money he wants, but move him to whatever city he wants for cents on the dollar! I understand that Gordon wants to go to Phoenix, and I understand that he never really had much of a choice as to whether he'd get moved in the Chris Paul trade. But completely unloading on the franchise you're (theoretically) going to play for while outright refusing to build a productive relationship with your extremely solid young coach or anyone else on the team is really not the way to go.

The lack of transparency from both sides in the Gordon affair is stunning, and while it doesn't reflect immensely well on the Hornets, there's no doubt in my mind it reflects far worse on Gordon. If he feels pain, he should be able to convince the organization of it without resorting to a media middleman. He should be able to describe it without contradicting himself. And he should be able to give a better answer than "out indefinitely" when asked whether he'd be back this season. I'm not sure whether the injuries are structural or not, and frankly, it certainly doesn't seem like he has much of an idea himself. If they are, the Hornets and Gordon need to patch things up and figure out how to address the media in concert -- if they aren't, then what the hell is going on? All that said, I really love watching Gordon, and I'm really hoping he comes back strong soon. His shooting stroke is brilliant, and there's honestly nothing quite like watching Eric Gordon play defense when he's locked in. I'll share -- here's my absolute favorite basketball-related Youtube video. Not a Spur, not a Cav, not even an NBA play -- it's Eric Gordon playing NASTY defense in the 2010 gold medal game.

Seriously, watch this clip. Watch it once, watch it twice, buy a digital picture frame and put it on eternal repeat. It's the best single-man defensive possession I've ever seen and few are anywhere close. It's art. Gordon switches onto three men in the course of one possession, single-handedly cuts off two open driving lanes, denies the ball to a good Turkish shooter, and almost steals the ball 4 times. And he doesn't even just force a bad shot -- he forces an ERASED shot, blocking the ball off a three point shooter into the crowd! Yes, yes. International game. I don't care. This is one of the gems. Get better, Gordon. Really need to see you doing this in the NBA again, because my God, it's fun to watch.

• • •

_Follow Steve Novak on Twitter at __@stevenovak20.___

This summer, the New York Knicks made several seemingly strange decisions, when it came to the personnel they signed and the direction they decided to go as a unit. To this point, it's all coming up roses for them. Kidd has been great, and with Felton looking decent and Lin looking hobbled, they look (for now) like a team whose moves were a bit smarter than the commentariat -- myself included! -- had initially expected. So, long story short, I may have been a bit over-agressive in my critique the moves, and would like to publicly admit that. The Knicks seem to be in the clear, at least for now -- my thought after the signings was less that they were individually poor moves and more that as a whole they left a team with few internal avenues for improvement with players that would only last one or two more years, if even that. Basically, the idea that the Knicks team we see now is the best Knicks team we'll see with this core. But given that this Knicks team does look like a minor contender with Melo playing like he is and the cast stepping up, that's not a terrible place to be after years of being a marginalized lottery team with an outsized payroll and a dismal organization.

All that said, there was one move I really liked for the Knicks even before I got a chance to watch this team on the floor, even if it was rather quiet. That move was signing a 28-year-old Steve Novak to a 4-year, $15 million deal. On its face, it seems pretty marginal -- and I suppose it was. But I can't get over how good of a price that is for someone with an outsized impact. Steve Novak is essentially Matt Bonner with a more conventional shot release -- it doesn't take him 15 years to get off his shot, and in fact, he's quick enough with it that he's in Korver's general sphere as one of the quickest shooters in the league. Almost every NBA player makes 50-60% of their threes in practice, but Novak's pinpoint form and incredible command of the three is almost surreal. I read once that the Spurs do a general shooting competition in practice, and someone in the front office keeps statistics on what percentages players shoot. Matt Bonner tended to win them, before Novak showed up in late 2011. After that? Novak won just about every internal three point competition for months, shooting some insane number like 95% on his practice threes. Steve Novak is REALLY GOOD at shooting threes, is the main takeaway here.

And unlike Bonner, his more conventional (albeit extremely quick) release doesn't become instantly less useful in a playoff situation -- in fact, because of his quick trigger, players like Korver and Novak actually become more useful in playoff scenarios. Essentially, if they get even a sliver of open airspace, they can hoist an open three. Matt Bonner, conversely, needs roughly twelve blocks of open space in the playoffs to shoot an open three -- the more athletic defenders that good teams have in droves always swarm him mercilessly, and with his slow release, he can never seem to get a legitimately open shot off in a playoff scenario. Novak is completely different, and while they're similarly worthless inside the arc, defensively, and on the boards... Novak's ability to shoot quickly and accurately gives him serious value in playoff situations and as a floor-spacing wizard in the regular season. The attention Novak demands helps shooters like Felton, Kidd, and Smith get more open. It helps free the paint up for more drives. And it's simply an efficient, effective, and proven offensive weapon that helps the Knicks' spacing and helps the machine work, and they locked a great shooter down in his shooting prime for less than $4 million a year. Sounds pretty solid to me. Great move by the Knicks.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Only four people guessed yesterday. That's the fewest we've had since, like, EARLY capsule days! Crazy. Anyway, shout-out for 2/3 guesses from Mike L, Sir Thursday, and Chilai.

• Player #286 blocks shots. A lot of them. He also was metaphorically robbed during the all-star break last year... which he responded to by coming a hair away from metaphorically robbing NBA history to end the season.

• Capsule #287 features a player whose silly Loch Ness inspired nickname is far more notable than... well, anything about his game.

• Player #288 is living the dream. Quixotic, almost-out-of-the-league journeyman to a reasonably paid spot starter. Good work. "Make that green, son."

I'm going to a Mark Knopfler & Bob Dylan concert tonight! Knopfler's my favorite ever, and Dylan's one of my favs as well. I even ponied up and got some seriously decent seats. Exciting times in the life of Aaron McGuire, folks.

• • •

Continue reading

“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.” -- Leo Tolstoy

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

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

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

• • •

There is one thing Manu Ginobili brings the Spurs that, in his absence, may never be properly replicated.

"Chaos."

In previous editions of these capsules, I've talked of many ways that various Spurs have helped their teams. I've talked of Tony Parker's cubist bent, Tim Duncan's rocksteady foundation, and Kawhi Leonard's evolving role as the one to throw the finishing punch. All of these are important and essential. Without Parker's artistic command of the floor, there'd be scant next-level cohesion on a team built around the outsized achievements of roleplayers and Death-defying talents of once-great superstars. Without Tim Duncan, there would be nothing. Without Kawhi Leonard's development from the finishing punch to the intermediate barrage, the Spurs' days as a contender may be numbered. These are all important.

But Manu brings something very different. Gary Neal comes closest, but with Neal, there's this unstated knowledge that any useful possession will end in the creation of a Neal shot -- from anywhere, mind you, but a shot all the same. Manu does not bring any specific, intrinsic skill. He is a talented shooter, a deft defender, an incredible passer. But there's a fundamentally different look that Manu Ginobili brings the Spurs with every lurch and shot he takes -- there's a wholescale impact Ginobili has on the team as a whole. The pace quickens, the heart trembles, the fans cheer raucously.

This general feeling is exemplified by one of his signature moves, one that few realize is as impossibly difficult as it is. Manu Ginobili is the master of the step-back in-motion three -- takes a dribble right, steps back into his shooting motion, launches an (often) quite well-guarded three from above the key. Some imagine this to be relatively easy. They are wrong. When you get a minute, go to the nearest basketball court with a ball, a friend, and a tape measure. Measure out an NBA-distance three-point line. Dribble around it, imagining defenders and teammates beside you. Embrace the ball, the line, and the moment. Dribble, dribble, dribble. Step-back, cradle, launch. As quickly as Manu does it, please. Wait longingly and watch as the ball sails through the air. Hold your form, if you'd like to look like an idiot.

Because nine times out of ten, you'll miss the basket by four to five feet.

Why? Because it's not a shot that normal people can make. It's not a shot normal NBA players can make. To truly master a shot like that requires a supernatural knowledge of one's own momentum, space, and distance. Few NBA players can seriously incorporate a shot like that into their games -- with the speed that Ginobili launches it -- with the remotest efficacy. Kobe Bryant, one of the few players who can profess to make shots like that with little to no regard to their likelihoods or physical impossibility, considers Manu Ginobili one of the players he most respects, and one of the few he most enjoys playing against. The feeling is mutual. Ginobili owns five signed jerseys that hang in his Argentina home. Kobe Bryant is one of those five.

"Game recognize game."

• • •

Hearing noises, Death slid to a window. Manu Ginobili was outside, dribbling in the driveway. Death could not understand how Ginobili had gotten past him, or exited the house in the first place -- Death has always been good at waiting, good at watching. He had known Ginobili was home, and he'd thought that he'd covered every exit. But apparently not. Death stared upon Ginobili's frame, as he crossed over phantasms and the ghoulish creations of his imagination. He sighed. It was time.

But he stood, captivated. Death sees your thoughts and your soul, without exception -- he saw things the way that his prey saw things, as though partial to a silver screen show of thoughts and dreams that only Death and his targets could experience. It was as though Ginobili had believed so readily, so truthfully, so morbidly that he'd brought his phantasms to life. And there he stood, besides a willowy Duncan and a semi-transparent Nowitzki. Kidd, Kobe, Garnett -- the signed jerseys on his wall -- all seemed to rise from the ground around Ginobili. He joked -- if only to himself -- and the ghosts of the living laughed with him.

And then the games began.

It was a driveway. A street. A court with no discernable dimensions. There were no fouls, there was no referee, there were only shots and passes. Ginobili would cross over behind a bush, the shrubbery a clearly-immobile screen to lose Bryant's coverage. He threw a pinpoint pass to Duncan, who made a 40-foot basket as though he was centimeters from the rim. There were images, moments, and fragments of time. And then the seminal moments of Manu's young life began to cycle. His first Euroleague title, as he drained baskets over Elmer Bennett and finished off a hard-fought Game #5 victory. His Olympic Gold, and his dizzying 29 point performance over a USA team that had no answer to his brilliance. His array of clutch shots and backbreaking threes to help the Spurs past the defending champions in 2005.

And then the mistakes, the disappointments. Good players note their successes and revel in them -- better players stew in their mistakes and use them as ammunition. The missed opportunity in 2006, the last-second foul that gave the dread Mavericks the tie and the series in a year the Spurs could've won a title -- the anguish and heartbreak replayed in living color. Losing out on a medal in his final year as an Olympian. The final game of the 2012 season, where his Spurs led going into the final quarter but discovered that the closer could not close out Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook quite that easily. The games strung together into a tapestry of ghostly memories. And then, as though the reel flickered, the memories faded, and the asphalt and concrete returned to true form once more.

But Death started in shock.

Ginobili -- as though he'd known Death was watching -- was nowhere to be found.

• • •

Manu Ginobili does not exist to impress you.

Manu Ginobili does not exist to the drone of mindless accolades.

Manu Ginobili exists to impress upon you. Manu Ginobili exists to become the player that nobody but he knew he could be, with his conscience true and public validation unnecessary. Manu Ginobili exists to use basketball as a canvas, to lay bare the contents of his soul and the beat of his heart. Manu Ginobili exists because his athletic betters getting consistently styled on by a grinning and balding Argentinian is an essential experience without which the NBA would never be complete. Manu Ginobili exists.

And thank God for that.

• • •

Running out the door, Death knew he had lost. Once again, Death had missed his shot. His prey was nowhere to be found. He spat in idle fury -- the grass below his feet turned to dust and withered. This cat and mouse game would end, someday. Death would find him, Ginobili would lose, and his dictate would be fulfilled once more. The inexplicable skills at accomplishing the impossible would fade, leaving only a flickering memory and the whispers of ticker-tape parades long past. Manu Ginobili would be mortal.

But not quite yet.

Death reached into his pocket for a cigarette, his favorite of the ironic sins. But there was something else. He drew from his pocket a note of folded paper, and unfurled it curiously as he lit his latest cancer-stick. He smiled in spite of himself. As frustrating as this stupid chase was, someday, he would miss this. Confronted with man's mortality, some speed their demise with every debauchery imaginable. Some make incremental steps towards a slightly longer life. Some become different people. And others? New tricks, clever schemes, and impossible twists abound in their favor. They will not master Death. Nobody does. But they shall stave it on their own terms, an archipelago of steely-eyed determination and grit, in hopes that their guile will impress the tides of fate.

And there had to be some respect for that. Begrudging though it may be.

Throwing the note aside, Death ambled quietly into the darkened street corner. Alone, once again.

"Not quite ready yet, friend. When I am, you'll be the first to know. -- Manu"

• • •

• • •

• For more capsules on members of the San Antonio Spurs, visit the Spurs 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 a foreign-born rogues gallery -- Luis Scola, Manu Ginobili, and Leandro Barbosa.

• • •

Follow Luis Scola on Twitter at @LScola4.

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

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

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

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

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

And sometimes, that's all you really need.

• • •

_Follow Manu Ginobili on Twitter at __@manuginobili.___

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Leandro Barbosa on Twitter at __@leandrinhooo20.___

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

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

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

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. MGallop and J are the two who got 3/3 right on today's players, although Chilai probably would've gotten Scola had I not been a little bit hyperbolic in the Scola riddle. My bad, Chilai.

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

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

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

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

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

Follow John Wall on Twitter at @John_Wall.

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

Except, well, his shooting.

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Iman Shumpert on Twitter at __@I_Am_Iman.___

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

...

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Der_K and Mike L got 3/3 with this last set, with Mike L aptly noting that Kirilenko couldn't possibly be an answer because he didn't play NBA minutes last season. Mike L is correct, except that I tried to make sure to put in 1 or 2 of the returning-vets when they had NBA footage I could watch. So he's one of three players to get added to the list despite not having played a minute of NBA ball last year. Good eye, though.

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

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

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

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

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

Follow _Tyler Hansbrough on Twitter at @THANS50.
_

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Tracy McGrady on Twitter at __@Real_T_Mac.___

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Michael Jordan
2. Tracy McGrady

So, there's that, I suppose.

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Nobody got anyone but Hansbrough right last time, so shout out to me for making riddles that suck.

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

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

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

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

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

Follow _Chandler Parsons on Twitter at @ChandlerParsons.
_

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

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Thaddeus Young on Twitter at __@yungsmoove21.___

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Mike got yesterday's set within about 10 minutes of my posting them (clearly using some of his Small Market Monday sway) and @MillerNBA once again got them. I think Miller has gotten like a week of these shoutouts in a row. Dude's good at this.

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

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

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

Whoo. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

_Follow Anthony Randolph on Twitter at __@TheARandolph.___

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

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

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

• • •

_Follow Kyle Korver on Twitter at __@KyleKorver.___

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

Follow Lou Amundson by hustling every day.

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

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

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

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Nobody quite figured the Kyle Korver riddle, but one guy got Lou and A-Rad. Good show, @MillerNBA.

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

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

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

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

• • •

Continue reading

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

• • •

Follow Ramon Sessions by driving into a tree.

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

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

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

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_Follow Desangana Diop on Twitter at __@sagana7.___

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

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

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

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_Follow Kenyon Martin on Twitter at __@KenyonMartinSr.___

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

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

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

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

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Just about everyone got 3/3 yesterday -- @MillerNBA (once again), Itachill, Der-K, and Chilai. Let's see if these are quite as easy.

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

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

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