As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Brian Cardinal, Jeff Green, and Joe Johnson.

• • •

_Follow Brian Cardinal on Twitter at __@BrianCardinal.___

Brian Cardinal has a special spot in most people's hearts, and that's for good reason -- he was perhaps the best representative of a hilariously awesome archetype that arose near the end of the aughts. By my assessment, the trend "officially" began in 2007. Here are the previous members of this wondrous squad of -- as I call them -- "chilled out old or washed-up bros who aren't so good at basketball but could definitely beast it in a YMCA Bowling League" (or "Token YMCA Bowlers", for short):

• 2007: Matt Bonner
• 2008: Brian Scalabrine
• 2009: Adam Morrison
• 2010: Adam Morrison
• 2011: Brian Cardinal
• 2012: Mike Miller

I don't really remember exactly when I noticed this trend, and I can't really tell you why exactly I keep track of this. But... well, yes. I do keep track of this. I actually have a spreadsheet on my computer where I store this particular list, and on a boring between-projects day at work a few weeks back, I figured out exactly who meets this description on each currently title contending team. I... really don't feel like making a Google Doc out of it that I'd have to update, but I guess I'll use this outward description of the "Token YMCA Bowler" concept by doing a team-by-team breakdown of this year's top five title contenders according to their token bowlers. Ordered from the worst token bowler per the concept to the best...

• OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER: Tough to crack this one. Last year, you could kind of make the case it was Derek Fisher, but this year you don't really have that many old players. Legitimately the only option you can really go for is Nick Collison, but he's... like... way too good at basketball to fit this archetype. Although he WOULD make a good YMCA Bowler, in my view. Sense of humor, competitive, seems like he'd master the intricacies of the local bowling alley. Still. Dunno. Probably the weakest contender by this "metric." (RUNNER-UPS: Cole Aldrich, Scotty Brooks)

• BOSTON CELTICS: Darko would be great in a YMCA bowling league! Bruising, intimidating, and probably throws a lot of high-speed strikes. That is, until he bashes a 20 pound bowling ball straight into the head of anybody on another team who wears black and white stripes. They don't have bowling leagues in prison, Darko. Exercise caution. (RUNNER-UPS: Brian Scalabrine, The Entire City of Boston)

• LOS ANGELES LAKERS: Some people would assume that their first thought -- Nash -- would be perfect for this. Nope. Wrong. Nash is simply far too good at basketball to be a token anything. The true winner, on this squad? "The Other Steve." Try and tell me that Steve Blake WOULDN'T be that sorta-annoying but highly dedicated middle-rotation bowler in an office bowling league. You can't tell me anything, reader, because I wrote this entire bulletpoint as though I'm Bill Simmons. Gotcha. (RUNNER-UPS: Steve Nash, Phil Jackson)

• MIAMI HEAT: This one's easy -- Miller hasn't retired, so it's still on him. He's got back problems, so he probably would have a tough time consistently dominating a bowling league, but you get the sense he'd be that kind of guy who just smiles at the table and keeps putting endless pitchers of beers on his tab while the rest of the team carries the way. You also get the sense that every once in a while, he'd have a bowling night where his back isn't killing him, and he'd COMPLETELY DESTROY the other team. And he just does it with this huge grin and his wife is ecstatic and he can't stop smiling even though his back is gonna kill him the next day. CLASSIC Mike Miller. This is him. Strong showing in this metric for the defending champs. (RUNNER-UPS: Juwan Howard, Shane Battier)

• SAN ANTONIO SPURS: Okay, look. Matt Bonner has a sandwich blog, quite literally hangs out with Skeets and Tas, and in Scalabrine's departure he's definitively the goofiest looking white guy in the league. Sorry, other teams. Spurs win this round. (RUNNER-UPS: Sean Elliot, Alex Arnon)

Whew. Good talk. Definitely had a lot to do with Brian Cardinal.

Finally, I bring you one last completely-true-couldn't-possibly-be-false fact about Brian Cardinal: he is a former correspondent on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Really, he defin--... okay, okay, no. He's not. But he bears a striking resemblance to former Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry. In fact, the resemblance is so ridiculously apt it actually drifts astray into the deepest recesses of the uncanny valley. There are exactly two celebrity/NBA similarities that are so ridiculous I can't actively separate them when I watch the celebrity. This one is one of them. The only other one is John Legend with Mo Williams. (Which -- if you have a chance -- try to look at them side by side. They're twins.) Anyway -- the point is, just try and tell me that these two sterling individuals aren't the exact same person. Try it.

It's impossible. Quit, end, done.

• • •

_Follow Jeff Green on Twitter at __@jeff_green22.___

I get the general concept behind the effusive praise Jeff Green has gotten lately. "Jeff Green is the most athletic Celtic we've had in years! He can space the floor! He can spell Pierce on defense! This is gonna be GREAT." In theory, a player that could actually do all of these things would be a phenomenal improvement for the Celtics. Potential game changer. They were one stopper from beating the Heat, after all! Therefore, if they add a stopper or two and improve their offense even to "barely league average" level, they'll be set up as a strong contender for the eastern crown. (Well, okay, I'm not totally sure about that. But we'll get to that in a later capsule, I suppose.) Me? I honestly have an issue with the way most of my Celtic-fan friends discuss Jeff Green, and it has to do with internal conflicts in every single one of those three key exclamatories. Namely, they're all incredibly misleading. All true. But all misleading, poorly representative, and rely on best case scenarios that are so obtuse and increasingly absurd that they completely deviate from reality.

First off, while he's the most athletic Celtic seen in years, that tells you nothing about fit, skillset, or talent. Especially when discussing a team that's been among the least "athletic" teams in the entire league over the last 5-6 years. Let's put it this way -- Anthony Randolph would be the most athletic Celtic seen in years. Wilson Chandler would be the most athletic Celtic seen in years. JaVale McGee would be the most athletic Celtic seen in years. None would help the Celtics JUST because they're athletic. They'd help the Celtics if they could learn the system, and gain a better ability than they've ever shown before to work within a rigid, successful defensive system. Simply saying "well, he's athletic, Rondo's cool, how can this go wrong?" is overly-simplistic and relies on Green adapting perfectly, right off the bat.

Second... sure, he can space the floor. But why would you want him to? Green is among the worst long shooters in the game, having shot over 33% from three ONLY ONCE in his entire career. He's not a great free throw shooter, he's never been good at spotting up, and he tends to take far more shots than his team wants him to take. He CAN help the Boston offense -- but not doing that. At all. In fact, if the Celtics are smart, they'd take him the heck away from outside shots in an effort to restructure his game. They did a little bit of it back in 2011 when he last played for them, but not nearly enough -- just as he did in OKC, he markedly depressed the Celtics' offensive performance during that stretch. Their defensive rating got two points worse and their offensive rating collapsed by almost 10 points. This wasn't some sans-Rondo effect, either -- the Celtics actually performed worse with the two of them on the court than it did with either on the court individually. Again -- he CAN space the floor. You CAN employ him that way. You just... shouldn't. At all.

Thirdly? I have to represent on behalf of Paul Pierce to the idea that Green is going to do a markedly better job than Pierce on defense against LeBron. Pierce has long been underrated on the defensive end -- for the majority of LeBron's career, Pierce has been one of only two or three players in the league who actively made life difficult for LeBron on the offensive end. He's been slow, he's been sluggish. His athleticism isn't obvious, his defensive talent not in-your-face to the same level as a Bowen or an Iguodala. But Pierce is a marvelous defender against players like LeBron. He gets in LeBron's face, talks down to him while they scrap, and keeps his weight on him fluidly. Jeff Green is a different defender from Pierce, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Just because Pierce hasn't been able to guard LeBron the last two years doesn't suddenly mean an athletic defender is going to do any better. Look at the Thunder's efforts to guard him. Look at Danny Granger's attempts. Look at every player in the league. There's nobody in the NBA right now that can effectively guard LeBron James. Paul Pierce was -- and, frankly, still is -- a fantastic defender. He did better than anyone else in the league on LeBron for a long period of time. Jeff Green isn't going to do better without LeBron beginning a decline by age, something I sincerely doubt is in the cards. At best, Green will keep pace with Pierce. At worst, he'll be a serious downgrade. The idea that Green will spell Pierce and improve on Pierce's performance in playoff minutes is simply ridiculous.

Now, this isn't to be all doom-and-gloom. I don't think Green will be a completely awful player for the Celtics. For one, after you put everything in context, there ARE things he can do to help the team -- his athleticism isn't destroy-the-world great, and by itself is virtually useless, but it COULD translate to scintillating above-the-rim plays if Rondo can get a good rapport going with him. His defense is nowhere near as good as most fans seem to think, but he should help the team significantly in the case Pierce goes down with a big injury. Their depth is slightly improved because of his presence, as well. He's put up reasonably good statistical results when used as a large wing instead of a small big man, and while he's generally a so-so defender, it's entirely possible that Doc Rivers will work his magic and make him far better. But to take a step back -- his contract is laughably huge for a player of his caliber and if he doesn't make some kind of leap in the next year or two, Green is going to quickly find himself both out of the Celtics' rotation and an utterly broken albatross. I hope that doesn't happen. Green seems like a nice guy. But he certainly isn't the no-miss breakout-primed prospect many Celtics fans truly seem to think he is -- he'll depend on context as much or more than any of the Celtics' new pieces, and it'll be up to Rondo to bring more out of Jeff Green than he's ever demonstrated previously.

• • •

_Follow Joe Johnson on Twitter at __@TheJoeJohnson2.___

Ooh! It's Joe Johnson! Let me list off a few rapid-fire facts about Johnson's 2012 season.

1. Joe Johnson shot above the SG position average from every single shooting range. Not a single below-average range.
2. Joe Johnson was in the top 25% of SGs from 3-9 feet, 16-23 feet, free throws, usage%, and overall points per possession.
3. Joe Johnson's defensive ratings per Synergy are solid, and he was an integral part in an excellent Hawks perimeter defense.
4. Joe Johnson played almost 36 minutes per game, after age 30. He still only missed 6 games in the entire shortened season.
5. Joe Johnson was paid way, way too much money last year. He will continue to be paid far too much money going forward.

These are the facts. What you do with them is up to you, but you can't really deny them -- after all, they're facts. The way you look at Joe Johnson essentially depends on the weight you give point #5 -- if you simply think the contract was too absurd, and that Johnson won't be worth that amount of money to be a low-tier star, you generally have a negative view of Johnson's game. On the other hand, if you look at basketball players in a world exogenous to cost and solely on their merits as a basketball player, there are scarce few places to nitpick Johnson's general game. A few minor ones, obviously -- he doesn't draw as many fouls as a ball-dominant player should, he takes too many isolations, and he doesn't drive to the rim as much as he should. He also, regrettably, has Kobe-vision on the defensive end. That is to say he takes possessions off and often will be hidden on the worst perimeter player on the opposing team -- that may not work very well in New Jersey, where Humphries and Lopez will make elite perimeter defense a must.

But then there's the shooting. I used to think Johnson was insanely overrated, back about a year ago. This season really turned my head a bit. Sure, Johnson started the year off poorly -- he didn't totally look like an all-star player in the first few months, and he looked worse than Josh Smith overall. But as the Hawks made their playoff push, Johnson stepped up his game quite a lot, bolstering his efficiency and for the first time in his career actually taking an active role in putting the Hawks on his back in a productive sense. Johnson shot 45% from three over the last two months of the season, and frankly, it felt even better than that. He put up career-highs (or close to them) at almost every range, and while a worse shot distribution under the Drew offense made his overall field goal percentage look a tad worse, he clearly began to show cogent improvement with a slight shift away from his iso-heavy years under the Woodson regime. In this new role, Johnson didn't just look good, he looked great -- he paired extremely high usage scoring with supremely high efficiency and solid defense. He was clearly an all-star caliber player, and if that ability to keep filling the net in such an efficient way persists next to Deron Williams, he'll be a great addition in Brooklyn.

This isn't to say that everything is feathers and diamonds, here. A lot of Johnson's issues have sparked from genuinely poor offensive schemes from his past two coaches, completely abusing Johnson's better-than-most-think shooting and wasting it on 10-15 second isolation plays that no player in the league could possibly make consistently, no matter their quality as a shooter. He's situation dependent. Put him in the right situation, he'll do wonders. Put him in the wrong one, and he'll put up padded stats on an empty team. The problem? I don't know if Avery Johnson is really the right coach to get the most value out of Johnson. In fact, given how he's utilized Williams over the past two years, I've got my doubts he'll be any better than the Woodson/Drew. And if he isn't, the onus will fall to Johnson to stand up to Avery's play calling. Last year's results were very hopeful, for Nets fans, but there's still a ways to go -- the Nets need to put Johnson in a position to succeed. Is that a sign that Johnson really isn't that good? Perhaps. But I'd prefer to think, the more tape I watch and the more I get comfortable with his shot, that he simply needs some better guidance. At the age of 31, it's doubtful he'll even maintain his current levels for more than a year or two -- he's distinctly on his decline by now.

But one can dream, I suppose. As you were, Nets fans.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. Bunch of 2/3 guesses, once again. Atori, Sir Thursday, J, Andrew Kieser, and Chilai.

• Great defender, shaky offensive player, interesting talent. Pretty much is what he is at this point, but Player #208 is solid. Looked good in the game I watched at Mandalay Bay this past weekend, as well.

• We all get that Player #209's a headcase. We get that he has issues with his long range jumper, like Josh Smith. But he's so, SO young. And his rebounding is so good. Come on. He'll be OK.

• Smooth. Athletic. Smells real sweet. Sad story, tho. Will be a Player Capsule (Plus).

As you read this, I am flying over the United States, returning triumphantly to Richmond with my wallet lighter and a conference conquered. I'll see you folks on the other side.

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with T.J. Ford, Joel Przybilla, and Josh Smith.

• • •

_Follow T.J. Ford on Twitter at __@tj_ford.___

Last March, directly after a freak elbow to the back in a routine regular season game versus the New York Knicks, T.J. Ford hung up his Nikes and retired for good. The retirement of someone who played for one of my favorite teams generally makes me feel conflicted and sad. And sure enough, that's exactly how I felt with Ford, despite the fact that I wasn't anywhere close to his biggest fan in San Antonio. While he was playing well, I spent most of the time essentially waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd been relatively poor in Indiana over the past couple years, with his ongoing injury problems sapping his game and turning a once awesome player into a relatively tentative one. In San Antonio, some of that was still there, although Pop had carved out a better role than either O'Brien or Vogel did in Indiana. Suffice to say, though, I wasn't exactly writing paeans to his brilliance. But that's somewhat besides the point -- my point is, no matter how little regard you had for a player's game in-the-moment, you still get a definite sense of sadness when watching a nice guy like Ford walk away from the game he loves. After listening to him talk about the not-completely-voluntary retirement, though, I felt significantly better about the retirement. For two reasons.

First, although I felt bad when I realized it, I honestly had never quite internalized the depth of Ford's injuries. I knew he was injured and I vaguely knew that he'd lost his first season to a malady of the spine, but I'd never known the exactitudes. Apparently, Ford has been going against doctor's orders to eschew contact basketball for almost 5 years, playing on a surgically repaired spine that nevertheless posed a huge risk to Ford every time he stepped on the court. If he was tentative on the court (and to these eyes, he was)... an injury that serious would tend to make being anything else impossible, wouldn't you say? The looming, creeping thought in the back of your head that one errant mistake is going to break your spine? That's insane stuff. And you can hardly blame anybody for walking away from that. Second, his attitude regarding the retirement isn't one of regret or sadness. It's one of opportunities he'll take in the future, hope, and general contentedness. It's the most positive spin you could put on the genuinely awful happening that Ford simply HAS to retire for his health -- he'll gain more time for his family, his friends, and his life-after-basketball. He'll get to coach the Austin Toros. He seems to look at it as the next step in a long journey rather than a serious setback in his life -- that's inspiring and wonderful, and it's a beautiful sentiment. It's the equivalent of actually following through on the sentiment behind the outworn politician pap behind "spending more time with the family" and "enjoying the community" for reasons of wanting to do it rather than reasons of scandalous necessity.

So, I don't feel too bad. He'll go forward, he'll become a great coach, and he'll continue to beat the odds for people with his back condition. Game, set, match. Fun stuff. With his career over, here are a few interesting statistical facts about T.J. Ford -- did you know that in the 2007 season, a 3rd year T.J. Ford was 2nd in the league in assist percentage? Really. With a bullet, too. Ford was higher than Kidd, Deron, Paul, et cetera. This fact is one of the many things about T.J. Ford that consistently amuses me. Never in Ford's career has he been a fantastic player, but in that year, his passing went insane and everything seemed to come together. It culminated in Ford putting up relatively insane numbers in his limited minutes during that year's playoffs. 56% true shooting on 35% usage? Assist rate of 44 to a turnover rate of just 13? Eldritch. In short, Ford did play lights-out ball in his last two years in Toronto. And while his $8,000,000 a year contract looked pretty awful in Indiana, it's easy to forget that Ford strung together two very good years that (all things considered) probably deserved that kind of a hail mary contract. If not a tad more. But those arguments are essentially behind us now, I suppose.

While sad, I take his view -- at least he walked away while he could still walk, right? And walk he will.

• • •

_Follow Joel Przybilla by eschewing the concept of chocolate__.___

Why are teams still trying to sign Joel Przybilla? Seriously. I don't tend to get too low on players here, but with Przybilla's current state, I honestly can't help it. I realize he's a name that some people recognize. I realize that over his career he's been a phenomenal, game-shifting rebounder. The Wages of Wins metrics have always liked him a bit more than I feel they should. He WAS a low-usage, high-impact rebounding talent. Theoretically. Before he suffered from brutal injuries in the late 2010 season, he actualized that ideal nicely. Then he got injured, then he got traded, then he got injured again, and I mean... cripes, guys, he just isn't that good anymore. His rebounding has fallen off from levels of per-minute insanity to levels of per-minutes "slightly-above-averageity." His defense is completely gone, as is his ability to jump -- his few offensive talents have dwindled into simply "reaching up and placing the ball into the basket." Take it this way -- he took 14 shots outside the immediate vicinity of the rim last season. He made... one. A single shot! That's not even enough to manufacture a buzz. Shoot!

"At least he's still low usage, right?" Sure. But Przybilla's turnover rate -- extremely high over his entire career, especially for a guy as insanely low usage as he's been -- tends to indicate the problem with usage statistics that don't incorporate turnovers. While Przybilla put up a usage percentage of just 7.9% last year (among the lowest in the entire league), he posted a turnover rate of 28% -- that means that 28% of the possessions Przybilla tried to use resulted in a turnover. That's... pretty hilariously bad, honestly. And it's not like there's any indication that it'll get better -- he actually posted an even worse percentage the season before, with a turnover percentage of 34% in the 2011 season. If you gave Przybilla the ball during the 2011 season, there was a 1/3 chance he'd turn it over. I actually like all the interviews I've read with Przybilla, and he seems like quite the stand-up guy. Some random facts: he's listed "The Big Lebowski" as his favorite film of all time on multiple occasions. He owns a bulldog named "Beanie." Avid outdoorsman -- loves to fish. Maybe that explains it. Maybe the Blazers, Mavericks, and Bucks all were competing for Przybilla's ability to teach their young bucks how to throw out a line.

I don't really know what else to say. I feel like a character from The Walking Dead, assuming that my character is some wonky guy picked up by the group and tasked with writing a 370 part series outlining the different zombies the group has encountered. "Well... this one was real bitey, wouldn'tcha know, and this one had a more guttural moan than most. This one bled a lot when we offed it, as opposed to like, you know, that one had bled out all the way beforehand so it was kinda desiccated and stuff. Oh yeah, I guess he was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt, so I mean... didn't really have a long ways to go from human to zombie, you know? Probably had a tattoo of a peace sign somewhere but hell if I'm lookin' those dudes are gross as heck. But I mean, fellas, this ain't rocket science. He's, um, a zombie."

That's basically Przybilla, at this point in his career. Not rocket science, here -- he's, um, a zombie. Good signing, Bucks.

• • •

_Follow Josh Smith on Twitter at __@TooSmoove5.___

People harp on Josh Smith for his errant long range jumper. Normally I'd use this space to try and counteract any overly-negative comments or thoughts people have. I'd really like to defend him, here. I try to defend more than I harp because I feel like it's simply a far more productive conversation to have. But you know what? It's essentially impossible to defend Smith's love of long jumpers from any remotely reasonable basketball perspective. At all. It's not like he takes these shots with split seconds left on the clock -- he'll regularly get the ball with 15-20 seconds on the clock, isolate, and simply let it fly. It's not like he doesn't have any other offensive skills -- he converted 98% of his dunk attempts last year and almost 70% of his shots at the rim overall. He's got talent, and a brilliant left-block post game to boot. Heck, he wasn't even that bad from 3-9 feet, putting in a field goal percentage roughly at the position average despite taking more than the average number of shots from that range. And, of course, better than his relatively abysmal percentage from the long two -- he shot 34% overall from outside 15 feet. Big men shot an average of 37% from that range.

Then again, Josh Smith also shot 7.95 shots per game from that distance -- the average big man shoots 3.58 a night. Maybe it's just a usage effect -- which explains the percentage, I suppose, but offers no guidance on what I find to be the most ridiculous thing about Josh Smith. It's not JUST that he shoots these with a low percentage, or that he shoots them late in the shot clock, or that he's bullheaded about the whole ordeal. It's simply the raw number he takes. Let me say it again -- on average, Josh Smith takes 7.95 shots beyond 15 feet in a single night. Let me try and put that in context. First, the raw number -- the average big man in the NBA shoots 6.86 shots a night. Not from any specific range -- OVERALL. Josh Smith, on an average night, takes more shots from outside 15 feet than the average NBA big man takes from the field. That's patently absurd. Second, the components -- despite being well below average for the range, Smith shoots more long two pointers than anyone in the league but Kobe Bryant. In fact, here are the top 5 in field goal attempts per night from 15-23 feet (along with their percentages from the range):

KOBE BRYANT, 7.72 shots per game, 41.1%.
JOSH SMITH, 6.32 shots per game, 36.7%.
GERALD HENDERSON, 6.25 shots per game, 39.5%
MONTA ELLIS, 6.22 shots per game, 37.4%
LAMARCUS ALDRIDGE, 6.20 shots per game, 43.1%

Ridiculous. Beyond that, he's an awful three point shooter (making 25% a night!) and an awful free throw shooter (his 63% from the line is in the bottom 25% of all power forwards). There are very, very few players with shot distributions more puzzling than that of Josh Smith. I'd argue there's virtually none. It's completely mindboggling.

Especially when you look beyond the shots. Outside of his offensive absurdities, Smith's tertiary stats are essentially the stuff of dreams. His rebounding is phenomenal, either as a small forward or in his natural role as a widebody four. His passing is excellent, although he does manufacture a pretty high turnover rate to go along with that. Steals? Top big man in the league. Blocks? Always up there. He's a fantasy basketball monster, and beyond all that, he's also an excellent defender. As the folks at Hoopinion smartly noted in their must-read season review of Smith's latest hits, he's one of the rare defenders who succeeds despite virtually never boxing out -- relies on his athleticism to make lightning-quick reads, and as such, will always be a more effective help defender than a primary man defender. Also, as they noted, any team that invests a long term high-dollar contract into Smith could turn out to be a pretty poor decision. Just about every facet of Smith's game is rooted in his athleticism -- without it, his defense would be little and his overused jump shot and decent court vision would be essentially all he has.

I don't really know what to say about Smith. Hopefully he puts it together. Figures out his role. Realizes he could easily -- EASILY -- make an all-star team if he didn't outright sabotage his chances with this utterly insane fixation on the long two and the vicarious devil-may-care attitude it represents. He'd make an all-star team, his teams would be better, and he'd probably be in line for a slightly sub-max contract. But, well. He probably won't, honestly. And he'll probably continue to befuddle and confuse right up until he vacates the league. Seems to be his M.O. at this point. Regrettable, but we'll always root for SOME disappointments, I suppose.

• • •

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. Fair notice -- Chilai also got 2/3 for Monday's capsules, I totally missed that. Sorry, Chilai! As for yesterday's riddles, most people got 2/3 -- good work to Raymond C, Lester, J, Chilai (once again!) Geezer, and Atori. Good job, folks.

• Player #205 is a father, a chimney sweep, and a correspondent on the Daily Show. (I think?)
• There are so many Celtics fans who are excited about Player #206. I'm gonna be honest. I've yet to figure out why.
• People need to start paying more attention to Player #207's defense -- THAT'S what's made him an all-star level player, honestly, not his iso-heavy offense.

Last night in Vegas. Time to go get a tattoo of Pitbull! Or maybe the Internet Explorer logo? Sounds chill, bro. Also: just a reminder, I didn't take Colombo Day off, so we DID run capsules yesterday -- Kevin Durant, Ronnie Brewer, and Shawn Marion. Chill stuff. Check it out, if you missed it. (And if you know why we've got a national holiday celebrating the largest city in Sri Lanka, let me know. Always really confused me.)

• • •

Continue reading

As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Ronnie Brewer, Kevin Durant, and Shawn Marion.

• • •

_Follow Ronnie Brewer on Twitter at __@RonnieBrewerJr.___

Contrary to popular belief, I do read every comment posted here. Although I rarely have time to offer a coherent response, I often incorporate tidbits and thoughts from the comments (whose writers tend to be smart, avid fans with very valuable perspectives on the ideas espoused in the capsules) into the capsules themselves, especially if I reach a mental block or find a certain thought particularly compelling. Sometimes, though, I see them as something of a challenge. Geezer correctly guessed that this capsule would be Ronnie Brewer, but noted that he had serious doubts as to whether the team acquiring Brewer -- here the Knicks -- really had reason to be hopeful or happy about his addition. This is pretty fair, all things considered. Brewer has his flaws. Especially on offense, where he was rudderless to the point of incomprehensibility last season -- he's got the offensive conversion rates of a bigger player, posting downright excellent numbers close to the basket (within 3-9 feet) and decent numbers on the true midrange. He just... didn't do either thing very often, choosing instead the strange route of taking well over half his shots outside of 15 feet, despite shooting an abysmal 33% on the long two and 27% from three. Less of that, Ronnie. More cuts and smart reads, please -- things you're good at and could add definitive value with.

But offense wasn't the question. The question was defense, and in that regard, I'm quite firmly in the camp that Brewer has a lot to offer. I tend to believe in his defense -- I think I've watched enough tape of Brewer that I can confidently say he's excellent. Knicks fans spun yarns to the heaven last season about Iman Shumpert's defense. It was good, don't get me wrong -- but his offense was abysmal and his defense didn't quite bear out by the numbers. Brewer, on the other hand? Brewer's worth on the defensive end was insane last year. It was partly filled by playing with Omer Asik, a player who I've previously outlined as one of the best defensive centers in the league. At least, you'd think that -- the thing is, Brewer actually played less than 25% of his minutes with Omer Asik. So that seems to be sort of a bunk theory. And even if he was gaming his sparkling on/off numbers... how Brewer could possibly be gaming his other tertiaries? He's one of the least foul-prone guards in the league, something that's IMMENSELY valuable when you're guarding players that shoot free throws as well as most modern guards. If you're constantly sending your player to the line -- something that, regrettably, Shumpert did quite a lot last season -- you're giving them a better chance to score than if they'd taken a wide open shot. Brewer didn't give up quite as many of those easy points to his man, enhancing his value. And harder yet to fool? Have to look at Brewer's Synergy numbers -- he posted excellent ones.

As for the eye test? I'd entreat you to ask Dwyane Wade how that turned out in the 2011 Eastern Conference Finals. Rather astounding set of statistics, here -- with Brewer on Wade, the Dwyane Wade who proceeded to run wild in the finals averaged a paltry 15 points a contest on abysmal shooting and rare free throws. THAT'S how guards can impact the court -- by keeping stars like Wade both off the line and out of rhythm, Brewer and other perimeter stoppers can do incredibly valuable things for any team willing to take a shot on them. Which brings us to his role next year, on the Knicks. Why, exactly, didn't anyone else pick him up? Seriously. Look at the contract he got -- a single year at the minimum. This guy is still in his mid twenties, just played 25 MPG as a primary perimeter stopper for one of the best defenses in the league, and is barely a year removed from being played extended minutes on shutdown duty in the Eastern Conference Finals. And you're telling me nobody was willing to give him more than the minimum? Insane. I think his impact on this Knicks team will be far more broad than most think, so long as he can keep from chucking up random shots. Counterintuitively, being a team featuring ball-dominant iso-heavy players may actually help him achieve that goal. If Melo and Amare are freezing him out on every possession, he essentially has no choice but to play his solid defense and fade into the ether on offense. Which means he can focus on what he's good at and play to his strengths. Brewer can produce everything Shumpert gave this team, and a little bit more. And in my view? He's the only new Knick that actively improves their bottom line. So yeah. I do think Knicks fans should be excited about Brewer. He was a major cog on a team that's won about 75% of their games over the past 2 seasons, and they got him for the minimum at their weakest position. An exciting pickup, to be sure.

• • •

_Follow Kevin Durant on Twitter at __@KDTrey5.___

Hey, everyone, this is Alex, and I'm technically speaking the second-most prolific author on the blog (look it up!). Anyway, Aaron has some conference that he's at, so today I'm your guest editor, because I am writing this single introductory paragraph. Today, Aaron writes another Player Capsule Plus and despite talking with him for hours every day I still have no idea how he does it either. Anyway, the subject today is none other than Kevin Durant, whose offensive game is as dominant and as beautiful as anyone's in the game today. His game really fits the famous SportsCenter montage from "He Got Game" better than Ray Allen, in my opinion, and that's saying quite a lot. Anyway, here's a sample from the Durant capsule (which includes a preview of the Thunder and a rumination on the limits of prediction in the wake of last season's WCF). Check it out. Not like you'd have to be convinced by me.

Which leads to the main point of this post. A lot of people refer vaguely to the concept of youth when they discuss the Thunder, and default to the position that the Thunder will "naturally" be better next year due to youth alone. And thus, I posed a question to myself. How much better can Kevin Durant really get? I thought, and thought. I thought some more. And, after crunching the numbers and trying to figure out his most likely steps forward, I came to a basic conclusion. He could be a bit better. He could be a bit worse, if his shooting numbers fall off a tad -- something that often happens to tall shooters earlier than most. There are a few basic ways to improve his offense -- he needs to either get better at getting himself open against pressure (something he's currently horrible at) and better at controlling the ball when he handles it (as he's extremely turnover prone). Beyond that, short of becoming a Nash-style sniper, it's hard to see how Durant improves his offensive game. He can shoot from any spot on the court, he draws free throws in bundles akin to the Walter White methylene barrels, and he has a better shot than anyone his height in the history of the league, excepting (perhaps) the immortal Dirk. He was the best defensive rebounding small forward in the league and every single problem he has on defense is rooted in his general body-type, not a lack of effort.

But the most likely scenario? He stays about the same, onwards to the infinite.

To read more on Kevin Durant, read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Shawn Marion on Twitter at __@matrix31.___

The thing with me and Shawn Marion is less that his defense has been markedly more impressive this past few years and more that he's simply been markedly more important to markedly better teams. No, Julien -- you're correct, his defense hasn't been markedly better the past few years. He's lost a step, or two, or three. Certainly isn't quite the same as he was in his prime. But I still think the last two years have changed the way I look at him quite a lot. This past year in particular -- the 2012 Mavericks were rated a well-within-the-top-10 defense over the course of the season and started the season off as a significantly better defensive team than they finished it. Marion was integral to that in just about every way -- in the same way Dirk key the Dallas offense on the floor, in the same way LeBron keys the Heat defense, so too does Marion key the Dallas defense when he sees the court. He has the versatility to cover four positions rather comfortably and throw in a few small centers as well. And help defense? Fantastic. Part of the Mavericks' defensive success is rooted in the fact that Marion can (when healthy and sprightly) effectively wall off usual routes from opposing ballhandlers and force them to take passes charitably described as "unintuitive" in order to get past Marion safely. The fact that teams facing the Mavericks end up with a highly restrained passing playbook helps the Dallas big men stay on their man and commit to certain spots in the defensive scheme -- this simplifies their defensive playbook at the expense of Marion's, which is a trade-off that (for the last few years) has absolutely worked like a charm.

The big issue, with Marion's defense? Age. While these past two seasons have displayed him in ever-more integral roles on ever-more quality defensive units, Marion's beginning to get up in the years, and that could at some point translate to problems. And by "some point", I actually mean "the end of the 2012 season" -- the Mavericks' defense fell off as the calendar turned and Marion got exhausted from being overplayed, perhaps best exemplified by their short-lived playoff run. They competed in game one, competed slightly less in game two, got blown out in game three, and suffered a farther-apart-than-you'd-think loss in game four. Which roughly correlates with their season -- competed at the start, tailed off a bit, got crummy in the third quarter of the compressed season, then played relatively poorly down the stretch despite getting decent numbers. It was -- overall -- a rather underwhelming death rattle for a deserving and patently memorable champion. One of the biggest parts of that decline? Marion, of course. He suffered exhaustion and overwork as the season went on, exacerbated when several keystone parts of the Mavericks' compelling 2012 roster either fell off the face of the earth or succumbed to injury. Carlisle was forced to play him too much, and it harmed their bottom line in increasing form as the year went on.

Offensively, while Marion is mostly known for his hilarious and unbelievably broken shooting motion, you can't really deny its effectiveness. At least in certain ways. He's no three point shooter, sure -- he's a below-average three point shooter over the course of his career, And in fact, he's no shooter on any kind of long shots -- he converted a well-below average total from every range from the midrange to the three. But his free throws -- despite his busted form -- tend to imply that his form is working perfectly well for him. He's a career 80% free throw shooter, which is quite solid for a man his size, and patently absurd when you actually watch the exact tics that make his form so ridiculous. The strange catapult-like contraption he builds from his guide hand and his follow-through, the odd concentration in his eyes, the herky-jerky release... it's all perfectly weird, but it still gets him above-average from the line over his career, so how would anyone have room to complain? Marion's real offensive skill isn't the motion itself, but what he does with it in the post -- he's among the better post players in the league, not just in converting from the post and at the rim (something he's very good at in his own right) but also in his pinpoint passing out of it. Jason Kidd has done an excellent job in the last few years setting Marion up in good positions, where he'll have 2 or 3 solid offensive options to pass to after he fakes out his defender and gets the entire defense off kilter. Given this tendency in his post offense, the general takeaway is pretty absurd. Marion, a player whose defense would be reason enough for big minutes, often helps just as much on the offensive end. And that's rather absurd.

In the final summation, I may be alone in saying this, but I think Marion has a decent case for the Hall of Fame. I distinctly doubt he gets in, mind you -- he spent too many years as the primary defender on a score of awful defensive teams. But I think Marion's late career shine with the Mavericks has finally convinced me. Marion's an intensely valuable defender, and with a clever coach like Carlisle scribbling away behind him, it's certainly possible to make a brilliant scheme based almost solely around Marion's hilariously weird skillset. Combine that with his offensive value in creation from the post and his quixotic-but-solid free throw motion? You get a player who's inscrutable, interesting, and quite possibly one of the best casual-fans-don't-know players in the league. Fantastic sea-changing defender who can be the crux of an entire defense while an important and engaging piece on offense? Solid. Give me more of those in the hall, please. (And I'm not just saying that in hopes above hopes that the Hall creates an exhibit that preserves in amber the exact intricacies of one of the most hilarious shooting motions of all time. Although, to be fair, that's probably reason #1 why Marion in the hall would be fantastic. Let's be honest.)

• • •

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. Most of the comment-folk only got 1/3 right -- today's overall winner is @AtweetVirani with 2/3. Good show.

• If not tragic, Player #202's retirement last year was certainly sad. But there were some heartwarming and salute-worthy wrinkles if you looked close enough.
• Three teams actually competed for Player #203's services this offseason. The problem: I have legitimately no idea whatsoever why they'd do that. He's been gone for almost 3 years, really.
• Earth to Player #204: STOP TAKING LONG TWOS. YOU'LL MAKE AN ALL-STAR GAME. JUST STOP IT. CRIPES.

Hopefully I'm on-time tomorrow too. Haven't gotten as ahead as I intended. Oh well. Vegas is reasonably fun -- the preseason game was phenomenal, and Alex Arnon and I have a piece on it coming later this week. So watch out for that.

• • •

Continue reading

In the interests of keeping our team away from rote and boring features, we don't intend to do season previews this year. At least not officially. But I tried to do a few longform previews last season in the form of reflections -- for today's Capsule (Plus) on Kevin Durant, I'm going to attempt to work in a general preview to the Thunder's season. So let's see if I can make this work.

Last season, I did a variety of playoff predictions. Many were apt. For instance, I correctly predicted that the Lakers/Nuggets series would be a coin toss. Mission accomplished. I predicted that the Thunder would make short work of both the Mavericks and the winner of Lakers/Nuggets, whoever it may be. That's essentially exactly what happened. But there was one thing I believed very strongly during the duration of the preview season, something that ended up partially becoming my downfall as I turned out to be so wrong as to shock and appall me. I predicted -- with the utmost confidence -- that the Spurs would beat the Thunder, no matter where or when they match up. I predicted, in fact, that it wouldn't be close.

Let me state the obvious. I was completely, unfathomably, misguidedly wrong. Utterly and miserably. But we'll get to that later.

• • •

I've told many people over the past few months that in the rubble of last year's Western Conference Finals, I thought I'd descended into a blithely venomous antipathy for Kevin Durant. I don't really retract that, because it's still completely true. I barely watched the Olympics, partly because I simply had trouble watching any of the players on Team USA and actually rooting for them. There are those like Kobe who I simply don't like much, even if he's always a fun watch. There are those like LeBron who I still dislike heavily, despite not really hating him anymore. I love Tyson Chandler, and I love Andre Iguodala -- fantastic guys, fantastic players. But Paul is incorrigable and Williams is worse. Anthony Davis still causes me to raise an eyebrow. You go on down the list, point by point, until you reach the Thunder kids. I don't like Westbrook, and most of my friends don't like him much either, so that doesn't seem all that rare. I dislike Harden despite having respect for some aspects of his game. But, well...

"Kevin Durant, boy. I don't know."

It's nothing personal. It's kind of stupid, actually. I think Durant's likely the nicest, least-controversial star in the history of the league. He's got an "edge" only insofar as a plastic butter knife technically has one too. He's smart, engaging, and his personal story (streets of DC, putting OKC on his back, leading a team of upstarts to incredible heights with an atrocious coach for three years running) is phenomenal. But the way he eliminated my favorite team -- a flurry of insane clutch performances, crazy three point bombing, and (in general) an absolute domination few can exact on any team in the modern league? It was vicious. Eventually, I'll be able to watch him without thinking of that. Hasn't quite happened yet, though, even when watching normal regular season footage. Which leads to a general antipathy and a lack of any desire to really watch him play. You kind of know what you're going to get, in a sense.

Which leads to the main point of this post. A lot of people refer vaguely to the concept of youth when they discuss the Thunder, and default to the position that the Thunder will "naturally" be better next year due to youth alone. And thus, I posed a question to myself. How much better can Kevin Durant really get? I thought, and thought. I thought some more. And, after crunching the numbers and trying to figure out his most likely steps forward, I came to a basic conclusion. He could be a bit better. He could be a bit worse, if his shooting numbers fall off a tad -- something that often happens to tall shooters earlier than most. There are a few basic ways to improve his offense -- he needs to either get better at getting himself open against pressure (something he's currently horrible at) and better at controlling the ball when he handles it (as he's extremely turnover prone). Beyond that, short of becoming a Nash-style sniper, it's hard to see how Durant improves his offensive game. He can shoot from any spot on the court, he draws free throws in bundles akin to the Walter White methylene barrels, and he has a better shot than anyone his height in the history of the league, excepting (perhaps) the immortal Dirk. He was the best defensive rebounding small forward in the league and every single problem he has on defense is rooted in his general body-type, not a lack of effort.

But the most likely scenario? He stays about the same, onwards to the infinite.

• • •

When I say that I think Durant is roughly what he'll be in the end, I'm not saying there's no chance of the other possibilities. It's possible Durant's shooting has been overachieving a bit, and that it'll temper off. It's also possible Durant will get better -- I outlined a few ways above, like a better sense of how the hell a player should assert to get open in a pressured situation. It's a confidence interval, with a reasonably large confidence that Durant stays about the same and a small tail at either end for the other two options. The thing is, when you look at essentially every big piece on the Thunder, you start to see a similar picture. The Thunder are young in years, but old in experience -- everyone but Harden has played more than enough minutes in their career to consider their developmental period over (or at least highly close to it) and their peak years beginning. There are certain individual things each player could potentially work on, but in terms of wholescale revamping of their games, there aren't a ton of realistic possibilities.

Which in a general sense is why I feel the consensus view on the Thunder isn't quite accurate. It's not impossible, mind you -- I keep harping on uncertainty, but it's always worth repeating. It could happen. They could take the proverbial leap. It just isn't probabilistically likely, not at this juncture. The idea that the Thunder are simply bound to improve because they're so young is fundamentally flawed -- there are many ways to gauge a player's age, and when a player is operating at or near their prime performance and has played enough minutes, calendar age matters far, FAR less than their age in minutes. And there isn't a single member of the Thunder core that hasn't played more than enough minutes to enter their prime. Once in their prime, it's rare that you get a Steve Nash-style mid-career improvement. More likely, you'll simply see players perform at the same superstar level for a few years, gravitating around their actual mean performance with occasional months beyond or below that.

That's simply how aging tends to work in the NBA, and simply how the game is played. You rise, you peak, you fall. And when you reach your complete picture, you tend not to deviate too far from your productive peak mean. Which applies collectively, as well -- all this is essentially to say that I don't think the Thunder are going to be a markedly improved team this season. Eric Maynor should help, certainly, and Perry Jones is a fun X-Factor. But I don't think you can really count on the Thunder being improved. I think the Lakers will be improved, I think the Spurs will be about the same, and I think the Heat will be worse. But I really don't think the Thunder are going to be all that much better -- they'll be slightly different, perhaps, but not a whole lot better. Examining individual aging curves makes you wonder where the magical "they're young, so they'll improve" mindset comes from. These are all gut feelings, not statistical predictions. But, last season, I made sure to publish a pre-season thought regarding the Miami Heat and their ability to win a title, both going forward and in the span of last season. I'd like to repeat that general trend of getting my prediction down for future mockery, jeering, and (rarer still) the occasional right call.

So, yes. To offer my prediction as to how the Thunder's season will go, I think they start the postseason by getting pushed by a plucky eight seed that they nevertheless dispatch in 5 or 6 close games. I think they win an easier-than-expected series against the Grizzlies or the Clippers, and proceed to beat either the Spurs or the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. They'll win in different, unpredictable ways. Perhaps their athleticism leads Brooks to run the Lakers into the ground. Perhaps age bites the Lakers too quickly, perhaps Nash has 2 or 3 off-games, perhaps Kobe goes iso-crazy at exactly the wrong time. As for the Spurs? Perhaps they win by holding homecourt and exploiting the permissive San Antonio defense. Who knows, really. It could be either, any, or all. But I think it's got a high probability of happening.

And then they'd meet the Heat, once more. Except this time, LeBron is a year older and Wade is a year worse. Their supporting cast -- full of stodgy old codgers and dodgy Juwan Howards -- is a year older, and their "big additions" from the previous offseason are worn down through the rough grind of an 82 game season and the simple machinations of Father Time. I think the Heat will be worse, next year, at least when the chips are on the table and the title defense reaches its pressurized peak. And throughout this all, will the Thunder be better? I don't think so, not to a significant degree.

But will they win a title? Quite a different question. And yes, Virginia -- I do believe they will.

• • •

I'm currently about halfway through Nate Silver's brilliant new book, The Signal and the Noise. I'm looking forward to finishing it, and I think I'll try to write up a decent-sized review/appreciation of the work. One aspect Silver focuses on in the early chapters is something I -- in college -- distinctly remember calling professors on with regularity. Many commit the sin of overinflating their own views, and making their ideas out to be certain beyond the reality. You'd think students of statistics would be mostly immune to this. After all, we learn confidence intervals and uncertainty principles at every step of our development. We spend hours and hours calculating these things by hand, and every single professor harps it until the day is done. Don't overstate your case. Don't go too far. Don't bloviate.

But alas, we're hardly immune. In fact, we may at times be worse off -- often, we simply think we're immune due to all the time we spent studying it. But it's no professional thing -- it's a human thing. Statisticians of all sorts find themselves prone to an unfortunate overconfident bluster similar to the type that any old TV analyst, social scientist, or politician espouses with impunity. We create a strong argument, a strong theory, a strong view. Then in our belief we buckle down and forget all those safeguards and caveats that any analyst should be actively sharing with their followers. As I did last year, when I -- again -- conflated confidence in the logic with certainty in execution. In the rubble of just how much that loss hurt, I never really had the chance to apologize for my overconfident reasoning leading some of the people who enjoy my analysis astray.

So, back to that wrong prediction.

My thought process was thus: the Spurs had (over the past 3 seasons) utterly dominated the Thunder in their individual matchups. The Spurs' defense -- regular season though it was -- had done a very effective job cutting down on fouls and keeping the Thunder off the line. The Spurs' offense, moreover, was essentially unguardable for the Thunder. No team in the league (not even the lowly Bobcats!) had allowed a higher offensive rating to the Spurs over the past several seasons. Going into the Western Conference Finals, the Thunder had won in San Antonio only once in the entire history of the Thunder franchise -- a meaningless game in late 2009, if you're wondering. This was the basis of my prediction -- without home court advantage against a team that had regularly obliterated them over the last 3 years, I simply didn't feel like the Thunder had a high probability of manifesting a close series. And the thing is? It wasn't a bad prediction in any of the individual steps of logic.

That all was sound. Everything fit. I seemed to have a good grasp on the pieces, a wide bredth of evidence to my assertions. So what was my problem? Why do I feel the need to apologize in any sense? Simpler than what you might think. What was bad -- and where I as a forecaster failed my reader -- was in the level of confidence I felt and openly assessed at this prediction. I told just about everyone who'd listen the litany of stats that proved my point, in turn becoming increasingly confident in my predictions and all the less uncertain in my assessment. In doing so, I managed to commit a cardinal sin in forecasting -- I conflated the strength of my evidence to the certainty of my prediction. You simply can't do that in the prediction business, because like it or not, you're going to end up off the mark sometimes, for reasons that simply don't fit prior expectations. The Thunder displayed more defensive acumen than they'd displayed at any previous point in their development in last year's conference finals, getting quality contributions from just about everyone on the face of the earth. There were games called so poorly I nearly had an anyerusim. There were shooting slumps, bad plays, and an uncharacteristic lack of confidence from the boys in black and silver. There were problems I simply didn't see coming. Ghosts in the machine, things that always seem to happen.

So yes. I don't apologize for getting it wrong -- I do think it's best practice to actively call out the times you miss the mark, if only to give added transparency to the people who follow your work, but it's not something to apologize for. It's something to call out. What I do apologize for is that tricky, annoying, and misleading overconfidence that led me to be remarkably wrong rather than simply slightly wrong. That's where I strayed, and that's where an apology is necessary and needed. And with all that said? While I don't think Durant has much of a leap left to make, I want to emphasize that he just as easily could. Analysis isn't prescription -- prediction isn't a death knell. Nothing final, nothing crazy. Never put an excess of trust in a single analyst.

And, well. Note to self: I certainly shouldn't do that either.

• • •

For more Player Capsules, please visit the Gothic Ginobili Capsule Directory.

Continue reading

_As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we contin_ue with Marcus Camby, Lance Stephenson, and Luke Ridnour.__

• • •

_Follow Marcus Camby on Twitter at __@MarcusCamby23.___

While I've always been at somewhat fond of Marcus Camby's personality and character, I must admit that I wasn't incredibly positive about Camby's game going into the 2012 season. He's something of an enigma, somehow considered the epitome of the all-D no-O big despite (at this point in his career) being no great shakes on either end of the court. Offensively, the story is obvious -- Camby has no low post game of any particular repute, beyond taking advantage of his prolific rebounding to tip in the occasional errant miss. He gets the majority of his offense from midrange jump shots and long two-pointers. That's perfectly fine for players like Dirk who shoot ridiculously well from that range. That's not quite as fine for players like Camby whose shot has gotten less and less reliable as the years trudge onward. He went through a nice little hot streak to end the year in Houston, shooting 44% on the long midrange and 42% from the short midrange -- this made up for the fact that, for the last 3 years, he'd been immensely inconsistent from those ranges, going from highs of 47% to lows in the teens. Impossible to know what to expect from him, which is what makes his offense so aggravating -- you simply have no idea what he's going to give you from night to night.

Defensively? He has a very good reputation. But I'm starting to wonder what he has beyond that, at least now. It's mostly age. In his prime, he was a great weakside shot blocker. Fantastic at it. He was disruptive, effective, and sneaky. And that has a lot of value -- he consistently had sparkling on/off court numbers, defensively, when he was in his prime. If you consider rebounding a part of defense -- which some do not, in a view I'm actually quite sympathetic to -- his always amazing rebounding adds a lot of value on the defensive end as well. But it's worth noting that despite his skills, there was always some degree of separation between the perception and the truth regarding Camby. He was never a fantastic pick and roll defender, and he never really had the ability to defend centers one on one. Complex plays (even in his prime) didn't tend to lend to his defense very well. His defensive player of the year award in 2007 strikes me as a bit odd, in particular; Duncan and Bowen were still in prime form that season, and Shawn Marion had singlehandedly dragged an awful defensive supporting cast in Phoenix to the fringes of a top-10 defense. I realize this is partly revisionist history. I don't know what I would've voted had I been there in the moment. And this is obviously colored by the playoffs, where Bowen and Duncan dismantled that Denver team defensively and Camby proved unable to cover Duncan in any meaningful way. But then again. It's not really a postseason award, it's a regular season award -- and I don't really remember much at all of the 2007 regular season, so I feel I don't really have a place to talk.

Notice, however, that the last paragraph was almost entirely framed in the past tense. That's because -- plain and simple -- he isn't nearly as good anymore. While he had a positive effect in Houston, for the entirety of his Portland tenure, Camby found himself simply unable to exert a strong impact on the court defensively -- those Portland teams played better defense with him off the court than with him on it. His block percentage has plummeted, his steal percentage has fallen off, and in general he's gone from a can't miss prospect to a player that's only situationally useful. He rebounds, yes. He'll block some shots, yes. He'll make a few long jumpers, sure. But the rebounds come at the expense of any remaining ability to get out in transition, the blocks come at the expense of solid__ play defense or positional defense, and the long jumper makes will be so few and far between they won't be worth it. I find it absolutely puzzling that the Knicks gave him $4 million a year, given his recent falloff -- it's not that I dislike him as a person, but I simply don't know what tape they were watching when they decided to pay that sort of a price and give up Josh Harrellson (another situationally useful player, albeit one making a fraction of Camby's salary and with a less storied name). By signing Camby, the Knicks get to continue selling fans on the illusion that this Knicks team is markedly better than last year's version. It's not, but it should be fine in a weaker East. To be totally honest with you, I'm expecting this Knicks team to get about the same Pythagorean record of last year's team, despite not being a better team in any cohesive way. Unless Camby has been sandbagging it the last few years. Because, you know. Late-30s big men with no guarantee of a future contract love sandbagging.

For his personal tidbit, I'd like to bring you back to the year 2010, when Camby was up for what he figured would be his last contract. He stated on multiple occasions he wanted to retire in LA -- he'd moved his entire family there, and had gotten comfortable with the idea of living there all his life. Remember this? Camby was prepared to give the Clippers a hometown discount to retain his services. Their response, to one of the first decent players in the history of the franchise that actually wanted to stay with them? "Screw you, we're going to trade your expiring for other expiring contracts and cash just to show you how little you mean to us." Classic Clippers. Good thing he got picked up by Portland -- there, he was able to experience the fruits of playing for one of the absolute best fanbases in the league. Just watch the response when Camby had during his best game in 3-4 years, and led the Blazers to an upset of the Thunder back in 2010. Beautiful moment. Not so beautiful: after saying he wanted to retire in Portland, they did almost the exact same thing as the Clippers and traded him away for expiring contracts and junk, choosing to let him go in their own firesale not two years later. Which, in turn, forced Camby to relocate his family once again. Gross. Chances are the Knicks will finally let him actually play out the string, but I said that about Portland a year ago, so... who knows, honestly? Here's hoping. He's a good dude.

• • •

_Follow Lance Stephenson on Twitter at __@StephensonLance.___

Lance Stephenson isn't very good at basketball. Let's start with that. He's obviously a great deal better at it than I am, but that's sort of damning with faint praise when you've actually made the NBA. He's a reasonably sized guard who could theoretically play the wing, but I'm not sure how much better he'd be out there. He makes terrible decisions with the basketball, so you'd think "hey! Play him off-ball!" and hope that works. But it... well, doesn't. You kind of need some sort of shot to actually play off-ball in the NBA. And that's something he simply doesn't have. His shot is completely broken, and in three years of pro/semi-pro basketball, he hasn't once shot over 21% from three. And that 21% came against the college three point line. Gross. This seems to be a reasonable reflection of his NBA shooting ability -- for his career, Stephenson is currently scarcely above a 60% free throw shooter. Which certainly backs up the theory that he simply doesn't have an NBA-quality shot, yet. Beyond his utterly busted shot, Stephenson lazes on defense and doesn't have a great grasp on where he should be on the floor, on either end. He tends to be in awful places to collect the ball and take a shot, just sort of lingering in the dreadful long-two location as his teammates beg him to go elsewhere.

For most players I'd highlight the work they're doing to reach their potential. Their efforts at fitting in on the court, figuring out their role, advancing their game. I don't think I can really do that for Stephenson, who has provided quite a bit of evidence that he's not the kind of guy you really need to focus on the positive for. It's one thing to have a rap sheet with drug use, gun ownership, or drunk and disorderly conduct. That's not exactly ideal, but in my view, it's not necessarily grounds for really disliking a person. I've had friends who are drug addicts, friends who are gun nuts, friends who are alcoholics. To some level I can see and fathom those sorts of excesses. But I cannot abide sexual assault. I can't really look at a guy who was arrested in high school for groping girls who didn't want it at his high school, wash out in a short college career, then get arrested once more for throwing his girlfriend down a flight of stairs and bashing her head into the bottom step. Why? Because she didn't answer his calls when she was out on the town. Christ. I've gotten annoyed at girlfriends for doing that but I can't even fathom what kind of mental disconnect would result in someone doing that to a person they're dating. I just don't get it. And for that -- and, in general, for the disturbed air around Mr. Stephenson -- I can't really think positively of Stephenson or give you any degree of hope for his future. Sorry.

Although, well. Okay. You know what's sad? Despite all of that, after this year's playoffs, I can't help but think of the bush league hit Dexter Pittman placed on Stephenson over any of that ill-repute. When I think of Stephenson, the main image I get is that of Pittman's snide wink, the Heat bench barely responding, and Stephenson hacking and gasping in the hardwood. Which in turn makes me sympathetic to Stephenson simply on account of Pittman being such an incredible jerk. So good job, Dexter. For the first time in my life, you've made me actively sympathetic to a violent assaulter. Really appreciated the help, bro.

• • •

_Follow Luke Ridnour by quacking and wearing awful unifo--oh wait, he's not a football player__.___

Ah, Luke Ridnour. The Oregon Duck to end all Oregon Ducks. (Really. One of the best Ducks in recent memory, at least on the hardwood. Led them to an Elite Eight! How wild is that?) Ridnour is a serviceable point guard, especially if your team is really bad. He's unfortunately something of a career backup on any particularly good team, but there's really not much wrong with that. His defense is atrocious, but frankly, point guard defense isn't that harmful to the team defensive context. And his passing is -- if not extraordinary -- extremely solid. He has a great handle, continuously putting up one of the lower turnover rates for his position over the last several years. He's a solid shooter -- nothing incredible, but patently solid. He's getting up there in the years, I suppose, but as long as he doesn't lose his legs on his shot, he can probably play reasonably competent ball well into his mid 30s. If he wants to. After all, we're looking at a guy who's shot 90% from the line over the last 3 years -- I doubt he'll be great in a year or so, but until he loses his touch, he'll still have a modicum of value on the court. Should be a solid backup for Rubio going forward -- and on a reasonably decent contract, too!

I'd now like to spend a short while touching on something I mentioned offhandedly in the Ricky Rubio capsule.

For all this talk about Rubio’s offense, as I said before, the Timberwolves offense was actually worse with Rubio on the floor. If they wanted better offense, they’d play Barea or Ridnour.

Many people have balked at this, and emailed me wondering how that could be true. I wanted to explain why, at least with Ridnour, it definitively is. It's not necessarily that the team around Rubio performs markedly worse with Rubio on the court -- everyone with a set of eyes and a pulse can tell that Rubio's presence helps the players around him get open shots. Indeed, while the on-off court stats show a team that shoots markedly worse with Rubio on the court, the raw stat of surrounding team on-court FG% doesn't quite show the full story for Rubio or Ridnour. What's more elucidating is to show the field goal percentage of all other players on the court while those two are in the game, and when you switch to that sort of view, you find strong evidence to the visually obvious -- that is, Rubio helps his team shoot. With Rubio on the floor, Timberwolves not-named-Rubio shot 44.4% from the floor. With Ridnour on the floor, Timberwolves not-named Ridnour shot a shade over 43% from the floor. Relatively marked difference, and one I think can be primarily attributed to the quality of their passing. (Ed. Note: Yes, I realize Rubio and Ridnour played minutes together. It doesn't impact these broader calculations much because the vast majority of the shots either took were without one another. Also: Ridnour is a pretty bad spot-up shooter, so he personally shot worse than you'd expect with Rubio on the court.)

So -- the question follows -- why, exactly, would the original statement be true? If he improves the shooting around him, why would you bench Rubio if you wanted better offense? Simple. Because the gap between Rubio and Ridnour -- personally -- is more than enough to bridge that. I'd argue that the players around Rubio having better percentages than the players around Ridnour is actually a pretty ridiculous result for Rubio, because not only does it mean he's making primarily the same players look better but also that he's making them look better despite the fact that nobody needs to guard Rubio. Guards can shade off onto the two-man, bigs don't really need to worry about showing hard on a Rubio drive, et cetera. It helps the other team's defensive spacing, so the fact that Rubio's passing still improved the players around him is a fantastic sign for his future going forward, at least as an offense-redefining passing talent. But in the short-term, before Rubio develops his offensive game? There are major problems. He improves a team's defense using his ridiculous defensive capabilities, but offensively, it's absolutely (and unfortunately) true that Rubio's ridiculously awful personal offense is a net drag on his team. Ridnour isn't phenomenal, but he also isn't a nonentity -- rotations have to shade for him, players have to consider his existence, and (most importantly) teammates can pass to him with the expectation he'll can an open shot. None of that is true for Rubio, yet, and as such despite his passing actively improving the players around him he will remain a detriment to the Timberwolves' offense until he develops a personal offensive skillset or two. I think he'll take measures to improve it relatively quickly, making this argument after-the-fact dithering -- but it could remain true for a season or two until his offensive improvements finally kick in.

• • •

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. We had two three-out-of-three guesses last time. Good show to Lester and Stefan. Solid riddles for once -- everyone had decent guesses but not everyone got it. Let's see if I can repeat that performance today.

• Excellent defender. Shocked he was able to be had on the market for that cheap as he was -- Player #199, more than any of their other additions, should make his new team very excited.
• Player #200 once went to a bar and watched National Geographic on a big screen while sipping a soda and tweeting. Seriously. I'm not kidding. Will be a Capsule (Plus).
• Is Player #201 a hall of fame player? Depends on where you're standing. But in my view, the case is stronger than most people think, ESPECIALLY given what he's done on defense these last two years.

Once again, apologies for yesterday's lack of capsules. I've been quite busy this week and I'm about to be even moreso -- as mentioned in the comments yesterday, I'll be in Vegas for the SAS Analytics Conference for much of next week. I'll also be attending (and hopefully writing a fun piece covering) the Clippers/Nuggets preseason game on October 6th with Alex Arnon, one of my favorite fellows. Given this, I figured it'd be good to get a little bit ahead on the Capsule writing -- I don't know how much time I'll really have to write early next week, but I'd really like to keep myself on schedule. That, and I didn't have that Capsule Plus finished yet, heh. Anyway. See you next week, hope everyone has a splendid weekend.

• • •

Continue reading

_As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we contin_ue with Danilo Gallinari, Ersan Ilyasova, and Eric Maynor.__

• • •

_Follow Danilo Gallinari on Twitter at __@gallinari8888.___

I don't really get why Mike D'Antoni was quite so high on Gallinari's jumper. I've heard stories that it's far, far better in practice. While that may be true, you'd think that a shooter with a ceiling like that would actually act on it at some point, right? You know, post at least one randomly insane season, a few "oh my god he can't be stopped" games per season, and give people a sense that he's actually a serious threat. He... really hasn't done that, yet. Other than his rookie year, where he played 14 minutes a night in just 28 contests (hardly a large enough sample size to truly assess -- he only took 72 threes that year, after all), he's never been supremely impressive behind the arc. Always one of the most prolific three point shooters in terms of how often he gets behind the arc, but never really one of the most accurate bombers -- this came to a head last season, where Gallo shot a barely-above-PF-average 32% from three on more three pointers than 80% of all power forwards. And if you consider him a small forward -- as he was often used in the Karl lineups -- that's even more below average, and even more troubling. The thing with Gallo -- and I don't mean to make excuses, but this is rather important -- is that three point shooting never happens in a vacuum. He wasn't taking these shots in the cold expanse of space, he was taking them in an actual team concept. And all things considered, when Gallinari got the ball behind the arc last year? He faced far more pressure than he would've on almost any other team.

This is because -- while they were a great offensive team -- last year's Nuggets virtually had no three point talent whatsoever. They finished the year as the 26th overall team in three point percentage, primarily because only two major rotation players could shoot above the position average from three -- Arron Afflalo and Ty Lawson. That's it. That's the comprehensive list. For a teaching example, watch how the Spurs move the ball compared to how the Nuggets move it -- the Spurs rarely take the shot off the first pass, redirecting the ball and allowing it to travel from person to person, as the defense lunges towards each individual shooter. For the Nuggets? They could do that, but it generally led to a far less open shot -- their three point bombers were so awful that the whole effect of an entire defense lunging to cover a shooter simply didn't happen as often or as effectively. Gallo's man knows he's good at threes, so he stayed on Gallo and pressured him. Afflalo's man knows he was the only member of the Nuggets with a remotely wet shot, so he'd simply stay on him -- occasionally, the whole defense-redirection ploy would happen on a pass to Afflalo, but it was never endemic and it never sustained for as long as it does against a team as good at threes as the last-season Spurs, or the mid-aughts Suns, or the late-aughts Magic. As for their only other good three point shooter (Lawson), he was hardly an impact on how open Gallo could get, because most of Gallo's passes came from Lawson -- over one third of Gallo's three point makes came directly off a Lawson pass, and a large proportion of the misses did too.

If Gallo had been on the Spurs, or the Warriors, or the Bulls? I'd imagine he'd have posted significantly better numbers from behind the arc, simply because the surrounding talent would've helped him get open. Same holds true for his time in New York, where they never had quite the three point bombers around him that he could've had in several other NBA locales. (Completely off subject, but worth noting -- this concept also works from the opposite angle. Afflalo's insane shooting numbers look markedly more insane when you consider the duress he was under when he took most of his three point shots.) Beyond that, he has some other talents too -- he isn't merely some three point bomber with no game around the threes. He's great at drawing fouls, moderately decent at keeping his turnovers down, and a solid man-defender. (Very bad on help, but that's because he's oversized and slow for the wing despite being too small to effectively defend big men.) He's an inordinately bad rebounder, an incredibly shaky passer, and really poor when you get within the long midrange. Incredibly below average for his size at the rim, very poor at posting up, and far worse than expected from the true midrange. Which is all rather rough -- his current contract definitely overpays him, unless the Denver front office can put the talent around him that'll get him open enough to convert his threes. Which is all well and good... except for the fact that you don't want to be stuck paying $10-12 million a year to a player whose skillset demands he be surrounded by great shooters if you want him to perform at a remotely above average level from the place where he (theoretically) makes his bread. Alas.

One thing I try to do with these capsules, in a strange and possibly misguided effort, is try to unearth things most people don't know about players. When I can find one or two little facts that most people who read the capsule won't have known going in, that's usually when I feel I've really given the reader some value. In this case, the item you may not know about Gallinari isn't some funny trait or silly habit. You may not realize this, but Gallinari really doesn't take disappointment well, and has a thirst for winning that actually goes beyond that of most everyday NBA folk. My evidence? This almost-heartbreaking article from last year's playoffs, where Gallo describes in some detail the feelings of shame and regret caused by his poor playoff performance, culminating in being unable to sleep and unable to get comfortable in his own skin, immense frustration, and the feeling that he's let down everyone from Denver to Italy. We often ask of our sporting heroes an incomprehensible amount of internal pressure -- we ask them to feel angry at losses, to feel as strongly as a fan each disappointment. We often neglect to take this to its logical end, and realize that we're essentially asking every player to approach games like Gallo approached the playoffs -- that we're asking players to internalize all the outward anger and disappointment we feel as fans of the sport. If most players took what we said at face value, they'd probably sound a lot like Gallo. Given how disappointed and frustrated he sounds... a bit of a sad truth, that.

• • •

_Follow Ersan Ilyasova by erasing your past and embracing the future__.___

I liked watching Ilyasova this year -- he was an unrepentant beast and played like the best player on the Bucks for long stretches of the year. He did it through an odd mix of talents, though -- odd enough that I can't help but wonder exactly how he'll respond to a year (or, rather, the several his new contract spans) with far heightened expectations. We'll start with something that he (actually somewhat shockingly) isn't very good at. Namely, finishing at the rim. While Ilyasova boasts a well-over 7'0" wingspan, he simply doesn't have the strength or height to finish over stronger offensive players, and it generally leads to Ilyasova being at least slightly baffled at the rim. He didn't shoot a number that's immensely poor -- converting on 60% of his at-rim plays, in fact -- but that rate actually ranked in the bottom 25% of NBA big men last season. So, while it was nice that he got to the rim, it was more a function of a naturally efficient player doing his thing than a player who actually found himself above-average at acting there. He fared much better from essentially everywhere else on the court, shooting right at the position average from 3-9 feet and slightly above it from all manner of midrange shots. But his primary value? Making it rain from three, essentially. Ilyasova converted on -- I kid you not -- 45% of his three point shots last year. Despite taking 20% of his shots from three point range! That's crazy! Seriously, legitimately, absurdly crazy. Only three players in the NBA shot nearly as well in a similar amount of shots -- Ray Allen, Stephen Curry, and Danny Green. That's it. That's your comprehensive list.

The thing that makes that even more ridiculous? He'd shown absolutely no proficiency at the three point shot before. Ilyasova had -- prior to this last season -- barely shot 33% from three point range. Part of it was a little-noticed step forward made by Brandon Jennings, who (despite a veritably marginal step forward in his assist rate), did a much better job actually finding the right places to set his teammates up. Part of it is that Ilyasova has always been a decent shooter, and it stands to reason that a shooter like him (before last season, he'd shot almost 80% from the line and regularly was above par from the long midrange) has the potential to get better. I don't think he'll shoot 45% again, but assuming the Bucks keep Jennings around, you'd think he'll retain at least some measure of his three point efficacy. He was also a maven on the glass, posting one of the strongest rebound rates at his position and throwing up more than his fair share of ridiculously dominant performances on the boards. On the downside, while Ilyasova's aforementioned talents deserves accolades galore, his defensive game is more quixotic and lacking -- despite long reach, he doesn't have a lot of strength or defensive talent. He tends to be slow to respond to rotations, a bit of a heavy floater (never quite committing to his man but never quite committing to the help) and his somewhat lacking height for his position does requires a good defensive presence beside him to make him worth playing. Bogut was good at this -- it remains to be seen if Udoh and Ilyasova can effectively coexist as well.

While Ilyasova is known more for his game than any particular personal items of interest, there is one element of Ilyasova's story that I've always found pretty interesting. Namely his age. Or rather, the odd lack of documentation behind it. At this point, it's generally agreed that Ilyasova is nowhere near his listed age (which I went by for the stat-capsule, but figured I'd write about here). He's probably 2 years older, at a minimum. The details are rather sketchy, but it appears to be similar to the Fausto Carmona (aka Roberto Hernandez) drama that embroiled the Indians this past MLB season -- essentially, Carmona was arrested in the Dominican Republic for paying a woman $26,000 to falsify his birth certificate. He was in fact three years older than his "Fausto" birth certificate would have us believe, and as such, everything he'd done under the Carmona name was done under a false identity. According to reports, there was a longstanding case wherein the Uzbek Basketball Federation filed a complaint with FIBA regarding Ilyasova's background, alleging that Ilyasova was actually a man named "Arsen Ilyasova", born in 1984 and who entered Turkey illegally in 2002. FIBA ruled in favor of Turkey, but despite that, many still believe the Uzbek's claims have merit. Count me as one of them.

In the event it is true, and Ilyasova is actually markedly older than his stated age, his new contract might be a little bit tough to swallow in the last year or two. I'm of the opinion it's a bargain deal overall -- getting a player who's obviously starter quality and just shot 45% from three to agree to a $40 million dollar deal with a partially guaranteed last year is a coup for the Bucks, and especially when you look at how often free agents blow off Milwaukee and demand crazy overpayment simply to consider the franchise an option. Paying around 7-8 million a year for Ilyasova's talents is perfectly reasonable, and if he actually is the age he says he is, this could end up being a value deal over it's entire duration. But even if he is actually entering his age 28 or 29 season, the Bucks should get a minimum of 2 solid years out of him, have a medium-sized trade chip for two, and have given themselves the flexibility to waive the contract altogether if he's fallen off by the last year of the deal. Really not a bad move for the Bucks -- even if you don't like Ilyasova, one must note that an above-value contract is ALWAYS a solid trade chip. And if the Bucks actually decide to take the leap and embrace a tanking strategy, the Bucks should be able to swap out Ilyasova for a draft pick or two, and perhaps some young talent to help round out a "lose a ton of games" core.

• • •

_Follow Eric Maynor on Twitter at __@EMaynor3.___

I want you to imagine something. Remember how Derek Fisher shot 37% from behind the arc in last year's playoffs? Imagine that he also knew how to pass the ball. Imagine if Derek Fisher had actually remembered how to pass -- he coupled that three point shooting with a hilariously bad 1.3 assists in 22 minutes a night. Imagine if the opposing team actually had any reason to foul Fisher. Imagine if Fisher had been a positive rebounder from the point guard position, and had actually played anywhere near a level that required the other team to guard him when he was on the floor. Imagine if Fisher -- rather than simply plugging into the offense as a spot-up three point shooter with a proclivity for taking stupid long twos and defending poorly besides -- actually changed the structure and the dynamic of the Oklahoma City offense, with more ball movement and markedly different pace.

So, you know. Imagine if Fisher was Eric Maynor.

Really -- everything I used to describe the theoretical "better Fisher" was something Eric Maynor either has done or has shown the capability to do. One of the things that baffles me about the general consensus that the Lakers are actually going to be better than the Thunder this year is the idea that the Thunder are simply going to stay the course. I don't totally disagree -- I think the Thunder team we'll see in the 2013 will be just about the same. I don't think Durant will improve in any way that moves the scale. I don't see Westbrook improving, though perhaps his public perception will. Harden may have a better playoffs, but overall, the team is going to be virtually the same in the bigger pieces.

But you can't tell me with a straight face that it isn't a good thing to be swapping out 22 playoff minutes a night of a mummified Derek Fisher ambling towards the grave with 22 playoff minutes of a versatile, pace-changing guard with a knack for getting teammates open and improving the team's offense. Simply can't tell me that won't help things. A big knack. Look at the 2011 season -- the OKC offense played REMARKABLY better with Maynor on the floor, something that will likely be slightly less prevalent this year (given OKC's increased offensive efficacy overall) but something that could vastly improve the Thunder's chances against the Heat. And, of course, against the team where Chris Duhon serves as the primary backup at the point. Just saying.

(Also, I'm just going to leave this here -- Maynor was ridiculously awesome in college.)

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next group. Whoever gets the most right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. I really need to stop putting team names in the riddles. EVERYONE gets them when I do. Last time, 3/3 from Ethan, Zewo, J, Atori, and Chilai. And in response, NO MENTIONS OF TEAMS TODAY. Take that, readers.

• How, exactly, do people expect him to survive three more years? He's 38. He's been falling off. come on, now.
• "In response to making this 'choke' gesture, I will now get choked myself. Also, I'm a jerk."
• Best duck in the league today! Which really isn't saying much. Or... anything.

Thanks for all the love and support over yesterday's LeBron capsule -- I very much appreciate it. I'm glad most of you found it to be a good read -- I think it stands up nicely to many of the best things I've ever written, and I'm glad others feel the same.

Continue reading

"Can a man who's warm understand a man who's freezing?"

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It was a mid-autumn dawn in the year 2009. Light crept, and I had nerves. The test was in three hours and I knew about as much about the Rao-Blackwell theorem as I had when I started the day before. I'd gotten some serious headway in grasping Bayes Estimators, but still felt the pangs of an active gap between the limits of my knowledge and the bare minimum I'd need to ace the test. I'd been studying for what felt like days. I'd done all the homework on time, I'd gone to office hours, I'd read study-sheets when I had free breaks at work. Maybe I wasn't really cut out for this. Maybe I really wasn't smart enough to hack it for the major. I turned the page of my study guide again, and started scribbling calculations. Then I shook to my core.

A cough, a hack, a spasm. I fell out of my chair in a moment of dizzy confusion. Papers scattered. It was a deep, hacking, bellowing cough -- I knew I was sick, and had been for weeks. But there was a certain edge to the cough I hadn't ever experienced before. I drew a white handkerchief from my pocket. Coughed into it a minute. Finally subsided. Sniffling, I made to put the handkerchief into my pocket. Stopped cold when I realized -- the handkerchief was a one-tone Jackson Pollock, signed and notarized with the ghastly sight of coughed-up blood. I stared at it, for a time, wondering the implications.

Then I hid it in my pocket and got back to work. Out of sight, out of mind.

• • •

I nestled into my bed, uneasy. The brightness was on low, the covers draped over me and the laptop -- I didn't want to wake my roommate, but I wanted to sleep as soon as the game finished. It was a constant battle,when I'd want to watch those late-night western conference games on the east coast. The Jazz were missing Deron Williams, and I'd expected I'd be able to turn the game off at halftime. Not so. Behind a classically dull performance by my Cavaliers, the Jazz had climbed back and taken a fourth quarter lead. The Cavs needed this game, but with about three minutes left in the contest, the game looked decided -- the Jazz had taken a 12 point lead and lethargy had wrenched the Cavs by their scruff. It was all just about over.

Except, well. We had LeBron James, you see.

And as any brilliant player of his brood was wont to do, he completely exploded -- within 30 seconds, LeBron had singlehandedly cut that large Jazz lead to 6. A three, a stop, a power-rim move. I bit my lip, rocking back and forth. LeBron threw a feed to Andy -- we got free throws, we made them. LeBron powered to the rim -- a score, free throws. Suddenly that 12 point lead was 2. LeBron drew free throws, again, then he made two straight heat check threes. Cavs lead! Free throw, free throw, free throw -- Cavs lead was six. Less than a minute to go. I sat grinning like an idiot, virtually patting myself on the back. We'd come back. We'd taste victory again.

But then they missed a free throw -- Price made a three. Missed another -- Millsap made two. Missed another -- Korver made two. One point game. The Cavaliers send Zydrunas Ilgauskas -- one of my all-time favorites -- to the line. One of two. Yet again. Your heroes let you down, sometimes. But we were up two, they didn't have Deron, and I needed a win. It was a bad day. Bad week. Bad month. Needed the rush. Had to have it. Korver gets it, but the defense is strong. They pass it around, time runs off. Will we force a violation? Was the game in hand?

"Down to 3, down to 2, down to 1 -- it's Gaines... YES! The Jazz win!"

• • •

Some people hit rock bottom on drugs. Opiates, booze, sex -- fun things. Mine had nothing to do with any of those. Never had drugs -- not once, not even marijuana. I got drunk once in college. A single night. Sex was common, but only with a steady girlfriend, and only prominent my senior year. Addiction? Heck no. I hit rock bottom on something far less fun. I hit it, believe it or not, on work. All my life, I've been prone to overwork. It started when I was young, constantly trying to live up to what I once felt were impossible expectations. I had a short period of lazy teenage snoozing. Then my grandfather died, things began to shift, and I went through a confrontation with my parents they probably don't even remember. And something snapped within me. I started working as though I had no other goals. Working to the point that my parents -- who had spent most of my young life telling me to work harder -- actually told me to chill a bit. Live a little. Calm down.

"Nope."

This only got worse in college, and as I said, hit rock bottom my 2nd year. I was reeling from the death of my beloved grandmother, sad about a ill-timed breakup, and worried that I wasn't good enough to succeed. I was taking an overload schedule in an effort to graduate in three years and save my family a good chunk of change. I was working 12-15 hours a week as a transcriptionist, and trying to get more work on the side to help raise money to placate our finances. I was actually taking a stats class with prerequisites I hadn't taken, trying to grease the wheels on my graduation plans. I was learning Russian. I was volunteering. And everything was difficult -- nothing was easy. I realized about halfway through the semester that I had no chance of graduating early if I failed any of the classes on my roster. I realized that -- unless I really lucked out -- I needed that semester more than I'd ever needed anything in my life.

So, I panicked. I pulled all-nighters like an addict pops pills. One, two, three times a week -- it didn't matter, to me. I just needed to get all of my work done, sometimes twice, and study my brains out like my life depended on it. It didn't, in retrospect. But at the time I had no idea. I stressed myself out and alienated friends and ruined my social life. And then I got sick. First it was coughing, then it was a constant hazy fever, then it was nausea. I started to relapse back into an anorexic state, skipping meals and forgetting to eat. It culminated with coughing blood, blacking out, and (finally) sleeping for a day or two straight over thanksgiving break and getting a bevy of sinus-related OTC medications at a local pharmacy. I took the Mucinex, drank a lot of tea, and went on long runs. Ate natural stuff, tried to focus on getting better. I couldn't go to the doctor, because my plan's doctor was only available from 10-4 and I had class or work during that whole duration, every single week. So I kept it a secret and hoped I hadn't ruined my body too much. I wanted to recover, and with more sleep and less stress, I finally did. The last day I coughed blood was in early December -- it stopped soon thereafter, and I haven't since.

• • •

I took solace in basketball. I was never a huge fan of any sports in my youth, preferring my father's general dismissal of sports to my mother's active fandom. Sure, I had my favorites -- on the playground at school I'd always pretend to be Tim Duncan or David Robinson when we were playing ball, and I thought them the best of all possible sports stars. A nice little SI for Kids feature on the two of them cemented all that. But other than a few scattered games, there weren't a ton of things I remember watching in high school, or my youth. That changed significantly in college, as I started to play a little more and take a more active interest in the two teams I loved -- the Spurs for Duncan's brilliance, and the Cavs in memory of my Cleveland-rooted grandfather.

Following the 2009 Cavaliers from the start of the regular season to their eventual fall in the playoffs was an experience I'll never forget. It brought me into the game, made me want to learn the ropes and analyze it from a smarter perspective. I started watching basketball almost religiously, tons of games every night and (on breaks and the offseason) downloading classics to bulk up my knowledge of the things I hadn't seen. I watched almost every game of each Spurs championship, I watched key games in LeBron's development from phenom to epoch, I watched the best games of the 90s and 80s. Everything I could possibly stomach. I saw Jordan, Dirk, Duncan and more. I grew to love the game, to know its intricacies, and to appreciate the subtle beauty in a possession's span. And more than that, I grew to appreciate and enjoy the brilliance of LeBron's game, and his immortal challenge.

I'll avoid the worn-out Cleveland tropes -- they're stodgy and unnecessary. What LeBron was attempting to do on those final Cavaliers teams was still otherworldly. He and the front office constructed some of the most well-built teams of the last decade, piecing together a wealth of minor talents and lower lights in a situation that perfectly leveraged every facet of each player's talent. Not a cog in the Cleveland machine lacked its place. And at the center, like Iron-Man's arc reactor, LeBron buzzed and whirred and made the machine run like clockwork. Dominating, ever-ticking clockwork. LeBron wasn't simply questing for a title, he was questing for a title in the manner of Duncan in 2003, or Dirk in 2011. He quested to become the primary catalyst in a way few ever imagine. Fame, fortune, glory abound, but along with it a sense of personal ownership and trust in his own power. He clearly didn't believe he was ONLY the greatest player in the league -- he felt he had the ability to transcend that, and become one of the greatest players of all time.

I related to and understood this general idea about his game. I felt a personal kinship with LeBron and felt that his quest to be not only the best player in the game but one of the historical greats was a greater reflection of the things I wanted to do. I didn't want to simply survive -- I wanted to thrive. I wanted to be brilliant, successful, celebrated. I wanted to be so good at what I did that people would want to be me. I wanted to wake up in the morning and feel like I'd done well enough, that I'd succeeded. I've spent my life with inordinately high personal expectations, and in their constant disappointment, I'd simply taken to working harder and harder in pursuit of impossible goals. I felt LeBron had the same ideals, goals, and general principles that I did. And as the 2010 Cavaliers hit their apex, I was hitting the worst points of my health-threatening overwork and my untreated depression. The Cavs kept me going. I had to keep watching, keep them close.

And just as I had unrealistic personal expectations, my fandom turned to unrealistic sports expectations -- it wasn't simply that the Cavs had a chance to win the title, it was that they had to win the title. I'd put so much of myself into my fandom, and I needed LeBron's success to validate my retrospectively insane and self-harmful efforts. And then, well. You know how that went. The 2010 Cavaliers collapsed within themselves, LeBron handled free agency like a fool, and finally left us in the skid. He left, my dear Zydrunas departed, and much like my work had left me with fewer friends than I'd had a year before, my team had left me without my heroes. Left to take the easy way out, the road oft-travelled. I had projected too much. LeBron James didn't want to be like me, he didn't want to succeed on his own terms -- he'd only found himself in that position by chance and coincidence. The criticisms and jeering rang true. The hero was a lie in a world of blithe untruths, and I sat in the dust of a dynasty deferred, mulling escape from the quicksand that had slowly consumed me.

"Are you the best player in the game, LeBron?"

"I mean, I've thought that for a long time."

• • •

In 2011, I graduated with my Bachelors. That last day -- with the gowns, the hats, the speeches -- was simply crazy. There was the graduation ceremony, where I actually fell asleep on an ex's shoulder and completely missed the speech. There was the stat department brunch, where we drank mimosas and celebrated our accomplishments. I was the first three-year grad in department history, as it turned out. People applauded as the department chair shared a short appreciation for each and every member of our small and lovable graduating class, and then we went our separate ways. My girlfriend went back to UNC, my parents went back to the hotel, and I rushed to finish packing -- I was moving out the next day. I threw my vinyls in a bin, ripped down my Duncan posters, loosely boxed my notes. Rushed, all of it.

Then, digging through the confines of my dorm closet, I came across something I thought I'd thrown away. It was a dusty old handkerchief, shoved behind a box, spotted with dried up blood. It really, really wasn't supposed to be there. I thought I'd thrown it and the rest of the bloody things out a long time ago -- after so long, I imagined the thing still had to be covered in nasty bacteria. I grabbed a towel I didn't care for, used it to pick the thing up, and chucked it as well as the towel in the bathroom trash can. Then I sat down at my desk and paused a second. It hit me.

College was over. I'd survived.

I wouldn't really put it any other way -- I didn't thrive, per se. My grades were mediocre at best, my social life was minimal, the numerous jobs I took were little more than tedium. Sure. I'd made some friends, I'd made some enemies, but generally I didn't feel like I'd met a ton of people who'd really care to keep in touch with me. Sure, I'd come back to see Sarah now and again. I'd die if I didn't keep in touch with Andrew and Hazal. Probably would text Eddie something incomprehensible at least once a month, onwards into the infinite. But what had I really gained? Circles under my eyes that'd never quite pass? Trade knowledge that would immediately be made useless by the specifications of whatever job I'd go to next? A sleeping disorder, depression, an affinity for sports? The echoes of my too-high expectations taunted me, and made me look forward to the uncertain future. But I shook them silent, continued packing, and left those awful years behind me. After all. My future looked a bit shaky, but it'd be what I would make of it. At least I'd succeeded in that much.

• • •

LeBron James has won a title. Few expect this to be the only ring LeBron will win. They expect more, and consider this a sub-summit on the constant climb towards a brilliant legacy yet to be written. But he's thrown the first-time monkey off his back, and in some ways, he did it exactly as he would've in Cleveland. Dwyane Wade had fallen off, just enough, and Chris Bosh was out or injured for almost the entirety of the playoffs. Where the late-period Cavaliers were an Iron Man suit with James as the arc reactor and precious little without him, the 2012 Heat were actually just about the same -- with LeBron off the court in the playoffs, the Heat were outscored by 12 points per 100 possessions. With LeBron on the court, they dominated opponents by 11 points per 100 possessions. Without LeBron, the 2012 Heat may not have won a single round -- not even against the hapless Knicks. Just like his cast in Cleveland.

In my case? There aren't really "titles" you can win in everyday life, so I'm not exactly there. But I do feel I've reached my own sort of personal sub-summit. I'm not at the top, and I certainly have a ways to climb. Without a doubt. But I've reached a nice level of complacency. I work long hours for a lucrative job I enjoy, and while my hobbies are extremely time consuming, I've succeeded in almost all of them and reached a steady level with my life as a whole. I make more money at my job than I ever dreamed I would. Gothic Ginobili has found a level of success I'd never imagined. I have flexibility, loved ones, and -- above all -- a comfort I could scarcely have dreamed of in my college experience. The man who coughed blood is now the man who sleeps in on weekends and looks to buy a house. The dark circles under my eyes are fading, the skeletal frame of a man self-starved becoming healthy once more. A smile can be seen, if you look hard enough. Depression still hits, at times, but I've worked through so much and continue to get better. Finally I can see a future. I can see the path to contentment, happiness, and things I'd never thought I'd taste when I found myself at my low of lows.

Speaking of things I never thought I'd say -- I can't really hate LeBron James anymore. I doubt I'll ever like him again, or root for his success. But for me, the hate faded well before he won his title. And in truth, it didn't come back when he hoisted the trophy. I think I've figured out why. Before, I looked at his flight and saw a man fleeing the challenge I was stuck in. I saw a personal hero abandon my team and city and insult our capabilities. Now? I see a man who fled one challenge only to find one just as difficult elsewhere, a man who still couldn't quite escape his demons without a hell of a lot more work. We both reached our rock bottom, we both languished and toiled, and we've -- in some sense -- both arrived. We're at a better spot, now, both at a certain level of triumph with so much of the mountain left to climb. When he left Cleveland, I was in a ditch. A low gutter. But we meet now at an intermediate step in our development, a bit older and a bit wiser. We are, for this precious moment, at equal footing. Neither freezing, both warm. Not as friends, not as allies, not as enemies. Just as people, ever-striving. So we sit, relaxing in the interim. I will root against him, later, and he will forget I exist. But in this moment, we stop. Consider. We have a drink. We sup.

Because the summit beckons, we trudge forward. And we move on, as comfort affords the privilege.

• • •

For more Player Capsules, please visit the Gothic Ginobili Capsule Directory.

Continue reading

_As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we contin_ue with Carl Landry, LeBron James, and Marreese Speights.__

• • •

_Follow Carl Landry on Twitter at __@CarlLandry24.___

While he's not a flashy player, no one can impugn Landry's skill -- what he does, he does well. And he does it with a hilarious disregard for his size. Seriously -- he's an NBA big man that stands around 6'7" or 6'8" -- he's listed as 6'9", but visually, there's absolutely no way he's actually that tall. Despite the genuine size disadvantage, Landry has perfected the use of angles and movement to become an incredible paint scorer. He's consistently among the absolute best at-rim finishers in the league (69% last year!), and his 3-9 foot post-up game is (surprisingly) not bad at all -- he shoots well above position average from that range. Despite, again, his size. People often get on his case for taking too many jumpers, but I'm not sure that's entirely fair. While Landry does take more jumpers than most big men, he's also more efficient with them -- his 42% from the true midrange was in the top 25% of all power forwards last year, and his free throw form (a scintillating 80%) indicates his shooting is actually just that good. And while he's awful from the long two and a nonentity from three, he actually takes fewer long twos than 50% of his PF brethren, in terms of the percentage of his shots from that range. He seems to have a decent understanding of what works and what doesn't for him, offensively. And when something works for Landry on the offensive end, it really works.

Unfortunately, the game is played on two ends, and Landry's size makes him a pretty awful defensive player. At no point in 2012 did Landry find a consistent place in Monty Williams' rotations, and from the looks of it, the reasons were primarily on his lacking grasp of and ability to capitalize on the Hornets' defensive schemes. Often I'd cry foul and say the coach needs to find better ways to utilize enigmatic talents like Landry, but in this case, I don't think I can -- Landry simply looked lost on the defensive end, lost in a system that required at least some modicum of size to complete the rotation and close the circuit. When Landry was on the court, he actually improved the Hornets' offense by a full two points per 100 possessions -- the problem was, he gave exactly that back on the defensive end, meaning they were virtually the same team with him as without him.His synergy numbers are rough, his adjusted plus/minus looks even worse than the raw on/off numbers, and visually you always get the sense with Landry that he's simply far too over-matched size-wise to compete on the defensive end. It's sad, although honestly not entirely unexpected. You can be a good defender as an undersized guard -- as an undersized big, you need to have an absolutely ridiculous grasp of steals and positioning to be even a slight positive on the defensive end, and that's something you don't tend to have if you weren't naturally blessed with it.

Yesterday, commenter Mike noted something about Landry that I thought was interesting -- he said that Landry's generally so-so performance after his first few years was a function of age and exhaustion, as Landry was both older than the average rookie and had put on more minutes in college than most rookies. Curious to test that, I looked up Landry's minutes played in college. While I couldn't find any data on his minutes played at Alcorn State, I did find his minutes at Purdue -- he played 1915 minutes over 3 seasons, with his highest season by far being his senior year at 1035. Basketball Reference's college search engine only goes back to the 2010 season, but in the last 3 seasons, there have been (kind of surprisingly, actually) a total of 97 seasons where a college player played more minutes than Landry's highest minutes total season. It looks like roughly one third of these players made the NBA, as well. Unless he played 1000-2000 minutes in a single season at Alcorn State, he's probably got a relatively comparable college minutes total to most NBA players -- a tiny bit above average, most likely, but overall not a giant leap from the norm. He turned 29 eight days ago, so in terms of calendar age, it's true that he's above the norm. But there's no wealth of evidence pointing to Landry suffering a far-too-high minutes total. I'm far more sympathetic to Mike's point that Landry's ACL injuries have sapped his game from the strong promise he showed in Houston as a rookie and a sophomore -- Landry's suffered more than his fair share of those, and really shouldn't be held accountable for that. It's certainly not his playing style or anything endemic to Landry's game that caused them.

Maybe it's the cramped hotel rooms. We'll call it that.

• • •

_Follow LeBron James on Twitter at __@KingJames.___

I don't really know how to introduce this capsule. I suppose I'll describe my thought process. LeBron James is all at once responsible for some of my most beloved and my most painful sports memories. As a Cleveland fan (who, yes, enjoys the Spurs as well), I found myself enthralled by James in Cleveland, and as many did, I thought him a man who represented my goals and ideals. I thought him a hero, an immortal, an icon. He left, and I lost all respect for him. I began to question the things I saw, the dominance I enjoyed, the sincerity of his time with the Cavaliers. I rooted for the Heat to fall. I rooted for LeBron to fail. I rooted for comeuppance, for karma, for anything.

And then, well, it happened. Carlisle's schemes were too good, LeBron was too timid, his legs too tired. The Heat fell, LeBron gasped for breath, and I didn't really know what to do. It was what I wanted, theoretically. But I didn't like the Mavs, either, and I suddenly realized I didn't really care. Not much. Revenge is not an emotion I'm usually partial to, and while I found the Cavaliers' upset of the Heat late in the 2011 season one of the greatest games I've ever had the pleasure of watching, I couldn't really rationalize getting myself excited and happy to see the Heat lose. It was the same thing this past year -- I watched exactly two games of the 2012 finals, and derived no enjoyment out of either. Yes, the Thunder found themselves outmatched. I suppose my vengeance for the Western Conference Finals should have been quelled. It wasn't, though. I didn't care if the Heat beat the Thunder. I wanted the Spurs to beat the Thunder. I didn't care if the Mavs beat the Heat. I wanted the Cavs to beat the Heat. Et cetera, et cetera.

I know people who still despise him. I know people who can't stand him. And I know others who belittle and insult those people, because they think it petty. That's too harsh, in my view. Just because some Cavs fans -- like myself -- have gotten "past" it to the point that they don't actively despise him doesn't mean every Cavs fan should be the same. I don't think I'll ever really LIKE LeBron again, and I admit, I haven't watched a single LeBron game with the Heat that I've actually been able to enjoy. It still stings. But one of the beautiful things about sports fandom is that everything is different. No two fans are the same, no two ways of approaching the game are the same. Just because I don't despise him doesn't mean another Cavs fan isn't entitled to his own anger. What I share is my personal story, not that of anyone else. It's mine and mine alone. And that's the way it should be.

Today, I wrote about LeBron James. I opened up about myself. I relived some strong feelings.

And, at last, I closed the book.

To read more on LeBron James, read today's Player Capsule (Plus).

• • •

_Follow Marreese Speights on Twitter at __@Mospeights16.___

Not totally sure what to say about Speights. I suppose I'll start with his skills. First, he's got a GREAT knack for rebounding on the defensive end. He's never played enough minutes for it to be totally noticeable, but his defensive rebounding percentage has hovered around 20% for three years in a row, which is fantastic, and generally ends up being in the top 30 or so leaguewide. For a nice bench big man, you could do far worse than rebounding like that. He couples that with a reasonably decent turnover rate despite a reasonably high usage percentage, which is a nice little wrinkle. Last season he showed another useful and underrated talent: an increasing ability to keep himself in the game. That is to say, he drastically cut down his foul rate, and barely found himself in foul trouble all year. For a team that was lacking in depth in the frontcourt for most of the season after the Arthur and Randolph injuries, this was essentially invaluable. These are all good traits to have, and when you combine that with the solid durability he's shown in the last two years, you have a player most would be surprised is making less than $5 million over the next two years.

Well, you might be surprised. Until you watched him. While Speights has a lot of talent and athletic potential, when actualized, his performance on the offensive end is pretty lacking. He's consistently found himself among the bottom 25% of bigs in at-rim percentage, which reflects a general unwillingness to either go hard to the rim or learn some decent post moves. His offensive numbers are actually extremely weird for a big man -- last season, for instance, Speights shot a blistering 46.6% on 16-23 foot two point shots -- which was among the highest totals in the entire league, let alone for just big men. He also took over a third of his shots from that location, which meant that he well understood his offensive talents. As well, he found himself among the top 25% of big men in his free throw percentage, making a patently decent 77% of his shots at the line with a solid free throw rate. For a big man who shows that kind of proficiency at shooting, you have to wonder why he's never tried to develop a three point game -- he took just 3 threes last season, and while he missed them all, Speights was so abysmal from every area of the floor beyond the line and the long two that you start to wonder if he actually needs to develop that shot to keep his minutes up. After all -- his defense is awful.

Now, look. A lot of very smart analysts thought that Speights showed defensive improvement in Memphis last season. Count me as one of the folks who disagrees. I admit, he looked a tad better, but I think that's more a function of who he played with. In 2011, he spent only 155 of his 558 minutes on the court with Elton Brand, the Sixers' best defensive big man. The vast majority of his 733 minutes in 2011 were played in lineups featuring both Speights and Thaddeus Young, which was (in retrospect) a really awful idea. Neither of them are supremely amazing defensive players, especially when playing out of position at center. When you combine the two of them, you're left lacking a rim protector and with a defense that at least visually looks like one of the worst you can possibly put together. In Memphis, Lionel Hollins finally corrected this ridiculous lineup decision by letting Speights play most of his minutes (905/1345) placed next to Marc Gasol, one of the best defensive big man in the game today. Of course he's going to look better -- it doesn't mean his personal defense has actually actively improved, it simply means that he's not being mishandled and poorly utilized. Often, when a player is said to have made strides on the defensive end, the strides are less a result of the player actually playing better and more a function of a team realizing they've been misusing him for years, or better yet, a team trading him elsewhere.

Off the court, Speights seems like a fun guy. His twitter feed is pretty entertaining, and he's known for getting into random beefs with random people. (Ed. Note: I originally typed "rondom" instead of random. Just thought you guys should know.) One of the more amusing examples of this comes from the good folks over at Liberty Ballers, where writer Jordan Sams was able to interview Speights and ended up awkwardly addressing a twitter beef in what sounds like one of the silliest interview-starting conversations in the world. The interview gets into some interesting things, like Speights' outside hobbies (bowling, college football video games, laughing), which Sixer is the best at picking up the ladies (he refuses to say), which Sixer is the funniest (Evan Turner, which I simply cannot fathom), and plays word association with the names of his Sixer teammates (for my money, the best one is when Speights goes completely silent at mention of Spencer Hawes. Because that's what I do at any mention of Spencer Hawes.) Also: he shares his #1 nap of all time, which is some seriously apt investigative journalism on the part of Sams. It's a solid interview. Go check it out. Otherwise, follow him on Twitter and bask in the marvel of his curious offensive game, even more curious defense, and funny personality.

• • •

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. Got a few 3/3s yesterday -- Mike, Mike L, Chilai, and Geezer all got them right. Good job.

• I think I can safely say that Mike D was spewing B.S. when he said this guy was the best shooter he's ever seen. Still solid, tho.
• Sort of a fluky season -- I don't think he's ACTUALLY that good. If so, though, Bucks got a crazy good deal.
• Ever wondered how the Thunder can be a better team next year, outside of youth? Look no further than Player #195.

Have a good day.

Continue reading

_As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we contin_ue with DeMarre Carroll, Al-Farouq Aminu, and Ekpe Udoh.__

• • •

_Follow DeMarre Carroll on Twitter at __@DeMarreCarroll1.___

I distinctly remember enjoying DeMarre Carroll's infectious, energetic, frenetic play on those late-aughts Missouri teams. I didn't think he'd be a splendid NBA prospect, but I figured him good enough. The one question I had about him was his shot. I never saw a game where it looked particularly on, and it gave me the impression he played like more of a big than a wing. Given his size, that's dangerous -- he's certainly not an NBA-caliber big man on size or width alone, and while he was a solid rebounder in college, he wasn't overwhelming. So you had a player who, like many others, was blessed with an endless motor, a knack for hustle, and a lack of a shot. Clearly one of the better players at his game on the earth, but also clearly not a splendid fit for the best league on the planet. Probably better overseas, where he could actually play as a big man. Players surprise you, sometimes. But often they don't, and what you see heading into their career is exactly what you get on the back-end.

Unfortunately for Carroll, that's how he's been so far. Extremely predictable. He struggles with a non-obvious position, the skillset of a four in the body of a three. Near the end of last season, he started to make a few threes -- but I mean it when I say they were sparse. Carroll only took 19 threes on the year. He made 7. In a vacuum, it's a great percentage, but one of those where the sample size is so small it's hard to put a wealth of confidence into it. Had Carroll made one more three, he would've gone from 37% to 42% -- among the best in the league. Had he made one fewer, he would've gone from 37% to 31% -- ridiculously below average. Much like Darius Morris, when people point to Carroll's shooting as an awesome sign, I'm not really sure what to say. It's certainly possible that the brief outburst was his true mean, but it's exceedingly unlikely. Especially given that over his career he's been a dismal shooter on anything beyond the basket area -- last year, in fact, he went 19-0f-54 from directly outside the rim to the three point line. Which is atrocious. He's made his free throws on an NBA level, but he was a career 60% free throw shooter at Mizzou, so I have trouble buying that as his true mean either.

There's clearly some value here. One thing that absolutely can't be said enough is that Carroll has a ton of value in the kinds of trap-and-press lineups coaches use at the end of games to try and force turnovers. He's not a wide player, but he is a quick and feisty one, and he's effective at cutting off running angles when you specifically assign him to dog the other player and keep them from crossing halfcourt. He works hard to disrupt possessions and he does his job well. That's an NBA-level skill, even if it's a bit undervalued in the league today. He's the kind of player who would've been excellent on a Rick Pitino-styled team, constantly pushing the envelope to try and steal the ball throughout the course of a game. Few NBA coaches play like that, but in that sort of a college system, Carroll could be a value add. Still, without a developed set-foot three point shot and the explicit tamping down of his empty offensive possessions, Carroll is going to have a lot of trouble finding minutes on ANY team, let alone a team as solid and deep as next year's Jazz. It's rough out there in the fringes. But his attitude seems good going into the year, and he seems to be working hard. When you're in his position, it's tough to do all that much else. Good on him for putting in the work, though.

• • •

_Follow Al-Farouq Aminu on Twitter at __@farouq1.___

Remember last offseason, when the Clippers and the Hornets were enthralled in high-intensity trade talks for Chris Paul? Seems like a decade ago, but bear with me. Remember how the two teams had fought it out to finally come to a tentative agreement, but the news was intensely convinced that the deal had come down to two hilariously minor players? That is to say, Eric Bledsoe and Al-Farouq Aminu. The Hornets, it was said, wanted Bledsoe. The Clippers wanted Bledsoe. Neither team much wanted Aminu. The back and forth went on and on, until finally, the Hornets relented and the deal was done. Many laughed, wondering why on Earth the Clippers wanted Bledsoe and noted (rather aptly) that on a team with Chris Paul, Bledsoe wouldn't see nearly the floor time he'd need to be effective. They also noted that the difference between the two players was barely worth arguing over, and how it was a weird thing to even theoretically mess up a trade involving a piece as big as Paul.

Well, while I'm not generally one to give the Clips a surfeit of credit, former Clippers GM Neil Olshey called this one exactly right. While the naysayers had a few excellent points (Aminu would've seen far more court time on last year's Clippers than Bledsoe did, and would probably still see more court time on next year's Clippers than Bledsoe will), in terms of assessing the pure talent of his pieces he did a good job in keeping the better asset. It's true -- Bledsoe's play in last year's playoffs is basically the only reason I'm saying this. But it wasn't exactly a minuscule sample, as the Clippers made the 2nd round and (at 11 games) played exactly half the games an average champion plays in a postseason. And Bledsoe displayed a lot of (frankly) incredibly valuable skills that should help him find a lot more value going forward than most people expected, even if the Clippers' roster isn't particularly well-oriented to help him find it. He's an infinitely better trade asset than Aminu, and perhaps better yet, he allows the Clippers to build contingency plans in the event Paul departs.

This isn't to say they wouldn't be worse for the wear without Paul. They clearly would be. But they wouldn't be rudderless -- when you have a star talent like Griffin locked up long-term, Bledsoe's ability to act as "Paul insurance" allows the Clippers to be confident they won't completely waste years of Griffin's prime on dismal, dismal teams (much like the Blazers are regrettably doing with LaMarcus Aldridge at this very moment). Which Aminu couldn't have necessarily done. Although all this isn't to say Aminu is necessarily chopped liver -- he could yet develop into an NBA-caliber starter. He just, well, hasn't. His offensive game is prokaryotic even at its best -- unorganized, unrefined, and lacking the general offensive cleverness that typifies players with the potential to grow to be much better. His rebounding for his position is downright excellent, but that's mostly because (much like our previous player, Demarre Carroll) he's stuck in between positions. He'd be better off playing as a large forward, but at 6'9" and a hyper-athletic but thin-type frame, he's much better suited to defensively match with NBA wing players.

Still. There's some promise in these here hills. One of Aminu's biggest problems, to this point in his career, is that of aggression -- or, more aptly, a lack thereof. He plays tentatively on both offense and defense, approaching each shot like a father would have a child approach crossing the street. Look both ways, signal what you're doing, hoist up and heave. It's excellent practice for crossing the street. It's also terrible practice for shooting a basketball, as it gives defenders time to close off your airspace and get in your grill. If Aminu can simply tamp down the amount of time it takes him to throw up his shots, I'd imagine you could add a few percentage points from every jump-shot range. His turnover problem is a bit tougher -- I'm not really sure how Aminu improves his ball control from here, although he really needs to. Turnover percentages at just under 20% are bad no matter who you are, but they're especially gross when you aren't at all supposed to be your team's primary ballhandler. The one thing that should soothe Hornets fans a tad is Aminu's work ethic -- it's extremely high, from all reports, and under Monty's tutelage he does seem to be turning into a decent defender. Going forward, if he can tamp down on his hesitation in his shots and stop pretending he has the ability to dribble, he should be able to carve out a role as a legitimate starter. Lord knows players with his length, work ethic, and curious resemblance to Fat Albert characters don't come around every day!

• • •

_Follow Ekpe Udoh on Twitter at __@EkpeUdoh.___

Ekpe Udoh is an interesting case of a player whose box score stats tell you virtually nothing about his game. To wit, if you were simply looking at Udoh's box scores, you'd uncover tales of a player who has no perceivable offensive game, shoots atrocious marks from just about every range on the floor (his roughly 60% career mark at the rim is simply woeful, and ranks in the bottom 25% of PF/C players in today's league) and confines many of his shots to an utterly busted 3-9 foot post-up game. He's quite a poor rebounder, regularly ranking as one of the absolute worst per-possession rebounders for his position. And he can't stay on the floor extremely well, either -- at a career mark of roughly 5 fouls per 36 minutes, he spends much of each game in foul trouble. Problems galore. If you looked at his box score stats alone, you'd think he was among the worst players in the league.

Here's the thing. He's not. The game is played beyond a simple box score, and that's where Udoh finds his value. On the defensive end, there's virtually nothing Udoh can't do -- there are a scarce few defenders who provide essentially a system-in-a-box, improving even barely-decent players to a level of solid defense far above expectations. Udoh, on his good nights, can be one of those. How does he do it? Simple. Incredible and outright ridiculous help defense, of course! He's something of the polar opposite to Andrew Bogut, in a silly way. Bogut was a great, great center when he was healthy with Milwaukee. But he was great in extremely obvious ways -- he controlled the boards with aplomb, finished strong at the rim, and had an old school heaviness to his game. Udoh? He doesn't control the boards -- at best, he holds his own on them. He doesn't finish strong -- to call him tentative at the rim is to understate it. And heaviness? Psh. Ekpe Udoh moves like water on the court, hyper-mobile with an alarming fluidity and quickness on the defensive end.

So, again. He's the exact opposite of Andrew Bogut. Where Bogut wouldn't really mess with his man, preferring to just reach over him and rip down the rebound over his head, Udoh simply slithers his way under the other team's primary rebounder and drags them down into the murky abyss, requiring the opposing team's worse rebounders try to wrangle the possession -- a prospect that usually fails. Udoh sets these strange, fluid screens that often seem to be made of spiderweb -- even the quickest players get tied up and stopped, mucking up the opposing offense and letting everyone on his team play closer to their man. Even though he's somewhat offensively lacking, he somehow manages to drag his defender all over the court, relying on excellent instincts and his insane mobility to play mind-games with the offensive players guarding him, forcing them to expend a ton of energy defending a player with almost no legitimate offensive skills. The ways he impacts a game are hardly obvious, but they're ever-present, and they make you wonder how good he'd look if he had, say, a semblance of an offensive game. Or better rebounding instincts himself. Or passing talent. Or... well, you get the picture.

So that's your boy Friday. (Fun fact: that's actually true, his middle name is seriously Friday -- among the better middle names in the entire league, I think.) He's a bit of a riddle wrapped in a mystery -- many wonder (legitimately) how good a player with his tepid stats could actually be. I myself am completely in-between. I see the incredible on/off court stats, understand (mostly) why they happen, and I see some degree of promise in his offensive game, if only just. I see the hard work he puts in on the floor every single possession. But I also look at Ian Segovia's paean and wonder if we aren't all getting a bit too wrapped up in his intangibles and his (admittedly hilarious) humor -- this is a player who's getting defensive players to chase him around the floor with some of the worst offensive numbers at his position in the league. If teams ever actually started to scout him (or if he was ever on a team that other teams felt was good enough it required scouting), that would essentially stop entirely, and there goes a big part of his value. He works hard, and he's overcome a general lack of NBA-level talent thus far -- but that certainly doesn't mean he never needs to develop these talents, nor does it mean that he'll be able to do this forever. It means he's staved off the tendrils of the box score for a year or two -- eventually, he will need to develop some moves, some rebounding, or some discernible box-score talent. Because if not, "great on/off court numbers on terrible teams that nobody bothers to scout" may be the sum total of his resume in the future.

• • •

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. Lots of 2/3 votes, but nobody figured out that I was talking Bledsoe vs Aminu. Good job to comment-folk Mike and Atori.

• Don't really know how he fell so far from his Houston highs. Still, he rebounded last year, and should be a serviceable bench friend for the 'Dubs.
• Player #191 is pretty good at the game of basketball. Maybe. Will be a Capsule (Plus).
• Good rebounder, awful defender. Some think Player #192 made progress on that end last season. Me, I think it was just Gasol.

See you tomorrow. And if you missed it, check out this morning's halfway retrospective!

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Hey, all! Aaron here. Last Friday, I arrived at the hard-won halfway point for my Player Capsule series. I've officially got more capsules behind me than there are ahead of me. In part as a celebration, in part as a general update, I decided to compile some statistics on the capsules thus far, the capsules yet to go, and the capsules people consider their favorites. Let's jump in.

• • •

I. CONCRETE PROOF THAT AARON MCGUIRE HATES THE NETS

This chart shows the players I've written and the players I've yet to write, in a stacked bar chart. The x-axis -- teams in question -- are ordered by the number of players a team has among the total 370. Brooklyn, for instance, has 9 players in the 370. They tie with 4 teams for the lowest number of players covered on any particular team. Five teams -- Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Minnesota, New York, and San Antonio -- are getting coverage of 14 players, and they're tied with the most. Fear not, Nets fans -- because the previous 186 capsules somehow only included two members of your team, there are still 7 members of the Brooklyn Nets to go.

• • •

II. THESE WERE THE CAPSULES THAT WERE

Here are some stats regarding the 186 capsules completed.

• There were 158,200 words among all capsules posted here, and 21,734 words in the 11 capsule (plus) posts. This translates to a total of 179,934 words in the first 186 capsules -- or, 967 words per capsule. With 15 players a week, that translates to an average of 14,510 words per week. If you've actually been reading all these, you have my sympathies. That's a lot of words!

• This project began on Friday July 6th, 2012. It is now 87 days later, on Monday October 3rd. In this timeframe, only thrice have I managed to put up fewer than 15 players in a single week. Upon realizing this, I will now consider this a victory.

• Of the players covered thus far, 13.9% have been centers, 44.2% have been forwards, and 41.9% have been guards. The centers who have gone thus far collectively shot 2.7% from three point range. A supremely important fact, I say. Of all these folks, there have been 11 posts for players that garnered a Capsule (Plus) -- one center, four forwards, six guards.

• • •

III. THESE ARE THE CAPSULES THAT WILL BE

Here are some stats regarding the 184 capsules yet to come.

• While the capsules I've finished garnered an average #NBARank of 195.6, the capsules yet to come have an average #NBARank of 194.7. If anyone wanted proof that I drew from a legitimately random distribution when I picked the order for these capsules, well, there you have it.

• Assuming no delays, the current schedule has me finishing the project smack dab on Christmas Eve. My current goal is to finish before 2013, so that seems like a good aiming point.

• Of the players left, 51.1% of them are forwards. 8.7% are centers, and 40.2% are guards. Of the currently planned out Capsule (Plus) posts left, 4 are forwards, 7 are guards, and none are centers. Subject to change, of course, as I write posts and get ideas for others.

• • •

IV. THESE ARE THE CAPSULES THAT DON'T SUCK

As part of this retrospective, I collected votes from 25 friends and readers to determine their favorite capsules. Most people highlighted a few of the 11 Plus posts along with one or two of their individual favorites. As per the votes, here are the three cream-of-the-crop selections of the best Capsule Plus features:

• Tim Duncan, Salt of the Earth (7 votes; 26%)
• The Flickering Candle of Stephen John Nash (6 votes; 24%)
• Defining a Hero with Andre Miller (4 votes; 16%)

There were quite a few people who picked one of the normal everyday capsules, as well -- in fact, all but 3 of our 25 voters picked at least one normal capsule to go along with their plus selections. Because there's so very many of them, few normal capsules garnered multiple votes -- only Nick Collison and Mike Bibby received more than one. But in the interests of highlighting the capsules that stood out to our readers, here are all capsules that received a vote as notably above the par.

Pau Gasol, Greg Monroe, Paul George, David West, Gerald Henderson, Jon Leuer, Carmelo Anthony, Andrew Bogut, Isaiah Thomas, Gilbert Arenas, Kevin Seraphin, Grant Hill, Derek Fisher, Tyson Chandler, Manny Harris, Avery Bradley, Jeremy Lin, Roy Hibbert, Brandon Jennings, Rajon Rondo, Brian Scalabrine, and Mo Williams.

• • •

VI. UPDATES FOR THE SECOND HALF

Not a ton here -- the format won't be changing, nor will the schedule. However, a few things will. First, I'm switching up the player stat-capsules a little bit -- now that ESPN's #NBARank is done with, I thought it a good idea to add the player's final standing in ESPN's project to the capsule statsheet. We will be adding it to the Capsule Directory in short time, as well. As another piece of useful data, we're adding what number a player is in the capsules out of the remaining players on his 2013 team. For example, see the updated version for DeMarre Carroll below.

Because it would be an incredibly meaningless waste of time, I won't be updating the statsheets for the players long passed. But this should make the statsheets slightly more useful going forward. The final change is hardly a change at all -- I've made two small banner images for the capsule directory, and placed one in the sidebar for easy access and will place one at the end of each capsule post, again, for easy access. Hopefully this helps people remember it exists!

• • •

VI. FINALLY...

Just wanted to add -- huge thanks to all of you who've stayed with me this long, and plan to read even intermittently going forward. For the most part, this project is meant as a reference to all and a reach towards a public database that's impressive, personal, and analytically sound. The fact that so many people have chosen to take the journey with me and watch in its totality my slow descent into blubbering madness is (to me) both heartwarming, humbling, and befuddling. Seriously? There are those who've read 170,000 words that I'VE written? Simply absurd. Nevertheless, let it be known that I have a vast appreciation for those of you reading, whether you've read a single capsule or all 186. Thanks a lot for taking an eye to my work, and I hope it's been -- and will continue to be -- an entertaining journey.

And now that that's over, I have capsules to write. See you on the other side.

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