Samuel Dalembert as all of you know, has had very high expectation since a year or two ago when he showed his athleticism during the year AI was injuried. This summer, however, many believed Billy King has made a huge mistake when the Sixers signed him for 60-70 million dollar contract based on his potential alone. Others, expected huge numbers from him. -3.24 Blocks Per Game(Leads NBA) -5.34 Blocks Per 48 Minutes(5th in NBA) -10.1 RPG (11th in NBA) When we signed him to that contract, it was obvious that he was brought here for defense. With the stats as supports from above, it is clear that he has been doing his job. He's even brought up his scoring by .6 percent, and still shoots a very high 54% from the field. If you don't count the first 5 games he played which he had several ugly offensive performances(6PPG), heck he probably would be averaging almost a double double right now. Is he living up to his $70 million expectation?
Despite his impressive numbers in the shot blocking department, as well as rebounding, I say no he is not. His defensive awareness is below average and it costs us during key stretches of games, I wish they kept track of goal tending violations I am sure Sammy would lead that category as well. He also takes to many risks and is slow when rotating on defense which often puts him in foul trouble and limits his playing time. He is the only player in the starting lineup not averaging at least 35 minutes a game. Moses Malone is back in town tutoring Dalembert again so lets see if he improves in those areas. Sammy has the capacity to be a 15 and 10 guy as well as dominant shot blocker, but he is quickly becoming the next Danny Fortson, a guy who cannot stay out of foul trouble. Despite all these deficiencies I am glad we resigned him I think he can improve over time in these areas, but the organization has to follow up on it’s investment maybe offer Moses a lot of money to become an assistant coach. He recently swayed away from his comments that he would not be interested in being a full time assistant. So we will see what happens.
I think we need to stop comparing Sammy's play with his huge contract. First off, we had to offer him the max contract bc that's what the CBA called for. If not, we would run the risk of losing him to another team. And there's no way BK was going to do that. With that said, dude is still trying to learn the game. Give him a break and let him mature. His basketball IQ will soon catch up.
Am I happy with him? Pretty much, but he won't live up to his contract until he starts learning to catch the damn ball and raise his basketball IQ. You don't know how many times the guy gets a long rebound, and instead of giving the ball to a guard and setting the offense up he turns around and launches an 18 footer. And don't even get me started about his slow defensive rotation, lack of fundamentals, and his habit of picking up horrible fouls. If the dude can catch AI's passes, he'd average 14 ppg.
