You got that backwards. Crabbe had "improved" his PER to above the 10.0 basketball equivalent of the Mendoza Line before he started in Lillard's absence. As a starter, it dipped back down to 9.9, and then after one decent game coming off the bench last night, it was back up to 10.3. You seem enthralled by these minor oscillations in Crabbe's PER, but that's all they are, insignificant minor oscillations. He's been bouncing around on either side of the 10.0 barrier most of the season. Changes this small are insignificant. Aminu saw his PER drop by 0.3 while he was out injured. Since PER is based on league average performance, which is recalculated nightly, a player can see his PER increase/decrease by a couple tenths of a point without even playing, depending on what the rest of the league does that day. So, 10.3 vs. 9.9 is meaningless. Unless Crabbe suddenly rockets up to the PER = 12 range, this is who he is - for now. And, even at PER = 12, he's grotesquely under-performing his contract. Turner is the one who has actually made significant improvement in his production. On 11/21 he had a very Crabbe-like PER = 9.5. Five games later on 12/1, his PER had jumped up to 11.8. A game later, it was over 12, where it has remained ever since. By mid-December, Turner's production was inline with his career average. The Turner we've seen for the last month is pretty much who Evan Turner is. Unfortunately, the same is true for Allen Crabbe. BNM
Turner is an okay player. The main thing that separates okay players from good/great players is how often they can make an impact. All okay/solid players can be good/great in a game here and there. Because they can't do it constantly, they aren't actually good/great players. So, it shouldn't be surprising when he has a good game, nor should it be surprising when he's invisible for a stretch of games. That's life in the NBA's middle class.
I think I've made that clear multiple times, but for the record, he's grossly overpaid for what he brings to the table. He's a one-dimensional player, who can't create his own shot, or create for others. He is a very good 3-point shooter, in catch and shoot situations. Baseball has it's Mendoza line: "The Mendoza Line is an expression in baseball in the United States, deriving from the name of shortstopMario Mendoza, whose poor batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. The cutoff point is most often said to be .200... The term is used in other contexts when one is so incompetent in one key skill that other skills cannot compensate for that deficiency. The "Mendoza Line" was created as a clubhouse joke among baseball players in 1979, when from early May onwards, Mendoza's average was always within a few points of .200 either way, finishing out the season at .198 for the year (and .201 for his career to that point). " The way Crabbe continues to oscillate around PER = 10.0, the NBA may soon have it's own version of the Mendoza Line - the Crabbe Criterion to describe a player who's overall production is well below average, but propped up by a singular skill that earns them a ridiculous payday. BNM
Tell me Denny Crane, why do you make a post about it every time Allen Crabbe's PER rises above 10.0, even if it's only for a single game. You've done that several times, as if having a PER = 10.3 is a good thing. BNM
Because his PER is clearly not a good enough figure to judge him by. One game and a .4 difference is a pretty big swing. It's not like he's going to get it to over 13 or 15 in a small number of games. And my question was rhetorical.
Yeah, Atlanta made the same mistake with Bazemore--treating a guy who's an asset when super cheap as though he's an asset in any context. Once he got a big deal, he ceased being an asset. Similar to Crabbe and Turner.
It was the market rate for wing guys who can potentially be (or for some reason have been thought of) as two way players this past summer. It's why guys like KCP, Rodney Hood, Otto Porter,etc will all get max contracts soon enough. We were just a year early. Not to mention Barnes/Batum/Parsons all got close to $100 mil deals for being marginally better than our guys on the tier below. The dearth of good wings is real. Gotta pay to play.
Yeah, Mendoza played in the pre-Ripken era when teams didn't expect their middle infielders to hit, as long as they fielded their position well. While Cal Ripken Jr. was pretty singular, the '80s and '90s were when teams began to expect more hitting ability from all positions (except catcher, still). Today, it's unlikely Mendoza would stick anywhere near that long.
Teams behaving irrationally doesn't mean that Portland, or any team, should do the same. I realize that good two-way wings are currently in gigantic demand, but paying out massive deals because you think/hope a guy might end up being one is silly. Atlanta got good value out of Bazemore on a bargain deal--the correct route would have been to wish him well on a big deal from another team and look for another undervalued player. Crabbe has never shown a talent outside of spot-up shooting. Spot-up shooting is valuable, but not when it comes with no other value. Paying him on spec, assuming more talents would emerge, is incredibly inefficient, in my opinion.
I'm not saying I agree with what we did, but more so coming to the realization that 15-20 mil/ yr is now the expected salary for an average wing player. It's obviously inefficient. It's not easy to find a guy like Jonathan Simmons (who the Spurs picked out of the middle of nowhere) to produce for peanuts from the wing spot. Hell, it could also be argued that we did get Moe/Aminu on an incredibly cheap deals, and they at least somewhat compensate for the AC/ET deals. Another point to consider when you figure out how many of the inefficient deals will become reality in the coming years: AC/ET will become more and more tradeable as their contracts continue.
So, what figure would you judge him by? Name one figure, other than 3FG%, when Allen Crabbe even approaches average. I showed in the Trade C.J. thread that our team point differential tales a significant hit when Crabbe is on the floor, and I also showed that he gets outscored by the opponent he's guarding. Judging his overall performance based on PER is probably doing him a favor as it's propped up by the one, and only, thing he does well - 3-point shooting. A 0.4 swing in PER based on one game is not a pretty big swing. It happens for multiple players every single day. Crabbe has been oscillating between 9.9 and 10.4 for over a month. Turner jumped from 9.5 to 11.8 in just 5 games. Now that's a significant jump, and it has also proven sustainable as Turner is now at 12.3. Yeah, expecting Crabbe to jump to 15 is pure fantasy, even 13 is a stretch as his career best is 12.2. Unless he improves other aspects of his game, his limited skill set will prevent him from ever being a PER = 15.0 player. BNM
So? Every sport has their specialists - guys who get by on a singular skill (in Mendoza's case, his glove), but suck at the rest of the game. Did Mendoza ever get the equivalent of an $84 million payday? Of course not. He was a bench player that stuck around for 9 seasons, but had fewer than 100 at bats in five of those nine seasons. His weak bat kept him from ever being anything more than a late inning defensive specialist. BNM
It didn't. Typo. Crabbe's contract is actually $75 million over 4 years, not counting the 15% trade kicker. Team 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 Portland Trail Blazers $18,500,000 $18,500,000 $19,332,500 $18,500,000 15% trade kicker. 2019-20 is player option. Trail Blazers matched 4-yr/$75M offer sheet from Nets on Sunday, July 10, 2016. BNM
Sorry to belabor this point, but since we still are in a sort of sticker shock with these contracts, it's worth visiting some of these other numbers for wing players given out last year and the year before. These are salaries for this season: Wade -- 23.2 mil Beal -- 22.1 mil Parsons -- 22.1 mil Barnes -- 22.1 mil Batum -- 20.9 mil Crabbe -- 18.5 mil Deng -- 18 mil Matthews -- 17.1 mil Fournier -- 17.1 mil Turner -- 16.3 mil Bazemore -- 15.7 mil Middleton -- 15.2 mil Jeff Green -- 15 mil Carroll -- 14.2 mil Ginobili-- 14 mil Crawford -- 13.2 mil JR Smith -- 12. 8 mil Afflalo -- 12.5 mil Gordon -- 12.4 mil Lee -- 11.2 mil Solomon Hill -- 11.2 mil Austin Rivers -- 11 mil Joining this list (probably near the top) in the next year will be: KCP, Redick, Porter, Roberson, etc. And in 2018, you will have Gay, Gallinari, Ariza, Bradley, Lavine, Will Barton, Andrew Wiggins, etc all potentially making close to or above 20 mil. Come this summer and next, people WILL stop ridiculing these deals.
