Frankly, despite the fact that I've watched just about all of his games for the past 2 seasons, I'm not sure what to make of Snell. To me, he's just so very, very, how you say, OK. Offensively, he's sort of the prototypical replacement player. He's low usage (~14%) and fairly high efficiency (TS%=.550). Defensively, IMO he's a plus player, but certainly not a stud. He doesn't do anything particularly well, nor is there a gaping hole in his game. To me, the most encouraging thing about Snell is that he sucked his rookie season and became an average-ish player in year 2. I doubt that any team in the league is hot for his services so I think you keep him and hope that his learning curve continues on the upswing. I'll be surprised if Snell is ever more than a MLE-type player. If he does not continue to improve, he's probably a league minimum journeyman.
The one nice thing about Snell is that it's really easy to stick him in a lineup. So he can find minutes despite not standing out in any particular way. But I agree it's hard to get really excited about him. At his best last year he was better than Dunleavy (at least statistically), so you know at the very least he can run up and down the court for 30 minutes and not suck the wind out of your team's sails while he's on the court. Hopefully we'll be able to give him higher praise than that by this time next year. I get the impression management (and especially Gar) are still high on Snell, so he'll have a spot in the rotation next year. If he repeats last year I think it's a toss up whether or not he gets his contract extended (when's the deadline for that?).........his play was okay last year, but pretty much defined replacement level.
October 31 and since it's only for a 26.1% raise, it's a lock that the team will take its option. The better question is whether they'll even make an extension offer.
I think you both are being a bit tough on Snell. There's an awful lot to be excited about it. (1) The thing Snell does way above average for an NBA player? He has really, really long legs and arms. It's good fun to marvel at how Bobby Portis and Doug McDermott look so composed in Summer League, or how composed E'Twan Moore looked in the regular season but none of those guys have optimal length. Snell has ideal size and athleticism for the job and that shouldn't be discounted. (2) Although Snell has been plagued by inconsistency, he's hasn't had injury troubles and has played decent minutes for a contender for his first two seasons in the league. He ended up averaging 20 minutes a game in 72 games last season. (2) Snell started defending his position well toward the end of last year. I think he's going to be able to guard the vast majority of 1s, 2s and 3s this upcoming season. And his shortcoming on defense -- the fact that he's just not quite strong enough for the NBA yet -- should in theory be remedied over the course of his career. (3) He's scored with solid efficiency even though he has no idea to get easy buckets. The .550 TS may not look like much to write home about, but how many times do you remember Snell converting on easy buckets within the flow of the offense? He almost never converted of dives to the hoop when his man's head was turned, or easy transition baskets and the like. This is perhaps his greatest weakness as a player, but most players are able to fix these things through experience over time. Snell's per 36 and efficiency numbers are just not that different than Jimmy Butler's were over his first two seasons, the major difference being that Jimmy Butler really came on during the end of his Sophomore year. Take a step back. If Tony Snell played for another team would we be excited if we traded for him? I think the answer would be an unequivocal yes. None of this means he's likely to be successful in the NBA, I just think our outlook is clouded by the obvious growing pains.
If the Bulls traded for Snell somebody would quickly point out that his combine max vertical was identical to that of the slow-footed and vertically-challenged Doug McDermott.
I like Tony. He is smooth. He can be aggressive. Just not every game. That is the big thing I have against him. Other than that, he can get to the line, is fast and long. His defense has gotten better since he has been in the league. He can hit the 3. He has the tools to be a good player in the league. Confidence seems to be lacking.
I agree with TBF. You can see why the Bulls invested a draft pick in him; I seem to remember the thought at that time being that he had the talent to excel, but with the knock being questions about his desire. Ultimately, player like him have to learn to adapt to the NBA. I thought he was on his way last season; I hope he gets there. We need the depth.
He has all the makings of a good D and 3 guy. To call him a MLE player isn't an insult, as that is a solid NBA role player usually, which is what I think he can be at this time.
I agree that Snell is an anthropometric All-Star and that's one of the reasons his game translates easily. If he had McDermott's measurements he wouldn't be anything special as a prospect. The conventional wisdom on Snell is that he plays better when he gets regular minutes and he needs this to be a successful NBA player. I did some cursory searching for splits on when he got minutes in games and when he didn't to see what the results were. This isn't perfect, but here's the comparison for when he started and when he didn't: I assume the majority of his starting minutes were when Dunleavy was out. This was the stretch when it seemed like the light bulb went on for Tony. But it doesn't look like he played better during that stretch compared to when he was on the bench. Also keep in mind that his bench play included his 13 game stretch when he didn't score a point. It might not be a safe assumption that Snell is going to automatically get better with more minutes. Agree. Snell can adequately defend all 3 backcourt positions and is a good shooter with his feet set. This means he should at least be able to stick around the league as a vet min type if his game doesn't progress from where it is now. However, it seems like GarPax are banking on a lot of internal improvement from Snell, Doug and Mirotic to improve this season so we'll need more than that. I don't feel comfortable projecting a steep improvement from Snell in getting easy baskets. His game has never been about getting to the rim and I get the impression he's just not that aggressive due to his personality. In his two years in the league his FT/36 has hovered right around 1.3, which is terrible. That's late-career Kirk Hinrich bad. In his senior year of college his FTA/36 was about 3.3 (estimate) which still isn't very good. I think Tony's big arc for improvement is getting more comfortable hitting a variety of long range shots with decent accuracy even though their degree of difficulty is fairly high, sort of like Jamal Crawford. I think the answer is an unequivocal "No." He's a 20th draft pick who has a career PER of 9.1. That's just not a lot to get excited about. I would guess if you were to post a poll about the trade value of Tony Snell on a well-informed general NBA message board most people would agree that it's practically nothing. I don't think I'm that down on Snell. He's proven himself to be a capable, albeit unremarkable NBA rotation player. He has great measurables which make it easy for him to translate his game at the highest level. He shoots well with his feet set. However, I think it'd also take a remarkable amount of improvement for him to go from where he's at to a 20+ MPG 16 PER player with usage of around 19, which is the improvement I think we'd need from him in order to be a more dangerous playoff team.
Nice post, rosenthall. I'm in around the same place on Snell. This is an important season for Snell. If he's a finished product right now, he projects as a vet minimum guy IMO. However, as I said earlier, I think he's shown steady, if slow, progress. I still think he could develop into a MLE-type 3-and-D player.
The big reason for hope with Snell is that it's very easy to play the matchup game with him and it would only take marginal improvements in a variety of areas for him to be that MLE guy we're rooting for him to be. I get the impression his college years were characterized by a long period of gestation before he "got it" and morphed into the player everyone wanted him to be in the conference tournament his junior year before he declared for the draft. He strikes me as a passive guy who likes to take everything in incrementally, so this might be the pattern of improvement we should expect of him. Or I might just be pulling abstractions out of my arse, we'll see.
