I would not trade Rudy yet. Although thin and young he played basketball for 24 months straight and held up just fine. (Spain, Olimpics, NBA, Playoffs) Over the next few years he will gain some strength to go with his skill set..can you say Jason Terry or Manu. No way. Teams would have to way over pay to get him. We also need to consider the marketability factor. We have 50 million people from Spain following the blazers, buying jerseys and merchandise. The league want to expend to Europe, why would we give up the best player from the continent ( Nowitzki is too old and gone in 3 years) for an average SF.
Jose Calderon and Pau Gasol are both better players than Rudy. Rubio probably will be, too. And that's only Spain. Counting all of Western Europe, Tony Parker is much better.
When it comes to NBA Playoffs Toronto will be an afterthought. Pau doesn't have the star power of Rudy. Pau is better then Rudy but not as marketable. Rubio is unknown, good point with Tony.
Jose is atrocious defensively. I am not sure I agree with this assessment. No doubt that Pau is better - but even at this point in time - Rudy is a better defender than Jose - and he still has room to improve on both sides of the floor. Rubio is the real diamond in the rough however - he seems like a Rondo like guy - which is just fantastic.
Rudy is nothing special defensively, himself, though. He has the ability to be dangerous in passing lanes, but his man defense is not very good because he's lacking in size and strength. So while Calderon is worse defensively, I don't think the difference between them defensively makes up for the difference between them on offense, where Calderon is a legitimate impact player. Fernandez isn't.
Rudy's team defense is actually very good - as is his nose for rebounds. Rudy's impact on the offense this year was not that far behind Calderon - he is just not used as much by Portland because he plays behind Roy. When you look at their offensive/defensive ratings per 100 possession - you notice that Rudy, as a rookie - is only 3pts less than JC on offense - but 3 pts. better on defense. At this point in the game - Rudy is as good a player as JC when you look at the "per 100 possession" offense/defense combined - and Rudy will only get better.
Offensive and defensive ratings are interesting, but like +/- are very dicey, especially over samples that aren't multi-year (and Fernandez's, of course, isn't). I wouldn't view a straight comparison of O/D rating as particularly conclusive. By PER, Calderon is significantly (though not hugely) more productive than Rudy. While defense narrows that gap, I don't think it narrows it enough, since Rudy isn't a good defender overall. I do agree that Rudy will improve while Calderon has probably reached his ceiling. I wasn't projecting who will be more valuable in the future, but I think Calderon is a better player at this point.
Rudy's PER for most of the year was at the 18... range - same as JC. Ariza's number on his back has really done a lot of damage to the way Rudy closed the year.
pffft ... uh no! Rudy's PER was pretty consistently in the 14-15 range for most of the year, it was super hot in the first month of the season and once people had the book on him and realized he was just going to launch threes they started to take that away from him and force him to put the ball on the floor.
Yeah, I really think it's all going to depend on how Rudy improves in the offseason. Will he develop a mid-range game? Will he get bigger?
He's got to get stronger ... I'm not sure if that means more bulk, but stronger for sure. If he gets to the point where he can drive and absorb a little contact and still get his shot off the mid-range game will come, the other part of this equation is his handle which is pretty dicey. As of now when he's dribbling he's only trying to create enough space to back up and jack up a fade-away three, defenders play him close because they know he can't take it to them. Lots of big questions this off-season with a lot of guys: Will Oden improve his footwork? Will Bayless rediscover his shooting touch? Will Rudy ever be a driver? Will Martell be healthy enough to play? Will Nicolas be able to refine his offensive repetoire and get a bit stronger and bigger? and finally Will Sergio be playing for the Knicks, Real Madrid or JKV Joventut next year?
I am pretty sure you are wrong here. His PER at the start of the year was ungodly 21 - 2nd on the Blazers behind Roy. He went down to around 18 until just the end of the year - I am pretty certain this is what I have seen - just wish I have a way to track it.
It was very high ... for about a month, by December it was down to 17 and pretty much held steady at the 15 level the rest of the year. I only know that because I'm pretty OCD about checking that kind of crap every couple of days.
It's strange because I had heard Rudy was a slasher before he came to the NBA. I just assumed that he stopped slashing because of his slight build. The guy really can't afford to go into the paint unless it's a backdoor lob.
This is what I recall, as well. I also like to check these things on a regular basis, especially for the four rookies.
OK - this really annoys me - so I wasted time looking for board posts, blog entries and the like that had Rudy's PER mentioned - with the assumption that his PER there is accurate. Here are some of my findings: Nov 7 Forum entry - 16.69 Nov 18 - Thorpe Archive - 21.05 Nov 20 - Hollinger Archive - 19.74 Jan 20 Blog entry - 16.36 Mar 20 Forum entry - 14.9 Season end - 15.5 This is far from conclusive - and a better idea will probably be to write my own PER calculator and feed it the game log data - but that's an exercise for another day...
There's no way we're trading Rudy unless he nets us an AMAZING trade deal. And let me reiterate that one more time: AMAZING.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2009.html Looking at the per 36 minute stats, it's hard to see how PER could be higher for Rudy than for Blake. 2 PPG better for Rudy, but everything else except 3PA looks better for Blake, or within .1/36 minutes. Blake better at FG%, 3Pt%, and way better in assists. Yet the PER differential is .9 I'm looking at which factor is weighted so heavy in Rudy's favor to make that big a difference, but the formula isn't that straightforward. Could be the extra rebound per game.
As a Rockets fan, I feel obliged to say this is not the correct answer. Maybe sign and trade Artest for Outlaw and Fernandez since you guys hate Travis sooo much around here.
