I think you're going to see quite a bit of shuffling between now and even the end of May regarding draft order; any mock you look at currently probably only has the top two players absolutely pegged and then after that would probably be lucky to have five guys in the right spot.
True enough. I wonder if Cousins might be a Rudy Gay situation though, where his attitude slides him a bit. Rudy Gay was one of those guys who refused to work out for any but the highest picking teams, and then when he slid past the first couple, the slide was on. It just seems the patterns are fitting. #3 pick one minute. #10 the next.
There are too many people on this board who seemingly focus entirely on statistics, as if there is nothing more to the story. If you rely entirely on stats as your proof of a players' performance, then you are entirely disregarding the most important aspect how they play\effect a game when they are on the floor....which should be weighted a hell of a lot more... Amazing that some people can see this with Roy during Game 4 of the playoffs, but when attempting to evaluate another players' performance over the year, suddenly seem incapable of doing so.... What a surprise....well, not really...
Awesome, thank you. This is how I counter on the "jump shooting" front: Jeff Pendergraph: http://www.82games.com/0910/09POR14.HTM DeJuan Blair: http://www.82games.com/0910/09SAS14.HTM In short, there's much more to Jeff than meets the eye. I noticed this watching games; Jeff's a dead-eye shooter when he's open, all the way out to 18 feet.
Blazerboy brought up the jump shooting front. How do you "counter" that? He said that it was an NBA skill and Blair didn't have any. I showed how retarded it looked to say that elite rebounding wasn't as good from your PF as 44% jump shooting. I didn't say that Blair was a great jump shooter. He then brought up how, sure, DC's jump shooting wasn't bad, but that his "defense and defensive potential" were better (post 49). So I shot that down. Now you're saying that Pendergraph's actually a "dead-eye" shooter b/c he shot 54% on the 16 jumpers he took this entire year? 9 made shots gives your eye the impression not only that there's "more to him", but that he's a "dead-eye"? I said that the interpretation of Dante jump shooting as a) good for the team and b) as an NBA-ready skill was not good, and showed how I personally think (and think that most people agree with me) that, for however much someone may or may not have wanted to draft Blair, he put up ELITE numbers in rebounding, taking shots in the paint (read the links in post 65...right below Blair's 36% jump shooting it says that he took 75 percent of his shots in the paint. And made 62% of them). Maybe you want your backup PF taking 75% of his shots as jumpers with a .88point per shot efficiency. Hell, that qualifies you to be Nate's assistant. I'd prefer my backup PF have an elite skill that many big men are supposed to have--rebounding. wtf is going on here? In addition, Blazerboy...read BlazerCaravan's post 53 ...that's where the knees question came from.
All due respect I think you are unfairly characterizing most people on this board. I think most people give a player the eye test and then they look at the stats to see if they jive with what their eyes are telling them. When there is a discrepancy that's where the conversations start (especially when it comes to evaluating reserves or low minutes guys).
You're interpreting the wrong portion of the right stat incorrectly. Yes, if Roy was shooting 75% of his shots at a .88 point per shot efficiency, he wouldn't be an All-Star. Duncan, in potentially his most inefficient year ever, shot only 59% of his shots as mid-range jumpers. Parker only took 55% of his as mid-range jumpers. As it is, Dante's true shooting percentage of 51% was 53rd of the 71 PFs. (Blair's, btw, was at 56%...and that was after factoring in his horrible foul shooting) If you look here (scroll halfway down to where it shows percentage of minutes at each position)....he didn't guard anyone else. 0% of team minutes guarding SFs. 0% of team minutes guarding centers. 17% of team minutes guarding PFs.
Wait, what? I never said that. Strawman alert. You're definitely winning the argument about something nobody is arguing. Strawman #1. It looks even more retarded to argue against something that nobody said. Strawman #2. No you didn't. You picked a stat, but didn't show how it compared to other players in the league. DC isn't a "bad" jump shooter. The stats back it up. Damn dude. You're just building some amazing strawmen. Please tell me where I want DC to be my backup PF. I don't want, or project, DC to be a PF in the NBA. So your entire argument / rambling above is moot. Strawman #3. Ok. I never brought up the knees because it has nothing to do with the original conversation. Blair just happened to be an example of what we were originally talking about. Did you do as I suggested and actually read what this conversation was about? It was NOT about who is or will be a larger impact player between Blair and DC. You and your strawmen are turning it into that.
Ah, I see. So now you want to change the stat that you use to "prove" that DC is a "bad" shooter. Gotcha. Carry on. Exactly. It is called small (too small it isn't even recorded here) sample size. Like I said, you're the one assuming his future position will be PF, not me.
Uh, you do know Claver missed most of the season before the draft because of injury? At least Blair has been healthy since HS.
Before the injury Claver was projected to go in the top-10. Our gain. But, I guess the same can be said about Blair.
Chad Ford with an update on Avery Bradley on his draft blog (insider only): http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/blog?name=nba_draft Excerpt: Definitely not a point guard, but a shooter who can guard point guards might fit in nicely?
i realize that article is probably just trying to hype players up for the draft, but it's basically all just hyperbole. avery bradley was the 3rd best perimeter defender on his own team(and may have been 4th had varez ward not gotten injured early in the season), not the best perimeter defender in the country.
That's enough for me. This team needs a great perimeter defender at either guard spot. The fact he has offensive game is just icing on the cake.
Re: Cahd Ford's draft blog I was upset that we didn't draft Blair, but I thought that Blair is a boom/bust guy. He was an INCREDIBLE rebounder in college, and that is a skill that translates to the NBA... but he might be injury prone and entirely worthless. I would have rather us take a guy who is 50% big-time contributor, 50% waste of a roster space than, say Pendergraph. Ed O.
Daniel Orton is almost a lock to be a lotto pick. If he stayed one more year at Kentucky he could have been a top-10 pick next summer. Most mocks have him going in the late lotto. That's amazing for a player who only averaged 3 PPG - 3 RPG as a backup to DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson. It's purely based off of his potential. At 6'10" 265 lbs, he's a load. Chad Ford compared him to a quick, more athletic Kendrick Perkins.
I've some time at lunch. Here goes: (BTW, one of the peeves I'm trying to gain some patience about is the internet custom of utilizing the word "strawman" when you don't really want to talk about what someone else is attempting to show you. So if this seems snarky, I apologize. But damn, man) 1. Blaze01 started this off in post 44 with the comment: I thought this was ridiculous, and showed that vs. just JP, since "winning" that part was enough for me to show that the entire comment was flawed to start. 2. Then in post 46, Blaze01 insinuated that I don't watch the players on the court, and said that Dante showed I noticed that Blaze01 didn't refute anything I said about JP (how could he?), but brought up DC's "automatic jumper", being a "good defender and rebounder" and "more potential and a more important definable NBA skill (that mid range shot) than Blair did, who he said was just a "good rebounder". So I, who doesn't think that mid-range shooting is a "more important definable NBA skill" than rebounding (since it's the most inefficient shot in basketball after the half-court 3), disagreed, and asked again about JP. 3. After being shown the part about mid-range jumper being horribly inefficient, blazerboy30 said: So, since Blair's defensive rating is better than DC's, and I feel that his "defensive potential" is slightly limited since he's playing backup PF and not great at it (which I proved in post 51 with defensive rating and PERAgainst), I figured that he wasn't saying much about his jump shooting anymore, but I responded to the "44% isn't bad" comment by saying that you're only getting .88 points per shot from DC's primary weapons (he shoots it 75% of the time), which is worse than if we had a one dimensional 3-point gunner who shot 29%. At this point, I was pretty sure that the conversation was over, since all anyone could say about drafting DC and JP over Blair was that they had "more definable NBA skills" than an elite rebounder who's better than them statistically and visually in almost every aspect of the game--while playing the same position. 4. Then BlazerCaravan came in to say that he agreed with Nik and I that Blair's "obviously a better player than JP and DC", but (to me, anyway) insinuated we were being wishy-washy about drafting players with bad knees. Since I was slightly confused, I didn't know if he was talking about Roy (the only other player we've drafted with knee problem history) or Oden (who didn't have any knee problems until after we drafted him). 5. In post 58, Blazerboy came back sarcastically with Roy, Duncan and Parker's mid-range percentages as if to refute the notion that shooting 44% on mid-range jumpers was horribly inefficient. I notice he didn't use the term Blaze01 used that I was refuting from post 46 ("good mid-range jumper that was pretty damn automatic".) The second quote Blazerboy used in post 58 from me was not directed at him, it was for those who thought 44% midrange shooting was "pretty damn automatic" or that my opinion that it's "horribly inefficient" was wrong. The third quote from me in post 58 WAS directed at Blazerboy, who said earlier that "I think Dante's defense and defensive potential are better than his mid-range jumper". I showed that, while that may be true, his defense wasn't close to Blair's....and the comparison from Blair to DC and JP and how he was better as just about everything than our two draft picks was the crux of everything I've been writing since post 44. And imo, the last line of post 58 ("You're the one assuming we should be judging his defense guarding PFs, not me") was odd, since in the approximately 640 minutes he played this year, PF's (and mostly backup ones) werethe only players he's covered. Any judgment you might have of his defense based on your observation of him against NBA players by definition has to be of him guarding PFs. And Blair's better at it than DC is. 6. Then in post 59, you told me to go reread the thread and that "Nowhere did I, or anybody else on this thread, bring up not drafting him because of his knees." I submit that it was my response to BlazerCaravan in post 53. Maybe you didn't read that part. 7. Then, in post 65, BlazerCaravan used the 82games stats to "counter on the jump-shooting front" (bringing up the comparisons of jumpshooting from JP, DC and Blair). I didn't quite understand this, since nowhere was the opinion that Blair was a prolific or proficient mid-range jump shooter brought up. However, BlazerCaravan used it as proof that . I thought that this was funny, since JP made a total of 8 jumpers ALL YEAR LONG. I guess making 8 jumpers all year qualifies you as a "dead-eye shooter" in BC's world, but not mine. And regardless, what's the conclusion? "There's more to Jeff than meets the eye". I'm sure there is. He might like Russian Poetry, or be a chess wizard, or like posting on Facebook 8 hours a day. The POINT I'VE BEEN ARGUING SINCE POST 44 is that, regardless of what more there is to JP than meets the eye, that Blair is a better player than both in almost every single measurable category, passes the eye test, got more minutes than both of our guys, and was more productive in the minutes he did get. Now, if I can refute the existence of any other confusion or strawmen on your part, I'd be happy to. If you'd like to weigh in on the point ("Blair's better, we should've drafted him, and we said this 10 months ago") I'd be happy to continue discussing it.
