Breakout List (Part 2)

Posted on June 13, 2013 | No Comments

Note: This article also appears on Raptors Republic.

So after discussing who I thought was overrated in the NBA, up next is my underrated list.

Like the overrated list, there are a lot of people I left off. Here are some of them:

Stephen Curry: When Curry didn’t make the All Star team, the consensus was that he was probably the biggest omission. He averaged 22.9 ppg, with a .589 True Shooting percentage (5th among point guards), and his passing (6.9 apg) is very underrated. It’s hard to call him underrated now, though, especially after these playoffs have become his coming out party and there have been countless articles written about him being the best shooter in the game today.

Klay Thompson: I went back and forth on whether to include him in the underrated category. On one hand, his game actually regressed this season, statistically. Yes, his basic numbers were up (points per game, etc), but that was mainly because his minutes and shots increased. And after starting out hot against the Spurs in the first two games, they shut him down in the four games since, when he scored just 10.5 ppg and shot well under 40% from the field.

Ty Lawson: Lawson was probably the toughest omission because I think he’s probably still underrated, but I think people are realizing that he’s as close to a franchise player as they have.

If I wrote this list before the playoffs had started, players like Ty Lawson, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson probably would have made the underrated list. Both Lawson and Curry have become their team’s franchise players and are will make the West’s All Star guard selection even more interesting next season¹.

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Thaddeus Young: Thaddeus Young’s name never comes up in really any conversation, even when you’re talking about the Philadelphia 76ers. He’s an excellent defender, is a very efficient scorer, can play either forward position, despite being undersized, and really his only big weakness is his lack of three point shot. And for some reason, it’s gotten worse every season since his third.

His biggest problem is probably that the Sixers have never really known what to do with him. He’s kind of like a poor man’s Josh Smith, without the headaches. And he’s been played out of position for most of his career at power forward despite not having the height or the bulk to be an ideal size for that position.

Ersan Ilyasova: In a league that prizes stretch fours, Ilyasova is strangely underrated. Despite a poor start to the season, he finished 4th in the league in three point percentage, but also helped out on the boards enough to grab 7.1 in just 27 minutes per game.

Since the All Star break, Ilyasova averaged 17.2 ppg, while shooting .449 from three and even better inside the 3-point line, and grabbed 9 rebounds per game. Plus, while he’s not a stopper, he’s actually a pretty good defender.

TOP 5 UNDERRATED

Amir Johnson

Raptors' Johnson celebrates his slam dunk over Knicks' Randolph during the first half of NBA pre-season action in Montreal

When Bryan Colangelo re-signed Amir to his current contract, many NBA pundits and a lot of Raptor fans, figured this was just another example of Colangelo giving out bad contracts to underserving players. While Amir definitely had trouble staying on the court due to foul trouble, he was (and is) and young, athletic big man who defends, rebounds, scores efficiently and actually helps the team win.

Pat Riley once said that hustle is a skill, because not everyone can do it. Amir can and does.

Since he signed the contract, Amir has shed his penchant for fouling, having a career low last season, and was arguably the Raptors’ MVP last season while playing a career high 28 mpg. He has even added a jumpshot to prevent his defenders from cheating on him, and he’s shown himself to be a good passer, especially to big to big.

He’s got the 17th highest PER and the fourth highest True Shooting Percentage among power forwards in the league. He’s a coaches dream because he plays the same whether he comes off the bench or starts, plays hurt and does whatever the coach asks of him including playing center and defending bigger stronger players, all without complaining once.

In a perfect world he would be playing on a playoff team and more people would know just how good he is. Hopefully that will happen fairly soon.

Nikola Pekovic

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Quick, name the 5 best true centers in the NBA this past season. Did you name Pekovic? If not, why not? Last season, in 31 minutes per game, Pekovic scored 16.3 ppg on 52% shooting, exhibiting one of the best post games in the league, grabbed 8.8 rebounds and set some of the hardest, most bone shattering picks in the league. Blake Griffin called him the most difficult player to play against in the NBA because he’s so strong and impossible to move. Plus, unlike a lot of centers in the game today, he can hit free throws (.744), so you can actually have him on the court at the end of close games.

Among all centers in the league, Pekovic was 5th in PER, 12th in True Shooting Percentage, 14th in free throw percentage, 14th in rebounding and 8th in points. And that includes faux centers like Bosh and Kevin Garnett.

While Kevin McHale might have done a poor job as GM for the Timberwolves, drafting Pekovic with the first pick in the second round showed he could do some things right. Of course, drafted just behind Pekovic were Mario Chalmers, DeAndre Jordan, Omar Asik, Luc Mbah a Moute and Goran Dragic were all drafted after him in the second round, so you could almost pick prospects out of a hat and still come up with a decent players in the first half of the second round, in 2008. Still, Danny Ainge, selecting one spot ahead of McHale, picked J.R. Giddens, who played a total of 38 games. Sure, Ainge raped McHale for Garnett, but the T-Wolves got Pekovic right from under their noses.

Mike Conley

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Like Pekovic, Conley’s name doesn’t generally come up when naming the best point guards in the league, but it probably should.

Conley was drafted 4th overall in 2007 and it was believed he would immediately become Memphis’ answer at PG. He was the best player on his Ohio team that went all the way to the NCAA Finals, exhibiting the leadership, as well as passing and scoring ability to make most believe he’d make an easy transition to the NBA and possibly become a star.

He struggled in his first season, but Memphis believed in him and stuck with him, and every year he improved.

The biggest boost he got was probably when the Grizzlies traded Rudy Gay and more responsibility fell to Conley. None of his numbers will jump out at anyone, but Memphis plays a slow-it-down game that isn’t good for showing off gaudy stats. Conley, though, has grown into a player with few weaknesses. He’s a very good floor general who can shoot from anywhere on the floor and is one of the best defenders at the point guard position.

His contract, which looked horrible when it was signed, now pretty much is in line with what he should be making.

Wesley Matthews

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I actually had Matthews on, at one point, but removed him. In today’s NBA, where shooting guards pretty much need to do two things well, shoot threes and defend, Matthews is the perfect role player. He’s just below Klay Thompson, in three point shooting percentage and is an underrated defender. His salary is manageable, as well.

On a bad team (Portland didn’t make the playoffs, but they have talent), he would be asked to do too much, but he’s the type of player that becomes more valuable the better his teammates are.

In the comments section, I stated that I’d rather have Wesley Matthews, at his salary, than DeMar DeRozan at his, next year. Many took this as a slight of DeRozan, but the fact is that while DeRozan is a more explosive athlete who is more exciting to watch, Matthews is the type of shooting guard you need in the league today. Anyone who has watched the playoffs, especially the Finals and Conference Finals, can see how valuable a wing player who can shoot the three and defend is, and how much of a liability a shooting guard who can’t do even one of those is.

Tony Parker

Warning: This is a cut and paste job from my last Lessons Learned from the Playoffs column, which can be found here. I was going to write something different, but realized I said all I wanted then.

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I spoke about this on PhDSteve’s podcast last week, but Tony Parker might be the most underrated player in the last decade. He’s been the Spurs leading scorer four of the last five years. In the four years he’s led the team in scoring, the team has an average winning percentage of .717. That’s an average of 59 wins, for an 82 game season (last year they only played 66 games). And the team reached the Conference Finals twice and the Finals once, during the years he lead the team in scoring.

He’s been on three All NBA teams, five All Star teams and has a Finals MVP.

This past season, he was 9th in the league in scoring, 6th in assists per game, had the 17th highest field goal percentage, which was the best among all guards, and for those that care about this, had the 10th highest PER.

Yet the Spurs have rarely been called Tony Parker‘s team, and when bringing up the top players in the league, his name is rarely mentioned.

He absolutely eviscerated the leagues best defense and made the league’s best perimeter defender look pedestrian, in the series against Memphis.

While I am a massive Tim Duncan fan, and think he deserves all the accolades he gets (and even deserves more), if the Spurs win the Championship this year, it will be because of Tony Parker, who will become one of only ten players in NBA history to win the Finals MVP more than once. Just to give you an idea of the company he would be in, that’s Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, TIm Duncan, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar andWillis Reed. Reed is probably the worst player in that list, and he finished 30th in Bill Simmons’ All Time Player Ranking in his Big Book of Basketball.

1. Even with Kobe’s injury and him out of the race, the West will still have Chris Paul, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Tony Parker, all of whom made the All Star team last season. Then there’s Andre Iguodala, who probably deserved to make it.

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Category: 76ers, Blazers, Bucks, Grizzlies, NBA, Nuggets, Raptors, T-Wolves, Warriors

Lessons Learned from the Playoffs (Conference Finals)

Posted on June 5, 2013 | 2 Comments

I think it’s fitting that Miami and San Antonio both made it to the Finals because, in my opinion, those two teams have played the best team ball, on both ends of the floor, than anyone else in the league for most of the season. Oklahoma, when healthy, had more talent than San Antonio but they didn’t play as a team nearly as well as the Spurs. Memphis and Indiana certainly played great team defense and were the best in the league, in that department, but neither team was impressive on the other end of the floor.

Both the Spurs and Heat can run an offense that will make even the grumpiest basketball purist smile, and both teams have sophisticated defenses that can frustrate an opponent.

But before we get to the Finals, let’s look back at the Conference Finals and see what lessons were learned (or had confirmed) by what we saw from those games. Quite frankly, a lot of the lessons were carry overs from round two, like how size still matters (the ONLY reason Indiana pushed Miami to seven games was because they were the bigger team) and defense is paramount to being a true contender. But there a couple I haven’t discussed yet.

PLAYERS’ WEAKNESSES GET EXPOSED IN THE PLAYOFFS

This isn’t anything revolutionary, but I think people often forget this during the regular season. Guys like Jamal Crawford and ~~Josh Smith~~ J.R. Smith are explosive offensive players, but their lack of defense makes them more of a liability once the playoffs start and can kill their team the deeper they go. So while the two players finished one and two in 6th Man of the Year voting, and were keys to their teams’ regular season success, if a team is truly interested in building a contender, maybe those aren’t the kind of players you want.

It’s not just poor defensive players that will hurt their team, it’s poor offensive players, too.

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Take, for example, the Spurs-Grizzlies series. San Antonio had two strategies going in. They were going to go at Zach Randolph‘s defense on the offense end, making him defend their pick and roll, something he’s simply not good at. And on the defensive end, they crowded the paint and swarmed Randolph in the post (taking advantage of his poor passing from the post) and made Memphis’ perimeter players beat them from the outside. They basically dared Tony Allen, a poor offensive player, to score on them.

During the regular season, Allen shot 12% from 3-point range (no, that’s not a typo), and was below average shooting everywhere, including at the rim. The league average shooting from 3-9 feet was 38%. Allen shot 28% from that range.

Allen went 2-11 in game 2 and 2-9 in game 4, and went 0-1 from three point range for the entire series.

Getting back to Zach Randolph, during the regular season, he averaged 1.4 assists per game despite the highest Usage Rate on the team. There 30 players in the league, this past regular season, that were at least 6’9, played at least 30 mpg and scored at least 12 ppg. Zach Randolph was 26th among them in assists per game.

I’d say they knew that doubling Randolph wouldn’t hurt them.

During the regular season, Chris Bosh was the only Miami big man to average, at least, 20 mpg. He played center, despite his preference not to, and his outside shooting helped space the floor for the Heat’s small ball. But he’s a finesse big man who doesn’t like, and isn’t good at, banging in the paint, and since he left Toronto, his rebounding numbers have declined from 10.8 rpg in his last year in Toronto, to 6.8 rpg this past season. That’s almost getting down to Bargnani-bad.

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And Indiana took advantage of Bosh’s lack of rebounding, killing Miami on the boards. I can’t count the number of times the commentators said the Pacer’s best offense was just throwing the ball up at the rim and having Indiana’s big men to go after the offensive rebound. In the seven game series, Indiana grabbed a total of 90 rebounds which, per game, is what the averaged when they finished first, in that department, during the regular season.

Against Indiana, Bosh averaged 4.3 rebounds per game. Normally, it’s hard to make any judgements about numbers like this with such a limited sample size, but considering how much Miami’s lack of rebounding hurt them, Bosh needed to step up and didn’t.

TONY PARKER IS AN ELITE PLAYER

He’s been on three All NBA teams, five All Star teams and has a Finals MVP.

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Yet the Spurs have rarely been called Tony Parker‘s team, and when bringing up the top players in the league, his name is rarely mentioned.

He absolutely eviscerated the leagues best defense and made the league’s best perimeter defender look pedestrian, in the series against Memphis.

While I am a massive Tim Duncan fan, and think he deserves all the accolades he gets (and even deserves more), if the Spurs win the Championship this year, it will be because of Tony Parker, who will become one of only ten players in NBA history to win the Finals MVP more than once. Just to give you an idea of the company he would be in, that’s Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, TIm Duncan, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Willis Reed. Reed is probably the worst player in that list, and he finished 30th in Bill Simmons’ All Time Player Ranking in his Big Book of Basketball.

FINAL(S) PREDICTIONS

Miami vs San Antonio: San Antonio in 6

In the last series, I underrated Miami’s difficulty playing against bigger teams, and overrated how much Memphis’ defense would hurt San Antonio. Miami is a great team with the best player in the game, but they simply have more weaknesses than San Antonio. They struggle against bigger team, of which San Antonio is one. They defense is predicated on making their opponent panic and make mistakes, something the Spurs rarely do. And the only player with a chance at slowing Parker down is LeBron James, who will be worn out if he has to defend him very much.

Indiana prevented LeBron from scoring in the paint, for most of the series, and that hurt Miami. San Antonio’s interior defense is almost as good, and the guy who will be asked to defend LeBron more than anyone, Kawai Leonard, doesn’t have to score on the other end like Paul George did.

And there isn’t anyone on the Heat that can defend Duncan in the post. During the regular season, Roy Hibbert took just 10 shots a game. Against the Heat’s small front court, he took 15. Duncan has not been much of an offensive weapon for the Spurs so far in the playoffs (not counting overtime), but it’s a good bet they’ll start pounding the ball into him against Miami.

LeBron is going to get what he gets, but Dwyane Wade looks hurt and Bosh should, again, be overwhelmed by the Spurs’ big front line. I just think San Antonio has too many advantages over the Miami.

If the series ends up going seven, I don’t know if you can bet against LeBron, but if it goes fewer, I’m picking San Antonio to win their 5th title in fifteen years.

NBA Finals Game 4: San Antonio Spurs v Cleveland Cavaliers

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Category: Heat, NBA, Playoffs, Spurs

Tempering Expectations on Ujiri

Posted on June 2, 2013 | No Comments

This article also appears on Raptors Republic.

Masai Ujiri has finally accepted the Raptors 5 year, $15 million offer to run the basketball side of the team and wasted no time putting his own stamp on the team. Why he took so long doesn’t matter now, so I don’t see the point of dwelling on it.

While Ujiri’s hiring is definitely reason for optimism among Raptor fans, considering what they’ve been through lately (or really for most of their 17 year existence), history tells us we probably should temper those expectations. For a couple of different reasons.

When Bryan Colangelo was hired to great pomp and circumstances back in 2006, I was one of the many Raptor fans applauding. I knew he’d never built a team that had made it to the Finals, and was well aware of his disregard for defense, despite the overwhelming evidence that you need to be good at it if your really want a legitimate shot at winning a title. But he also had great success in Phoenix, drafting four All Stars including an MVP, with the highest pick being 9th, putting together a team that went to the Conference Finals twice and tied a franchise record with 62 wins, in 2005, the year he won his first Executive of the Year award.

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Despite the flaws of his teams, and thus in himself as a General Manager, there was reason to be optimistic when he came to Toronto. Especially considering the act he followed.

By any measure, Colangelo had a better resume when he took over the Raptors organization than Ujiri does right now.

Like Colangelo, Ujiri won an Executive of the Year award building a high performing regular season team that was too flawed to be a real title contender. In fact, even Ujiri himself admitted, before the playoffs, that Denver wasn’t a contending team despite winning 57 games, which was good for the third best record in the West and a franchise record.

Ironically, the Denver team Ujiri built seemed to be a more successful model of what Colangelo was trying to do in Toronto. An athletic, starless team who could outscore most of their opponents and entertain the fans. Unfortunately, history tells us that’s not how you build a true contender.

And coincidentally, Colangelo and Ujiri were both wooed away from running other successful teams with a 5 year, $15 million contract.

RAPTORS MASAI UJIRI

Now I am not suggesting that history is about to repeat itself, so there’s no reason to jump to any conclusions. What Ujiri has over Colangelo is that Ujiri understood Denver was not a real contender, despite winning all those games. Colangelo has never shown himself to be that much of a realist. While Colangelo is known for his ability to sell the moves he makes as better than they actually are, Ujiri is known more for his “refreshing honesty“. In that way, they couldn’t be more different.

Of course, there are other differences that give Raptor fans reason to be optimistic. Ujiri is already apparently looking to trade Bargnani, something Colangelo never did. That in itself should be music to many fans’ ears.

Ujiri also is known to have the patience that Colangelo has lacked over his tenure in Toronto. And while Colangelo certainly liked to push the narrative that the Raptors were on the forefront of analytics, reality has shown things to be somewhat different, at least in practice. Ujiri, on the other hand, has been a regular attendee of the MIT Sports Analytics Sloan Conference, and has been known to take a strong interest in analytics.

And trading for a rather unpredictable player, like JaVale McGee, is also something Colangelo probably would not have done, although it’s hard to say whether or not that’s a strength, especially after giving McGee a 4 year-$44 million extension that now looks like a bad deal.

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That does bring up a few more similarities between the two, unfortunately. Like Colangelo, Ujiri hasn’t been shy about handing out big contracts to players that don’t always deserve it. As mentioned, he overpaid McGee, who promptly fell out of the starting lineup. He then gave Danilo Gallinari a four year, $42 million extension.

While Gallinari is a good player, he’s not worth the borderline All Star salary that he’s currently making (what is it with Ujiri and Colangelo overpaying tall, jumpshooting Italians?). Next year, Denver will be paying four players more than $45 million, and not one of them made the All Star game this past season, and may not make it next year, either.

It is very difficult to predict what Ujiri will do and how he will do as General Manager of the Toronto Raptors, though. Colangelo’s tenure in Toronto looked nothing like his years in Phoenix. Joe Dumars went from looking like a genius who built a “starless” Championship team (I would debate the starless part) to a guy who would fit in nicely in Bill Simmons’ non-annual Atrocious GM Summit without even changing teams. Grantland recently had an article talking about this very thing.

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The fact is that Ujiri has been put in charge of a Raptors roster that looks nothing like the one he was given in Denver. Denver won 53 games the season before he took control. They’d made the playoffs the previous seven seasons, and featured one of the best players in the NBA, Carmelo Anthony. The Raptors are an overpaid, underperforming team who couldn’t make the playoffs in an Eastern Conference that featured an 8th seed Milwaukee team basically going door-to-door asking teams to overtake them so they wouldn’t have to face Miami in the first round.

We have already gotten a glimpse of what might be up Ujiri’s sleeve, with him basically gutting the front office of the team, including the team’s longest serving employee, Jim Kelly, and the guy Colangelo was recommending take over his job, Ed Stefanski. It’s hard to imagine him getting rid of everyone that put this mess together and then decide to stay the course with the guys on the floor.

Dealing Andrea Bargnani is Ujiri’s first priority. But there’s also a theory out there that MLSE may want to blow this whole thing up, hence the renaming rumblings. So is tanking for Toronto’s own Andrew Wiggins or others in the deep 2014 draft in play? If that’s the case, trading Kyle Lowry now might be a good place to start.

John Chick, CBC Sports

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It’s no secret that a complete teardown would make me happy and, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see that happen. Ujiri has the security of a five year contract, which should give him enough time to blow up the team and build it back up the way he wants.

It is important, however, to keep in mind that Ujiri has never built a contender, and he’s never worked in the front office of a team that has ever made it past the first round of the playoffs. He doesn’t have the Championship pedigree that a guy like Sam Presti had before taking over the Thunder organization. That’s not to say Ujiri doesn’t know how to build a contender or isn’t the right man for the job, but for those of us that remember how similar the mood was when Colangelo took over seven long years ago, we shouldn’t just assume he’s going to be the Mesai(ah) of the Toronto Raptors.

—

Just to stoke the fires of speculation, a little, there was this little tidbit…

Memphis has given permission to coach Lionel Hollins to speak to other teams, league source tells Y! Sports.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) June 2, 2013

And for those waiting for the Underrated portion of my recent series, it’s coming, but more pressing things have pushed back the release date a little.

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Category: NBA, Nuggets, Raptors

2013 Overrated/Underrated/Breakout List (Part 1)

Posted on June 1, 2013 | No Comments

This article also appeared on Raptors Republic.

While many Raptor fans are, not surprisingly, focused more on what’s going on with management, I thought I’d turn the focus back to the guys who make their money on the court.

Bill Simmons has his annual NBA Trade Value List, and Forbes has their overpaid list, so I thought I would start my own annual list. Not to be outdone, and because no column of mine would be complete if it wasn’t at least a couple of thousand words, instead of just one list, I’m going to have three. The 5 most overrated players, the 5 most underrated players and the 5 players who should break out next season.

The parameters I gave myself is that the player had to be healthy for most of the season, and there had to be one Raptor on each list. Now, obviously these lists are not conclusive of anything and are only solely my opinion, so I expect lots of people to tell me I’m wrong.

Of course, there were plenty of omissions and no list would be complete without talking about some of the big ones. Part one is my All Overrated team, so here were my biggest overrated omissions, in no particular order:

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Carmelo Anthony: Anthony was the leagues leading scorer and the best player on a team that won 54 games, good for second in the Eastern Conference, and lead New York to the second round for the first time since Patrick Ewing wore a Knicks jersey. So why would he be overrated? Because for a franchise player, he doesn’t make his teammates better, he’s a poor defender, and he’s not the most adaptable offensive player.

Brandon Jennings: When Jennings came into the NBA, he averaged 25 ppg, shooting .479 and dishing out 5.5 apg in his first eleven games, highlighted by a 55 point game against Golden State in just his 7th game. Since then, his shooting percentage plummeted. In four years, he’s got a career shooting percentage of under 40% but it hasn’t stopped him launching more than 15 shots per game. His decision-making, which was a question mark before he was drafted, hasn’t improved much, and his defense seems to have gotten worse. And many predict he could get as much as $12 million as a free agent this summer?

Dion Waiters: Waiters was one of those draft prospects that jumped up the in the mock drafts after the college season had ended, which is always a bit of a red flag for me. He was the second leading scorer among rookies, this year, and made the All Rookie first team. He also barely shot 40% from the field and 31% from beyond the arc. And he took 13.4 shots to get to his 14.7 ppg.

J.R. Smith/Jamal Crawford: Both are high volume scorers who can score in bunches, and when they’re on they’re two of the best “bad shot makers” in the league. They finished one and two in 6th man of the year voting, and were big reasons why their teams had home court advantage in the playoffs. They’re also absolutely horrible defenders, can kill the offense when they aren’t hitting, and become bigger and bigger liabilities the deeper their teams get in the playoffs.

Dwight Howard: Howard is a three time Defensive Player of the Year winner who lead Orlando to the Finals four years ago. On the downside, he hasn’t been healthy in two years, still looks awkward most of the time on offense, and shot less than 50% from the line the last two years. If you need more evidence of why he’s overrated, read Bill Simmons’ recent article about him.

OVERRATED

Blake Griffin

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In just his third season, Griffin has made the All Star game three times, has made the All NBA second team the last two years and is one of the most exciting players in the game and a regular on ESPN Sports Center highlights. And he’s a career 20-10 player and sees the floor well enough to dish out 3.7 assists per game last season.

Unfortunately, he came into the league with poor defensive instincts and he’s still a poor defender, which Memphis took full advantage of in knocking the Clippers out in the first round. He’s also can’t hit a shot when he steps out of the paint and how exactly has his rebounding gone from 12.1, in his rookie season, to 8.3 last year?

If you’re paying Griffin the money he’s making, you’d hope he’d have at least one elite skills beyond being able to dunk on just about anyone. He’s not a bad offensive player, despite his shortcomings, but you can’t give him the ball and expect him to score. And with his defense as bad as it is, he should be a lot better on the offensive end.

I just don’t know how far the Clippers can go in the playoffs with Griffin. And instead of apparently being weary of Chris Paul’s presence, he should be thanking his lucky stars to have him on the team because I don’t think the Clippers are a playoff team without Paul, with or without Griffin.

Russell Westbrook

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I know what some of you must be saying. Didn’t Westbrook show his value to the Thunder when he got injured and Oklahoma looked nothing like the team that won a Western Conference best 60 games, losing in five games to Memphis in the second round?

Yes and no.

Westbrook is definitely an integral part of the Thunder team and especially to their offense. But that’s, in large part, to head coach, Scott Brooks, “designing” an offense that is so dependant on his ability to create havoc on opposing defenses.

Westbrook’s biggest problem, other than his sometimes horrible defense, is his often brutal decision making. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from this year’s playoffs, it’s how important decision making is to going far in the playoffs.

I still maintain that Houston traded the wrong player when they traded James Harden, and I really think they would be in a better position if they had traded Westbrook for a big man who can score in the post.

David Lee/Al Jefferson

831830 I put these two together not because they play similar games (they don’t) but because they both have the same weakness that can kill their team.

Both guys are double double machines and can score twenty points before half time. They’re also hard workers and popular among teammates. But their defense is so bad it makes Andrea Bargnani look like Marc Gasol.

While On/Off Court stats are not the best indicator of really anything, it is interesting to note that Utah’s opponents had an Offensive Rating of +9.8 when he was on the floor as compared to when he was off.

And David Lee’s opponents actually shot much better at the rim than average when he was trying to protect it.

And, unfortunately, you need a good defensive front line to go far in the playoffs, even in today’s NBA, which means it’s difficult to contend with guys like this on your team.

Golden State would never trade the popular Lee, but maybe they should. An Jefferson will be an in demand free agent this summer, but I would think twice about signing him to the money he’ll be asking.

Damian Lillard

Lillard was the runaway Rookie of the Year, leading all rookies in scoring and assists per game. He was relentless on the offensive end and displayed a confidence seen by few rookies.

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That said, Portland only won 33 games despite Lillard running a team featuring LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews and Nicolas Batum. And Lillard’s defense is BEYOND horrible. In fact, a team featuring him and David Lee would create a defensive singularity so powerful that there would be a real danger of creating a black hole that would destroy the solar system in the blink of an eye. Obviously this is something David Stern and Adam Silver need to keep an eye on.

In a lot of ways, Lillard reminds me of Damon Stoudamire. Stoudamire was the perfect point guard for a bad team because he could dominate the ball and do anything he wanted with it. But as his teams got better, his value declined because he simply wasn’t good enough to dominate the ball on a good team, and he didn’t really have the role player skills to compliment the stars on the team.

The Rookie of the Year award is interesting, because it’s often not given to the best eventual player. Stoudamire’s draft also featured Kevin Garnett, Antonio McDyess, Michael Finley and Rasheed Wallace, each on an All Star and Garnett an MVP, but it was Stoudamire that won the Rookie of the Year award.

Tyreke Evans won Rookie of the Year over James Harden, Stephen Curry, Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson and Ricky Rubio, all of whom are better players than Evans now.

Rudy Gay

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To be honest, I’m not even sure when Gay is even overrated, anymore. Especially with how Memphis scored more efficiently and defended better after they traded him away.

But there are still a lot of people, including a lot of NBA players, who seem to think that Gay is the player Bryan Colangelo tried to sell to Raptor fans and not the inefficient offensive player who hasn’t improved since his rookie season, six years ago.

Memphis gambled, when they offered Gay a max contract before he could even test the market as a restricted free agent (a similar mistake Colangelo made with both Andrea Bargnani and DeMar DeRozan). They assumed he would fulfill the potential he had when he was drafted and become the elite player he certainly had the skills to become.

He didn’t.

And now he’s the Raptor’s problem.

There are some that argue that money shouldn’t matter when rating a player, but it does. If Rudy Gay were making half the money he is (which would be more in line with what he’s actually worth), then he would be still be a Memphis Grizzly and people would be talking about how good a third option he is for them, instead of whether or not the next GM will be able to trade him and his massive contract.

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Next up, the All Underrated team….

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Category: Bucks, Cavs, Clippers, Jazz, Knicks, Lakers, NBA, Raptors, Thunder, Warriors

Lessons Learned from the Playoffs (Round 2)

Posted on May 25, 2013 | No Comments

And now it’s down to four.

Well, one thing’s for sure. These playoffs have highlighted the difference between the East and the West. While every series in the West has been fun and exciting, the East has been like the final season of The Office. Entertaining once in a while, frequently painful to watch, and really only watched by the die hard fans¹.

I find every round gives you something a little different. The stakes are a little higher, the competition a little tougher, and there’s always more storylines to follow.

And like the first round, there were a few lessons I learned (or had confirmed).

THE WARRIORS ARE BETTER CONSTRUCTED THAN THE THUNDER

The Thunder won 13 games more than the Warriors, and have been the team-building model many have wanted to follow throughout the league. In three years, they were able to draft Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and James Harden, three of whom will undoubtably appear on this year’s All NBA team, and go from the lottery to the Finals in just four years.

Sam Presti has been touted as one of the best GMs in the NBA and the Thunder have been on the forefront of the analytics revolution. Plus, teams are looking to pick their front office clean, in their search for GMs, just as they’ve previously done with the Spurs (Rich Cho, the current GM of the Bobcats was the Thunder assistant GM), which has be one of the greatest compliments a franchise can have.

So what exactly is the problem?

Well, both the Thunder and Warriors lost All Stars (and the team’s second best player) to injury early in the first round, and while neither team made it out of the second round, the Warriors barely missed David Lee‘s presence while Oklahoma went from having the league’s most efficient and high scoring offense, to a team that averaged less than 90 points a game against Memphis.

Obviously Russell Westbrook is a better player than David Lee, and more instrumental to the Thunder offense than Lee is, but it goes deeper than that. Golden State was able to overcome the loss of Lee better because they had more weapons.

While Kevin Durant and Kevin Martin were really the only Thunder players, outside of Westbrook, who had the ability to create their own shot and score consistently, Golden State had Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Jarrett Jack, Carl Landry and even Harrison Barnes.

Serge Ibaka was Oklahoma’s third leading scorer, but all he proved was that he can’t create for himself and desperately needs to work on his post up game.

Of course, Scott Brooks‘ rather pedestrian offensive sets didn’t help, but that brings up the question of whether or not he’s even the right coach to take the team to a title.

But while Sam Presti has surrounded Durant and Westbrook with role players who fill specific roles, but don’t have the ability to expand on that, Golden State features a roster full of players who can step up, if needed, making it more likely they’ll be able to withstand droughts or injuries to their key players better than the Thunder.

And Golden State features more two-way players who can score AND defend consistently (I’m looking at you Kevin Martin).

If you take away Golden State’s two best players and Oklahoma’s two best players, which team would you rather have?

BIG MEN BEATS SMALL BALL

This season we supposedly saw the evolution of the NBA towards small ball, highlighted by Miami’s domination despite not having a legit center on the team for the majority of the season. There were other examples, though. The Knicks won 54 games with Carmelo Anthony as their starting power forward, and Denver won 57 games with Danilo Gallinari often times the tallest players on the court.

And then came the playoffs. Denver was bounced in the first round and the Knicks struggled against and aged and injury depleted Celtics team and their vaunted offence (3rd most efficient offence in the league during the regular season) came to a crashing halt against the Pacers.

Three of the four teams left also happen to have three of the biggest front lines in the league. And the fourth team happens to feature LeBron James, who is bigger and stronger than most starting power forwards in the league, but also happens to be the most dominant offensive player in the NBA and one of the best defensive players. Miami could run anything and be pretty successful at it.

I think the whole small ball revolution thing is overstated and more likely a trend, much like Mike D’Antoni‘s 7-seconds or less was. It’s definitely useful, especially in the regular season and in short stretches in the playoffs, but the change we’ve seen has been done more out of necessity, rather than due to it being a better way to play. The dearth of quality centers and lack of good 2-way power forwards has made going small a good way to compensate while knowing few teams will be able to punish you for going small.

Is there any doubt that Oklahoma would be a much better playoff team if they had a big man who could score in the post, as well as defend? They certainly wouldn’t have missed Westbrook’s presence nearly as much if they had a post threat that demanded double teams and could open up the shooters more.

If you want to be a force in the playoffs, you need to be able to compete with the big boys, and you can’t do that without a big front line.

This is obviously good news for the Raptors. For those lamenting Colangelo turning down James Harden for Jonas Valanciunas, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. Harden is obviously the better player, but if the Raptors want to be successor in the playoffs, they’ll need a guy like Valanciunas.

GOOD COACHING MATTERS

There is a line of thinking that coaching is overrated. The claim is that there are only a small handful of coaches that even make a difference, so unless Gregg Popovich is walking through the door, it really matters very little who the coach is. It explains why we see so many of the same coaches recycled throughout the league, and why Vinnie Del Negro still has a job.

And that may be true, to a degree, in the regular season. In the playoffs, however, coaching matters. Over a seven game series, it’s the adjustments that coaches make that are often the difference between going home early and staying for another round.

After getting blown out by the Nets in the first game of the first round, Tom Thibodeau made some adjustments that slowed the pace and shut down the lane. If the Bulls weren’t being coached by Thibodeau, they probably would have started their summer vacation a couple of weeks earlier.

Memphis wasn’t necessarily a more talented team than the Clippers, but they were definitely better coached. And Lionel Hollins is a better coach than Scott Brooks, too.

That’s why, if I was Memphis , I would lock Hollins up long term, offering him a 10 year contract. It tells the players that this is his team, and it allows the organization to create a system around him and acquire players that fit that system.

Well coached teams play differently than regular teams. No matter what the talent level, they usually do what they’re supposed to do, even if the final result isn’t what they’d hoped. Obviously it helps to have players who fit what the coach wants to run, but the wrong players will tend to play better with a good coach.

Is Dwane Casey the type of coach that makes a difference? Do his teams seem well coached to you? Do his players develop well?

I’ll leave that for you to decide.

DEFENSE STILL MATTERS

Defense has alway been a key ingredient in Championship teams. And despite more of a focus on small ball, and a shortage of good two way big men, the top three defensive teams all made it to the Conference Finals. And Miami isn’t far behind, at 9th, in defensive efficiency.

I’ve always talked about how the deeper you get in the playoffs, the more likely weaker defensive players will be exploited, and those weak links on defense will become more and more difficult to overcome.

That’s why it’s important to build a team with a good defensive base from the start, and not have players that you need to cover for. Because if you have any Championship hopes for your team, you know that you’ll get to a point when you can’t cover for those players, and you’re likely to end up losing because of them.

PREDICTIONS FOR THE CONFERENCE FINALS

San Antonio vs Memphis: San Antonio in 6

Truth be told, I’m writing this after their first game, but that didn’t change my prediction.

I have a difficult time watching Memphis in the Conference Finals for a couple of reasons. The first is because I know in some different reality, they are still the Vancouver Grizzlies and I’m anxiously awaiting the franchise’s first Conference Finals home game, where I’ll be sitting, cheering them on in person.

The second reason is because this is a team that came into the league the same time as the Toronto Raptors, and didn’t even make the playoffs for their first 8 seasons, finishing below the Raptors in the standings for all but one of those years. And now they have made the playoffs more times than the Raptors and have gone deeper than the Raptors ever have.

But that’s not why I’m picking them to lose in six. I honestly wouldn’t have a problem seeing them get to the Finals, especially now that the guy who was responsible for ripping the Grizzlies out of Vancouver is no longer associated with the club: Michael Heisley.

Memphis is an excellent defensive team and very well coached. Marc Gasol and Mike Conley are both underrated, and they have some very good role players. But their offense is below average and San Antonio is simply a better team on both ends of the floor.

Miami vs Indiana: Indiana in 6

Just kidding. I wanted to see if you were still paying attention. Actually, I’m picking Miami in 5, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they sweep the Pacers. While the Pacers defense is excellent, like Memphis, their offense leaves something to be desired, and Miami will exploit that. David West isn’t big enough to take advantage of Miami’s lack of interior defense, and Roy Hibbert simply isn’t enough of an offensive threat to make the Heat pay.

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