Spoiler [+]
Eastern Conference:
- Atlanta Hawks.
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]JEFF TEAGUE, PG[/h4]
Projection: 13.7 pts, 3.6 reb, 7.0 ast per 40 min; 12.16 PER | Player card
• Shoot-first point guard with quick first step who likes to drive to basket.
• Outstanding college shooter who struggled to adjust to pro 3-point line.
• Hyper, high-risk, gambling defender; blocks shots but fouls far too often.
The mutterings from the Hawks after the season were that Teague needed to play more, but I wonder if we were watching the same guy. While he certainly showcased the talent to create shots and defend the position, and he distributed the ball decently enough, he couldn't put the ball in the basket.
As a shoot-first point guard, that's a problem. Teague placed 66th out of 71 point guards in TS percentage and nailed only seven 3-pointers all year, which was unexpected after he hit 44 percent at Wake Forest a year earlier. The hope is that he can turn the corner in his second season, and if he does, the point guard job awaits on a silver platter for him.
Teague also needs to calm down on defense. He excels at blocking shots from behind but lands in that situation far too often because he's beaten so easily. He also rated third among point guards in fouls per minute, which is unacceptable for a starter.
[h4]JOE JOHNSON, SG[/h4]
Projection: 21.6 pts, 4.9 reb, 4.8 ast per 40 min; 17.98 PER | Player card
• Excellent midrange shooter with size, strength to play over top of most defenses.
• Handles ball like a point guard but lacks quick burst to penetrate and create.
• Uses size effectively on D; one of league's most durable and consistent players.
If I were to describe Johnson in one word, it would be "reliability." It's not that he can go off for 40 points -- something he's accomplished only once in the past four years -- but rather that he nearly always gets 20. He never turns the ball over, he never gets hurt, and he can seemingly play 40 minutes night after night without any sign of fatigue.
The same applies to his defense -- he guards quick guards one night and big wings the next, and while he's not a shut-down defender by any means, he uses his size very effectively by making opponents play over the top of him.
Johnson's rates of free throws and assists both declined sharply, which normally would tell you that he got to the basket less. But in his case, he actually shot more at the rim than he did in any of his previous three years with the Hawks, taking more than a third of his shots in the basket area. That helped lift his shooting to 45.8 percent for the year, saving the rest of his stat line in the process.
[h4]MARVIN WILLIAMS, SF[/h4]
Projection: 14.2 pts, 6.7 reb, 1.6 ast per 40 min; 14.03 PER | Player card
• Good midrange shooter with decent handle, but tends to disappear.
• Good size and leaping ability make him excellent finisher and rebounder.
• Decent lateral movement; solid defender who often guards opponent's best wing.
It was a frustrating year for Williams, who signed a big contract and then followed it up by misplacing his jump shot and generally vanishing for long stretches. Williams made only 36.9 percent of his long 2s and 30.3 percent of his 3s, one year after appearing to be one of the league's most improved shooters. Additionally, he was just 51st among small forwards in usage rate -- his instincts without the ball are poor, so he doesn't get open as much as he should. Plus, he lacks a post game to operate against what are usually smaller wings checking him.
Williams turned in a solid job as the Hawks' wing defensive stopper, but he wasn't an essential component -- he often sat on the bench in the fourth quarters so Jamal Crawford could finish the night out.
[h4]JOSH SMITH, PF[/h4]
Projection: 17.5 pts, 9.1 reb, 4.6 ast per 40 min; 19.23 PER | Player card
• Long-armed, elite leaper provides spectacular shot blocks and transition finishes.
• Underrated ball handler for his size who can lead break and make correct pass.
• Southpaw developing left-block post game, but outside set shot rarely connects.
Smith produced his best season last year and it was outrageous that he didn't make the All-Star team; while Joe Johnson was the go-to guy on offense, Smith was the team's best all-around player.
As was widely reported during the season, shot selection played a huge role. Smith used to take about 55 percent of his shots in the basket area; last season he launched 71 percent from there. In contrast, he tried only seven 3s all season after attempting 87 -- or about 86 too many -- the previous year. He shot worse than ever on long 2s (28 percent) and remains a miserable foul shooter, but because he attempted so many close-in shots, he still shot over 50 percent for the first time in his career.
Smith's ballhandling remains vastly underrated, and he kicked it up another notch in that department last season by averaging a nifty 4.8 assists per 40 minutes. He finished fifth among power forwards in pure point rating and third in assist ratio.
Defensively, of course, he's a terror. He still leaves his feet a bit too much and can lose focus at times, but the negative plays have become dramatically less frequent. He's renowned for his shot blocking but also ranked third among power forwards in steals per minute. Plus, he sports a low foul rate for his position.
[h4]AL HORFORD, C[/h4]
Projection: 15.5 pts, 11.0 reb, 2.7 ast per 40 min; 18.65 PER | Player card
• Quality team defender; struggles against tall post players but otherwise excels.
• Excels at starting break with quick dribble and outlet, and runs floor to finish.
• Will face up in post for jump hooks and shoot midrange J's in half court.
Horford doesn't excel at any one thing, but it's tough to find any weaknesses. His once-mechanical post game looked much more fluid last year, and he's also shooting the ball with increasing confidence: Horford nailed 46.8 percent of his long 2s last year and also improved his mark at the line.
Horford is a strong defensive rebounder who can dribble and pass, which allows him to push his own rebound upcourt to start Atlanta's break. It often looks like he's about to commit a horrific turnover on these forays, but he always manages to find a guard after a breakout dribble or two.
Horford's biggest shortcoming is, well, he's short for a center. He stands 6-10 and taller centers can play right over the top of him on post-ups and outreach him for rebounds; he's really more of a power forward. However, despite giving up inches every night, he fouls very infrequently with only five centers getting whistled less often.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]MIKE BIBBY, PG[/h4]
Projection: 12.1 pts, 3.1 reb, 5.5 ast per 40 min; 11.38 PER | Player card
• Quick, accurate catch-and-shoot stroke makes him lethal weakside weapon.
• An orchestrator at the point but one who rarely penetrates or creates.
• Defensive liability with a capital L who struggles against both size and speed.
Bibby slipped badly at both ends last season and at 32 is starting to show his age; at this point it's difficult to consider him a viable starter. He shot a respectable 38.9 percent on 3s and earned the fourth-lowest turnover rate at his position, so at least he's not taking food off the other player's plates, but he averaged an anemic 13.3 points per 40 minutes. Plus, he never gets to the line anymore; even his miserable 1.0 free throw attempts per game owed mostly to late-game fouling and technical foul shots.
In fact, Bibby is largely relegated to spotting up off the ball while Johnson or Crawford runs the offense. Last season, 79.5 percent of his baskets were assisted, according to Hoopdata.com, which was easily the worst rate among point guards. Similarly, he logged a mere 9.5 percent of his shot attempts in the basket area -- only four players did so less frequently.
Bibby's biggest problem, however, is that he can't defend on the ball. While he remains a smart team defender, his lack of size, strength and mobility make him a neon target for opponents. He should be much less exposed in a bench role.
[h4]JAMAL CRAWFORD, G[/h4]
Projection: 20.5 pts, 3.1 reb, 3.8 ast per 40 min; 16.02 PER | Player card
• Quick, accurate catch-and-shoot stroke makes him lethal weakside weapon.
• An orchestrator at the point but one who rarely penetrates or creates.
• Defensive liability with a capital L who struggles against both size and speed.
Bibby slipped badly at both ends last season and at 32 is starting to show his age; at this point it's difficult to consider him a viable starter. He shot a respectable 38.9 percent on 3s and earned the fourth-lowest turnover rate at his position, so at least he's not taking food off the other player's plates, but he averaged an anemic 13.3 points per 40 minutes. Plus, he never gets to the line anymore; even his miserable 1.0 free throw attempts per game owed mostly to late-game fouling and technical foul shots.
In fact, Bibby is largely relegated to spotting up off the ball while Johnson or Crawford runs the offense. Last season, 79.5 percent of his baskets were assisted, according to Hoopdata.com, which was easily the worst rate among point guards. Similarly, he logged a mere 9.5 percent of his shot attempts in the basket area -- only four players did so less frequently.
Bibby's biggest problem, however, is that he can't defend on the ball. While he remains a smart team defender, his lack of size, strength and mobility make him a neon target for opponents. He should be much less exposed in a bench role.
[h4]ZAZA PACHULIA, C[/h4]
Projection: 12.1 pts, 11.0 reb, 1.7 ast per 40 min; 12.70 PER | Player card
• Tough, physical, foul-prone big man who crashes boards and guards post.
• Passable midrange shooter with decent quickness, ballhandling for size.
• Uses low center of gravity for leverage, but lack of hops limits at-rim play.
Atlanta's chief enforcer was a free throw generator for both sides. He averaged a foul every 5.85 minutes, the fourth-highest rate among centers, but ranked seventh in free throw attempts per field goal attempt. Pachulia has surprisingly quick hands for his size and ranked seventh among centers in steals per minute, but all those reach-ins contributed to a high foul rate.
Otherwise, he's settled into a fairly predictable existence as a generic backup center and is unlikely to change his stripes much in the foreseeable future.
[h4]JORDAN CRAWFORD, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Lanky, leaping guard who also can shoot with range and handle the ball.
• Subpar defender who needs to add strength and increase intensity.
Geez, does that description remind you of anybody? Many have pointed out the uncanny similarities between Jordan Crawford and Jamal Crawford, starting most obviously with their names, but we should probably make sure this Crawford can play before we casually lump the two together too closely.
There is one major difference -- at 6-4, this Crawford has a much different road to creating shots than his eponymous teammate, because he's not able to shoot over the tops of players who are directly in front of him.
[h4]MAURICE EVANS, SF[/h4]
Projection: 12.5 pts, 4.4 reb, 1.4 ast per 40 min; 11.26 PER | Player card
• Extreme low-mistake player who mostly shoots jumpers from corner.
• Good leaper who can finish on break and rebounds well for size.
• Undersized for 3 and a very limited ball handler, but a solid defender.
If you look really closely at the left corner of the Philips Arena basketball court, you can see a depression in the exact shape of Evans' feet. He spent the entire season waiting for Patrick Swayze to ride in and declare that nobody makes him stand in the corner, to no avail.
[h4]Lowest Turnover Ratio, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]TO Ratio[/th][/tr][tr][td]Maurice Evans[/td][td]Atl[/td][td]4.1[/td][/tr][tr][td]Dante Cunningham[/td][td]Por[/td][td]5.7[/td][/tr][tr][td]Devean George[/td][td]GS[/td][td]5.7[/td][/tr][tr][td]Rodney Carney[/td][td]Phi[/td][td]5.7[/td][/tr][tr][td]Peja Stojakovic[/td][td]NO[/td][td]6.3[/td][/tr][/table]
As a result of his fairly limited role, Evans achieved the lowest turnover ratio in the NBA last season, with miscues on just 4.1 percent of his possessions. And he got involved in transition plays and on the glass enough to average a respectable 13.8 points per 40 minutes. Alas, he was less than stellar in his primary offensive role -- Evans made only 33.7 percent of his 3s and had one of the lowest free-throw rates at his position.
[h4]JOSH POWELL, C[/h4]
Projection: 11.2 pts, 8.0 reb, 2.0 ast per 40 min; 7.09 PER | Player card
• Smart, solid but extremely limited frontcourt player.
• Can make open 15-footer and will use body to defend post. Poor finisher at rim.
• A 5 in a 4's body; can't handle ball but lacks size to score inside.
Powell got some minutes as L.A.'s fourth big man but had an awful year, shooting 36.6 percent and ranking dead last among power forwards in TS percentage and PER. Powell's biggest problem is that he doesn't convert nearly enough at the basket; in two pro seasons he's made only 47.7 percent in that area, which is a pathetic figure for a big man. His midrange touch from the previous season abandoned him too, leaving him without a role offensively.
Powell's rebounding numbers also dropped off sharply, and at 27 his career is on life support. He's fortunate the Hawks gave him a contract, because he easily could be toiling in Budapest or Belgrade right now.
[h4]ETAN THOMAS, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Undersized center who blocks shots, rebounds and plays physical.
• Won't create offense, but can finish at rim and make short hooks.
• Extremely injury-prone; has played 49 games in past three seasons.
A center in a power forward's body, Thomas' bigger concern of late is that he rarely has been in a healthy body. Between assorted breaks and sprains and a heart problem, he can't be relied on as a rotation player. Of equal worry is how Thomas played last season when healthy; in 23 games, he averaged only 9.3 points and 8.0 boards per 40 minutes. He won't stay in the league much longer with numbers like that, but one suspects "The Poet" has a bit more left in the tank. As a third center in Atlanta, he's in the right role.
[h4]PAPE SY, F[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Long, athletic wing regarded as having outstanding defensive potential.
• Limited offensive player; a project. Statistically, not a terrible shooter.
Sy played for Le Havre last season in the French League, one of the weaker European confederations, and averaged five points a game while serving as the understudy to former Oregon guard Chamberlain Oguchi. So I think we can safely say this pick was made for potential long-term gains rather than any short-term benefit. Sy has D-League written all over him; wait two years, and then we can judge whether this mystery man produces any benefit for the Hawks.
- Boston Celtics
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]RAJON RONDO, PG[/h4]
Projection: 15.0 pts, 4.6 reb, 9.7 ast per 40 min; 18.84 PER | Player card
• Pesky, disruptive defender with outstanding quickness and freakishly long arms.
• Clever penetrator and passer who can finish at rim or find open man.
• Awful outside shooter whom opponents leave uncovered on perimeter.
Rondo is one of the most unusual players in league annals. He's a top-notch point guard, ranking fifth in Pure Point Rating despite a propensity for turnovers, but there's another part of him that's a power forward: Rondo placed fourth among point guards in rebound rate and took nearly two-thirds of his shots in the basket area, where he converted a phenomenal 59.7 percent.
He's also a major force defensively. Rondo grabbed second in the league in steals per minute; only teammate Tony Allen amassed more. He gambles too much, but his rare combination of length and quickness allows him to recover quickly.
Rondo's dreadful shooting remains his Achilles' heel. He shot 62.1 percent from the line, the worst of any point guard, and 35.3 percent on long 2s. On 3s, he's hopeless: 24.4 percent career. If he ever shoots straight he'll be a superstar; as it is, he's merely an All-Star.
[h4]RAY ALLEN, SG[/h4]
Projection: 17.3 pts, 3.8 reb, 3.1 ast per 40 min; 14.10 PER | Player card
• Ranks among best shooters ever; deadly off screens and money from line.
• Lacks quickness and length but good ballhandler and passer.
• Respectable defender despite giving up inches, quickness to most opponents.
At this point, the differentiating factor for Allen is his total shooting percentage. He no longer creates shots in bunches and he made only 36.3 percent of his 3s, but because he still sneaks in for layups (he's shot better than 60 percent in the basket area the past two seasons), draws fouls and hits midrange jumpers (47.6 percent on long 2s, shots from 16-23 feet), his percentages remain stellar. Allen ranked fourth among shooting guards in TS percentage, and if he had shot his usual percentage on 3s, that mark would have escalated higher.
The other remarkable feat about Allen is his continued defensive vigor. While he's the weakest defender of Boston's five starters, he showed in the Finals that he can be an effective on-ball defender even against elite shooting guards. At 34, he defends with far more zeal than he ever showed in his 20s.
Finally, Allen shot better than 90 percent from the line for the fifth straight season to move to 89.4 percent for his career and has a decent chance at passing Peja Stojakovic (89.45 percent) and moving into the No. 4 position all-time. However, he has little chance of catching the top two men on the list, Mark Price (90.39 percent) and Steve Nash (90.33 percent).
[h4]PAUL PIERCE, SF[/h4]
Projection: 18.3 pts, 5.0 reb, 3.2 ast per 40 min; 15.55 PER | Player card
• Excellent midrange shooter off dribble with size to play over top of most wings.
• Vastly underrated defender with size, strength, intensity and smarts.
• Good ballhandler for size; shot fakes and clever spins allow him to draw fouls.
The good news-bad news from Pierce's season is that he set career highs in field goal percentage, 3-point percentage and free throw percentage. Already among the better shooters at his position, he moved up to fifth among small forwards in TS percentage. As usual, he drew a ton of fouls too -- one for every two field goal attempts.
One reason his shooting percentage improved is that he got to the rim more often -- more than half his 2-point attempts were in the basket area, a notable increase from the previous three seasons. He actually shot worse on jumpers, but he was so good at the rim (59.1 percent) that it didn't matter.
That's the good news. The bad news? A 33-year-old player coming off triple career highs is almost certainly due for some regression. I'm not talking collapse or anything -- he's in great shape and has had no major injuries -- but he's unlikely to match those numbers in 2010-11, and my projection system pegged him to have one of the league's biggest PER declines.
[h4]KEVIN GARNETT, PF[/h4]
Projection: 16.6 pts, 9.4 reb, 3.4 ast per 40 min; 17.20 PER | Player card
• Maniacally intense defender with length to bother shots from several feet away.
• High skill level for size: can pass, dribble and shoot. Jumper impossible to block.
• Knee problems have robbed formerly outstanding quickness and leaping ability.
Garnett isn't the all-weather force he was a couple of years ago, but let's not exaggerate his decline either. He's still among the better power forwards in the game, especially at the defensive end. He just can't go for more than 30 minutes a night or so, and he can't put a team on his back anymore.
The most obvious manifestation of his knee problems lie in his rebounding and block numbers, both of which have slid back toward the league average for power forwards. Offensively, however, he's surrendered surprisingly little because he still can play over the top of opposing defenses. He's an accurate midrange shooter who can get off his shot over anybody and he's also an effective distributor. If there aren't further setbacks with the knee, it seems he can maintain his play at or near this level for a while longer.
[h4]JERMAINE O'NEAL, C[/h4]
Projection: 17.4 pts, 9.0 reb, 2.1 ast per 40 min; 15.91 PER | Player card
• Post-up center who likes to catch on left block, turn and face. Solid rebounder.
• Handles ball well for size but relies far too much on mediocre jump shot.
• Has lost lift but still a good defender. Blocks shots, takes charges, defends post.
If O'Neal's shot chart tilted any further to the left, he'd have his own show on MSNBC. Last season he took more than a third of his shots from the left side of the floor and just a fraction of that many from the right. As a result, he was the league's most left-dominant player in 2009-10 (see chart).
[h4]Biggest Left-Right Differential, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]% of 2-Pt. FGA from left[/th][th=""]% of 2-Pt. FGA from right[/th][th=""]Difference[/th][/tr][tr][td]Jermaine O'Neal [/td][td]Mia[/td][td]36.3 [/td][td]15.3[/td][td]21.0[/td][/tr][tr][td]Dwyane Wade [/td][td]Mia[/td][td]29.6[/td][td]11.4[/td][td]18.2[/td][/tr][tr][td]Kevin Garnett [/td][td]Bos[/td][td]31.7[/td][td]16.0[/td][td]15.6[/td][/tr][tr][td]Luke Ridnour[/td][td]Mil[/td][td]34.4[/td][td]20.1[/td][td]14.3[/td][/tr][tr][td]Udonis Haslem [/td][td]Mia[/td][td]31.8[/td][td]19.1[/td][td]12.9[/td][/tr][/table]
O'Neal also had a comeback season, showing up in better shape, averaging nearly a point every two minutes and making more than half his shots for the first time in his career. He still shoots too many jumpers, but last season he had a little more elevation and rained 45.5 percent of his shots outside the basket area. O'Neal was also more active defensively than his diminished block totals would suggest, and he posted his best rebound rate since he left Indiana. I'd expect his shooting percentage to dip a little, as he's unlikely to shoot so well from distance again, but otherwise it seems reasonable to expect another solid campaign.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]SHAQUILLE O'NEAL, C[/h4]
Projection: 16.3 pts, 11.0 reb, 2.5 ast per 40 min; 14.39 PER | Player card
• Behemoth center still commands doubles due to talent for short hooks near rim.
• Atrocious free throw shooter who negates unique ability to draw fouls.
• Subpar pick-and-roll and transition defender but useful against other big 5s.
Shaq remains an offensive force despite the fact he can barely jump anymore. However, he slumped quite sharply on shots around the basket, making 58.9 percent after hitting 64.9 percent over the previous four seasons, and that helped account for the decline in his PER.
The rest of his game, however, has really slipped. He wasn't in as good shape as he was in Phoenix and his foul rate climbed sharply; that helped limit him to 23.4 minutes a game last season. He continues to draws fouls but no longer at the prodigious rate he used to, and he commits too many turnovers with offensive fouls of his own. And defensively, he's fairly useless unless he's guarding a power low-post player -- in which case he can be quite effective. Look for Boston to nurse him through the regular season and then unleash him against big centers in the playoffs.
[h4]GLEN DAVIS, PF[/h4]
Projection: 13.7 pts, 8.4 reb, 1.5 ast per 40 min; 10.83 PER | Player card
• Widebody who is surprisingly light on his feet and can outmaneuver taller foes.
• Quality midrange shooter but gives up inches and struggles to finish at rim.
• Uses strength and leverage as weapon on defense; won't block shots.
Davis is an anomaly among rebounders -- we tend to think of players as either "good" or "bad' in this category, but Davis is amazing on the offensive boards and invisible on the defensive glass. He ranked third among power forwards in the former category but was the fourth-worst in the latter. In fact, Davis was the only player in the league to play at least 500 minutes and have a higher offensive rebound rate than defensive rebound rate.
Davis revamped his shot chart last season, cutting the midrange jumpers by more than half and instead taking more than two-thirds of his shots in the basket area. However, he has a lot of trouble finishing inside. His 49.2 percent shooting in the basket area was among the worst marks by NBA big men, and there's a good reason for that -- he got his shot blocked more than any other player in basketball. A phenomenal 17.9 percent of his releases were returned to sender (see chart), and while he draws fouls at a high rate, he shot only 69.6 percent from the stripe. As a result, his TS% was 53rd among power forwards, hobbling his offensive game.
[h4]Highest Percentage of Shots Blocked, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]Blk.%[/th][/tr][tr][td]Glen Davis[/td][td]Bos[/td][td]17.9[/td][/tr][tr][td]Chuck Hayes[/td][td]Hou[/td][td]16.4[/td][/tr][tr][td]Tyler Hansbrough[/td][td]Ind[/td][td]16.2[/td][/tr][tr][td]Joel Przybilla[/td][td]Por[/td][td]14.4[/td][/tr][tr][td]Joel Anthony[/td][td]Mia[/td][td]13.8[/td][/tr][/table]
Defensively, Davis was solid, but he has to cut the fouls -- at one every 7.07 minutes, it's tough to leave him on the floor for extended minutes.
[h4]KENDRICK PERKINS, C[/h4]
Projection: 13.1 pts, 10.0 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 13.09 PER | Player card
• Outstanding low-post defender with tremendous strength and bulldog demeanor.
• Great screener but too often called for illegal picks. Can lose cool with officials.
• Underrated close-in shooter who can play effectively with back to basket.
Perkins hurt his knee in the Finals, had surgery in July and isn't expected back until roughly midseason. That's a huge blow for Boston -- not only had Perkins evolved into one of the game's best defensive centers, but he's also an improving offensive threat.
Perkins quietly shot 60.6 percent from the floor, and was active enough to score a respectable 14.7 points per 40 minutes. His offensive numbers would look even better were it not for his phenomenally high turnover ratio. Perkins sets more illegal screens than any other player in the league -- he had 45 offensive fouls last season, a jaw-dropping total for a secondary scorer -- and also tends to get whistled for three seconds and traveling more than most.
You don't think of Perkins when it comes to big men who run the floor, but the one thing in his favor is that he runs every time. Invariably, he'll get a cheap bucket because of it at some point during the game.
[h4]NATE ROBINSON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 19.5 pts, 4.4 reb, 5.7 ast per 40 min; 16.09 PER | Player card
• Electrifying leaper who can make plays at rim despite diminutive size.
• Emotional player prone to poor decisions; will lose focus on defense.
• Combination of quickness and shooting ability makes him difficult cover.
Robinson had a bad year by his recent standards, but he remains a potent scoring weapon off the bench who averaged better than point every two minutes. He took more 3s and made fewer forays to the basket, especially after coming to Boston, and he had the best passing numbers of his career.
Admittedly this isn't saying much -- he was 58th among point guards in assist ratio -- but Robinson shoots a much better percentage than most gunners, so if he's providing anything at all in the other phases, he can be a positive force when he's on the floor. I expect him to see more action this season, as Boston is fairly desperate for bench scoring from its perimeter players.
[h4]MARQUIS DANIELS, SG[/h4]
Projection: 12.6 pts, 4.5 reb, 2.8 ast per 40 min; 9.71 PER | Player card
• Smooth scorer with tremendous feel near basket and point guard's handle.
• Poor outside shooter, especially on 3s, and a B athlete with a poor motor.
• One of league's most injury-prone players; reliably misses 25 games a season.
I'm not exaggerating: Daniels has missed 24.7 games per season during his seven-year career. It's been something different every season, and in 2009-10 he broke the unofficial career record for "most rotation spots lost due to injury" when Tony Allen usurped his position while Daniels was on the shelf. True to form, Daniels then suffered a concussion in the conference finals and missed the rest of the playoffs.
Daniels also turned in one of his worst seasons, scoring just 12.3 points per 40 minutes, and at 29 his career is in crisis. A thumb injury hampered his ability with the ball, and that certainly wasn't helpful, but bad-shooting wings have a history of steep decline in their late 20s and early 30s. He's not a good defender, he can't space the floor and he's not good enough with the ball to orchestrate the offense, so it's not clear what his role might be going forward.
[h4]DELONTE WEST, SG[/h4]
Projection: 13.7 pts, 4.3 reb, 5.2 ast per 40 min, PER 13.36 | Player card
• Quick wing with good ballhandling skills and a respectable jumper.
• Quality defensive player who leaps quickly and moves well laterally.
• Mental question mark whose play yo-yos with his mood.
West is one of the league's most underrated wing defenders. Synergy Sports rated him the second-best defensive player in the league after Ron Artest, and while I wouldn't quite go that far, he's quick, tenacious and has long arms.
He's also a very good distributor and ballhandler for his size, having played point guard earlier in his career and now ranking second among shooting guards in assist ratio. He appeared to lose confidence in his 3-pointer, making only 25 all last season after hitting 39.9 percent in 2008-09, and that took down his numbers a bit.
Of course, so did his preseason arrest and multiple absences from the team while he tries to control a depression disorder. It's affected his play at times and made an otherwise useful player a question mark for 2010-11.
[h4]AVERY BRADLEY, PG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Big-time defender with quickness, long arms and serious hops.
• Good first step and ability to explode and finish near the basket.
• Not a point guard and undersized for 2; mediocre outside shooter.
The question for Bradley will be whether he'll need an adjustment period to learn NBA defense, or whether he'll just start bringing it right away. The Celtics don't have a lot of time to wait, but Bradley was in high school less than two years ago. He'll get first crack at filling the Tony Allen role as a stopper off the bench, but expect Boston to look at trades if he isn't getting the hang of it by midseason.
[h4]LUKE HARANGODY, F[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Good hands and decent outside shooter, but not a creator.
• Subpar athlete who will struggle to defend position.
• Undersized power forward who can score in post and likes to bang.
Harangody had a strong summer league and put up very good numbers at Notre Dame, but it's not clear whom or what he can guard at the NBA level. If he answers the defensive questions he might turn into a useful player, although he's unlikely to play in the first 40 minutes of any game for this team.
[h4]VON WAFER, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Good spot-up shooter; elevates well enough to shoot over closing defenders.
• Aggressive scorer. Quick to rim but gets out of control. Poor court vision.
• Subpar defender. Focus and maturity are questionable.
Wafer played fairly well in Houston two years ago, averaging nearly a point every two minutes, but he had a disastrous run in Greece last season and has had some back issues. He shot 39.0 percent on 3s for Houston and led the D-League earlier in his career, so he'll make shots and score points. As with Robinson, he's a bit of a Jekyll-and-Hyde player, and he hasn't been the easiest guy to deal with in the clubhouse. Nonetheless, this was a worthwhile risk. You don't normally find this much upside with a minimum-salary player.
[h4]SEMIH ERDEN, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Physical inside player who likes to mix it up underneath.
• Has low skill level; looks mostly for garbage buckets near basket.
The Turkish big man was a late second-round pick in 2008. I was surprised Boston brought him over because Erden looks semi-awful based on his translated Euroleague stats. His 2009-10 numbers are hideous -- 8.4 points per 40 minutes, 41.9 percent shooting and a 7.10 PER -- and his output from previous years wasn't much better. If that's all he does, he'll be back in Turkey faster than you can say Constantinople.
- Charlotte Bobcats
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]SHAUN LIVINGSTON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 13.0 pts, 3.9 reb, 5.9 ast per 40 min; 12.71 PER | Player card
• Very tall point guard with great court vision, but tends to force passes.
• Plagued by knee injuries. Has some trouble defending position despite length.
• Will post up small guards on left baseline. Poor long-range shooter.
Livingston's career was on life support after his early season release by Oklahoma City, but he joined Washington late in the season and played quite well. His April stats -- 15.5 points on 62.7 percent shooting -- were particularly eye-popping, as was the fact he could play 36.8 minutes per game.
Livingston's knees are obviously an issue and his jets may always be a limitation, but he's learned how to post up smaller guards for shots. He continues to make far too many turnovers and has no shooting range to speak of, but if he can stay ambulatory for more than 50 games, he's a decent backup at the very least.
[h4]STEPHEN JACKSON, SG[/h4]
Projection: 18.6 pts, 4.8 reb, 3.8 ast per 40 min; 14.29 PER | Player card
• Big guard who can play over the top of defenders with high-arching J.
• Tough defender despite average quickness. Competitor who can get overexcited.
• Has high dribble and will lose ball in traffic, but sees floor well. Loves pull-up 3s.
Jackson's role changed dramatically in going from Golden State to Charlotte -- he lost only a tenth of a point off his scoring average, but he finished with barely half as many assists. I don't have a good way to search for how often this has happened, but I'm guessing you could count it on your digits and have several fingers and toes left over.
Obviously, he had a lot more worthwhile passing options in Golden State. Playing for a Bobcats team whose second-leading per-minute scorer was the immortal Nazr Mohammed, Jackson was something of a godsend. Only three shooting guards owned a worse pure point rating, but between Jackson's scoring, durability and defense, he was one of the most valuable players at his position.
[h4]GERALD WALLACE, SF[/h4]
Projection: 17.4 pts, 9.1 reb, 2.4 ast per 40 min; 17.69 PER | Player card
• Athletic wing who is spectacular finisher in transition or on drives to basket.
• Great anticipation off ball for steals and blocks, but will lose track of man.
• Excellent rebounder. Can score in post, but cross-body jumper rarely connects.
Wallace booked his first-ever All-Star berth largely on the basis of phenomenal rebounding numbers in the first half of the season. On New Year's Day he was averaging more than a dozen rebounds a game, a monumental figure for a 6-foot-7 small forward.
With an equal lack of warning he cooled off, slipping to nine boards a game the rest of the season. This, mind you, still destroyed his previous career high, but it changed his overall rebounding improvement from "historically unprecedented" to merely unusual. It was, however, more than enough to lead all small forwards in rebound rate.
Wallace also ranked in the top 10 at his position in blocks and steals per minute, and finished second in free throw attempts per field goal attempt. That latter item was noteworthy because it marked a career high for Wallace even though he took dramatically fewer shots at the basket (63.0 percent of his total versus 72.0 percent a year earlier)
[h4]TYRUS THOMAS, PF[/h4]
Projection: 16.0 pts, 10.5 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 16.28 PER | Player card
• Shot-blocking forward with length and timing to impact games defensively.
• Terrible finisher despite leaping ability. Can hit midrange jump shots.
• Lacks strength and instincts to score in post. Must reduce turnovers.
Although Thomas averaged a healthy 16.7 points per 40 minutes, right now his value is mostly at the defensive end. He rated second among power forwards in both blocks and steals per 40 minutes and 11th in defensive rebound rate; Chicago in particular defended dramatically better with him on the court.
As for his offense … it's rough, man. Thomas is 6-10, can leap and has a decent midrange J, but he doesn't have a good feel for the game and is terrible at adjusting in midair. As a consequence, Thomas converted only 51.1 percent of his shots in the basket area, which is subpar for a player of his size.
And the turnovers … oh, the turnovers. Thomas led all power forwards in turnover ratio with miscues on 14.3 percent of his possessions, evenly spread between out-of-control charging fouls, passes into row 17 and dribble drives that fell into enemy hands. At the moment he has more confidence in his offensive ability than he really should. That said, he's just 23, he's very talented and he made some nice improvements in the other phases of his game last season. The question is whether he'll ever become enough of an offensive threat to justify his salary.
[h4]NAZR MOHAMMED, C[/h4]
Projection: 6.0 pts, 11.4 reb, 1.2 ast per 40 min; 16.66 PER | Player card
• Intelligent big man with innate understanding of rebounding angles.
• Undersized for five and a C athlete. Struggles to defend away from basket.
• Will hit awkward behind-head jumper from 12 feet … if he catches the pass.
After a quiet couple of years, the fluke rule returned with a vengeance in 2009-10. Mohammed was the most obvious example, inexplicably posting a 19.46 PER after being kept in cold storage for the previous two seasons. Apparently even his own coaches didn't trust it, because in the playoffs he was out of the rotation behind Theo Ratliff and Tyson Chandler.
The fluke rule, for those who don't recall, states that players aged 28 and older who experience a year-to-year jump of more than 3.0 points in PER are unlikely to sustain those gains the following season. In fact, 90 percent see their PER decline the next season, and on average the decline is almost exactly 3.0 points. With that as the backdrop, let's look at last season's crop:
Mohammed's differential from 2008-09, when he eked out just a 7.17 PER, would have been even greater had he played enough minutes to qualify. Nonetheless, it was a real outlier. His points and rebounds per minute and his TS percentage all set new career highs, and his turnover ratio was a career low. Mohammed, in fact, scored 3.3 points per 40 minutes more than he ever had, which is a huge increase at any age, but a shocking one at 32.
In short, he won't be doing this again. The good news is that he won't have to. I've long thought Mohammed was an effective player despite his iffy defense and bad hands. In addition to consistently posting PERs in the 15 to 16 range, he's a strong rebounder and provides surprisingly robust scoring. He's likely to start at center and could average a double-double … even if his PER slips back to the 15 to 16 range, as the fluke rule expects.
[h4]Fluke Rule Players, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player [/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]2008-09 PER[/th][th=""]2009-10 PER[/th][th=""]Change[/th][/tr][tr][td]Luke Ridnour [/td][td]Mil[/td][td]12.95 [/td][td]17.81[/td][td]+4.86[/td][/tr][tr][td]Carlos Boozer [/td][td]Uta[/td][td]17.28[/td][td]21.42[/td][td]+4.14 [/td][/tr][tr][td]Nazr Mohammed [/td][td]Cha[/td][td]15.83*[/td][td]19.64[/td][td]+3.81[/td][/tr][tr][td]Ben Wallace [/td][td]Det[/td][td]12.18[/td][td]15.84[/td][td]+3.66[/td][/tr][tr][td]Sam Dalembert [/td][td]Phi[/td][td]13.22[/td][td]16.84[/td][td]+3.62 [/td][/tr][tr][td]Corey Maggette [/td][td]GS[/td][td]16.91[/td][td]20.40[/td][td]+3.49[/td][/tr][tr][td]Jamal Crawford [/td][td]Atl[/td][td]15.15[/td][td]18.50[/td][td]+3.35 [/td][/tr][tr][td]* 2007-08 PER. Did not play enough minutes to qualify in 2008-09.[/td][/tr][/table]
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4].J. AUGUSTIN, PG[/h4]
Projection: 15.8 pts, 2.6 reb, 5.0 ast per 40 min; 12.67 PER | Player card
• Small, quick guard who can penetrate. Decent outside shooter, too.
• Defensive liability due to lack of size. Only average laterally.
• Looks more to score than to pass. Struggles to finish at the basket.
Augustin struggled with his shot early in the season and seemingly lost confidence, taking dramatically fewer shots as the year went on. By the All-Star break, he was passing up open looks left and right, which is never a good thing for a scoring-minded point guard. He played better over the final 25 games, but by then the damage was done. Augustin finished with a 38.6 percent shooting mark that included a ghastly 37.5 percent on twos -- the league's third-worst percentage from inside the arc.
Augustin also needs to improve at the defensive end, where he has to get stronger to offset his inability to bother shots. It would be nice if he got a rebound once in a while, too -- only three players had a worse rebound rate last season.
[h4]BORIS DIAW, PF[/h4]
Projection: 12.9 pts, 5.9 reb, 4.3 ast per 40 min; 12.32 PER | Player card
• Ballhandling big man who loves to pass, but often turns down easy shots.
• Mediocre outside shooter. Rarely draws fouls on drives. Poor rebounder.
• Excellent defender when in shape, but conditioning a question mark.
Diaw led all power forwards in assist ratio and came in second in pure point rating, but he reverted too far to his passive ways as a scorer. Diaw averaged just 12.7 points per 40 minutes -- the lowest among the 10 Bobcats to play at least 900 minutes, and shocking considering how many touches he got.
Diaw also tends to shun contact en route to the hoop, resulting in just 0.19 free throw attempts per field goal attempt -- 55th out of 63 power forwards. Plus, he's a lousy rebounder, ranking fifth from the bottom in rebound rate at his position.
At this point, his main benefit is his defense. Despite questionable conditioning, Diaw can guard any spot one through four. He doesn't block shots, but he's strong and has good feet. Alas, he looked like he'd packed on some pounds while playing for France over the summer and will have to ease up on the macaroons this fall.
[h4]KWAME BROWN, C[/h4]
Projection: 9.4 pts, 11.0 reb, 1.5 ast per 40 min; 8.62 PER | Player card
• Offensively limited big man with terrible hands and poor instincts.
• Active defender with good size and strength. Guards pick-and-roll well.
• Improved rebounder, but an awful foul shooter.
Just how much worse can this guy get from the free throw line? Brown shot 70.7 percent from the line as an 18-year-old rookie in 2001-02; last season he hit 33.7 percent. It's been a steady decline through the 60s, 50s and 40s to get to this point, and the only conclusion one can reach is that he's not putting in the work. Brown posted the fourth-highest rate of free throw attempts per field goal attempt at his position, but because of all those bricks at the line, he finished last among centers in TS percentage.
Brown's coaches have finally stopped talking themselves into the idea that he can be an offensive player, allowing him to focus on rebounding and defense. He's perfectly fine in those two areas, but any points he gets are gravy and he can't be on the floor late in games because of his foul shooting.
[h4]DERRICK BROWN, F[/h4]
Projection: 13.9 pts, 5.8 reb, 1.5 ast per 40 min; 12.83 PER | Player card
• High-jumping, long, left-handed combo forward who can drive and draw fouls.
• Needs to prove he can defend either threes or fours. Could use more strength.
• Work in progress as an outside shooter, but has solid form and may improve.
Brown offers some promise and could emerge as a rotation player this season. His rookie numbers indicate several strong, positive markers -- sixth among small forwards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt, fourth in offensive rebound rate and passable ballhandling numbers.
Physically, it's obvious how he'd take a step up. He can really jump and had some wicked finishes at the basket, and his length helps him challenge shots. He'll be able to play a lot of four once he fills out, and while his shooting numbers last season weren't good, he doesn't look hopeless out there.
[h4]GERALD HENDERSON, G[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Defensive-minded guard with quickness and strength to check NBA wings.
• Poor offensive instincts and iffy jump shot. Excellent rebounder.
Charlotte's first-round draft pick hardly played and did little of note while he was on the court. Henderson is a good athlete who can defend, but his offense last year -- 35.6 percent shooting, 9.3 rebounds per 40 minutes -- was simply unacceptable. He played 43 games and made 10 outside shots. Ten.
[h4]DOMINIC McGUIRE, SF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Wing defender with length and athleticism to bother shooters; also can play four.
• Miserable offensive player who can't shoot or handle. Excellent rebounder.
Here's my most amazing stat from 2009-10: Dominic McGuire played 307 minutes without making a single foul shot. He earned only seven trips to the line, and shanked all seven, further cementing his rep as one of the league's least threatening offensive players. McGuire is a good defender, especially against small ball fours, and annually posts among the best rebound rates at the small forward spot. But he averages only 6.3 points per 40 minutes for his career, and his turnover rates are astronomic. His only real use is as an end-of-quarter defensive specialist, where you know ahead of time there's no chance of him playing offense.
[h4]DeSAGANA DIOP, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Big defensive center who can defend post, but nimble enough to help vs. guards.
• Dreadful on offense -- no shooting range, hands or ball skills. Willing passer.
• Horrific foul shooter (47.7 percent career). Solid rebounder.
Diop has his moments as a third center, but his offensive game has made him unplayable for any longer than a few possessions at a time. The Bobcats thought so little of him that he was inactive during the playoffs against Dwight Howard -- the one player he might have some use against.
[h4]MATT CARROLL, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Good outside shooter, but lost his speed three years ago and never recovered.
• Solid team defender but hopeless in one-on-one situations; a walking target.
Carroll played only 121 minutes last season and didn't make a case for more extended burn. He used to have a good first step going to the hoop and getting himself to the line; last season he drew six free throws the entire season. He is a 39.5 career 3-point shooter and may have some limited use as a zone-buster for the Bobcats.
[h4]EDUARDO NAJERA, PF[/h4]
Projection: 8.5 pts, 6.3 reb, 1.6 ast per 40 min; 7.95 PER | Player card
• Tough, physical frontcourt player who gets under opponent's skin.
• Anemic offensive performer who no longer has zip to work offensive boards.
• Fouls way too often. Can't jump or finish.
It's tough to sell yourself as an "energy" guy when you can't run the floor or rebound. Najera was 56th out of 63 power forwards in rebound rate and scored an anemic 9.2 points per 40 minutes; since he's already an undersized four, he brought very little to the table and at this point is a 12th man. He's tried to recast himself as a floor spacer, but he was 19-of-64 on 3s last year and is at 31.3 percent for his career.
- Chicago Bulls
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]DERRICK ROSE, PG[/h4]
Projection: 23.5 pts, 4.1 reb, 6.6 ast per 40 min; 19.42 PER | Player card
• Strong finisher in the paint with great athleticism and quick first step.
• Has mastered shooting short floaters on the drive, but should draw more fouls.
• Defense at point of attack remains suspect. Must improve effort.
It's going to be interesting to see how Rose's numbers change under Thibodeau, because Rose barely played any defense the past two seasons. Statistically, it's not hard to prove that he wasn't giving a token effort. Rose was dead last among point guards in fouls per minute, fourth from the bottom in steals per minute, and drew eight offensive fouls per minute the entire season. Only two point guards fared worse.
He made strong offensive progress after a sprained ankle healed. From Jan. 1 to the end of the season, he shot 53.5 percent, averaged 22.5 points a game and got to the line with dramatically greater frequency.
Although he lacks 3-point range, Rose is good from middle distance. He took more than a third of his shots from long-two range and made 44.3 percent of them. But his real specialty is the floater. Rose made 49.1 percent of his "in-between" shots, the third-best mark in the league, and with the possible exception of Tony Parker, Rose owns the game's best on-the-run shot from that range.
[h4]Best 'In-Between' Shooters, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]FG[/th][th=""]FGA[/th][th=""]Pct.[/th][/tr][tr][td]Steve Nash[/td][td]Phx[/td][td]112[/td][td]213[/td][td].526[/td][/tr][tr][td]Beno Udrih[/td][td]Sac[/td][td]99[/td][td]193[/td][td].513[/td][/tr][tr][td]Derrick Rose[/td][td]Chi[/td][td]144[/td][td]293[/td][td].491[/td][/tr][tr][td]Kobe Bryant[/td][td]LAL[/td][td]204[/td][td]435[/td][td].469[/td][/tr][tr][td]Rudy Gay[/td][td]Mem[/td][td]129[/td][td]276[/td][td].467[/td][/tr][/table] * Min 150 attempts
[h4]RONNIE BREWER, SG[/h4]
Projection: 12.7 pts, 4.1 reb, 3.2 ast per 40 min; 12.79 PER | Player card
• Long-armed guard who moves without ball as well as any player in game.
• Good finisher around rim, but poor long-range shooter with funky release.
• Overrated defender who gets share of steals, but struggles to defend on ball.
Even before a torn hamstring prematurely ended his season just days after a February trade to Memphis, Brewer was having a tremendously disappointing season. For reasons unexplained, Brewer's offense essentially vanished. He lost nearly a quarter of his field-goal attempts in similar minutes and took barely half as many free throws. His true shooting (TS) percentage dropped, too, but that's mostly because he slumped to 63.2 percent from the stripe.
From the field, Brewer took largely the same shots and made the same percentages. He just took them far less often. It's rare for a healthy, 25-year-old guard to suddenly lose 5.5 points from his 40-minute scoring average, but he'll need to find his shooting stroke for the Bulls to recoup their investment.
Brewer faces a big challenge accomplishing this in Chicago. He'll get plenty of minutes, but this team is a bad fit for his skills. Offensively, his presence exacerbates the Bulls' lack of shooters, and defensively he's being asked to play the same defensive stopper role that he failed at in Utah.
[h4]LUOL DENG, SF[/h4]
Projection: 17.7 pts, 7.4 reb, 2.2 ast per 40 min; 15.55 PER | Player card
• Good midrange shooter who can rise over defenders to make shots.
• Athletic wing with excellent size who can defend, rebound and finish.
• Limited offensive variety and lack of 3-point shot suppresses scoring numbers.
The defining Deng sequence for me occurred in the Charlotte game last season, in which he drew 7-foot Tyson Chandler on him in a switch. Deng caught the ball from a teammate near the 3-point line, faced up, took one dribble and a long jumper. Ugh. That seems to be the only move in his repertoire, regardless of the defender, and the lack of creativity and instincts in his game makes him merely a decent scoring option instead of a lethal one.
Nonetheless, Deng is a valuable player. He defends and rebounds far better than most players at his position, he draws fouls and he runs the floor. Plus, that midrange jumper that I cursed earlier is a useful weapon at the end of the clock because he can get it off over nearly anyone. Chicago started running the "Nowitzki play" for him last season, in which he isolates at the foul line. The play may be a good way to take advantage of his length. We'll see if Thibodeau keeps it in the playbook.
[h4]CARLOS BOOZER, PF[/h4]
Projection: 20.7 pts, 12.6 reb, 3.1 ast p/40 min; 19.41 PER | Player card
• Prolific scorer who shoots high-arcing midrange jumpers from free-throw area.
• Attacks rim off dribble. Great left-hand finisher. Excellent defensive rebounder.
• Good strength, but indifferent defender who lacks length and rarely blocks shots.
I don't associate "Boozer" with "defense," but he was the best defensive rebounder among power forwards last year with an exceptional 29.9 defensive rebound rate, finishing fifth in the league overall. Boozer shot a career-high 56.2 percent from the floor, helped by his increasing proficiency as a mid-range shooter. Over the past two seasons, he's made 45.5 percent of his long 2s (16-23 feet), making him a weapon in the pick-and-pop game and setting him up for show-and-go to the basket, where he invariably finishes with the game's best left hand.
One concern in Chicago is that Derrick Rose isn't as good a passer as Deron Williams is, which may cost Boozer a bucket or two. Boozer received an assist on 74.2 percent of his baskets last year, one of the highest rates among scoring big men. Additionally, Boozer was a fluke rule player for 2009-10, so his numbers can be expected to decline this year. However, we shouldn't expect Boozer's decline to be as sharp as some other fluke rule players because he turned 28 years old last season and had previously attained his 2009-10 player efficiency rating (PER).
[h4]Fluke Rule Players, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player [/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]2008-09 PER[/th][th=""]2009-10 PER[/th][th=""]Change[/th][/tr][tr][td]Luke Ridnour [/td][td]Mil[/td][td]12.95 [/td][td]17.81[/td][td]+4.86[/td][/tr][tr][td]Carlos Boozer [/td][td]Uta[/td][td]17.28[/td][td]21.42[/td][td]+4.14 [/td][/tr][tr][td]Nazr Mohammed [/td][td]Cha[/td][td]15.83*[/td][td]19.64[/td][td]+3.81[/td][/tr][tr][td]Ben Wallace [/td][td]Det[/td][td]12.18[/td][td]15.84[/td][td]+3.66[/td][/tr][tr][td]Sam Dalembert [/td][td]Phi[/td][td]13.22[/td][td]16.84[/td][td]+3.62 [/td][/tr][tr][td]Corey Maggette [/td][td]GS[/td][td]16.91[/td][td]20.40[/td][td]+3.49[/td][/tr][tr][td]Jamal Crawford [/td][td]Atl[/td][td]15.15[/td][td]18.50[/td][td]+3.35 [/td][/tr][tr][td]* 2007-08 PER. Did not play enough minutes to qualify in 2008-09.[/td][/tr][/table]
[h4]JOAKIM NOAH, C[/h4]
Projection: 13.3 pts, 13.6 reb, 2.7 ast per 40 min; 17.23 PER | Player card
• Spirited big man is amazing pick-and-roll defender and dominant rebounder.
• Energy player whose points come from running floor and offensive tip-ins.
• Good ballhandler, but odd, sideways-spinning jumper limits offense.
Noah has added enough muscle to check most centers, and is much more adept at banging under the glass for rebounds. As a result of his bulkier frame, he has to be considered among the league's elite defensive performers. Few are better at stepping out to the perimeter to help against the pick-and-roll, and Noah can react back to the basket for a shot block or rebound. Offensively, he's still mostly a scavenger, but Noah quietly made a lot of progress shooting. He made 24 of his 59 long 2s (shots from 16-23 feet) -- not a huge number, but a respectable 40.7 percent conversion rate. More shockingly, he hit 74.4 percent from the line, which was well above the league average for centers. The information will stun anyone who has seen him shoot -- his guide hand stays on top of the ball and forces it to spin sideways, basically blocking his own shot but somehow he's making it work. Noah started making hook shots close to the basket last season -- something he seems to do better with his left hand than with his dominant right.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]TAJ GIBSON, F[/h4]
Projection: 12.8 pts, 10.6 reb, 1.3 ast per 40 min; 13.34 PER | Player card
• Long-armed, bouncy defender with good length, size and quickness.
• Limited post game, but good mid-range shooter and finisher.
• Active around rim with shot-blocking and offensive boards. Must cut fouls.
A P.J. Brown clone who the Bulls stole with the 26th pick in the draft, Gibson was a quality defensive player right out of the box and proved a much better rebounder than advertised. Gibson placed sixth among power forwards in blocks per minute and 12th in offensive rebound rate. Equally nice was his 39.4 percent success rate on long 2s (16-23 footers).
If he can hit midrange jumpers at that rate, he'll have a functioning role in the offense, especially an offense as desperate for spacing as Chicago's. He's ancient for a second-year player at 25, so he's not likely to develop much further, but with a 7-foot-4 wing span and big-time defensive skills, he'll hang around the league for a dozen years.
[h4]KYLE KORVER, SF[/h4]
Projection: 14.9 pts, 4.7 reb, 3.3 ast p/40 min; 12.66 PER | Player card
• Ace 3-point shooter who loves to pull trigger on secondary break.
• Good team defender with fast hands, but slow feet make him 1-on-1 liability.
• Struggles to create own shot, but has size to convert off pin-downs.
Korver missed 30 games, but sizzled when he played, shooting 53.6 percent on 3-pointers to set a new league record and smashing his previous career best with a 49.3 percent mark overall. Given how well he shot the three, it's amazing he didn't take more. Korver took only 39 percent of his deliveries from distance, which was barely above the league average for small forwards.
Instead, he took more long twos. He made 45.5 percent of those shots, while depriving himself of an extra point. As a result, he made much less impact than he could have. He is still ranked third at his position in TS percent and amassed one of the best assist ratios at his position, but as a low-usage, low-rebound player he needs to have a scorching TS percent to provide a lot of value. Taking so many twos makes that high TS percent a much more difficult feat. Let's hope he changes his shot mix for the 3-pointer starved Bulls.
[h4]JAMES JOHNSON, SF[/h4]
Projection: 13.6 pts, 6.6 reb, 2.7 ast per 40 min; 11.36 PER | Player card
• Athletic player who can finish at rim and has scorer's attack mentality.
• Erratic performer who gets completely out of control driving to basket.
• Inconsistent outside shooter and wildly foul-prone defender. Looked a bit heavy.
Johnson may be the most high-mistake perimeter player I've ever seen -- he led all small forwards in both turnover ratio and fouls per minute. His whopping 17.7 turnover ratio was the worst of any perimeter player's, except for Memphis' Jamaal Tinsley's. No other wing player climbed above 15.0.
On the foul side of the ledger, Johnson committed a foul every 6.0 minutes, a shockingly high rate for any position and an absoltely extraordinary one for a wing. The closest wing player to that number, Denver's Joey Graham, was whistled once every 7.3 minutes.
Johnson did accumulated the highest rate of blocks among wings, and was able to create shots at a decent rate. His shooting percentages weren't bad either. In other words, if he can just bring some semblance of control to his game, there's enough ability there to be a rotation player. Nobody knows if that will happen, but glass-half-full types will note that rookies with high turnover rates tend to make stronger progress in Year 2 than their peers.
[h4]C.J. WATSON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 14.7 pts, 3.8 reb, 4.2 ast per 40 min; 13.52 PER | Player card
• Shoot-first point guard who rarely turns ball over. Not a good distributor.
• Size, shooting allow him to play the 2 in spots. Comfortable playing off ball.
• Below-average defender who gets steals. Struggles to stop dribble penetration.
Watson struggled with his 3-point shot, but made an impact as a low-mistake guard that can score a little. He boasted the third-lowest turnover ratio among point guards and was 20th at the position in TS%. His efficiency made up for his rare assists, and ranked 62 of 71 point guards in usage rate.
Although he didn't make 3-pointers, he was lights out on long 2s. Watson made 46.2 percent, after making 45.5 percent a year earlier, and taking nearly a third of his shots from that distance. Watson has fast hands and ranked second among point guards in steals per minute, but that's partly a reflection of Golden State's frenzied system. However, he's not a great athlete and has trouble in straight-up defense.
[h4]KEITH BOGANS, SG[/h4]
Projection: 9.1 pts, 4.6 reb, 2.2 ast per 40 min; 7.69 PER | Player card
• Strong, smart wing who succeeds as defender despite short arms.
• Average shooter who likes corner 3 but has great difficulty finishing near basket.
• Good ballhandler for his size. Played point guard in college.
Bogans continues to find regular work on good teams, a baffling state of affairs given his limited output in recent seasons. While he's a quality defender, he's not all-world or anything and his offense is anemic. Last season he averaged just 8.9 points per 40 minutes and had a single-digit PER for the third time in four seasons. Bogans never shoots unless it's a wide-open 3 from the corner. He had one of the league's lowest usage rates, and a third of his shots came from inside the arc. At 30, it's hard to envision a reversal in his future.
[h4]OMER ASIK, C[/h4]
Projection: 12.0 pts, 12.8 reb, 1.7 ast per 40 min; 11.06 PER | Player card
• Quick center who can score near basket and run floor. Decent rebounder.
• Badly needs to add strength. Easily pushed around in paint.
Asik's translated European stats paint him as a high-percentage, low-volume scorer who rebounds a little (12 points, 12.8 boards per 40 minutes and an 11.06 PER). That's credible output for a backup center, but he'll have to pump some iron if he wants more than ten minutes a night. Another question to ponder: How long before he signs a shoe contract with Asics?
[h4]KURT THOMAS, C[/h4]
Projection: 6.9 pts, 10.7 reb, 1.7 ast per 40 min; 8.87 PER | Player card
• Tough low-post defender, despite being undersized for center spot.
• Still a strong defensive rebounder because of superior positioning.
• Good midrange jump shooter, but does little else offensively.
Thomas' offensive game bit the dust last season, slipping to a meager 8 points per 40 minutes. At this point it's tough to find him regular minutes, despite the fact that he turns in solid work defensively and on the boards.
Thomas was dead last among centers in free throw attempts per field goal attempt and nearly posted the worst figure in the league (see Jason Kapono comment), an amazing feat for a player who didn't attempt a single 3-point shot. Nearly half his shots were long twos and he knocked them down at a 44.7 percent clip, but he doesn't bring anything else to the table.
[h4]BRIAN SCALABRINE, PF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Limited role player with average shot and virtually no other offensive value.
• Tough, barrel-chested team defender who can check bigger 3s and most 4s.
• Slow feet and lack of hops render him useless on boards and in transition.
Scalabrine can be moderately useful at the defensive end, but let's get real -- we're talking about a guy who averages nine points per 40 minutes with a career 38.7 shooting percentage. He's among the worst rebounders for his size in league history, and he hasn't had a PER above 8 in half a decade. He shouldn't be in the league.
- Cleveland Cavaliers
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]MO WILLIAMS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 18.1 pts, 3.5 reb, 5.9 ast per 40 min; 15.54 PER | Player card
• Outstanding outside shooter off catch or dribble with quick release off shoulder.
• Shoot-first point guard who rarely penetrates or makes incisive passes.
• Suspect defense can be exposed by quick point guards.
Williams nailed 40.2 percent of his long 2s (16-23 footers) last year; for any other player that's a nice season, but for Williams it was a tragedy -- he's usually in the mid-40s or better. He was actually more accurate on 3s (42.9 percent) than long 2s, and he's developed into one of the league's best free throw shooters (89.4 and 91.2 the past two seasons). However, those misses inside the arc dragged down his shooting and scoring numbers.
Williams improved his point guard numbers to something more respectable, bumping up his assist rate and creating a bit more off pick-and-rolls, but this was just a side act -- he's out there to rain in jump shots. He's a bit one-dimensional in that regard, but he ranked seventh in TS% while taking a dozen shots a game. Chances are he'll increase the latter number to the high teens this year and take a hit on the percentages.
[h4]ANTHONY PARKER, SG[/h4]
Projection: 10.4 pts, 4.0 reb, 2.9 ast per 40 min; 9.02 PER | Player card
• Good outside shooter who excels in catch-and-shoot game, even when contested.
• Good passer and ball handler but lacks athleticism to create own shot.
• Quality defensive player with good size, strength and effort.
Parker's performance quietly tanked this past season, and at this point he's a marginal rotation player. He took more than half his shots from beyond the 3-point arc and converted 41.4 percent, but otherwise he was pretty useless offensively. For a starting shooting guard to average a meager 10.4 points per 40 minutes is pitiful -- among starting wing players, only http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=976Shane Battier and http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=3028Thabo Sefolosha were worse.
Those two, however, are phenomenal defensive payers. Parker is merely decent. So while he makes open shots and doesn't screw up, the fact that he creates so little trouble for opponents makes him a liability -- one that will become more glaring without LeBron around to soak up all the untaken shots from Parker.
[h4]ANTAWN JAMISON, SF[/h4]
Projection: 18.7 pts, 8.9 reb, 1.4 ast per 40 min; 15.84 PER | Player card
• Unique scorer with quick release has mastered short flips and hooks near rim.
• Good outside shooter but lacks one-on-one arsenal and struggled from line.
• Decent rebounder but rest of defensive game is decidedly subpar.
The accepted wisdom that Jamison wasn't as effective in Cleveland as he was in Washington isn't entirely accurate -- his per-40-minute scoring dipped by only 1.5 points, and a big chunk of that was because he suddenly forgot how to make a foul shot, hitting only 50.6 percent as a Cav. Obviously, that can't be blamed on chemistry.
Otherwise, it was a very typical Jamison season, as he's surrendered virtually nothing to age despite turning 33 years old last season. The veteran forward continues to produce points without turnovers -- he was fifth among power forwards in turnover rate and averaged better than a point every two minutes, making his middling TS percent more efficient than it looks.
Jamison is best finishing what others start, as he's devastating catching the ball on the move and probably takes fewer dribbles than any 20-point scorer in league history. There's talk of him filling a sixth man role this year, which he did well enough in Dallas to win the Sixth Man award, but it seems more likely that he'll have to start at the 3.
[h4]J.J. HICKSON, PF[/h4]
17.3 pts, 9.7 reb, 1.0 ast per 40 min; 16.14 PER | Player card
• Promising big man who can finish around basket and knock down open 15-footer.
• Strong, athletic 4 who should improve as a rebounder and develop a post game.
• Defense remains a liability, especially versus perimeter 4s.
Hickson is a decent rebounder and has the size and build to be a good defender, but what really sets him apart is his skill as a finisher. He ranked third in the NBA in shooting percentage in the basket area at 65.7 percent, and overall converted 55.4 percent of his attempts. He was 11th among power forwards in TS percent, and at 22 he figures to improve enough in the other phases of the game to be a viable NBA starter.
The one thing he'll have to upgrade is his defense -- he still gets lost on pick-and-rolls and help situations. This resulted in the Cavs defending dramatically worse (6.8 points per 100 possessions) with him on the court. But he has the physical skills to guard the position; it may just be a question of getting the reps.
[h4]ANDERSON VAREJAO, C[/h4]
Projection: 17.4 pts, 9.0 reb, 2.1 ast per 40 min; 15.91 PER | Player card
• Elite defender who can guard 1 through 5 due to length, quickness and strength.
• High-effort player who takes charges, crashes boards and wins loose balls.
• Decent ballhandler for size. Good finisher, but poor shooter who lacks post game.
Varejao produced the best season of his career at both ends and was a legitimate candidate for Defensive Player of the Year. One thing that stood out is how much less he flopped -- while Varejao still drew 28 charges, it was barely half the 51 he drew a year earlier. Instead, he flew around the court with even more energy than ever, swallowing up pick-and-rolls and defending the post with similar vigor. The Cavs allowed 5.8 points per 100 possessions less with Varejao on the court, and the visual backed up the numbers -- he was a relentless defensive presence.
Varejao also delivered some offensive value, converting 65.6 percent of his shots in the basket area for the fifth-best mark in the league. The other underrated part of his game is that he's a good ballhandler who had one of the better pure point ratings among big men. His next challenge is to bring the same energy for more extended bursts as a starting center.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]RAMON SESSIONS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 16.3 pts, 4.8 reb, 6.2 ast per 40 min; 14.23 PER | Player card
• Clever pick-and-roll operator who uses size and handle to score, draw fouls.
• Average athlete but one with good size and toughness; good rebounder for size.
• Poor outside shooter who struggles in catch-and-shoot and from free throw line.
It's unclear why Sessions came off the bench when he was Jonny Flynn's equal on offense and a vast improvement on defense. Unfortunately, he was nearly as miscast in the triangle as Flynn was, as his core talent, running pick-and-roll, went neglected while he was forced into being a spot-up shooter.
He could hardly be more ill-suited for the assignment, as he's made only 10 3s his entire career. He was better than usual on long 2s at least (42.1 percent), and finished fifth among point guards in rebound rate. Nonetheless, it's hardly shocking that his numbers dipped so much given that he went from a fairly ideal system for his skills in Milwaukee to a terrible one in Minnesota. His contract (three years left, $12 million) can provide incredible value in the right situation, so he could end up being a steal for Cleveland.
[h4]JAMARIO MOON, SF[/h4]
Projection: 10.8 pts, 7.2 reb, 1.8 ast per 40 min; 11.94 PER | Player card
• Great leaper who can finish alley-oops or transition plays, and rebounds well.
• Nonexistent off-dribble game and mediocre jumper limit scoring output.
• Good shot-blocker due to length and leaping ability, but often leaves feet.
Moon is the type of player you don't mind using if you also have a LeBron James who can create shots at the drop of a hat. Moon doesn't turn the ball over, defends fairly well, rebounds and blocks shots. And when he does shoot, he makes a decent percentage.
That's especially true in the basket area, where he's among the best in league history -- he made 70.3 percent of his shots there last season, and while that came off just 74 attempts, he has now taken 394 in his career and made 69.9 percent of them.
Still, 11.3 points per 40 minutes is fairly piddling output for an NBA wing player, and that, along with playing the same position as the MVP, helped restrict his playing time.
[h4]DANIEL GIBSON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 13.1 pts, 2.8 reb, 2.7 ast per 40 min; 11.18 PER | Player card
• Shooting specialist with accuracy and range, but oddly reluctant to pull trigger.
• Lack of size limits usefulness due to troublesome defensive matchups.
• Nominally a point guard but has to play off the ball.
It's hard to believe this is the same guy the Pistons couldn't guard in the last two games of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals. Gibson has devolved into a strict catch-and-shoot specialist, and not even a particularly useful one.
While he certainly has the shooting part down -- he hit 47.7 percent of his 3s and ranked second among point guards in TS percent -- he was such an infrequent participant that it didn't amount to much. Part of what made Gibson so deadly in that Detroit series was his aggressiveness, but that mentality is long gone. Gibson came in dead last among point guards in usage rate and fourth from the bottom in pure point rating; even as a high-efficiency spot-up guy, he needs to be more active to justify a rotation slot.
[h4]LEON POWE, PF[/h4]
Projection: 19.5 pts, 4.4 reb, 5.7 ast per 40 min; 16.09 PER | Player card
• Undersized 4 who has battled several major knee injuries.
• Can't shoot or pass, but clever scorer with amazing knack for drawing fouls.
• Takes charges in bunches but otherwise limited defender lacking size, mobility.
My nickname for Leon Powe is "The Whistle," because virtually any play involving him will result in a foul. Last year he earned 63 free throw attempts on just 49 field goal tries on offense, committed a foul every 6.6 minutes on defense, and was one of the few players to draw more than one offensive foul for every 40 minutes on the court. This is par for the course for Powe; he did the same thing in Boston.
Powe played only 236 minutes while battling back from a serious knee injury and didn't have his usual burst. As a 6-8 power forward with no range, he'll need it to survive, and the hope is he can regain that edge this season.
[h4]RYAN HOLLINS, C[/h4]
Projection: 13.0 pts, 6.7 reb, 1.6 ast per 40 min; 10.35 PER | Player card
• Athletic, slender 7-footer who can defend perimeter, run floor and finish.
• H as limited offensive skills and poor feel. Shockingly ineffective rebounder.
• High-strung, emotional player who is prone to poor decisions.
One of the great mysteries with Hollins is how such a great athlete can be such an awful rebounder. He's 7 feet tall and can jump out of the gym but ranked 63rd out of 64 centers in rebound rate. While he lacks strength, so do a lot of other bigs (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=1977Chris Bosh, http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=125Marcus Camby, etc.) and none of them are anywhere near this bad on the glass.
Hollins offers some defensive value because he's so agile for his size, but he offsets it with poor decisions. He commits some of the worst goaltends in the league and fouls far too often (6.51 per 40 minutes, seventh among centers), and his lack of muscle makes him a liability in post defense.
Offensively, his lack of skills leaves him prone to turnovers. While he got enough dunks and free throws to post a strong TS percent, he didn't score enough to offset his anemic rebounding and shaky ballhandling. On a decent team, he's a fourth big man at best, but on a dreadful Minnesota club he ended up starting 27 times.
[h4]JOEY GRAHAM, SG[/h4]
Projection: 13.6 pts, 6.5 reb, 1.2 ast per 40 min; 10.27 PER | Player card
• Powerful wing who can score around basket. OK from midrange but can't hit 3s.
• Dreadful ballhandler. Will push off with Heisman-caliber stiff-arm on drives.
• Good size for position but a below-average defender who reacts slowly.
The main complaint about Graham is how he can be such a sharp guy off the court and have such a low basketball IQ. Graham is smart, listens to the coaches and does everything he's told, but seemingly everything that happens on the court takes him by surprise. He's particularly bad with the ball, ranking second-to-last among small forwards in both turnover ratio and pure point rating.
Graham's size allows him to go one-on-one and score or draw fouls, but his methodology is purely brute force. If a defender gets in his way, he'll shove him aside, earning an offensive foul in the process -- Graham had 16 offensive fouls in just 759 minutes last year. What he won't do under any circumstances is determine where the defender came from and find the man he left open.
[h4]DANNY GREEN, G[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Wing has reputation for strong outside shot, solid defense.
• Limited ballhandler and B-level athlete.
One of my favorite sleepers from the 2009 draft, Green played 115 relatively undistinguished minutes as a rookie. He also got into two D-League games for the Cavs' affiliate in Erie and played very well, averaging 25.5 points. At the moment, he's a fairly unknown quantity at the NBA level, but the opening at small forward should provide some opportunities for him.
[h4]CHRISTIAN EYENGA, G[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Athletic wing who needs more game experience. Needs to improve jump shot.
• Can run floor and has mobility to defend NBA wing players.
A "who?" pick with the final choice of the first round in 2009, Eyenga has been a mystery to date, but we'll start learning now that he's been brought over. This should be a developmental year for him, and he's likely to spend a good chunk of it in the D-League.
[h4]JAWAD WILLIAMS, F[/h4]
Projection: 12.2 pts, 4.4 reb, 1.8 ast per 40 min; 8.31 PER | Player card
• Big for a wing but limited. Has respectable outside shot but can't create.
• Useful defender as a 4 against small-ball lineups. Bad rebounder for size.
I'm a little baffled that the Cavs felt the need to give Williams a qualifying offer. While he had his moments last season, at the end of the day he was one of the least effective players at his position. Williams will have to shoot better on 3s to have a career, because he's not going to create anything and he doesn't rebound. He has a bit more value on defense, though mostly as a stabilizer -- he rarely blocks shots and virtually never gets steals.
[h4]SAMARDO SAMUELS, PF[/h4]
No projection |Player card
• Undersized but strong 4 who likes to bang around basket.
• Middling athlete who may need to get in better shape.
Samuels earned a contract after a strong summer league performance and is likely to make the team. Undersized 4s have been consistently overlooked in recent drafts, only to post very solid performances, and its possible Samuels will be the latest of that group. On the other hand, he's a lot more limited than most members of that group -- if he makes the cut, he'll do it with his defense and rebounding.
- Detroit Pistons
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]RODNEY STUCKEY, PG[/h4]
Projection: 19.1 pts, 4.6 reb, 5.5 ast per 40 min; 15.73 PER | Player card
• Huge combo guard who likes to drive for short and midrange jumpers.
• Can handle ball but a mediocre outside shooter. Poor finisher for his size.
• Quality defender at either guard spot. Good size and can pressure, deny ball.
Stuckey is huge for a point guard and has been effective posting up smaller ones for short-range jumpers. He draws fouls, scores nearly a point every two minutes and is one of the best rebounders at his position. This would all be great if he were really a point guard.
But he's not. He's a 2. Stuckey assisted on less than one in five of his possessions, even though he had plenty of options around him last season. That placed him 64th out of 71 point guards in assist ratio, which provides another data point for the two argument, just in case "He's 6-foot-5, doesn't see the floor and goes to the hole on every play" wasn't succinct enough.
Don't get me wrong -- Stuckey is a good player who has made slow but steady progress, even if his puzzling inability to make 3s (25.4 percent in his career) or finish at the rim (46.5 percent last season) put a ceiling on all that potential. I just wonder when Detroit will realize that a guard rotation of three shooting guards and no point guards isn't the best way to go.
[h4]RICHARD HAMILTON, SG[/h4]
Projection: 18.3 pts, 3.1 reb, 4.5 ast per 40 min; 13.47 PER | Player card
• Slender swingman who excels moving without ball for midrange jump shots.
• Quick and can get own shot. Able to draw fouls despite rarely attacking paint.
• Can be overpowered by big wings but excels against quicker, shorter players.
Hamilton was fourth among shooting guards in usage rate and averaging 21.4 points per 40 minutes, so he still can create offense -- just at reduced effectiveness. His PER and TS percent numbers have steadily slipped the past three seasons, as he rarely gets to the rim anymore. Last season, only 13.4 percent of his shots came in the basket area; he used to take nearly one-third from that region, and the difference explains his career-low 40.9 percent shooting mark.
Although he stands 6-7, Hamilton also has become anemic on the glass -- only six shooting guards tallied a worse rebound rate. He continues to draw amazing numbers of fouls off the ball, and his percentages may surge a bit once he isn't asked to carry such a heavy offensive load, but there's no denying that his game is in decline.
[h4]TAYSHAUN PRINCE, SF[/h4]
Projection: 14.3 pts, 6.0 reb, 3.5 ast per 40 min; 14.34 PER | Player card
• Long-armed, skinny forward who uses length to bother shots from a step away.
• Mostly shoots midrange jumpers. Rarely attacks basket or turns ball over.
• Athletic finisher in transition. Game has suffered thanks to back problems.
A ruptured disk in his back cost Prince 33 games, and for the first two-thirds of the season, he was essentially worthless. Down the stretch, however, he played like the Prince of old, which offers some promise for the Pistons this season. Prince shot 51 percent after Feb. 1 and averaged 15.2 points per game. Qualitatively, he had a soaring, swooping dunk over Andre Iguodala in early April that served as an exclamation point on his return. Prince ranked third among small forwards in pure point rating -- an important skill because the Detroit guards aren't passers -- but his defense has been slower to come around. Once an elite defender, he's slipped in recent years, but he still has the length to be a major pest.
[h4]CHARLIE VILLANUEVA, PF[/h4]
Projection: 20.4 pts, 8.3 reb, 1.6 ast per 40 min; 16.58 PER | Player card
• 3-point range and scorer's instincts. Likes pull-up jumper off dribble.
• Poor defender who struggled with foot problems. Effort level a major concern.
• Not a great shooter despite frequent J's. Needs to attack rim and create more.
Villanueva performed his usual routine of creating lots of shots with few turnovers and barely acceptable accuracy last season, and the Pistons can live with that. What they can't live with, however, is the way he defended.
I know Villanueva was suffering from plantar fasciitis, but goodness, he was awful. The guy was ponderously slow up and down the court and rarely in the correct zip code on help defense. At 6-11, he was able to get some stops with his length, but on many plays he would have needed a plane ticket to get within reach of his man. Detroit gave up an additional 7.2 points per 100 possessions with Villanueva on the court last season, and the only surprise is that the number wasn't larger.
If it's the injury, that's one thing. If it was effort, that's something else. I don't profess to know for certain which is the culprit, but I have a feeling it will be obvious by mid-November.
[h4]BEN WALLACE, C[/h4]
Projection: 6.6 pts, 10.8 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 13.04 PER | Player card
• Elite defender despite lack of height. Strong, quick and a superior competitor.
• Blocks shots, takes charges and controls boards. Rarely leaves lane in help D.
• Hopeless offensive player and a horrific foul shooter. Often loses ball on way up.
Here's what I want to know: Why did Wallace think Detroit would be better than Phoenix? He left several million dollars on the table to lose 55 games in Detroit rather than make the conference finals with the Suns, and it doesn't make any more sense now than it did at the time.
In any case, Wallace delivered an amazing campaign and pretty much single-handedly carried Detroit's defense for much of the season. The Pistons were a whopping 8.6 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court last season, as he seemed to regain much of the energy and lift that the Big Ben of yore possessed. Wallace rebounded with renewed vigor, ranked third among centers in steals per minute and posted his best PER in four years.
Alas, it may not continue. Wallace is a Fluke Rule player, so we should expect his PER to return from whence it came. In his case it's easy to see why -- his 54.1 percent shooting mark was his best since the turn of the century, and his assist rate may have been an outlier, too.
[h4]Fluke Rule Players, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player [/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]2008-09 PER[/th][th=""]2009-10 PER[/th][th=""]Change[/th][/tr][tr][td]Luke Ridnour [/td][td]Mil[/td][td]12.95 [/td][td]17.81[/td][td]+4.86[/td][/tr][tr][td]Carlos Boozer [/td][td]Uta[/td][td]17.28[/td][td]21.42[/td][td]+4.14 [/td][/tr][tr][td]Nazr Mohammed [/td][td]Cha[/td][td]15.83*[/td][td]19.64[/td][td]+3.81[/td][/tr][tr][td]Ben Wallace [/td][td]Det[/td][td]12.18[/td][td]15.84[/td][td]+3.66[/td][/tr][tr][td]Sam Dalembert [/td][td]Phi[/td][td]13.22[/td][td]16.84[/td][td]+3.62 [/td][/tr][tr][td]Corey Maggette [/td][td]GS[/td][td]16.91[/td][td]20.40[/td][td]+3.49[/td][/tr][tr][td]Jamal Crawford [/td][td]Atl[/td][td]15.15[/td][td]18.50[/td][td]+3.35 [/td][/tr][tr][td]* 2007-08 PER. Did not play enough minutes to qualify in 2008-09.[/td][/tr][/table]
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]BEN GORDON, G[/h4]
Projection: 19.2 pts, 2.9 reb, 3.8 ast per 40 min; 13.97 PER | Player card
• Spectacular outside shooter with high-arcing release. Undersized for a 2.
• Good strength but just average as ball handler. Can make runners in lane.
• Tweener on defense who struggles to challenge shots. Subpar rebounder.
Although Gordon's first season in Detroit looked absolutely brutal, it's important to remember he played much of it on a bad ankle. This should be obvious from his 3-point percentage -- there's no way this dude would make 32.1 percent of his 3s at full strength. Not now, and not when he's 50. Gordon also basically stopped gathering rebounds, scored less than a point every two minutes for the first time in his career and was an open sore on defense.
Gordon's game log makes the impact of the ankle injury more obvious. He scored 20 or more points eight times in the first nine games and five times in the final six. In between he surpassed the 20-point mark only four times in 48 games. He may not live up to his huge contract, but he'll go back to being the normal Gordon this season.
[h4]WILL BYNUM, PG[/h4]
Projection: 15.3 pts, 3.3 reb, 6.5 ast per 40 min; 13.65 PER | Player card
• Short spark-plug guard who looks to score off dribble. Improved as a passer.
• Average outside shooter. Explosive leaper who can finish despite small stature.
• Aggressive defender but can run himself out of position. Lack of size a negative.
Predictably, Bynum couldn't repeat his amazing, out-of-nowhere 2008-09 season, but 2009-10 wasn't a bad encore. The main difference was that he shot the ball less, which might not be a bad thing -- he dominated the ball at times two seasons ago but played it much more by the book in 2009-10. Bynum's pure point rating landed well above par for his position, so the "2 in a 1's body" critique now seems tired.
Defensively, Bynum didn't get any taller and had to run around like a madman to compensate -- sometimes to his detriment. Overall, however, he's become a pretty solid backup point guard and won't be overmatched if injuries push him into a starting role.
[h4]JASON MAXIELL, PF[/h4]
Projection: 12.7 pts, 9.6 reb, 1.0 ast per 40 min; 13.86 PER | Player card
• Undersized but has long very arms; makes spectacular shot blocks and dunks.
• Poor shooter and bad ball handler. Lacks great offensive instincts.
• Tough, but short and not in great shape. D has slipped in recent years.
Maxiell looked out of shape last season, and his defense clearly has declined. Although this was inevitable -- he's a 6-7 center, for crying out loud -- Maxiell hasn't compensated well for his lost athleticism. Too often he seems caught out of position on D, and that has nothing to do with size.
Offensively, Maxiell shoots a lot of jumpers for a guy who can't shoot. During the past two seasons, one-fifth of this shots have been long 2s outside the basket area, and he's made 30.1 percent. He's also a terrible foul shooter (56.4 percent in his career), offsetting some of the damage he unleashes in the paint with his bulk and explosiveness around the basket.
Overall, he's settled into a mundane existence as an undersized backup center, one who doesn't seem likely to change much in the near future. It's a disappointment given the promise he showed in his first three seasons.
[h4]AUSTIN DAYE, SF[/h4]
Projection: 15.8 pts, 7.6 reb, 1.7 ast per 40 min; 13.40 PER) | Player card
• Rail-thin wingman with good outside shot. Needs to hone scoring instincts.
• Will block shots and alter others with length, but rest of D needs major work.
• Must improve ball skills. Very good rebounder despite lack of strength.
Daye was lapped by second-rounder Jonas Jerebko for good reason -- Daye has yet to get a clue on defense, and he badly needs some bulk. That said, he still looks to be the better long-term prospect because of his combination of length and shooting ability.
Although Daye didn't shoot particularly well last season, he managed to score 15.3 points per 40 minutes as a rookie. However, other weaknesses came to the fore. Most notably, Daye is a lousy ball handler, ranking 62nd out of 67 small forwards in pure point rating. He also fouled once every eight minutes and needs to defend without hacking, which should be easy once he realizes he can lay off opposing wings and use his length to alter shots.
[h4]JONAS JEREBKO, F[/h4]
Projection: 13.1 pts, 8.2 reb, 1.1 ast per 40 min; 13.82 PER | Player card
• High-energy combo forward who can run floor and moves well without ball.
• Quality defender, especially against 3s. Good size and athleticism.
• Mediocre outside shooter with few ball skills. Needs to improve handle.
Jerebko earned starts at the 3 early in the season and was so good he stayed in the starting lineup all season, moving to the 4 when Tayshaun Prince came back. At 6-10, the 4 is his most likely long-term position, where he can be a pain with his off-the-ball activity and athleticism up and down the floor.
Jerebko is a high-energy defender as well. He needs a bit more muscle to guard post players, but he's a real pest to 3s because of his length. He has good feet and hands, too, ranking ninth among power forwards in steals per minute. Jerebko is already 23, so he might not develop as much in the future as some other 2009 rookies, but if the jumper comes around, he'll prove an absolute steal with the 39th pick.
[h4]CHRIS WILCOX, PF[/h4]
Projection: 13.7 pts, 4.3 reb, 5.2 ast per 40 min, PER 13.36 | Player card
• High-flying pick-and-roll finisher. Loves to receive in lane as dive man for dunks.
• Poor defender who gives up position easily and gets caught napping in help D.
• Lacks an outside shot, limited post game. Poor ball handler. Decent rebounder.
Wilcox set a career high in rebound rate last season, and that about wraps it up for the good news. If you're going to sign a guy like this, I really don't understand why the team wouldn't run high screen-and-rolls for him, but Detroit didn't. Wilcox just floated around and scored nearly three points per 40 minutes fewer than he had in any other season. His season also included the usual assortment of defensive mix-ups, which is the main reason it's tough for him to earn minutes. The irony is that he's a much better player than most fifth big men; he just can't do the things (guard the post, defend at the end of quarters) that most fifth bigs are asked to do.
[h4]GREG MONROE, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Long lefty with high skill level for size. Can hit midrange J, handle ball and pass.
• Not a great athlete and criticized for lack of motor. Could struggle on defense.
• Could be a tweener between 4 and 5. Not a great rebounder but not overly mobile.
My draft rater loved Monroe, and I thought he was a great value pick. He averaged nearly four assists a game as a college center; nobody does that. His ability to operate out of the high post could be a real boon for this team in particular, as it has lots of scorers but nobody who has been terribly interested in setting them up.
[h4]TRACY McGRADY, F[/h4]
(Projection: 14.9 pts, 5.3 reb, 5.1 ast p/40 min; 13.17 PER) | Player card
• Long, scoring wing who can get jump shot off over most defenders.
• Vastly underrated passer with good feel for game. Tends to settle for jumpers.
• Virtually useless as defender thanks to knee injuries. Has lost burst, explosion.
McGrady has shot 38.8 percent and 38.7 percent the past two seasons as he's become increasingly reliant on contested jumpers to generate points. He shot only 25 percent on 3s last year and 33.7 percent for his career, but most of those were contested looks off the dribble -- one can imagine him being more potent as a spot-up specialist if he were willing to accept the role. Alas, his defensive niche is more difficult to envision. He's 32 and can't move, so even if the brutal shooting numbers of the past two seasons improve, he's unlikely to have value as more than a deep bench player.
[h4]TERRICO WHITE, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Athletic wing who can really jump. Good ball handler for size, can play point.
• Mediocre outside shooter. Didn't score at high rate as collegian.
• Questionable motor. May need to add strength. Had low assist rates in college.
I didn't understand the fascination with White -- even the year he played point in college he barely averaged two assists a game. If he makes shots he'll probably stick, but he didn't shoot particularly well in college.
[h4]DaJUAN SUMMERS, F[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Big wing who can shoot from deep but rarely attacks basket.
• Good leaper but otherwise limited athletically. Bad rebounder for size.
• Good size and could eventually play 4.
Summers made 35.7 percent of his 3s, which is decent; the problem was everything else. He shot horribly inside the arc, rebounded like a guard and brought little to the table defensively. If those numbers don't improve, Summers will spend his next winter learning a foreign language.
- Indiana Pacers
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]DARREN COLLISON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 18.7 pts, 3.4 reb, 7.9 ast per 40 min; 16.88 PER | Player card
• Tiny, blazing fast point guard who easily creates shots with quickness off dribble.
• Decent shooter but must improve court vision and handle; should add floater, too.
• Good defender despite size. Pressures ball, has great feet and long arms.
Collison's speed, athleticism and shooting ability are comparable to those of Houston's Aaron Brooks, but Collison is a more extreme version -- he's even faster, more athletic and a better shooter. He shot 52.5 percent on 3s his last season at UCLA and 40 percent on NBA 3s as a rookie. In fact, the biggest question is why he didn't take more -- only 15 percent of his shots were triples, one of the lowest rates among point guards.
Collison displays more rough edges than Brooks, however. He's prone to carrying violations and needs to tighten his handle, and somebody with his jets should draw a lot more fouls. And like Brooks, he's driving mainly to score rather than to pass. One key difference between the two: Collison can really guard. He gives up inches, and that hurts him on some nights, but he's so good in other phases that he's still a net positive.
[h4]BRANDON RUSH, SG[/h4]
Projection: 12.4 pts, 5.7 reb, 1.8 ast per 40 min; 9.64 PER | Player card
• Solid wing defender with good athleticism. Will block shots. Intensity an issue.
• Has solid, high-arcing lefty jumper and can finish in transition.
• Oddly passive on offensive. Has few ball skills and never draws fouls.
As I pointed out at the end of last season, Rush may be the worst player ever to lead his team in minutes, posting a sub-10 PER for a second straight season. At times you wondered whether he was so invisible that the coaches forgot to take him out.
There's some talent hiding, however. Rush nailed 41.1 percent of his 3s, is a solid defender who was third at his position in blocks per minute and possesses NBA athleticism. Alas, his in-game Houdini acts are legendary. Only four shooting guards had a lower usage rate, and only three drew fouls less often. Rush has the ability to be a very solid player, but he's 25 and he still isn't any good. His offseason may offer a hint as to why -- Rush will open the season with a five-game suspension for a violation of the league's substance-abuse policy.
[h4]DANNY GRANGER, SF[/h4]
Projection: 25.5 pts, 5.8 reb, 3.1 ast per 40 min; 19.56 PER | Player card
• Deadly long-range shooter the off catch with the size to convert under duress.
• Can attack off dribble. Always starts right but has sweet right-to-left crossover.
• A tweener on D but a decent defender with active hands. Good shot-blocker.
Granger didn't shoot the 3 as well as he did in his All-Star season a year earlier, but otherwise there wasn't much difference -- he did everything else in near-identical quantities and still averaged 24 points a game. As usual, the way he scored was as impressive as the quantity, getting virtually all his points in the flow of the offense. You never felt that he was impeding the rest of the group.
The growing issue with Granger is missed games. He's played 67 and 62 the past two seasons, and it's difficult to imagine that Pacers would do anything of consequence without him in the lineup for the full 82.
[h4]TYLER HANSBROUGH, PF[/h4]
Projection: 18.5 pts, 9.6 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 14.49 PER | Player card
• Energetic, slightly undersized 4 with good quickness. Struggles to finish near rim.
• Active defender and rebounder and very strong. Average leaper with short arms.
• Aggressive, attacking offensive player but needs to improve low, flat jump shot.
Hansbrough played only 29 games before suffering from an inner-ear infection that induced vertigo, so I'm not sure I'd read too much into his stats. Yes, his shooting percentage was awful, but unlike the other rookies, he didn't get a chance to make adjustments after taking his initial lumps. He hardly got in any work during the summer because he was still dealing with the vertigo, so he may start slowly again in 2010-11. But let's not judge him just yet.
[h4]ROY HIBBERT, C[/h4]
Projection: 18.2 pts, 8.8 reb, 3.3 ast per 40 min; 15.21 PER | Player card
• Big, slow post-up center who likes to shoot sky hooks. Can hit from 15 feet.
• Blocks shots and uses size in paint, but immobile. Picks up fouls in bunches.
• Subpar rebounder and surprisingly bad finisher thanks to limited elevation.
Hibbert is 7-2, but offensively he does a fair amount of damage away from the basket. He's slowly turning into the new Zydrunas Ilgauskas, minus the tip-ins on the offensive glass -- he likes to shoot sweeping hook shots, he's steadily improved as a shooter and he can't move.
Hibbert has figured out how to use his size as a weapon on defense. He rarely strays from the lane and basically concedes jump shots to opposing centers, much the same way Yao Ming plays. His big problem right now is that he continually gets caught out of position and commits fouls. That was the key reason he played only 25 minutes a game, and the fouls are likely to put an upper bound on his minutes in the high 20s or so throughout his career.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]A.J. PRICE, G[/h4]
Projection: 19.2 pts, 4.0 reb, 5.5 ast per 40 min; 14.77 PER | Player card
• Shrewd pick-and-roll scorer who can shoot off the dribble from distance.
• Has scorer's instincts but needs to improve passing skill. A 2 in a 1's body.
• A "B" athlete who may struggle to stop quicker guards. Has trouble getting open.
Price was a real find at the back end of the second round, playing well enough to start by the end of the season and not looking out of place with the first unit. Long term, however, he's probably more of a combo guard off the bench, as he doesn't seen the floor well at all -- Price was just 66th out of 71 points guards in both assist ratio and pure point rating.
Price shot well enough on long 2s and free throws that I suspect his 3-point percentage will improve. However, an offseason knee injury is a major concern. He fractured his left patella in a charity game -- the same knee that suffered a torn ACL two years earlier -- and likely will miss the start of the season. Since he was already at his limit athletically against NBA talent, he'll need to come back very close to full strength.
[h4]T.J. FORD, PG[/h4]
Projection: 17.0 pts, 4.7 reb, 6.3 ast per 40 min; 14.08 PER | Player card
• Diminutive, right-hand-dominant point guard with outstanding straight-line speed.
• Has rep as a me-first type who looks for own shot or immediate assist.
• Small stature an issue on defense. Quick to ball and rebounds very well for size.
Ford is turning into that guy at the playground nobody wants to play with. He fell out of favor for a second straight season because of his tendency to look for his own offense at the team's expense, often launching long jumpers off the dribble early in the shot clock. Although he's a good midrange shooter (45.2 percent on long 2s last season), the Pacers had superior offensive options on the court.
Conversely, Ford landed just 52nd at his position in pure point rating and 49th in assist ratio, never seeming content to make the pass that leads to the pass that leads to the basket. It says something that the offense performed 3½ points per 100 possessions worse with him on the court, even though his replacements were some of the least gifted offensive players in captivity. The same thing happened a year earlier when Indy replaced him with Jarrett Jack.
Ford is a rarity as a right-hander who looks to shoot going to his right, and if you drew a line through the middle of the court, he'd rarely cross to the left side of it. Last season he lobbed nearly three times as many shots from the right side of the floor as the left and once again was the league leader in right-left differential (see chart).
[h4]Biggest Right-Left Differential, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player [/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]% of 2-Pt. FGA from right[/th][th=""]% of 2-Pt. FGA from left[/th][th=""]Difference[/th][/tr][tr][td]T.J. Ford [/td][td]Ind[/td][td]30.7 [/td][td]10.9[/td][td]19.8[/td][/tr][tr][td]Carmelo Anthony [/td][td]Den[/td][td]31.3[/td][td]13.9[/td][td]17.4[/td][/tr][tr][td]Chris Kaman [/td][td]LAC[/td][td]28.4[/td][td]13.9[/td][td]14.5[/td][/tr][tr][td]Chauncey Billups [/td][td]Den[/td][td]31.9[/td][td]17.5[/td][td]14.4[/td][/tr][tr][td]Marcus Thornton [/td][td]NO[/td][td]24.0[/td][td]9.8[/td][td]14.2[/td][/tr][/table]
[h4]DAHNTAY JONES, SG[/h4]
Projection: 14.8 pts, 5.0 reb, 3.0 ast per 40 min; 10.21 PER | Player card
• Good athlete and great leaper. Has skills to be outstanding defensive player.
• Poor outside shooter. Loves to go one-on-one from wing but tends to lose handle.
• Good finisher at rim in transition. Should rebound more given athleticism.
Talk to people in the league about Jones and they'll tell you he has a stopper's skills but is sidetracked by dreams of being a scorer. The Pacers indulged that fantasy far too often last season, especially early in the season with a parade of wing isolations.
They discovered that he can draw fouls on drives to the hoop but is equally adept at creating a three-on-two going the other way. Jones had the fourth-worst turnover ratio among shooting guards, with about one possession in seven ending in a miscue, and that more than offset a high rate of free throw attempts.
Defensively, Jones is a positive force, but he needs to manage his aggression better. He averaged a foul every eight minutes, the second-worst rate among shooting guards, and a seven-year vet really should have that out of his system.
[h4]MIKE DUNLEAVY, SF[/h4]
Projection: 16.7 pts, 6.1 reb, 2.8 ast per 40 min; 11.26 PER | Player card
• Tall, savvy wing who is a good set shooter and can create for others off bounce.
• Limited athlete who struggles one-on-one. Below-average rebounder for size.
• Lacks strength and quickness on D, but a good team defender who takes charges.
Dunleavy came back from a serious knee injury well enough to play 67 games, but he didn't look like the same player. In particular his outside shot failed him, with Dunleavy hitting only 31.8 percent on 3s and a fairly pitiful 34.4 percent on long-distance 2s. He also looked a step slow out there, especially on defense.
Overall, though, he was a half-decent player last season. If his outside stroke comes back, he offers some real value as a wingman off the bench, even playing at last season's speed. And if he has more pop in his step, which often happens in the second year back from a knee injury, he could be a viable starter.
[h4]PAUL GEORGE, SF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Long wing with accurate shot, deep range and skill to play over top of defenses.
• Smooth, patient offensive player but can be too passive. Ball skills questionable.
• Must add strength and improve energy level on D. Length yields plentiful steals.
On paper, George seemingly has all the attributes to be a big-time scorer. The one red flag is that he wasn't especially prolific as a collegian, scoring 16.8 points a game in a weak conference. He certainly can shoot, hitting 90.9 percent from the line last season and 44.7 percent on 3s the season before, and you don't normally see 6-9 forwards averaging over two steals a game. His game may replicate that of Danny Granger's, but it appears they can play at the same time with Granger at the 4.
[h4]JEFF FOSTER, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Unusually quick big man who is active rebounder, especially at offensive end.
• Not a great leaper but mobile enough to defend wings 1-on-1 on perimeter.
• Poor outside shooter and constantly sets illegal screens. Plagued by injuries.
I've long felt Foster was one of the league's most underrated players, but we may be getting close to the end of the line here. He missed all but 16 games with a back injury and struggled in his few minutes. At age 33, his athleticism -- the one thing that really separated him as a player -- has diminished noticeably, and he lacks the power or skill to take his career in a different direction.
[h4]JAMES POSEY, SF[/h4]
Projection: 9.1 pts, 6.6 reb, 2.6 ast per 40 min; 8.30 PER | Player card
• "Stretch 4" who camps out at 3-point line but can't create off dribble.
• Quality defender with length and toughness; excellent defensive rebounder.
• Out of shape last season and may be showing age. Has become foul-prone.
Posey has become one of the most extreme players in the league. More than two-thirds of his shots were 3-pointers, the second-highest rate among small forwards. He remains a stalwart on the glass, as only three small forwards had a better defensive rebound rate, and he's a surprisingly effective distributor with the fourth-best assist ratio at his position.
On the other hand … he shoots so rarely (third-worst usage rate among small forwards, just 9.2 points per 40 minutes) that it's hard for him to make much of an offensive impact. Despite picking his spots carefully, his true shooting percentage remains below the league average. And as the tire around his waist has grown, so have the fouls -- only five small forwards were whistled more often. He's likely to improve on last season's 33.5 percentage mark on 3s; nonetheless, his four-year, full-midlevel contract has proved to be an unmitigated disaster.
[h4]JOSH McROBERTS, F[/h4]
Projection: 13.6 pts, 9.1 reb, 3.5 ast per 40 min; 14.24 PER | Player card
• Lefty forward who can handle and pass. Can shoot from outside, but lousy at line.
• Lack of strength, mobility make him a liability on defense. Iffy conditioning.
• Subpar rebounder for size. Will post up smaller defenders for short hooks.
After wandering the desert for a few years, "McBobs" looked like a real NBA rotation player at the end of last season. Granted, that was partly because he shot 55.7 percent on 2s, which he may have a tough time repeating, but McRoberts also attained the best pure point rating among power forwards and has begun to develop a 3-point shot.
To get more extended burn, however, he has to upgrade his D. McRoberts got in better shape last season but still has work to do on that front, plus his free throw shooting remains inexcusable.
[h4]SOLOMON JONES, C[/h4]
Player card
• Foul-prone big man with high base and virtually no strength. Has poor hands.
• Very long and a decent athlete. Can hit short-range jumpers. Poor rebounder.
• Can't be trusted with ball; a turnover waiting to happen.
Jones is very long and displays some decent skills, but it's tough to keep him on the court because he's such an error-prone player. On offense, he doesn't have the strength to play near the basket and is a train wreck handling the ball in the high post. Defensively, he can block shots but is easily shoved aside by bigger players, and he picks up fouls in bunches trying to overcome disadvantageous floor position.
[h4]Top Foul Rate, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]PF/40[/th][/tr][tr][td]Fabricio Oberto[/td][td]Was[/td][td]7.45[/td][/tr][tr][td]Solomon Jones[/td][td]Ind[/td][td]7.41[/td][/tr][tr][td]Hasheem Thabeet[/td][td]Mem[/td][td]7.34[/td][/tr][tr][td]Jon Brockman[/td][td]Sac[/td][td]7.04[/td][/tr][tr][td]Amir Johnson[/td][td]Tor[/td][td]7.02 [/td][/tr][/table]
That's most obvious in his foul rate, which was second in the NBA last season at an obscene 7.41 per 40 minutes (see chart). He's been in the league for four seasons, so this wasn't some kind of rookie learning curve; it's what he is. As a third center you could do worse, but as a rotation player he's overmatched.
- Miami Heat
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]MARIO CHALMERS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 11.5 pts, 3.0 reb, 5.5 ast per 40 min; 11.33 PER | Player card
• Shoot-first point guard with good size and amazingly fast hands.
• Good 3-point shooter, but rarely penetrates and commits too many turnovers.
• Gambling defender who will leave openings. Professionalism an issue.
Chalmers delivered a disappointing second season, getting benched for repeated tardiness and staying on the pine due to repeated misses. He shot just 31.8 percent on 3s, which was a huge setback from his promising rookie performance and one that all but eliminated any reason to keep him on the floor.
At his best, Chalmers' ability to space the floor and play off the ball make him a useful weapon on a team like Miami that doesn't require a traditional point guard, but he has to make shots. Last season he rarely shot the ball and was even worse at creating shots for others; plus, he ranked 65th out of 71 guards in turnover ratio.
[h4]DWYANE WADE, SG[/h4]
Projection: 27.9 pts, 5.4 reb, 7.2 ast per 40 min; 26.31 PER | Player card
• High-scoring slasher with unbelievable quickness and knack for drawing fouls.
• Willing passer but erratic jump shooter. Will lose handle on the drive.
• Phenomenal shot-blocker for size and a good defender. Loves to roam off ball.
Wade put together an amazing year considering he was in noticeably worse shape the first two months and lacked his usual elevation. He shot in the low 40s in late December, but from that point until the end of the year, he was pretty much an exact replica of his 2008-09 self.
Wade's whole game is getting to the basket. He shot 63.4 percent in the basket area and ranked fourth among shooting guards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt. That's why it's amazing to see defenders bite on his shot-fake time after time; once you've got him shooting a jumper you've won, just let him shoot it. Wade shot 35.8 percent on long 2s and 30 percent on 3s, but seemingly twice without fail during every game, would have somebody land on him after he faked a 17-footer off the dribble.
Wade can take himself out of plays by roaming on defense, but he's such a dynamic disruptor that it's hard to complain -- especially since he chooses his risks much more carefully than he used to. Despite standing 6-foot-4, Wade blocked 1.1 shots per game; he's one of only three players 6-5 or shorter to average more than a block per game, and he's accomplished this four times. (Dennis Johnson and David Thompson are the others.) He also averaged a block and two steals in the same season for a second time in four years; the last player besides Wade to do so was Gerald Wallace in 2005-06.
[h4]LeBRON JAMES, SF[/h4]
Projection: 29.0 pts, 7.3 reb, 8.3 ast per 40 min; 29.12 PER | Player card
• One-of-a-kind talent with point guard skills in a power forward's body.
• Physique and blinding speed overpower opponents on drives and transitions.
• Middling outside shot and free throw stroke are lone remaining weaknesses.
The disappointing ending in Cleveland doesn't change the fact James churned out one of history's most dominant regular seasons. His 31.19 PER didn't quite match the 31.76 he chalked up a year earlier, but since 1973-74 (we can't track it for earlier seasons because the league didn't track individual turnovers until then), he boasts two of the top six PER marks. The only player to top him is Michael Jordan, who owns the first, second, fourth and fifth positions.
[h4]Top Reg.-Season PER Since 1973-74[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]PER[/th][/tr][tr][td]Michael Jordan[/td][td]1987-88[/td][td]31.89[/td][/tr][tr][td]Michael Jordan[/td][td]1990-91[/td][td]31.79[/td][/tr][tr][td]LeBron James[/td][td]2008-09[/td][td]31.76[/td][/tr][tr][td]Michael Jordan[/td][td]1989-90[/td][td]31.31[/td][/tr][tr][td]Michael Jordan[/td][td]1988-89[/td][td]31.29[/td][/tr][tr][td]LeBron James[/td][td]2009-10[/td][td]31.19[/td][/tr][/table]
Of all the phenomenal stats he put up, this one is the most remarkable: James converted an incredible 71.2 percent of his attempts at the basket area. To fully appreciate this mark, consider that nobody since 2004 has sunk more than 70 percent of their shots in that area with at least 150 attempts. Now consider that James had not 150 attempts, but 601 -- nearly eight a game. When he wasn't dunking, he was dishing -- he had a 5.83 pure point rating that was easily the best among non-point guards (see chart).
[h4]Top Pure Point Rating Among Non-Point Guards[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]PPR[/th][/tr][tr][td]LeBron James[/td][td]Cle[/td][td]5.83[/td][/tr][tr][td]Manu Ginobili[/td][td]SA[/td][td]4.31[/td][/tr][tr][td]Joe Johnson[/td][td]Atl[/td][td]3.50[/td][/tr][tr][td]Hedo Turkoglu[/td][td]Tor[/td][td]3.47[/td][/tr][tr][td]Jason Terry[/td][td]Dal[/td][td]3.42[/td][/tr][/table]
The %!$** in the King's armor is that he's quite mortal if you can manage to keep him away from the basket. James hit only 39.1 percent of his 2-pointers that weren't at the rim, and that was a career high. Similarly, his other shooting numbers are mediocre: 33.3 percent on 3-pointers and 76.7 percent from the line. It's useful in end-of-shot-clock situations that he can get a jumper off any time he pleases, but the jumper is a liability earlier in the possession.
[h4]CHRIS BOSH, PF[/h4]
Projection: 25.4 pts, 12.0 reb, 2.6 ast p/40 min; 23.88 PER | Player card
• Long, athletic frontcourt player with outstanding midrange jump shot.
• Lefty excels at driving either side to draw fouls. Likes to operate from left elbow.
• Excellent rebounder. Mobile defender but can be overpowered.
Bosh showed up with a little more muscle and put together the best season of his career, ranking fourth in the league in PER while setting new career-bests in points and rebounds per minute, shooting percentage, true shooting percentage (TS%) and usage rate. He's become a spectacular midrange shooter, making 46.3 percent and 48.2 percent of his long 2s the past two seasons.
Bosh also owns the free throw game. He ranked fourth among power forwards by averaging better than a foul shot for every two field goal attempts, and rarely reciprocated: No power forward fouled less often than Bosh's 2.69 per 40 minutes. Of course, the latter datum is partly an indictment -- he didn't give hard fouls on any of the myriad layups the Raptors gave up, especially during the final quarter of the season when, to put it kindly, he had it in cruise control.
Considering Bosh's slim build, perhaps the most impressive part of his season was that he ranked fifth among power forwards in defensive rebound rate. The biggest worry, on the other hand, is that once again he missed significant time with injuries. Bosh has played more than 70 games just once in the past five years.
[h4]JOEL ANTHONY, C[/h4]
Projection: 6.5 pts, 8.1 reb, 0.5 ast per 40 min; 10.73 PER | Player card
• Hard-working shot-blocker with bad hands and limited offensive skills.
• Possesses good quickness and hustles. Won't shoot but makes foul shots.
• Undersized for 5. Amazingly poor rebounder considering his athleticism.
The Heat are justifiably pleased with Anthony's intangibles -- he works really hard, he defends well and he's one of the best shot-blockers in basketball, rejecting 3.3 shots per 40 minutes last season.
But the tangibles? Eccch. Anthony averaged a ridiculous 6.6 points per 40 minutes. He also posted the worst defensive rebound rate of any center at a comical 11.1. For comparison, 25 shooting guards rated better, as did 6-footers Chris Paul and Kyle Lowry. At the end of the day, he's a third center and at 28 he's not going to suddenly morph into anything more. Why Miami felt he merited a half-decade commitment is one of life's great mysteries.
http://[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]MIKE MILLER, SG[/h4]
Projection: 11.4 pts, 7.1 reb, 4.5 ast per 40 min; 11.68 PER | Player card
• Outstanding shooter with textbook release. Strangely reluctant shooter.
• Willing passer -- too willing, actually -- who can put ball on floor going right.
• Excellent rebounder. Not terribly mobile and struggles on D, especially vs. 2s.
My big problem with Miller last season wasn't his unfortunate man-bob, but rather his inexplicable unwillingness to shoot. Miller led all shooting guards in TS%, assist ratio and rebound rate. So he was a human triple-double machine, right?
Wrong. His PER fell below the league average.
Miller is an awesome shooter, making 48 percent of his 3s, but he shot the ball only once every lunar eclipse. He finished 57th amongst shooting guards in usage rate and instead indulged his newfound unselfishness by passing up shots and forcing passes into traffic. Miller amassed the best assist ratio at his position … and the second-worst turnover ratio.
As for the rebounding, that's legit -- Miller might be the most underrated rebounder in basketball, averaging more than seven per 40 minutes for a third straight season. That's all well and good, but if LeBron and Wade are kicking the ball out to him wide open at the 3-point line, he's gotta shoot the rock.
[h4]ZYDRUNAS ILGAUSKAS, C[/h4]
Projection: 13.8 pts, 9.4 reb, 1.3 ast per 40 min; 11.76 PER | Player card
• Pick-and-pop specialist who has developed 3-point range but lost post arsenal.
• Excels at tip-ins around basket but overall rebounding has declined sharply.
• Plodder is liability in pick-and-roll D and rarely blocks shots despite size.
Ilgauskas' game really slipped last season and he can no longer be considered more than a fourth big man on a decent team. He's basically just a spot-up jump shooter now, as last season was the first of his career in which he took fewer than half his attempts in the basket area. He shot only 36.1 percent on long 2s, and while that should bounce back -- he'd hit better than 44 percent in three of the four previous seasons -- his declining rebounding and free throw numbers aren't likely to return to their former levels.
Because of the wayward jumper, he slipped to 62nd out of 64 centers in TS% last season. Since he no longer offers much defensive value, he'll need to improve the percentages considerably to continue as a viable rotation player.
[h4]UDONIS HASLEM, PF[/h4]
Projection: 13.0 pts, 11.0 reb, 1.1 ast per 40 min; 13.40 PER | Player card
• Undersized but physical defender who rarely gambles or leaves floor.
• Has no post game and few ball skills, but good midrange jump shooter.
• Won't initiate offense, but can finish around rim. Remarkably consistent.
Haslem had arguably his best season as a pro, although you'd need a magnifying glass to tell one Haslem season from another. His main achievement was ramping up his rebounding to rank 10th among power forwards in rebound rate. His 14.2 points per 40 minutes also marked a career high, fueled as usual by his midrange J. Haslem nailed 44.6 percent of his long 2s, taking nearly half his shots from that distance and specializing in pick-and-pop plays from the elbows.
Haslem enjoys a rep as a strong defender, but frankly this is overblown. He seldom blocks shots or steals the ball, and last season he drew 24 offensive fouls in 2,185 minutes -- hardly an imposing rate. Combining steals, blocks and fouls, no power forward in basketball made fewer plays per minute.
That's not all there is to defense, obviously, but there isn't much other evidence to support Haslem's case. For instance, the Heat didn't defend any better with him on the court last season, even though he was splitting minutes with Michael Beasley. I wouldn't pay too much attention to that last datum except that the same was true in 2008-09 … and 2007-08 … and 2006-07 … and, yes, even in the championship season of 2005-06. They weren't any worse with him out there, but all the available evidence suggests that he's pretty average.
Perhaps this shouldn't come as a shock -- after all, he's 6-8, 235 and can't jump. We're impressed simply because he maxes out his skills, but he starts at a disadvantage nearly every night.
[h4]CARLOS ARROYO, PG[/h4]
Projection: 10.7 pts, 3.4 reb, 5.7 ast per 40 min; 11.21 PER | Player card
• Slick ball handler who likes to shoot midrange jumpers going to his right.
• Poor long-range shooter but can find open man. Vastly improved floor general.
• Below-average defender who lacks length to bother shots. Average quickness.
Arroyo changed his game as dramatically as any player in the league last season. Formerly one of the league's biggest hotdogs, he went straight by the book and achieved the second-lowest turnover ratio among point guards.
Arroyo dialed his offensive game way back, slashing his usage rate, abandoning the 3-point shot and rarely going to the basket. In fact, nearly two-thirds of Arroyo's shots were long 2s, which was easily the highest rate in the league last season (see chart).
Surprisingly, he hit a very solid 44.8 percent of them, even though he isn't known as much of a shooter. It probably helped that opponents didn't fear his shot -- they universally ducked under screens and dared him to fire away.
[h4]Top % of FGs as Long 2s, '09-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]Pct.[/th][/tr][tr][td]Carlos Arroyo[/td][td]Mia[/td][td]60.5[/td][/tr][tr][td]Antonio McDyess[/td][td]SA[/td][td]55.8[/td][/tr][tr][td]Dante Cunningham[/td][td]Por[/td][td]52.6[/td][/tr][tr][td]DeMarre Carroll[/td][td]Mem[/td][td]47.5[/td][/tr][tr][td]Trenton Hassell[/td][td]NJ[/td][td]47.2[/td][/tr][tr][td]Min. 200 FGA [/td][/tr][/table]
[h4]EDDIE HOUSE, SG[/h4]
Projection: 13.7 pts, 3.5 reb, 2.8 ast p/40 min; 10.08 PER | Player card
• Outstanding outside shooter with quickness to free himself. Rarely enters paint.
• Has to play off ball. Can't dribble upcourt against pressure or run offense.
• Energetic defender, but liability due to lack of size and limited athleticism.
The bottom line for an Eddie House-type is that you have to make shots. Last season, he didn't. House shot only 34.8 percent on 3s and 38 percent overall, eliminating the one good reason to keep him on the floor.
Otherwise, it was his usual season of extremes -- he shot 92.3 percent from the line but hardly drew fouls, ranked last among point guards in assist ratio and nearly captured the best turnover ratio in basketball. Those three items simply result from the fact he does almost nothing but catch-and-shoot jumpers. When they don't go in, another number results -- the 10th-worst PER among point guards.
[h4]DEXTER PITTMAN, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Behemoth center who needs to lose weight and get in shape. Strong.
• Has size and hands to be effective around basket. Good rebounder. Blocks shots.
That "303" under "weight" is a little scary, but Pittman blocked a shot every 10 minutes in his final college season and his per-minute scoring and rebounding numbers were solid. Miami basically needs him for just one opponent; if he can push Dwight Howard away from the basket for 10 minutes a night in May, they'll be ecstatic about their return on a second-round pick.
[h4]JUWAN HOWARD, PF[/h4]
Projection: 10.2 pts, 8.0 reb, 1.4 ast per 40 min; 8.77 PER | Player card
• Veteran big man who likes to shoot double-clutching, line-drive 15-footer.
• Long-armed but slow and extremely limited offensively. Subpar rebounder.
• Solid post defender and savvy from help side, but never blocks shots.
Howard was perceived as a huge success because so little was expected from him, but in reality, "barely adequate Band-Aid" is probably a better description. He didn't get in the way or screw up, and shot a robust 48.9 percent on 2s away from the basket. However, he averaged 10.2 points per 40 minutes with below-average efficiency, and finished last among centers in blocks per minute.
[h4]JAMAAL MAGLIORE, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Long-armed center with size to knock around opposing post players.
• Once nicknamed "Big Cat" for quickness, but now molasses slow.
• Can't jump at all. Will rebound thanks to size, but struggles to finish at rim.
Magloire played only 36 games last season and is nearing the finish line. He can't jump or run and basically has no offensive value any more, averaging single-figure points per 40 minutes for three straight seasons.
The one thing he can still do is rebound, as he battles for position and has crazy long arms, but finding a decent defensive matchup for him is increasingly problematic. Even low-post centers can give him trouble, because many of them routinely beat Magloire down the floor.
[h4]JAMES JONES, SF[/h4]
Projection: 11.0 pts, 3.6 reb, 1.3 ast per 40 min; 8.51 PER | Player card
• Long-range specialist who likes to set up for 3s in corners. Rarely dribbles.
• A poor athlete who appears to have lost what little leaping ability he had.
• Bad rebounder and a tweener between 3 and 4.
Jones played in 36 games and remains one of the league's most one-dimensional players, taking more than three-quarters of his shots from behind the arc. He can shoot it, making 41.1 percent of his 3s last season and 39.5 percent for his career, but that's his entire arsenal. Jones sunk six 2-point baskets the entire season and averaged just 11.4 points per 40 minutes.
Wait, there's more. He stopped rebounding two years ago; at one time he would block a surprising number of shots but he swatted just four last season. Plus, he offers virtually no defensive value. He's one of the rare players who is so limited that even if he shoots 40 percent on 3s, he's not going to be a rotation player.
- Milwaukee Bucks
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]BRANDON JENNINGS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 19.9 pts, 4.1 reb, 6.9 ast per 40 min; 14.36 PER | Player card
• Quick left-hander with good ballhandling skills and solid short-range floater.
• Mediocre outside shooter who fails to punish opponents who play off him.
• Undersized defender who moves fairly well but struggles against big guards.
People talk about Jennings' shaky jumper, but a bigger problem might be his inability to finish at the rim. Jennings made only 39.7 percent of his attempts at the basket, which was the worst mark in the league for any player with at least 200 attempts. Going back to 2004, he's the first player to take more than 200 attempts at the basket and make less than 40 percent (the previous record holder was Ben Gordon, at 41.2 percent in 2004-05).
[h4]Worst Shooting Percentage At Basket: 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]FG[/th][th=""]FGA[/th][th=""]Pct.[/th][/tr][tr][td]Brandon Jennings[/td][td]Mil[/td][td]142[/td][td]358[/td][td].397[/td][/tr][tr][td]Yi Jianlian[/td][td]NJ[/td][td]93[/td][td]214[/td][td].435[/td][/tr][tr][td]James Harden[/td][td]OKC[/td][td]91[/td][td]206[/td][td].442[/td][/tr][tr][td]Caron Butler[/td][td]Dal[/td][td]158[/td][td]342[/td][td].462[/td][/tr][tr][td]Rodney Stuckey[/td][td]Det[/td][td]228[/td][td]490[/td][td].465[/td][/tr][tr][td]*Min: 150 attempts in basket area[/td][/tr][/table]
Moreover, Jennings shot poorly everywhere inside the arc; despite a nice-looking floater, he made a ghastly 32.3 percent on 2s away from the rim. Overall, he made 37 percent of his 2-pointers; among players who played at least 1,000 minutes last season, only Rafer Alston was worse (see Daequan Cook comment).
In fact, 3-point shooting was the best thing he did offensively, making 37.4 percent of his high-arcing deliveries. His form was good enough to hit 81.7 percent from the stripe, so there's hope he can improve his other percentages in future seasons.
He also has to improve as a point guard. His pure point rating fell below the league average, and his forays to the rim were mostly to score rather than to assist. And of course, he has to add strength. At only 169 pounds, he was a speed bump for power guards.
With all that said, very few rookie point guards play productively right away, and the fact that Jennings did so at the age of 20 offers a lot of promise for his NBA future.
[h4]JOHN SALMONS, SG[/h4]
Projection: 16.3 pts, 4.2 reb, 3.1 ast per 40 min; 13.74 PER | Player card
• Multifaceted scorer who can hit J, go to rim or "walk" defender into jump shot.
• Solidly built, long defender with good hands who can check most wing players.
• Good ballhandler but a subpar passer with a selfish streak; will break offense.
For the second season in a row, Salmons blew up after a midseason trade, carrying the Bucks' offense down the stretch and averaging 19.8 points in March and April. That contrasts with his 2007-08 campaign, when he came out like gangbusters and then went into a tailspin in the second half of the season.
But all this corresponds with Salmons' reputation, which is that he is very happy and productive as a first or second option but goes into a funk when given a lesser role. The difficulty is that he's not quite good enough to have such an important role on a good team; his efficiency is middling and he doesn't create many easy looks for others.
He's a useful, versatile player, however. He defends, stays healthy and has enjoyed an unusually late peak -- he's been far better after age 28 than before it. The key is whether the Bucks can keep him engaged while reducing him to a third or fourth option.
[h4]COREY MAGGETTE, SF[/h4]
Projection: 24.4 pts, 7.0 reb, 3.3 ast per 40 min; 18.48 PER | Player card
• Strong, quick, foul-drawing machine with unstoppable right-handed drive.
• Mediocre shooter who has selfish tendencies; will force contested J's.
• Good rebounder but a bad defensive player who invests little effort.
People talk about superstars getting all the calls, but there is no player who gets more calls than Maggette. None. He will drive to his right (always to his right), create contact and slam into a defender, and earn a bail-out whistle for his effort every time. It's truly amazing.
As a result of that skill, Maggette once again led all perimeter players in free throw attempts per field goal attempt with an astounding .622. He cashes them in, too, shooting 82.1 percent from the line for his career.
That skill makes Maggette valuable despite the fact that he's subpar in the other phases of the game. He finished fourth among small forwards in both true shooting percentage and PER, entirely because of the free throws. He has total tunnel vision once he puts the ball on the floor and he hardly tries on defense, ranking 60th out of 67 small forwards in pure point rating and dead last in blocks per minute.
Maggette had an unusually high foul rate last season because the Warriors insisted on playing him out of position at power forward for big chunks of time; that won't be a problem in Milwaukee.
However, his offensive numbers likely will suffer. Maggette was a Fluke Rule player last season (see Nazr Mohammed comment), and in this case, there's an obvious reason his numbers looked so good: He was able to abuse opposing big men off the dribble by playing out of position at the 4. Look for him to average more like "just" 22-23 points per 40 minutes this time around, a figure that should easily lead this team.
[h4]DREW GOODEN, PF[/h4]
Projection: 16.3 pts, 11.8 reb, 1.1 ast per 40 min; 15.82 PER | Player card
• Bouncy power forward who goes to glass and can finish around basket.
• Underrated midrange shooter despite unusual release. Limited post game.
• Nimble defender with good size, but tends to lose focus and make poor decisions.
For the first time in his career last season, Gooden played the majority of his minutes at center, and he's bulked up enough to hold his own on that spot. In fact, he nearly set a career high in rebound rate and finished seventh in the NBA in offensive rebound rate.
Gooden also has made tremendous progress as a shooter, with his 86.1 percent mark from the free throw line ranking first among centers. It was his second straight season in the mid-80s from the stripe, and he knocked down 45.2 percent of his long-distance 2s as well.
Choosing his spots better might be part of the reason. Gooden switched from taking 39 percent of his shots in the basket area in 2008-09 to 62.8 percent last season; the only reason his field goal percentage didn't increase more is because he shot dreadfully on "in-between" shots. Normally a solid shooter from this range, he made only 31.1 percent.
Gooden probably will drift back toward the perimeter in Milwaukee, where he figures to play more at power forward than at center, but at either position he's one of the league's more underrated players right now.
[h4]ANDREW BOGUT, C[/h4]
Projection: 19.4 pts, 12.2 reb, 2.7 ast per 40 min; 20.60 PER | Player card
• Elite help defender who takes bushels of charges and is a shot-blocking force.
• Effective right-block post weapon who likes to shoot lefty jump hooks in the lane.
• Outstanding rebounder, but a poor shooter with average speed and quickness.
Bogut enjoyed a breakout season in 2009-10, and in retrospect it's a minor travesty he didn't make the All-Star team. He's always been able to rebound, but he showcased big improvements in his scoring and defense in his fifth pro season. Bogut markedly cut his turnovers and became increasingly comfortable shooting short hooks around the basket, often after facing up from the midpost. He bumped his 40-minute scoring average by nearly five points and sharply cut his turnover rate at the same time.
Defensively, he's always been a fantastic rebounder and taken charges by the boatload. What changed last season were his shot-blocking numbers. Never renowned for his vertical, Bogut nonetheless swatted 2.54 shots per game, good for second in the league. On a per-minute basis, he blocked shots more than twice as often as he had the previous season.
Amazingly, he also ranked fourth in the league in charges drawn per game -- it's mind-boggling that a big man could go up in the air for so many blocks and still stay on the ground for so many charges. If he keeps up those numbers, his regrettable omissions from the All-Defense and All-Star teams won't continue for long.
First, however, he must overcome that horrific elbow injury he suffered in April. Bogut rarely shoots from outside, so a full recovery is less essential in that respect, but he might not be in peak basketball shape at the outset of the season.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]CARLOS DELFINO, SF[/h4]
Projection: 13.9 pts, 6.8 reb, 3.5 ast per 40 min; 12.50 PER | Player card
• Strong, tough swingman with decent lateral quickness who can defend wing.
• Good ballhandler and passer but lacks quick first step to create own offense.
• Mediocre outside shooter who can hit off the catch but rarely off the dribble.
If Delfino could score, he'd make $10 million a year because he's pretty good at everything else. He can handle the ball, defend and rebound, has quick hands, and offers good size and strength.
Unfortunately, he lacks a consistent jumper and has little burst on his first step. That's translated into a 40.3 percent career shooter who rarely draws fouls. Last season half his shots were 3s and he made 36.7 percent, so at least opponents have to respect him on the perimeter. But you're a lot happier having him as a role player than as a starter. We have no idea whether Delfino's happier, however -- he hasn't changed his facial expression once in his five years in the league.
[h4]LUC RICHARD MBAH A MOUTE, SF[/h4]
Projection: 9.8 pts, 8.3 reb, 1.8 ast per 40 min; 11.91 PER | Player card
• Awesome on-ball defender with length, toughness, and quick feet and hands.
• High-effort player with nose for ball. Can guard any spot 1 through 4.
• Poor shooter with subpar scoring instincts. Often left unguarded.
Mbah a Moute remains the league's most underrated defender, not to mention its most versatile. Against Dallas last season, he guarded Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry in the same game; neither player did jack against him.
Offensively, Mbah a Moute can make shots around the basket but completely lost confidence in his midrange jumper last season. He made 37.5 percent of his long 2s as a rookie; last season that dipped to 25.6 percent in half as many attempts. His new ritual is to make a tentative shot fake, shuffle his feet and then drive to his right.
That made him very easy to guard, obviously, and as a result the Bucks often had to pull him despite his defensive contributions. He needs to establish an offensive role, but if and when he does, his defense will earn him some serious recognition.
[h4]ERSAN ILYASOVA, PF[/h4]
Projection: 17.9 pts, 10.2 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 15.81 PER | Player card
• Very effective spot-up shooter who needs only to improve shot selection.
• Surprisingly good rebounder who plays more physically than size suggests.
• Takes charges, but subpar speed and quickness limit defensive impact.
Ilyasova has two strengths you usually don't see in tandem -- he is a good outside shooter and a very good rebounder. The former makes him a great pick-and-pop weapon and produces a low turnover rate since virtually all of his shots come off the catch.
The latter makes him a viable power forward, helping offset his poor mobility and elevation. Although technically undersized (235 pounds), Ilyasova relishes physical play -- he likes to battle underneath and takes charges at an even more prodigious rate than does his more acclaimed frontcourt mate, Andrew Bogut. Ilyasova also can score around the basket, shooting 61.6 percent at the rim.
Ilyasova's outside shooting numbers aren't quite as strong as one might expect, however, because he needs to choose his shots better. While he has a lovely high-arcing shot, he likes to shoot fadeaways off the dribble and should probably stop. He is dramatically less effective with jumpers off the bounce, and at times will catch and shoot even though he's not open.
[h4]LARRY SANDERS, PF[/h4]
Player card
• Athletic big man who can run floor and finish but needs to refine skills.
• Only 222 pounds and will need to add strength to be a full-time center.
Garry Shandling's new favorite player, Sanders is the classic "energy" type. He is 6-11, and can run the floor and block shots, so he'll make some impact plays just by hustling, especially in the open floor.
In the half court, however, his weaknesses come to the fore. Most scouts project him as a center but he seriously needs to add muscle to contend with NBA big men, and he needs to improve his skill set. He's a raw prospect with rudimentary post moves, so most of his buckets probably will come off putbacks or drives to the rim.
[h4]KENYON DOOLING, G[/h4]
Projection: 14.3 pts, 2.4 reb, 5.1 ast per 40 min; 11.30 PER | Player card
• Solid defender who likes to pressure the ball. Gives up inches at the 2.
• Shoot-first point guard who struggles as a distributor.
• Good elevation on jumper but inconsistent with accuracy.
I gave Dooling the benefit of the doubt in my review above, because he was hurt for a big part of last season and playing in such a depressing situation for the rest of it. But I'm worried about the guy, because he didn't seem nearly as athletic.
Dooling experienced a dramatic drop in free throw attempts, claimed the third-worst rebound rate in the league (see Jason Terry comment) and was one of only two players to play at least 500 minutes without blocking a shot. All the other players at the bottom of these lists were tiny guards. Dooling is 6-3. Either he was hurting or he's losing it fast.
[h4]CHRIS DOUGLAS-ROBERTS, SF[/h4]
Projection: 15.2 pts, 4.3 reb, 2.5 ast per 40 min; 11.93 PER | Player card
• Herky-jerky, one-on-one scorer. Rare lefty who finishes well with right hand.
• Tall for a guard, but a mediocre outside shooter. Drives only to score, not to pass.
• B athlete with hunched-over posture. Active hands on D, but beaten easily.
If Douglas-Roberts is going to make a living as a straight one-on-one-scorer, he has to either convert more often or make some 3s. He doesn't see the floor at all -- only two shooting guards had a worse pure point rating -- and his drives have a high cost in turnovers.
That's acceptable if he shoots in the 50s; at 44.5 percent, it's not. Douglas-Roberts is an excellent foul shooter and he made 42.5 percent of his long-distance 2s last season, so the hope is that he can develop 3-point range. He's attempted only 66 in two seasons and made just 17, but I have trouble seeing him becoming a rotation player if he's working strictly in 2-point increments.
[h4]JON BROCKMAN, PF[/h4]
Projection: 9.3 pts, 12.4 reb, 1.8 ast per 40 min; 12.90 PER | Player card
• Undersized, high-energy offensive rebounding machine with great motor.
• Wildly foul-prone. Has trouble checking tall post players, is too aggressive on D.
• Can hit short-range jumper, but otherwise gets nearly all his points on putbacks.
The two best offensive rebounders last season were both rookies … and both were taken in the second round. Brockman led the league in offensive rebound rate by collecting an amazing 18.2 percent of misses, while DeJuan Blair of San Antonio ranked second (see chart). Brockman is only 6-7, but he is physical and aggressive and has mastered a trick where he stands out of bounds under the baseline and then shoehorns his way to an inside position as a shot goes up.
[h4]Offensive Rebound Rate Leaders, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]Rate[/th][/tr][tr][td]Jon Brockman[/td][td]Sac[/td][td]18.2[/td][/tr][tr][td]DeJuan Blair[/td][td]SA[/td][td]16.0[/td][/tr][tr][td]Greg Oden[/td][td]Por[/td][td]15.6[/td][/tr][tr][td]Kevin Love[/td][td]Min[/td][td]14.5[/td][/tr][tr][td]Nazr Mohammed[/td][td]Cha[/td][td]14.2[/td][/tr][tr][td]*Min. 500 minutes [/td][/tr][/table]
There was a cost to that aggression, however -- a foul every 5.7 minutes, the top rate among power forwards and the fourth-highest rate in basketball. Brockman also needs to improve from the line. He finished second among power forwards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt but converted only 59 percent.
[h4]DARINGTON HOBSON, F[/h4]
Player card
• Among best rebounding wing players in country as a senior at New Mexico.
• Excellent ballhandler and passer for size with shaky outside shot.
Hobson was a second-round pick, but for his size, he does two things as well as anyone in the draft: rebound and handle the ball. That can make him a useful bench energy player, and the hope in Milwaukee is that he can find some minutes in a "point forward" role off the bench. He's old for a rookie (23) and his upside is probably limited, but he might have more Year 1 value than a lot of his rookie peers.
[h4]MICHAEL REDD, SG[/h4]
Player card
• Lefty sharpshooter with quick release that's as potent off dribble as off catch.
• Uses threat of shot to create drives but usually for shot, not for assists.
• Miserable defensive player with limited athleticism and poor conditioning.
Redd looks to be this year's Tracy McGrady after injuring his knee for a second consecutive season and missing most of last season. He shot only 35.2 percent in the 18 games he played on a bad knee, and the Bucks have since filled his position with other players. He's due $18.3 million this year but likely won't be back in the lineup until February. One presumes that his huge expiring contract will become a hot topic at the trade deadline.
Wherever Redd ends up, it will be as an audition for the 2011 free-agent market. He is 30 and has some serious knee problems, but his sweet jump shot might allow him to maintain an NBA existence for a while longer.
[h4]EARL BOYKINS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 14.3 pts, 2.5 reb, 5.6 ast per 40 min, 10.17 PER | Player card
• Diminutive guard who looks primarily to score. Will push tempo.
• Doesn't see floor well and will force shots. Defensive liability due to size.
• Will reach for steals; ends up behind man he's guarding with alarming frequency.
Boykins resurrected his career with the Wizards last season, playing particularly well during a midseason stretch that provided Washington's last glimmer of competence before its season went south. That said, his final stats weren't that impressive: a 49.8 true shooting percentage for a score-first guard doesn't really cut it, especially one with as many defensive limitations as Boykins had. He's useful insurance as a third point guard, but I'd be surprised if he's a regular part of the rotation.
[h4]KEITH "TINY" GALLON, F[/h4]
Player card
• Strong outside-shooting big man who can excel in pick-and-pop game.
• Overweight as a collegian and needs to get in much better shape.
Suffice it to say that his "Tiny" nickname is ironic rather than literal. Gallon was pushing three bills last season and needs to get in much better shape to have a pro career. If so, he can be another Ilyasova as a 6-9 power forward who can rain in jumpers.
- New Jersey Nets
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]DEVIN HARRIS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 19.4 pts, 3.5 reb, 7.3 ast per 40 min; 16.57 PER | Player card
• Lightning quick score-first guard who can drive past any defender.
• Poor set shooter but makes 15-foot step-back jumper. Draws tons of fouls.
• Elite defender when focused but barely tried last season. Injury-prone.
Last season Harris took a major step backward in several respects, struggling with injuries and coming nowhere close to his All-Star performance of a year earlier. Let's start with the injuries, since they're the biggest concern going forward. Harris has played just 70 games once in the past five seasons, and given his slight build and how much contact he takes, one has to worry about his ability to stay on the court.
He also needs to play better when he's out there. Harris played a lot of games at half-strength and drew dramatically fewer fouls than he had a year earlier; he also shot a career low 40.3 percent from the floor. Stylistically, he tended to pound the ball searching out shots; while this might be an appropriate strategy if Bobby Simmons and Trenton Hassell are your wingmen, Harris needs to make sharper, quicker decisions this season.
Harris' shooting percentages should bounce back -- there's no way he'll shoot 49.6 percent in the basket area again -- but he also has to start trying on defense. Harris was arguably the best defender at his position while in Dallas; last season he might have been the Nets' worst. The ability is there: He's tall for the position, extremely quick and great at taking charges. Yet the Nets -- one of the worst teams ever -- allowed 6.8 points per 100 possessions more with Harris on the court.
[h4]TERRENCE WILLIAMS, SG[/h4]
Projection: 15.5 pts, 7.9 reb, 5.2 ast per 40 min; 12.61 PER | Player card
• Athletic wing with wayward jumper. Can get to the rim but doesn't draw fouls.
• Excellent rebounder for size. Has strength, athleticism to be a good defender.
• Can pass and create but must make better decisions. A classic "point forward."
Williams' rookie season looked like a disaster until the final two months, when he made tremendous strides. Prior to the All-Star break, he shot 36.6 percent, but from March. 1 to the end of the season he morphed into a different player. Over those 22 games, Williams averaged 14.1 points, 7.1 boards and 5.6 assists, including a 27-13-10 triple-double against Chicago on April 9.
His full-season numbers were a mix of the great and the awful. He really can't shoot, making only 24.1 percent of his long 2s and ranking 64th out of 67 small forwards in TS percentage, and he doesn't draw fouls despite his athleticism. However, he ranked sixth at this position in rebound rate and ninth in pure point rating.
Finally, here's one more weird data point: Only three small forwards blocked fewer shots per minute than the 6-foot-6 Williams. What's up with that?
[h4]TRAVIS OUTLAW, SF[/h4]
Projection: 17.4 pts, 6.6 reb, 1.8 ast per 40 min; 14.40 PER | Player card
• Long, high-jumping swingman; decent shooter who can get shot off anytime.
• Uncoordinated defender; struggles through screens but can challenge shots.
• Average ballhandler who settles for jumper too often and doesn't see floor.
Outlaw missed 57 games, mostly because of a foot injury, and it wouldn't have been a bad idea to skip the other 25 too. After a trade to the Clippers, Outlaw shot bricks (39.3 percent) and played matador defense while he waited for the free agency clock to strike midnight.
Nonetheless, his brief season offered a taster course of the same strengths and weaknesses. Outlaw is far better at creating shots than making them, but he accomplishes this without committing turnovers. These are useful skills to have with a second unit and a reason that he's far more valuable coming off the bench. He's also very good as a smallball power forward, as few 4s can hang with him off the dribble.
While $35 million is too rich for that set of skills, clearly his skills are worth something. He's only 25, but he hasn't improved over the past four seasons and was no closer to turning the corner with his play last season. With lots of minutes and shots on offer in New Jersey, this will be his best chance to prove he's more than just a bench scorer.
[h4]TROY MURPHY, PF[/h4]
Projection: 16.3 pts, 11.8 reb, 2.5 ast per 40 min; 15.71 PER | Player card
• Lefty sharpshooter who loves to spot up at top of key for 3-pointers.
• Superior below-rim rebounder who gets great position. Invisible on D otherwise.
• Subpar athlete. Will shot fake and drive lane but can't finish in traffic.
OK, Murphy isn't going to make the All-Defense team. But in virtually every other respect, he's a heck of a player. Last season he ranked among the top 10 power forwards in rebound rate, pure point rating and true shooting percentage while averaging a double-double for a second straight season. That's a doozy of a combination and explains why he's a quality starter despite the porous D.
Once again, Murphy was the unquestioned master of the straight-on 3 from the top of the key. Last season he lobbed 175 shots from that range; the next closest player, Toronto's Andrea Bargnani, took 109. I would struggle to name any other category where a player had that wide a lead on second place. Since this arrangement is unique to Jim O'Brien's offense in Indiana, I'm interested to see how much Johnson borrows from the Pacers' playbook to get Murphy his favored shot.
[h4]BROOK LOPEZ, C[/h4]
Projection: 20.9 pts, 10.0 reb, 2.3 ast per 40 min; 19.66 PER | Player card
• Skilled center with 18-foot range and solid low-post game. Good foul shooter.
• Good leaper when he can gather himself, but poor mobility. Mediocre rebounder.
• Has shot-blocking skill but otherwise a subpar defender due to slow feet.
Statistically Lopez had a very impressive second season, especially given the paucity of talent surrounding him. What's particularly impressive is that he combines two important skills -- he draws a lot of fouls and he shot 81.7 percent from the line. Only three centers proved more accurate from the stripe. While Lopez relied too often on his jumper -- he made only 33.2 percent of his long 2s -- a lot of those shots were under duress at the end of the shot clock.
Lopez needs a lot of work on his defense, however. He blocked a decent number of shots, partly because there were so many Nets opponents attempting layups, but his lack of mobility is a real concern. He doesn't run the floor well and his pick-and-roll coverage leaves much to be desired.
http://[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]JORDAN FARMAR, PG[/h4]
Projection: 16.6 pts, 3.3 reb, 4.0 ast per 40 min; 12.80 PER | Player card
• Quick, high-leaping guard who can get to basket but doesn't see floor well.
• Average outside shooter but an unusually bad foul shooter.
• Good defender who moves feet well but vulnerable to post-ups by big guards.
Point guards in the Lakers' system aren't expected to set up teammates as often as their counterparts on other clubs. But Farmar was just ridiculous -- he placed 69th out of 71 point guards in assist ratio and 69th in pure point rating. That explains why he couldn't take Derek Fisher's job despite posting fairly decent numbers in other categories and Fisher's own freefall.
Another disappointment is that Farmar has been in the league four years and still stinks from the line -- his 67.1 percent mark was worse than every point guard's except Rajon Rondo's. While Farmar hit 37.1 percent of his 3s and made an impressive 57.3 percent of his shots in the basket area, it's hard to argue he's maximizing his talents.
He wasn't a great fit in the Lakers' system and may be much more comfortable in New Jersey. But Phil Jackson wasn't making him miss free throws. If Farmar doesn't convert a few more and start finding some teammates with his drives, his career is unlikely to gain much more traction.
[h4]ANTHONY MORROW, SG[/h4]
Projection: 17.7 pts, 5.2 reb, 2.1 ast per 40 min; 13.90 PER | Player card
• Outstanding shooter who is threat from any spot on floor. Will force it.
• Will post small guards and turn over left shoulder for jumper; can make floaters.
• Limited athlete and a very poor defender. Doesn't hustle back in transition.
If Morrow isn't the best shooter in basketball, he's definitely on the short list. Through two pro seasons, he's at 46.0 precent on 3s, 87.9 percent from the line and 44.3 percent on long 2s. Unlike a lot of shooting specialists, he can create some offense for himself too. Morrow had a middle-of-the-pack usage rate and pumped in 17.8 points per 40 minutes.
That about covers the strengths; the rest of his game needs serious work. Morrow will stop the ball searching out shots and he basically needs to learn defense from the ground up -- he sure as heck wasn't taught anything with Golden State. Despite those limitations, his jumper alone should guarantee him a dozen-year career.
[h4]DERRICK FAVORS, PF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Long-armed, high-jumping power forward is potent shot-blocker.
• Can hit midrange J and finish at rim, but offensive game lacks polish.
• Runs floor and rebounds well. Should be a quality defender.
Favors probably draws the widest range of scout comments of any rookie. Some talent evaluators think he'll be a superstar; others had a lot of questions as to why he didn't dominate more in college. The fact his college team ran so much offense through Gani Lawal rather than Favors can be taken one of two ways -- either as a sign that they knew Favors wasn't as good as the pro scouts thought, or that Favors will vastly outperform his fairly pedestrian college scoring stats.
[h4]JOHAN PETRO, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Reasonably athletic 7-footer with decent 15-footer and some shot-blocking skill.
• Poor rebounder for size; lacks basketball instincts at both ends.
Even though the Nuggets were desperate for frontcourt help, Petro sat at the end of the bench in Denver, playing only 436 minutes the entire season. He's only 24 and I suppose it's possible the light bulb could still turn on. However, he's made no progress in six years in the league and, well, let's just say my Google search for "Johan Petro workaholic" didn't turn up anything.
[h4]DAMION JAMES, SF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Tough, physical forward who rebounds extremely well. Great motor.
• Has long arms and has improved rapidly as a perimeter shooter.
• A tweener who may be too small for 4. Must improve handle. Struggles from line.
James' best hope of sticking in the league is probably as a smallball 4. He rebounds extremely well for his size and shot 38.3 percent on 3s as a senior at Texas, so the potential is there. The problem is that he's undersized for the 4; he's also a poor foul shooter, calling into question those college 3-point numbers. His effort level alone is likely to keep him in the league for several years, but he'll need to hit jumpers to be a rotation player.
[h4]QUINTON ROSS, SF[/h4]
Projection: 7.0 pts, 3.5 reb, 1.1 ast per 40 min; 3.92 PER | Player card
• Quick, pesky defender with wiry build. Moves feet and rarely gambles.
• Can hit midrange jumper but otherwise useless offensively. Awful rebounder.
Ross shot 36.3 percent and earned the dubious distinction of having the league's worst PER in 2009-10, so I suspect he's not long for this league. While his defense has use and he may find occasional snippets of playing time in end-of-quarter situations when the opponent has the ball, in the big picture he'd have to be an All-Defense-caliber performer to justify his anemic 6.5 points per 40 minutes. He's not in that class of defender, and it's likely he'll be bought out at some point during the season.
[h4]KRIS HUMPHRIES, PF[/h4]
Projection: 15.3 pts, 11.8 reb, 1.1 ast per 40 min; 14.79 PER | Player card
• Quick, aggressive power forward. Can score but a selfish offensive player.
• Short for a 4 and struggles on D. Picks up pushing fouls trying to guard post.
• Good driver who draws fouls but struggles to finish at rim. Good rebounder.
Perhaps this vignette from Humphries' time in Dallas will offer some insight into how he thinks on the court: In an early-season game against Minnesota, Dallas teammate Jason Terry found himself isolated against Eurostiff Oleksiy Pecherov -- a total mismatch. All the other Mavs got out of the way … except for Humphries, who flashed to the low post calling for the ball.
No, Humphries doesn't totally get it. He'll break the offense to search out shots and after six years in the league, he still doesn't know to use an arm bar to defend the post. That's unfortunate because he has a lot to offer. He can run the floor and crash the boards, ranking sixth among power forwards in rebound rate and ninth in free throw attempts per field goal attempt.
Alas, he's a career 43.8 percent shooter, which is pitiful for a frontcourt player who never shoots beyond 15 feet. His poor shot selection is a major factor in that percentage, and it's those mental shortcomings that prevent him from evolving into a rotation player.
[h4]STEPHEN GRAHAM, SF[/h4]
Projection: 14.4 pts, 6.2 reb, 1.3 ast per 40 min, PER 9.98 | Player card
• Thickly built wing who rebounds well for size. Subpar outside shooter.
• Can create own shot in a pinch but has no court vision.
• Mobility a weakness, especially guarding 2s. Mediocre defender overall.
No, we don't know why he started the Bobcats' first four games lat season, and we certainly don't expect that event to repeat itself. The good news for Graham, however, is he's established something of a career. He can score and rebound just enough to prove useful in spots as a fringe rotation player, with his ideal role being as a fifth wing who can fill in at either shooting guard or small forward in the case of injury or fouls. Just don't expect him to find the open man -- he was second to last among shooting guards in assist ratio.
- New York Knicks
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]RAYMOND FELTON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 14.5 pts, 4.3 reb, 6.8 ast per 40 min; 14.99 PER | Player card
• Up-tempo point guard who can push ball in transition. Mediocre outside shooter.
• Struggles to finish in basket area. Can penetrate but doesn't see floor well.
• Well-regarded teammate and good defender. Rebounds very well for size.
Although Felton struggles to finish, he made progress last season. He sunk 56.1 percent of his shots in the basket area last season, which I suspect is a fluke (he's usually in the low-to-mid 40s). But if it's not, then he offers a lot more offensive value. Felton still doesn't draw many fouls, which is troubling because he goes to the basket fairly often. On a positive note, he may get more opportunities to do his thing in the open court in New York than he did in Charlotte.
All told, he's good for a stopgap and bad for a long-term solution. He'll defend and run the offense decently and he'll make enough shots that teams will guard him. But I have trouble seeing him as the pick-and-roll operator who can take D'Antoni's offense to the next level. If anything, his numbers are likely to regress from a season ago, as his improvement was primarily because of a jump in shooting percentages (both on short 2s and long 3s) that he'll have trouble maintaining.
[h4]WILSON CHANDLER, SG[/h4]
Projection: 17.2 pts, 6.2 reb, 2.7 ast per 40 min; 13.78 PER | Player card
• Long wing who can score going to basket. Likes to drive right baseline.
• Competent defender and rebounder. Could play some 4 as he fills out.
• Poor outside shooter; will force shots. Good finisher but doesn't draw fouls.
Chandler is a 3 but played the 2 most of last season. This role doesn't suit him nearly as well -- he's 6-8, he's not a great ballhandler and he can't shoot. However, Chandler kept spotting up for jumpers and missing them, making 26.7 percent of his 3s and 37.7 percent of his long 2s.
Chandler is much more effective going to the basket, but to be an effective scorer, as opposed to a league-average possessions-eater like he is now, he needs to draw more fouls. His rate of 0.19 free throw attempts per field goal attempt is unacceptable for a non-shooter, especially one with his athletic skills. Chandler's length and athleticism contribute to his potential as a defensive stopper -- especially if he can get back to playing his natural 3 spot. That hasn't been an area of focus in New York, but the Knicks were 5.0 points per 100 possessions better with Chandler on the court.
[h4]DANILO GALLINARI, SF[/h4]
Projection: 18.1 pts, 5.6 reb, 2.0 ast per 40 min; 15.13 PER | Player card
• Deadly outside shooter with size to release over closing defenders.
• Uses threat of shot to set up drives but not a one-on-one scorer. Good passer.
• Subpar defender who is a tweener between 3 and 4. Horrid rebounder.
More than half of Gallinari's shots were 3s and he nailed 38.1 percent of them, which is good; what the data doesn't show is that he converted a lot of the shots despite having an opponent's paw in his face. At 6-10 he doesn't require a big opening to get his shot away, though his stroke is a bit flat if you're nit-picking.
Gallinari played some 3 last season, but between a bad back and slow feet he's almost certainly destined for a career at the 4, which maximizes his skill as a floor spacer. To do that, however, it would be nice if he grabbed a rebound once in a while -- Gallinari ranked second-to-last among power forwards in rebound rate. In addition, there's the little problem of Stoudemire also playing the 4, which could send Gallinari back to the wing … and send opposing small forwards streaking to the basket.
[h4]ANTHONY RANDOLPH, PF[/h4]
Projection: 23.6 pts, 11.9 reb, 2.6 ast per 40 min; 21.48 PER | Player card
• Slender, long-armed lefty with advanced ballhandling skill for size.
• Great shot-blocker and good rebounder but leaves feet too easily pursuing blocks.
• Lousy outside shooter and subpar decision-maker. Effort, work ethic in question.
Randolph played 33 games of exhilarating Jekyll-and-Hyde basketball before an ankle injury shut down his season. Heights included 28 points and 13 rebounds against Orlando, eight blocks against New Orleans and an amazing five offensive fouls drawn in one game against the Clippers. Other times it looked like his brain was vacationing on Mars -- most notably during his 0-point, 0-assist, 1-rebound "effort" in Detroit.
The overall takeaway is that Randolph holds a lot of promise for a 21-year-old prospect who entered the league very raw. Randolph has the potential to be a Marcus Camby-esque dominator defensively -- he rated third among power forwards in blocks per minute and sixth in steals per minute -- and needs only to improve his understanding and effort level to become an ace disruptor.
Offensively, he has much to learn. Randolph can create shots but has no clue what a good one is, so he too often settles for a flat-footed, line-drive jumper that he flicks off his shoulder. Reports differ as to his attitude and work ethic, although that may partly result from the dysfunctional environment at Golden State. He's a valuable player now and could be amazing in a couple of years, but a lot of rough edges remain.
[h4]AMARE STOUDEMIRE, C[/h4]
Projection: 24.2 pts, 9.6 reb, 1.4 ast per 40 min; 20.44 PER | Player card
• Lethal finisher rolling to rim on pick-and-roll, but also can hit jumper.
• Lightning-quick first step going to right from left block; dribbles solely to score.
• Decent guarding post and will block shots, but lethargic weak-side defender.
Stoudemire has his shortcomings, but his one strength is so overwhelming that he's still an incredibly effective player. He can score from anywhere on anyone, and he does it with far greater efficiency than most high scorers. Last season, Stoudemire scored 26.7 points per 40 minutes and achieved the second-highest true shooting percentage among power forwards, a lethal offensive combination that played a major role in Phoenix's No. 1 mark in offensive efficiency.
He improved as the season progressed, too. After spending much of the offseason motionless while recovering from retina surgery, he averaged 21.3 points per game over the first three months of the season. Over the final 2½ months, spanning 33 games, his average ballooned to 26.4. His rebound rate increased dramatically as well; for all the critique of his rebounding over the years, he leapt above the league average for power forwards in rebound rate.
On the negative side, there's that pesky "1.0" in the assist column. Yes, he averaged 23.1 points and one measly assist per game. Among power forwards, Stoudemire ranked second-to-last in assist ratio and last in pure point rating. In fact, his minus-5.58 pure point rating was worse than that of only two other players -- centers Dwight Howard and Tyson Chandler. Part of that results from Stoudemire committing too many offensive fouls, with a staggering 43 last season. Of course, he probably wouldn't commit as many if there were any threat of his passing the ball.
http://[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]KELENNA AZUBUIKE, SF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Powerful wing who also can hit 3-pointers; good post player and rebounder.
• Limited ballhandler who dribbles solely to score. Short for a small forward.
• Struggles moving laterally on defense but has strength to guard post-ups.
Azubuike played nine games before tearing his patella tendon and missing the rest of the season. His recovery will dictate how much he can contribute, but he was a defensive liability even before the injury. Offensively, he can probably do most of the same things -- his game was based in equal parts on power and shooting ability, but very little on quickness.
[h4]ROGER MASON, SG[/h4]
Projection: 13.3 pts, 4.0 reb, 3.1 ast per 40 min; 9.78 PER | Player card
• Catch-and-shoot specialist with quick, line-drive release. Can hit off dribble, too.
• Subpar athlete who struggles to penetrate or create own shot. Never draws fouls.
• Average at best defensively. Can handle ball but a tweener between 1 and 2.
Shooters who hit shooting slumps don't offer much value, so Mason's 33.3 percent mark on 3s ushered him out of San Antonio's guard rotation. While Mason also provides some modest utility as a backup point guard, he's exposed defensively in that role because of subpar quickness.
Making matters worse is his near total inability to draw fouls. Mason landed at the bottom among shooting guards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt; overall, only three players drew fouls less often. One cause was that Mason took only 10 percent of his shots in the basket area -- again, one of the lowest rates in basketball. Combined with the wayward 3-point shooting, he was 59th out of 66 shooting guards in TS%. For a shooting specialist, that won't cut it.
[h4]BILL WALKER, SG[/h4]
Projection: 17.9 pts, 4.6 reb, 2.2 ast per 40 min; 14.65 PER | Player card
• Athletic wing with scoring instincts. Moves well without ball.
• Could stand to get in better shape. Has history of knee problems.
• Has shot surprisingly well as a pro. Disappointing rebounder. Must improve D.
Walker was a revelation after he landed in New York at the trade deadline, shooting so well from distance that he nearly led the league in TS%. Walker hit 43.8 percent of his 3s and 51.7 percent overall; while the 3-point shooting is all but certain to decline this season, Walker has hit a high percentage of his 2s everywhere he's been and could stay around 50 percent from the floor.
[h4]True Shooting Percentage, 2009-10 Leaders[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]TS%[/th][/tr][tr][td]Fabricio Oberto[/td][td]Was[/td][td]65.4[/td][/tr][tr][td]Bill Walker[/td][td]Bos-NY[/td][td]64.9[/td][/tr][tr][td]Greg Oden[/td][td]Por[/td][td]64.7[/td][/tr][tr][td]Nicolas Batum[/td][td]Por[/td][td]64.6[/td][/tr][tr][td]Tyson Chandler[/td][td]Cha[/td][td]64.3[/td][/tr][/table]
Walker's nose for the ball on offense is not matched by the same zest on the boards or at the defensive end. He ranked 61st out of 67 small forwards in rebound rate, and only two small forwards blocked shots less often. He fouled frequently (ninth-most among small forwards) and needs to upgrade his defensive game across the board. Dropping 10-15 pounds from his chunky frame would be a good first step, something he reportedly accomplished in the offseason.
[h4]TONEY DOUGLAS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 16.9 pts, 3.8 reb, 4.1 ast per 40 min; 14.56 PER | Player card
• Dogged defender with good lateral movement. Can check 1s or 2s.
• Decent outside shooter. Has size of point guard but thinks score-first.
• Average handle. Has trouble creating for teammates. Doesn't draw fouls.
Douglas was about as advertised as a rookie in terms of skill set, but the combination worked out better than expected because he banked more shots. His 57.1 TS% ranked a surprising 12th among point guards, helped by a 38.9 percent mark on 3s. Given that he made 37.6 percent from the shorter college distance, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
Fortunately, Douglas doesn't need to shoot the lights out to fill a role as a combo guard off the bench. He can defend and create shots; if he could set up a basket once in a while (he was just 67th out of 71 point guards in assist ratio last season), the Knicks could live with him shooting in the low-to-mid 30s on 3s.
One other thing to keep in mind with Douglas is that he spent five years at Florida State, so he's unusually long in the tooth (24) for a second-year player.
[h4]RONNY TURIAF, C[/h4]
Projection: 10.1 pts, 8.6 reb, 4.6 ast per 40 min; 13.03 PER | Player card
• Hyperactive big man who pursues every block, but a below average rebounder.
• Fairly mobile and strong and runs floor well, but short for a center.
• Good midrange shooter and high-post passer. Efficient finisher at basket.
Turiaf played only 42 games and it looked like the time off might have affected his conditioning. He rated only 15th among centers in blocks per minute -- a low ranking for him -- and his offensive numbers, which usually come on sheer energy, diminished to just 9.8 points per 40 minutes.
Turiaf seemed to lose confidence in his midrange J, taking only 24 long 2s all season. That issue extended to his abysmal 47.4 percent mark from the line. While he's become a much better finisher -- he made 70.3 percent of his basket-area shots last season -- he came out behind on the trade.
[h4]TIMOFEY MOZGOV, C[/h4]
Projection: 13.4 pts, 14.3 reb, 0.5 ast per 40 min; 9.95 PER | Player card
• Big center who can rebound. Decent scorer but prone to turnovers.
• B athlete with size, but will struggle on defense. Must reduce fouls.
Mozgov translates as an NBA rebounder but not anything else. He projects to average 14.3 boards per 40 minutes, which would be fairly sensational, but only as a 44.0 percent shooter with a 9.95 PER.
Why such a poor PER projection? Fouls and turnovers. Gobs of them. In Euroleague play last season, he committed 50 fouls in 218 minutes, a phenomenal rate that would have him fouling out, on average, just after halftime of an NBA game. Additionally, he committed a turnover every 9½ minutes. Those factors are likely to make him a backup center at best while the Knicks wait for him to develop further.
[h4]EDDY CURRY, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Low-post scorer who can overpower defenders on block. Can hit from 15.
• Racks up turnovers in bunches. Utterly confused by double-teams.
• Slow, uninterested defender. Out of shape and routinely beaten down floor.
It's hard to remember that Curry is only 27. He's shown no desire to get in anything resembling basketball shape the past two years, and frankly, he was one of the league's most overrated players prior to that point. There is no expectation that he'll play this season, but his expiring $11.3 million contract could become an important trade chip.
[h4]ANDY RAUTINS, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Good outside shooter with solid ballhandling skills. Can't create own shot.
• Strength, athleticism and defense all are major question marks. Smart player.
Rautins played 32.5 minutes a game as a 23-year-old at Syracuse … and averaged 12.1 points per game. He's a good 3-point shooter (40.8 percent as a senior) but far from elite based on his free throw and 3-point numbers over his three-year career. He handles the ball well for his size but couldn't create shots against younger collegians; he sure as heck isn't going to against pros. I suppose he could work out, but I'm dubious.
[h4]LANDRY FIELDS, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Polished college scorer with high basketball IQ. May need to add strength.
• Middling athlete and just an average outside shooter. Subpar foul shooter.
Fields had a strong summer league but will face a stiff challenge athletically as a pro. He shot 33.7 percent on 3s and 69.6 percent from the line as a senior at Stanford, so he won't cut it as a spot-up shooter. However, I don't think he has the chops to get to the rim time and again. Nor is he going to make a living as a defensive ace, which very much leaves in question how he might contribute. Should he defy the odds and start knocking down 3s, he has enough other tools in his shed to prove helpful.
- Orlando Magic
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]JAMEER NELSON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 16.9 pts, 4.2 reb, 7.1 ast per 40 min; 15.07 PER | Player card
• Good outside shooter with elevation to get shot away over taller opponents.
• Muscular build can absorb contact on drives to rim; usually drives to score.
• Mediocre distributor and only average defender, but rebounds well for size.
Nelson exchanged one fluke for another. While nobody expected him to make 54.8 percent of his long 2s again, as he did in 2008-09, his slump to just 37.8 percent was an equally strong outlier in the opposite direction. I'd look for him to split the difference this season.
The biggest factor that prevents Nelson from ranking among the elites at his position is his inability to draw fouls. Despite his quickness to the rim and strength, he finished only 61st out of 71 point guards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt, even though he didn't shoot a particularly high rate of jump shots.
[h4]VINCE CARTER, SG[/h4]
Projection: 19.1 pts, 4.9 reb, 4.0 ast per 40 min; 14.95 PER | Player card
• Still a plus athlete with good elevation on jumper and explosion near rim.
• Good driver who can create shots without turnovers, but too often settles for J.
• Frustrating player who shies away from contact and defends inconsistently.
Carter got off to a rough start, but he was a huge reason Orlando played so well in the second half of the season. From Feb. 1 onward, he shot 49.1 percent overall, 45.3 percent on 3s, and pumped in 17.9 points per game. For that matter, he wasn't as bad as people want to remember in the playoffs either: In the Boston series, for instance, he averaged 17.8 points on 43.1 percent shooting in the four losses, which was better than his regular-season numbers.
He didn't make a high percentage overall, but he created shots without miscues, ranking fifth among shooting guards in turnover rate and 12th in pure point rating. Sure, he takes some bad bailout jumpers, shuns contact and often fades away unnecessarily. But his real shortcoming was the fact that he wasn't good enough to take over an offense against opponents who could single-cover Dwight Howard. At this stage of his career, that was something we knew long before the playoffs started.
[h4]MICKAEL PIETRUS, SF[/h4]
Projection: 14.9 pts, 5.2 reb, 1.4 ast per 40 min; 11.73 PER | Player card
• Potent spot-up shooter with athleticism to make straight-line drives and finish.
• Quality defender with good feet and quick hands but prone to mental errors.
• Scoring limited by terrible ballhandling. Has high bounce and poor court vision.
It seemed like Pietrus' breakout 2008 playoffs would portend a much bigger season in 2009-10. Guess not. He put up virtually identical numbers as the season before and failed to wrest away a starting wing position that was his for the taking.
The big reason is that he's probably the most mistake-prone shooting specialist in basketball. Pietrus took 57 percent of his shots behind the arc and made 37.9 percent of them, making him a solid sniper. But somehow, he was well above the league average in turnover ratio … meaning that his few forays to the rim produced a ghastly miscue rate. Pietrus also owned the worst assist ratio among small forwards, so it wasn't like he was losing the ball trying to set up teammates.
[h4]RASHARD LEWIS, PF[/h4]
Projection: 15.4 pts, 5.8 reb, 2.0 ast per 40 min; 13.23 PER | Player card
• Classic "stretch 4" with high, accurate release from distance.
• Capable of posting up smaller players, especially with left block turnaround.
• Greatly improved defender who compensates for lack of athleticism and strength.
It was quite a forgettable 2009-10 for Lewis -- he opened it with a 10-game suspension, followed it with his worst season in several years, and capped it off with an 8.3-point-per-game stinker in the Boston series. He had fewer offensive opportunities than the season before and his percentages didn't change any, resulting in a 2.5-point drop in his 40-minute-scoring average.
While Lewis has improved dramatically as a defender at the 4, he finished dead last among power forwards in rebound rate. This appeared to be partly strategic -- Dwight Howard grabbed everything on the defensive end, with Orlando leading the league in defensive rebound rate, and on offense Lewis was 25 feet from the hoop.
But to offset the fact he's not generating second shots, nor a ton of first shots either, he has to shoot more accurately than he did last season. That goes double for the postseason, during which he sunk just four of 23 3-pointers against Boston.
[h4]DWIGHT HOWARD, C[/h4]
Projection: 21.8 pts, 15.0 reb, 2.2 ast per 40 min; 24.43 PER | Player card
• Athletic, imposing physical presence who overwhelms defenders around basket.
• Dominant defender who blocks shots, defends the pick-and-roll and guards post.
• Poor shooter with limited post arsenal, limiting impact vs. players of similar size.
I thought Howard looked a step slow in the first half of the season and wrote as much. But, man, did he make up for it later. The centerpiece of the Orlando juggernaut that rolled through the second half of the season, Howard led the NBA in free throw attempts per field goal attempt and finished second in rebound rate.
Right now, however, his physical dominance is muted by glaring weaknesses. Howard is an atrocious foul shooter (59.2 percent), limiting the impact of all those fouls he draws. He had the second-worst pure point rating among centers and needs to learn how to avoid offensive fouls and make better passes out of double-teams. Howard's staggering total of 75 offensive fouls on the season not only killed possessions but often sent him to the bench with foul trouble.
He also can't score against players who match his strength, with Boston's Kendrick Perkins being the most prominent example. In the Eastern Conference finals, Howard couldn't get his usual catches at or near the rim and was forced to make moves off the dribble, usually resulting in an awkward rolling hook through the lane.
While Howard still shot a respectable 56.8 percent for the series, that fell short of his 61.2 percent in the regular season -- and Boston did this with one man, not the two most opponents used. And it was no fluke. In the four times Orlando played Boston in the regular season, Howard averaged 12.0 points and made less than half his shots in those games.
Suffice it to say there's work to be done. Regardless, he's an MVP candidate because of his defense, rebounding and dominating offense against 25 or so of the league's 30 teams. He just needs a better plan against his physical equals.
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[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]QUENTIN RICHARDSON, SG[/h4]
Projection: 12.8 pts, 7.0 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 11.61 PER | Player card
• Strong, chunky wing who got in better shape last season. Excellent rebounder.
• Good 3-point shooter off catch with quick release from under chin.
• Weak ballhandler, but can score in post. Can't stop quick guys, but takes charges.
Richardson took the "big guard" idea to heart in New York but reportedly dropped 25 pounds last offseason and subsequently put together a very solid 2009-10 campaign. He shot 43.1 percent overall, which, believe it or not, was a new career high; hit 39.7 percent of his 3s while taking nearly two-thirds of his shots from beyond the arc; and re-established his strength on the boards.
Miami also used Richardson as a defensive stopper and while that produced mixed results -- the dude isn't the most mobile guy, no matter how much weight he loses -- he's tough and a good team defender when he's in shape. He's likely to fill a very similar role for Orlando at both ends of the floor, and seems headed toward an extended reunion with his former team in late May.
[h4]RYAN ANDERSON, PF[/h4]
Projection: 21.4 pts, 8.8 reb, 1.6 ast per 40 min; 18.43 PER | Player card
• Outstanding spot-up shooter with a nose for scoring despite average ball skills.
• Adept rebounder with good hands, but struggles to finish in traffic.
• Below average defender who needs to add strength, improve lateral quickness.
Keep an eye on this guy -- I've always thought of him as a poor man's Troy Murphy, but he was better than Murphy last season on a per-minute basis. In fact, Anderson nearly led the team in points per 40 minutes, finishing 0.1 behind Carter and ahead of Howard. While Anderson got lost in the Magic's deep frontcourt in the second half of the season, his acquisition was an underrated heist by Orlando as a sidebar to the VC trade.
As a matter of fact, both Anderson's shooting and per-40-minute rebounding were dramatically better than those of the man starting ahead of him, Rashard Lewis. Only his defensive shortcomings kept him on the bench. Anderson shot 37 percent on 3s while taking more than half his shots from distance, and he shot a respectable 50.3 percent on 2s as well -- something he had struggled with as a rookie. If he continues scoring and plays even remotely acceptable defense, the Magic need to seriously upgrade his playing time.
[h4]J.J. REDICK, SG[/h4]
Projection: 16.1 pts, 3.3 reb, 3.4 ast per 40 min; 13.74 PER | Player card
• Excellent outside shooter who has become more comfortable driving to basket.
• Good passer, especially feeding post; skill at drawing fouls offsets poor elevation.
• Great at chasing opponents through screens but average defending on ball.
Redick was one of the league's most improved players last season, bumping his player efficiency rating from a hideous 9.96 to a very strong 15.03 in his walk season. That he improved his shooting numbers shouldn't come as a huge surprise -- pretty much everybody wondered why he hasn't been hitting 40 percent of his 3s the whole time.
The bigger shock was how much he's improved as a ballhandler and defender. An easy mark as a rookie, Redick has worked on his body and quickness to become a fairly competent defender. He's not a game-changer by any stretch -- he was in the bottom three at his position in both blocks and steals per minute and among the worst rebounders -- but he can handle most 2s without help.
Offensively, he's figured out how to use the threat of his jumper to open driving lanes. While he's not an elite finisher by any stretch, he shot decently on 2s (47.1 percent) and has become unusually good at drawing fouls. Redick finished eighth among shooting guards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt, even though half his shot attempts were 3-pointers.
[h4]CHRIS DUHON, PG[/h4]
Projection: 9.8 pts, 3.2 reb, 6.7 ast per 40 min; 10.37 PER | Player card
• Pass-first point guard. Not a great outside shooter, but most of his shots are 3s.
• Good defender who takes few gambles. Low-mistake offensive player.
• Very limited as a shot-creator and has trouble finishing at basket.
What an odd year. Duhon played extremely well in December and April, but was so awful the rest of the season that he finished at just 37.3 percent from the floor. The only thing mitigating his poor shooting was that he seldom shot the ball, ranking 68th out of 71 point guards in usage rate. More than half his shots were 3s, and he muddled through at 34.9 percent, but his conversion rate on 2s (40.0 percent) was unacceptable.
Duhon at least found enough teammates to rank ninth in pure point rating, helped also by his low turnover ratio. Those skills make him a good steward as a backup point guard, his new role in Orlando and one that's more in keeping with his skill level.
[h4]BRANDON BASS, PF[/h4]
Projection: 17.0 pts, 8.1 reb, 1.2 ast per 40 min; 16.01 PER | Player card
• Excellent midrange shooter for his size who loves shooting from foul-line area.
• Tough, hard-nosed defender who blocks shots, but undersized and mistake-prone.
• Can face up bigger players for drive, but gets tunnel vision and will force shots.
Bass played reasonably well when he got chances, but I've been told that he fell out of favor because he couldn't remember the plays. Really? If that's true, it makes it all the more amazing that he shot 51.1 percent and scored 17.9 points per 40 minutes last season. Bass finished 2009-10 with a PER (16.54) well above the league average, but Orlando's frontcourt was so deep that he hardly played.
This, and his reasonable contract, make him one of the more tantalizing pieces of trade bait in the league. The Magic may choose to keep him around for insurance, but if he ever gets to a situation where he can play 30 minutes a night, he'll put up some numbers.
[h4]MARCIN GORTAT, C[/h4]
Projection: 10.6 pts, 13.0 reb, 0.7 ast per 40 min; 13.93 PER | Player card
• Active 7-footer who blocks shots, rebounds and provides reasonable post defense.
• Has limited perimeter arsenal but can post up for short hooks and finish at rim.
Gortat's phenomenal offensive rebound rate of 2008-09 declined to something more normal last season, and as a result he registered fewer easy putbacks. That mostly explains the sharp decline in overall output between the two seasons; given that we're comparing two relatively small samples (794 and 1,088 minutes), the truth about his ability level likely lies about halfway between those poles.
If so, this Pole still grades out as a very solid center who could start for a good chunk of the league's teams. In fact, he's probably the best backup center in the league, which makes it rather unfortunate for him that Howard plays 36 minutes a night and never gets hurt.
The Magic signed him to a full midlevel deal a year ago and were restricted from trading Gortat without his approval for the past 12 months, but now they can ship him out at a moment's notice. They might be inclined to do so if they can get the right chip on the perimeter; downgrading to a more generic backup center is unlikely to hurt them much given how few minutes are on offer with this club.
[h4]DANIEL ORTON, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Physical wide-body with wingspan to play center despite standing 6-10.
• Good rebounder and excellent shot-blocker, but not overly athletic.
• Hardly played in college; offensive game still a big question mark.
Orton is more likely to see action with his next team than this one, since his most likely use to the Magic is as a trade chip to reinvigorate the roster at the trade deadline. I'd look for him to show up in a D-League city near you this winter.
[h4]STANLEY ROBINSON, SF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• High-flying forward who can rebound and finish at basket.
• Quick defender but lacks strength to guard the post.
• Average at best as a shooter, with limited offensive arsenal.
Robinson's capabilities as a defender could earn him some minutes with the defense-first Stan Van Gundy, especially in end-of-quarter situations when the other team has the ball. Otherwise, he needs to work on developing an offensive role to stick in the league.
[h4]JASON WILLIAMS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 10.6 pts, 2.8 reb, 6.3 ast per 40 min; 11.25 PER | Player card
• Heady point guard with deep understanding and good court vision.
• Decent outside shooter off catch but rarely penetrates to basket or draws fouls.
• Subpar defender who is vulnerable to both penetration and post-ups
What's the opposite of ball pressure? Ball vacuum? Whatever it is, that describes how Williams plays defense -- as far away from the opponent as he possibly can, in the hope he won't be victimized by penetration. With his knees having seen better days, he often gets beat anyway.
That's a shame, because he still can run an offense with the best of them. Williams was 10th in pure point rating and shot well enough to rank 19th among point guards in TS%. Coaches always crave having somebody like this around for 10 minutes a night with the second unit, so his return as a third point guard offers a security blanket for the Magic.
[h4]MALIK ALLEN, PF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Wooden big man who can hit open 15-footer and won't turn it over.
• Has no other offensive value and is a total nonfactor on boards.
• Will throw weight around on D but has poor mobility and can't jump.
Allen played 51 games for Denver last season and used the time to construct an ironclad case that he's no longer a viable NBA player. Last season was his third straight with a single-digit PER -- this time a pathetic 5.97 -- and his scoring, rebounding and shooting percentages are far south of the norms for his position. While his midrange J is a useful weapon, he's become completely devoid of value otherwise, resorting to rampant fouling on D and unable to finish even the most promising of feeds on offense.
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]- Philadelphia 76ers
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]JRUE HOLIDAY, PG[/h4]
Projection: 14.9 pts, 4.4 reb, 6.4 ast per 40 min; 13.91 PER | Player card
• Big guard with great feet. Pressures ball. Has tools to be world-class defender.
• Quick penetrator but iffy court vision. Turnover-prone. Mediocre shooter.
• Needs to improve offensive instincts. League's youngest player in 2009-10.
Holiday exemplifies the importance of considering age when evaluating players. Normally we'd look and say he had a pretty ho-hum rookie year, but Holiday was the league's youngest player and improved dramatically as the season wore on. Up until the All-Star break, Holiday had shot 38.2 percent; over the final two months, he averaged double figures and sunk nearly half his shots. The fact he was a halfway decent player at age 19 bodes very well for what he might be when he's 25.
He could start down that path by first improving with the ball. Holiday displays All-Defense caliber talent, but on offense he placed 69th of 71 point guards in turnover ratio, which is unacceptable. Even that can be seen as a positive, though -- rookies with high turnover rates tend to develop faster in subsequent seasons.
[h4]EVAN TURNER, SG[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Smooth scorer with tremendous feel for game. Not a pure shooter.
• Long for a wing and a good ballhandler. Sees floor like a point guard.
• Lacks elite athleticism. Faces questions about defensive ability.
The biggest worry about Turner is that he isn't a great shooter. He rarely shot 3s at Ohio State and shot in the mid-70s from the line. That won't be a problem if he's good enough to have the ball in his hands most of the time, but it's an issue if he's spotting up on the wings while others run the show. Statistically, however, he looks like a can't-miss prospect.
[h4]ANDRE IGUODALA, SF[/h4]
Projection: 17.7 pts, 6.3 reb, 5.8 ast per 40 min; 17.47 PER | Player card
• Elite athlete with great first step, superb strength and explosive finishing skills.
• Has size, strength and quickness to be elite defender. Outstanding rebounder.
• Good passer but mediocre outside shooter. Could improve post game.
Iguodala is only 26 and doesn't appear to have lost any athleticism, but his drift away from the basket last season is worrisome. Igoudala took only 31.4 percent of his shots in the basket area, which is ridiculous given his superior finishing skills. He annually ranks in the top two or three best basket-area finishers among perimeter players and last season was no exception, with Iguodala making 64.8 percent.
He's not nearly as effective shooting jumpers, especially 3s. Alas, last season he jacked up nearly four triples a game, making only 31 percent of them. His free throw rate slipped too, because one doesn't draw fouls shooting Js, so that's another bad sign.
In every other respect, Iguodala is a stud -- he rebounds, passes, runs the floor and defends. But he's indulging the worst part of his game -- shooting -- and it's keeping him from becoming an All-Star.
[h4]ELTON BRAND, PF[/h4]
Projection: 15.7 pts, 8.4 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 14.71 PER | Player card
• Long-armed but short 4 who has struggled to compensate for loss of athleticism.
• Good midrange shooter but too reliant on jumper. Tends to lose ball on drive.
• Has slipped massively as a rebounder. Lost explosiveness around basket.
Here's where TS% tells the real story. Brand has dropped from the high 50s as a Clipper to the low 50s and high 40s as a Sixer. At that reduced level, he isn't good enough to be a primary offensive option. Brand's main problem is that he can't get to the rim anymore, with nearly half his shots coming from the "in-between" distance and only 42.6 percent of those going through the net.
In a related story, Brand's secondary stats have dried up. He no longer gets assists because he's not being doubled in the post. He's basically stopped rebounding -- his rebound rate landed in the bottom quarter of power forwards -- depriving him of easy second shots.
Also, Brand's loss of burst is evident at the defensive end. Not only is he rebounding less, he blocked half as many shots as he did three years ago. While he seems reluctant to embrace life as a fourth option, that's what he's become.
[h4]MARREESE SPEIGHTS, C[/h4]
Projection: 21.3 pts, 10.0 reb, 1.5 ast per 40 min; 18.45 PER | Player card
• Among best shooting big men in basketball. Has 20-foot range.
• Natural scorer but shoots nearly every time he gets it. Needs to pass, rebound.
• Awful defender. Tries to take charges but might be worst flopper in league.
Speights can score, but the issue is going to be finding a position he can defend. Last season the Sixers gave up 7.5 points per 100 possessions more with him on the court, and subjective observation backed up that statistical fact. At 6-10, he's undersized for the 5 and he's not a great leaper. However, he has a fairly heavy build and isn't particularly mobile, so asking him to guard the perimeter is a stretch.
Speights also seemed confused guarding pick-and-rolls, while his attempts to draw charges were often hilarious. Long-term, he might be best suited to a bench role where he can spend more time guarding players who aren't as good.
The one problem with that approach is that Speights is so good offensively that it's tempting to offer him starter's minutes. Speights is a spectacular shooter for his size, hitting 45.5 percent of his long 2s; in another year or two those shots are likely to be worth three points. Plus, he also displays the strength to muscle his way to the bucket. Between those skills, he can get a point every two minutes with little risk of turnovers. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether he can prevent opponents from doing the same.
http://[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]LOU WILLIAMS, PG[/h4]
Projection: 20.8 pts, 3.4 reb, 5.6 ast per 40 min; 19.16 PER | Player card
• High-scoring combo guard with outstanding quickness off dribble.
• Mediocre outside shooter with shaky handle. Improved as point guard.
• Quick, gambling defender but lacks strength and often plays as undersized 2.
After Williams moved to the point for the first time last season in place of Andre Miller, the Sixers continued to struggle, so a lot of people casually assumed that Williams was the problem. Actually, his transition turned out better than anyone could have expected. Williams had the best season of his career, slashing his turnover ratio to one of the best at his position while ranking ninth among point guards in TS%. He successfully reduced his usage rate to get others involved and dramatically increased his shooting numbers across the board.
About the only thing Williams lacks at this point is a reliable 3-point weapon. He shot it more than ever but made only 34 percent last season, leaving him to attack opponents who sagged off to give him the jumper.
Williams' best role remains as a combo guard off the bench and he may revert to that this season, but it was encouraging to see he could handle playing the point full-time if needed.
[h4]THADDEUS YOUNG, F[/h4]
Projection: 19.2 pts, 6.3 reb, 1.9 ast per 40 min; 15.83 PER | Player card
• Left-handed combo forward with a knack for scoring around basket.
• Runs floor well and a passable outside shooter. Off-dribble game needs work.
• Solid rebounder. Has skills to defend but a tweener between the 3 and 4.
Two years ago he seemed like one of the best prospects in the league, but Young has stalled. His PER has actually declined each of the past two years, while efforts to diversify his offensive game have borne little fruit.
One thing that would help is playing him at his natural position. Young has been dramatically more effective at the 4 his entire career: According to 82games.com, his PER climbed nearly five points higher at the 4 last season, while the differentials were nearly as large the previous two years. As a power forward, his knack for making short bank shots is far more of an advantage and his iffy J is a liability. While there's an understandable reluctance to commit to a 6-8, 220-pound power forward, his numbers make it a no-brainer.
[h4]ANDRES NOCIONI, F[/h4]
Projection: 16.1 pts, 6.5 reb, 2.0 ast per 40 min; 10.64 PER | Player card
• Aggressive, shot-happy forward who lets fly off the catch but struggles in paint.
• Hard-nosed defender but a tweener; short for four and too slow for most 3s.
• Decent rebounder until last season. Chippy player who gives hard fouls.
I'd heard Nocioni wasn't exactly overjoyed to be in Sacramento, and it sure looked that way watching him. He might have led the league in shots per touch, joylessly jacking long Js virtually every time the ball found its way to him.
He made enough 3s (38.6 percent) that it didn't work out too badly, but it was a different story inside the arc. Nocioni shot only 40.8 percent on 2-pointers and posted one of the lowest free throw rates at his position, resulting in his lowest TS percentage since his rookie year. He also stopped competing on the boards, ranking 60th of 63 power forwards in rebound rate. One wonders if the change of scenery will brighten his mood a bit. If so, he's skilled enough to be a strong bench player.
[h4]SPENCER HAWES, C[/h4]
Projection: 17.1 pts, 9.7 reb, 3.2 ast per 40 min; 14.86 PER | Player card
• Seven-footer who likes to stay on perimeter and shoot high-arcing jump shots.
• Will block shots but needs to add strength and toughness at both ends.
• Decent post player but rarely utilizes skills on block. Never draws fouls.
Hawes is 7-1 and possesses some nice post moves and a sweet short-range J, but until he gets more comfortable with the idea of contact, it will be hard for him to be an effective player. He's kind of a poor man's Rasheed Wallace, constantly drifting away from the paint to shoot jumpers. Hawes placed 61st out of 64 centers in free throw attempts per field goal attempt, but he's one of the most frequent shooters of 3s and long 2s. He's at 31.4 percent for his career on 3s and respectable but hardly awesome on long 2s (41.1 percent).
Similarly, Hawes is strangely subdued on the glass, ranking 48th among centers in rebound rate. And given how much pride he takes in his jumper, it's not clear how he's just a 67 percent career foul shooter. He's only 22 and certainly the talent is there, but most players tend to drift toward the perimeter as they get older. Hawes needs to do the exact opposite by scoring more on the block.
[h4]JODIE MEEKS, G[/h4]
Projection: 15.8 pts, 5.4 reb, 2.3 ast per 40 min; 11.82 PER | Player card
• Undersized 2 with a sweet outside shot. Has scorer's instincts.
• Average athlete who has to improve defense. Good rebounder for size.
Meeks is a pure floor-spacer, taking nearly half his shots from beyond the arc as a rookie and earning one of the lowest turnover ratios at his position. To succeed, he simply has to make more shots. Meeks hit only 31.8 percent of his 3s and 38.8 percent overall; he needs to make 40 percent from long distance to have a steady gig. He's come to the right place, at least, as the Sixers are desperate for zone-busters.
[h4]JASON KAPONO, SF[/h4]
Projection: 12.6 pts, 2.7 reb, 1.7 ast per 40 min; 7.94 PER | Player card
• Amazing long-range shooter with a quick release. Can hit off dribble to right.
• Least athletic player in league. Can't rebound or defend at all.
• Maddening tendency to shoot long 2s instead of 3s reduces value.
The Sixers won the battle but lost the war. They became the first team to successfully convince Kapono that 3s are worth more than 2s, and as a result he shot more 3s than 2s for the first time in his career. Unfortunately, he made a career-low 36.8 percent of his 3s, eliminating much of the value of the first accomplishment.
If Kapono isn't lighting it up from outside, he has no value because he provides so little in other areas. For starters, he drew only 15 free throw attempts the entire season for the league's worst rate of free throw attempts per field goal attempt, including a 27-game stretch where he didn't attempt a free throw.
[h4]Fewest FT Attempts Per FG Attempts, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]FTA/FGA[/th][/tr][tr][td]Jason Kapono[/td][td]Phi[/td][td]0.050[/td][/tr][tr][td]Jarvis Hayes[/td][td]NJ[/td][td]0.055[/td][/tr][tr][td]Bobby Brown[/td][td]NO-LAC[/td][td]0.063[/td][/tr][tr][td]Roger Mason[/td][td]SA[/td][td]0.069[/td][/tr][tr][td]Anthony Carter[/td][td]Den[/td][td]0.072[/td][/tr][/table]
He also ranked last among small forwards in Rebound Rate and second from the bottom in combined blocks, steals and offensive fouls drawn per minute. He offers no defensive value whatsoever and has to be hidden in zones or against non-scorers.
Despite all those shortcomings, he can prove valuable if at least half his shots are 3s and he shoots in the mid-40 percent on them. Short of that, he's dead weight.
[h4]TONY BATTIE, C[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Solid defensive forward plagued by knee problems.
• Can hit 15-footer but rarely rebounds and can't score in paint.
• Length, smarts are assets on D. Still fairly mobile but won't block shots.
Battie was out with a groin injury for much of last season and played only 134 minutes. At 34 with diminished skills, it appeared 2009-10 would be the end of the road, but the Sixers have given his career a reprieve.
[h4]DARIUS SONGAILA, PF[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Combines sweet midrange shot with good feel and off-ball movement.
• Physical but undersized with average quickness; strictly a below-rim player.
• Very poor rebounder and rarely draws fouls.
Of all the signs that the Hornets were stretched thin, having vertically challenged Songaila posing as a backup center was perhaps the most damning. Songaila can be effective in his natural power forward role, where his lack of rebounding and shot-blocking isn't as glaring, but he proved to be a major liability in the middle. That shouldn't come as a big surprise considering he's 6-8, and happily the offseason trade to Philadelphia should relieve him of such hardship this coming season.
Songaila has a nice stroke and knows how to play, which makes it more baffling that he can't figure out how to get to the line. He averaged a piddling 0.15 free throw attempts per field goal attempt -- only two centers were worse.
[h4]CRAIG BRACKINS, F[/h4]
No projection | Player card
• Skilled big man who can shoot with range, run floor and jump.
• Indifferent rebounder and defender; needs to add strength and upgrade motor.
• College free throw and 3-point percentages disappointing, given shooting stroke.
Brackins' skills overlap those of Songaila, and it seems only one of them will emerge. Obviously, the answer is Brackins after this season -- Songaila's contract expires -- but given his strength deficit and reliance on skill, he might need some time to get his footing at the NBA level.
- Toronto Raptors
[h4]JARRETT JACK, PG[/h4]
• Combo guard who can run offense but tends to over-dribble. Improved passer.
• Average shooter but draws fouls on drives. Tends to play well late in season.
• Struggles to defend quick point guards. Strong enough to check most 2s.
Jack again started slow and finished gangbusters, but for the season as a whole, he demonstrated tremendous improvement as an outside shooter and distributor. His assist ratio reflected a career high as did his true shooting percentage. While he tended to pound the ball looking for opportunities, his results were strong enough to overcome that misgiving.
Of particular note was Jack's 41.2 percent success as a 3-point shooter. Never known as a long-distance marksman, he's always been a very good foul shooter and solid from midrange, so perhaps it was just a matter of time before he got the hang of the longball. Jack also ranked ninth among point guards in free throw attempts per field goal attempt, further boosting his output. Included in that total was his borrowing of Kevin Durant's "rip" move to get three freebies -- something he did twice in one game late in the season.
All told, he's not exactly a natural at the point and his shooting numbers will probably regress a bit from last season's highs, but after a strong 2009-10, he's a reasonable proposition as a starter.
[h4]DeMAR DeROZAN, SG[/h4]
• Explosive leaper who can finish in transition. Excellent offensive rebounder.
• Decent midrange shooter but lacks 3-point range. Doesn't see floor well.
• Athleticism has yet to translate into good defense. Mistake and foul-prone.
Well, he wasn't bad for a 20-year-old rookie. DeRozan has plenty of areas for improvement, but considering his inexperience and unimpressive college stats, his rookie year has to be viewed as something of a success. He started all season and while that was a stretch, he didn't embarrass himself, showing a knack for drawing fouls and averaging a respectable 15.9 points per 40 minutes.
DeRozan's defense was a problem, although he wasn't exactly awash in good examples to follow. He ranked seventh among shooting guards in fouls per minute and needs to use his leaping ability on the defensive boards the way he does for second shots on offense.
Offensively, his major hurdles are passing and 3-pointers. DeRozan can get to the basket but rated 64th out of 66 shooting guards in assist ratio and 59th in pure point rating -- he needs to spread the wealth a little. As for the 3s, he made only four all season so he needs to add that weapon to be considered a serious offensive threat.
[h4]LINAS KLEIZA, SF[/h4]
• Well-built forward who likes to shoot outside jumpers and crash offensive boards.
• Straight-line, right-hand driver. Left arm might as well have hook at end.
• Subpar defender who is too slow to guard wings and too short to defend 4s.
Kleiza played in Europe last season; he was last seen in the NBA with Denver a year earlier. He takes a lot of 3s even though he's a mediocre long-range shooter at 34.2 percent for his career; of more value is that he annually ranks among the best rebounders at the small forward spot. His strength is a big reason he rebounds well and drives to the rim successfully, but people tend to look at his strong frame and think he must be a tough defensive player. He's not, thanks to slow feet -- a weakness that only adds to the Raptors' shortcomings in that department.
[h4]AMIR JOHNSON, PF[/h4]
• Long shot-blocking big man. Outstanding finisher in basket area.
• Despite blocks, a bad defender. Lacks strength and is absurdly foul-prone.
• Limited shooting range and no post game. Gets points on "garbage" baskets.
Well, he can certainly finish: Johnson led all power forwards in shooting percentage and TS%. He also scored well in other measures of athleticism, averaging nearly a free throw for every two field goal attempts, swatting nearly a shot every 20 minutes, and landing seventh among power forwards in offensive rebound rate.
Alas, the issue isn't whether Johnson can play, but for how long. Johnson can't defend the post without fouling because he's so weak and sports such a high center of gravity. As a result, he averaged a phenomenal 7.02 fouls per 40 minutes, which would put the theoretical limit of his minutes per game at 34.2 before fouling out. Realistically, given how conservative coaches are with foul trouble, it will be very difficult for him to average more than 24 unless he cuts the foul rate substantially.
In fact, last season only one player averaged more than 5.5 fouls per 40 minutes and averaged more than 24 minutes a game -- Indiana's Roy Hibbert, who barely squeaked past both thresholds at 5.6 fouls and 25.1 minutes. To have a realistic shot at replacing most of Bosh's minutes, Johnson would have to cut the foul rate to 5.0 or less. He's been in the league five years and has never come close to that standard. With a career rate of 7.2, it's doubtful he'll serve as more than a very effective part-time player.
[h4]ANDREA BARGNANI, C[/h4]
• Sweet-shooting big man with quick line-drive release. Rarely looks to pass.
• Good straight-line driver off shot fakes. Tends to pivot off wrong foot.
• Incredibly bad help defender. Doesn't react well or compete. Poor rebounder.
Bargnani's 2009-10 season was fairly identical to his 2008-09, but his per-game numbers leapt because he played more minutes. Thus, at this point, we might be pretty close to seeing all we're going to get from the top overall pick in 2006. That player can certainly score -- nearly a point every two minutes, with a very low cost in turnovers -- and with Bosh gone he may score even more this season.
Alas, he can't do much of anything else. Bargnani ranked 61st out of 64 centers in rebound rate and is something of a joke defensively. On the ball he's not completely awful -- he has a knack for blocking post-ups. However, Bargnani is laugh-out-loud terrible in help defense, or in his case, "don't help" defense. Toronto, which was already one of the worst defensive teams in history, gave up a whopping 8.5 points per 100 possessions more with him on the court, according to 82games.com.
[h4]Fewest Steals Per Minute, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Team[/th][th=""]Steals/40 min[/th][/tr][tr][td]Andrea Bargnani[/td][td]Tor[/td][td]0.36[/td][/tr][tr][td]Joe Smith[/td][td]Atl[/td][td]0.41[/td][/tr][tr][td]Robin Lopez[/td][td]Phx[/td][td]0.41[/td][/tr][tr][td]Zydrunas Ilgauskas[/td][td]Cle[/td][td]0.42[/td][/tr][tr][td]Brendan Haywood[/td][td]Was-Dal[/td][td]0.44[/td][/tr][/table]
One stat crystallizes Bargnani's defensive inabilities: He amassed the lowest rate of steals in basketball (see chart). This is a truly amazing feat given some of the slow-moving timber he beat out for the dishonor, and it offers another example of how disengaged he was from the proceedings when somebody wasn't backing directly into him with the ball in his hands.
http://[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]JOSE CALDERON, PG[/h4]
• Smooth, ballhandling point guard. Has high dribble but never turns ball over.
• Shoots deadly accurate push shot from shoulder. Good finisher. Money at line.
• Horrific defensive player. Can't move laterally at all and lacks strength.
The Raptors were a historically bad defensive team last season, and Calderon was a major cause. Ever since suffering a severe hamstring tear in 2008-09, he's been a sieve on defense. According to 82games.com, opposing point guards blistered him for a 22.6 PER last season, which is quite an accomplishment: Not one point guard who played more than 50 games achieved a PER above 22. Basically Calderon turned average point guards into something slightly better than Steve Nash. Subjective observation backs this up: While he wasn't getting much help behind him, Calderon was routinely flambéd by opposing dribblers.
It's a shame he's so awful on D, because he can really run an offense. Calderon ranked sixth in pure point rating, and even in an "off" year by his standards, he shot 39.8 percent on 3s and ranked in the top quarter of point guards in TS percentage. While he doesn't get to the basket with great frequency, few other guards convert more reliably -- Calderon made 63.5 percent of his shots in the basket area.
Interestingly, Calderon slid to 79.8 percent from the line after setting the league record at 98.1 percent the year before. He missed 21 foul shots last season; the previous two seasons combined he'd missed only 14. At 87.8 percent for his career, however, he's still Toronto's no-brainer first choice to shoot freebies.
[h4]LEANDRO BARBOSA, SG[/h4]
• Among fastest players in league end-to-end; loves to streak up left side on break.
• Accurate long-range shooter despite odd release but has terrible court vision.
• Faces major size disadvantage at the 2. Gets steals but is not a good defender.
Barbosa missed half the season with a wrist injury and didn't shoot nearly as accurately when he played, perhaps because of the injury. However, this didn't stop him from firing away. It seemed at times that every Barbosa catch was a possession ender -- he would either fire a shot or dribble into a turnover trying. He averaged better than a point every two minutes, but it was hard on the eyes.
The good news is that he'll almost certainly shoot better this season. Barbosa is a career 39.8 percent 3-point shooter but slumped to 32.4 percent a season ago. That and his driving ability make him a very effective bench player despite his subpar defense and indifference toward the four players sharing the court with him.
[h4]ED DAVIS, PF[/h4]
• Long, slender, active big man who can really rebound and block shots.
• High percentage finisher who can hit short-range shots, but needs more ball skills.
• Needs to add strength and improve midrange jumper.
My Draft Rater wasn't high on Davis, and when it misses, it's mostly on guards and one-and-done guys -- not a power forward who spent two years in school. That doesn't doom him to failure by any means -- this method has a high variance -- but I do wonder how much he'll be able to score at the pro level. He's not bulky enough to shut down post players, so if he can't produce points, he's probably a career backup.
[h4]SONNY WEEMS, SG[/h4]
• Athletic wing who can guard perimeter. Very good leaper and finisher.
• Good elevation on jump shot. Can hit from midrange over defenders.
• Needs better ball skills and more consistent long-range shot. Never draws fouls.
Although Weems has his limitations he proved quite useful on this roster because he could do the things -- run, rebound, block shots -- that nobody else could. He holds some promise as a defensive stopper and his offense progressed to the point where he has to be guarded.
In fact, Weems' 47.8 percent mark on long 2s was a shocking surprise. While he's unlikely to repeat it, he could compensate by drawing a foul once in a while. Only four guards drew fewer free throw attempts per field goal attempt, and if Weems isn't going to make 3s (he hit just two last season), he has to get to the line every now and then.
[h4]DAVID ANDERSEN, C[/h4]
• Good pick-and-pop shooter who can also make turnarounds and hooks in post.
• Soft defender who gives ground and struggles to guard post without fouling.
• Decent leaper who can rebound, but poor lateral quickness.
With the fourth-best turnover ratio among centers, Andersen's pick-and-pop weapon allows him to create shots without turnovers -- so he doesn't need to hit at a huge clip to offer value. However, he failed to do that last season, rating 61st among centers in TS percentage thanks to an abysmal 45.8 percent mark on 2s.
He might turn around last season's 34.6 percent mark on 3s once he adjusts to the longer NBA 3-point line, but if his performance inside the arc doesn't improve, I'm not sure it will matter much. Given his defensive shortcomings, Andersen needs to be an impact player offensively to command a rotation slot. He fell well short of that standard last season.
[h4]JULIAN WRIGHT, SF[/h4]
• Slender, athletic forward who can handle the ball, run and jump.
• Poor outside shot limits halfcourt role; prone to poor decisions.
• Good rebounder for size and solid defender, but a tweener in terms of size.
Wright has regressed since a promising rookie season and has become so turnover-prone that it's difficult to keep him on the floor. Only three small forwards racked up a higher turnover ratio, which is particularly damning in Wright's case because he wasn't asked to do a whole lot offensively.
His lack of a jumper forces him to drive into crowds, and his decision-making hasn't progressed. The most telling example last season occurred in a game against the Lakers when he came down on a 2-on-1 with 6-foot teammate Darren Collison ... and tried to throw him an alleyoop. Yep, that was one of the turnovers.
[h4]SOLOMON ALABI, C[/h4]
• Tall, athletic center who blocks shots. Regarded as great locker-room guy.
• Runs floor and competes but raw offensive game needs refinement.
• Lacks strength. College rebounding numbers were inexplicably poor.
Talk to scouts about Alabi and you'll hear fawning compliments about his leadership and intensity. That makes it all the more surprising he dropped so low in the draft. His offense needs work and apparently there were concerns about a health issue, but if he can defend the middle, he'll be a huge help for the Raptors.
[h4]MARCUS BANKS, PG[/h4]
• Aggressive, athletic point guard with penchant for dribbling into trouble.
• Outstanding at pressuring ball but picks up fouls. Likes to push ball in transition.
• Below average outside shooter.
Banks played in only 22 games and has largely been forgotten, but he played fairly well in his limited chances last season. He's only 28 and is still one of the better athletes at his position, so we can't rule out a return to relevance at some point. For now, his expiring $4.5 million contract carries far more value than anything he can contribute to a rotation.
[h4]REGGIE EVANS, PF[/h4]
• Tough, strong 4 who dominates on glass despite lack of hops and mobility.
• Regarded as one of league's dirtiest players. Picks up fouls in bunches.
• Can't shoot or get own shot. Offense comes almost entirely off put-backs.
Evans missed most of the season but delivered his usual freak-show stats when he did play -- a huge rebound rate, an outrageous free throw rate, an enormous turnover ratio and a personal foul every seven minutes. He's 30 but he plays below the rim so age isn't likely to affect him much. He's not a rotation player, but as a fifth big man he has enough useful characteristics to provide value.
- Washington Wizards
[h3]STARTERS[/h3]
[h4]JOHN WALL, PG[/h4]
• Hyper-athletic point guard with great quickness and spectacular leaping ability.
• Can create off dribble but turnover-prone as collegian. Jumper still suspect.
• Size and quickness should make him elite defender. Must improve intensity.
Wall's athleticism isn't in question, and at 6-4 he's huge for a point guard. The bigger issue is how much skill he can add to his incredibly athletic package. Wall averaged four turnovers a game at Kentucky and shot 32.5 percent on college 3s. While he can forge a decent career by blazing to the basket and drawing fouls, his chances at stardom depend on sharpening all the rough edges. His potential is enormous, but his rookie season could be a bumpy journey.
[h4]GILBERT ARENAS, SG[/h4]
• Quick, scoring-minded guard with accurate long-range shot and compact release.
• Likes to attack paint from top of key. Dominates ball and will lose handle.
• Owns skills, but not motivation, to be elite defender. Professionalism in question.
I was going to write "shoot-first guard," but …
Even before Arenas' indiscretions with firearms, he wasn't exactly endearing himself to the locals. He pounded the air out of the ball looking for his own shots, setting a new career high in usage rate despite coming off two knee injuries and clearly not having his former burst.
Arenas ranked only 50th at his position in true shooting percentage (TS%) and 47th in pure point rating, so he was burning a ton of possessions to less than scintillating effect. He actually passed the ball more than he had in recent seasons, but it wasn't enough to offset all the forced jumpers he's increasingly leaned on since he's lost a step on his drive.
Arenas is a pretty good outside shooter and may successfully adjust to playing off the ball if he's willing to accept the role and actually put forth the effort on defense. But last season brings that into question. Even without all the off-court nonsense, the Wizards have allowed Arenas to indulge himself for so long on the hardwood that he may be irredeemable.
[h4]AL THORNTON, SF[/h4]
• Scoring-minded combo forward with accurate jumper. Good finisher at rim.
• Can score one-on-one but dribbles with head down and makes terrible decisions.
• Subpar defender who must improve effort. A tweener, between 3 and 4.
I liked how Flip Saunders used Thornton after the trade, putting him in one-on-one wing isolations in which he just had to score and could make a fairly easy read. Thornton can handle that; anything more complex and he's got problems. His best skill is creating shots, but he doesn't create very good ones: He rated 48th among small forwards in TS% and generates nothing for teammates.
Thornton also generated one of the league's biggest rebound disparities, ranking seventh at his position in offensive rebound rate but just 60th at the defensive end. Focus may be an issue here, as his size and leaping ability should make him much more effective on the glass. Thornton will probably start this season, but his ideal role is as a scorer with the second unit. In that environment, in which any kind of decent shot is welcome and quality is less important, Thornton fits to a tee.
[h4]ANDRAY BLATCHE, PF[/h4]
• Skilled frontcourt player with good midrange jumper. Likes to use stepback shot.
• Improving passer. Needs to upgrade shot selection and draw more fouls.
• Lazy defender who often leaves feet. Intensity, motor remain questions.
Blatche enjoyed a breakout of sorts once Jamison was traded, averaging nearly 21 points a game after the All-Star break. But the development that's even more encouraging was his late-season burst of passing. Blatche initially reacted to his go-to role with "Cool, now I can hog the ball like Gilbert" enthusiasm, but he had seven or more assists in five of the final 11 games … after zero in the first 71.
Averaging 20 points and two assists, Blatche doesn't stand out. Averaging 20 and five assists? Now there's a quality offensive player. Blatche still needs to improve his shot selection, rely less on his jump shot and draw more fouls, but he's only 24 and it's his first extended run as a featured performer. It's been a rocky journey to this point, but if he can share the ball and improve his defensive focus, he can become a star.
[h4]JAVALE MCGEE, C[/h4]
• Athletic, raw, long-armed shot-blocker who flies up and down floor.
• Great dunker but otherwise fairly clueless offensively. Can make 15-footer.
• Leaves feet way too often. Lacks strength and can't hold position on block.
McGee ranks among the league's most tantalizing prospects, a 7-footer who can leap like crazy and routinely blows past other big men in transition. At times, it seems he's just about to turn the corner. During a game in Boston in March, for instance, he completely flustered the Celtics with his shot-blocking. And not without reason, as McGee led the NBA in blocked shots per minute (see chart). He also averaged 16 points and 10 rebounds per 40 minutes, so clearly he's doing something right.
[h4]Most Blocks Per Minute, 2009-10[/h4][table][tr][th=""]Player [/th][th=""]Team [/th][th=""]Blocks/40 min.[/th][/tr][tr][td]JaVale McGee[/td][td]Was [/td][td]4.17[/td][/tr][tr][td]Hasheem Thabeet[/td][td]Mem [/td][td]4.03[/td][/tr][tr][td]Greg Oden[/td][td]Por [/td][td]3.82[/td][/tr][tr][td]Chris Andersen[/td][td]Den [/td][td]3.38[/td][/tr][tr][td]Joel Anthony[/td][td]Mia [/td][td]3.30[/td][/tr][/table]
On the other hand, he's very raw at both ends and desperately needs to improve his basketball IQ. McGee takes himself out of position going for blocks as often as he gets them, sometimes taking laughably poor choices to lunge for shots he can't possibly touch. Additionally, the same things that make him a speedy shot-blocker render him a poor post defender -- he has a high base and a thin frame, so he's rooted out of position easily. Finally, he really struggles in complex situations such as pick-and-roll coverage. Despite his shot-blocking, the Wizards defended better when he was off the court.
http://[h3]KEY RESERVES[/h3]
[h4]KIRK HINRICH, PG[/h4]
• Solid outside shooter off catch or dribble, but rarely attacks basket.
• Great footwork and fundamentals on defense, but a bit undersized.
• Can play both guard positions but more a scorer than passer.
Hinrich has clearly lost some zip with the ball. He posted among the lowest usage rates at his position, and his decline in field-goal percentage can be tied directly to the shocking rarity of his shots at the rim -- he took only 16.9 percent of his attempts in the basket area.
He's not a good enough outside shooter to thrive that way. Hinrich sunk 43.0 percent of his long 2-pointers and 37.1 percent of his 3-pointers, both of which are good marks, but between the paucity of free throws and the lack of layups, he was subpar in both TS% (52nd among point guards) and usage rate (57th). Between not creating a lot of shots and not making a high percentage of them, his offensive value was pretty limited.
Fortunately, his defense doesn't appear to have suffered. Hinrich has quick feet, great fundamentals and has cut his fouls, making him one of the league's best wing defenders even though he usually gives up inches.
[h4]JOSH HOWARD, SF[/h4]
• Big wing with good handle and ability to free self for mid-range jumpers.
• Average shooter. Athleticism has declined in recent seasons.
• Has lost ability to rebound. Quality defender when motivated.
Howard's season couldn't have gone worse. He was delivering by far the worst campaign of his career when Dallas traded him to the Wizards; after four games in Washington, he blew out his knee and missed the rest of the season.
Even before the injury Howard's athleticism was clearly on the wane, as evidenced by his rapidly diminishing rebound rate. He used to rank among the top five small forwards in this category, but last season he finished 50th. Barely a quarter of his attempts originated in the basket area compared to a few seasons ago when he logged nearly double that number.
His numbers should bounce back a bit, because he also had an unusually bad shooting season. Howard shot only 26.7 percent on 3s even though he's at 33.8 percent for his career. He saw his percentages on long 2s take a similar dive.
That said, he's not a great shooter and he'll probably be further diminished athletically once he returns. Howard had been focusing more on his offense the past couple of seasons, but he's not a go-to guy anymore. He needs to get back to being a defense and energy guy in his career's second chapter.
[h4]YI JIANLIAN, PF[/h4]
• Mobile 7-footer with good lateral movement and decent mid-range jumper.
• Mechanical player with poor feel for the game and no finishing skills at the basket.
• Subpar defender and rebounder who needs to add strength and gain focus.
The shocking thing about Yi is how brutally bad he is finishing at the rim. He's 7 feet tall and can jump, but he nailed only 43.5 percent of his shots in the basket area last season. For someone his height to convert such a low rate is criminal; his was, by a vast margin, the worst percentage among frontcourt players with at least 150 attempts. I can't emphasize enough how unusual this is: Only two other full-time frontcourt players fell under 50 percent (Jared Jeffries and Glen Davis), and both of them were just a hair underneath (49.7 percent and 49.2 percent, respectively).
Yi doesn't shoot particularly well from outside either (37.0 percent on long 2s). His best offensive attribute is that his quickness helps him draw fouls. And while his length and quickness should make him a good defender, he hasn't shown the resolve or basketball IQ to get it done. After three seasons in the league, he's still as much of a project as the day he arrived. Given that everyone in the league thinks he's really 25 rather than his listed age of 23, he doesn't have much time left to turn the corner.
[h4]NICK YOUNG, SG[/h4]
• Slender, one-on-one scorer who can elevate for mid-range J. Good shooter.
• Can't see floor at all and high handle makes him prone to turnovers.
• Leaping ability hasn't translated into defense or rebounding. Doesn't play hard.
Young may be the league's blindest dribbler, ranking dead last among shooting guards in assist ratio. He has a knack for scoring -- 18.0 points per 40 minutes -- and he'd be a good 3-point specialist if he'd spot up more often instead of going for 17-foot contested jumpers.
Of greater mystery is his total inability to rebound. Young is 6-6 and can jump, but he ranked second to last among shooting guards in rebound rate. Among those who outrebounded him were Ben Gordon, J.J. Redick, Luke Ridnour, Jason Williams, Aaron Brooks, Mike Bibby and Carlos Arroyo.
Young doesn't seem to have any clue how to play defense either. He was eighth among shooting guards in fouls per minute and in the bottom dozen in both blocks and steals. He can jump and he can shoot, which should be a pretty good foundation, but right now he's not an NBA rotation player.
[h4]TREVOR BOOKER, C[/h4]
• Undersized but physical power forward who likes to play in the paint.
• Very good rebounder and tough. Active enough to score without needing ball.
• Can make short-range jumpers, but not a shooter. Won't create offensively.
Some of the best value draft picks in recent seasons have been short power forwards, and Booker could be another. His upside isn't huge but his game should translate immediately, so he could be a rotation player right out of the chute. At best, he can be a Paul Millsap-esque sixth man, but he'll have to figure out how to succeed while giving up inches to every opponent.
[h4]HILTON ARMSTRONG, C[/h4]
• Seven-footer with no post game and two of the league's worst hands.
• Will attack off dribble from high post. Subpar rebounder, lacks strength.
• Active shot-blocker with good anticipation in passing lanes.
Armstrong suited up for three teams last season but shot more than 40 percent for zero of them. His dramatic offensive limitations and terrible hands have undermined what could otherwise be a lengthy career as a backup center, because he has the other prerequisites for the job. About the only good news to report is that his anemic rebound rate recovered somewhat last season.
