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Is Bledsoe the best player from the 2010 NBA Draft?

12/26/2012

The 2010 NBA Draft continues to disappoint us. At the time, many scouts and teams were convinced this was going to be a great draft. John Wall was considered one of the best point guard prospects in a while, and a player fully deserving of being picked first. Evan Turner had just had one of the best college seasons in recent memory, and was considered pick #1a. Meanwhile, although possessing a questionable attitude, several scouts saw DeMarcus Cousins as the most talented player in a star-laden draft. Derrick Favors and Wes Johnson were also coveted prospects. Each of these players, in their own way, has been a disappointment.

I reviewed the 2010 Draft a few months ago. If anything, in general, the players from that draft have disappointed us to an even greater extent so far this year. Wall has been hurt, while Greg Monroe and Cousins have apparently regressed.

The one huge and shocking exception is Eric Bledsoe, whose ascent has been pretty well documented. Bledsoe has been playing lights out this year, and it does not appear to be a fluke - this guy just possesses an uncanny mix of athleticism and basketball smarts.

There was not much of an indication this was going to happen, though. Bledsoe was not a highly sought-after prospect (he was picked #18 by the Clippers) and he was simply not good his first two years in the league.

This year, in limited minutes, he has been great. Which leads us to an interesting question that Ethan Sherwood Strauss put out recently: Is Bledsoe the best player from the class of 2010?

He really might be. That is as much an indictment of the players from that class as it is an endorsement of Bledsoe, but it's a relevant question nonetheless. A guy who plays less than 20 minutes a night and was picked 18th overall should not be in contention to be the best player in a draft that was supposedly loaded.

But consider where we are. The class of 2010 lacks a true star so far, and it's becoming less certain whether one will arise. Bledsoe seems to have as good a shot as any, although we should not necessarily consider him the favorite.

This is very good news for the Clippers, although they might not know it. Being the Clippers, it actually seems they have a good chance of screwing this up. Chris Paul and Bledsoe form a small backcourt, but both are so good defensively that one can usually effectively defend shooting guards. This means, ideally, Paul and Bledsoe can be the Clippers backcourt for the forseeable future. Bledsoe is also the ideal point guard to spell Paul and make sure his minutes are low during the regular season.

But, like I said, this is the Clippers - so we should expect the worse. Even with Jamal Crawford and an eventually healthy Chauncey Billups, Bledsoe needs to be playing much more than he has. And, more importantly, he needs to be an integral part of L.A.'s future plans, along with Paul and Blake Griffin.

Bledsoe probably will cool off some when he eventually is given more minutes, but it seems pretty clear we are watching a very good basketball player here. His surprising success, compared with the unexpected failures of the rest of the 2010 draftees, indicates how difficult it can be to predict future success in the NBA.

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Why it's important to be conservative with free agents

12/20/2012

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I just want to go on a quick tangent about why I think it is important to be conservative with NBA roster decisions, particularly in regards to free agents. If you're familiar with the site and its main tenets none of this will be surprising.

I believe the success of a NBA team, especially a very good team, depends largely on who its best two or three players are. It's important that all your starters are decent, and a solid bench is a nice luxury, but the key thing is
always your top two or three guys.

Everything else trickles down from your top players. So I am very willing to pay my top two or three guys big, big money. As long as they can produce at an All-Star level, or close to it, they are worth it.

As we know, these kind of star players rarely switch teams via free agency - because the team they are on can give them more money. So these upper echelon players are usually not realistic targets in free agency. Realistic targets in free agency are usually not nearly this good.

I do not believe players #5 through #15 on most NBA rosters need to be paid big money. However, they are the type of players that make up the majority of the league, and they are the free agents most likely to be available in the Summer. These "average" players simply don't deserve huge contracts, because there are too many other players that are similar to them. Therefore when these kind of players become free agents, they are exactly the type of player to avoid throwing lots of money at.

What many NBA teams fail to understand is that good players can simply become adequate players pretty quickly. The drop-off in talent is not that much. There are many, many average-type players in the league. There are not nearly as many excellent players.

So I think teams should be reluctant to commit long-term, expensive contracts to free agents that have been occasionally superb, but usually are about average. If the player ends up only slightly regressing from his peak performance, he will be highly overpaid.

Having such a conservative philosophy about free agents (and players in general) can have several drawbacks - one being that inevitably you will end up losing some good players because you were unwilling to pay them their "market" value.

I'm willing to live with that. That's because grossly overpaying players who end up not being good is the worst way to destroy your payroll. I simply do not want to risk doing that. If I miscalculate and lose a couple of very good (but not great) players by incorrectly projecting their future production, so be it.

Let me give you an example. I mildly criticized the Phoenix Suns for giving Goran Dragic a 4 year, $30 million deal over the Summer. I said that while Dragic has had his moments of excellence in the NBA, he has never consistently proven himself as an average starting point guard. Up until last season he had never been one of the four best players on a NBA team. So while the Dragic deal on paper seemed completely reasonable for a point guard with some talent, I would not have done it.

This season Dragic is making me eat my words. He is playing like a borderline All-Star and has been Phoenix's best player. The deal now looks like an absolute bargain.

But even though I was wrong about Dragic, I feel completely comfortable in my logic for not initially endorsing the deal. If Dragic turns out to play as well as he has - good. But last Summer the chances just seemed too high that Dragic was not going to perform at that high of a level over the next four years. I don't believe in giving big contracts to those type of players, even if it turns out I'm being too cautious. (It's also worth noting that even though Dragic is having a very good year, the Suns are bad.)

I encourage taking calculated risks, but never being reckless. For instance, I understood why the Philadelphia 76ers traded for Andrew Bynum. It was a calculated risk, and it now looks like it has failed them, but the 76ers at least knew that they were getting a fantastic player if Bynum was healthy. But paying big money to a player you "hope" will be good (like Dragic) is too risky for me. You only want to commit big money to a player who you know has a strong likelihood of being damn good.

An expensive free agent needs to play at a high level, because otherwise it is so much smarter to sign another guy for the fraction of his price. Decent players are surprisingly easy to find. Matt Barnes, Andray Blatche, Marquis Daniels and Nate Robinson, for instance, all had trouble landing roster spots with any team this season. All four are currently making significant contributions to playoff teams - and playing for the league minimum. Solid contributors do not have to be paid $6 million annually, or anything close to it, to be helpful.

Ersan Ilyasova had a career year in '11-'12. The Milwaukee Bucks resigned him for 4 years, $32 million guaranteed. This year Ilyasova has slightly regressed and is having his minutes stolen away by Larry Sanders - who is playing far better than Ilyasova at a fraction of the price. For every success story like Dragic and the Suns, there are just as many stories like Ilyasova and the Bucks. This is the reality of the league. Most NBA players have a skill level that is somewhat comparable with one another, and good players can dip and become only average at the drop of a hat.

Naturally everybody wants as many good players on their team as possible, but what I am saying is that it's nothing worth obsessing over. Obsess over finding a way to get three stars, three of the best 50 players in the world. The rest pretty much takes care of itself.

I am not saying, incidentally, that you should be content having terrible players on your roster. Look at the Cleveland Cavaliers. They have Kyrie Irving and Anderson Varejao, and both are playing at an All-Star level. But they have nobody else. The rest of their starters are mediocre, and the bench is miserable. You do not want to be the Cavs. If they had a few more league average players on their team they would be going to the playoffs instead of the lottery.

Through the draft and intelligent veteran free agent signings, you should always be able to fill the less important part of your roster with acceptable pieces. You do not want more than one or two bad players on your team - there are too many better alternatives out there, either in the D-League or elsewhere.

So a NBA team should focus on trying to have a few great players and no terrible players, and a team should only pay its great players a huge salary. Outside of a team's starters no player should really need to make more than a few million dollars a year. These are the keys to success for a good team mindful of the salary cap. You need to draft well, and you need to be conservative with the type of players you give big deals to. It sounds boring and dull, and it works.

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Are the Knicks a viable contender?

12/14/2012

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Last week I mentioned that while the New York Knicks have started out great, it still would be a big surprise to see them make it out of the East and into the Finals. However, the Knicks have been very fun to watch, and look to be much better than anticipated. More and more pundits are jumping on the bandwagon and believe New York is a legitimate title contender. I still hesitate do this.

The reason I can't imagine the Knicks in the Finals is pretty simple: New York's three best players have all been playing at an unexpectedly superior level. I doubt this is sustainable.

I don't think most fans realize how much better Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd are playing compared to their normal solid production . Let us look at each one of these player's career season highs in PER and WS/48, and then compare it to this year so far, courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com:

Player                      Career High Season PER   2012-13 PER

Carmelo Anthony             22.2                                26.1

Tyson Chandler                 18.7                                 22.8

Jason Kidd                                 22.5                                 20.2

Player              Career High Season WS/48       2012-13 WS/48

Carmelo Anthony             .160                              .209

Tyson Chandler                .220                                .276

Jason Kidd                         .188                                .245

In of itself this chart pretty much shows you why the Knicks have been so good, and it also helps indicate why it is unlikely the Knicks can win it all in June. This season all three players are pretty much blowing their career high numbers away in those categories. That's crazy, and it's unlikely to continue.

The Knicks' stars have all been playing much better than they ever have before (well, except maybe for Kidd, who is simply playing better than he has in the last decade.) Not just better - much better. The incredible start for Anthony, Chandler and Kidd will almost inevitably tamper off. Those numbers are just way too high compared to the normal production they have supplied over their careers.

Analyzing the increased individual dominance of the three, Anthony's hot start is probably the least surprising. He's one of the few Knicks who is actually supposed to be in his prime. Nonetheless, whether he can continue being this dominant is pretty questionable.

Chandler, meanwhile, has played at a borderline All-Star level before, but this year he has been significantly better than that. He is fifth in the league in Win Shares, and is playing the center position as well as anyone. It is hard to see him being able to sustain this pace, especially given how prone he is to injury.

Kidd, though, is obviously the biggest surprise of the three. While not the amazingly dynamic player he once was, you could argue he has never been as brutally efficient as he has been this season. It's been a pleasure to watch.

Kidd's perimeter play on both ends of the court has been otherworldly in its intelligence. He simply looks to be the smartest player on the court at all times, and has seemingly perfected how to get the absolute maximum out of his greatly diminished skill-set.

The fact of the matter, of course, is Kidd is 39 years old! What he is doing right now is pretty much unprecedented. His PER the last two years was 14.4 and 13.1. Nobody - nobody - could have seen this coming. But it seems unsustainable. The question is if he can be even marginally this good the rest of the season. If he can, the Knicks will be very successful.

So the Knicks are, in my mind, still unlikely to beat Miami. However, come the playoffs, if their three best players can play as well as they have so far, everything is fair game. That would be a sight to see.

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Nothing too surprising so far

12/6/2012

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When you understand the inherent element of risk and chance in the NBA, it's pretty hard to get too worked up about early regular season happenings - unless something really crazy happens. If you acknowledge how hard it is to precisely predict both a team's and a player's performance, then you won't worry too much about strange early season results. The most important thing, as always, is trying to get a handle on the big picture.

So far the 2012-13 season has had few major surprises. Of course, some teams have played much better than expected, and some far worse. The same thing can be said about many players. But I have seen pretty much nothing that has stunned me - well, outside of maybe Andre Drummond, and maybe Eric Bledsoe's blistering start.

The biggest team development, in my eyes, is the Memphis Grizzlies making a credible argument for being a title contender. Before the season I considered the Grizzlies a long shot to make the Finals. I still think it is unlikely they make it that far, but their chances seem better today than they did a few months ago.

The Grizzlies' ascent, in case you didn't notice, is not a big surprise. We all knew Memphis was good, just maybe not this good. As for teams like the Knicks and Nets, both who have started out well - I doubt they can compete with Miami. The saving grace for both New York teams is they play in the East, but a healthy Heat team seems vastly superior to either of those two squads.

It is also worth noting that while the Lakers have played poorly, it is far too early to make any serious judgments on them. Until Steve Nash returns, Los Angeles is just trying to stay afloat. This is not a big surprise.

So, yes, the regular season has been pleasantly boring so far. A big injury or trade could change all that, but right now we are just where we expected.

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NBA Focus

Is Bledsoe the best player from the 2010 NBA Draft?

Why it's important to be conservative with free agents

Are the Knicks a viable contender?

Nothing too surprising so far

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