15 game regular season sample determining the next 15 years of a player's career arc. This, this I like.

Yeah seriously this is joke, no one has any idea.

Win streak will probably end in Utah on dec 8, having played @Clippers the night before.

Yep using Playstyle, archetype of actual NBA players.... and projecting the future to answer a question about the future of 2 players

But if you want to play it serious, Nobody can choose between Murray and Booker because they are not on the market, question is bad, no answer can be given.... Wow fun debate

And you should send a letter to all the scouts in NBA "lol you, projecting an NBA career over 30 games of kindergarten, I like your job"

Article on variability in efficiency and volume for shot creators (iso/pnr) vs spot up shooters


http://fansided.com/2016/11/28/nylon...tion-variance/

What is Aaron Gordon supposed to be good at? Doesn't seem like he has much chance of being a good enough shooter or play maker to play at the 3, should try and get some value for him while they can. Pretty lol that the Magic cleared out all that space just to be a worse version of what they were.

I still have faith in Gordon and think he can be somewhat like Shawn Marion. Imo the magics main problem is that they are shaken at 1 and 5, plus they are nearing critical times as far as keeping Ibaka is concerned.

Aaron Gordon definitely the disappointment of the season thusfar in my eyes. I imagine him having the tools to play some PnR (athletic rolling to the hoop, can kinda shoot), and playing the corner 3 / baseline backdoor.

I think part of the problem is that Orlando has one of the worst PG rotations and Fournier is largely a get-his-own-offense kind of guy.

Hard to judge Gordon as he's in the worst possible spot for his skills. He usually shares the court with two other bigs and an awful PG who can't shoot. The Magic should try running some different lineups now that the season is lost- maybe like Fournier-Meeks-Mario-Gordon-Biz or something and see how he plays in more optimal circumstances.

76ers should have taken Gordon though

I struggle to see Aaron Gordon ever playing the 3. His ball handling just looks so unnatural, especially in pick and roll situations. Among players who have 20+ possession as the pick and roll ball handler, he and Iman Shumpert are dead last, scoring .33 ppp. He can probably run the PnR a bit as a 4, but 3s are imo always going to give him way too many problems.

Man Hennigan sure has messed up what could have been a promising team. I'm okay with Mario being a bust if that ends up being the case, but the Biz signing after Ibaka plus a bunch of their other moves just make no sense.

yeah, remember seeing those pnr #s for gordon. he needs to play pf exclusively. according to bref he has played 95% of his min at sf this season (60%) last year, so vogel is wildin

Amazing how much better they would be with Oladipo

Reggie Jackson practiced fully today, sounds like he might be back next week. I'm excited to see what the Pistons can do, they've held on pretty well despite Ish's shortcomings as a starter. His refusal to shoot has really hindered the offense.

When I imagine Gordon in the PnR, it's definitely as the screener, can't imagine why he would ever be the ball handler.

RWB being a credible 3pt shooter is so unfair. Would love to see OKC pick up a couple reliable wing players.

ya for sure. he's never going to be a passable wing or 3 in the true sense. the best version of him will always be a 4 running around setting screens on offense while being able to guard multiple positions well on defense.

If Gordon has no other option than to be a 4, one of vucevic/biyombo/Ibaka needs to be traded. The problem is they are commited to NV, and they're already all in on SI because of the VO trade. That being said, there have been numerous examples of players developing a 3 point shot- if you think that Gordon is a long term 3 (i.e. You think he can develop a shot), then leaving him at the 3 now might not be a horrible idea. He can learn the nuances of being a defensive 3. Despite his size, he has the physical attributes to do this

Gobert definitely > people like Towns, Drummond,

Only Cousins, AD, STAPS, Joel are/can become more important to a team, than he is

Gobert is a defensive anchor for certain, but he doesn't bring enough to the table offensively to be more valuable than towns, who has a diverse high ceiling offensive game and off the charts bbiq.

Between gobert and Drummond is interesting. They are very different players who both have holes in their game. It depends a lot on the makeup of the rest of the roster and running mate at power forward. If you have Kevin love, for example, at power forward then you probably would want an elite rim protector like gobert

KAT is 3.5 years younger than Gobert, lol @ his ceiling being lower than current Rudy.

Drummond isn't in the same stratosphere as Rudy.

And let's not act like Rudy's "elite" defense is just that because I feel it undersells him. He's a once in a generation rim protector that gobbles up rebounds, which has INSANE value. You can see it every game when he's in there, defenders get more deflections and offensive players show a reluctance to take it inside.

Rudy > all but AD in the list of bigs we've been talking about atm, but like MS said KAT/Embiid/Staps are much younger and can improve. I'd obviously take KaT, but there is a very real chance that he's just not going to be good at defense. He seems to rotate a decent percentage of the time, but the rate that the ball goes in on contests is pretty alarming. I think there is a very real skill that some defenders have, and it's the ability to pick up the ball/angles enough to challenge or deter shots without sacrificing rebounding position. Tim Duncan had, Mutombo had it, and Rudy certainly has it. I'm not sure that can be taught tbh.

WCS/KaT have been bad on defense despite being really good in college, I'm not sure we can assume they will both figure it out because bigs rarely do--they improve a little ftmp but unless your Hibbs for a couple years it's hard to go from bad to very good over the course of your career. If KaT doesn't improve greatly on that end his "ceiling" will be drastically lower because rim defense is extremely important in today's NBA.

The one weakness if you want to call it that is that some teams, Cleveland for example, can pretty much play Rudy off the floor. As bigs with range and other skills start to become the norm, I could see Rudy's value being marginalized.

Once in a generation is hyperobole- you can rattle off 6-8 centers who you'd rather have than gobert for a year pretty easily. Even a guy like bogut is not far off from Rudy in overall value.

Guys like

Cousins
Embiid
Kristaps
Towns
M Gasol
DeAndre Jordan
Whiteside
Jokic
Howard
Adams
Drummond
Gobert

If you're a once in a generation type of defense stopper, you're not middle of the pack at best on a list like this

he's middle of this list because he's criminally underrated, the only certain thing in that list is Cousins > Gobert, future healthy Embiid, future Staps > Gobert

He's not just a big that stand under the rim and swat shots, he's excellent at help defense, he's by far the best big on pick&roll D, he's the leader of a perennial top 3 D itl

He's not negative on offense, which is the case for Deandre/Bogut

Any kind of advanced stats this year puts him, top 3 on D, top20 overall.

17th VORP
17th BPM
20th RPM
10th winshares
13th ws/48
11th Ortg
3rd Drtg
2nd DWS
1st FG%
2nd points off screen

That's right stats love him, only other big sneaking in those rankings are AD and DMC

Only sick defensive players in those top 20 advanced stats lists are Kawhi and Draymond