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Tag Archive - exercises in futility

Exercises In Futility:An Addendum (I’m Sorry, Stephen Graham)

September 10, 2011 in by with 3 Comments

Photo by robleto on Flickr

 

I feel I owe Stephen Graham an apology. A few days ago, Danny Chau and I deemed him the worst rotation player in the NBA. Included in the post is a video I edited of all of his most embarrassing missed shots from last season. In the video, he is failing over and over again. Uncontested jumpers, easy layups, clank, clank, clank. He appears to be trying hard and even making some decent moves off the dribble, but in these clips he just can’t put the ball in the basket. Or, in lots of cases, anywhere near it. I made him look completely incompetent and, with “Yakety Sax” in the background, it’s pretty funny. But it’s a bit mean.

Danny and I are well within our rights to have fun at Graham’s expense, yet I still feel somewhat guilty. After all, Graham isn’t incompetent. I watched every single miss of his from last year and ended up seeing him make some nice plays, too. While a tremendous basketball player, Stephen is just not a good NBA basketball player. He and his brother Joey are incredible athletes and hard workers, but have never been able to produce consistently at this level. They’re licensed pilots with degrees in aviation management, but make baffling decisions on offense and get lost on D. Some might suggest that their high IQ’s and low basketball IQ’s are actually related – when Joey was in Toronto, the word was that he was always thinking. While you need to be mindful of what your coach wants you to do when he puts you in the game, you can’t be actively thinking about this — to be at your best in the NBA, you need to shut everything out and trust your instincts. This seems like a major problem for the Grahams.

I have a feeling this is a problem for other players on our 50-worst list, too. And if it’s not a “too much thinking” thing, maybe it’s a confidence thing. Maybe it’s playing out of position. To make it to the NBA, you need to have lots of basketball talent. If you’re not a star, much of your success is determined by context. Whenever I read David Thorpe saying that the NBA is a coach’s league, I think of role players who look useless one year and valuable the next. Being on this list doesn’t make you a bum — I’d take a healthy Louis Amundson (#30) on my team in a second. I’d love for my young guys to spend a season with Raja Bell (#12). If I could inject Darko Milicic (#38) with focus and Andris Biedrins (#48) with confidence, I’d start either lefty at center. And man, I’m looking forward to seeing Jonny Flynn (#39) out of Minnesota.

I tend to get annoyed with fans who say certain players “suck.” The worst NBA players have put more of themselves into basketball than a lot of these people will ever put into anything. I get really annoyed when people call players lazy and say they don’t care, unless there’s real evidence of this. I’ll say Stephen Graham has been ineffective in the pros and has terrible hands, but that’s where it ends. It’s actually pretty f’ing awesome that he’s made himself a career after going undrafted, undeterred by the “inferior brother” label and stints in the CBA and D-League. With no NBA games or transactions to analyze, I may have ridiculed you a little, Stephen, but it was all in good fun. I’m sorry, man. You’re alright.

Exercises In Futility:The 50 Worst NBA Rotation Players, 10-1

September 7, 2011 in by with 5 Comments

Photo from xcode via Flickr

A Danny Chau and James Herbert collaboration

It’s been a summer of lists — or at least that’s how it has seemed. Over the past few weeks the NBA blogosphere has been inundated with them. Some see them as a pointless exercise in futility (you see what I did there), but no matter where you stand on the idea of ranking players, it makes for conversation. And this has been an offseason starved of honest-to-goodness basketball-related talking points.

Inspired by Top 100 lists created by Zach Lowe over at Sports Illustrated’s The Point Forward and the trio running CBSSports’ Eye-On-Basketball, we decided to run in the opposite direction. What if we ranked the worst players?So we set some guidelines and shortened the list down to 50. For one, all players had to have averaged 15 minutes of playing time last season. An arbitrary number, yes, but it kept things consistent.

And it’ll soon be evident (at least it was for us) that when ranking the worst, there really isn’t much of a formula. Arguments can be made for most of these players as the worst. We did our best to take context and potential into consideration, but this list is completely open-ended — that same open-endedness fuels the chaos, riles up emotion, and makes things fun.

Here are 50-41, 40-31, and 30-21, 20-11. We’re here. The final frontier. It’s been a long, painful journey. Let’s finish this one off right.

10. Andres Nocioni
F, Philadelphia 76ers

If this seems a bit high for Andres Nocioni, it shouldn’t. This isn’t 2006. We aren’t living in a world where he’s a hardnosed defender and efficient, lights-out shooter from anywhere on the court. This isn’t the Nocioni that’s going to give the hard foul or hound you on defense. He’ll give you five seconds of honest effort, but at any emerging signs of defeat, it’s as though some sort of trigger goes off. His body sags off the opponent, and it’s over. Dunk. Open jumper. You’ve won. And it only took a few seconds of work.

Nocioni’s offense has aged even more rapidly. Outside of his two years of brilliance in Chicago circa 2005-2007, Nocioni has been an inefficient scorer for much of his career. Nocioni still notches a barely-above-average three-point shooting percentage, but the area between the rim and the three-point line has become a ghost town, and will remain so until Nocioni decides to hang it up. He still (somehow) has the quickness to take his man off the dribble, but at some point in the isolation process, the body needs to stop, gather, and rise up. The problem is, this is where much of his quickness has abandoned him. He’s not a fast leaper, nor does he seem very willing to throw his body at his opponents. His running hooks, floaters, and layups are largely useless – almost as much as the range between 10-23 feet.

So what does that leave us with? A corroded player with a false reputation and a steadily declining utility quotient. If this ranking seems a bit high, watch him next year. We’re more than a half-decade away from 2006, and Nocioni makes that fact all too evident.  -DC

9. Earl Watson
PG, Utah Jazz

I saw this Henry Abbott comment about Earl Watson and it made me happy:

Earl Watson doesn’t play much offense, so he’s always described as a defensive specialist. But not playing offense is not the same as being great at defense. To my eyes, there are plenty of better defenders.

Via Tuesday Bullets | 8/2/11

This is where I admit that I made an NBA hate list last year and Earl Watson is on it. So are 5 other players mentioned in this post. There are only 15 names on the list, so apparently I can’t stand players who are really unproductive and get rotation minutes. That or these rankings are totally biased because I rated players extremely poorly when I found them annoying. I think Danny kept that in check, though.

I should clarify the hate list thing — I don’t actually hate Earl Watson. In fact, I used to like him! Back when the Sonics existed, I was a fan of his defense (which has since deteriorated a fair bit) and his propensity to throw alley-oop passes. He’s always been a turnover machine, but I usually like point guards who try to make flashy passes even when it’s a bad idea. It’s not like I’m coaching them.

This brings me to P.J. Carlesimo and the reason why Earl Watson is on my “hate list.” In 2008-2009, Carlesimo started Watson for the first month of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s existence. Being a huge Russell Westbrook fan, I resented the hell out of Watson. The team was terrible but fun, so I watched almost every game on League Pass, rooting for them and yelling at their coach through the TV. I unfairly picked apart everything Watson did, outraged at every minute he spent on the floor at Westbrook’s expense. His alley-oop passes were still cool, but I enjoyed them begrudgingly.

When Scotty Brooks arrived and placed Russ in the starting lineup, that should have been the end of my grudge. Watson is an extremely ineffective player, but he really shouldn’t be an unlikeable one. I still get annoyed whenever he checks into a game, though — old habits die hard. -JH

8. Samardo Samuels
PF, Cleveland Cavaliers

Byron Scott: “[Samardo Samuels] has more talent and is more athletic than Kevin Love.”

Everyone else on the planet: “No.” -JH

7. Eddie House
G, Miami Heat

After reading Chris Ballard’s must-read “The Art Of A Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan’s Tour Of The NBA” for the first time, I gained a tremendous respect for the pure shooter. The kind of psychological preparation that Steve Kerr went through to make sure he was dependable at any point in the game was intriguing, and it really shows the work and dedication of a man who was put on this earth to shoot and exclusively shoot for a decade of his life.

Eddie House isn’t Steve Kerr. I don’t care what the percentages tell you. I don’t care what his role has been for the last six seasons. House came into the league as a volume scorer. But I’ve seen stray cats dribble basketballs better than he does. So he resorted to shooting threes when he’s open. And good for him. He makes them often.

But it’s not the same as Kerr or other pure shooters. He has that scorer’s unrelenting braggadocio which is even more nauseating when you realize that he isn’t a pure shooter. He’s just a cocksure guy that was somehow too proud to develop anything resembling point guard, or even shooting guard skills. The absence of skills beyond shooting doesn’t make you a pure shooter. It makes you lazy, and makes your hubris grating and borderline offensive to the sanctity of the game.

That’s Eddie House. He shoots the ball. The end. -DC

6. Mike Bibby
PG, Miami Heat

You can’t redeem Mike Bibby.

In hopes of humanizing the blogosphere’s most reviled point guard, I spoke with Norma Wick, who covered the Grizzlies when Bibby began his NBA career. She said he was shy, but a bit of a prankster. He and Michael Dickerson were like Cuttino Mobley and Steve Francis — after being teammates in college, they always had adjacent rooms on the road in the pros. This is endearing, but it probably doesn’t change your opinion of him. You probably liked Bibby when he was a Grizzly, anyway. You might have loved him for the first five or six years of his Kings tenure. I did. But now? No.

Now, Mike Bibby’s game is as appealing as Richard Jefferson’s tattoo. As soon as you put him in the game you’re putting your defense at risk. In theory, he’d redeem himself for his defensive deficiencies by helping your offense. If his shot is on, then this… might be true? I mean, he did hit 45.5% of his threes for Miami in the regular season. He never created a good shot for himself or drove past a defender, but he had value as a floor-spacer, I guess. Ugh.

You can’t redeem him after watching him brick his way to the worst playoff run in NBA history. The man who was on the floor strictly to shoot couldn’t manage better than 28.1% from the field, playing with three of the best offensive players on the planet. He made me scream for more Mario Chalmers. He made me miss Carlos Arroyo (#25 here). He did these things. He is the worst. -JH

5. Jason Maxiell
PF, Detroit Pistons

Go to YouTube and type in his name. You’ll love him.

K, now go to Basketball-Reference. Same thing. Yeah, see that 2010-2011 season? Do you still love Jason Maxiell? He’s the worst.

You can and should still love Maxiell’s dunks and blocks, but let’s be realistic about his prospects as a rotation player. Aside from highlights plays, screen-setting, and baby-eating, you’re not getting anything from him. He could never shoot, pass, or dribble. He’s regressed in a big way on the boards. Last year was the third straight season that his production has dropped and this time he found himself out of the rotation for long stretches. It’s sad when the undersized overachiever stops overachieving. -JH

4. Yi Jianlian
PF, Washington Wizards

Four years ago, Fran Frascilla introduced Yi Jianlian as the anti-Yao Ming. He was new school. He was hip-hop. He was 50 Cent (an outdated reference then, let alone now). Indeed, after four years Yi could very well be seen as the opposite of Yao. While Yao carried his enormity with grace and nobility, there isn’t a basketball player alive more uncomfortable in his own skin than Yi.

You’ll never get the sense that Yi dislikes basketball. It’s clear that he very much enjoys it. But in a sport where height is king, Yi treats his towering frame as a burden. He’s that friend you have – the hopeless romantic that empathizes with every romantic comedy, and knows every line to 500 Days Of Summer– that internalizes the drama of cinema and tries to reenact his own life accordingly. Yi never wanted to be seven feet tall. He wanted to be the superstar wings that were universally recognized. He wanted to be Chinese Jordan. He wanted to be Kobe.

And it shows. It shows in his absolutely abysmal turnaround fadeaway which he insists on hoisting possession after possession. Pound for pound, he is easily the weakest player in the league. He uses none of his fluid, run-jump athleticism consistently, and for everyone who recognizes Yi’s talent, it’s maddening. He is a career 40.5 percent shooter. Yi honestly couldn’t be more of a letdown if he tried. He’s the worst.

Yi, I mean this sincerely: Go back to China. Go back home where you can dunk on anyone and everything. Go back to the style of play that’ll make you happy in a place where it is actually feasible. Go back to where you’re adored. You’re miserable here, and it’s making us miserable too. -DC

3. Targuy Ngombo
G/F, Minnesota Timberwolves

This isn’t about Targuy. We love Targuy from what little we know of him, but he’ll never step foot in the NBA.

This is actually about Rasual Butler. Unfortunately, Butler decided to hop on over to Gran Canaria, a team in the Spanish ACB league, after we finalized our top-50 list. I don’t quite understand why they want him, though. He’s the worst.

He’s the worst because he shot 32.3% from the field, and 33.8% from behind the arc. His only purpose on the floor is to shoot. He couldn’t do it. According to Synergy Sports Technology, he was 2-for-19 (10.5%) for the season in ISO possessions. That means on 19 separate occasions, Butler thought it was a fantastic idea to take more than two dribbles, try and inevitably fail to create space, and throw up a wild shot with literally no chance of going in.

Why does he do it? Because he’s made tough shots in the past. And by past, I mean four years ago. His mind still thinks he’s capable, and for a shooter, that’s all you need. There’s no mental filter that says, “Rasual, this is a really stupid idea. Don’t do this, or you’ll get benched.” So basically, he’s Travis Outlaw without the potential, athleticism, or base talent. Wow. Did we all just gag in unison?   -DC

2. Chris Duhon
PG, Orlando Magic

Oh, Chris Duhon. What are you good at?

Nothing. You’re the worst. -DC

1. Stephen Graham
F, New Jersey Nets

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXSsWOc8JK8 w=640 h=390]

This is it. The worst rotation player in the league is Stephen Graham. Watch the video above, painstakingly crafted with love and care (hate and disdain) by none other than James. It’s excruciating.

I think about fruit flies a lot. I think about their capacity for memory. I think about how they fly, and how they are probably frightened as hell by our slappy hands. But seconds later, they’re flying in the same vicinity with the same ignorance and audaciousness before. Do you ever wonder about the fruit fly in mid-flight as their memory resets? Do you think they scream out, “OH HEY!” every three seconds, as if they’re seeing the world for the first time for the millionth time?

This is what I think about when I don’t want to think about how awful Stephen Graham is.

Sometimes I wonder if Stephen Graham was bitten by a radioactive fruit fly. Because when he has the ball in his hands, for three seconds, he’ll look like a competent basketball player. Then he drives and rises up. And in that moment, his memory resets, and suddenly he doesn’t know what a ball is. The ball is either thrown violently at the hoop or slips out of his hands like he was trying to catch a catfish with his bare hands. There is no in between. He’s a terrific athlete, but there’s absolutely no excuse for going up for a layup and throwing the ball hard against the backboard.

He has the gifts of a prototypical NBA wing, but he also has hands like ostriches have opposable thumbs. He is the worst.And this time, we mean it.

Exercises In Futility:The 50 Worst NBA Rotation Players, 20-11

September 3, 2011 in by with 3 Comments

Photo by ElvertBarnes on Flickr

A Danny Chau and James Herbert collaboration

 

It’s been a summer of lists — or at least that’s how it has seemed. Over the past few weeks the NBA blogosphere has been inundated with them. Some see them as a pointless exercise in futility (you see what I did there), but no matter where you stand on the idea of ranking players, it makes for conversation. And this has been an offseason starved of honest-to-goodness basketball-related talking points.Inspired by Top 100 lists created by Zach Lowe over at Sports Illustrated’s The Point Forward and the trio running CBSSports’ Eye-On-Basketball, we decided to run in the opposite direction. What if we ranked the worst players?So we set some guidelines and shortened the list down to 50. For one, all players had to have averaged 15 minutes of playing time last season. An arbitrary number, yes, but it kept things consistent.

And it’ll soon be evident (at least it was for us) that when ranking the worst, there really isn’t much of a formula. Arguments can be made for most of these players as the worst. We did our best to take context and potential into consideration, but this list is completely open-ended — that same open-endedness fuels the chaos, riles up emotion, and makes things fun.

Here are 50-41, 40-31, and 30-21. Let’s continue with 20-11.

 

20. Dante Cunningham
F, Charlotte Bobcats (FA)

Some apologies are probably in order.

Dante Cunningham isn’t the 20th worst rotation player in the NBA. In lists like these, oversights are hard to catch, and by the time it was caught, it was too late to do anything about it. I wasn’t the keenest observer of the Charlotte Bobcats, and some assumptions were made on Cunningham’s position that unfairly vaulted him up the list.

Cunningham was a serviceable player who did exactly what the Bobcats asked of him. He was an efficient offensive player considering a majority of his shots are spot-up jumpers from 20 feet and in.

Cunningham will be backing up Corey Maggette (and at times Gerald Henderson, if that rumored D.J. Augustin/Kemba Walker backcourt duo is actually happening – which it shouldn’t) whenever the season starts, Cunningham will have opportunities to contribute meaningfully on offense.

Unfortunately, Cunningham isn’t a good defender, and it could very well be due to his position on the Bobcats. Offensively, he is definitely more of a 3 than a 4, but it puts him in a precarious position on defense. He isn’t the most active defender on the perimeter, often drifting out of position, and late to put his hands up, which becomes especially problematic when he has to guard gifted three-point shooters. Dante had a bit more success in Portland guarding bigger players, but with there likely won’t be a place for Cunningham in the PF/C rotation.

However, his defensive issues don’t justify his position in these rankings. Considering Cunningham played at the power forward position exclusively for Portland, I thought it was a safe assumption that he would play on the Bobcats, which were ravaged by injuries in their frontcourt. But it wasn’t safe, and that changed everything. For that, I’m sorry. —DC

19. Ryan Gomes
F, Los Angeles Clippers

When Ryan Gomes signed with the Clippers, I figured it was a no-risk move. Gomes had proven himself to be a smart, dependable role player. Why couldn’t he start at the 3 for a team that had offensive firepower at every other position? If he just played to the same level he did in Minnesota and Boston, it’d be a great fit.

It turned out to be the worst season of his career. Gomes shot 41% from the field, was hesitant with the ball on his way to a 12.7 usage rate, and rebounded less frequently than ever before. Oops.

Did we learn anything about Ryan Gomes, though? I think he confirmed that he’s much more of a matchup problem as a stretch-4 than as a 3, which is backed up by the data on 82games for his time as a Timberwolf. Gomes’s season is an illustration of how much fit matters in the NBA. Even if you’re the kind of guy that can write guest posts for ESPN, being a role player means your productivity is influenced as much by your collection of teammates and your coach than your own individual skillset. We hope that Gomes won’t be as bad in his second season with the Clippers, but it’s hard to project too much of a jump without a significant increase in minutes at the 4-spot. He’s the only person on Earth who must wish he saw less of Blake Griffin. —JH

18. Jamario Moon
SF, Los Angeles Clippers (FA)

I’m sorry, I’m not going to rip on Jamario Moon. I’ve rooted for this guy since I saw him make his debut as a 27-year-old rookie with the Raptors. I love when basketball vagabonds end up making it and you probably already know that his journey included multiple stints in the D-League, USBL, CBA, and WBA, along with stops in Mexico and, famously, the Harlem Globetrotters. I live in Toronto and, when he was traded to Miami, a lot of people seemed happy to never see him bite at a pump-fake or take an ill-advised three-pointer again. Those tendencies annoyed me, too, but I knew I’d miss seeing him rebound, defend, and finish on the break in person.

That said, Moon was downright irrelevant last season. He started 20 games, but you didn’t notice. And if you’re a small forward, the post-LeBron Cavaliers and the post-uhh… Corey Maggette Clippers should give you ample opportunities to separate yourself. As a fan of his, I want to believe that he can still contribute in a limited role on a team like the Thunder, but there’s no telling what kind of home he’ll find in free agency. —JH

17. Luther Head
G, Sacramento Kings (FA)

I don’t find myself thinking about Luther Head very often. His best season was four years ago, and there are no signs of him making a breakthrough to get back at that level. What was that level? 10 points in 27 minutes of action (Bobby Jackson is not impressed). He had the potential to be the next great sparkplug. But he never reclaimed that offensive potency again, which wasn’t near where it could’ve been. And outside of that potency, there isn’t much else to Luther Head.

In his sophomore season, he averaged 5 three-pointers a game, and made a ridiculous 44% of them. Comparing Head to Eddie House is wrong, and should be a crime. Luther was an outstanding athlete with a great handle. He wasn’t above driving baseline and crushing an opponent with a dunk.

But that was long ago. He’s still an effective shooter from range, but injuries and a lack of consistency have taken away the more dynamic parts of his game. I’d say more, but the fact is, it’s not going to get any better. He hasn’t devolved completely, and he’s still a very capable option off the bench. But he’s essentially been forgotten, and this means something. —DC

16. Manny Harris/Christian Eyenga
SF, Cleveland Cavaliers

If Antawn Jamison was the bed of parsley to LeBron James’ suckling pig dropped on the floor in a Cleveland restaurant, Manny Harris and Christian Eyenga are the cockroaches lapping up the grease that, for some reason, still hasn’t been mopped up.

Give it a few seconds (or hours). It’ll make sense. Plus, I lumped them together because you’ll never see just one cockroach. They always seem to come in pairs.

This was a Cavalier team (and offense) built exclusively around LeBron James. They didn’t choose to be the successors, but they are. It just so happened that they were also very, very bad.

LeBron played a lot of isolation ball in Cleveland. Not to be outdone, Harris and Eyenga both had a fair bit of their own throughout the season. Now, LeBron wasn’t the most efficient in isolation plays, but whatever he shot in Cleveland surely trumps the 28.3% combined percentage of Harris and Eyenga’s ISO posessions.

If there is a noticeable split anywhere, it’s in three-point shooting and defense. Harris has proven to be an above-average shooter with his feet set, while Eyenga is still trying to incorporate that type of range into his game. On defense, Harris is a terrible defender. Eyenga, on the other hand, is a contender for the worst defender in the entire league. Eyenga allowed 1.12 points per possession, almost 50% of all shots taken against him, and if you’re a spot-up guy behind the line? Having Eyenga in your face was probably more preferable than being wide open with no one within eight feet of you.

Manny Harris and Christian Eyenga are young, but we aren’t looking at the most highly regarded prospects coming into the draft here. They may be decent players down the road, but that’s not within sight. Maybe it was a little mean to lump them up. But misery loves company, and this was a match made in heaven. Or hell. —DC

15. Sebastian Telfair
PG, Minnesota Timberwolves (FA)

This is hard for me. I’m not going to think about SLAM covers or documentaries or EBC games on NBA TV. I’m not going to think about Coney Island. I’ll focus on numbers and facts.

Seven straight seasons of sub-.500 TS%. Five straight with a PER under 11. He’s too small to defend well, way too small to rebound, and only shot 53.1% at the rim last season. 19 minutes a game for a 17-win team.

Impressively, Telfair shot a career-best .359 on three-pointers. Unfortunately, the makes were pretty much all wide open. Kevin Pelton would say Bassy has very little gravity — defenses don’t feel they have to guard him. His defenders consistently went under screens, cheated off him, and played him for the drive. Sometimes, he made them pay, but it wasn’t enough to help Minnesota’s spacing. If last season was the beginning of him becoming a true outside threat, then perhaps he can remain in some team’s rotation… but that team would have to be terrible. —JH

14. Shelden Williams
F/C, New York Knicks (FA)

There are players that stake their livelihood on the ability to rebound. It’s a gift, an art, and an essential for all NBA teams. Players like Reggie Evans don’t really need to do anything else, because their talent in that one field is weighty enough to blur their liabilities.

Shelden Williams is not one of those players. He can set a good pick, and he’s is a good rebounder. He is. He is very good. But he isn’t great. And that’s unfortunate, because there is literally nothing else he does that is remotely serviceable.

Shelden Williams has only hit over 50% of his shots once for an entire season. For someone so limited offensively, it’s expected that shots should only be taken when they are wide open and right at the basket. The problem is, Williams is awful right next to the basket. Even if he catches the ball right underneath the rim, his lift is so nonexistent, any kind of outstretched arm will stifle the attempt. It’s kind of pathetic.

So Williams over the years has developed a jumper of sorts from 13 feet in. But the word “develop” implies it’s gotten better over the years. It hasn’t. It’s still a really low-efficiency shot (it’s not in the grander scope of all basketball players, but again, we’re talking about Shelden Williams). On a pick and roll, more often than not, he’s pulling up for a baby jumper. Because somehow, that is a slightly less problematic for Williams than a layup a mere inches from the rim.

If you played Shelden Williams for 36 minutes, he’d get you double figure rebounds. But why the hell would you do that? —DC

13. Wayne Ellington
SG, Minnesota Timberwolves

I’ve already written about Jonny Flynn, Darko Milicic, and Sebastian Telfair for this project. Good God, what a team this was.

When Wayne Ellington came out of UNC, there was hope that he could succeed as a pure scorer. On that stacked team, he showcased an effective three-point stroke and mid-range game. In the pros, only the three-point stroke remains. He appears to have some skills with the ball in his hands, but hasn’t really done anything with them at this level. He can create mid-range shots, but rarely converts them. He almost never attacks the basket, and when he does he usually misses. He does not draw fouls. He should be better than this, but I’m not sure he ever will be.

If Ellington’s production remains where it’s been for his first two seasons, he’ll find himself out of the Wolves’ rotation soon. The team isn’t great, or even good, but it has enough pieces that he shouldn’t receive minutes by default anymore. Unlike Flynn, he won’t get a fresh start to try to recapture the skills that haven’t translated. I guess Ricky Rubio and Not Kurt Rambis will have to be enough.

Don’t worry, Wolves fans. Wayne is the last one. —JH

12. Raja Bell
SG, Utah Jazz

Raja Bell played 68 games last year. It was more than he’s played in the past two years. He probably played it hurt. He’ll most have an extended rest period before the next season begins, but what exactly are we expecting from a healthy Raja Bell?

Raja Bell shot a disappointing 35.5% from behind the arc last year. That number would be perfectly fine for most players, but it was Bell’s worst percentage since his rookie and sophomore year – he’s been a 40% three-point shooter for much of his late-20s and early 30s.

Bell is still a capable on-ball defender, but he noticeably lost a step or two in his last season with Phoenix, and it’s been three years and several injuries since then. That said, he is one of the smartest and most well-conditioned athletes in the league. If anyone could make a return to form, it’d be Bell. But if last year is any indication, we’re looking at a diminished player. And considering how bothered he looked last year, this version of Raja Bell might be here to stay. —DC

11. Ryan Hollins
C, Cleveland Cavaliers

I’m just going to say it: Ryan Hollins is a Bargnani-esque rebounder who’s too skinny to play post defense and has no offensive game outside of three feet. He averages 6.1 fouls per 36 minutes. This is why he’s #11 on this list.

The rebounding thing is really weird. He’s 7’0 and he can jump like this:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHMO1XBxc9Q ]

If you’re that kind of athlete, you should rebound more than Hollins does by accident. You should also probably not turn the ball over twice a game when you’ve never been asked to create any offense. But hey, his dunks are awesome! And you can’t teach height!

In fairness, Hollins did have his moments as a Cavalier. He started for the last three weeks of the season. He played a big part in the win over the Heat. He shot 7-7 from the field against the Bobcats. He even shot 8-8 from the free throw line in the final game of the season. But you know what they say about centers… —JH

Exercises In Futility:The 50 Worst NBA Rotation Players, 30-21

August 27, 2011 in by with 1 Comment

Photo by iLikeSpoons on Flickr

A Danny Chau and James Herbert collaboration

 

It’s been a summer of lists — or at least that’s how it has seemed. Over the past few weeks the NBA blogosphere has been inundated with them. Some see them as a pointless exercise in futility (you see what I did there), but no matter where you stand on the idea of ranking players, it makes for conversation. And this has been an offseason starved of honest-to-goodness basketball-related talking points.Inspired by Top 100 lists created by Zach Lowe over at Sports Illustrated’s The Point Forward and the trio running CBSSports’ Eye-On-Basketball, we decided to run in the opposite direction. What if we ranked the worst players?So we set some guidelines and shortened the list down to 50. For one, all players had to have averaged 15 minutes of playing time last season. An arbitrary number, yes, but it kept things consistent.

And it’ll soon be evident (at least it was for us) that when ranking the worst, there really isn’t much of a formula. Arguments can be made for most of these players as the worst. We did our best to take context and potential into consideration, but this list is completely open-ended — that same open-endedness fuels the chaos, riles up emotion, and makes things fun.

Here are 50-41 and 40-31. Let’s continue with 30-21.

 

30. Louis Amundson
PF, Golden State Warriors

Louis Amundson is a solid energy guy who can make your defense better. At his best, for a good team he’s worth a two-year, $4.6 million contract. Unfortunately, last year’s Warriors were not a good team and they never saw his best. Amundson appeared in only 46 games as a result of a broken finger, sprained ankle, and back spasms.

When he played, he was even worse than usual offensively. Never one to exhibit any semblance of touch around the basket, Amundson’s FG% dropped to .454. Unless he was dunking or shooting an uncontested layup, you pretty much knew he’d miss. And with his FT% slipping to .391 (seriously), he became a huge liability. If we attribute this drop-off to injuries alone, then there’s reason to be optimistic about next season. It’s hard to be too positive about an unskilled veteran, though.

Turning 29 in December, Lou could still be useful if he can get those percentages back up. With David Lee, Ekpe Udoh, Andris Biedrins, and now Jeremy Tyler in the Bay Area, he might need a chance to do so elsewhere. -JH

29. Travis Outlaw
F, New Jersey Nets

It annoys me that Travis Outlaw is on this list. While he’s not going to shed the “overpaid” label or become the star we wanted him to be, he should be a fine rotation piece. His game isn’t exactly well-rounded and he gets lost on defense, but there’s plenty of value in a 6’9 guy who can create a decent shot whenever he wants to. The guy we saw in Portland, when healthy, was far from one of the 50-worst rotation players in the league. His two-point jumpers off the dribble weren’t advisable for most players, but Outlaw hit them.

Last year, though… Ugh. His numbers. They were disgusting:

28.8 MPG, 9.2 PPG, 4.0 RPG, 1.0 APG, .375 FG%, .302 3P%.

The man’s PER was 8.8. I like Travis Outlaw, but do you want me to try to justify these figures? I can’t. No one can. Outlaw was just about the worst rotation player in the league in 2010-2011. If you’re a Nets fan, you can only pray that it was an aberration. A terrible, terrible aberration. -JH

28. Derek Fisher
PG, Los Angeles Lakers

Putting a label on what Derek Fisher does on the court isn’t very fun. He is a liability in most areas of the game, and his point production has steadily dropped over the last four years. This isn’t necessarily an indictment on his abilities as a player — after all, the Lakers boast one of the most talented and versatile rosters in the league — but shows a natural decline, which tends to happen when you’re 37 and have played all 82 regular season games (not even counting the postseason games) for the last six years.

So with every argument that places Fisher among the worst players in the league, there is a caveat. Add all the caveats up, and it’s pretty clear that he isn’t the worst player (though he isn’t that far off). Let’s take a few things into consideration: He’s one of the smartest players in the league. He’s a natural leader, and a shoo-in as a future coach. He’s beyond durable and he’s consistent. From that perspective, his slowness, ability to blow every single layup he takes whether guarded or not, inability to do ANYTHING against quicker guards doesn’t seem that awful, right?

All of these gripes have existed for years, and it’s only gotten worse. Last I checked, Fisher was supposed to be replaced about 15 years ago. And yet, Ol’ Reliable is still firmly planted in the Lakers’ starting lineup. But at this point in his career, he really, really shouldn’t be. And we all know this. -DC

27. Quentin Richardson
G/F, Orlando Magic

Outside of Dwight Howard, Quentin Richardson was arguably the best individual defender on the Orlando Magic. Injury and conditioning issues have chipped away at his athleticism, but he is still a tall and physical defender that isn’t afraid to take on challenges. Richardson has grown out of the flash that defined his earlier seasons, which has done wonders for his defense.

“Then why is he on this list?”, you ask.

Because he shot 34.1% from the field, and a blinding 28.8% from three. Q was never known for his efficiency (he’s a career sub-40% shooter), but last year was nuclear fallout bad.
 
This, of course, came after his season with Miami in which he boasted a career-high three-point percentage. Richardson still has what it takes to be one of the better role players in the league, but it all hinges on his shot, and whether its abandonment is permanent. Teams won’t be able to justify playing on a solid defender if there is zero utility elsewhere. -DC

26. Vladimir Radmanovic
F, Golden State Warriors (FA)

The above play surprised pretty much nobody who has seen Vladimir Radmanovic play basketball. He can be an excellent spot-up three-point shooter, but you just can’t trust him. The Warriors would go on to lose the game in overtime.

You could argue that we’re being harsh on Vlad Rad with this ranking. After shooting miserably for the Warriors in 2009-2010, he returned to a level of efficiency he hadn’t achieved since his Laker days. The problem is that efficiency is just about his only positive attribute. Radmanovic won’t help his team on defense or on the boards, despite being 6’10 and kind of mobile. If you absolutely need a floor-spacer, he can play, but he’ll hurt you in other areas and test your sanity a little. If you’re like me, when you hear “Radmanovic” you think of poor effort and decision-making before you think of sweet shooting. -JH

25. Carlos Arroyo
PG, Boston Celtics (FA)

I’d like Carlos Arroyo to write a book. He could teach us about basketball in Puerto Rico. He could tell us how a 39-year-old Hakeem Olajuwon got along with a 25-year-old Vince Carter. He could share stories about Stockton and Malone, LeBron and Wade, KG and Ray, and both Supermen. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to go from a star on the international stage in summertime to being a second- or third-string guy in the winter? I do.

…but I don’t want him playing many minutes on my team anymore. Unlike young, flashy Carlos, he won’t hurt you out there, but he’s not contributing much beyond spot-up shooting. If the Heat release you to make room for Mike f’ing Bibby, you belong on this list. -JH

24. Al Thornton
SF, Golden State Warriors (FA)

Al Thornton is a terrific athlete.

Okay, now onto the bad news. Al Thornton is not very good. He is your least favorite offensive dynamo without any of the redeeming qualities that player might possess. He is Al Harrington without the three-point range. He is Corey Maggette without the overbearing strength and nose for contact. He is Josh Howard, except he’s Josh Howard strapped to a malfunctioning jetpack. Unfortunately, he lost the device that controls the thrusters, so he flies and crashes intermittently, and he can’t do anything about it. -DC

23. Mo Evans
SF, Washington Wizards (FA)

-JH

22. Keyon Dooling
PG, Milwaukee Bucks

I like Keyon Dooling. I really do. But between last season and his prospects looking forward, there is little reason why he shouldn’t be on this list.

Dooling joined the Bucks as a stopgap at the reserve point guard position. He replaced Luke Ridnour, who had his most effective season ever backing up and playing alongside Brandon Jennings. Dooling embraced his role as a mentor at the get-go. But as a point guard, Dooling’s first year as a Buck was lukewarm at the very best. With the team’s lack of consistent shooting options, the Bucks needed someone like Ridnour, who was both an excellent distributor and a reliable spot-up shooter. With Jennings’ erratic season, the Bucks needed a stabilizer like Ridnour. Dooling was a willing player, but he just didn’t have the skills to compensate for what Jennings in his current state lacks.

With Shaun Livingston joining the team next season, Dooling will have his hands full trying to stay relevant on a revamped roster. He’s developed into a solid distributor, but his defense, which had always been a plus, began to slip. Next year will determine whether or not Dooling is in the midst of a major decline, or whether it was more of a systemic issue. Either way, Dooling is teetering on the edge of irrelevance. -DC

21. A.J. Price
PG, Indiana Pacers

There is very little that separates A.J. Price’s rookie season with last season statistically — unless you notice (which you should) that his shooting percentages in all areas took a nosedive. This could partially be explained by former Pacers coach Jim O’Brien’s awfully inconsistent rotations, or because Price just isn’t that great of a shooter.

His performance in the five-game playoff series against the Bulls was admirable, and does speak reasonably well for his future, but with the addition of George Hill, Price’s primary backup point guard role might be tinkered with a bit.

Ultimately, Price wasn’t very good last year, and his shooting numbers (which were on par with fellow stinker Quentin Richardson) serve as evidence. But there’s still time. Price has more than a decade to reach his ultimate destiny of being a poor man’s Derek Fisher. I make that comparison with the most positive of intentions, hopefully. -DC

Exercises In Futility:The 50 Worst NBA Rotation Players, 40-31

August 20, 2011 in by with 2 Comments

Photo by mshahdy on Flickr

A Danny Chau and James Herbert collaboration

It’s been a summer of lists — or at least that’s how it has seemed. Over the past few weeks the NBA blogosphere has been inundated with them. Some see them as a pointless exercise in futility (you see what I did there), but no matter where you stand on the idea of ranking players, it makes for conversation. And this has been an offseason starved of honest-to-goodness basketball-related talking points.

Inspired by Top 100 lists created by Zach Lowe over at Sports Illustrated’s The Point Forward and the trio running CBSSports’ Eye-On-Basketball, we decided to run in the opposite direction. What if we ranked the worst players?

So we set some guidelines and shortened the list down to 50. For one, all players had to have averaged 15 minutes of playing time last season. An arbitrary number, yes, but it kept things consistent.

And it’ll soon be evident (at least it was for us) that when ranking the worst, there really isn’t much of a formula. Arguments can be made for most of these players as the worst. We did our best to take context and potential into consideration, but this list is completely open-ended — that same open-endedness fuels the chaos, riles up emotion, and makes things fun.

Here’s 50-41. Let’s continue with 40-31.

40. Brandon Rush
G/F, Indiana Pacers

There is no slick or clever intro for Brandon Rush. There is no humorous anecdote or delayed punchline. Take him as he is, or remain confounded that he isn’t more. In a few years, at his current rate of production – that, to his credit, hasn’t wavered, though it hasn’t exactly improved — he will be the best Rush in the Rush family. …I’m not exactly sure what that means anymore.First, the things that Brandon Rush does well. He is an excellent three-point shooter and isn’t shy about it. Each year, his percentages from behind the arc have improved, and he shoots 40% for his career. He is a good on-ball defender. Rush could probably ramp up the intensity from time to time to vault him into a more distinguished group, but he’s a fine defender as it stands.

But he’s not getting younger. He entered the league at 23, and now at the age of 26 with precious little to show in terms of improvement, he’ll traverse this plateau until his athleticism begins to diminish. The skills he displays currently would be invaluable to an elite team in need of a quality defender, and floor spacer. But his capabilities, especially on offense, are more multifaceted than his output. Much of it is stymied by his nonexistent ball handling skills, and everything else is neutralized by a lack of consistent effort.

The Pacers are moving on. Paul George is wish fulfillment and George Hill can do everything Rush can, but better. Brandon still has a chance somewhere, but he’ll have to act fast. – DC

39. Jonny Flynn
PG, Houston Rockets

The maddening part of this exercise is that it’s inherently difficult to accurately assess the type of guy that plays 15 minutes a game. It’s easy to establish who’s an A+ player and who’s an F player, but differentiating between a D and a C-? That’s why scouts exist. Turning a C- guy into a B+ guy? That’s why coaches exist.

Jonny Flynn has proven in his two years as a pro that he is far from an A+ player. At times, he’s looked like an F player. As easy as it is to rip on David Kahn, though, I’m not ready to say that he picked a complete dud with the 6th pick in the 2009 draft.

The Flynn we saw at Syracuse had incredible quickness, a natural scoring ability, and that endearing little-guy confidence. The one in Minnesota, in the triangle, had… uh… quickness. When he was healthy. That’s about it.

Flynn could be higher on this list — I’m not going to print last season’s horrendous offensive numbers here and he was one of the worst defenders in the league — but as a Timberwolf he wasn’t at full health and was in the worst system possible. He is now on a team that has a track record of developing its guards and, while it’s going to be difficult to carve out playing time behind Kyle Lowry and Goran Dragic, there are raw materials here that are begging to be properly utilized. – JH

38. Darko Milicic
C, Minnesota Timberwolves

I just spent the last half hour watching Darko Milicic clips on Synergy. I think I hate him now.

I don’t understand how Timberwolves fans can watch him shoot another lefty hook without resorting to violence. This is a man who shot 37.6% on post-up opportunities last year when he actually managed to catch and hold onto the ball. I’ve seen him heave a lefty hook from 15 feet away with his defender in perfect position and plenty of time on the shot clock. I’ve seen him turn down an open layup on the right side to go middle and miss a lefty hook over multiple defenders. It doesn’t matter what is happening around him, Darko’s mind is made up: lefty hook.

I want to know what’s going through Wesley Johnson’s head when he reposts Darko. He KNOWS the guy is going to turn left and haphazardly flip the ball toward the basket over three people. I want to know how David Kahn can honestly think we’re supposed to buy the “he picked up the triangle in two days” crap when his basketball IQ on offense has been low for his entire career. I want to know how Kahn can call him a great passer when he is such a black hole and how he can call him a “defensive presence” when he shows such poor understanding of team defensive principles. I want to get Kurt Rambis drunk and have him tell me what he really thinks of Darko.

Darko makes me angry because he’s not just another no-talent 7-footer. The few occasions when he busts out a counter-move in the post, it usually works. At his size, he should be a plus defender and he has the ability to move his feet on that end when he wants to. He just doesn’t do it. He doesn’t help you win. After eight seasons of this, I can’t even imagine Rubio redeeming him. – JH

37. Antawn Jamison
PF, Cleveland Cavaliers

I feel like we’re letting the fine folks over at Cavs: The Blog down with this ranking. If you’ve perused the blog in any capacity, you wouldn’t be able to escape the constant eye-gouging that invariably occurs when Antawn Jamison’s name arises.

The most valuable thing about Jamison? His name (his contract). It’s still worth something. He’ll still be known as a scorer, and with his name alone, he might find his way onto a team in need of his lackluster service. This is how he made it onto the Cavs. The Cavs were in need of offensive support, and they went out and got it.

Jamison was suddenly in the crux of a golden opportunity. How was Jamison to know he’d be the marquee name of the franchise the season after? He was meant to be the bed of parsley to LeBron James’ suckling pig. …Actually, that’s enough defending Jamison. If I walked into a restaurant, and the chefs dropped the suckling pig on the floor and shamelessly served a bed of parsley as the main course, I’d be pissed off too.

I believe successful teams are built around defense and efficiency, especially when they don’t have a superstar. Jamison was not efficient, and his defense was an insult to all that man has achieved since the discovery of fire.

via Giving out grades: Antawn Jamison | Cavs: The Blog

If Jamison does indeed stay with the team, my condolences to the fans. We can only read of your pain, Cleveland. We can’t feel it. – DC

36. DeShawn Stevenson
SG, Dallas Mavericks (FA)

“There’s like 37 people that are acting like me on Facebook,” Stevenson said. “I mean, if you look at me and look at all these tattoos, do you think I’d be sitting on the Internet and typing? C’mon, man. Sometimes you’ve got to look at a person. I would not be in my house on a computer typing nothing about anybody.”
Via DeShawn Stevenson: ‘Let LeBron just chill’, 6/11/11

Sometimes you’ve got to NOT look at a person. This is challenging when the person in question has a president on his neck.

Unlike, say, J.R. Smith, Stevenson’s game has little in common with his personality and appearance. The dude says and does some crazy things, but on the court he’s basically a trash-talking Keith Bogans (more on him below). He’s a tough wing defender, he’ll make threes when open, and he won’t demand the ball. This was enough to earn him a championship ring, but I’m skeptical about it being enough to keep him in that rotation.

Usually a spot on a list of subpar rotation players would indicate that something has gone horribly wrong, but this is rather encouraging news for Stevenson. He was in a rotation last season, despite shooting 28% on threes the previous year and 31% the year before that whilst battling back injuries. He played well enough that he’ll get a new contract once this lockout is over. Good for him. – JH

35. James Jones
SF, Miami Heat

The following is a conversation I had with myself.

Danny #1: Hey Danny! What are your thoughts on James Jones?
Danny #2: Well, to get the obvious stuff out of the way, he’s a great three-point shooter.

D1: Really great. Did you know he is tied for 28th all-time three-point shooting percentage?
D2: Yeah, I did know that because we’re the same person. He’s tied with other marksmen like Dell Curry, Allan Houston, and (surprisingly enough) Brandon Rush, whom you discussed five spots above.

D1: Yeah, he’s been a consistent shooter all of his life. What else can he do?

D2: *is quiet*
D1: Danny?
D2: He has long arms.
D1: …That’s a physical characteristic. What else can he do though?
D2: Did you know he’s tied with Allan Hou—
D1: Alright, nevermind. – DC

34. Keith Bogans
SG, Chicago Bulls

It’s not your fault, Keith. You didn’t force Tom Thibodeau to start you all 98 of those games last season. You didn’t tell Jack Ramsay to vote for you as the Defensive Player of the Year. You didn’t ask to be a punchline. You just really, really should’ve settled in as somebody’s 3rd shooting guard by now.

Bogans proves that If you almost never dribble, shoot, draw fouls, rebound, or create shots for teammates, you can still have a place in the NBA. Above-average perimeter defense has value in this league, as does toughness. It’s just mind-boggling that it has added up to an average of 22 minutes a game over eight years. He’s had a remarkable run as a rotation guy, but you have to think it’ll end soon. – JH

33. Steve Blake
PG, Los Angeles Lakers

Steve Blake must be glad that his first year with the Lakers is over. He struggled to adjust to the triangle, got chicken pox, and was swept out of the playoffs. This could not have been what he had in mind when he signed his four-year deal.

Looking at the numbers from last season, Blake’s three-point shooting was the lowest it’s been in four years and he turned the ball over at a rate higher than any of Jordan Farmar’s final three seasons as a Laker. His greatest value to the team was that he was superior to Derek Fisher on defense and, unlike the departed Farmar, he knew to get out of the stars’ way.

I’m sure Steve was the same guy he’d always been, but he did not assert himself and did not produce at the level that was expected of him. Perhaps Mike Brown’s offense will give him more responsibility and we’ll see a return to form next season. If not, then get ready to watch him spend 20 minutes a game mostly standing around. – JH

32. Jordan Hill
F/C, Houston Rockets
I wonder if Jordan Hill is an awkward guy in person. He runs up and down the court like he’s stumbling, but when it’s time to call for the ball in the post, he’s moving around like a seasoned pro. …Then once gets the ball, it’s back to stumbling.

His offensive skills may not be fully developed, but that shouldn’t have been expected in the first place. What he does have is a halfway decent hook shot, and he has range out to about 15 feet. It’s a work in progress, and Houston might have the patience to see it through.

But he isn’t on this list for his passable offensive repertoire. He’s on here because his defense is atrocious. Any player with any semblance of a post move will get by Hill and score, and if you’re lucky, he’ll be clueless enough to foul you while you’re at it.

If this seems too high for such a young player, it might be. But the Rockets are now packed with young talent at the frontcourt positions, and I’m not sure Hill is leading the pack by any stretch. His offensive potential says he’s a rotation player for years to come. His defense (so far) laughs at that. It laughs so hard. – DC

31. Willie Green
G, New Orleans Hornets

– DC

Exercises In Futility:The 50 Worst NBA Rotation Players, 50-41

August 17, 2011 in by with 4 Comments

Photo by Charley Lhasa on Flickr

James Herbert and I are working together again. And again, we’re digging into some bad players. Check out our first collaboration on HP here.

It’s been a summer of lists — or at least that’s how it has seemed. Over the past few weeks the NBA blogosphere has been inundated with them. Some see them as a pointless exercise in futility (you see what I did there), but no matter where you stand on the idea of ranking players, it makes for conversation. And this has been an offseason starved of honest-to-goodness basketball-related talking points.

Inspired by Top 100 lists created by Zach Lowe over at Sports Illustrated’s The Point Forward and the trio running CBSSports’ Eye-On-Basketball, we decided to run in the opposite direction. What if we ranked the worst players? We started out with 100 names, and yes, there are some terrible players in the NBA, but the list was extremely irrelevant.

So we set some guidelines and shortened the list down to 50. For one, all players had to have averaged 15 minutes of playing time last season. An arbitrary number, yes, but it kept things consistent.

This list was assembled using our varying degrees of knowledge of basic and advanced statistics, Synergy, and a steady flow of argumentation. We don’t claim this ranking to be definitive by any stretch, and there will be plenty of disagreements.

We’re not inherently mean people, and we may have developed a bit of Stockholm Syndrome while writing about some of these players. Somewhere in the process, we found ourselves defending players we never knew we cared about. Hopefully this will inspire a similar response for you.

And it’ll soon be evident (at least it was for us), that when ranking the worst, there really isn’t much of a formula. Arguments can be made for most of these players as the worst. We did our best to take context and potential into consideration, but this list is completely open-ended — that same open-endedness fuels the chaos, riles up emotion, and makes things fun.

EDIT: If it wasn’t clear, we’re going backwards, leading up to the No. 1 worst rotation player. 

So let’s get started.

50. James Johnson
F, Toronto Raptors

I’m feeling a little guilty here. I’m an unabashed James Johnson fan. Have been since his Wake Forest days.

Sometime during his rookie season in Chicago, I began calling Johnson “LeBron James in a coma.” I’m not quite sure if I meant a food coma or an actual coma, but it’s easy to imagine Johnson playing a role similar to LeBron if LeBron’s entire body was numb from the head down. He’s capable of initiating a fast break by himself with solid rebounding ability, adept ball handling for his size, and good vision. And it all looks great when he’s not making the wrong decision. (He greatly overstates his abilities in this area.)

He’s a hardworking defender capable of chasing smaller guys around screens with his length, size, and leaping ability. But it’s against bigger power forwards and centers where he’s awful. Getting better/more familiar with his opponent’s hesitations, fakes, and spins will help, though it’s clear that playing the power positions isn’t quite in his element.

Johnson only played 25 games for the Raptors. It’s too small of a sample size to cash in on his promising talent right now. He does have glaring weaknesses in his game that need to be addressed (his jump shot, improving his post-up defense) but chances are, this ranking will look foolish in the near future. – DC

49. Brendan Haywood
C, Dallas Mavericks 

With about a quarter of the season in the books, Brendan Haywood doesn’t seem to care. He sometimes defends like he gives a damn, but his total effort? Particularly on the boards? It’s outright distressing, if not depressing.

via Money Conquers All | The Two Man Game, 12/09/10

I’d add “infuriating” to those two adjectives. God, watching Brendan Haywood for most of last season made me crazy. When people spout off about NBA players only caring about money and taking it easy after getting paid, it bugs me. The few players who give them ammunition bug me even more.

Up until mid-February, Haywood was clearly a different player than the one the Mavs paid for. This player was rarely engaged defensively and couldn’t even hit 40% of his free throws. Maybe  he was secretly nursing an injury. Maybe he had some personal issues distracting him. Maybe he just didn’t adjust well to being a backup. Maybe it wasn’t just laziness… but it sure looked like laziness.

Still, Haywood performed admirably for the last couple of months of the regular season and his defense was a key part of their championship run before he was sidelined by a hip injury, making way for an unforgettable 11 minutes of Ian Mahinmi in Game 6 of the Finals. Based on the way he turned his awful season around, I think there’s a good chance he’s off this list a year from now. – JH

48. Andris Biedrins
C, Golden State Warriors
At age 22, Andris Biedrins averaged 11.9 points and 11.2 rebounds a game. He was too skinny to defend post-up players, but he did everything else big men had to do and had an excellent motor. If you watched him for a few possessions, battling against stronger players and finishing with ease, it was easy to overlook his grotesque free throw stroke.

Now, at 25, he is coming off a season where he registered a PER of 12.1 in 59 games. A season where his team performed significantly worse at both ends with him on the court. We hoped he would bounce back after his disappointing 33-game campaign the year before, but he didn’t. We hoped the departure of Don Nelson would end his confidence issues, but it didn’t.

If we’re going by recent performance, Biedrins should be way, way higher on this list. He’s not scaring anyone on defense and, in addition to not having any offensive game away from the rim, he’s afraid of being sent to the foul line. He remains near the bottom of these rankings because it’s possible that his fall from grace has been more about injuries than anything else. According to Golden State GM Larry Riley, he’s excited about the game and healthy again. Perhaps this means next season he can play with the energy he used to. If Tyson Chandler can return to form at 28, Biedrins can at 25, right? …Right? — JH

47. Shawne Williams
F, New York Knicks
Shawne Williams was awesome in the first half of 2010-11. Really awesome. Shooting 47.5% for more than three months is nothing short of divine. Then Carmelo came, and a band of comrades went. And the spirit of Seven Seconds Or Less was lost. Williams wasn’t the same after. (And yet he still managed to finish the season shooting a tick above 40% from beyond the arc.)

Williams was offered a chance in New York, and tried his hardest not to disappoint. He was unwisely thrown into a gauntlet of defending players much bigger than himself, though surely more out of necessity than choice. As such, Williams was a horrid defender, though we give him credit for trying.

With SSOL MIA (LOL, WTF), Williams’ shooting numbers will fall even further down to earth next year. And that’s bad. Because outside of spot up situations and buckets in transition, Williams is a non-factor on offense.

The steep decline in production and effectiveness in the second half of the season is troubling. If it is indeed a result of the systemic changes in the Knicks offense due to Carmelo/Chauncey Billups’ arrival, then we could be looking at a miserable player come next season. – DC

46. Randy Foye
G, Los Angeles Clippers
Randy Foye is better than Willie Green for two reasons:

  1. He isn’t Willie Green.
  2. He shows a faint inkling of knowledge in team management.

Randy Foye is basically Willie Green, and this makes me horribly depressed because:

  1. They are both stout high-volume, low-efficiency gunners.
  2. And I hate players like that.
  3. …And it’s not like Foye has that much brighter of a future than Green. He’s only two years younger.
  4. Think about that for a second. Two years separate these guys. It feels like Willie Green has been torturing us for ages.

Foye has really great scoring instincts. But the execution is always half-hearted and flat. Still, he can get buckets when given (ample) opportunities. And sadly, that fills a need for a lot of teams. – DC

45. Gilbert Arenas
G, Orlando Magic

J: So, we’d rather have Randy Foye than Gilbert Arenas.
D: 2007 me is crying right now. Also, 2007 me barely knows who Randy Foye is.
J: Hell, 2011 me is about to start crying. But, I mean, look at Gil’s stats. He was crap. He had to be on this list somewhere.

D: And here he is. Somehow, he isn’t higher on the list (where he probably should be). What is it about Gil that compels us to hang on?
J: Nostalgia, mostly. But you know how he said he scored 20+ pretty much every time J-Rich sat out last season? He wasn’t lying. And he did average 17 points for the Wizards before the trade, even though it was inefficient as hell. Perhaps SVG is holding him back… or something.

D: Well, Gil was never an efficient scorer. The best thing he had going for him was that people considered him a threat. Now, that’s gone. And if he can’t put points on the board and pressure a defense, what exactly are we expecting of him?
J: I just don’t want to believe that he isn’t a threat. I’m probably delusional, but every single time I watch him I hope for a throwback performance. The vast majority of the time, it doesn’t happen. But then he’ll get on a hot streak in a playoff game and I’ll be sucked back in. I just wish it happened often enough to have real hope.

D: I pine for those performances too, but there’s this awkward line that we have to walk as Gilbert fans. On one side, it’s hoping that he returns to 2007 form, which won’t happen. The other side is hoping that he assimilates into a system and becomes a serviceable role player, which…to be honest is less than majestic. It’s less than Gilbert.
J: Is it less than Gilbert? It’s less than Agent Zero, I guess, but our expectations for Gilbert have sunk so low that I could be okay with “serviceable role player,” provided that his role is to basically do what used to do in shorter spurts. Say he ends up somewhere between a J.J. Barea and a Jason Terry… I can live with that if he can live with that.

D: I can’t. All or nothing for me. My memory of Gilbert has to be pristine. I don’t have it in me to tell my future children about some…”serviceable role player.”
J: My memory of Gilbert has already been tarnished. I have nightmares about that stupid beard multiple times a week.

D: Alright. Final question: Can Gilbert Arenas be effective ever again?
J: You should probably ask his doctors. But you asked me. So, yes.
D: And your guess is as good as mine.

44. Spencer Hawes
C, Philadelphia 76ers
If safety helmets were allowed in regulation NBA games, Spencer Hawes would be the first in line to order. Every. Single. Time.

He’s played at least 71 games in all four seasons. He’s also averaged less than one free throw made a game his entire career. Kudos to Spencer for staying healthy, but at what cost are we talking here?

Theoretically, Philadelphia is a place where Spencer can flourish. Pairing up with Elton Brand in the starting lineup should have accentuated his strengths while at least somewhat masking his glaring weaknesses. Brand may not be what he used to be, but at his core, he is still a hardnosed player. Hawes, for all of his flaws, is a talented player somehow. He has great touch, he’s not the biggest stiff in the world, and he can kind of rebound, pass, and block shots. But his inconsistency and lack of any tenacity is nauseating.

He hasn’t improved a bit since he stepped foot in the NBA. What he has done is raise his three point attempts since his rookie season, which I can only assume is an inefficient way for him to stay out of harm’s way. He was the permanent starter on a playoff team, which maybe counts for something. And he’s still young — that’s an excuse we can ride until it’s dead and gone.

Never change, Spencer. (PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE CHANGE, SPENCER.) – DC

43. Linas Kleiza
F, Toronto Raptors
Linas is one of the tougher guys to rate in this list. Few of the other names went through such an injury plagued season. Kleiza played on and off from the beginning of the season until the end of February, showing flashes of offensive potency that made him such an intriguing signing to begin with.

Kleiza sat out in February and missed the rest of the season to undergo microfracture surgery on his right knee. As Kleiza’s game doesn’t necessarily rely on his athleticism, it shouldn’t debilitate him, though there is always a worry when it comes to that kind of surgery.

With a full recovery, he should be back into the Raptors’ starting lineup. He’s a versatile scorer who operates well in post-up situations, taking advantage of his beefiness to bully smaller opponents. He’s regressed quite a bit as a three-point shooter, but he has legitimate range from deep, which is more than you can say for almost the entire roster, save for Andrea Bargnani.

But there was a lot of uncertainty in his performances last season. And they will carry on into the next. – DC

42. Kwame Brown
C, Charlotte Bobcats
I just don’t understand how a guy with such little offensive ability could ever have been picked first overall. His hands and instincts are awful and it’s weird even picturing him hitting a jumper. His free throw shooting is dreadful, too, but at least he upped it from 33.7% (!!!) to 58.9% last season.

Brown retains some value because of his defense and rebounding. He’s a solid one-on-one defender and can be trusted in pick-and-roll situations. This is just about all he is asked to do at this point in his career. Thankfully, he’s proven solid enough in those areas to still have a career — a year ago, we could not have been sure of that. – JH

41. Donte Greene
F, Sacramento Kings
The good: Donte Greene is 6’11, 23 years old, and can guard three positions. He made 85.3% of his free throws in his rookie season. He made 37.7% of his threes in his second season. He has the cutest son ever.

The bad: last season, he shot 29.2% on threes and 66.2% on free throws. He came into the league as a 3-4 tweener, and after three years we still aren’t sure where to put him because he can’t dribble or rebound.

If nothing else, Greene surely has a place in the league as a defender. He’s frustrating, though, as he’s shown flashes of being much more than that. He just hasn’t been able to produce with any regularity. If we’re still talking about his “potential” a year from now, there’s a problem. – JH

Honorable mentions:

Trevor Ariza
SF, New Orleans Hornets
The 2009 playoffs version of Trevor Ariza is hard to forget. He used his length and quickness to play the excellent perimeter defense we were accustomed to seeing and, for two months, made defenses pay when they left him open behind the three-point line. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen this version of Ariza since.

Unhappy with the terms of the contract his hometown team offered, in free agency he left the squad with multiple All-Stars and landed up on a Houston team where he was asked to be a creator. The Rockets/Hornets version of Ariza is still a very good defender and slasher, but his atrocious shot selection makes him downright harmful when the opponent doesn’t have a dangerous wing scorer. Nonetheless, Monty Williams had the Hornets playing the league’s 10th-best defense and he was a large part of it. For that and the memory of April-June 2009, he escapes the bottom 50. – JH

Jeff Green
F, Boston Celtics
This feels wrong, doesn’t it? Yeah, this definitely feels wrong.

Jeff Green is not a bad player, but he might not be as good as we once thought. Fans and detractors have held a nagging suspicion that Green was simply a glorified role player, and frankly, it’s more truth than fiction. If we split last year’s season into two – one with the Thunder, one with the Celtics – and throw them in a comparison with his 09-10 season, the Per-36 minute numbers of all “three” seasons are virtually identical. This isn’t to say his stats are terrible, but they show a frightening consistency that might to indicate a peak (and a plateau) in his development.

His breakout season in 08-09 was notable because, seemingly out of nowhere, Green shot the three ball beautifully at 38.9% on 3.2 attempts a game. His shot has since abandoned him. Without that accuracy from beyond the arc, he has even less to mitigate the inherent downsides of tweenerdom.

He’s not one of the worst, and that’s why he isn’t on the actual list. But for a player who was once thought to be Kevin Durant’s sidekick in Oklahoma City, the lack of progress and lackluster production is a bit saddening. Jeff Green isn’t a game-changer. Though, as we’ve learned from the Thunder’s success, getting rid of him is. – DC

Nate Robinson
G, Oklahoma City Thunder

via Twitter:
#Word2BigBird shout out to @ZachLowe_SI Lol its time 2get 2009 Nate back http://bit.ly/qeWKHt #WorDaApP –JH

(That isn’t a real tweet.)Â