Ranking Mystery Nets Not Easy

I wonder if Nene and Chandler will get restless if the Nets are indeed waiting on Howard. Sounds funny to even suggest top free agents would be waiting on the Nets.

The Nets were 5.1 points per 100 possessions better on defense when he was off the court.

Our best defensive 5 man unit last year was Farmar, Morrow, Vujacic, Hump, and Petro

Though Hollinger might be placing a lot more emphasis on Brook’s rebounding as a part of his defense

get criticized for his rebounding.

I believe in roles in the NBA. Morrow is a sharpshooter. who ever thinks he is going to be a defender is wasting there breath. If we can get 6-8 rbs from Brook and Nene/Chandler get 8-10 I am fine with that. Lopez putting up 20+ pts is his role. Getting Rbs can be someone else.

On Lopez: “One feather in Lopez’s cap is that he’s always on the floor.”

This is true.

though I am excited about the schedule coming out on Tuesday.

What’s nene and chandlers rank? And marshon??…

@RoyceWebb
Royce Webb, ESPN NBA
Coming today on ESPN.com: @johnhollinger on potential CP3 & Dwight Howard trades for Lakers, Knicks, Nets, Clips, Celts, Rockets, GSW.

Wow Hollinger absolutely rips Lopez to shreds. There is no way the Magic are trading Howard for him.

As the main scoring threat on a bad offensive team, Lopez created shockingly little for his teammates. He ranked 53rd of 67 centers in assist rate and, although he rarely turned the ball over, he forced countless shots into double-teams. Even more often, he would lunge into defenders on a face-up jumper in sort of a slow-motion rip move; this desperate bid to draw fouls failed far more often than it succeeded. He needs to develop better court sense and a drop-step counter to his right-hand dominant post game.

“One of the poster children for the lockout: After signing a five-year, $35 million deal, then playing as if he were an 11th man for the Dakota Wizards, Outlaw’s career is at a crossroads.”

That right there was worth the Insider subscription.

Defensively, Humphries will never be great, but his activity was a plus on most nights and he cleaned up on the boards. Throw in a high rate of blocks, a low foul rate and decent toughness against post threats, and he was probably New Jersey’s least-bad defensive player. Other than that, I can’t think of much he did this past year that people found interesting or relevant.

Outlaw needs to be a major offensive contributor to be useful, because defensively he doesn’t offer a lot. Although he’s very long, Outlaw is all arms and legs and can’t get out of his own way. Once he starts going one way, he has no chance of changing direction quickly. His lack of coordination leads to near-comic sequences chasing players through screens off the ball, and his lack of strength means he can’t play 4 more regularly. Synergy rated him among the league’s worst defenders, and his plus-minus supports that.

Defensively, Morrow struggled, and being away from Golden State meant there weren’t a bunch of other awful defenders to steal the spotlight from his badness. Although his adjusted plus-minus numbers were solid, Synergy rated him one of the league’s most flammable defenders. Observation backed that up: He can’t guard good 2s at all; big ones devour him on post-ups, and small ones dribble by him. Because of that, his matchups require careful placement, thus his career path seems more as a deadly 20-minute sniper than as a long-term starter. But he’ll be in the league a decade with that shot of his.

Hope you guys don’t mind all these quotes from the story. I wanted to pick out what I thought were the most interesting portions of each player’s profile.

The fact is.. No other team can offer the Magic cap relief, 2 1st round picks, a young , improving center who can score , and the ability to amnesty Agent Zero.

The one area of concern is his defense. Williams has a reputation as a strong defender, and certainly his size and toughness present advantages. But he hasn’t been terribly engaged on that end the past two years, and the numbers back it up. Williams has had strongly negative plus-minus numbers on the defensive end each of the past four seasons. His Synergy numbers from last season were also underwhelming. This is partly because of lineup selection in Utah, so I don’t think he’s as bad as his numbers, but if those numbers persist in New Jersey it’s going to raise some serious questions.

“However, he’s pure D-League — especially last season.”

Can’t really disagree with anything he’s saying, and now the reality must sink in, that for all the assets the Nets have, a lot of them are still highly flawed especially defensively. We may have the best shooter ever, but he’s also a pretty terrible defender. He may have a young 20 ppg center, but his basketball IQ has got a ways to go and he’s got lead feet.

Additionally, Graham’s awfulness was amazingly broad-based. He has good size but isn’t a particularly good defender, and was in the bottom third of small forwards in every category I track except one. In that one, defensive rebound rate, he managed to eke into the upper half. Basically, he’s in over his head at this level, and I imagine there are 20 D-Leaguers who bash their heads against a wall every time Graham gets another chance.

Uzoh had an unexpectedly good assist-turnover ratio in his limited minutes and I suspect he’ll have trouble maintaining it, but he rebounds well for his size and can check 2s if he has to. If he improves his handle and especially his shooting, he can move up in the world.

Alas, his defense didn’t make the trip. Stretched to guard elite wing players, something he rarely had to do in L.A., Vujacic’s Synergy and on-court vs. off-court numbers were both quite poor.

Nonetheless, Vujacic was useful. He’s a good ball handler who can man the point in a pinch, and was 16th among shooting guards in pure point rating. He also created shots at a decent clip, ranking in the middle of the pack among 2s (32nd). What hurt him was his 53rd-ranked TS%, a direct consequence of how rarely he gets to the rim and draws fouls.

James’ remit was basically to run around and do stuff, and he achieved that enough in his rookie year to be a fringe rotation player. His 12.5 rebound rate is spectacular for a 3, and his defense and energy make one wonder if he can be a poor man’s Ruben Patterson.

To get there, he needs to figure out this whole offense thing. James can run and finish, but a turnover every 16 minutes isn’t going to cut it for a low-usage role player; by comparison, Chris Paul averaged one every 17, and he had the ball in his hands just a tad more often.

His mobility offers some defensive value defending pick-and-rolls — especially if you were just watching Brook Lopez try to guard them. But Petro is average at best at the rebounding and shot-blocking portions of his job description, and manifestly terrible in most of the others.

Offensively, Petro shoots from under his chin but can make a 15-footer if left open. The problem is that he kept shooting even when he wasn’t open, often from farther than 15 feet. Petro was 16th among centers in usage rate, despite having the fourth-worst TS% at the position, and that wasn’t an out-of-character season for him.

The big development was the jump in his assist ratio, a result of being liberated from the triangle offense and being permitted to create more on his own.

However, he had a lot of low-value assists (see Chris Paul comment) and he seldom made the hit-ahead passes that would have set up transitions for others. Plus, the assist jump didn’t meet with commensurate improvement in other areas. Farmar’s shocking inability to get to the line is the biggest drag on his game.

people say that Lopez should have had better numbers on a 12 win or bad team. Hollinger actually said Lopez was the MAIN Offensive Threat. WHEN was that?

Clearly these ’So Called Basket Ball PEOPLE" have no Idea.

Lopez played with SG Devon Haris. What happened when Dwill came to the Nets? What were Lopez’ stats.

SMH!!!!!

other teams are leaking it, where is ours?

He is young to him only 23. In his arsenal a lethal average throw. Even for the good of D12 to lose Brook it is a pity. Also it is a pity to lose MarShon.

Joe Budden (Love his music) is on twitter just making a fool of his self

but what can we offer the Magic that the Lakers can’t? We can take on Hedo’s contract if we amnesty Outlaw but then there’s all this talk of signing Nene, Chandler, Butler, Prince… if we sign a big free agent we’re screwed. Then again, if Dwight goes to LA anyway we’re screwed.

I love the opinions of those who say that Devin Harris “didn’t know how to get the ball to Brook Lopez” as if Brook Lopez was standing in some mystery spot on the floor and Devin Harris only needed to make a simple pass to get Brook his points.

DeAndre Jordan, Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman and 2 firsts for Dwight and Hedo.

That’s much better than the Nets’ offer.

How terrifying is the prospect of Blake Griffin and Dwight Howard playing side by side

nobody really considered the Clippers…now if CP3 goes to NYK and D12 to LA..I think Deron stays here.

this would be an out of conference trade..whereas ours wouldnt obviously.

Would Dwight and Brook even complement each other?

http://www.nba.com/news/features/john_schuhmann/statscube-preview-2011-NJN/index.html

Hump WAS “stealing” some rebounds from Brook, but only barely. Brook was still a bad rebounder when Hump wasn’t on the floor

So, to summarize, here are the options and the financial implications for each player.

Howard:

_ Plays the entire season in Orlando, opts out and ends up elsewhere (either by signing as a free agent or through a sign-and-trade): $80.5 million for 4 years.

_ Gets traded in February, opts out, then re-signs with the team that acquired him: $110.8 million for 5 years.

Paul:

_ Plays the entire season in New Orleans, opts out and ends up elsewhere (either by signing as a free agent or through a sign-and-trade): $75.8 million for 4 years.

_ Gets traded in February, opts out, then re-signs with the team that acquired him: $100.2 million for 5 years.

Do the math, add up the differences, and there are 55 million reasons why both those guys might want to be wearing different uniforms by the time March 1 rolls around.

http://sheridanhoops.com/2011/12/02/dwight-howard-chris-paul-trades/

One recurring problem i keep encountering on this site is most people brushing off the Clippers. In fact posters here should be praying that the Knicks land Paul because if Paul ends up with the Clippers we can say goodbye to any hope of getting Dwight.

They are just a better situation for him:

-Great assets which ORL wants
-Warm climate which Dwight wants
-Hollywood which Dwight wants
-Join other stars which Dwight
-Western Conference which ORL wants and the league should prefer
-Huge market which Dwight wants

So whats the negatives?

-An owner with horrible morals, bad personality, and a bad rep
-Second fiddle to Kobe

Thats it?!! Second fiddle? Pleeease that team would be second fiddle to nobody especially when the Lakers start their decline. The owner while indeed a **** is not gonna be much of a factor. He knows how mch money he will make with such marketable stars on his team. Even he couldnt mess that up. The players wouldnt care cuz at the end of the day they are all about winning and no other team affords the opportunities that the Clippers present.

So ppl stop brushing the Clippers off like they are not threats cuz they could very well be the favorites to land Dwight if CP3 doesnt end up in NY