Let’s calm down from these zany statistical extrapolations.

There’s no extrapolating going on here — these are Brandan Wright’s stats. Normalizing everyone’s numbers to 36 minutes has its limitations, but it is not zany. We’re looking at the actual performance of players.

At the end of the Brandan Wright has put up two back-to-back non-impact seasons where he failed to even play in half of the games. This has amounted to:
Rookie Year [38 games]: 4.0 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 0.2 ast : 0.3 tov, 0.6 blk
Sophomore Year [39 games]: 8.3 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.5 apg : 0.6 tov, 1.0 blk
I know standards aren’t exactly high around these parts, but it seems incredibly curious to call that "good".

Your proof of Wright’s poor play is, as always, the fact that he hasn’t played very much. When you hear the inevitable response — that he hasn’t played much because Nellie underrates him — you then re-list Nellie’s career achievements, as though this somehow demonstrates Nellie’s infallibilty. I think we’re both tired of the go-around, so I won’t extend it. But let’s just note: you can not dispute the strength of his numbers. You tried to, you got called out on it, and you reverted to your “good players play more than this” argument. Wright’s numbers are extremely good.

Wright has shown ZERO ability to play man to man defense on any NBA 4 or 5- not even a little bit. I can recount countless times where he was getting abused on the same simple post up moves repeatedly and demonstrated extremely poor hoops IQ with his shielding.

I’d dispute “zero”. He’s had some problems with heavier players, and his positioning for defensive rebounds is quite poor — it’s by far the weakest part of his game. But he’s not a zero as a man defender. A lot of his blocks, the ones you praise below, have come from man defense, not simply from rotating.

Wright’s turnover rate is relatively low because he barely handles the ball.

There were about 140 centers and power forwards who played significant minutes in the league last year. The vast majority of these guys, like Wright, don’t handle the ball much and don’t command double teams. If Wright’s low totals are due solely to his role — if he’s not actually good at holding on to the ball — you’d expect at least forty or fifty of these guys to turn over the ball less than he does.

Of those 140 guys, you know how many actually turned it over less often than Wright? Six. Steve Novak, Matt Bonner, Joe Smith, ‘Sheed, Antawn, and Walter Herrmann — so three wily veterans and three white boys who are told, "Stand behind the three-point line and DON’T MOVE!" Other than these six, Brandan Wright turned the ball over less often than every other big man in the NBA. And he did that while scoring at a good clip and with an extremely high percentage.

The truth is that Brandan Wright is very, very good at limiting turnovers. You simply can’t believe that to be true, because an elite turnover rate suggests a high basketball IQ, and you’re convinced that Brandan Wright’s basketball IQ is low. The evidence disagrees with you, to say the least.

His jumper (though far superior to everyone’s favorite Warrior "cornerstone" who could get beat in horse by most 8th graders) is slow and unorthodox. There isn’t much upside there compared to a young KG, Rasheed Wallace, Carlos Boozer, West, and even Aldridge (who I’d rate as being one of the more overrated players in the game).

I agree that Wright’s upside is lower than most of the guys on that list, and I also agree that Aldridge is overrated. But the drearily predictable Biedrins dis aside, who cares about Brandan Wright’s jumper? He has played well without needing much of a jumper.

Wright has ZERO low post moves and cannot create for others or even himself (though he does have a nice little baby hook).

…I’m struggling with your math here. Wright has zero low post moves, except for his one nice low post move? Sure, he often uses the baby hook off rebounds, but he uses it in the post as well.

Given his somewhat apathetic approach to the game and physical awkwardness (runs funnier than Webber ever did, not so smooth ball handling and scoring moves, etc) I have a hard time believing he’s ever going to get there.

…see, now this is the thing. A lot of your analysis of Wright seems predicated on his appearance. And yeah, he’s goofy-looking.

But what is the proof that he has a “somewhat apathetic approach to the game”? No Warriors employee has ever criticized Wright’s work ethic, something that can’t be said of several guys on the roster. Wright’s jumper noticeably improved between his first and second season… wouldn’t that suggest that he was working on his game? Nellie hasn’t been the only person to say that Wright’s been the best player on the floor in camp thus far… is everybody just flat-out wrong?

You see Wright’s dorky face and dorky gait and assume he’s a mistake-prone loser. You’re simply wrong about that, and your refusal to see otherwise is getting pretty amusing. Wright did make some mistakes in terms of defensive positioning, but so did literally every other Warrior last season. The only one you remember doing it is the dorky-looking one. Brandan Wright looks like a dork… he doesn’t play like one.

The one area I remain impressed by Wright is his timing on blocks. I don’t think his block rate is an illusion at all and if you guys project him to rack up a higher swat rate than the likes of Carlos Boozer (a pretty terrible defender), Dirk, West (slightly undersized 4) I completely buy that. However as we all know blocks can be an empty stat- they aren’t always good indicators of good defense- which is exactly the case for Wright over his first 2 years in the league.

I’d agree on all counts here… Wright’s timing on blocks is excellent, but I’d trade a good chunk of that for improvement on the defensive glass.

The inference you sharp cats seem to be posing is that Brandan Wright has the potential (the utlimate insult- means you haven’t done anything) to someday be on par with the likes of KG, Aldridge, Boozer, Bosh, Dirk, or even Rasheed (he’s never been a "numbers" guy).

Firstly, your “potential” dig is nonsensical. We’ve been looking at what Brandan Wright has already done. He’s done it in a fairly limited array of minutes, and it’s reasonable to discount his performance somewhat for that, but this about his accomplishments, not wishcasting that he’ll be something other than he is.

Secondly, I am not suggesting, and have never suggested, that Wright will become a superstar… his upside is not nearly that high. There’s no particular reason to think he’d ever be better than, say, the 10th best power forward in the league. And with this latest shoulder flare-up, it’s hard to project him even getting that good.

What I am suggesting is that 1) Wright’s early numbers compare favorably with many of the good power forwards in the league, and 2) given that, it is not likely that he sucks. It is, in fact, likely that he’s pretty good. And a crappy franchise shouldn’t be cavalier about a pretty good 21-year-old power forward, even if they have a better 20-year-old power forward. Brandan Wright is a useful player, and one that has deserved more of a shot than he’s gotten.

And I still think that CWebb signing could have been a good move if he didn’t have those knee problems.

I agree… trouble is, he did have those knee problems, and Nellie used him anyway. It didn’t sink our season or anything, but it was a mistake, and a reminder that while Nellie hits a lot more than he misses, he definitely does miss. He missed a lot last year, and Wright was one of the misses.

Let’s calm down about the rave reviews from Nellie about Wright in training camp.

Oh, I don’t put much stock in that, nor in the idea that Wright’s added 360 pounds of muscle of whatever. Just countering your point. A big part of your argument is that Nellie seems to think Wright sucks, so Wright probably sucks. Nellie has been saying that he expects this to be Wright’s breakout year, and that Wright’s been outplaying Randolph thus far. If you’re going to try to divine what Nellie’s thinking (good luck), you have to factor that stuff in.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on par with Aldridge someday though. A 6-11 forward-center grabbing 7.5 rpg, swatting 1 shot, and with a mediocre FG% doesn’t do much for me.

Nor for me. On the other hand…

LaMarcus Aldridge (career): .527 TS%
Brandan Wright (career): .574 TS%

As I’ve contended before, Brandan Wright is probably already better than LaMarcus Aldridge. Health and Nellie permitting, Aldridge is Wright’s floor, not his ceiling. Sadly, health will not seem to permit.