ROY Race: Evans vs. Curry

He’s not K-Mart because another person also has that nickname?

Um, exactly. When another guy already has that nickname, and is an active player in the league, you can’t just start referring to a seperate player by the same nickname, that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

It wouldn’t be a big deal if K-Mart was out of the league

I have to say, this does still bug me, but less so. We really need to go back to actual creative nicknames instead of boring recycled garbage, you know?

For the record, while Lebron’s shot isn’t pretty, from a mechanical standpoint, he does have decent form. He also completely started it from scratch early on his career – but while he was already in the NBA, so who knows, maybe Evans can do that, too. I also don’t see Evans as an elite athlete, just a good one. He does have very good size, length and strength for his position already, and seems to know how to use it (offensively at least) already.

I’ll also note that when talking strictly about potential, it leaves out the more important quality of “how likely will they reach their potential”….

evans hae been very consistant actually….

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/4564/splits;ylt=AvUynVjCNbIukdjfiD.gYukvLYF

November- 5.1
December- 5.1
January- 5.1
February- 7.1

wow 5.1 assists EVERY month…. February he’s actually up, but I’m sure by end of month he’ll even out to 5.1 again :D

People are stuck on some pre-draft stigma he’s larry hughes ball hog, he moves the ball and passes well, is pretty unselfish… saw him go to the hole a million times v. warriors, dump to JT or Hawes and them brick it.

From what i’ve heard/scene… He’s very coachable too…

What Tyreke needs to do is A) develop a jumper and b) become a better ball handler.

In a January 2, 2001 overtime game against his former Kings team, he scored a career-high 53 points on 20-for-27 field goal shooting.

53. Still 53 on 27 shots for tony delk

I think he’s answered just about all the questions people might’ve had… he’s gonna be a good one.

I’m really not seeing those answers. I already knew he had the talent and the athleticism to be a very good player. The question is – does he have the maturity to handle himself like a professional? The work ethic to become great? Will he ever make good decisions on the floor on a consistent basis, or will he just turn into a low percentage gunner? I hardly see how all those questions – the same questions people have had about him for a while, have been answered. All he’s shown so far is the talent that made him the top PG prospect in his class.

Sure, there can be apportioning issues with Win Shares… like every metric, it has its flaws. But the Warriors are bad primarily because of their terrible defense, and it’s even more terrible when Curry’s on the floor. Why, exactly, would we assume that he’s getting a raw deal?

I’d like to point out, again, that I do have a lot of confidence in UZR….you just have to know how to use it properly and understand what it’s telling you, exactly. Stop using it as an example of a questionable statistic!

I’m not trying to say Curry is his equal defensively; I honestly don’t know. But I’m pretty confident that, based on the limited and noisy data we have to work with, neither you nor anyone else knows … or at least knows in the same way we know Curry is a much more efficient scorer than Jennings.

This is a fair point… I agree that evaluations of defensive quality are always murkier, both statistically and in general. You’re right. There is less definitive proof of Jennings’s defensive edge than there is in Curry’s shooting edge.

But I’ll just add — and perhaps I should’ve added before — that my belief that there’s a defensive gap between the two is not solely predicated on the numbers. Watching the games, it seems to me that Curry’s a really, really bad defender. He has trouble fighting through picks… he gets lost at times… he fouls too often, and at dumb times. From the Bucks games I’ve watched (not many to be fair, maybe five total), Jennings does not struggle nearly as much. The stats that are out there tend to lend credence to that idea.

Could I be wrong about this? Of course. I’m just some jackass on the Internet, like everyone else here. And even I’m not claiming that Jennings will always be the better defender… Jennings is getting defensive tutelage from Scott Skiles, while Curry just has Nellie staggering around near him. But I do believe that Jennings has been a much better defender. And if your argument isn’t that Curry’s better on defense than I’m giving him credit for, but that we can’t know how good NBA players are at defense, well… I don’t really know what to do with that. We can’t measure their defensive contributions as cleanly or as confidently as we can measure their offensive contributions, but I don’t think that means we can’t come to any conclusions. Some types of defensive stats show more consistency than you’d think.

You, for instance, have expressed interest in a Kirilenko acquisition in the past (as I have). When people talked about the Warriors trading for Tayshaun Prince, you weren’t nearly as interested (neither was I). You wrote that part of the basis for your reasoning was that Kirilenko’s plus-minus numbers suggested that he made a big defensive impact, while Prince’s plus-minus numbers didn’t. And that was a pretty good point! With the exceptions of ‘06-’07 and ‘07-’08 — two years in which both Kirilenko and the Jazz were openly disappointed about his role and performance — Utah’s D has always been significantly better with Kirilenko on the floor. It’s been an extremely good defense with Kirilenko on the floor. The same used to be true of the Pistons when Prince played, but it hasn’t been true for four years now.

Does that prove that Kirilenko’s the better defender? No, it doesn’t. If Prince’s backup was Trevor Ariza and Kirilenko’s backup was, say, me, Kirilenko would look better in plus-minus no matter how well or poorly he played. There’s all sorts of noise and murkiness in these numbers. Still, those numbers are strongly suggestive. If you see numbers like that, and the guys’ respective backups don’t seem like they’d skew the numbers, and one guy looks like a defensive impact player while the other looks washed up… you’d probably feel confident in saying Kirilenko’s the better defender, right?

I’m not saying that I think Jennings is Kirilenko. But the numbers don’t suggest that there’s anything wrong with his defense, and he looks to me like an effective defender. The numbers suggest that Curry’s defense is really bad, and he looks to me like a really bad defender. Thus, I wrote that “Jennings is a much better defender than Curry.” Should I have preceded that with an “in my opinion”? I guess so… I just find constant caveats like that to be a slog on message boards. Any claim any of us makes is pretty clearly our own opinion.

The difference is that I cited them not to prove anything in particular, but to cast some reasonable doubt your rather strident assertion that Jennings was "much better" on D, and better overall. (You had after all stated that Curry’s equal or superior "by just about every overall value metric you can find;" I simply found one by which he wasn’t).

I haven’t claimed, nor would I, that Jennings is the better player overall. I said that if forced to choose, I’d probably choose Jennings. And I could easily be dead wrong on that.

But my contention that Jennings rates as Curry’s equal or superior by just about every metric you can find… on that, I don’t know what to tell you. The only place I’ve seen Curry sport a meaningful edge is in Dave Berri’s version of Wins Produced, and I don’t think that’s a very credible metric. We can quibble about the phrase “just about”, but really, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Most metrics don’t show much difference between the two. Those metrics could be wrong, but that’s what they show.

At some level, I think it here may be a bit of a philosophical or stylistic difference here.

As I suggested above, I think it’s more of a stylistic difference than anything. I don’t think I’m smarter, more knowledgeable or more privy to basketball wisdom than other people here… frankly, there are a number of folks who know more than me. I just get tired of writing things like “as I see it”, and if I think I’m right about something, I’m likely to keep blabbing about it. I can’t prove that Jennings is a much better defender than Curry, but I think he is, and until someone shows me something to make me change my mind, I’m going to express that. Similarly, I can’t prove that Don Nelson has cost this team a passel of wins, but I think he has, and until someone shows me something to make me change my mind, I’m going to express that. Just because we can’t measure Don Nelson’s effect on the team doesn’t mean we can’t judge his performance.

Nevertheless, I will try harder to add “in my opinion”-type caveats to my posts in the future. And I apologize to anyone who feels I’ve been overly strident. It’s all love and candy from this guy.

(Brief aside: though I haven’t known you to employ straw men very often in support of your eloquent cases, the statement "the idea that Ridnour has been dragging them to victory over Jennings’s crappy body simply doesn’t hold water" is a pretty shameless one…)

The post that opened this line of conversation came from Rocky. In it, he said, “Jennings was never worth the risk. His immaturity alone and his game is proving it right now. The Bucks are playing well because of the career year of Luke Ridnour not the play of Jennings.” I pointed out that the Bucks have had greater success with Jennings than with Ridnour. You asked me why I thought that… I reiterated that the Bucks have had greater success with Jennings than with Ridnour, which is why I thought Rocky’s contention (that the Buck’s good play is due to Ridnour) was bunk. Apologies if I was unclear.

By contrast, I think some of the quasi-legal cases you make here are better posed as open questions, or even shelved till further notice.

I don’t mean to present them as quasi-legal… I’ve just been assuming we’re all sufficiently familiar with each other’s posting styles to skip the niceties of “I could be wrong, but” etc. Again, if I’ve ruffled feathers, I apologize. We’re all clubhouse clowns here, even jae (though he’s an excellent one).

Anyway, blah blah. Obviously, your posts are, for the most part, awesome. I’ve learned a ton from you. Tranquility.

As are yours; as have I from you; tranquility to you, dirty dog.