hornets
turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything at once
it’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
when the atlanta hawks passed on taking chris paul, perhaps one of the most obvious picks in the last decade, they saved the nba draft.
oh, they didn't save it right away. we saw boston pass on brandon roy, and we'll see chicago pay dearly for passing on aldridge/al thornton in favor of thomas/noah.
but everybody learned a lesson by 2007: when in doubt, take the player who is the best and most likely to contribute right now.
we saw atlanta bite the bullet and take another forward in horford. seattle played conservatively, taking jeff green over yi. and the talented risks, the thaddeous youngs and javaris crittendons of the world, fell.
because everybody who watched the nba over the last two years didn't realize how freakin' unstoppable chris paul was, even though nobody else on his wake team was good enough to draft.
mathy math math!
chris paul > steve nash (superior defender) (1)
PROOF: obvious and immediate.
chris paul > deron williams (superior decision-maker) (2)
PROOF: see the assist/turnover ratio, and extrapolate this idea to the two records that the players' teams have, respectively.
chris paul > jason kidd (superior scorer) (3)
PROOF: see (1)
those three inequalities give some insight as to why the hornets are arguably the best team in the west. i'll take the spurs, because in the playoffs, tim duncan is probably the last true force. but at this point, i would at least have to consider the hornets as being among the best.
signing peja was critical for the hornets. there are only a few pure shooters left in the league, and to go out and buy one is roughly equivalent to the cost of buying an all-star. of course, the media saw that stojakovic only has one main dimension to his game, and so the signing was immediately labeled as a poor move.
to label such signings in this way is erroneous: it completely ignores the idea of scarcity, for one, and it neglects to mention the obvious reason why you want stojakovic out behind that line, namely, that somebody has to guard him.
allow me to take this idea further. because a large small forward or power forward has to guard rashard lewis, dwight howard has gone nuts in the paint this year. in the same vein, since the opponent's small forward cannot leave peja, chris paul is able to get down the lane with more regularity, which means that he is even more effective. or, to describe it in terms of cavemen, MORE POINTS MORE ASSISTS.
let me describe "the idea of david west."
david west is a strange nba player. in my mind, he is what drew gooden should have been coming out of college: a highly skilled shooter whose height allows him to get 10 rebounds a game. and while west isn't physically dominant, he plays better than almost all power forwards away from the basket. in short, he isn't mechanical. you would think that this would cause him to have rebounding numbers that are similar to rashard lewis, but his combination of activity and skill allows him to have a few easy baskets a night.
so the hornets are effective on offense because they can spread the floor effectively, which makes chris paul arguably as effective as he can be.
but one might think that the hornets aren't physical enough on defense. and so tyson chandler comes into play. chandler was never going to score in the league, primarily because he started from such a low level of offensive skills. it would have taken years for chandler to figure out the offensive end of the court, and so the bulls angrily gave up on the kid, claiming that he was lazy, wasn't trying, etc. but the hornets figured out what denver figured out with marcus camby, namely that these players were able to protect the rim in the same way that ben wallace could. and the hornets and nuggets both make no pretense of wanting camby and chandler to score, which is nice for both guys.
the bottom line is that the hornets' starting five actually works as a team, particuarly on offense. mo pete can take over the scoring, and bobby jackson can come off the bench to be a leader/spell chris paul.
and that's good enough to maybe be the best team in the west.
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything at once
it’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
when the atlanta hawks passed on taking chris paul, perhaps one of the most obvious picks in the last decade, they saved the nba draft.
oh, they didn't save it right away. we saw boston pass on brandon roy, and we'll see chicago pay dearly for passing on aldridge/al thornton in favor of thomas/noah.
but everybody learned a lesson by 2007: when in doubt, take the player who is the best and most likely to contribute right now.
we saw atlanta bite the bullet and take another forward in horford. seattle played conservatively, taking jeff green over yi. and the talented risks, the thaddeous youngs and javaris crittendons of the world, fell.
because everybody who watched the nba over the last two years didn't realize how freakin' unstoppable chris paul was, even though nobody else on his wake team was good enough to draft.
mathy math math!
chris paul > steve nash (superior defender) (1)
PROOF: obvious and immediate.
chris paul > deron williams (superior decision-maker) (2)
PROOF: see the assist/turnover ratio, and extrapolate this idea to the two records that the players' teams have, respectively.
chris paul > jason kidd (superior scorer) (3)
PROOF: see (1)
those three inequalities give some insight as to why the hornets are arguably the best team in the west. i'll take the spurs, because in the playoffs, tim duncan is probably the last true force. but at this point, i would at least have to consider the hornets as being among the best.
signing peja was critical for the hornets. there are only a few pure shooters left in the league, and to go out and buy one is roughly equivalent to the cost of buying an all-star. of course, the media saw that stojakovic only has one main dimension to his game, and so the signing was immediately labeled as a poor move.
to label such signings in this way is erroneous: it completely ignores the idea of scarcity, for one, and it neglects to mention the obvious reason why you want stojakovic out behind that line, namely, that somebody has to guard him.
allow me to take this idea further. because a large small forward or power forward has to guard rashard lewis, dwight howard has gone nuts in the paint this year. in the same vein, since the opponent's small forward cannot leave peja, chris paul is able to get down the lane with more regularity, which means that he is even more effective. or, to describe it in terms of cavemen, MORE POINTS MORE ASSISTS.
let me describe "the idea of david west."
david west is a strange nba player. in my mind, he is what drew gooden should have been coming out of college: a highly skilled shooter whose height allows him to get 10 rebounds a game. and while west isn't physically dominant, he plays better than almost all power forwards away from the basket. in short, he isn't mechanical. you would think that this would cause him to have rebounding numbers that are similar to rashard lewis, but his combination of activity and skill allows him to have a few easy baskets a night.
so the hornets are effective on offense because they can spread the floor effectively, which makes chris paul arguably as effective as he can be.
but one might think that the hornets aren't physical enough on defense. and so tyson chandler comes into play. chandler was never going to score in the league, primarily because he started from such a low level of offensive skills. it would have taken years for chandler to figure out the offensive end of the court, and so the bulls angrily gave up on the kid, claiming that he was lazy, wasn't trying, etc. but the hornets figured out what denver figured out with marcus camby, namely that these players were able to protect the rim in the same way that ben wallace could. and the hornets and nuggets both make no pretense of wanting camby and chandler to score, which is nice for both guys.
the bottom line is that the hornets' starting five actually works as a team, particuarly on offense. mo pete can take over the scoring, and bobby jackson can come off the bench to be a leader/spell chris paul.
and that's good enough to maybe be the best team in the west.
posted by mike at 1:06 PM
1 Comments:
Hear hear! Thanks for the article. By the way, back in the late 90's, a hot topic of debate in Cincinnati is who was the better college frosh - David West or DeMarr Johnson. The answer (at the time) was overwhelmingly Demarr - who happened to be on a stacked Cincy team with Kenyon Martin (if I recall correctly), despite the fact David West had the gaudier numbers in college. Who had the last laugh? (To Be fair to DeMarr, I don't know who could have succeeded under his circumstances...)
The fact that Xavier made the elite eight (nearly the final four... the played Duke down to the wire) the year after he graduated could be attributed to Bill Simmon's beloved "Ewing Theory," but it should not be held against Mr. West. He similar story to Michael Redd - a dominant college player who comes to the NBA and is, at first, pretty overmatched, but takes a couple of years to develop some skill and thrives in the league. Redd is the bigger name, but I contend the West is the more valuable player - a 6'9" guy who can play near and away from the rim and grab some rebounds where as Redd is a shooter. Granted, West is a perfect fit for the Hornets - they have the point guard, the shooter, and the man to protect the rim in place. West fills in the gaps nicely, and the Hornets have rewarded him nicely for it.
As the Hornets seem to be one of the best run franchises from a team building perspective (up there with the Spurs, Blazers, Pistons... I don't know how you can say the Celtic's "built" a team, but they do play very well together, so I guess that something...) they're situation in New Orleans is unfortunate. That team deserves the love - I don't hold it against the city, but they need a move so much more than the Sonics. The following statement is probably hyperbolic, but the Hornets are Expos of the NBA and something needs to be done.
P.S. Watch out for an NFL playoffs article sometime soon... I think I'm finally going to get around to it...
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