Al Thornton workout

Al Thornton worked out for the 76'ers yesterday. From the report in the Philly Inquirer, it doesn't sound like his workout really made much of an impact one way or the other:

After yesterday's pre-draft workout of Florida State forward Al Thornton, a potential choice of the 76ers with their No. 12 pick in Thursday's NBA draft, president and general manager Billy King continued to talk about moving up in the first round.

"There are a lot of teams like us who are trying to aggressively get up," King said after two separate pre-draft workouts. "There are some teams talking about getting big-name players, and I think those conversations will continue. I think there will be a lot of movement."

[...]

Thornton had postponed an earlier workout with the Sixers due to a sprained ankle and yesterday said he performed at about 75 percent efficiency. He added that his back also stiffened up.

So what do we know with the draft just two days away? The Sixers seem to like a bunch of different players, and they're considering trying to move up in the draft. An attempt to move up in the draft strongly suggests that there are a few players that the Sixers have a stronger interest in, and that they'll make a trade to move up if one of these players is still available at a spot where the team with the pick asks for a reasonable amount in return.

Lebron James' Cavs, Vince Carter's Raptors

In the immediate aftermath of the Spurs’ sweep of the Cavaliers in the finals, I read a number of columns about how the Cavs needed to improve the team and win a championship before Lebron becomes a free agent so that he doesn’t decide to sign elsewhere. On one level, the statement is innocuous enough—after all, the goal is to win championships, and the NBA Finals demonstrated that Cleveland still has a ways to go before it can be considered a top-tier championship contender. On another level, these columns really bothered me.

First things first—you don’t win championships to keep Lebron James around; you keep Lebron James around to win championships. Somehow, this basic point keeps getting lost in all the talk about improving the Cavaliers.

Second, and related—making personnel moves with the goal of keeping a player, as opposed to as part of the larger plan for creating a contender, can end up hurting a team in the long-run (and even not so long-run).

What do I mean? Well, just look at the Cavaliers. In the June 25, 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated, Jack McCallum mentions that the Cavaliers have several cumbersome contracts—those of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall and Damon Jomes—that will be tough to unload. These contracts, seemingly by consensus, are the obstacles to bringing in the appropriate talent to surround Lebron so that he will choose to stay in Cleveland three years from now.

But wait a minute. All four of these players were signed in the summer of 2005 (Ilgauskas- 5 years, $50 million; Hughes- 5 years, $60 million; Marshall- 4 years, $22 million; Jones- 4 years, $16 million). And why were they signed? Well, the basketball reason was that the Cavaliers wanted to surround Lebron with scorers to prevent teams from collapsing on him, but the Cavaliers were also thinking about Lebron’s impending free agency in the summer of 2006. Making all of these moves was meant to keep Lebron from seriously exploring free agency. Now, only two years later, the contracts given to these four players are considered a major hindrance…to keeping Lebron from seriously exploring free agency.

In all fairness, I think these signings were better than the current conventional wisdom paints them. After all, they did convince Lebron to resign with the Cavaliers and three of these players (Ilgauskas, Hughes, Marshall) played an important role in getting the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals. However, without the desire (need?) to make a case to Lebron during the summer 0f 2005, there’s a decent chance the Cavaliers would have exhibited more patience and have put themselves in a better position to get the players they need to be top-tier championship contenders, not just top-tier Eastern Conference contenders.

If you want another example, look at Vince Carter’s Raptors. To convince Carter to resign in the summer of 2001, the Raptor’s signed Antonio Davis for $64 million over five years, Jerome Williams (seven years, $41 million), and Alvin Williams (seven years, $42 million), not to mention acquiring Hakeem Olajuwon ($17 million). And it worked…sort of. Carter signed an extension, theoretically keeping him in Toronto until 2008. Yet a few years later the Raptor’s were swooning as the age and health of these signings became a burden, Vince was dogging it, and eventually the Raptors were forced to trade him for 50 cents on the dollar (if that!) to the New Jersey Nets.

The moral of the story? Don’t panic if your superstar is approaching free agency. Sign the right players for your team; don’t just sign players that will convince your superstar to stick around in the short-run. Explain what you’re doing to your superstar, and count on him to understand. Otherwise, you’re mortgaging your chance to actually put together a team that can compete. And when the short-run fix becomes a long-run drain, the superstar can always find a way to force himself out of town, leaving the franchise to deal with the mess that’s been left behind.

A brief (or not so brief) Celtics interlude

So Kevin Garnett has put the word out, through his agent, that he doesn't want to play in Boston. The conventional wisdom seems to be that this kills a trade to Boston because KG can opt out of his contract after next season.

Quite frankly, if I'm the Celtics, I try and make the trade anyway. KG doesn't strike me as the sort of player who will refuse to report just because he was traded to a team that wasn't on his wish list. And he certainly doesn't strike me as the type of player who isn't going to play his hardest every minute he's on the floor. I think the operating assumption needs to be that making a deep play-off run (getting KG out of the first round for only the second time in his career) will convince KG to stick around. A Pierce/KG combo (plus whatever other parts the Celtics put around them--most likely Perkins, Allen, and West/Rondo next year) can compete for the Eastern Conference crown for at least the next three years, and once you get to the finals you never know what can happen.

If the Celtics really are scared away from going after KG because of his agent's statements, then I think they have two options:

1. Stay put: I'm more optimistic about the Celtics than most people. I think with a healthy Pierce, the current roster, and whoever they pick up in the draft they'll be competing for a playoff spot this year. They were 24-58 last season, but once you account for the 2 of 24 record when Pierce was out with his foot injury, they were 22-34. Still not great, but a more realistic view of where they currently stand. Add in a year of growth for their young players, particularly Jefferson, and the 5th pick, and a run at .500 and the playoffs should be expected.
   
2. Trade Pierce: In many ways, the Celtics are dealing with a version of what the Lakers are going through with Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum. The question is whether Pierce will still be playing a high level when (if) the Celtics young players come into their own. Going after KG is the win now option, trading Pierce is the win later option (and staying put is the "we have no better option" option). If they can trade Pierce for a high draft pick (plus extras), then it might be time to go full-fledged to the youth movement and the fast-paced style of play Danny Ainge has been pushing for.

Of these options, I'm a bigger fan of trading Pierce, even though he's a great player and it will undoubtedly mean another year or two out of the playoffs for the Celtics. If the Celtics traded Pierce to a team like the Bucks (for this year's first round pick plus extras), then they could pick Corey Brewer with one of their draft picks (theoretically replacing Pierce) and still use the other pick to on either a big with potential (Yi?) or a point guard (Conley?), depending on whether they feel more confident in the development of Perkins or their point guards (Rondo/West/Telfair). Assuming they went big, then the Celtics could run out an athletic starting line-up of Jefferson, Yi, Brewer, Green, and Rondo. If they went small, they could put out a starting line-up of Perkins, Jefferson, Brewer, Green, and Conley.

Would they be good with either of these line-ups? I have no idea, but it would sure be fun to find out!

A three-headed monster with the 12th pick?

I just spent the last half-hour perusing draft websites, and I think it's clear that no one has any idea who the 76'ers are really interested in. It seems like the draft "experts" are focusing on the trio of Jeff Green, Al Thornton, and Julian Wright.

In the mock drafts, Al Thornton seems like the slightly trendier pick (he's the choice of the Sport's Guy and DraftExpress), but Jeff Green (the SB Nation mock draft selection) and Julian Wright (the choice of HoopsHype) also have their supporters. The choices made in all of these drafts seems to depend both on the drafter's personal comparison of these three players combined with which of the three are projected to still be available at that point.

Assuming that the 76'ers really are likely to pick one of these players (and not the mediocre power forward that history tells us should be drafted 12th), it seems like Julian Wright and Jeff Green would be the Sixers' preferred pick. After all, the only thing I've seen in the Philly papers about their preference is this brief snippet:

So players whom the Sixers like, such as Chinese power forward Yi Jianlian, Kansas forward Julian Wright and Washington center Spencer Hawes, could be available. Of course, all three may be taken. The Sixers haven't hidden their affection for Georgetown forward Jeff Green, but he could go fifth to 10th.

Al Thornton has his workout with the Sixers this coming Monday, so his stock might change radically over the next few days.

[Update: Chris Ekstrand, over at CNNSI, also gives the thumbs up to Thornton.)

Apparently I was being too generous...

...when I predicted that the sixers would get a mediocre back-up forward/center, but one that would still be an improvement over most of our current crop of big men. If form holds, they'll actually be getting a mediocre to piss poor back-up forward/center.

I looked up the Position-Adjusted Win Score per minute (PAWSmin) for this past season of the previous picks in the 12th slot, and the numbers weren't encouraging:

• 1997 Austin Croshere (-0.030)
• 1998 Michael Doleac (-0.056)
• 1999 Aleksandar Radojevic – not in NBA
• 2000 Etan Thomas (0.052)
• 2001 Vladimir Radmanovic (-0.087)
• 2002 Melvin Ely (-0.215)
• 2003 Nick Collison (0.019)
• 2004 Robert Swift – injured
• 2005 Yaroslav Korolev (-0.160)
• 2006 Hilton Armstrong (-0.020)
  

For those unfamiliar with it, PAWSmin is one of the "Win" metrics developed by the people from the Wages of Wins (also linked in the side bar). An "average" NBA player will produce a "position-adjusted" Win Score (PAWS) of zero. For a quick and dirty check using PAWSmin, 0.050 is good, 0.100 is great, and 0.150 is fantastic.

Looking at those numbers, Etan Thomas is good, Nick Collison is slightly above average, and you really don't want the rest of these guys playing big minutes for you. Now, I know that just looking at the numbers for this past season might be a bit unfair--after all, the older players on this list (Croshere, Doleac) are probably starting to slow down a little from their peak and the younger players are probably still developing (Swift, Korolev, Armstrong)--but these numbers still don't fill me with hope.
For comparison purposes, the PAWSmin of the 76'ers current big men are listed below:

• Samuel Dalembert (0.049)
• Joe Smith (0.003)
• Steven Hunter (-0.024)
• Alan Henderson (0.054)
• Shavlik Randolph (0.040)

Our current big men hardly qualify as great, but the chances that we can improve our frontline through this draft look pretty slim.

[For the record: I'm not entirely sure what I think of the Win Score metrics--I haven't really thought about them enough. They definitely intrigue me, and I'm sure I'll write more about them as I really think through their strengths and weaknesses. For the moment, I thought they gave a quick and easy way to try and compare the players I was interested in.]

With the 12th pick, the 76'ers draft....

... a mediocre back-up power forward/center.

How do I know? Well, I wish I could claim special access to the 76er's management, but really all I did was look at the players picked in the 12th slot over the last 10 years:

• 1997 Austin Croshere
• 1998 Michael Doleac
• 1999 Aleksandar Radojevic
• 2000 Etan Thomas
• 2001 Vladimir Radmanovic
• 2002 Melvin Ely
• 2003 Nick Collison
• 2004 Robert Swift
• 2005 Yaroslav Korolev
• 2006 Hilton Armstrong

It's sort of amazing that every 12th pick of the last decade fits into this category, but it's true!

Even though none of the names on this list really excite me (with the possible exception of Robert Swift's potential), I think it's fair to say that many of the names on this list would upgrade the 76'ers current big man rotation. At the very least, it seems likely that the 76'ers will be able to turn the pick into a player likely to become an NBA rotation player.

When you don't have a high draft-pick, I guess you take what you can get...

Please stop the 11 foot rim nonsense

They played an exhibition game on 11 foot rims in Seattle this past Saturday, apparently with the goal of "restoring" fundamentals to basketball. Every time I hear about this type of exhibition, I just want to scream.

To see why I think raising the rims is a silly idea, you just need to think about the goals that raising the rim will purportedly accomplish:

• Was there more passing and spacing? Was teamwork at more of a premium and less of a focus on individual play?

Can anyone explain to me how raising the rim by a foot is meant to accomplish any of these goals? Raising the rims will accomplish two things: (1) decrease a shooter's effective range, and (2) eliminate most dunking.

Decreasing the shooter's range: Higher rims means that it takes more strength to reach the hoop on a jump shot, so people won't be able to shoot from as far away. If the goal is to increase passing and spacing, this result is the last possible thing you should be aiming for. Decreasing a shooter's range means that defenses can sag into the lane more, creating more congestion and fewer passing angles in the painted area. One of the main reasons behind moving the 3-point line back to its old length was to create more space in the lane; increasing the height of the rims effectively negates this change.

Eliminating dunks: Um...Exactly why is this considered such a good idea? Instead of dunks, people will be shooting a two foot lay-up. How does that change anything about how the game is played? In the short run, people will get a little discombobulated because the angles for scoring from in close will be different, but once they adjust their positioning the higher rims aren't going to change interior play much at all. And I certainly don't understand how replacing dunks with short lay-ups is supposed to place a higher premium on teamwork.

Until someone can come up with a good explanation for how raising the rims is supposed to accomplish its stated goals of increased passing, spacing, and teamwork, I have a bit of advice: Please, just stop with this nonsense already.