bwgood77 wrote:I agree for leadership and possibly trading Tucker mostly...though Tucker should play PF not him...if you looked at how he played at PF (and someone posted the actual minutes and he played mostly at SF and was certainly more effective at PF)...he lost BIG time on the other end playing PF.
But your link doesn't do too much for me.
Firstly, Dudley rarely shot...he played far more minutes than both of them and still had fewer shots...if you look sat per 36 he had WAY lower shot rate. I don't think he holds up that 3 pt % on as many shots..perhaps, but it is unknown, and my guess is he would finish 3rd of those guys.
Also, comparing their PER's is ugly for Dudley.
Dudley did attempt more total field goals than Leuer; he averaged fewer field goals than Leuer despite averaging more minutes, which is what you must have meant. Regardless, Dudley's three-point volume was still significant (2.9 per game), and he attempted over twice as many total threes as Leuer (238 to 110). The difference was that Teletovic and Leuer averaged more two-point attempts, which makes sense given their greater size.
The difference in PER just seems to reflect the difference in rebounding. Leuer and Teletovic will give you more rebounds given their greater size, but Dudley should compensate to some extent with greater defensive versatility, which PER does not measure. (As I have indicated, PER is a slipshod metric at best—at best.) Dudley's .420 three-point field goal percentage last season is not that much higher than the .400 that he shot on threes over his previous seven seasons. Dudley is yet another player, much like Channing Frye, James Jones, Raja Bell, Eddie House, and others, who people fallaciously believed was "made" by Steve Nash yet turned out to be an effective and efficient—even elite—shooter irrespective of Nash.
The big statistical difference, as I see it, is that Dudley's assists and assists-to-turnover ratio are much better than those of Leuer and Teletovic. One point that I have made is that with lead guards who are 'challenged' as playmakers in Bledsoe and Knight (and even Goodwin), the Suns need to compensate with better front-court passers, and Dudley should help in that regard. Obviously, he is nothing extraordinary as a passer, but his assists-to-turnover ratio in recent years (2.0:1.0 over the last four seasons) is very good for a forward or swingman and suggests that Dudley moves the ball, makes good decisions, and is more accurate than most non-point guards. Combined with his three-point accuracy (not to mention his defensive tenacity), Dudley is reminiscent of Mario Elie. As you can see from the following link, Elie—while a role player and not a high-volume guy at all—ranked among the twenty most efficient offensive players in the NBA in '96-'97 according to the offensive efficiency metric Floor Percentage (created by Dean Oliver). Although not a perfect metric, its big-picture results make sense. (For instance, John Stockton and Kevin Johnson were by far the most efficient offensive point guards in the NBA, Jeff Hornacek was the second-most efficient offensive shooting guard after Michael Jordan, the most efficient high-volume offensive players were Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Kevin Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Grant Hill, and so forth and so on.)
http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/stats97/blflpldrs.htmIf that metric were being tabulated today, Dudley is the kind of guy—with his .601 True Shooting Percentage and 2.1:1.0 assists-to-turnover ratio last season—who, like Elie back then, might make the top-twenty leader board. Elie could do more off the dribble than Dudley, including running pick-and-rolls, and he was more athletic, but their total value may be similar.
The kinds of players listed at that link were the types who media members and fans either valued correctly or severely underrated. The big names who did not make that list were often overrated, at least offensively. What the guys on that list all had in common was that they were intelligent and/or selfless players who understood how to play within their limitations (or how not to force matters) in order to eliminate 'bad plays' that would cost their team's offense. Indeed, Dudley is exactly that kind of player.
Of course, we are rather splitting hairs here. Dudley is the sort of player who can make a contending club, such as the '09-'10 Suns, better, much as Elie did in Houston and San Antonio (and, to a lesser degree, maybe even Phoenix in his final season in '00-'01). But like Elie, Dudley is not the kind of player who will make a bad team notably better—hence the '12-'13 Suns. The question is how bad Phoenix will be next year. I am not sure, but the Suns still seem like a gigantic construction zone to me. Bender and Chriss are extremely young and inexperienced, and Phoenix almost has the look of a college team in places. I do not sense that enough of the current players really complement each other, and the Suns are still missing what they need the most, which is a guy who can make the game easier for everyone around him, creating continuity and cogency. Of course, those players are fairly rare by definition, but you need at least one or two of them to become a serious threat. There may be some intriguing diamonds in the rough on this roster, but I have the feeling that Phoenix will need to make at least one or two more big trades down the road in order to create some coherence.
