Jonas Valanciunas

[Ruzious]

Vucevic did do very poorly in the athletic testing, and I'd guess JV would have done considerably better. Having said that, Vucevic does appear to be underrated, imo. He's a physically imposing player with very good skills for his size and moves around much smoother than a somewhat similar NBA player - Zaza Pachulia.

[brassviews]

Apparently, the buyout for Valanciunas is bigger than expected. He may have to withdraw or end up staying with draft fall.

[tidho]

Apparently, the buyout for Valanciunas is bigger than expected. He may have to withdraw.

Is this new info? It seemed like the full details of the buyout were known three weeks ago. Unpleasent, but not crippling.

[droponov]

How big is it? How big was it expected to be?

[trenekas]

I am confident that he will participate in the NBA draft. In Lithuania does not have any knowledge about the withdrawal of the application. In addition, rumors say that, despite the large buyout he will remain in draft

[droponov]

It's like the 8 fouls per 40 minutes thing, projecting a foul prone career in the NBA. It's absolute nonsense.

(as a side-note, it doesn't make any sense to measure fouls - or rebounds or whatever - per 40 when talking about international leagues. That's the full length of the game and players aren't used as intensively as the are in the NBA. It's extremely rare to see a player on the floor for 30 minutes. The convention is to use the per 28 metric. With fouls it's more relevant because players can foul at a faster rate because they know they won't stay on the floor time enough to fool out).

Valanciunas was a foul machine in the first half of the regular season (6.4 fouls per 28, fouled out in 2 of his first 4 games). In the following stage, he averaged 4.4 fouls per 28, which is a pretty normal number for a player with Valanciunas' role (defensive/energy player).

So, is he foul prone? Or he was as foul prone as one would expect a 18 years old rookie to be when competing at that level? Why did he improve? What kind of fouls did he cut? Will he be foul-prone in the NBA? Why? Is it something that will hinder him on a long time or something that he'll quickly grow out of? What does he need to work out to foul less? Does he lack awareness, is he too eager to defend, is it because he doesn't pick team schemes well, is it on 1x1 plays, is it because he lacks size, or lacks experience? How much each one of these factors contribute? And then you can to do detail: is it the footwork, the hands? In which situations? Is it defending the post 3/4 or straight up? Why, does the player sticks his foot between the opponent legs or does he lack fundamentals? Etc. Etc. And is it really a problem when by the end of the season he was fouling at a normal rate?

This is an interesting discussion. Of course, being prepared to have this discussion would force one to actually see games, not highlight reels.

These are all very good questions that a Valanciunas expert/scout would be able to answer.

I assume the reason we use per 40 is because that's what DX's database has. It allows us to look at something like this http://www.draftexpress.com/stats.php?y ... e=&sort=26 and see JV at T-6 in all of Euroleague in foul rate. Can't hide behind different rules to justify that. He's a big time fouler on the curve too.

As for his progression over the year. This is a good source: http://www.hoopsstats.com/basketball/fa ... 3/date-2-1 He's still dropping 7, 8, 9 foul per 40 games in the last act of the season. His last 7 games

3 fouls in 3 minutes (35 per 40)
1 foul in 10 minutes (4 per 40)
2 fouls in 16 minutes (5 per 40)
4 fouls in 21 minutes (8 per 40)
3 fouls in 12 minutes (9 per 40)
3 fouls in 16 minutes (7 per 40)
3 fouls in 23 minutes (5 per 40)

Total: 19 fouls in 101 minutes, or 7.53 per 40

Just his last 4 games = 13 fouls in 72 minutes, 7.22 per 40

Doesn't look that improved to me

You can use childish tricks like including an obvious outlier where he got 3 quick fouls in the second subsample as much as you want: the improvement is still undeniable.



Isn't the improvement easy to visualize? I think it's quite obvious. He started the series averaging one foul every 3 minutes and he finished the season with a 1 foul per 5 minutes ration.
You say that 13 fouls in 72 minutes doesnt' look like improvement to you but that looks like you're trying to impugnate your own ability to understand simple numerical expressions - it took him 50 minutes to get his first 13 fouls. 72 to get his last 13. That's a 50% improvement! If you can look at that chart and say you can't see a significant improvement, I don't know what to say.

But my post was more about your "methodology" than Valanciunas. The fact is of the matter is that the only reason you say Valanciunas is foul prone is because he played in the Euroleague last season. That's why I said it was important to answer that question about a 18 years old playing at that level. Valanciunas was never exceptionally foul prone playing against his peers or at lower levels. So, if Valanciunas was playing in a non-Euroleague team or in the NCAA, would you call him foul-prone? I don't think you would and yet he'd be the exact same player.... without the benefit of the experience.

When evaluating prospects, the "why" and the "how" are more important than the "what". He was foul prone in the Euroleague but wasn't at lower levels. Why? To know why, you need to know how he collected those fouls. And only then you can project him to be a foul-prone player through out his NBA career or to be just another big who struggles with fouls in his first couple of years at the pro level but improves significantly afterwards, only then you can assess his chances of "fixing" that problem. But how can you go there without actually seeing the player? You can't, you're just making wild assumptions based on superficial knowledge - at best they're irrelevant, at worst they're flat out misleading.

Fouls are not a sure thing to sink Val. But it's rolling a dice that he can fix that and that it's not an issue related to defensive awareness, that the game will not be just too fast for him in the NBA as it is for a lot of bigs. Then it's rolling another dice that his body will develop right, that he'll add strength without losing all mobility and lift. Then it's rolling another dice that he makes a big leap on the offensive end. With every dice roll the %s go down. That's why taking projects who are dice rolls in body, game and mind fail so often. It's hard to hit all 3. You're usually lucky to hit one. Why not take a player who has to hit one dice instead of 3?

That's simply not how things happen. Your analogy with rolling dices is extremely appropriate for the way you approach this thing, considering that you admit you don't know the players, but again, that's why teams scout them using a completely different approach.

Player A, B and C can have the exact same weaknesses on paper but their probabilities of "fixing" them can vary widely and how good they can become in those aspects can vary even more. There's no discrete uniform distribution as there is with the probabilities of getting one side in a dice roll. That's why detail is important - it's the only way of getting as close as possible to the outcome, of having a good guess and not be limited to it may happen and it may not happen. With every dice the % goes down but the % of hitting any given dice is a lot higher for some prospects.

This is why I don't like superficial evaluations based on buzzwords like (great/lousy) "athleticism". A guy like you believes that Gerald Green or Joe Alexander have great athleticism because they're explosive leapers and can dunk emphatically but on a basketball court they slide as fast as Brian Cardinal and they leave the floor as quick as Brian Scalabrine. And an extensive collection of superficialities doesn't make detailed insight.

Regardless of how much you believe in your "seeing players doesn't matter methodology", in the end you'll end up Krstic - soft, slow-footed, defense-less, inefficient jump-shooting big who can't rebound to save his life - as a good comparison to Valanciunas - a tough, defensive minded, big who loves to rebound and scores efficiently. Evaluating prospects is more an art than a science, so difference of opinions will always happen, but some opinions are anchored on more solid ground than others.

[Dr Positivity]

As I mentioned, he averaged 7.22 fouls per 40 his last 4 games. 7.2 is still really bad in a 5 foul league and the biggest reason Val can only play 15mpg. So no there is not a drastic difference between including that 3 foul/3 minutes game and leaving it out. The game after that he has 1 in 10 minutes which is one of his least foul prone games. Combined that's 4 in 13 minutes which is a normal number for Val.

Green was a very good athlete, he just had no game except chucking 3s and no head for the game, plus he had little lower body strength. Alexander was always a guy who could jump but not move quickly side to side. And he also had one of the worst feels for the courts I've ever seen. He was SF Thabeet upstairs.

Val averaged 6.2 fouls per 40 in the Lit league this year which was by far the highest number on his team. "Not foul prone" is false. He wasn't *as* foul prone, but he played in a much worse league.

You talk so much about the how and not the what, and I agree. That's how I see prospects too. It's about TOOLS - Your body talent is a tool, your skill is one, your head is one. If anything I think people (not specifically you) are looking at Jonas' rebounding and scoring adjusted numbers and seeing the what and not the how. It's very impressive Jonas finishes 65-70% of his points at the rim. That doesn't mean he has the athleticism, strength, or lift to be a good finisher in the league. DX loves his pick and roll stats in the EL. How good is he actually at the how and not why of pick and roll play - Setting picks, speed rolling to the basket and finishing, ability to hit the pick and pop (this might be his best in that area). Is he a good pick and roll player for reasons that will translate into the NBA, or because he's a mobile 7 foot 7'6 guy in a league where nobody can matchup with his height and his athleticism weaknesses don't matter, with good hands. Being a good pick and roll player comes down to being good at scoring. If he ask me, a 7 footer who doesn't get off the floor and will be at a strength disadvantage for years, is not set up well to finish and run the pick and roll in the NBA. You need to either be really strong or really explosive to kill it finishing and Val is neither. As you said, it's about the what and not the how. That's exactly why I'm not on the Val bandwagon. Val can put up his 20 and 14 numbers in the EL and get the staticians drooling. If he puts up those stats with a toolset that won't translate to the NBA, it means as much as Ammo's college stats.

Back to the fouling. My concern is that fouling a lot of the time indicates awareness level. Thabeet fouls so much cause he can't read the game. It goes too fast and he can't see the angles before he gets his arms up. JV's defensive awareness has been listed as a concern. Even DX says so. Locke points it out in his video. It's not a secret. It's been passed off as an age thing but it's a concern.

There is no question that Val is foul prone at this point. It's not a death sentence. But it's one more thing he has to fix to go along with his body and his game. If his fouling is a result of poor awareness it's a very hard thing to fix. It also lends to questions like "What if Val needs to play hard and aggressive to put his rebounding and putback numbers?" Val can put up 15 and 11 adjusted in the NBA on high %s and make Hollinger love him, but if he's picking up 3-4 fouls in 15 minutes doing it, his real stats will look like 8 and 6 backup big which is exactly his present role in the Euroleague. Jordan Hill puts up 13, 10 and 1.7 per 36. He can only do it for 15mpg so he's really putting up a 5, 4, 0.7.

[Ruzious]

What 18 year old active center playing in a quality men's league isn't foul prone? I think everyone knows it'll take him some time to adjust to the NBA. Kid just turned 19. He'll adjust.

[Ruzious]

Apparently, the buyout for Valanciunas is bigger than expected. He may have to withdraw or end up staying with draft fall.

Link? Source?

[Steely Reserve]

Didn't Smooth's foul chart comparison effectively neutralize this 'foul prone' debate?

lol

RealGM posters try way too hard to be smart. It's a turn off. LMAO @ foul rate being a reason to not draft Valanciunas.

*rolling on the floor in laughter*

[brassviews]

Valanciunas will be at Eurocamp after all according to reports. He's expected to talk with some NBA teams. Certainly, the interest will be primarily on his buyout.

http://www.lithuaniabasketball.com/news ... eviso.html

[NO-KG-AI]

I never understood not letting a valuable player foul out. I hated when the Blazers would always sit Oden so fast with 4 fouls, and he'd finish with 4-5. Why not just let him play through it? Is getting the 5th or 6th foul really going to hurt you more than help? Because the minutes he'll play will probably be very valuable.

[S.W.A.N]

You talk so much about the how and not the what, and I agree. That's how I see prospects too. It's about TOOLS - Your body talent is a tool, your skill is one, your head is one. If anything I think people (not specifically you) are looking at Jonas' rebounding and scoring adjusted numbers and seeing the what and not the how. It's very impressive Jonas finishes 65-70% of his points at the rim. That doesn't mean he has the athleticism, strength, or lift to be a good finisher in the league. DX loves his pick and roll stats in the EL. How good is he actually at the how and not why of pick and roll play - Setting picks, speed rolling to the basket and finishing, ability to hit the pick and pop (this might be his best in that area). Is he a good pick and roll player for reasons that will translate into the NBA, or because he's a mobile 7 foot 7'6 guy in a league where nobody can matchup with his height and his athleticism weaknesses don't matter, with good hands. Being a good pick and roll player comes down to being good at scoring. If he ask me, a 7 footer who doesn't get off the floor and will be at a strength disadvantage for years, is not set up well to finish and run the pick and roll in the NBA. You need to either be really strong or really explosive to kill it finishing and Val is neither. As you said, it's about the what and not the how. That's exactly why I'm not on the Val bandwagon. Val can put up his 20 and 14 numbers in the EL and get the staticians drooling. If he puts up those stats with a toolset that won't translate to the NBA, it means as much as Ammo's college stats.

Where to begin... okay being a good pick and roll player come down to being good at scoring... false completely false.

There are a gazillion ball players out there who can score, it does not make them good pick and roll players.

Pick and Roll is less about your ability to put the ball in the hoop then it is about your ability to read defenses and react to the way your team mate comes off the screen.The ability to find the seems in the defense and get yourself into position to recieve the pass. The soft hands necessary to recieve a quick pass on the move and then look to the hoop.

Amir Johnson is an excellent pick and roll player but by no means is he considered a scorer.

The one thing that could help him get better at pick and roll would be getting bigger and stronger to increase his ability to finish at the rim against the bigger more athletic players of the nba. Does anyone think that this kid not going to get bigger and stronger as he matures?

If this kid does nothing else besides getting bigger and stronger over the next two years (develops no jumpshot new post moves etc etc.) he will still be able to have a solid nba career because he does three things very well

Rebound
Hit foul shots
Screen and Roll

Those skills alone make you you a valuable player. Add a 15 ft jump shot or a reliable set of low post moves and you are talking about an all-star.

[Dr Positivity]

Amir is a solid scorer. His combination of athleticism/strength and hands make him one of the best finishers in the league. That's all part of being solid at scoring. 13ppg .60 TS% per 36. He is helped by having a PG as good at the pick and roll as Calderon on the team, though.

Val has good hands, I'm not convinced in his finishing at this point due to his lack of strength and lift.

[S.W.A.N]

Amir is a solid scorer. His combination of athleticism/strength and hands make him one of the best finishers in the league. That's all part of being solid at scoring. 13ppg .60 TS% per 36. He is helped by having a PG as good at the pick and roll as Calderon on the team, though.

Val has good hands, I'm not convinced in his finishing at this point due to his lack of strength and lift.

He is 19. Strength will come, as for lift.... When you are 7'0 with huge wing span your need for lift is a little less than the average player.

The hands are the key, and the reason I want Val more than Bismack. Athleticism is great, but BB Iq and soft hands are what seperate the grinders from the stud's.

Bismack looks to have the basketball insticts but not the hands.
Jonas has the instincts and the hands, lacks the athleticism.

Hell of a lot easier to hire a trainer to build strength than it is to teach soft hands.

edit:

you bring up a good point that I failed to mention when describing pick and roll, a huge part of the success of the play depends on the guard. With no Stockton there is no Malone.

If we draft Val we better keep Calderon

[droponov]

As I mentioned, he averaged 7.22 fouls per 40 his last 4 games. 7.2 is still really bad in a 5 foul league and the biggest reason Val can only play 15mpg. So no there is not a drastic difference between including that 3 foul/3 minutes game and leaving it out. The game after that he has 1 in 10 minutes which is one of his least foul prone games. Combined that's 4 in 13 minutes which is a normal number for Val.

Green was a very good athlete, he just had no game except chucking 3s and no head for the game, plus he had little lower body strength. Alexander was always a guy who could jump but not move quickly side to side. And he also had one of the worst feels for the courts I've ever seen. He was SF Thabeet upstairs.

Val averaged 6.2 fouls per 40 in the Lit league this year which was by far the highest number on his team. "Not foul prone" is false. He wasn't *as* foul prone, but he played in a much worse league.

Okay, we've moved over from the crazy "no progress" stance, which is a nice development. Now you claim he's still foul prone, just not as foul prone as you thought.

But you're wrong again. You talk about how 6 fouls per 40 is too much in a "40 minutes league" but nobody plays 40 minutes or anything close to it. That's why I said that standard would mislead you.

Let's see real numbers:

Valanciunas averaged 3 fouls and 20:58 minutes per game. http://bit.ly/lFy2d2

The starting center in their team, the well established veteran Milko Bjelica, averaged 2.8 fouls and 20:28 minutes per game. http://bit.ly/iXM9Tm

And you call this "by far"? C'mon, you're just spinning stuff at this point. It's basically the same fouling rate. This is a negligible difference, basically non-existent. And frankly, if you factor the shots that one and the other contest and their defensive energy - Valanciunas averages 2 blocks per game in teh same time, Bjelica... 0.5 - I'd argue that Valanciunas is actually the less foul-prone of them.

Now that we've settled that the "by far" was bogus, is this at least minimally foul prone? A guy fouling 3 times in 20 minutes? A player whose role is to get on the floor, play hard for 20 minutes or so, sometimes more, sometimes less, be a defensive and rebounding presence, block some shots, intimidate, bring some energy to the game and then go back to the bench? It's not, you only think it is because those numbers would imply foul-proneness for a starting NBA player. But considering his role and the competition, it's not being foul-prone.

Let's look at the centers of the other good team in the Lithuanian league, the one that beat Valanciunas' team in the finals:
Travis Watson - 3.9 fouls/13.7 minutes. This is a 32 years old Euroleague veteran.
Trent Plaisted - 3 fouls/17:45 minutes. A guy with some 3 or 4 years of pro experience.
Marjanovic - 1 foul/10:26 minutes. Another guy who's been a pro for 5 years or so. The only one who fouls at a lower rate than Valanciunas (not by much).

Now factor that he's a 18 years old getting accostumed to the pro-game.

I told you that using weird metrics would end up misleading you.

You talk so much about the how and not the what, and I agree. That's how I see prospects too. It's about TOOLS - Your body talent is a tool, your skill is one, your head is one. If anything I think people (not specifically you) are looking at Jonas' rebounding and scoring adjusted numbers and seeing the what and not the how. It's very impressive Jonas finishes 65-70% of his points at the rim. That doesn't mean he has the athleticism, strength, or lift to be a good finisher in the league. DX loves his pick and roll stats in the EL. How good is he actually at the how and not why of pick and roll play - Setting picks, speed rolling to the basket and finishing, ability to hit the pick and pop (this might be his best in that area). Is he a good pick and roll player for reasons that will translate into the NBA, or because he's a mobile 7 foot 7'6 guy in a league where nobody can matchup with his height and his athleticism weaknesses don't matter, with good hands. Being a good pick and roll player comes down to being good at scoring. If he ask me, a 7 footer who doesn't get off the floor and will be at a strength disadvantage for years, is not set up well to finish and run the pick and roll in the NBA. You need to either be really strong or really explosive to kill it finishing and Val is neither. As you said, it's about the what and not the how. That's exactly why I'm not on the Val bandwagon. Val can put up his 20 and 14 numbers in the EL and get the staticians drooling. If he puts up those stats with a toolset that won't translate to the NBA, it means as much as Ammo's college stats.

The idea that nobody can matchup with Valanciunas height in the Euroleague is absurd. In fact, it was the other way around, Valanciunas struggled quite a bit because he isn't as developed physically as his counterparts were. That's one of the reasons why he fouled so often.

He's a good pick'n'roll player because he sets excellent screens, at the proper angles, with his feet well positioned relatively to the ball-handler, he gets wide and low, he's tough handling the contact, he has great timing rolling off the screen, the fundamentals to know how and when to roll, to which side roll, great hands to catch the passes and a combination of length, body control and soft touch that allows him to convert if he gets the ball (and even if he wasn't a good finisher, that wouldn't make him a non-valuable player in the screenroll game). I also think you underrate his athleticism. Sure, he lacks the explosiveness and the leaping ability of guys like Dwight Howard. But if he had that, and considering his length, hands, fundamentals, touch, motor and work ethic, he'd be the clear number 1 pick in this draft (and in pretty much every other one). not a top-10 one. Anyway, great hands, length, mobility, smarts and fundamentals work everywhere. That's why stats like rebounds translate so well from the Euroleague to the NBA. They do from college but even better from the Euroleague, there aren't teams with 6'6'' short-armed bigs to allow stat padding.

There is no question that Val is foul prone at this point. It's not a death sentence. But it's one more thing he has to fix to go along with his body and his game. If his fouling is a result of poor awareness it's a very hard thing to fix. It also lends to questions like "What if Val needs to play hard and aggressive to put his rebounding and putback numbers?" Val can put up 15 and 11 adjusted in the NBA on high %s and make Hollinger love him, but if he's picking up 3-4 fouls in 15 minutes doing it, his real stats will look like 8 and 6 backup big which is exactly his present role in the Euroleague. Jordan Hill puts up 13, 10 and 1.7 per 36. He can only do it for 15mpg so he's really putting up a 5, 4, 0.7.

Of course he's going to foul too much once he joins the NBA. That's what young bigs of his age do. But teams don't draft players for 1 or 2 seasons. That's why I doubt many of them - or any of them, actually - shares your concern about his foul rate or his strength. He fouls at the rate you'd expect a player of his age/position/type of game to foul and he has the strength you'd expect an European player of his age to have. You don't understand that because you're too superficial.

[karolis1221]

dont argue with mufasa hes posting same thing everyday oh and scouting prospects only by youtube highlights.

[Dr Positivity]

"By far" the most on his team was probably too much. He's still the most foul prone player on his team. http://www.eurobasket.com/team.asp?Cntr ... 683&Page=3 His 3.2 sticks out.

What do you think of this: http://www.lkl.lt/statistics/players/en/?ss=18 Jonas V. 14th in the LKL in fouls per game. 6th for Cs. That's still foul prone. It's not as much as the Euroleague where he's T-6th, but that's because this is the Lithuania league where nobody is close to NBA caliber. I rest my case: JV has always been foul prone, he was just less foul prone in the LKL than EL for obvious reasons. He wasn't rookie Blake Griffin fouling in the LKL then only picked them up cause of the jump to the EL. 6.1 per 40 in the Lithuania league is still not a good number for a guy head and shoulders about the rest of the league in talent

Fouling gets WORSE as the competition heightens and the game gets faster. Guys like Thabeet, Jordan Hill, and Oden didn't have trouble at the college level and then couldn't escape it in the NBA. The Euroleague is too big for him? Well guess what, the NBA is much bigger. 6/40 in the Lit league and 8/40 in the EL, means if he got dropped in the NBA right now there's almost no way he's not a 6 per 36 guy. If he can't do it there, how will he in the NBA?

Here's what I'd have liked to see out of JV to say fouling is not an issue and only a result of his jump: http://www.fibaeurope.com/cid_KNce8jInH ... 38682.html AB played a lot of minutes and didn't pick up fouls at higher rate than he does in the NBA, against much better competition than the Lit league.

[Collymore]

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

[erudite23]

I think its clear that JV is foul prone. Any argument otherwise is stupid. With that stated, I think its not nearly the problem that Mufasa is making it out to be, either. Many bigs, especially ones that pride themselves in rebounding, defending and blocking shots, are foul prone when they come to the NBA. Derrick Favors had an excellent rookie season but averaged 6 PFs per 36. But he will almost certainly adapt moving forward. JV has the height, skill and motor to make it in the league. I think his mobility and athleticism will be at least average. I do think that he will struggle with foul trouble early, but my belief is that 3 or 4 years in he will have overcome it and settled into a starting role and be a valuable contributor to a team.