RealGM

For a long time I've been a fan of the wages of wins journal's metric based insights into basketball. So the other day I was catching up on a summer's worth of wages of win posts and I saw that Troy Murphy made their list of most under paid players. http://dberri.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/ ... n-2008-09/

At number seven they value troy murphy very highly because he rebounds and scores, while improving greatly from 07-08' to 08-09'.

As much as we like to malign TMurda for not playing defense. Maybe he's not a defender but he is very good.

Another reason I'm optimistic was the drafting of Tyler Hansbrough, not because I expect him to be a game changer but because I expect him to be average. If you read this article http://dberri.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/ ... be-bryant/ you'll come to the part where it details that Danny is much more productive at the 3 than the 4.

This makes me happy because now with Queezy gone, Tyler in and our team a bit more forward heavy this will free up Danny to play his more productive position Small Forward.

Statistically Mike Dunleavy is very good; and he claims to be pain free for the first time via his blog. In this wages of wins article he discusses why Mike Dunleavy's net production is that of a star status player. http://dberri.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/ ... r-in-indy/ If Mike Dunleavy returns to his former self it will be a shot in the arm to this team.

The WoW season ending(ish) (66 of 82 game) article http://dberri.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/ ... n-indiana/ talks about Danny Granger a lot, From what I've heard Danny is continuously working on many of the areas he needs to improve. So not only do I think Danny can't score much more in each game I think he should pump up his other stats a bit.

All of this with some of the improvements we have made to our Defense and Energy have left me hopeful that our pacers will return to the playoff hunt.

Also a big Wages of Wins fan. Regarding Murphy, I posted this link before, but here it is again...

http://www.wagesofwins.com/Top152009.html

Troy Murphy had the number 1 rank for power forwards and the number 7 rank overall. Obviously, this is just based on one season. But it shows that we would likely have been a 20 win team without his contribution.

I think we'll see a potent Troy, Mike, and Danny combo this season. If we can get solid play from the center and point guard positions, we'll be good.

Well according to win score we need help at the SF position as well.

Yeah, I love Danny, but he is vastly over-rated by the general Pacers fan population. He has the potential to be awesome, but he still needs to improve his rebounding and defense a lot. Also, if we can keep him at the 3, that'll help a bunch.

There's always reason for optimism. Only 2 seasons of salary restraints!

taken from Jim O'Brien's recent "letter to the fans"

"Mike Dunleavy described Dahntay as the best individual defensive player he's ever seen and that certainly is a heck of a statement to make."

That's definitely a hell of a statement. I don't know how much weight we can put behind it, but for Mike to make a statement like that says a lot of Dahntay's defense. I'm wondering how long it's going to take for us to actually see this new defensive attitude's effect on the team's performance.

I liked the wordpress read, although I don't believe a lot of it (like a player should be paid nearly $50 million.... Hmmmm....) It was still interesting. I remember most Pacer people (I don't know about this board, but in general) thought we got a pretty good deal for Harrington. Now they consider him extremely overpaid.

I wonder what kind of money JO will get. I think he will actually be underpaid a lot after this year. If he wasn't part of the "evil past" I would think he'd be a good pick-up for the bench, for the right money, obviously. A guy to help out Hibbert and come off the bench as a potential multi-tool threat. His knees could be finished though, and so would he.