NoDopeOnSundays wrote:Chanel Bomber wrote:Bro I was referring to Suggs, not Obi
Chanel Bomber wrote:
This franchise had four top 10 picks in a row and they selected Frank, Knox, RJ and Obi. None of these players has proven to be merely a good NBA player.
You clearly say Obi is in the same category as Knox and Frank, ie not good players, then later you try to say you're agnostic about him being good.
- Melo scored pretty high in isolation scoring in some years, and never ranked below the 50th percentile since isolation defense started being tracked. Was he a good defender on the whole? You know the answer to that. I see the same with RJ. The sample size is pretty small too (59 possessions), so you have to wonder if there isn't some year-to-year variance since he ranked low in the previous two years. Let's see what the numbers look like next year. I think overall he has been very disappointing as a defender. Does he have the potential to become a decent defender? Sure. But I think his lack of foot speed will prevent him from becoming a stand-out defensive player.
Is this a joke? Being in the 87th percentile when you're primary on the opponents best offensive option and where Melo fell are entirely two different things. This is such a bad and biased attempt at an argument that you may as well just say "Man F**k RJ" cause there's no reasoning with you and I'd respect that more than the long responses. Case in point, talking about variance when someone is in their 3rd season and mentioning sample size of isolation possessions. Just an example of how silly that point about the possessions are, Bridges only had 68 possessions in isolation, Smart had 41, Holiday had 40, Thybulle had 47. He literally had more possessions defending in isolation than 3 of the 4 all-defensive guards/wings, somehow that isn't enough of a sample size.
I feel like you make an argument hoping nobody checks the numbers, but I will. Also it doesn't matter what you think or how you feel about him as a defender, those numbers speak for themselves and no amount of you trying to discredit them will make me stop using them.
- About offense, my arguments rests on more than TS%. But he's an aggressive scorer who doesn't provide much besides scoring. So naturally his scoring efficiency matters more for him than players like Lamelo or Garland who also set up their teammates for efficient shots in addition to scoring. In addition to being inefficient, he's also a high-volume scorer (as opposed to last year where he was more muted), which further damages his impact. I don't put much stock into impact stats, but none of them depicts him as an impact player on offense. And he has regressed incredibly as a floor spacer, ranking dead last in efficiency from the corners after one good year from 3 (where teams mostly left him wide open to overload on Randle or Rose). So where does the positive contribution come from?
So, you're comparing him to point guards? When I have continued to say over and over again he's one of the very few two way wings under 23 years old in the league, you come back with two point guards who are actually terrible defenders? This is how unreasonable you have become, you have to go to two guys who don't play the same position because you know there are so few wings that play both sides of the floor. The point of RJ is that he projects as someone who can score, and who can defend, you know a two way wing, which is what he's actually been projecting at whether you see it or not. If he gives us a Jaylen Brown impersonation that would go further towards us being a winning team than any of these other players you keep mentioning.
- You mention becoming a better free throw shooter or making an extra lay-up like it's an easy thing to do and something we can count on. Not necessarily. LeBron is one of the hardest workers in the league and he never really improved his FT%. As far as finishing is concerned, it's hard to fix a lack of touch or athletic ability. I expect RJ to improve his TS% over the next few years. By how much is really the question, because he's so far away from league-average. Jamal Mashburn and Jrue Holiday - two of his closest statistical comps at age 21 or year 3 (Mashburn being by far the closest) - eventually reached league-average so I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility.
I have no doubt that he will improve on it, and he'll get stronger as well. Can you name some 23 and under two way wings for me, since we have to move him and he's not that good, please show me some of his peers that project out to being scorers and defenders. I want to see who you name to be honest, because once you start this exercise you'll quickly notice just how few of them there are.
RJ/Randle was not meant as a 1-to-1 comparison. They play different styles of basketball, and they have very different mental make-ups. But they share a lot of similarities: inefficient scorers, unreliable jumpshooters, mediocre athletes, a tendency to force the issue, and selfish in their own peculiar ways.
The RJ/Randle comparison is the epitome of laziness, and just use as a "gotcha", because you see the 21 yr old the same as the guy who has been in the league for 8 years, as though they're on the same development path. It's why you have to throw qualifiers on saying RJ is selfish, because you know once the numbers come out they blow holes in what you're saying, for instance RJ didn't even lead the team in touches when Randle was out, but Randle averaged 96.5 touches per game the 2nd time RJ was out
If RJ were even half as selfish as you say he would have cracked 80 touches per game, but he didn't do that, because he's fine with letting the offense work without being involved in every play.
One guy who can't play within the offense and the guy who can play within it aren't the same, no matter what their games look like to you.
Yes, I said Obi hasn't proven to be a good NBA player. He has been good in his role as a back-up, but surely our standard for being a "good" NBA player is more than 17 minutes per game back-up. I didn't say he was "bad". I said he hasn't proven to be "good" - with the disclaimer that he really hasn't had the opportunity to prove it in New York.
As far as the ISO defense numbers, I brought them up, as I was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised. We're debating those numbers, no need to resort to some emotive "there's no reasoning with you" type of response (or to questioning my intent) that you're
way above of. Either we're debating or we're not.
But back to the topic #1 I don't how these possessions are tracked, as the numbers seem low for
all the players, not just RJ with 59 tracked possessions. He ranked in the 29th percentile last season on only 53 tracked possessions, so I do think there might be some variance
either way. What these numbers say is that he was good/great at defending ISOs this season, not that he was a good/great defender. These stats are context-dependent. I'm fine with saying RJ was great at defending ISOs this past season. I'll say he's a good/great ISO defender if he can sustain it for longer than one season. Two seasons in a row should give us a better idea.
Melo was a decent man-to-man defender in New York even before these playtypes were tracked. Yet, he was still an awful team defender, and on the whole a mediocre (at best) defender. I don't think RJ's as bad as Melo as a team defender, but I think he's pretty weak in that aspect of defense. On the whole, I think he's mediocre on that end of the floor as of today, even as he had a very good year in terms of isolation defense. ISO defense is one aspect of defense was my point.
I brought up talented point guards because quality playmaking can help offset some deficiencies in individual scoring efficiency. A smart playmaker will create and find easy shots for their teammates, thus elevating the team's scoring efficiency. So it offers them a little bit of leeway as far as their own scoring is concerned, that pure/aggressive scorers (who don't offer much in terms of playmaking) like RJ simply don't have. I was not comparing RJ to Garland and Lamelo per se. Just making the point that RJ doesn't offer much offensively besides scoring (maybe some offensive rebounds since he's a driver? Genuinely asking), so his scoring efficiency is more relevant for him than other players who might elevate their team's efficiency in other ways. I don't see how this is controversial.
I personally think you're focusing too much on the 2-way wing archetype that you seemingly have already decided RJ matches, or will match. I think it's mostly theoretical, or hypothetical at this stage, but maybe you do acknowledge that. I don't think he fits the criteria of a quality two-way wing. Not yet at least. Will he? It's debatable. There's a number of young NBA wings I would pick ahead of RJ in a hypothetical draft, regardless of 2-way, 1-way, 0-way, including Bane, Poole, Maxey, Barnes, Mikal, Herro, *Edwards and Haliburton. I view RJ as an inefficient scorer and a mediocre defender - so he doesn't qualify as two-way to me right now. I respect your confidence regarding his ability to meet that standard in the future - I guess I'm more skeptical than you. I have already said I will admit to being wrong if he ever averages 20ppg on above-average efficiency, so we will see. If he becomes an elite defender, which is less quantifiable, same thing. I just don't think ISO defense numbers are a barometer for being a good defender on the whole.
I think both Randle and RJ were selfish at times this season. As I already said, it wasn't meant to be an exact comparison, and I know full well that RJ is younger than Randle. But I think they share similarities that I've already outlined. Randle with his ball-dominant ways obviously has a more deflating effect on the team, and you can make the case he plays more selfishly. He also passed the ball more often per touch than RJ (67% vs 57%), which doesn't reflect well on RJ either.
I'm not interested in debating who is worse. I didn't like the way either player performed or carried themselves this season. Randle was probably worse because of the body language, and the expectation that he was our "leader". Randle I have simply given up on because the financial commitment has already been made and I have already reached the acceptance stage of grief.
