Knightro wrote:Bamba made subtle improvements statistically (PER, TS%, REB%, BLK%, WS/48, OBPM, DBPM, VORP all increased) and significant improvements in not completely killing the team when he stepped on the court.
Year 1
PLUS/MINUS PER 100 ON COURT -14.1
PLUS MINUS NET PER 100 -18.8
Year 2
PLUS/MINUS PER 100 ON COURT +1.6
PLUS MINUS NET PER 100 +3.5
But he's still a long way off from being a high-minute player. The main thing for him this offseason is getting his body and conditioning right. If he can maintain the weight he put on in a healthy and in-shape way, it should benefit him.
Truth is somwhere in between. He wasn't top 10 worst player last year like numbers suggested, nor he improved all that much this year.
But once you replace Jerien Grant, Martin, Jonathan Simmons , Wes Iwundu bench with clear imrovments in DJ Augustin ( full time backup), way more games of MCW, still solid Ross and combine if with Clifford finally giving up on idea of playing all bench players at once, you get this.
When you run 3 men lineups, almost all best Magic lineups come with DJ, player who Bamba played most min, and by default, all the worst are ones with Fultz ( and that's thrend through whole XY- number of players lineups).
To make whole story short, him playing with savvy veteran like DJ brought better version of Bamba than he could ever be in rookie year playing with no NBA level talent PGs.
He probably did improve a bit on his own, but when you look at his numbers, they are all identical. His FG% got down, but his TS improved by 0,3%, his RPM only improved by value of players around him, where his DRPM stayed the same , same with his win share, he stil stands in this poor one assit to one turnover ratio, his fouls are still sky high.
His pick&roll is still complete liability ,as he does not have athletics nor footwork to catch a ball and make a leap without making it too complicating . And i think that's a bottom line with Bamba. He was brought to be that athletic freak with huge wingspan like Gobert and it turned out he is slow and unathletic. And he never had any post or scoring skills to be worth mentioning.
Looking where NBA is going, i just can't imagine him being anything more than career backup at this point.
Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon