Notanoob wrote:Novocaine wrote:68% at the rim is an excellent number. I'm well aware that he isn't a shot-creator, hence why I mentioned his high potential as a role-player.
I checked the rebounding numbers. Valetine, I project to be an elite wing rebounder, had a 12.8% rebounding rate, as a senior and was the probably the best rebounding guard in the country. Beasley has a 10.1% as a freshman and being very underdeveloped athletically. And I bet that if we adjust the numbers to contested/uncontested rebounders, Beasley is even closer. That's another excellent number, especially for someone who has such a large margin to grow athletically as Beasley.
7.3% on unassisted 3s is higher than I'd expect. In any case, he'll be deadly when defenders try to chase him off the 3 point line or switch a big to him. He'll be great at sidestepping or attacking the close out with a few dribbles.
Like I noted, a number of other SGs finished as well as he did. 68% is good but it doesn't stand out when five other guys are about as good or better in your class at your position.
I suppose this is mostly semantics, but "five other guys are about as good or better" sounds like an elite tier to me. I checked your table: there are only two guys with a higher rimFG% - at .7 points higher, McClellan, who's a 23 years old senior, and LeVert, another senior. How on earth do you conclude Beasley isn't a good finisher from those numbers? And his role was that of a finisher, so obviously he has a larger percentage of shots unassisted - but so does McClellan, for that matter.
Look, a 68% FG at the rim is elite for a freshman guard. It's always been. You could even have 10 other guys with higher numbers, it'd still be elite, it'd just mean that class had lots of strong finishers. Numbers aside, anyone who has seen Beasley playing and can't figure he'll be a good finisher, knows little about basketball. He's equally adept of using both hands, showed the beginnings of a good floater, he can finish jumping off the wrong foot, can finish with an eurostep and is aggressive and tough. And this while still being a bit of a stick.
You conspicuously left out Daniel Hamilton, who is what an impact rebounder looks like at SG (16TRB%, 27DRB%). 12TRB% is really nothing to write home about at all. Being slightly above average at a skill not relevant to your position is not something to bother with.
I was going to ask what Hamilton, but I forgot. That's a ludicrous comparison. Have you actually watched these guys playing? Hamilton is more of a point-forward than a wing. He was quite often the second tallest man in his team lienups, and frequently paired with a big who can't rebound. He'd get tons of free rebounds by design, to allow him to kickstart their transition offense by having the rebounding bringing up the ball (and proceed to suck at it, but that's another story). Played as forward, always had 2 smaller guards alongside him, sometimes 3. Sure, if you call Hamilton a SG (I don't care much about positions, they don't make much sense in todays basketball), he's an elite rebounder. Like Kyle Anderson was an elite rebounder for a PG, or a SG, or whatever title you'd assign to him. The idea that a guard isn't an elite rebounder because he has lower rebounding numbers compared to guys like those is absolutely demented. If you put up the effort to scrutinize all the low mid majors and lower divisions, I'm sure you'll find other nominally backcourt players, or guys who could only play guard in the NBA if they were good enough, with godly rebounding numbers. It has no fruitful meaning. Numbers need to be contextualized.
You're also wrong with that tidbit about a 12% TRB%. I suppose that may be the case if you compare with oddities like Daniel Hamilton, but again, if you want to go by the numbers, that's a really bad way of doing it.
Okay, I queried NBA guards with a TRB% above 9% and who played at least 1000 minutes.
http://bkref.com/tiny/Ec1nxThere's a total of 13 players who met those conditions, so it's fair to say it's the elite of NBA rebounding guards. Feel free to change the thresholds if you wish. Let's see how many of them had higher rebounding numbers than Beasley as college freshman - I'll use per 40 numbers and, when available, TRB%.
Westbrook -3.4 per 40 - Worse
Rondo - 4.5 per 40 - Worse
Sefolosha - N/A, played in Europe as a forward
Will Barton - 6.5 per 40, 9.3 TRB% - Worse
Bazemore - 6.2 per 40, 9% TRB% (as a sophomore, freshman numbers n/a but feel free to check them) - NOPE
Evan Turner - 6.5 per 40 - Worse
Kyle Anderson - 11.5 per 40 and 15.7% - here we go, a 6'9'' player with a completely different role rebounding-wise, there's your Hamilton (a vastly better version, but still a dubious contributor at the NBA level)
Jeremy Lamb - 6.4 per 40, 8.7% TRB - Worse
Shabazz Muhammad - 6.8 per 40, 9.2% TRB - Worse
Tony Allen - 6.9 per 40 - Worse
Lance Stephenson - 7.6 per 40 - marginally better than Beasley, Stephenson was an offensive glass crasher in college
Brandon Rush - 7.4 per 40 - also marginally better
Michael Carter-Williams - 5.7 per 40 and 8% TRB% - Worse
Out of the best rebounding guards in the league, only two of them put very slightly better numbers than Beasley in college, while a 6'9'' point-forward put vastly superior ones. Yet you claim his rebounding numbers are nothing special because... you bizarrely decided to compare him to freaking Daniel Hamilton?
Beasley is a really good rebounder for his position. He's tough as nails, quick off the floor and a bulldog fighting for the ball. And rebounding isn't a super important skill for backcourt players, but it's still quite useful.
And sure, so are Valentine and Hamilton. That doesn't detract anything from Beasley rebounding though.
In my write up on SGs, you can see that Beasley had the lowest % of makes off the dribble (unassisted). Much lower and we are talking about literally no made shots off the dribble. You can't talk up his off the dribble shooting when he hardly made any shots off the dribble.
He made plenty of shots off the dribble, I saw them. And I'm going to guess assists were credited on plenty of his pull-ups because he'd shot after a couple of dribbles, against defenders closing out and such. And of course I can - I know when I see excellent shooting mechanics. He gains separation very easily with his first step and he makes his last dribble "hard", in order to bring the ball up into his motion. That's a fundamental that few players master at such a young age and he does.
Anyway, your description of Beasley as a guy who merely has "solid spot-up shooting" is dramatically wrong. If that's what your numbers told you, run away from them.