Leap Year - The Kemba Walker Thread III

[Liver_Pooty]

From ESPN Insider Tom Haberstroh's Player Profiles:

Scouting report
+ Undersized volume shooter who seems to have plateaued
+ Signature nasty crossover into mid-range jumper but a subpar passer
+ Takes care of the ball but a mediocre defensive player

Analysis
At what point do the Hornets move on from Walker? It's the third straight season the Hornets have watched Walker score 17-something points per game on volume, not efficiency -- and it's the third straight season with the Charlotte offense in the tank.

Walker isn't a natural distributor (5.4 assists per 36 minutes), but he keeps his turnovers to a minimum mostly because he's settling for easy mid-range jumpers so often. He has never been a threat from the outside, and while his long 2 mid-range jumper is solid, he gets himself in trouble in the 10 to 16 foot range where he shot just 30 percent.

It's a good thing he gets to the line as often as he does because he sports one of the worst effective field-goal percentages of any starting guard in the league. At some point, the Hornets have to make a decision whether Walker is their point guard of the future or a scoring supersub like Lou Williams or Jamal Crawford. That's not a bad thing.

Spot on.

[HornetJail]

It's going to be a make or break year for Kemba. This is the first year Kemba will have playing with something better than a bottom 3 offense around him. He's going to have some space to score (probably not enough till Al hits the bench, but we'll see), and some actual assist targets. I'm not worried at all about Kemba from what we've seen to this point, but if his numbers look the same despite the changes in our offense, then it becomes an issue. I expect he's going to have a lot of court time when Al is not on the floor this year, and I think it's for the best to separate them as much as we can.

[Liver_Pooty]

It's going to be a make or break year for Kemba. This is the first year Kemba will have playing with something better than a bottom 3 offense around him. He's going to have some space to score (probably not enough till Al hits the bench, but we'll see), and some actual assist targets. I'm not worried at all about Kemba from what we've seen to this point, but if his numbers look the same despite the changes in our offense, then it becomes an issue. I expect he's going to have a lot of court time when Al is not on the floor this year, and I think it's for the best to separate them as much as we can.

What I found interesting in the MKG piece is how much the author of these articles think MKG would benefit from a play maker at the PG position as opposed to someone like Walker.

I hope Kemba looks for MKG more off his cuts to the basket this year. Easy points.

[HornetJail]

I honestly don't think that MKG cut to the basket enough last year. Part of it is the defense being able to crowd the paint due to our lack of offensive spacing- that should change some this year.

[BlackOutBuzz]

"Mediocre defensive player" seems a bit harsh. Maybe man defense but Kemba is a wizard when it comes to stopping the fast break.

[BigSlam]

"Mediocre defensive player" seems a bit harsh. Maybe man defense but Kemba is a wizard when it comes to stopping the fast break.

I really think he gets a bum wrap with his defence. I think because he's small people just default to him being a poor or mediocre defender.

He's a hell of a better defender than most give him credit for. I'd take him as a defensive PG before I'd take a lot of other PG's around the league.

A lot.


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[yosemiteben]

Kemba had a very poor season defensively last year, and a really nice one the year before. I think his health issues last season had a lot to do with that dropoff.

The potential is there for him to be a very good to great defender for his position.

[DY_nasty]

Dude stopped playing defense as soon as he got paid. He was horrible last year.

He was scrappy at least before then. I never liked him matching up against more physical point guards, but at least he made it a point to compete and fight right back. Him showing that side was a rarity last year.

[yosemiteben]

Dude stopped playing defense as soon as he got paid.

I suspect his injury played had more to do with it.

[DY_nasty]

Dude stopped playing defense as soon as he got paid.

I suspect his injury played had more to do with it.

He was playing poorly on the defensive end before he had the surgery though. The effort wasn't there all year long.

On top of that, it wasn't just like he was getting beat off the dribble. He was just losing people, falling asleep, etc. That's mental. He didn't care nearly as much as he did before.

[yosemiteben]

Dude stopped playing defense as soon as he got paid.

I suspect his injury played had more to do with it.

He was playing poorly on the defensive end before he had the surgery though. The effort wasn't there all year long.

On top of that, it wasn't just like he was getting beat off the dribble. He was just losing people, falling asleep, etc. That's mental. He didn't care nearly as much as he did before.

Kemba had foot injury issues in the preseason before last season, so he wasn't in great condition coming in to the season. Add in the fact that our entire team was a train wreck in November / December, then he gets hurt in January, and I think last season was more of an anomaly.

I think Kemba is about as fierce a competitor as there is and that has been borne out in the way he has contributed to this franchise, so I just don't buy that he stopped caring because his deal got done.

[HornetJail]

The last half December and the first half of January was really the only stretch of the season where Kemba was actually playing his way. And we saw the results. He was great.

November, we were trying to incorporate Lance too much, and he was just horrific. Lance looked marginally better in December but got hurt halfway through. Kemba really took off after that happened because the floor opened up and he was always the one with the ball.

I think replacing MKG with a shooter like Lamb, Daniels, or even Marvin or PJ is going to bump up Kemba's numbers in shooting and assists.

Wouldn't surprise me if Kemba played most of this season the way he played that 4-5 week stretch in Dec-Jan. I'm really not as worried about offense as I am defense.

[yosemiteben]

I'm really not as worried about offense as I am defense.

Which just baffles me.

What is your lower limit of acceptable offensive performance?

What is your lower limit of acceptable defensive performance?

[HornetJail]

I'm really not as worried about offense as I am defense.

Which just baffles me.

What is your lower limit of acceptable offensive performance?

What is your lower limit of acceptable defensive performance?

Top 15 either way. With our personnel, we should probably be a ~15th ranked offense. I trust Clifford's defensive schemes more than some do on here, but after MKG got hurt, we probably have a bottom 5-10 defensive roster.

This team has been achieving its (minor) success over the last couple years solely because of defense. If we don't have a top 15 defense, which I honestly don't think is possible without MKG, we're going to have to compensate by being a top 15 offense. And if Al buys into the system and moves the ball like a center is supposed to do in a 4 out 1 in system, I think it's attainable. There are A LOT of "ifs" for this team now, and I think that's the single biggest one. We're obviously making the effort to do more 3 point shooting, and hopefully that will follow with an uptempo, ball movement-heavy offense that would fit the vast majority of this roster.

[yosemiteben]

I just don't think people appreciate the weight and extent of how **** our offense has been. We have never had an offense ranked higher than 23rd in the league since the Charlotte Bobcats franchise was founded. He haven't had better than bottom 5 offense in five years.

I'm optimistic that this season will be better, but as most around here know I tend to be optimistic by nature. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose which will be better this season, our offense or our defense, I'm still going with our defense because our worst case scenario for our defense has proven to be about league average even without MKG.

[HornetJail]

I just don't think people appreciate the weight and extent of how **** our offense has been. We have never had an offense ranked higher than 23rd in the league since the Charlotte Bobcats franchise was founded. He haven't had better than bottom 5 offense in five years.

I'm optimistic that this season will be better, but as most around here know I tend to be optimistic by nature. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose which will be better this season, our offense or our defense, I'm still going with our defense because our worst case scenario for our defense has proven to be about league average even without MKG.

It did? I remember our defensive ranking dropping into the late 10s and early 20s in the stretches that MKG has missed in the past. At least at those times, we had a McRoberts and/or Biyombo to help along the defense. We now rely on Cody Zeller as our best defensive big man, with no-defense bigs in Jefferson, Kaminsky, and Hawes alongside him. Batum is a better wing defender than anyone we've had outside of MKG, but he's not that caliber of defender. And our backcourt of Kemba, Lin, Roberts, Lamb, Daniels, PJ varies from "decent or solid sometimes" to "absolute garbage" on defense. We're going to be relying on offense to win games this season.

This isn't the same team from years' past that has always built "defense-first". We have shooters for like the first time in our franchise's existence, we let a budding defensive stud in Biyombo walk for 3 million a year just so we could gain shooting and passing ability. We traded a future defensive stud in Vonleh so we could draft Kaminsky without a massive logjam at the position, we traded for shooters that don't defend. We've put a real emphasis on offense for the first time in this franchise's existence.

So we can basically throw out what the Bobcats have done on offense in the past. We're a different team with a different identity.

[yosemiteben]

It did? I remember our defensive ranking dropping into the late 10s and early 20s in the stretches that MKG has missed in the past. At least at those times, we had a McRoberts and/or Biyombo to help along the defense. We now rely on Cody Zeller as our best defensive big man, with no-defense bigs in Jefferson, Kaminsky, and Hawes alongside him.

Late 10s is probably correct, which is essentially league average and significantly better than the Bobcats / post-Bobcats era offense has ever been.

We've done this several times, but I'll repeat that McRoberts was not an asset by any regular or advanced defensive metric, and our best defensive season in franchise history was the one where Biz had his minutes cut in half to 14 MPG (the year before, when he played twice that, we had the worst defense in the league) and MKG only played 24 MPG.

I have no idea why you label Kaminsky as no defense but talk like McRoberts contributed much defensively.

Al is a poor help defender, granted, but he is a very good man defender in the post and he is an elite defensive rebounder.

If we are healthy we will manage league average defense. We haven't shown capable of league average offense in 13 years.

[fatlever]

http://www.nba.com/hornets/kemba-walker-china-blog-10/7/15

[Joest2003]

I been watching he Hornets for a LONG time i never remember Walker being bad defensively. Only time I can remember a opposing guard really dominating him was Westbrook but he does that to everyone. Hes one of the quickest players in the league he uses that on D and also stops fast breaks like ive never seen a player before in my life. If im going to criticize something its deff the fg% thats really the only thing stopping him from being a John Wall/Kyrie type player.

[DY_nasty]

I been watching he Hornets for a LONG time i never remember Walker being bad defensively. Only time I can remember a opposing guard really dominating him was Westbrook but he does that to everyone. Hes one of the quickest players in the league he uses that on D and also stops fast breaks like ive never seen a player before in my life. If im going to criticize something its deff the fg% thats really the only thing stopping him from being a John Wall/Kyrie type player.

Lamar put together a season review on everyone

he detailed it pretty well. Kemba was a good defensive player until this past year.

Need to find the link