Raymond Felton vs TJ Ford

[HarlemHeat37]

Mahlinion- why do you think Felton is underrated? I haven't really seen why anybody would rank him better than they currently do..

[Goubot]

Felton has been, at best, an average point guard, but I think that a lot of people have completely written him off, which isn't quite fair. He's stayed at the same level of play throughout his career, but a lot of that can be attributed to poor coaching, which was especially apparent last year. He was playing out of position for a long time so that Jeff McInnis (worst player in the NBA last year, arguably) could start. It'd be easier to judge him with a few years of actual coaching, and Larry Brown could help a lot here.

But Ford is much better at this point, no question.

[tsherkin]

As a Bobcats fan, I have to say... TJ.

The injury thing is the only real issue. Plus sometimes TJ completely loses it during a game and tries to "take over" and shoots 10 shots in a row or something. But that's rare. Overall, from past production, when healthy, it's TJ.

Felton has one more year with a real coach (larry Brown) to either improve or be relegated to backup PG for some team somewhere.

I think this is a reasonably fair post; Felton is really terrible about scoring efficiency and doesn't have an advantage as a playmaker, so there really isn't anything he brings to the table that Ford does not except being bigger and lacking a history of potentially crippling injury.

Felton isn't a strikingly insightful player, either, but Larry Brown is a definitive teaching coach, so maybe he can do something positive for Raymond (of whom I thought quite highly when he was drafted, I'm mildly embarassed to admit).

Having said that, some of his offensive inefficiency is undoubtedly the product of bad coaching and being obliged to shoot 4 or 5 more times per game than he should have on account of the 'Cats being dumb and not giving Okafor enough shots and the Morrison experiment.

So if you reduced his shot volume to a more respectable pure-point type level (think Stockton, Nash), he could potentially be closer to the 45-47 % FG range, which would be awesome. He's not a scorer, so once he's allowed to stop pretending to be and his own scoring instincts are modified, he could improve and Brown, like his other namesake Hubie, is a guy who can do that (he did positive things for Jason Williams, you'll recall, did Hubie).

[Goubot]

Yeah, a lot of the times when I saw him, he had trouble picking his spots when penetrating. It seems like he would just go all the way to the basket even when it was clear he didn't have an especially good shot, and he'd either get stuffed or he'd be stuck with nowhere to go. Again, it probably didn't help that he was playing as SG for a lot of the year. If Brown can reel in this tendency and teach him when it's best to penetrate, it should benefit the team, because Felton has a good enough first step to draw defensive attention. He'd also need to get a credible jumpshot for Brown to be really happy about working with him.

I think he has some good tools, and if he's willing to listen to Brown, he'll benefit enormously.

[crowd goes wild]

I'll take Ford

[fluffernutter]

The only real positives I can come up with at this point regarding Felton are as follows:

(this is as a long time Bobcats fan, yes, we exist)

1) Good build and speed. Like a smaller Terry Porter; they were both thick yet still speedy and relatively immune to injuries. He's had a lot of scares but always comes back the next game or two.

2) Good crunch time scorer. Felton's shooting percentages suck, but they don't suck much worse in cruch times vs. normal. Meaning, they suck at the same rate, which is decent for crunch time scoring, because it is usually much lower than the normal scoring rate. A little odd. Felton is better than average under pressure.

3) Decent free throw shooter (links to 2, always seems to make free throws at the end of games).

4) Average or above average defender.

5) Capable of occasional great passes, but not very good at consistent "good" passes.

6) Decent ball handler.

7) Excellent splitter of double-teams (but not very good after he's split it).

That's about it. TJ has him beat in shooting, finishing, overall speed, agility, assist rate, etc.etc.

Felton's only real excuse has been the incredibly bad coaches he's had so far, and the decision to play him as a short, bad-shooting 2 30% of the time. Just terrible.

[RayFeltsFan]

Meh it's hard to judge them both Felts hasn't had a full season to run the point and has had horrible coaching since coming into the NBA like fluffer said earlier so it's still unclear whether or not he's a bust pg player. Next year we should actually see what he can do I think he's VERY much underrated and has been asked to do something he's not consistent at which is scoring. But with that said give me him w/ a Hall of Fame coach over another injury prone player which is the last thing the Bobcats need.

[Basketball1]

While I believe that TJ Ford is the better player when healthy, he has not been
healthy for a large portion of his career and the potential for a serious or even
career ending injury is too much to overlook.

Thus, I'd take Felton.

[T-Spot]

I can't really think of anything Felton does better than Ford. Ford is a better shooter, finisher, passer, creator [for himself and his team mates], ball-handeler, ect. Then again, I think TJ is very underrated and Felton is a lemon.

[Kabookalu]

It's gonna be hard for me to be unbias because I'm fairly bitter about the Ford trade (not that I'm not happy with Jermaine O'neal, just that I think we departed with the wrong point guard). Ford was one of the most exciting point guards to watch. He made eye popping passes without the intent of looking flashy, took over games when the Raptors went on their usual droughts of not being able to score and seemed impossible to contain, was a dazzling ball handler, broke down defenses like they were nothing (I still remember the game of him torching Boston's ironwall defense and made Rondo look like the worst PG in the league) and the few times we actually did push the break, Ford almost always finished it off because he was so good at finding trailers, cutters, etc. He turned Jason Kapono into our best perimeter cutter every time he made a backdoor cut, an ability that seems to be forbidden on our team.

As you can tell I liked Ford A LOT and don't think that this comparison is close (unless you're out of options for a 2 guard, Felton obviously fits that bill better). To me he seemed like a 3 point chucker and wasn't that good of a penetrator, though he did have talent when it came to passing the ball but liked to score the ball himself more.

[Harry Palmer]

Neither seems to be quite as good as the sum of their parts.