kcktiny wrote:Ben Wallace is universally regarded as one of the worst offensive players in the history of the league.
By who? Nothing could be further from the truth.
Could he shoot? No. But he never averaged as much as even 10 FGA/g in a season, and in his career averaged just 5 FGA/g. So his misses did not really hurt his team much.
Could he score? No. But a team does not need five scorers to be successful.
But Wallace had more than three offensive rebounds for every turnover over his entire 16 year career.
That is a very valuable offensive contribution.
I think that if you look at his usage, his turnover rate is less impressive. He was never trusted with the ball because no one would guard him more than like 4 feet from the basket and they would hack him knowing that he was incompetent from the line. No handles, not a threat to drive, like he was basically a no-go once he got the ball unless he could immediately just dunk it off an ORB or easy shovel pass. He was an absolute embarrassment on offense, but he was playable because his rebounding and defense were very valuable, particularly in-era. I think he'd be more challenging to play as much today.
Remember that you're talking about an 11.0 USG% player whose career OBPM is -0.1.
His TOV was even 13.8% on his career, which is actually garbage when you consider his usage rate. He was not a good offensive player at all. In-era, his D and rebounding made that irrelevant, though, because their impact was so high that they dramatically outweighed his incompetence on offense. That's the difference.
