sCoTTYwIN wrote:i am sick of ppl hating on deshawn. he shot 40% from behind the arc his first two seasons with us. last year he was INJURED. hes also the coolest guy on the team and the best backcourt defender we have. i realize that Mike miller can shoot better and Foye is younger, but neither of them are good defenders. flip flip is gonna want him out on the floor, trust me, im a season ticket holder. he also OWNS lebytch.
also, he has scored over 30 multiple times and he took 2nd in the 2001 dunk contest (and he was robbed anyays, should have been first )
Stevenson has scored over 30 once in his entire career: on Feb. 25, 2008 against New Orleans. That's one time out of 581 career games. Let's not make it sound like the guy can score with ease and voluntarily chooses to defer to other players. Stevenson is a really bad offensive player for a shooting guard.
Just for kicks, I ran a screen of role playing starting shooting guards. I looked only at players between 6-4 and 6-6 who average at least 25 minutes per game but averaged 12 or fewer field goal attempts per game. I took the results from the 2006/07 and 2007/08 seasons (Deshawn's best seasons) and ranked them by TS%. Of the 23 player-seasons that qualified, Deshawn's TS% ranked him 15th and 18th. So basically, even if you only look at low-usage role players, Deshawn's scoring efficiency is pretty darn poor - and that's in his best seasons.
I agree that Stevenson is an above-average defender, but he's absolutely not a lockdown defender. He's real good at chasing Ray Allen/Rip Hamiltion types around off the ball, but his on-the-ball defense isn't much better than average.
I think, given the right defensive system and coaching, the defensive gap between Foye/Miller/Young and Stevenson is small, much smaller than the offensive gap between them. Unless something goes horribly wrong, I don't see much of a role for Stevenson except as a situational substitution guy against certain matchups.
Magnumt
