Best center under 6'7" ever

[NCHeels2008]

I'm curious to see a list of the people that used to throw him in on EVERY SINGLE trade proposal on this board. Hardly anyone's said a bad word about him in a year and a half, when mostly no one used to say anything good about him. It's really weird.

Chuckwagon FTW

[contract]

Chuck Hayes.

Wes Unseld?

[moofs]

maybe because he's improved a lot in that time.
He used to be super foul prone, missed layups and a free throw joke.
He's always played hard but now he plays smart too.

He's still a free throw joke, and he's never been foul prone outside of what was called for him to be.
That leaves that he's hitting his layups.
To which I respond:
1. 0.529 career FG%, WITH last year's 37% (which was a total aberration)
2. Who cares if he's hitting wide open layups so long as his FG% is good? The argument before has been that people wouldn't sag off of him as much, creating better spacing on the perimeter. Of course, that would have basically just shifted dynamics and introduced other problems elsewhere, but let's ignore that and I'll just point out what I did then - that the improvement would have been fairly insignificant. Say Hayes had shot 65% instead of 57% in 06-07, with no other repercussions to the team's play. He makes, in 78 games, 217 baskets instead of 192 - an improvement of 1 additional basket every 3 games.

That said, his offense has improved significantly this year. Previously, he wasn't likely to make nearly as many of the contested shots he's made thus far. He was also getting lots of love last year WITHOUT the offensive improvement (read: a significantly lower FG% and no notable post moves).

He said in an interview that he made the most of his fouls since he came off the bench, and that he would adjust given the starting role. He is still a free throw joke. The only thing he improved on was his layups, so people are cool with him now.