Player of the Day: Andre Roberson

[RalphSampsonJr]

I see we have yet again come back around again to the same argument..
Just know that Billy (an NBA level coach getting paid millions) will continue to play him 25-30 minutes this season so strap yourselves in for a LONG season.
I'll be sitting there enjoying the games, while you guys watch in frustration thinking you know better than a professional NBA coach..

See the above post, regarding title teams and how much they played their defensive specialists, and who played over them. Those teams were well coached and won titles. They don't play their defensive specialist 30 minutes a night, or anything close to it.

And you think playing Robes 10-15 mins will?!

[slick_watts]

you can't have a serious discussion with someone who believes 'show me a team who won a championship with andre roberson' is a valid test for andre roberson's value to this team.

show me a team who won a championship with a point guard who averaged a triple double.

you can lead a horse to water...

on an aside, you know what many great teams have in common? elite defense. you know who really helps us have an elite defense? i'll give you three guesses.

[ThunderBolt]

you can't have a serious discussion with someone who believes 'show me a team who won a championship with andre roberson' is a valid test for andre roberson's value to this team.

show me a team who won a championship with a point guard who averaged a triple double.

you can lead a horse to water...

on an aside, you know what many great teams have in common? elite defense. you know who really helps us have an elite defense? i'll give you three guesses.

If we had traded Adams instead of Kanter and then let McDermott play SG, we would have had potential to have 5 guys score 30ppg. If each guy played 48 minutes we would average 150 ppg and go 82-0. This simply won’t happen if Roberson is in the lineup.

[RalphSampsonJr]

you can't have a serious discussion with someone who believes 'show me a team who won a championship with andre roberson' is a valid test for andre roberson's value to this team.

show me a team who won a championship with a point guard who averaged a triple double.

you can lead a horse to water...

on an aside, you know what many great teams have in common? elite defense. you know who really helps us have an elite defense? i'll give you three guesses.

This!!
Defense wins championships.
I know defense is harder to appreciate because unless it's a volleyball swat, it ain't making a highlight reel but is it really this hard for some people to see what's happening out there?!

Pleeease next time you anti Robersons watch a thunder game, watch him and what he gets upto on the defensive end. He is using his athletism perfectly when guarding guys out there. He is one of the best I've seen at dodging screens and following his man around the court.

defense is half the game and Robes is a top 3 perimeter defender in today's league.

He just came off being the thunders 2nd highest scorer in last seasons playoffs. That's PLAYOFFS not some game against the lakers. It was against the team with the 3rd best record In ball last season.
He now has more room to operate with these two new all stars! I don't understand how he is so easy to dismiss?!?

[RalphSampsonJr]

you can't have a serious discussion with someone who believes 'show me a team who won a championship with andre roberson' is a valid test for andre roberson's value to this team.

show me a team who won a championship with a point guard who averaged a triple double.

you can lead a horse to water...

on an aside, you know what many great teams have in common? elite defense. you know who really helps us have an elite defense? i'll give you three guesses.

If we had traded Adams instead of Kanter and then let McDermott play SG, we would have had potential to have 5 guys score 30ppg. If each guy played 48 minutes we would average 150 ppg and go 82-0. This simply won’t happen if Roberson is in the lineup.

I call this the "play too much 2K" theory

[spearsy23]

Who was it on the Cavs 2 years ago? How about those heat Teams? Or Dallas that Won? Or the big 3 Celtics teams?

Iman Shumpert
Norris Cole
Deshawn Stevenson
Tony Allen

Hahaha thanks again for making my point for me guys (saying guys here due to the AND 1).

So you mean iman shumpert, who came off the bench 15 minutes a game in the finals, behind defensive stalwart JR Smith who played 30 plus mpg in the finals?

Or Norris Cole (miss you NoCo!!) Who also came off the bench for Miami, played 15mpg in the finals, behind stopper Mario Chalmers.....and was a point guard?

Or deshawn Stevenson, who like the above guys played about 15 minutes per game in the finals, and was pulled from the starting lineup for defensive specialist JJ Barea after game 2, which ultimately propelled the mavs to the title (JJ was a huge x factor.....and not because of his D).

Or are you talking about Tony Allen, who appeared in 3 of the 7 finals games.....for 17 total minutes, playing less then Eddie "shutdown" house.

Take off the blinders, fellas. Those guys didn't play much on those teams. The better offensive options did, all of whom weren't strong defenders. They were all well coached, and played the appropriate 15 or so min a game, except for Allen (your poster boy for a Roberson comparison), who barely touched the floor in the finals. The 1 game Stevenson played close to 30 minutes, it's because he was hitting shots.

All those guys were better offensively than Roberson. Sorry to crush your argument here, but open your eyes to reality.

So your point when saying championship teams don't play defensive specialists is actually that they don't play them as much as we play Roberson? Because those seem like two very different arguments.

[hardenASG13]

you can't have a serious discussion with someone who believes 'show me a team who won a championship with andre roberson' is a valid test for andre roberson's value to this team.

show me a team who won a championship with a point guard who averaged a triple double.

you can lead a horse to water...

on an aside, you know what many great teams have in common? elite defense. you know who really helps us have an elite defense? i'll give you three guesses.

What a bad analogy.

What you are describing (a point guard averaging a triple double) is a superstar. Championship teams have those, and play/use them alot. Rely on them actually.

They don't, however, have defensive stoppers on the wing who aren't guarded and play 30mpg, like I pointed out. They play the better offensive guys those minutes, despite them being worse defensively. Just not okc.

[bondom34]

They don't have an iso heavy weak defending PF.

[slick_watts]

What a bad analogy.

no it's apt.

no team has ever won a title while fulfilling [insert narrow condition here]

this is a common arguing tactic for you. it's transparent, it's silly, and it leads nowhere.

because: yes, russell westbrook is a superstar. teams win titles with superstars all the time.

and, yes: andre roberson is an elite defensive role player. teams win titles with elite defensive role players all the time.

we have demonstrated that we can narrow either condition to the point where the opposite becomes true. but the more you narrow the conditions, the less meaning they have.

do you understand?

[sleestak33]

I see we have yet again come back around again to the same argument..
Just know that Billy (an NBA level coach getting paid millions) will continue to play him 25-30 minutes this season so strap yourselves in for a LONG season.
I'll be sitting there enjoying the games, while you guys watch in frustration thinking you know better than a professional NBA coach..

See the above post, regarding title teams and how much they played their defensive specialists, and who played over them. Those teams were well coached and won titles. They don't play their defensive specialist 30 minutes a night, or anything close to it.

At the end of the day it all comes down to this...does Roberson's defense offset his offensive deficiencies? The glaringly obvious answer to that question is absolutely not. How many points does he cost the team offensively because he misses shots any decent wing player would make, has no ability whatsoever to create his own offense, misses free throws, doesn't get the ball even when he's wide open because the other players know he will miss which leads to bad shots many times, etc.? How many points does he cost the team offensively because the other team literally doesn't guard him and uses his defender to double team or just stand by the lane which clogs everything up for other players trying to drive to the basket? You can make a good argument that offensively he costs the team double digit points game in and game out with his offensive ineptitude. How many points defensively does he really negate? If he plays a great defensive game he might negate 6-8 points but if you look at the elite players he does nothing whatsoever to hold them beneath their normal season scoring averages, especially when it matters the most in the postseason as Leonard, Thompson and now Harden have all easily surpassed their normal averages with him guarding them. KD averaged 37/game against Roberson in the regular season series against the Warriors. It's not that he's not a great defender it's that teams can simply run a pick and roll or high screen until he's out of the play. He is clearly a net negative player pretty much every game and he should be playing limited minutes in a backup role. Like you said there's no other team out there playing anybody resembling Roberson and most certainly not starting them and playing them over 30 minutes. That's just ludicrous.

[hardenASG13]

Iman Shumpert
Norris Cole
Deshawn Stevenson
Tony Allen

Hahaha thanks again for making my point for me guys (saying guys here due to the AND 1).

So you mean iman shumpert, who came off the bench 15 minutes a game in the finals, behind defensive stalwart JR Smith who played 30 plus mpg in the finals?

Or Norris Cole (miss you NoCo!!) Who also came off the bench for Miami, played 15mpg in the finals, behind stopper Mario Chalmers.....and was a point guard?

Or deshawn Stevenson, who like the above guys played about 15 minutes per game in the finals, and was pulled from the starting lineup for defensive specialist JJ Barea after game 2, which ultimately propelled the mavs to the title (JJ was a huge x factor.....and not because of his D).

Or are you talking about Tony Allen, who appeared in 3 of the 7 finals games.....for 17 total minutes, playing less then Eddie "shutdown" house.

Take off the blinders, fellas. Those guys didn't play much on those teams. The better offensive options did, all of whom weren't strong defenders. They were all well coached, and played the appropriate 15 or so min a game, except for Allen (your poster boy for a Roberson comparison), who barely touched the floor in the finals. The 1 game Stevenson played close to 30 minutes, it's because he was hitting shots.

All those guys were better offensively than Roberson. Sorry to crush your argument here, but open your eyes to reality.

So your point when saying championship teams don't play defensive specialists is actually that they don't play them as much as we play Roberson? Because those seem like two very different arguments.

Absolutely. It just makes no sense to roll them out 30 minutes a night ala OKC. That's too long to handicap your offense. Maybe not on a Tuesday on Milwaukee, but on the championship level, which okc has been on from 2011 until last year, it is too much. There's evidence for the evidence crowds from past champions....they simply don't commit to 1 way defensive wings anywhere close to 30 min a game at that level, and Roberson is an extremely bad offensive player compared to many defensive specialists as well. It makes it to hard to rely on stars pulling magic tricks all night, which is what OKC has tried to do unsucessfully.

[hardenASG13]

What a bad analogy.

no it's apt.

no team has ever won a title while fulfilling [insert narrow condition here]

this is a common arguing tactic for you. it's transparent, it's silly, and it leads nowhere.

because: yes, russell westbrook is a superstar. teams win titles with superstars all the time.

and, yes: andre roberson is an elite defensive role player. teams win titles with elite defensive role players all the time.

we have demonstrated that we can narrow either condition to the point where the opposite becomes true. but the more you narrow the conditions, the less meaning they have.

do you understand?

Yes............but do you understand I've demonstrated that teams, in fact, dont win titles in the modern NBA playing said defensive specialists 30 min a night? They play them about 15, choosing better offensive options to fill the larger minutes. So what your saying isn't apt?

And the stars play big minutes, and are heavily used, across the board, making the comparison wrong from your end....


So you can understand....you can't narrow the superstar side down at all.....teams have always won with them. Teams haven't won playing defensive specialists 30 mpg on the wing. They play about half that, which is what I propose for roberson. Why ignore the evidence of what smart
Past champions have done. You love evidence, it's right there!

[hardenASG13]

you can't have a serious discussion with someone who believes 'show me a team who won a championship with andre roberson' is a valid test for andre roberson's value to this team.

show me a team who won a championship with a point guard who averaged a triple double.

you can lead a horse to water...

on an aside, you know what many great teams have in common? elite defense. you know who really helps us have an elite defense? i'll give you three guesses.

This!!
Defense wins championships.
I know defense is harder to appreciate because unless it's a volleyball swat, it ain't making a highlight reel but is it really this hard for some people to see what's happening out there?!

Pleeease next time you anti Robersons watch a thunder game, watch him and what he gets upto on the defensive end. He is using his athletism perfectly when guarding guys out there. He is one of the best I've seen at dodging screens and following his man around the court.

defense is half the game and Robes is a top 3 perimeter defender in today's league.

He just came off being the thunders 2nd highest scorer in last seasons playoffs. That's PLAYOFFS not some game against the lakers. It was against the team with the 3rd best record In ball last season.
He now has more room to operate with these two new all stars! I don't understand how he is so easy to dismiss?!?

More room to operate!? Please, he was completely unguarded in the series, how much more room is he getting?

He was the second leading scorer. Shot uncharacteristically well on his embarrassingly wide open looks, while his defender clogged lanes for everyone else, like oladipo and Adams, and made Russ alot more inefficient and have to work alot harder.

You guys love evidence. There's evidence title teams in the modern NBA don't commit 30 minutes to 1 way defenders on the wing. They play half that, behind offensive options at that position

[RalphSampsonJr]

I see we have yet again come back around again to the same argument..
Just know that Billy (an NBA level coach getting paid millions) will continue to play him 25-30 minutes this season so strap yourselves in for a LONG season.
I'll be sitting there enjoying the games, while you guys watch in frustration thinking you know better than a professional NBA coach..

See the above post, regarding title teams and how much they played their defensive specialists, and who played over them. Those teams were well coached and won titles. They don't play their defensive specialist 30 minutes a night, or anything close to it.

At the end of the day it all comes down to this...does Roberson's defense offset his offensive deficiencies? The glaringly obvious answer to that question is absolutely not. How many points does he cost the team offensively because he misses shots any decent wing player would make, has no ability whatsoever to create his own offense, misses free throws, doesn't get the ball even when he's wide open because the other players know he will miss which leads to bad shots many times, etc.? How many points does he cost the team offensively because the other team literally doesn't guard him and uses his defender to double team or just stand by the lane which clogs everything up for other players trying to drive to the basket? You can make a good argument that offensively he costs the team double digit points game in and game out with his offensive ineptitude. How many points defensively does he really negate? If he plays a great defensive game he might negate 6-8 points but if you look at the elite players he does nothing whatsoever to hold them beneath their normal season scoring averages, especially when it matters the most in the postseason as Leonard, Thompson and now Harden have all easily surpassed their normal averages with him guarding them. KD averaged 37/game against Roberson in the regular season series against the Warriors. It's not that he's not a great defender it's that teams can simply run a pick and roll or high screen until he's out of the play. He is clearly a net negative player pretty much every game and he should be playing limited minutes in a backup role. Like you said there's no other team out there playing anybody resembling Roberson and most certainly not starting them and playing them over 30 minutes. That's just ludicrous.

Haha this post is just begging for some bondom34 stats that will completely dismantle what you are trying to say

[spearsy23]

Hahaha thanks again for making my point for me guys (saying guys here due to the AND 1).

So you mean iman shumpert, who came off the bench 15 minutes a game in the finals, behind defensive stalwart JR Smith who played 30 plus mpg in the finals?

Or Norris Cole (miss you NoCo!!) Who also came off the bench for Miami, played 15mpg in the finals, behind stopper Mario Chalmers.....and was a point guard?

Or deshawn Stevenson, who like the above guys played about 15 minutes per game in the finals, and was pulled from the starting lineup for defensive specialist JJ Barea after game 2, which ultimately propelled the mavs to the title (JJ was a huge x factor.....and not because of his D).

Or are you talking about Tony Allen, who appeared in 3 of the 7 finals games.....for 17 total minutes, playing less then Eddie "shutdown" house.

Take off the blinders, fellas. Those guys didn't play much on those teams. The better offensive options did, all of whom weren't strong defenders. They were all well coached, and played the appropriate 15 or so min a game, except for Allen (your poster boy for a Roberson comparison), who barely touched the floor in the finals. The 1 game Stevenson played close to 30 minutes, it's because he was hitting shots.

All those guys were better offensively than Roberson. Sorry to crush your argument here, but open your eyes to reality.

So your point when saying championship teams don't play defensive specialists is actually that they don't play them as much as we play Roberson? Because those seem like two very different arguments.

Absolutely. It just makes no sense to roll them out 30 minutes a night ala OKC. That's too long to handicap your offense. Maybe not on a Tuesday on Milwaukee, but on the championship level, which okc has been on from 2011 until last year, it is too much. There's evidence for the evidence crowds from past champions....they simply don't commit to 1 way defensive wings anywhere close to 30 min a game at that level, and Roberson is an extremely bad offensive player compared to many defensive specialists as well. It makes it to hard to rely on stars pulling magic tricks all night, which is what OKC has tried to do unsucessfully.

Roberson had never played 30 minutes per night until last season.

[slick_watts]

Yes............but do you understand I've demonstrated that teams, in fact, dont win titles in the modern NBA playing said defensive specialists 30 min a night? They play them about 15, choosing better offensive options to fill the larger minutes. So what your saying isn't apt?

And the stars play big minutes, and are heavily used, across the board, making the comparison wrong from your end....

none of the stars on those teams have ever averaged a triple double.

So you can understand....you can't narrow the superstar side down at all.....teams have always won with them.

and teams have always won with defensive specialists. i'm glad we're on the same page.

[slick_watts]

just for fun: defensive specialists with big roles on title teams. this is OBPM < 0.0 and DBPM > 2.0.

ben wallace
dennis rodman
bruce bowen
andrew bogut
shawn marion
kendrick perkins
robert horry
ron harper

i mean, this was 5 minutes of searching for me. there are many more. wallace, bogut, perkins are big guys with no offensive game. rodman we all know. horry hit a three here or there but was mostly a defensive role player on the title teams he was on with 95 rockets being the big exception. marion and harper were past their prime defensive role players on dallas and lakers title teams, respectively.

so a decent mix there. i suspect the reason defensive wing specialists aren't as prevalent on title teams as defensive big specialists is because defensive big specialists tend to have a greater impact, and most title teams do not get the kind of usage and scoring from their PG that we do (so they need wing positions to supplement).

[sleestak33]

just for fun: defensive specialists with big roles on title teams. this is OBPM < 0.0 and DBPM > 2.0.

ben wallace
dennis rodman
bruce bowen
andrew bogut
shawn marion
kendrick perkins
robert horry
ron harper

i mean, this was 5 minutes of searching for me. there are many more. wallace, bogut, perkins are big guys with no offensive game. rodman we all know. horry hit a three here or there but was mostly a defensive role player on the title teams he was on with 95 rockets being the big exception. marion and harper were past their prime defensive role players on dallas and lakers title teams, respectively.

so a decent mix there. i suspect the reason defensive wing specialists aren't as prevalent on title teams as defensive big specialists is because defensive big specialists tend to have a greater impact, and most title teams do not get the kind of usage and scoring from their PG that we do (so they need wing positions to supplement).

You're not seriously trying to compare the offensive games of Bowen, Marion, Horry and Harper to Roberson are you? All of those guys could shoot the ball and at least had to be guarded. How many 3s did Horry hit to win clutch games over his career? What an asinine comparison! LOL Rodman was a freak because while he wasn't good offensively he made a colossal impact on games with his rebounding as he was arguably one of the greatest of all time and his defense was much better than Roberson's. Perkin, Bogut and Wallace are all bigs and it's passable to be bad offensively as a big because they can get close to the basket and at least make layups or dunks. You can't have a perimeter player though, especially in today's NBA that puts a premium on outside shooting from wing players, who has no ability to shoot, score or create their own offense. You can go back through the history of championship and elite teams and there is not one of them that has ever started a wing player and played them as much as OKC remotely resembling Roberson with an offensive game that bad...not one. I've watched the NBA since the early 80s and I have never seen a wing player in the playoffs that the other team literally didn't guard for the entire series. It's almost unfathomable that a team would start a player like Roberson that is so bad on offense the other team is completely disregarding them and using his defender to double team or just stand by the lane.

[slick_watts]

You can't have a perimeter player though, especially in today's NBA that puts a premium on outside shooting from wing players, who has no ability to shoot, score or create their own offense. You can go back through the history...

'today's nba'

'you can go back through history'

all these arbitrary rules you are creating are getting you mixed up, sleestak.

i don't see why position is a fundamental issue here. because as i told your buddy, no title team in history has really had a high usage point guard grabbing 10 rebounds a game, either. what's it matter that we get a lot of offense from pg position? and rebounds, too? hint: it doesn't. just like it doesn't matter where our 3pt shooting comes from, where our defense comes from, etc. as long as it is there.

[hardenASG13]

just for fun: defensive specialists with big roles on title teams. this is OBPM < 0.0 and DBPM > 2.0.

ben wallace
dennis rodman
bruce bowen
andrew bogut
shawn marion
kendrick perkins
robert horry
ron harper

i mean, this was 5 minutes of searching for me. there are many more. wallace, bogut, perkins are big guys with no offensive game. rodman we all know. horry hit a three here or there but was mostly a defensive role player on the title teams he was on with 95 rockets being the big exception. marion and harper were past their prime defensive role players on dallas and lakers title teams, respectively.

so a decent mix there. i suspect the reason defensive wing specialists aren't as prevalent on title teams as defensive big specialists is because defensive big specialists tend to have a greater impact, and most title teams do not get the kind of usage and scoring from their PG that we do (so they need wing positions to supplement).

So yeah, most of those are big guys. The wings are light years ahead of Roberson offensively ( Harper, Marion, bowen). Also, most you listed, bigs but still, are before handchecking on D became illegal, which makes perimeter D alot harder and almost impossible against star players (see James harden averaging 34ppg against roberson).

Despite what you 'suspect', maybe it's just that NBA wings are expected to be able to dribble a ball and have good enough shooting to actualy get the respect of being guarded. This isn't the 1980s or 1990s anymore. Due to rule changes (no hands on D), the game evolving, and it being set up to Open the floor more, perimeter guys need to be able to shoot to play close to 30mpg. Otherwise they play 15, as in my examples of NBA champs in the modern league. I suspect you are grasping at straws here, as your point is just not applicable to this situation.