Post#110 » by Braggins » Mon Dec 31, 2018 2:53 am
Yeah, I dont really agree with the super negative Cody takes. Hes +1.08 in RPM and +2.3 in BPM, so I'm not really sure how he is supposedly hurting the team with his play.
I think the issue is that he looks much worse than he actually is because he is bad in a lot of the areas that people judge individual talent on.
He is clearly a significant positive on defense and the stats have backed that up for years, but his defensive value is entirely based on his team defense and his ability to rotate quickly (and intelligently) and make a small impact on a lot of plays and also his switching versatility, but his individual post defense is straight up bad. If a decent post scorer gets the ball on the block against him they tend to manhandle him, so he ends up looking like a bad defender even though his presence has a positive impact on overall team defense. He also isn't the kind of rim protecting presence that will ever deter people from attacking the rim, which is a bit unfortunate.
When it comes to rebounding, he is good at consistently finding his man and putting a body on him and keeping them from rebounding out of their area, but when a missed shot goes to his area and he has to have a 1v1 fight for a rebound against a more physical center he often loses.
On offense, he basically isn't good at anything that would give you the impression that he is a viable player on offense. He doesn't shoot or finish well and he doesn't handle the ball or pass that well, but hes great at setting screens and freeing up other guys, so he actually ends up being a pretty neutral presence on offense, even though it would seem like he sucks.
He has a tendency to look really bad late in games sometimes. I think its because later in the 4th when the game slows down and the flow is disrupted the game becomes more about individual players making individual plays, rather than pure team play, and all his weaknesses become much more apparent and more of a liability.
Having said all that, I don't disagree that it would be great if we could find an upgrade to Cody at the center position, but the problem is that we already have so much of our resources tied up in the center position that I find it difficult to justify prioritizing finding another when we have other weaknesses and our coach wants to play small so much anyways.
