Kevin Willis wrote: His stats show that he is a slightly above average defender in the NBA. Which answers the question is he a NBA caliber player - he is.
Even if he is a slightly above average defender in the NBA (which I don't believe a look at all of those stats even fully concludes but let's go with that), that in combination with his brutal offensive game still makes him a negative value player. I suppose you could argue the league is full of negative value guys (who will soon be on their way out of the league themselves) and that makes him "NBA caliber" in the strictest sense of the term, but that doesn't mean this deep team should be playing one.
He's also 10th man on a loaded championship team who was forced to play more minutes due to injury. When we had our full team back for 2-3 games his playing time dipped. Like it should.
I've heard this narrative all season, but he's actually been played as the 8th man all season when everyone is healthy (averaging 24 minutes a game which is 8th on the team). He has consistently played more minutes than RHJ (19 min), Davis (17 min), Boucher (13 min), and Thomas (11 min), all guys who have shown themselves to be vastly superior players than him because of what they can either do defensively (RHJ, Boucher), offensively (Thomas) or both (Davis). The issue here is that McCaw is really more of a 11th-12th man on a NBA roster (especially THIS NBA roster) and yet he's been played by Nurse like a rotation player for no reason that anybody can see.






















