payitforward wrote:In my case, it's statements like yours that don't compute. "How is Asik one of the best bigs in basketball?" you ask. Well, just the way any player is one of the best at his position: by putting up numbers.
Asik was the second most prolific per-minute rebounder in the league among all Centers who played 15 or more minutes a game.
He's also a very strong defensive player. And he's a pretty efficient scorer -- but he doesn't shoot a lot, so he doesn't score a lot of points. Is that why you think he's a role player?
That said, I'm not altogether sure I'd rank him "one of the best bigs..." either. Depends on how big a group you think "the best" is. But, he's a very very good one -- in the top ten or dozen I'd say. By no means "a role player."
In your first paragraph, I think you highlight our fundamental disconnect that keeps cropping up over and over. You tend to define players by their numbers--products of past performances in a specific set of circumstances. I prefer to define them by their collection of skills and physical attributes. I think those are better predictors of future performance than past numbers because I think what a player will do in the future is MOST determined by X, Y, and Z things that he can do, independent of any outside factors like teammates, systems, and situations. Of course, the difficulty in this approach is in accurately defining skill sets, which is not a science, and requires lots of observation, perspective, and revision because players change a lot.
And it needs to be repeated often around here, basketball's numbers do a very poor job truly capturing on court events. To me this is a self evident truth. I simply can not get on the same page with someone who disagrees with that. Its the main reason I've had so many disagreements with you and other stat guys like Nivek.
Anyway, I think you do raise an interesting and difficult questions. How do you define a role player? What is this opposed to? How do you determine a role player's value?
I think the proper answers to those questions are very nebulous. I'm not sure you can figure out absolute values in team building resources for players in practice. Everything is going to be very comparative, very relative.
This is my attempt at defining what a role player is: someone who is useful primarily for filling in the cracks in your roster between your foundation pieces.
A foundation piece is determined by the value of his collection of attributes. For someone to be a foundation piece, they need to do enough things at a high level to build your lineups around without having to compensate too much for their weaknesses. A foundation piece is a foundation piece because it would be extremely difficult and costly to replace what they bring to the table. They need to be excellent at some skills that are rare and thus difficult and expensive to acquire in team building resources.
And this skews towards offense and scoring because high level offensive ability is the most skill intensive and the most uncommon set of skills. 1.) Individual shot creativity or consistent ability to create shots for teammates. 2.) Scoring or assisting in volume with acceptable efficiency. 3.) Clutch scoring. These are the MOST rare and valuable skills in the NBA
by far. They define a player's value more than any other collection of attributes because basketball is a game of scoring buckets and scoring buckets in the NBA is extremely hard. Somebody has to be able to do it or your team will lose. It doesn't matter how good a defender you are. It doesn't matter how good a rebounder you are. You have to be able to contribute on offense in some sort of uniquely useful way at an above average level,
or you are a role player. You have to be able to do something on offense that most other NBA players can't.
Individual creativity, volume scoring ability, and clutch scoring ability being the most valuable attributes in the NBA is why every single NBA player and coach ever would understand and accept that a player like Carmelo Anthony is far more valuable than a role player like, say, Larry Sanders, even though stat nerds are absolutely certain the opposite is true. It's why Carmelo makes tons of money and his teams win a ton of games. The best defensive and best rebounding team will still lose in the NBA if they don't have someone that can
nut up and score. Or regularly help someone else score.
Anyway, your position on Asik being one of the dozen best bigs in the NBA is coherent given what I know of your position on a player like Drummond. I strongly disagree with you on both. Simply put, you overvalue players with almost no unique scoring ability based on their rebounding ability. Rebounding is an important part of a team's success in general, but it is not a uniquely valuable individual skill. It's a cheaply acquired skill. Reggie Evans led the league in rebounding rate last season and makes 1.2 million this season. He'll probably struggle for minutes behind a group of front court players who who are FAR inferior rebounders but are far superior offensive players. Rebounding ability is the least valuable of the three phases of the game, behind offense and defense.
Asik has an extremely limited offensive skill set. He does not have shooting range beyond 3 feet. He can't dribble, can't face up, can't get himself to the rim. He can't create looks for himself from the post. He can't get himself to the FT line at an unusual rate and he can't shoot FTs well. He can't facilitate offense for others from the high post or the top of the key. His one offensive skill is catching the ball at the rim and dunking it or laying it in. This is not a rare or valuable offensive skill set. This is why he's a role player. He's a fifth option on offense for a team. He doesn't score much because he CAN'T score much. You could not run a successful offense through him. You could not build a good offense around him by treating him as a foundational piece and devoting those kinds of team building resources to him.
- Dwight Howard
- Tim Duncan
- Joakim Noah
- Carlos Boozer
- Roy Hibbert
- David West
- Nene
- Al Horford
- Paul Millsap
- LaMarcus Aldridge
- Kevin Love
- Marc Gasol
- Zach Randolph
- Pau Gasol
- Serge Ibaka
- Blake Griffin
- Dirk Nowitzki
- Chris Bosh
- Brook Lopez
- Kevin Garnett
- David Lee
- Josh Smith
There's 22 NBA bigs off the top of my head who are unquestionably better and more valuable than Asik. Most significantly so. Plenty more who are better than him too but don't have as obvious a case and I don't feel like having to argue against those who would cherry pick them. Suffice to say most teams have at least one big man who is a better and more valuable player than Asik. Asik is a quality role player, but an average player by the standards of all NBA bigs when you include the foundational guys, much less players across all positions in the league.
Let me say why.
