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• Who to watch in March Madness - Part 1 - Shooting Guards

  Blog comment - 7 days ago

  This is great... really looking forward to the rest. But yeah, 2 guard is no longer the glaring need it was. Whether its the as a starter or from the bench, I think Thornton has solidified his spot there.
  
  To go off on a little tangent here... Thornton looks better and better every game. Its likely he's going to be dropping in atleast 15, maybe even 20 or more ppg next season. The Hornets have finally found the "third scorer" that has been missing for some time. I don't even think people have fully realized what a steal Thornton was.
  
  He really looks to be capable of becoming an elite scorer at the 2 guard position. 20.5 points per 36 minutes in the guy's rookie season, on a solid 1.20 points per shot (that number has been improving by the game I might add). That's impressive. And he was a mid 2nd rounder! An interesting little cherry-picked stat I just dug up using Basketball-Reference.com... in the past 10 seasons, there are only 3 guys who, having played atleast 500 minutes, had better points per 36 minutes scoring averages in their rookie seasons - Ben Gordon, Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony. Good company eh? Of those four, Thornton's numbers are probably most similiar to Gordon's rookie season - only Thornton's are actually better overall.
  
  I think Marcus is going to be huge for the Hornets. It sucks that the team won't make the playoffs this year, but its not that important in the long run. A late first rounder and a second rounder have suddenly made the future very, very bright...
  
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• Salary Value at the Center Position

  Blog comment - 7 days ago

  corndeaux, well think about this - PER takes team pace into account, and Lee is a 22 PER player this year. That's excellent. His career PER is a well above average 19.3
  
  Now of course PER doesn't take into account defense, and most observers say Lee is very weak in that area. I haven't watched the guy enough to know.
  
  The whole D'Antoni pace thing is a bit blown out of proportion I think. Sure pace has an effect, but I think its generally exagerrated - especially when it comes to D'Antoni's teams. According to Basketball-Reference.com New York averages 94.1 possesions a game. That's "fast" for the modern NBA but honestly the difference between New York's pace and league average is not a whole lot - it comes out to about 1 or 2 extra possesions a game. So New York players have one or two more possesions a game to work with... that doesn't seem like enough to drastically alter a player's stats. Not to mention that there are six teams that play at a faster pace. Indiana runs and guns a lot more than New York does (97.7 possesions a game) but people rarely talk about the "O'Brien effect" or anything like that.
  
  Just thought I'd throw that out there.
  
  Oh and great article Joe... really liking the work you have been doing. #