Drew Gooden vs Amir Johnson

[Buddahfan]

I said this last season that I can see him playing 20 - 25 mpg in 2010-11 with improved scoring. I can envision something like 10-12 ppg and 6-7 rpg if he averages close to 25 mpg.

I think at 20-25 mpg that he will still be a net positive on the court in 2010-11.

I don't know if he is ready to handle 30+ mpg on a regular basis. I think he needs to score more before he starts to get some breaks on the calls by the officials. He still needs to learn how to not commit so many dumb fouls and better position himself as well as continue to improve his footwork on both offense and defense. He needs to learn how to successfully take a charge. Hopefully Carlesimo can help him with his defense like English has and continues to do with his offense.

Can he start and only average 25 mpg? I think it would be difficult.

I think for him to average anything over 25 mpg at this point would require him to reduce his effectiveness on defense and the offensive glass unless he can make some significant strides in reducing his fouls without comprising his effectiveness on defense.

Could he be effective at this point playing 30+ a game. If and when I see it happen then I will comment on that

[hateslosing]

I don't see any reason that Amir Johnson needs to score more than he did this year. He is a good player, a great hustle guy, rebounder and defender and that is what we need from him. As a scorer there is no reason to think he should be anything but the last option on the floor unless he's wide open at the rim.
As far as his contract, 5 million a year for 3 years (give or take) sounds reasonable.

[LBF]

homecourt discount hes having fun here he'll be signed once bosh makes up his mind which may be never.

[Tim W.]

Can he start and only average 25 mpg? I think it would be difficult.

Care to elaborate on this?

[Buddahfan]

Care to elaborate on this?

A team can start whoever they want.

It is interesting to note that when Johnson started for the Pistons in the beginning of the year in 2008-09 before Curry yanked him from the starting lineup the Pistons were 5-2 in the first quarter. See below

Having followed his career long enough I know that he can be and usually is a positive contributor over the season as a starter or as a bench player.

The problem however, with him starting is that coaches do not like to bring their bench players into the game in the first quarter on a regular basis after say 3 minutes 5 minutes or even 7 or 8 minutes.

Coaches just don't do this. So even if a player is generally effective when he is on the court in the first and third quarter coaches don't like their starters picking up early fouls which forces the bench player to play say 30 minutes. Now the Lakers with Bynum and Odom have been a bit of the exception but normally this is not the case.

So yes I think Johnson could be an effective starter if his minutes were limited by fouls to about 25 mpg on the average. However, i doubt that Triano would start him under those circumstances.

It was clear in watching the games that Johnson started that Triano just about had a heart attack whenever Johnson got a foul or two in the first quarter especially early.

So I doubt that Johnson could start if he can't stay on the court for 30+ minutes night in and night out no matter how effective he was for the time that he was out there.

I don't think that he would have to play 40+ minutes like he did in the last game of the season in 2009-10 but I think 30 mpg minimum would be the number to keep him in the starting lineup if he gets the initial nod to start in the fall.

Personally I don't think he can do it for a number of reasons, at least not yet. So I am figuring him in the same role as last year even if Davis starts ahead of him assuming that Bosh leaves and the Raptors don't obtain another big man who is of starter quality.

We shall see

Here is the list from 2008-09 of the games he started at the beginning of the year before being pulled from the starting lineup

Date----Opponent-Score with Pistons number on the left
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Oct 29 vs Indiana 23-17
Nov 01 vs Was 31-21
Nov 03 vs Char 23-14
Nov 05 vs Tor 20-23
Nov 07 vs N.J. 27-14
Nov 09 vs Bos 19-17
Sac 11 vs Sac 18-31

[Quixotic]

It is interesting to note that when Johnson started for the Pistons in the beginning of the year in 2008-09 before Curry yanked him from the starting lineup the Pistons never lost a first quarter.

Uh... what is your definition of losing a quarter, because by my count your claim is a bit of an exaggeration. Not taking anything away from Amir, who I think is a valuable piece indeed, but their games against Toronto and Sacremento come to mind.

[Buddahfan]

Uh... what is your definition of losing a quarter, because by my count your claim is a bit of an exaggeration. Not taking anything away from Amir, who I think is a valuable piece indeed, but their games against Toronto and Sacremento come to mind.

I was wrong on that. See I do admit it when I am wrong I went back and checked it. The Pistons were 5-2 in the first quarters when he started. In fact they only gave up 137 points in the first quarters of those games in which he started or about 19.5 points per first quarter.

i think Johnson was trying to guard Bosh in that Toronto game.

The game vs Sacramento was in Sacramento with only one day rest between between games including a cross country flight. The whole team stunk that game.

The point is that although I think he can be an effective starter even if he is limited somewhat by foul trouble I doubt that Triano will start him unless he can stay out of foul trouble.

If you go back to last season there were numerous games in which the second unit was playing very well having cut huge deficits incurred by the starters in the first and third quarter. Then Johnson got into foul trouble and had to come out and that was the end of the rally. I know by the end of the year this was giving Triano fits and I don't blame him. It was giving me fits to to watch a rally cut short because your best or second best guy on the court has to come out because of foul trouble. Frustrating for everyone all around. I can't begin to tell you how many games I turned off, I watched them on broadband, because of this happening. Though I never did break my computer or computer monitor. Such amazing self control. LOL

[Raptor4Ever]

Based on the last 2 days and the trades that went down, paying anything more than 5.5 milion for Amir is too much

[Quixotic]

Nice fix. =P

But just to show how stats can be misleading, let's look at the quality of those 7 opponents (team, margin, final win%):

Indiana +6 .439
Washington +10 .232
Charlotte +9 .427
Toronto -3 .402
New Jersey +13 .415
Boston +2 .756
Sacremento -13 .207

So pretty much, the only decent team they "won" a first quarter against was Boston, and only barely. Against teams with worse records than the Pistons, they were 4-2 in the first quarter. I do agree that Amir has a positive defensive impact on games though.

[Buddahfan]

Just to finish the though.

Don't get me wrong he had some real stinker games last season like that one against the Bulls in April. I also remember one against the Cavs and I know that there were others. But all players have bad games. On the whole he has shown that when he is on the court whether as a starter or bench player he tends to be a positive contributor.

[Buddahfan]

Nice fix. =P

But just to show how stats can be misleading, let's look at the quality of those 7 opponents (team, margin, final win%):

Indiana +6 .439
Washington +10 .232
Charlotte +9 .427
Toronto -3 .402
New Jersey +13 .415
Boston +2 .756
Sacremento -13 .207

So pretty much, the only decent team they "won" a first quarter against was Boston, and only barely. Against teams with worse records than the Pistons, they were 4-2 in the first quarter. I do agree that Amir has a positive defensive impact on games though.

You know what you say is true. Back then an even into last year his performance against the elite players in the league was average at best. I think that this can be explained by two things. Lack of experience and lack of strength. However, he has gotten better against better players. The improvement was clear last season between his performance in the second half of the season after the all-star game vs his performance in the before the all-star break.

He still has a way to go, however I have no doubt that if he can control his foul problem down to a reasonable level that he will be able to be a very good starter in the NBA some day.

[DonCarlos]

I think that Amir vs. Darko is a better comparison than Amir vs. Gooden.

Darko:

21.4 Minutes
6.7 PPG
4.7 RPG
1.5 AST
0.7 STL
1.1 BLK
.536 FG%

Amir:

17.7 MPG
6.2 PPG
4.8 RPG
0.6 APG
0.5 STL
0.8 BLK
.623 FG%

Darko got what, 4 yrs, $20 mil? I could certainly live with something in that ballpark for Amir.

[smushmush]

I don`t think how Gooden is paid will affect how Amir will be played in my opinion. It comes down to whether Amir loves to play in Toronto coupled with the fact, he will likely be the starting center next season as we have to give consistent minutes to alabi and davis but bring them along slowly.

[smushmush]

It's 100% relevant - buying a player out doesn't affect the cap space. By obtaining Evans, you're saving >$3 million over 3 seasons and *potentially* were getting a better fit for the team (if he wasn't injured). You could not have gotten a player making less money as per the trade rules. You *may* have received a player(s) with a shorter contract, but it was unlikely any team would give that up to obtain Kapono.

Paying Kapono big money for a lot of years was BC's mistake. Trading for Evans was not - at worst it was net neutral.

A long term deal with Gooden will not look good in a year or two. Just like Kapono. Just like Turkoglu.

Buying a player out does affect cap space as in the cba agreement as the bought-out amount(instead of the contract amount) is distributed over the remaining years with 8.5% or 12.5% raises. If buying-out contracts did not count against cap space, BC would have bought out Jose and Turk, essentially hitting the reset button which BC hopes he has by his side now.lol.

[blaze89]

amir is worth around 3-4 million a year for 3-4 years.............good contract amount and length for him i would say

[OzRapFan]

amir is worth around 3-4 million a year for 3-4 years.............good contract amount and length for him i would say

Amir is worth , 6.8 million for 5 years, apparently.

[Liston]

1) The sample size of games in which he "consistently played >25 minutes" is too small.

Agreed - difficult to say, since he played behind our best player and was rarely going to see many min. This year he should be able to see 25+ min a game.

2) 4.4 fouls per game is already on the wrong side of the high end. If you look at the highest avg fouls per game for the last 5 seasons, there were two cases of 4.0 (one being an injured Oden) and usually it was a bit less. It's the same as why you wouldn't say Amir could potentially average ~36.7 minutes a game with 5.9 fouls per game. It would be possible if he always obtained the 4th, 5th or 6th fouls after the same minutes played every game, but because they sometimes come after only 10 minutes, he can't make up the difference by simply playing more minutes the next game. Of course, this is a lot more evident as a sub with a lower ceiling on minutes per game; as a starter I could see him averaging 25 minutes a game, but how will it affect his defense over the course of a season?

For sure. I still think he gets 25+ min usually. He's 23 and hopefully will make improvements under English, Carlesimo, etc's guidance.

[Quixotic]

Buying a player out does affect cap space as in the cba agreement as the bought-out amount(instead of the contract amount) is distributed over the remaining years with 8.5% or 12.5% raises. If buying-out contracts did not count against cap space, BC would have bought out Jose and Turk, essentially hitting the reset button which BC hopes he has by his side now.lol.

Liston obviously meant buying out the player doesn't wipe them from the cap, and not the opposite case that you inferred. The context was why we didn't just buyout Kapono or Evans (because the savings -- as you explained -- would be minimal). You have to take what he said along with the notion that the player would not agree to a buyout for much less money than what they are due (see Mourning, Marbury, etc.) without a specific clause in their contract that specifies a buyout rate.

[Quixotic]

Agreed - difficult to say, since he played behind our best player and was rarely going to see many min. This year he should be able to see 25+ min a game.

For sure. I still think he gets 25+ min usually. He's 23 and hopefully will make improvements under English, Carlesimo, etc's guidance.

We can all hope. ~$7 mil a year is a pretty hefty price (considering the potential financial landscape under the new CBA) to promise someone who can only average 23 minutes a game.

[Raptor4Ever]

We can all hope. ~$7 mil a year is a pretty hefty price (considering the potential financial landscape under the new CBA) to promise someone who can only average 23 minutes a game.

And this is what he got BC is the worst nightmare for this Raptor team.
Time to Say goodbye to this loser and get ourself a real GM who can actually negotiate a deal better than a Carrot.