Ajar wrote:
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The stats I linked to are actually on the season, so they include his shooting/distributing slump at the start of the season. If his 2010-2011 season averages are this good, he doesn't even need to sustain his current extremely high level of offensive efficiency to remain near the top of the league's PGs in offence generated per possession. I'm pretty confident that he'll remain in the top 10 PGs in offensive efficiency this season unless he suffers a season-ending injury. On the flip side, his defence looks better to my eye, but my eye is quite untrained and I haven't looked at defensive stats.
I see a few people making the "sell high" argument, and to be honest it's the one argument for trading Jose that I can really grok. It does make sense. However, I think it would need to shore up another position (SF, C) rather than trading for another PG. If we bring in another PG who is a good distributor, it's a lateral move at best and more likely a downgrade, since I can't see us getting one of the few PGs who are as good at handling the rock as Calderon. Since we've got Bayless already and he's looking like he could be quite good, if we do trade Calderon I'd make Bayless the starting PG the way we made DeRozan the starting SG in his rookie season -- force-feed him minutes and let him learn by playing real games. We'd cost ourselves quite a few games (Calderon's WP/48 is about 0.2 lately while I think Bayless is still negative), but hopefully bring Bayless along even quicker than we have with DeRozan.
The other case is if we hit the lottery jackpot and draft an elite PG. Then I guess we'd try to grow Bayless into a combo guard who could spell our rookie PG but also share the floor with him when DeRozan is on the bench for a bit. So Bayless would be the 6th man the way Barbosa is now.
So that argument does make some sense, and those two contexts are really the only cases where I'd reluctantly support a Calderon trade.
That said, I actually think Jose can be this team's PG until at least the 2013 trade deadline (when he'll have a $10.5M expiring contract). I think the Raptors as structured need a pass-first PG who takes care of the rock, and as I've been saying, I don't think there are many in the league who are better than Jose on that front. We may be able to develop Bayless into that; I think doing so will be easier if Bayless is backing up Calderon and can learn from him directly in addition to learning from the coaching staff. You can have shooting coaches and defensive coaches and whatnot but I'm not sure there's such a thing as a "playmaking coach." I'm hoping that seeing how Calderon runs an offence both in practice and in games will help Bayless develop his own playmaking.
If that pans out, Bayless becomes the starting PG sometime in the 2012-2013 season or at the start of the 2014 season, and we go from there.
Finally, I actually think we could re-sign Calderon for a much smaller contract after his current one is up and continue to use him, if his efficiency remains high in the 2012-2013 season. In that case Bayless becomes the next Leandro Barbosa in much the same way I described above, but he plays more and more time at PG as Calderon's minutes decline with age. If Steve Nash and Jason Kidd are still making plays well into their 30s, I wouldn't write Calderon off after this contract.
"Jose doesn't fit this team's long-term plans" is an assumption I've seen made by a couple of people in this thread, but I wouldn't just assume that's true. I think he's the type of PG this team needs right now, and unless our starting 5 all grow into shot creators and/or ball distributors (not so likely given their low assist numbers so far), we're probably still going to need a PG who can distribute the ball efficiently and effectively in 2014.
Holy crap, I just previewed this post and it's turned into a wall of text... eek.
I see a few people making the "sell high" argument, and to be honest it's the one argument for trading Jose that I can really grok. It does make sense. However, I think it would need to shore up another position (SF, C) rather than trading for another PG. If we bring in another PG who is a good distributor, it's a lateral move at best and more likely a downgrade, since I can't see us getting one of the few PGs who are as good at handling the rock as Calderon. Since we've got Bayless already and he's looking like he could be quite good, if we do trade Calderon I'd make Bayless the starting PG the way we made DeRozan the starting SG in his rookie season -- force-feed him minutes and let him learn by playing real games. We'd cost ourselves quite a few games (Calderon's WP/48 is about 0.2 lately while I think Bayless is still negative), but hopefully bring Bayless along even quicker than we have with DeRozan.
The other case is if we hit the lottery jackpot and draft an elite PG. Then I guess we'd try to grow Bayless into a combo guard who could spell our rookie PG but also share the floor with him when DeRozan is on the bench for a bit. So Bayless would be the 6th man the way Barbosa is now.
So that argument does make some sense, and those two contexts are really the only cases where I'd reluctantly support a Calderon trade.
That said, I actually think Jose can be this team's PG until at least the 2013 trade deadline (when he'll have a $10.5M expiring contract). I think the Raptors as structured need a pass-first PG who takes care of the rock, and as I've been saying, I don't think there are many in the league who are better than Jose on that front. We may be able to develop Bayless into that; I think doing so will be easier if Bayless is backing up Calderon and can learn from him directly in addition to learning from the coaching staff. You can have shooting coaches and defensive coaches and whatnot but I'm not sure there's such a thing as a "playmaking coach." I'm hoping that seeing how Calderon runs an offence both in practice and in games will help Bayless develop his own playmaking.
If that pans out, Bayless becomes the starting PG sometime in the 2012-2013 season or at the start of the 2014 season, and we go from there.
Finally, I actually think we could re-sign Calderon for a much smaller contract after his current one is up and continue to use him, if his efficiency remains high in the 2012-2013 season. In that case Bayless becomes the next Leandro Barbosa in much the same way I described above, but he plays more and more time at PG as Calderon's minutes decline with age. If Steve Nash and Jason Kidd are still making plays well into their 30s, I wouldn't write Calderon off after this contract.
"Jose doesn't fit this team's long-term plans" is an assumption I've seen made by a couple of people in this thread, but I wouldn't just assume that's true. I think he's the type of PG this team needs right now, and unless our starting 5 all grow into shot creators and/or ball distributors (not so likely given their low assist numbers so far), we're probably still going to need a PG who can distribute the ball efficiently and effectively in 2014.
Holy crap, I just previewed this post and it's turned into a wall of text... eek.
that's what she said
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