The loss last night was almost inevitable, with a superior, healthy team fighting for a playoff spot coming into town against the Raptors.
The Raptors? Inferior in talent, pretty banged up at this point AND having recently embarrasses this same team on their home court not too long ago.
Despite that, the team characteristically hung tough by playing just enough defense and winning the 3-point battle handily for the first 3 quarters. Fittingly, an Andre Iguodala three-ball midway through the 4th quarter capped off a big 76ers run to make it a 20-point lead and Solomon Alabi started feeling that itch and slowly came to his senses. As AltRaps so poignantly points out in the Roll Call… “It was one of those nights”.
Some takeaways from the game, as we saw a little more of some of the 10-day contractors, or “lottery tickets” as most astute observers describe:
Justin Dentmon looks like he’s got the size and speed to be an NBA point, but just hasn’t shown any aggressiveness other than some impressive looking spins that amounted to blocked shots. He lacks a lot of polish.
Alan Anderson shows flashes of athletic ability, but for all the “veteran savvy” that guys like Leo Rautins profess he has, he doesn’t average an assist in 20 min/game and is shooting under 44%. No thanks, we already have a shooting guard who shoots a mediocre percentage and doesn’t know how to pass.
The problem with Bryan Colangelo is that he thinks he can find a diamond in the rough like he arguably did with Jamario Moon. He looks for the same thing in these guys that scouts look for in high-school players. Raw physical ability. But the problem is that even high-schoolers with raw talent don’t amount to much, like the Stromile Swifts of this world. And then he expects to find someone in their mid-twenties to blossom with that kind of profile? Smells like desperation to me.
If there’s one league in this world where guys don’t come out nowhere, this is it. Jeremy Lin’s story, however incomplete it is right now, is so rare NBA people were having trouble remembering the last time something like that happened. It just doesn’t happen and it’s almost insulting the fanbase, especially when TV commentators keep pumping these guys up.
Well, Ed Davis is not on a 10-day contract, but you might as well lump him in. He had a solid game today and if the GM is in love with athleticism, did he Ed Davis today? The one dunk he had from almost the free-throw line off a nice feed from Dentmon should have caught his eye. There’s this stat that I like to use, rebound percentage, that takes out a lot of the noise (pace, other teams field goal %, MINUTES) that distorts stats like rebounds/game. Ed Davis is at 17.1% Let me show you what that number means:
Total Rebound Pct
1. Dwight Howard-ORL 21.8
2. DeMarcus Cousins-SAC 20.0
3. Andrew Bynum-LAL 19.3
4. Kevin Love-MIN 19.0
5. Kris Humphries-NJN 18.5
6. Tim Duncan-SAS 18.4
7. Greg Monroe-DET 18.3
8. DeAndre Jordan-LAC 18.0
9. Joakim Noah-CHI 17.9
10. Blake Griffin-LAC 17.9
11. Ersan Ilyasova-MIL 17.5
12. Tyson Chandler-NYK 17.3
13. Marcin Gortat-PHO 17.1
14. Roy Hibbert-IND 16.6
15. Zaza Pachulia-ATL 16.4
16. Serge Ibaka-OKC 16.1
17. Carlos Boozer-CHI 16.1
18. Al Jefferson-UTA 15.9
19. Josh Smith-ATL 15.8
20. Pau Gasol-LAL 15.7
Ed Davis is not on that list because he didn’t qualify for NBA Reference’s minutes-played criteria. (http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2012_leaders.html)
The kid is an elite rebounder that has shown some offensive ability without probably many plays called for him.
Free Ed Davis for the rest of the season, and see what he can do before Jonas Valunciunas comes in and turns into a real numbers game.
