Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Doron Lamb and Ricky Ledo
At Mavs Moneyball, a look at the intersecting career paths of two young SG's.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Dwight Powell
Dwight Powell is a good example of the type of guy who can slip through the cracks in the NBA draft. The odds of any mid second round pick sticking in the league are not great, but Powell has the physical ability and the talent of a guy who could have went in the first round and has a chance to have a 10-year career in the NBA.
As a four-year player and a relatively unheralded recruit on a middle-of-the-pack team in the Pac-12, Powell never got a ton of national publicity. He shared a front-court at Stanford with two other NBA prospects - Josh Huestis, who achieved a brief measure of notoriety after OKC made him the first American born first round pick to go to the D-League and Stefan Nastic, a massive 7'0 with the size and skill to where he could make an NBA roster next season.
Stanford was a very unbalanced team last season, as they had one of the best front-courts in the nation and guard play that was average at best. They scuffled through the season with a 21-12 record and a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament before taking advantage of a weak draw to make the Sweet 16. Powell was their best player, but he didn't have the opportunity to put up the massive stats that scouts want to see out of a senior.
Powell averaged 14 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block and 1 steal on 46% shooting - he did a little bit of everything for the Cardinal. However, because he was playing on a team that slowed the pace and didn't space the floor all that well, he didn't have a chance to rack up big scoring numbers. And since Huestis and Nastic needed touches too, Powell had to be a team player, moving the ball and not having a ton of offense run through him.
** Powell is not the same type of player, but a similar dynamic is why Chandler Parsons slipped into the second round.
At 6'11 235 with a 7'0 wingspan, Powell is a bit of a jack of all trades but master of none. He's very athletic for a guy with his size - he has a great first step, he can play above the rim. He can put the ball on the floor, play with his back to the basket, step out and hit the 20-foot jumper and facilitate out of the high post. Powell has prototype size for an NBA PF - he can bang in the post, clean the glass and move his feet on the perimeter.
As a result, he can fill a number of different roles in an NBA rotation. He could play out of the high post and facilitate offense in a starting line-up and he can swing between both interior positions on a second-unit. Powell doesn't have great length, so he's not going be able to protect the rim or match-up with some of the best PF's in the post, but his quickness should allow him to defend in space. His ceiling is somewhere around Markieff Morris.
The problem Powell could have is that while he is decent at everything, he doesn't have any one exceptional skill that could get him into a rotation early in his career. He's not a dominant rebounder, he's not a great 1-on-1 scorer and he's only an average shooter. The thing he should really work in his three-point shot - he can handle and pass, so he would be a real problem if defenses had to guard him 25+ feet from the basket.
I think he could step in right away and have a role as a backup PF similar to Dante Cunningham, but guys with that skill-set are hardly uncommon at the next level. As a second-round pick, he's going to have to earn everything he gets. He's already experienced the business side of the game - before his first training camp, he's been the property of three different teams and the Celtics already have 15 guaranteed contracts on their roster.
With Boston already committed to so many other young PF's, there may not be a spot for Powell in their long-term plans and he might have to bounce back and forth to the D-League for awhile. Even if it's not with the Celtics, I think a guy with his size, skill and athletic ability will be able to find a home in the NBA. Powell has all the tools - he's the type of guy who could have a better career in the NBA than in the NCAA.
As a four-year player and a relatively unheralded recruit on a middle-of-the-pack team in the Pac-12, Powell never got a ton of national publicity. He shared a front-court at Stanford with two other NBA prospects - Josh Huestis, who achieved a brief measure of notoriety after OKC made him the first American born first round pick to go to the D-League and Stefan Nastic, a massive 7'0 with the size and skill to where he could make an NBA roster next season.
Stanford was a very unbalanced team last season, as they had one of the best front-courts in the nation and guard play that was average at best. They scuffled through the season with a 21-12 record and a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament before taking advantage of a weak draw to make the Sweet 16. Powell was their best player, but he didn't have the opportunity to put up the massive stats that scouts want to see out of a senior.
Powell averaged 14 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block and 1 steal on 46% shooting - he did a little bit of everything for the Cardinal. However, because he was playing on a team that slowed the pace and didn't space the floor all that well, he didn't have a chance to rack up big scoring numbers. And since Huestis and Nastic needed touches too, Powell had to be a team player, moving the ball and not having a ton of offense run through him.
** Powell is not the same type of player, but a similar dynamic is why Chandler Parsons slipped into the second round.
At 6'11 235 with a 7'0 wingspan, Powell is a bit of a jack of all trades but master of none. He's very athletic for a guy with his size - he has a great first step, he can play above the rim. He can put the ball on the floor, play with his back to the basket, step out and hit the 20-foot jumper and facilitate out of the high post. Powell has prototype size for an NBA PF - he can bang in the post, clean the glass and move his feet on the perimeter.
As a result, he can fill a number of different roles in an NBA rotation. He could play out of the high post and facilitate offense in a starting line-up and he can swing between both interior positions on a second-unit. Powell doesn't have great length, so he's not going be able to protect the rim or match-up with some of the best PF's in the post, but his quickness should allow him to defend in space. His ceiling is somewhere around Markieff Morris.
The problem Powell could have is that while he is decent at everything, he doesn't have any one exceptional skill that could get him into a rotation early in his career. He's not a dominant rebounder, he's not a great 1-on-1 scorer and he's only an average shooter. The thing he should really work in his three-point shot - he can handle and pass, so he would be a real problem if defenses had to guard him 25+ feet from the basket.
I think he could step in right away and have a role as a backup PF similar to Dante Cunningham, but guys with that skill-set are hardly uncommon at the next level. As a second-round pick, he's going to have to earn everything he gets. He's already experienced the business side of the game - before his first training camp, he's been the property of three different teams and the Celtics already have 15 guaranteed contracts on their roster.
With Boston already committed to so many other young PF's, there may not be a spot for Powell in their long-term plans and he might have to bounce back and forth to the D-League for awhile. Even if it's not with the Celtics, I think a guy with his size, skill and athletic ability will be able to find a home in the NBA. Powell has all the tools - he's the type of guy who could have a better career in the NBA than in the NCAA.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Vince and The Matrix
At Mavs Moneyball, a look at the holes the two long-time vets have left in the Mavs rotation.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Chris Paul and Competition
Normally I would let this kind of thing slide right by, but I'm stuck at work on a Saturday and I've got nothing but time to kill.
Earlier this morning, Pro Basketball Talk put out a short blog post about Chris Paul crying in the locker room after the Clippers lost Game 5 of their second round series to the Thunder. If you remember, LA blew a 7-point lead in the final minute in rather dramatic fashion, thanks in large part to one of the silliest fouls I've ever seen - the Clippers were up 2 with 6 seconds left when Paul fouled Russell Westbrook on a pull-up 3.
Their article is in bold, my comments follow.
Chris Paul is one of the game’s most fiery competitors, a player who wants to win much more badly than the rabid fans who cheer for him on a nightly basis.
This is one of the main tropes when it comes to covering CP3. It's not enough to say that he's one of the best players in the NBA and that he's in the running for best PG of his generation, we have to talk about how much he wants to win and what a fiery competitor he is.
At 6'0 190, Paul is one of the smallest players in the league, but he makes up for it by being one of its smartest, quickest and most skilled. He's a great story and his size makes it easier for the average fan to relate to him than most of the giants who play in the NBA.
However, there are some advantages to being undersized - for the most part, the referees let him get away with murder on the court. He grabs and holds constantly and he's one of the worst floppers in the league, which is just an awful combination. It's one thing to take cheap shots at a guy throughout the game and it's quite another when you do that and then start crying to the refs when there's the slightest amount of contact the other way.
It's like he has decided that since he's so much smaller than everyone else, the rules of the game don't apply to him and it gives him the license to bend the rules as much as he wants. Maybe that's what people mean when he says he wants to win so badly, which is fine, but it's hardly the most admirable trait in the world.
It’s not surprising, then, that he would be moved to tears following a crucial postseason loss where his play down the stretch was a contributing factor to such a critical defeat.
Contributing factor!? I'm not a huge fan of playing the blame game for a tightly-played game with over a 100 hundred possessions that was decided in the last seconds, but if we're going to micro-analyze the last minute and play by the rules established by the media, let's be clear. The Clippers don't lose that game if Paul doesn't make two huge mental errors in the final 20 seconds.
With 17 seconds left, they are up 2 with the ball. Paul is dribbling up the court when Westbrook reaches over and goes for the steal. Instead of taking the foul, holding the ball or dribbling the other way, he anticipates the contact and tries to make a jump pass in order to draw the foul. The refs don't bite, Westbrook rips the ball out and the Thunder have a chance to tie or win. This is not a mistake a PG at any level of the game should ever make, much less a professional that people refer to as "The Point God" with a straight face.
About 10 seconds later, after the Clippers were on the wrong end of a very controversial out of bounds play, Paul makes his second mistake. There's so much wrong with fouling Westbrook on that situation it's hard to even know where to start. Fouling the shooter on a 3 is a cardinal sin in basketball - that should never ever happen, much less with the game on the line. And since Westbrook is a 32% three-point shooter, that is exactly the shot the Clippers want him to take. If he makes that absolutely terrible shot with a hand in his face, you shake his hand and call it a day. The one thing you absolutely cannot do is foul him and give him 3 shots at the line to win the game.
Personally, I wouldn't blame Paul for the loss. Mental mistakes are a part of the game and anything can happen in the last few seconds of a close game - that's what makes it so compelling. At the same time, if a guy like Westbrook had done two stupid things like that, you think the media would have cut him the same slack as Paul? Lord forbid Dwight Howard had done ONE of those things - people would still be talking about what an asshole he is.
The double standard is what really annoys me about the coverage of Paul. He's one of the best players in the world and he's been on some really good teams and he's never even made a Conference Finals. If he was held to the same standard as his peers, people would be calling him a choke artist who doesn't know how to win when it really counts. Can a team with Dwight Howard or Carmelo Anthony ever win it all? I don't know, but apparently they can go farther in the playoffs than a team with Paul on it.
Four months later, the emotional fallout lingers. “It would be lying to you to say I’d forgotten about it,” Paul said during a break on set. “It’s one of those things that I don’t want to forget, to tell you the truth. I think for me, I feel like you have to remember things like that and therefore you don’t want that feeling again. I know I don’t.”
This isn’t something to make fun of, and in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
But when Chris Bosh cries in the locker room after a loss, this makes him a giant pussy? Just checking.
Personally, I don't care whether a guy is crying or not in the locker room. It's not even really my business - on some level, it feels like a violation of his privacy. Respond how you want to respond, it's your life. All I really care about is whether the guys on my team put themselves in the best position to win the game. If they have done that, they've done their job and I have nothing to complain about.
Real fans are emotionally invested in the outcome of their team’s favorite games, and I hate to break it to them, but the vast majority of players don’t care about these contests nearly as much. It’s a job for the most part, and once one game is finished, it’s onto the next one, often times in another city the very next night.
Let's unpack this for a second. I really dislike the idea that we have to divide fans into categories of "real" or "fake". If you're at the game, you're a real fan. If you're watching it on TV, you are a real fan. And if you are doing one of those things and you just want to watch a good game without having an emotional investment in the outcome, that's no big deal either. There's a lot of things you can do in the world - if you follow basketball and put money in the collective pocket of the industry, that's cool with me.
Personally, I consider myself a "real fan" of the Dallas Mavericks, even though I no longer have the same emotional attachment that I did when I was a kid. That's just a part of growing up and not letting the actions of others affect your emotional well-being. Even if it were not my job, I would still follow their personnel moves very closely and go to a lot of their games, because I really enjoy watching basketball played at a high level. If I'm going to watch them 60+ times a year, I would certainly rather they be a good team that wins more often than not, but I'm also not going to sit here and feel like shit afterwards if they lose.
The other thing to note is the weird juxtaposition the author makes. Even the most diehard fans aren't that emotionally invested in the outcome of any one regular season game. There's 82 in a 6 month span, you can't get too up or too down about any of them. How could a player be any different? He would go crazy over the course of an 82-game season if every loss shook him to the core. Those are the games the author is talking about as being "a job" - the ones where you have to hop a plane and go to another city the very next night.
You can't juxtapose a guy's blase reaction to losing Game 43 of the regular season with Paul crying after losing Game 5 of a second round series. Those are totally different scenarios. Show me the player whose not upset by losing a game like that, a game that would have swung a second round series and gotten them to the Conference Finals. Who knows when your team is going to be in that scenario again? A lot of guys go their whole career without ever getting out of the second round. When you big up Paul for a perfectly normal reaction, you are taking a cheap shot at the professionalism of the rest of the league and that is not OK.
Players like Paul are rare in today’s NBA. Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash have the same level of competitiveness, but they’re the only ones who immediately come to mind that share Paul’s passion.
And here's where the article goes off the rails entirely. Just to pick a name at random - if you are looking for a superstar known for outward displays of emotion and reacting poorly to tough losses, how about Westbrook? Kevin Durant doesn't have a passion for the game? As someone whose covered the Mavericks for several years and has followed the team for most of his life, I know for a fact that Dirk Nowitzki does. I could make a long list of NBA superstars who have given their life to the game and that's before we even get to the average player who had to beat out 10 guys who were just as good for their spot in the league.
As writers who are paid to cover the spot, maybe we shouldn't judge things based off what immediately comes to our mind? Maybe we should take a second and think about it what we said before we hit publish. I got nothing against Kobe and Nash, but FOH with putting them up on a pedestal above the rest of the league.
There may be others, certainly, but the list is shorter than most fans would like to acknowledge. A report of a genuine show of emotion should only gain Paul more respect from those following the league, and anyone who would try to use this as a reason to mock the game’s best point guard should ask themselves what they truly want to see out of the players they idolize.
I've been in enough locker rooms to know that NBA players show emotion all the time. I can't remember what playoff game it was anymore, but for whatever reason, the image of Matt Barnes with his jersey over his head, absolutely devastated by a loss, has stuck with me. This is one of Paul's teammates! Just because a guy isn't a superstar doesn't mean he doesn't care about the game and have a passion for what he does, a point I probably should have emphasized more in the section about Kobe, Nash and Paul.
Also - maybe grown men shouldn't idolize other grown men? Maybe that's a bad idea? I hate the idea that LeBron James and Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant are different than you and me. They are just regular human beings with a very tough job - the only difference is they are bigger, faster and more coordinated than us. They work hard at their jobs and they care about doing well, but so does everyone else! The guy working 2-3 jobs to support his family - he's putting in the same amount of time that Paul does and no one's kissing his ass about it either.
Professional basketball players are entertainers. That's all they are. The only thing I want or need from them is to be good at their jobs in a way that makes me enjoy watching them. I want to see guys like Paul playing their best on the biggest stages of the sport, not making elementary errors that end up swinging the power structure of the entire league. That's all.
This is one of the main tropes when it comes to covering CP3. It's not enough to say that he's one of the best players in the NBA and that he's in the running for best PG of his generation, we have to talk about how much he wants to win and what a fiery competitor he is.
At 6'0 190, Paul is one of the smallest players in the league, but he makes up for it by being one of its smartest, quickest and most skilled. He's a great story and his size makes it easier for the average fan to relate to him than most of the giants who play in the NBA.
However, there are some advantages to being undersized - for the most part, the referees let him get away with murder on the court. He grabs and holds constantly and he's one of the worst floppers in the league, which is just an awful combination. It's one thing to take cheap shots at a guy throughout the game and it's quite another when you do that and then start crying to the refs when there's the slightest amount of contact the other way.
It's like he has decided that since he's so much smaller than everyone else, the rules of the game don't apply to him and it gives him the license to bend the rules as much as he wants. Maybe that's what people mean when he says he wants to win so badly, which is fine, but it's hardly the most admirable trait in the world.
It’s not surprising, then, that he would be moved to tears following a crucial postseason loss where his play down the stretch was a contributing factor to such a critical defeat.
Contributing factor!? I'm not a huge fan of playing the blame game for a tightly-played game with over a 100 hundred possessions that was decided in the last seconds, but if we're going to micro-analyze the last minute and play by the rules established by the media, let's be clear. The Clippers don't lose that game if Paul doesn't make two huge mental errors in the final 20 seconds.
With 17 seconds left, they are up 2 with the ball. Paul is dribbling up the court when Westbrook reaches over and goes for the steal. Instead of taking the foul, holding the ball or dribbling the other way, he anticipates the contact and tries to make a jump pass in order to draw the foul. The refs don't bite, Westbrook rips the ball out and the Thunder have a chance to tie or win. This is not a mistake a PG at any level of the game should ever make, much less a professional that people refer to as "The Point God" with a straight face.
About 10 seconds later, after the Clippers were on the wrong end of a very controversial out of bounds play, Paul makes his second mistake. There's so much wrong with fouling Westbrook on that situation it's hard to even know where to start. Fouling the shooter on a 3 is a cardinal sin in basketball - that should never ever happen, much less with the game on the line. And since Westbrook is a 32% three-point shooter, that is exactly the shot the Clippers want him to take. If he makes that absolutely terrible shot with a hand in his face, you shake his hand and call it a day. The one thing you absolutely cannot do is foul him and give him 3 shots at the line to win the game.
Personally, I wouldn't blame Paul for the loss. Mental mistakes are a part of the game and anything can happen in the last few seconds of a close game - that's what makes it so compelling. At the same time, if a guy like Westbrook had done two stupid things like that, you think the media would have cut him the same slack as Paul? Lord forbid Dwight Howard had done ONE of those things - people would still be talking about what an asshole he is.
The double standard is what really annoys me about the coverage of Paul. He's one of the best players in the world and he's been on some really good teams and he's never even made a Conference Finals. If he was held to the same standard as his peers, people would be calling him a choke artist who doesn't know how to win when it really counts. Can a team with Dwight Howard or Carmelo Anthony ever win it all? I don't know, but apparently they can go farther in the playoffs than a team with Paul on it.
Four months later, the emotional fallout lingers. “It would be lying to you to say I’d forgotten about it,” Paul said during a break on set. “It’s one of those things that I don’t want to forget, to tell you the truth. I think for me, I feel like you have to remember things like that and therefore you don’t want that feeling again. I know I don’t.”
This isn’t something to make fun of, and in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
But when Chris Bosh cries in the locker room after a loss, this makes him a giant pussy? Just checking.
Personally, I don't care whether a guy is crying or not in the locker room. It's not even really my business - on some level, it feels like a violation of his privacy. Respond how you want to respond, it's your life. All I really care about is whether the guys on my team put themselves in the best position to win the game. If they have done that, they've done their job and I have nothing to complain about.
Real fans are emotionally invested in the outcome of their team’s favorite games, and I hate to break it to them, but the vast majority of players don’t care about these contests nearly as much. It’s a job for the most part, and once one game is finished, it’s onto the next one, often times in another city the very next night.
Let's unpack this for a second. I really dislike the idea that we have to divide fans into categories of "real" or "fake". If you're at the game, you're a real fan. If you're watching it on TV, you are a real fan. And if you are doing one of those things and you just want to watch a good game without having an emotional investment in the outcome, that's no big deal either. There's a lot of things you can do in the world - if you follow basketball and put money in the collective pocket of the industry, that's cool with me.
Personally, I consider myself a "real fan" of the Dallas Mavericks, even though I no longer have the same emotional attachment that I did when I was a kid. That's just a part of growing up and not letting the actions of others affect your emotional well-being. Even if it were not my job, I would still follow their personnel moves very closely and go to a lot of their games, because I really enjoy watching basketball played at a high level. If I'm going to watch them 60+ times a year, I would certainly rather they be a good team that wins more often than not, but I'm also not going to sit here and feel like shit afterwards if they lose.
The other thing to note is the weird juxtaposition the author makes. Even the most diehard fans aren't that emotionally invested in the outcome of any one regular season game. There's 82 in a 6 month span, you can't get too up or too down about any of them. How could a player be any different? He would go crazy over the course of an 82-game season if every loss shook him to the core. Those are the games the author is talking about as being "a job" - the ones where you have to hop a plane and go to another city the very next night.
You can't juxtapose a guy's blase reaction to losing Game 43 of the regular season with Paul crying after losing Game 5 of a second round series. Those are totally different scenarios. Show me the player whose not upset by losing a game like that, a game that would have swung a second round series and gotten them to the Conference Finals. Who knows when your team is going to be in that scenario again? A lot of guys go their whole career without ever getting out of the second round. When you big up Paul for a perfectly normal reaction, you are taking a cheap shot at the professionalism of the rest of the league and that is not OK.
Players like Paul are rare in today’s NBA. Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash have the same level of competitiveness, but they’re the only ones who immediately come to mind that share Paul’s passion.
And here's where the article goes off the rails entirely. Just to pick a name at random - if you are looking for a superstar known for outward displays of emotion and reacting poorly to tough losses, how about Westbrook? Kevin Durant doesn't have a passion for the game? As someone whose covered the Mavericks for several years and has followed the team for most of his life, I know for a fact that Dirk Nowitzki does. I could make a long list of NBA superstars who have given their life to the game and that's before we even get to the average player who had to beat out 10 guys who were just as good for their spot in the league.
As writers who are paid to cover the spot, maybe we shouldn't judge things based off what immediately comes to our mind? Maybe we should take a second and think about it what we said before we hit publish. I got nothing against Kobe and Nash, but FOH with putting them up on a pedestal above the rest of the league.
There may be others, certainly, but the list is shorter than most fans would like to acknowledge. A report of a genuine show of emotion should only gain Paul more respect from those following the league, and anyone who would try to use this as a reason to mock the game’s best point guard should ask themselves what they truly want to see out of the players they idolize.
I've been in enough locker rooms to know that NBA players show emotion all the time. I can't remember what playoff game it was anymore, but for whatever reason, the image of Matt Barnes with his jersey over his head, absolutely devastated by a loss, has stuck with me. This is one of Paul's teammates! Just because a guy isn't a superstar doesn't mean he doesn't care about the game and have a passion for what he does, a point I probably should have emphasized more in the section about Kobe, Nash and Paul.
Also - maybe grown men shouldn't idolize other grown men? Maybe that's a bad idea? I hate the idea that LeBron James and Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant are different than you and me. They are just regular human beings with a very tough job - the only difference is they are bigger, faster and more coordinated than us. They work hard at their jobs and they care about doing well, but so does everyone else! The guy working 2-3 jobs to support his family - he's putting in the same amount of time that Paul does and no one's kissing his ass about it either.
Professional basketball players are entertainers. That's all they are. The only thing I want or need from them is to be good at their jobs in a way that makes me enjoy watching them. I want to see guys like Paul playing their best on the biggest stages of the sport, not making elementary errors that end up swinging the power structure of the entire league. That's all.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Michael Beasley
The first thing you have to recognize about why NBA teams are still interested in Michael Beasley is that he played pretty well for the Miami Heat last season. In 15 minutes a game, he averaged 8 points and 3 rebounds on 50% shooting. If you project that over 36 minutes, Beasley was at 19 points and 7.5 rebounds a game. It was a dramatic improvement from the downward slope he had been on in the last few seasons - he had a PER of 17.
He fell out of the rotation towards the end of the season and hardly played at all in the playoffs, which lead to a lot of speculation and rumors about him falling out of favor with the Miami brain-trust. That may or may not be true, although Erik Spoelstra did say he thought Beasley had matured tremendously on and off the court when he was asked about him during the NBA Finals. The reality is that he probably never had much of a chance to get playing time anyway - the Heat were pretty all-in on their veteran leaders in the frontcourt.
Over the course of the playoffs, Miami gave guys like Shane Battier and Udonis Haslem chance after chance, even when it was pretty obvious that they had nothing left in the tank. Maybe Beasley's mental mistakes on the defensive end made it impossible to play him, but Battier and Haslem flat out couldn't move anymore and their physical flaws on the defensive end absolutely killed the Heat throughout the playoffs. It wasn't really exposed until the NBA Finals, though, due to Miami's cakewalk through the Eastern Conference Playoffs.
For all the knocks on him, Beasley proved that he could still play basketball and help an NBA team last season. He's never going to be the elite two-player he was projected to be coming out of college, but he's a 6'8 240 mismatch nightmare coming off the bench and if given the chance to play against second unit forwards on a spread floor, he can get buckets really quickly. If a team is looking for instant offense off the bench from their front-court, Beasley can provide it.
Most of the concern with Beasley stems with his reputation for immaturity, off the court foolishness and run ins with the law. As a result, a lot of fans just don't want him on their team in any circumstance and he has become a punchline throughout most of the NBA. The thing about it is, though, is that he is getting older and as people move deeper into their 20's, they do tend to mature. Maybe Beasley never will, but there's little harm in bringing him in for a workout and talking with him to get a sense of where his head is at.
He's 26, he wants to make a living playing professional basketball and he probably wants to do it in his home country, if at all possible. He knows he's on a really short leash and he's not going to get a long-term guaranteed contract. If you are confident in your locker room culture and you think that he is starting to grow up, there's really no risk in bringing Beasley in on a one-year deal. Once a guy gets a reputation for being a knucklehead, it's very easy to write him off as not worth the trouble, but people can change, even a guy like Super Cool Beas.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Gus Malzahn and The Cowboys
At The Cauldron, a look at why the Auburn coach might be the best option for the Cowboys.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Jonas Valanciunas
At RealGM, a look at the continued improvement of the young center from Lithuania.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Dario Saric
At RealGM, a look at the game of the 76ers first-round pick, who won't come over to the NBA for at least another two seasons.
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