As the Lakers struggled through the early part of this season, much of the blame has been cast on Pau Gasol's passivity or Steve Nash's absence. The Los Angeles Lakers are at .500 even though Kobe Bryant is in the midst of one of the best 28-game shooting stretches of his career, despite being forced to undertake greater ball-handling responsibilities. But maybe it's Dwight Howard who is at fault. According to many all-encompassing metrics, Howard is playing worse than he has in years, at least so far.
When it comes to passing big men, it’s usually the Gasol brothers who get most of the love, but I think Greg Monroe may be the league’s best passer out of the low post. His 3.4 assists per game are solid and, without digging deeper, show a passing skill most big men don’t have.
DeAndre Jordan is a worse free throw shooter than some players are three-point shooters. With a 44% career free throw rate, Jordan is a huge liability late in close games, enough so that coach Vinny del Negro has to be wary of playing him in such situations. In fact, Jordan averages 26.5 minutes per game but has played just 4.5 minutes per fourth quarter, well below what you’d expect for a starter and one of a team’s core players.
On a recent Raptors Republic podcast, a show I host each week, one of the panellists suggested that he thought the Raptors’ decline in defense may have been due to them playing at a faster pace this season. No, the analysis wasn’t based on a faulty mathematical basis – he was not mistaking, as many did during the D’Antoni-era in Phoenix, that a faster pace led to more points and more points were indicative of a bad defensive unit. Instead, he was suggesting that, even for an efficiency stat like defensive rating, pace could still have an impact.
After shooting a spectacular 45.9% on 2-point jump shots through his first 23 games as a starter last year, Lin shot 20% on 2-point jump shots through his last three games. The suddenly awful jump shot seemed inexplicable at the time, but it was passed off as a brief shooting slump. What started as a three-game problem last season has now extended through twelve games this year. Lin is shooting 22% on jump shots this season, and it doesn't get any prettier regardless of how you break it down.
Tyreke Evans is putting himself among some unique company. In this case, I don’t mean that as a compliment. Evans currently has the unique distinction of being one of a small group of players in the three-point era to have failed to match his rookie performance in his next three seasons. That is, Evans looks to be one of a rare group of players to peak as a rookie.
While it's still early in the NBA season, the New York Knicks have looked very impressive so far. Their performance is even more impressive when you factor in the devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy on the NYC metropolitan area, prompting the cancellation of the Knicks' season opener against the Brooklyn Nets. Indeed, when the Knicks finally got on the court and blew out the Miami Heat, I wondered whether their energetic, feisty performance was a cathartic release of the city's frustration stemming from the hurricane. New Yorkers were in misery, and the Knicks were determined to give them something to celebrate.
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