Hollinger hates our rookies

[bleachkit]

Here are John Hollinger's quotes about our rookies

https://theathletic.com/1438782/2019/12/06/hollinger-the-2019-draft-lottery-has-been-a-train-wreck-but-here-are-the-silver-linings-in-this-rookie-class/?source=rss

De'Andre Hunter was supposed to be a safe pick with limited upside at No. 4. He hasn't even been that safe. Hunter holds his own as a positional defender and can make shots when given time and space; theoretically that makes him a 3-and-D guy. So is Tony Snell. Actually, the statistical similarity between Hunter and Snell is jarring, and not in a good way. 

Hunter doesn't have the kind of footwork or hair-trigger release that could make him a high-volume 3-point weapon and he struggles mightily to get anything closer to the basket-shooting just 42.0 percents on 2s with a low free-throw rate. Hunter rarely had to create on the ball at Virginia; he has some flashes as a right-handed driver but needs to add more wiggle and finishes. Right now he's all strait lines.

A combo forward, Hunter may be stuck between positions. He shows limited playmaking ability as a 3 - including a high turnover rate for a secondary option - but barely rebounds enough for a wing, let alone a 4. He can guard either spot competently and shows switch ability at that end, which should at least allow minutes while he figures out the offensive side. However, he makes little impact in terms of dynamic plays, with just 13 steals and five blocks on the season.

Taking Hunter over Washington - a younger, better player at the same position - the Hawks might want a mulligan on this one.

Cam Reddish -who was arguably outperforming Garland for the dishonor of this lottery's worst performer before unexpectedly erupting for 25 points Wednesday night. Despite that outburst the body of work tells a gruesome story. 

Advertised as a 3-and-D guy,  he has official stats of 31.8 percent shooting while unofficially averaging two ball handling disasters per evening, contributing to a sky high turnover rate for a secondary player. I'm sure Reddish can shoot better on 24.7 on 3s - he's at 77 percent from the line, for instance. I;m not totally sure how much better, however. His elbow-out form form doesn't inspire oodles of confidence, even in warm-ups. And inside the arc, he's a lost cause who has no slue how to finish or where to send the ball next.

With his size and mobility and a rate of 1.9 steals per 100, Reddish might be able to defend well enough to stay in the league. The Hawks have even used him as a stopper at times. (The Hawks give up 400 points per game, but still).

Offensively, however, Reddish has been a total disaster. All the red flags from his freshman year at Duke have only shown worse as a pro: His limited handle, rough decision making and peculiar inability to finish combine to make him among the leagues least effective offensive players.

 

[JayBirdHawk]

Hunter:

Missing JC hurts him, his focus should have been 3 and D while developing his offensive toolbox.  He's had to dig into it sooner than expected with miixed results.

 

Reddish:

1st 5 games (October) of his NBA career - 1-18 from 3 for 5.5%
12 games in November: 12-43 for 27.9%
Last 5 games (December) : 11-28 from 3 for 39.3%

 

Baby Steps.

[Atlantaholic]

*Sigh*

This is pretty much accurate all around. I know the consensus around here is that Hunter is "doing alright" but whatever the eye test is telling people a quick look at any of his numbers whether raw or advanced tells a very, very different story. Doesn't rebound, doesn't create, his off ball defense is not there (worst defensive win shares on the team). Not saying he hasn't shown any flashes of being a good 3 and D guy, but showing a few flashes when you are a 22 year old rookie is not exactly something to be proud of from your #4 overall pick. Now... the season is still young, and we have had injuries. I'm not writing Hunter off or anything like that but to describe his start as anything other than disapointing would be a massive lie, regardless of the context. I understand the struggles with the offensive side, and I didn't expect him to be a creator... but no rebounding and inconsistent defense are harder to swallow. Also figured he'd be better than a 40% FG player by now. 

As for Cam... well, after having what has to be one of the worst starts in the history of the league for a top 10 pick he is looking like an NBA player lately. That's the best complimetn I can come up with. However, in his defense we all knew the kid was a bit of a project so at least showing some tanginble improvement means we are on the right track with him. In that sense Hunter's struggles have been a bigger surprise to me than Cam's. 

 

[kg01]

Well I hate Hollinger's overrated a** so I guess we're even?

[txsting]

Yeah, these draft picks have not looked too good so far.  I don't know what Cam is even doing in the NBA at this point.  He's a baby and needs to be in college park building confidence.  

Hunter I suppose will get there but he's a work in progress as well.

It was a terrible draft though.  Going back to look at it,  i like our aggressiveness and Travis got it to fall his way.  I think we were happy coming out of the draft, but perhaps we have blown it.  Again.  Too early to say, but these horses are looking kinda lame.

[txsting]

Moving up in a lousy draft tends to work out poorly.  My faves on draft night were Brandon Clarke, Culver, and Bruno.  Culver is doing just as poorly as Hunter.  I still like Bruno and think he's an NBA player.  Obviously Clarke is a beast and the steal of the draft probably.  I didn't want PJ Washington, but obviously I was wrong.  That dude is the second coming of Paul Millsap.  And I hated on Cam a bunch, but really didn't mind him at #10 as much.  Just thought he was a project with some upside who got bumped up because he made a name for himself in preps and he got the undeserved bump for being a Dookie.

[High5]

People get too caught up in Hunter's age. He's still a rookie and 22 is still very young. 

[lethalweapon3]

Q: Who was the best Grizzlie rookie drafted / acquired on draft night during J-Ho's tenure there?

Comment: His Wiki page is a mess. Somebody pls help that man.

~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

I've got nowhere else to stash this and it's unworthy of it's own thread, but the ESPN RPMs are out.

http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM

3 Quiz Questions:

(1) Trae ranks third-best in ORPM. Who's #1 and #2? (this one's kinda easy, if you assume Giannis isn't one of them)

(2) Trae ranks second-worst in DRPM. Who's #431? (I kinda gave this away a couple days ago)

(3) As Trae might have guessed by now, Kris Dunn ranks 1st in DRPM among all players classified as PGs w/ 15+ MPG. WHO currently ranks 2nd among the PGs???

 

~lw3

[Atlantaholic]

1 hour ago, High5 said:

People get too caught up in Hunter's age. He's still a rookie and 22 is still very young. 

Well at It's just hard to understand what compelled us to give up picks 8, 17, and 35 for him at this stage. Starting to look like stayin pat would have been a smarter move. Hope I'm wrong but I don't see much more than Taurean Prince with better defense as a ceiling for Hunter so far, and he's still got some ways to go on offense to really be even that. 

[Spud2nique]

58 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Q: Who was the best Grizzlie rookie drafted / acquired on draft night during J-Ho's tenure there?

Comment: His Wiki page is a mess. Somebody pls help that man.

~lw3

The very fact that he opposes our rookies make me think they will be superstars.  

Ya he didn’t do well in Memphis did he? 

[JayBirdHawk]

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Q: Who was the best Grizzlie rookie drafted / acquired on draft night during J-Ho's tenure there?

Comment: His Wiki page is a mess. Somebody pls help that man.

~lw3

That took some deep digging....

 

13 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:

The very fact that he opposes our rookies make me think they will be superstars.  

Ya he didn’t do well in Memphis did he? 

......yikes, it's not pretty!!! actually down right Terribad!!

Most are no longer in the NBA, some are barely NBA platers  - WOW!!!

[High5]

10 minutes ago, Atlantaholic said:

Well at It's just hard to understand what compelled us to give up picks 8, 17, and 35 for him at this stage. Starting to look like stayin pat would have been a smarter move. Hope I'm wrong but I don't see much more than Taurean Prince with better defense as a ceiling for Hunter so far, and he's still got some ways to go on offense to really be even that. 

There are a ton of eventually good players that didn't look special <2 months into their careers. He's already an above average 3pt shooter on good volume and he's been a fairly solid defender. ESPN just released their RPM stats and he's rated as a positive defender (and our best not counting John's 5 games). There's a lot of value in him simply becoming a great 3&D. But he's also shown the ability to hit some tough shots in traffic and get some high quality looks from ~15 in. He just hasn't hit them consistently yet. 

Still, I understand having doubts. I'm just generally patient with rookies and even more so now after what we saw from Trae last season. 

[AHF]

3 hours ago, txsting said:

Yeah, these draft picks have not looked too good so far.  I don't know what Cam is even doing in the NBA at this point.  He's a baby and needs to be in college park building confidence.  

Hunter I suppose will get there but he's a work in progress as well.

It was a terrible draft though.  Going back to look at it,  i like our aggressiveness and Travis got it to fall his way.  I think we were happy coming out of the draft, but perhaps we have blown it.  Again.  Too early to say, but these horses are looking kinda lame.

Have you watched him lately?  After being a disaster early on offense, he is looking he belongs today.  Still has plenty of development on both sides of the ball but he has looked good lately.  Way better than a lot of other rookies. 

 

 

(Recently - not so much year to date.  If it sticks like it did with Trae, then that is what we call development and it was part and parcel of the guy we drafted to expect he needed it.)

[gurpilo]

Is difficult to not agree with the statement, they have look awful. Although might be true they are showing flashes overall performance is poor.

[lethalweapon3]

35 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

That took some deep digging....

 

......yikes, it's not pretty!!! actually down right Terribad!!

Most are no longer in the NBA, some are barely NBA platers  - WOW!!!

I'd be tempted to grant him Triple J as his parting gift. But given a certain individual the Grizzlies allowed the Hawks and Mavs to play volleyball with over their heads, I doubt he wants much credit for that pick, either.

 

~lw3

[benhillboy]

2 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

(2) Trae ranks second-worst in DRPM. Who's #431? (I kinda gave this away a couple days ago)

~lw3

This is why I can never fully get behind Trae.  Offensive skills historic.  Defensive tools and productivity just about cancel them out making him a strictly box office player (sigh).   We saw flashes last season of him trying to form a respectable floor game for his size but that has regressed to pretty much nothing.  Can’t set a screen nor run through one.  Can’t run off the ball nor impede his man from doing so.  Guys like Nunn, Smart, and Van Fleet always post ungodly +/- versus my man with only a fraction of his on ball skills.

Edited December 12, 2019 by benhillboy

[lethalweapon3]

Another twist on the RPM figures that just came out...

De'Andre presently ranks 89th in DRPM (+1.23) among all players regardless of any minutes played, which is also 16th among all players ESPN designated as SFs. Among players with 20+ games played and 30+ MPG, regardless of position, Hunter ranks 30th in the league.

I just went through the full list casually, and I did not find more than two Rookies ranked ahead of him in DRPM. One of them ("Second to" Nunn) was drafted by None, and the other (sneaker company intern Bazley) is getting 10th-Man backup minutes in OKC. So as far as drafted Rookies that are relied upon as starters, as far as THIS metric (one I believe J-Ho himself originated back in the day?) is concerned right now, you're not doing much better defensively than Hunter anywhere else in The Association.

"Hey, Mulligan Man!" Hollinger's comparative strawman, PJ Washington, classified as a PF, ranks 23rd among PFs in DRPM. In terms of total RPM, it's currently Hunter at a net-positive +0.77 (139th out of 431 players; The Trae Young is #138), Washington as a net-negative -0.44 (240th overall, a few spots behind Marvin Williams).

I know the D-PIPM and D-Rating** data has been unkind, and I thought J-Ho exists in the first place to get our minds off of "counting stats" (SPG, BPG) in the first place, but are those latter catch-all measures more of a combo of (The Quality of Who Exactly He's Stuck Guarding) x (The Defensively-Flawed Company He Keeps)? The YPJ Factor, if you will?

Also, does anyone know what tweaks did Jeremias Engelmann provide to RPM data, after J-Ho left The Four Letter Network?

** I should clarify that's bball-ref's D-Rating, which a poster above correctly notes has him "last" on the team at 118 or something. NBA.com's D-Rating, in comparison, has Hunter 12th (incl. two-ways that hardly play) on the team, with YPJ, Parsons and Crabbe below him. Cam is slightly better-rated, and no Hawk ranked above them, aside from Butch Clembry, has logged 20+ games and 20+ MPG.

~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

2 minutes ago, benhillboy said:

This is why I can never fully get behind Trae.  Offensive skills historic.  Defensive tools and productivity just about cancel them out making him a strictly box office player (sigh).   We saw flashes last season of him trying to form a respectable floor game for his size but that has regressed to pretty much nothing.  Can’t set a screen nor run through one.  Can’t run off the ball nor impede his man from doing so.  Guys like Nunn, Smart, and Van Fleet always post ungodly +/- versus my man without a fraction of the skills.

one encouraging sign, though. Check out the answer to Quiz Question #3. (Having a certain informant around as a teammate is probably helping this guy surge up the charts.)

 

~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

2 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

I've got nowhere else to stash this and it's unworthy of it's own thread, but the ESPN RPMs are out.

http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM

3 Quiz Questions:

(1) Trae ranks third-best in ORPM. Who's #1 and #2? (this one's kinda easy, if you assume Giannis isn't one of them)

(2) Trae ranks second-worst in DRPM. Who's #431? (I kinda gave this away a couple days ago)

(3) As Trae might have guessed by now, Kris Dunn ranks 1st in DRPM among all players classified as PGs w/ 15+ MPG. WHO currently ranks 2nd among the PGs???

 

~lw3

For those who "Got" the answer to Quiz Question (3), I'll note that last season, he was 10th-worst in DRPM among PGs by the same (15+ MPG) criteria. 6th-worst the two seasons before with a certain basketball club. Now, by "Hookah" by crook, he's 2nd-best.

~lw3