The Alonzo Gee saga carries on, as his agent says the wait could last through September. Certainly a high-stakes game for a formerly undrafted player, Gee continues to keep an option to sign a $2.7 million qualifying offer, before becoming an unrestricted free agent after next season. Without picking up Gibson’s option yet, or guaranteeing Azubuike’s 2012 – 2013 season; Cleveland’s set-in-stone, rostered wings stand at Dion Waiters and Omri Casspi. One way or another, the team probably needs more than that. Let’s assume, for a variety of reasons, that one of the three “loose ends” plays for another squad next year. How do we feel about the remaining free agent options?
I'm not enough?
Currently, in the search for wing help, Cleveland brought C.J. Miles in for a two day workout. As one of the last players to make the high-school-to-NBA transition, he enters an eighth professional season as a 25 year old. An abysmal rebounder; according to ESPN’s Hollinger stats pages, of 63 small forwards last year who played 500 minutes, he procured the second-worst rebounding rate. Three years ago, he ended eighth-worst of seventy players. He also does not shoot particularly well, with career marks around 33% from three and 35% on long twos. He is solid enough though, that he annually deserves to be one of the NBA’s 450 players. Decent size and reasonable skill level let him function as a second-string-offense-producer, where he peaked at 18 points per 36 minutes in 2010 – 2011. His true shooting percentage has decreased four years in a row, but short-term and at a low cost, Miles serves as a decent dice-roll to provide wing help where Cleveland most lacks: size and scoring.
The next two players have not been linked to Cleveland, other than writers basically saying, “Cleveland needs wings…they have cap space…so, that’s a possible destination.”
Carlos Delfino turns thirty before next season. He is a solid, but non-spectacular offensive player. His annual 2-to-1 assist to turnover ratio rates amongst the best swingmen, and while jacking a couple of threes per quarter, he converted 37% over the last few years. As a player specializing in ball-movement & shooting, he compliments the skill-sets of Kyrie and D-Wait very well. Defensively, despite plummeting last year to allow an opponent PER of 17, he typically performs admirably. Though not remotely linked to Cleveland; as a low-cost option, his combination of size, shooting & experience would supplement the Waiters, Gee, Gibson rotation sufficiently for a couple of years.
When I wrote my initial free agency article on July 1st, Jodie Meeks did not really register. Not because I don’t like him, but because I was searching for short-contract, small-dollar options. At that time, discussion about Alonzo Gee focused on 4 years, $16 million; I put Meeks at least in that ball-park. As a starter on two consecutive playoff teams, Meeks sports a career 37% three-point mark and stellar 56% true shooting while rarely turning the ball over. In each of the last two seasons, he held his opponent to a lower PER than himself. Take a quick look at this assortment of advanced statistical metrics. All numbers are combined totals from the 2010 – 2011 and 2011 – 2012 seasons, unless noted otherwise.
- At age 23 & 24, “Young Wing A” played 3706 regular season minutes and 227 playoff minutes. At age 22 & 23, “Young Wing B” notched 4313 regular season minutes, with 151 in the playoffs.
- Based on Basketball-reference.com, their Win Shares over the last two seasons are 9.2 and 11.4, respectively.
- John Hollinger’s Extra Wins Added comes in at 2.4 for Player A and 11.6 for Player B, while wagesofwins.com awarded the former with 6.28 Wins Produced in 2010 – 2011, compared to 5.86 for the latter (no numbers available for 2011 – 2012).
- According to adjusted-plus-minus, player A provided 6.5 points per 100 possessions more value than Player B.
Pretty similar, right? Swingmen entering their primes, playing major minutes for borderline playoffs team, with each receiving significant support from one metric, while posing as equals according to two others.
Player A is Jodie Meeks and Player B is Nic Batum, sitting pretty with ink newly dried on a $45 million contract. I understand these two players are different; Batum is slightly younger and big for his position, while Meeks is undersized. Batum certainly possesses higher “upside” and deserves a larger contract, but there are other takeaways here. First, the consensus of the above numbers shows Batum’s worth at six wins per season. When a team spends one-sixth of their luxury tax space on that, they either expect lots of improvement, or the money is not efficiently spent. Second, if a team can snag Jodie Meeks for 3 years and $10 million, that serves as fine value, no improvement needed. If this option presents itself to the Cavs; I say take it. To avoid employing three 6’ – 4” and under shooting guards though, the team may need to pass on Gibson’s option. Additional size and athleticism can come in the form of…
Derrick Brown! Although viewed as a tweener, he spent much of his time at the three last year, where he out-produced his small forward opponents with a PER of 15.4 compared to their 12.3 (numbers from 82games.com). Limited minutes from his prior two seasons tell a similar story. For a Cavs team routinely poisoned by a lack of size and athleticism on the wings, Brown is the antidote. At 6’ – 8” with great speed and a penchant for electric dunks, he would look great on a Cavs team looking to run. He offers nothing for floor spacing, but I am not too concerned about that. For their careers, Gibson shoots 42% from deep, Kyrie sits at 40%, Casspi – 36%, and Gee – 35%. Waiters flashed NBA range at Syracuse and Cleveland added floor stretching bigs in Zeller and Leuer. Each of the metrics used in the Meeks / Batum comparison consider Brown a completely fine NBA player. A big, athletic and reasonably productive small forward for cheap?!? What am I missing here?!? Sign him up for 2 years and $5 million!!
Summary: At some point, I lost track of the purpose of this article, but I am pretty sure it ended with a Waiters, Gee, Meeks, Brown and Casspi wing rotation for 2012 – 2013. And honestly, I’m excited about it.
From a purely statistical analysis, this is a decent analysis. I like Brown’s numbers for a 3 year player, even though I’ve never seen him play. Additionally, his numbers are fairly similar to Gee’s from a shooting perspective: though he’s a better inside the three point arc. Maybe with work from the Cavs coaches, Brown could develop a decent stroke for the corner 3. I don’t know anything about his mechanics, but it might take a lot.
I also like Meeks, though his field goal percentage isn’t fantastic, and he doesn’t get to the line all that well. I do think the Batum comparisons are a bit silly since Batum has four inches on him. I think you’re overestimating Wins Shares (Do I think Jodie Meeks added 11 extra wins? NO). But Meeks would be a great guy to push Waiters in practice, and a quality guy off the bench or starter with Waiters coming off the bench.
I like Gee, but I really wonder what his game plan is. I think he feels that since a lot of other players got stupid contracts, he should get one too. It doesn’t help him that he was exposed at the end of the season when he had to try to get his own offense too much. I like him, but I’m not sure he’s a long term guy. It’s hard to retain a guy who thinks he’s underpaid and that he’s better than he is. I don’t know if I want to have that kind of attitude on the team. I like that the Cavs are sticking to their guns and not overplaying role players.
Another SF option that we ought to consider is Kevin Jones. If Jones is smart (a big if), he will probably realize that his best option to make the Cavs is to lose as much weight as possible and try to become a primarily a small forward. He is a good spot up and step back shooter, and his 3 point numbers in college are mainly from bad shot selection. Plus he’s a guy who could take other 3s into the post. I don’t know if he can guard 3s, but the roster is starting to look pretty crowded at the 4.
Adam Morrison is an intriguing option. Apparently he looked very good in summer league, and stronger. He wouldn’t be a bad flier to take, and I can’t see him being worse at the wing 3-pointer than the maddeningly inconsistent Casspi.
No love for Brandon Rush? He’s restricted, but the thought is that GSW has a glut of wings and might not match. Better shooter than any of the above, better rebounder than Meeks and Delfino. Best of the bunch in blocks and personal fouls.
Chris beat me to the punch on Brandon Rush…he’s a guy I really think the Cavs should make an offer on. He has all the tools to be good defender, and has consistently been one of the league’s top shooters. Sure he can’t create, but that’s what we got Dion for, right?
HoopsDogg,
I usually agree with your comments but suggesting Kevin Jones be converted to SF is not one of your better ideas. It’s a proven fact that tweeners are typically better left alone to do what they do best. Jones is a small four who played that position well enough to be highly effective in college. He will probably be effective against all but the elite bigger fours in the NBA. He might even have an advantage over those bigger fours because he can play decently away from the hoop. He will never develop the skills to keep up with the quickness required on the wing in the NBA.
CJ Miles may be an example of a tweener in the opposite direction. He is an excellent ball handler and is a better big SG than a typical three. His rebounding stats support that evaluation. Gee on the other hand is a great rebounder who is a poor ball handler. That makes him a small SF not a bigger SG.
HoopsDogg,
The Meeks / Batum comparison primarily hinges on Batum getting 4 years, $45 million and Meeks not signing yet. Although I know Batum has some advantages, the ultimate goal is to make plays that help your team win basketball games. The ultimate goal is not to be tall. As far as making plays to help their teams win; Batum has some work to do, lest he be overpaid. Meeks will probably be underpaid. That is the main idea.
Also, Meeks total of Win Shares was 9.2 and that is over two years. And Win Shares aren’t EXTRA wins. They’re just wins. According to that metric, he was worth 4.6 wins per season. That certainly seems reasonable to me. I like the Win Shares number in that basketball-reference based it off of Dean Oliver’s offensive rating, defensive rating, and usage numbers. I think Oliver’s work is very impressive.
Chris and Nathan,
I live in Indiana and wrote a little for the Pacers TrueHoop blog last summer. At that time, I advocated for the Pacers to let Rush walk. In that regards, I come across Rush with a little bias. Prior to last season, I considered him a hollow shooter.
That said, he had a really good season. A “career season”, if you will. His field goal percentage took a HUGE leap, his three point shooting was sublime…his per possession scoring, rebounding, assists and blocks reached all-time highs. As you noted, his frequency of fouling was cut in half from previous seasons. He was relatively old at 26 last year. Did he take a leap or just have a big contract year, like so many players before him?
Not that this has anything to do with Brandon Rush, but Larry Hughes had his big contract year at age 26.
You HAD to mention Larry Hughes. :(
I completely understand your interest in Derrick Brown. Despite all the positive you point out, I can’t find any info linking him to any interested teams. My guess is that many teams see him as a tweener and may not be interested because of that. Teams also may look at that Charlotte roster from last year and see it as so horrible that none of those players interest them. Even someone like Brown could be seen as a good stats/bad team guy. Although as I said before, I like him. I don’t get why the Cavs are interested in Miles at all. He’s an inefficient offensive player and a poor defender and rebounder. I think Casspi is better. I completely agree with you on Meeks even if it means cutting Gibson, and would be okay with Delfino on a one or two year cheap deal. His skills do fit well. What do you think about Mickael Pietrus, Sam Young, Matt Barnes, and DeAndre Liggins as other options? I would be pretty comfortable with a wing rotation of Waiters, Gee, Casspi, Meeks, Young, although Liggins intrigues me as a 3 and D guy down the road.
well no one is saying throw larry hughes money at rush. Lets not be hasty. I’d certainly take look at taking him for whatever we were supposedly willing to pay gee at least, $16million for 4 years. He is a little older, but he just turned 27, and its not like his game is based on speed. He’ll be solid while Kyrie and friends are in their prime.
I really like the idea of both Meeks and Rush. Neither is a top three player on a playoff team but I feel like either is the type of guy that could contribute game to game and even go off a few times throughout the course of the season. Both seem to make sense as top 6 guys this year that could right roles going forward too. I read the NYU NBA Rotation Synergy piece and I really think the Cavs could benefit from spot up shooters because Kyrie (and hopefully Waiters) balling handling is so good. I think both could be had for cheap deals and the Cavs are bidding against themselves with Philly’s cap situation and Golden State having Barnes.
Matt,
I certainly don’t want to belabor any strained comparisons I made between Hughes and Rush. Primarily, I was just pointing out that last year was an outlier compared to Rush’s previous performance. With a multi-year contract, obviously the team needs to expect no regression back to his previous level of play, which was marginal. Even at that though, at least he is a good three-point specialist.
Mike,
Derrick Brown doesn’t jump out as a typical good-stats, bad-team guy. At least to me, that means a guy that scores alot, probably inefficiently, while not playing defense. Brown has been a low-usage, efficient scorer that has displayed defensive results. My guess is people have tried to fit him in the “undersized power forward” role, whereas he seems better served as “big, athletic d-and-dunking small forward”. That sounds to simple though…maybe he is a head-case and I don’t know it. Regardless, for minimal cost, there is a decent amount to like.
For Pietrus, I was primarily looking at younger guys (obviously, made an exception on Delfino). Also I assume if Pietrus is going to play for cheap, he will do it for a contender.
I would rather the Cavs pursue Meeks, Brown, Miles or Rush over Sam Young.
Matt Barnes turned down 2 years and $7 million from Cleveland to sign for half as much with the Lakers…so, I dont’ like him.
DeAndre Liggins is kind of out of left field. If you’re just looking for a young guy to pay $700K and be a 5th wing, he’s fine, but there are probably 20 other players we could throw in that boat.
You have to use roster slots on someone, so why not pick a guy who’s a virtual lock to shoot over 40% from 3, and won’t hurt you on defense either? I guess what i’m saying is in the worst case we get a hollow shooter, which is ok with me, and in the best case we get the much-improved Brandon Rush of last season.
Kevin: I was referring to Hollinger’s Extra Wins (admittedly, I don’t even know how it works, I just took the name as being self evident).
JAG: Point taken on Jones, whose absolute best case scenario is Millsap: a guy who’s not a SF but who can play it if he needs in order to get on the floor. And I don’t think that’s his best position, but I don’t see him making the Cavs at PF right now, now that they have Luer.
I like Rush too, but everyone’s stats are inflated in GS. However, he might’ve just needed to get out of Indiana. He’s a guy who can probably play either wing position. Who’s better Rush or Gee? Gee is a better defender (he seems to get at least one INT a game), but Rush is a much better and more natural shooter. I wouldn’t mind seeing him at 3 years, 11 million.
OppPer is not a reasonable measure of a player’s defensive ability. There is no correlation between an OppPer value and the generally accepted defensive ability of a player.
For example, if you used Opp Per to rate the defensive effectiveness of the Cavs players from last season, Opp Per would clearly demonstrate that Varejao defends about as well as Jamison while Manny Harris was hands down the team’s best lock down defender. It would also suggest that Caspi was a better defender than Gee, and that Sessions has above average defenive presence on the floor.
None of these things are remotely true.
So any time I think I might want to use Opp Per to demonstrate something, I force myself to remember that for years, Opp Per consistantly showed that Damon Jones was clearly a better defender than Eric Snow.
HoopsDogg,
Hollinger’s Extra Wins was the one stat that disliked Meeks (only 1.2 per season).
With regards to your “better than Gee” question, it is hard to answer that question. The answer is probably “yes”. My biggest concern with Gee is that we’re basing our thoughts on him from a solid 40 game run during a delayed, accelerated season. We still don’t know exactly who Alonzo Gee is. If he eventually agrees to 3 years, $10 million or something though, I think that will be an amount everyone can agree is reasonable, with pretty much no downside.
Nathan, Matt, etc
I think Rush is fine, I’m just always suspicious of contract-year anamolies. Because of that, I rate him below Meeks and Brown. If 2011 – 2012 is the real-deal Brandon Rush though, he will be a solid pick-up for whoever grabs him.
Douglar,
Are you telling me that in 2007 – 2008 that Wally Sczerbiak was not a better defender than Lebron James? You’re crazy!
Anyways, good comment. There is not a perfect way to quantify defensive contribution. Opponent PER obviously gives no credit for defending the opponent’s best player, or for rebounding, rotating well, etc. Every method I have seen for quantitatively evaluating defense has holes. I take a quick look at rebounding, steals, blocks, opponent PER, the player’s impact on his team’s on-court / off-court, subjective descriptions and make a generalization. Obviously including the results of each of those items in an article would be a horrible bore. Over the last two years, Jodie Meeks has combined extremely low opponent PER’s of 10 and 12 with being a starter on a top 3 defense team. In 2011 – 2012, Philly was 3 points better per 100 possessions on defense with him on court than off. When watching games including Jodie Meeks, I don’t recall ever thinking to myself, “he’s horrible at defense”…I combine all of those things together and make the determination that he is not bad at defense.
Who mentioned Meeks weeks (rhyme!) ago on this very comment page? Holla! LOL!
Kj,
Finally, we’re not bickering about something. Yeah, initially I assumed Meeks would be worth a bit more than teams apparently think he is.
I do hope that Cleveland adds one player this summer that finally tops Joey Graham as the best off-season free agent wing that Cleveland has signed since Lebron left. I’m not asking for much.
1.) Went to CtB
2.) Checked to see author of most recent article.
3.) Determined author was Kevin Hetrick
4.) Scrolled quickly searching for bolded “Derrick Brown”.
5.) Unsuccessful search
6.) Began reading article.
7.) Noted growing discomfort with each passing paragraph that doesn’t include “Derrick Brown”
8.) Started paragraph that began with “Derrick Brown!”
9.) Smiling
About quantifying defense: offensively no one ever gets frustrated when a center can’t hit a 3 or shoot 80% from the free throw line. If I told you a guard can’t hit an open 10 footer would you want him? What if he’s name is Rajon Rondo! In other words, EXPECTED ROLE is something that is so easily added or removed from an equation on the OFFENSIVE end. he can’t hit a mid range jumper? Who cares he scores 20 ppg on >50% shooting. Offensive schemes and spacing are developed to deal with this. Defense is where it gets tricky, because it is REACTIVE. Therefore, the observer assumes no ROLE. Oh, you mean JaVale McGee can spike a ball into the 10th row? He can’t guard the PnR to save his life. Wally Szczerbiak was an strong player for his size and was very difficult to back down (conversely, he backed down players all the time). But he had slow feet, and could get “burned” easily so he must suck defensively. The biggest problem with quantifying the value of a player’s defense is that certain players are asked to play a certain role and we ignore that. Also, the stats that generally point to “good defense” can come at the expense of playing that role – when players gamble for steals or leave their man wide open because they were out of position trying for a block. That’s why generally analysts only point out defensive outliers – the truly dominant individual and team defenders (Garnetts, Tony Allens, LeBrons of the world) and the truly putrid ones (Kevin Martins). Everything else is tough
I too am surprised by Meeks continued availability but it seems clear that FO’s will spend for top-flight FA’s but are gonna low-ball marginal starters/bench guys. In general, that is…
Btw, this thesis of mine is further buoyed by the fact that Weems signs a 3-year deal w/CSKA today. Obviously could not get a good NBA offer…
Kj seems to be on to something. I’m thinking it is more about the awareness the FO’s have of the new CAP rules. The competitive teams that are near the tax limits are forced to offer less to the middling players and teams with CAP space are being smart enough to take advantage of it. That has a two fold effect on teams like the Cavs. If they are patient they can pay less for players who can be contributors and still maintain their CAP space for bolder moves at a later date. Grant seems to be playing the game quite well. The QO that has been extended to Gee is more than several similar players have already signed for,. Right now it looks like a real upgrade over Gee isn’t going to happen but if he moves on, it sure looks like Grant will be able to acquire a similar player while saving money.
cavs are out of the running for meeks, reports are that front runners are lakers, bucks and wizards
teddy,
it also looks like Brandon Rush will be re-signing with GSW in the next couple of days.