Let's be serious here. Dwight gets a lot of rebounds, but he's just not an elite rebounder. An elite rebounder is andre Drummond. Detroit is a good rebounding team with Morris and illysova playing power forward. Scroll up and see the stats yourself. Dwight wins 36% of his contested defensivr rebounds, the reason were the worst defensive rebounding team in the NBA. Drummond wins 55%. Huge difference. If he's not playing defense, rebounding or scoring at an elite level, he's not elite.
Good point, he's averaging 13, 12 and 1.8 in 32 mpg. I expect his scoring to go up. Not many are averaging that.
Drummond won't be for long. He's already putting on the pounds that will ground bound him in about 2 more years. He's going to turn into a 38% FT shooting version of Jerome James. Watch it happen. And Detroit and SVG are going to rue the day they gave him a 5-year max contract.
Look at his overall chase % above. He contests quite a lot of rebounds 36% overall, I think third on that list, but he wins 46% of those. Drummond who is an elite rebounder, contests 38% and wins 58% Dwight still does a good job on the offensive glass but sucks on the defensive glass. He's just not winning them like he used to and my guess is this is due to him not wanting to push his body or he's not fast enough anymore on the second/third jumps. At the end of the day, he's not worth 22m. I guarantee Morey would say so himself if he wasn't afraid to hurt Dwights fragile ego. He's a marginal at best improvement over Capela right now and Capelas arrow is pointing up. Now if we can't find anyone to sign, and Dwight would accept a one year deal, by all means. But if we sign him longterm, you better bet were stuck in mediocrity and harden will be gone once his deal is up.
Yeah I don't really know, but here's what I do know. If i had a choice to pay Drummond 20million or Dwight for the next 3 years i'd pick option A 100% of the time. Let's just hope we have someone else to spend our cap space on so our hand isn't forced.
I'm getting kind of tired of Dwights silly turn overs and frustration fouls. I don't think I can watch another 5 years of that. I hope we don't resign him, I hate to say it.
Unless Dwight has a bad playoffs, I won't label him as done being elite. His last 2 playoff series, he's been elite, and easily our best player. We can criticize him for cruising in the regular season, but he just outplayed chandler, D. Jordan, and Bogut by a pretty good margin.
Those numbers are NOT elite - he is not an elite player - hasn't been for some time, it would not be so bad if he would recognize that and play his role as he continues to decline, but he continues to want to post up, which he is lousy at doing.... Not elite! Research? LOL - who needs research - this is an OPINION - which you should have recognized by calling me an OP. Right? RIGHT? DD
Also I'd like to point out that we wanted him to take on a more D. Jordan type of a role, to let go his post ups, stop demanding the ball, and just rebound like crazy. he's pretty much done that. And in the playoffs that resulted in a D. Jordan ++. I'll take that from a max player.
He's under medical restrictions and he's putting up a combination of pts/rebs only 2 other players in the league are matching/besting. It's a different game than it was 5 years ago much less 10 or more years ago. By year, the # of guys who averaged at least 13 ppg and 12 rpg: 2010 - 4 2011 - 3 2012 - 2 2013 - 4 2014 - 3 2015 - 3 By contrast, guys who average 2 or more made 3's/game: 2010 - 10 2011 - 15 2012 - 23 2013 - 26 2014 - 20 2015 - 26 You have no appreciation for the value of a skill-set which hasn't been diluted or left largely redundant. B/c you didn't want to put an ounce of effort in to actually verifying your, most assuredly infallible, eye-test. 4 guys were doing what DH12 was doing in 2010 and 3 guys, including DH12, are doing it this year. Compare that with the evolution of outside shooting and it's a joke - as is your baseless viewpoint. Yeah, that kind of says it all. You had me @ Hello. The beauty of your reasoning is in its simplicity. 5 star thread!
Dream2Clips - 13pts and 12rbs is hardly elite. Lies, damned lies and statistics. You can see his decline - medical restrictions, is that what is causing him to not challenge at the rim much anymore, or to have NEVER worked on developing a post game. The guy is a Defensive big, who is PAID like a superstar, or elite, player, he is NOT Elite - putting up Tyson Chandler like statistics does not make him so..... DD
He worked on a post game, he worked pretty hard, but potential isn't infinite, and he has no potential to be a good post player.
He did not work on it hard enough, or he would have developed, he relied on his athleticism for too long and now that it is waning, so is his game - it will be a fast crash - Steve Francis style. DD
oh no doubt his game is mostly done, but he simply lacked the potential to be a good post player, hard work doesn't guarantee success, for him it was nothing more than trying to push **** uphill.
I think "elite" depends more on the value you place on different contributions and deficiencies, not how many players match your production in certain categories. 12 RPG is impressive and rare (if it stays that high), but does that fully compensate for not being able to create his own shot or the fact that he clogs up the paint due to no jumpshot at all (though he inexplicably shoots nothing but threes during pre-game warmups)??? I conclude they might balance out but he's definitely not elite.
I also take exception to the commonly repeated narrative that the end of Steve Francis' career is so certainly due to character. The guy was legitimately, severely injured a couple of times. The NBA is so elite, why is it so hard to believe that the right injury can knock a guy out of the league? This is life - sh#t happens. It's not always a result of player's commitment to practice. It could be, but I'm sure none of the posters on here know enough to make those conclusions. Geez
