Vivid, i like your optimism,but your post is typical of a guy looking at strictly numbers. Amare as a high scholler dominated his workouts vs guys like gooden who was a great college player. Amare only has a 2" vertical advantage, but his explosion and suddeness in small spaces is what made him special along with his attitude of wanting to dominate guys. Chase on paper is probably a better athlete than wade and carmello,but those guys can burst and explode in small gaps. I think patterson is like rick fox type of guy. If the rockets dont win, it wont be because of patterson. Solid player.
Then some people forget as a freshman he averaged 16.4 points a game. Then 17.9 points game sophomore before Wall and Cousins showed up in the same year as his junior year. Thats huge upside there.
Deckard- He took a backseat in high school and college. If you have that mentality, you cant be a top end player. You're a Phi Slamma Jamma man, did michael young take a backseat? Even with clyde,dream,williams,larry m,alvin and all those guys, he still was a dude to be reckoned with.Guys like patterson have the same attitude whether theyre the leading man or not. He's a solid role player and you know me, if he proves me wrong, I'll admit it.
Most of you have to understand that before this past year at KY, Patterson was the go to guy who was playing under Billy Gillespie...and everyone knows how his tenure unfolded there...he still put up very good numbers on a team that had 5 (including Patterson of course) go in the first round...although he could have more than likely gone in the top ten the past two years and he "fell" to 14, he is still a top ten player AFTER playing with all of those guys...and like I said even though he slid, I think he helped himself out from an NBA perspective because he added another dimension to his game by learning to shoot from outside, so that means he can spread the floor and he was able to be successful while defecting to Cousins and Wall...
Also, he showed NBA teams that he knows how to be a team player and use his strengths to be successful...hence why DM drafted the guy...
Rick Fox 6'7 smallforward who cant jump and has no 5% body fat body. Averaged 12 points and 4 rebounds in his college career and shot 50 % from the field at North Carolina. Not Patrick Patterson. :grin:
Anyone who says that didn't watch him play pre-Cousins. He was the alpha dog and demanded the ball in the paint. He carried a weak Kentucky team to the NCAA and NIT before UK wised up and dumped Billy Gillispie for Calipari. When Cousins came in Patterson decided to come back to school and play with him so he could complete his degree and expand his game. Now he has a pretty good outside shot as well as his post up and transition games. Personally, I'd worry about bringing in someone who had to be the "alpha dog" and trying to play him alongside Yao and Brooks. THose guys will have the ball in their hands the majority of the time they're on the court. Patterson will "fit in" the same way Shane Battier did, and if the need arises, he will play the 5 or the 3, even though he's a natural 4. The Rockets still need to pick up a true center in free agency, but that shouldn't be too hard.
Karl Malone college career averages 18.7 pts. 9.3 rbd 1.4 ast. FG%631 Pattersons 16.1 pts 8.2 reb. 1.5ast. FG%58.5 Not too bad.. Kinda close. Around the same minutes per game and Malone didnt have Wall or Cousins on his team in his last year to bring his averages down.
No waite?? That 631 was Malones freethrow percentage. Sorry :grin: . His FG% was actually .566 making it lower career field goal percentage than Patrick Patterson. Sorry Patrick. I just didnt think Malone had such a low freethrow percentage. I thought it was his field goal average.
Lee, I have to agree with you about true alpha dogs having that ego and mentality. I actually tend to think that people might actually value PP more if he had raised some stink about not being featured at Kentucky. Folks would say that shows fire and spark. However, there's a spectrum. There's Jordan's will and fire on one end, and then milk drinking shrinking violets on the other. There are plenty of All stars and very good players that don't have Jordan's will and fire, but are plenty mentally tough. The other way to look at it is that some of the egomaniacal semi stars are the ones that put up stats but never win because of their selfishness. We don't exactly want those guys either. PP may have Tim Duncan's mentality or demeanor. Tough, but soft spoken and team oriented. Who knows. In the end, it's mostly about skill and talent. If PP has enough skill and talent, it looks like he has enough between the ears and in the chest to be all he can be. if we wind up with the next kurt Thomas, Rodney Rogers, Carl Landry or Al Horford, I'm pretty ok with that. It's a very good starting calibur PF. It means we have a very valuable asset.
I agree with your points but I don't think Amare is a fair comparison. 1. Those measurements were draft combine ones. Amare was 18 years old at the time. Those numbers now are probably inaccurate for his actual height (look at him vs 7fters in the league; he's about that tall now). 2. Amare, KG, Bosh are another class of power forward. The same could be said for Dirk. You just cannot compare those to the more traditional PF types like Carlos Boozer or Al Jefferson or Zach Randolph or David West or Elton Brand. The "traditional" PF is the Charles Barkley/Karl Malone mold, someone who can bang in the post mostly, step out to 20ft and hit the open J, and play the pick and roll to perfection. They are not supposed to be guys with 1-on-1 fadeaways or range out to 25ft or the ball handling ability to do face up crossovers during penetrations to the hoop. Comparing Patterson to "traditional" PF's, I feel like he was the best one in the whole draft, only to be surpassed if Favors decides not to follow Dwight Howard's path. He had the best range, the best array of post moves, and is the strongest and toughest out of the bunch. Big men picked ahead of him included two young unknowns (Cousins and Favors), two long fast players in the KG/Bosh mold with limited post-game skill sets (Udoh, Davis), and two veteran centers, one with better passing and one with better rebounding, but both falling short of Patterson in toughness and athleticism (Aldrich and Monroe). Defensively you could also make the argument that Aldrich might be a bit ahead of Patterson right now (and he's a good pick which is why Presti got him), but I feel like with their complete tools Patterson can still be coached into a better defensive presence. I know it sounds like a lot of late revisionist thinking at this point, but it obviously was not the case with Morey in the draft room when they rated him 6th overall before the draft. At this point we just have to trust them and try to see what they saw that made them like Patterson so much.
Actually Malones stats are kinda weird. He goes from averaging 20 a game his freshman year to 16 a game in his junior year? Maybe he had to take a backseat to someone too in his junior year like Patterson??? Same thing happened to Patterson in his stats going down for Cousins and Wall to be integrated into the team. Funny thing. Malone actually averaged less in last season in college than Pattersons two first seasons.
I like him alot but I dont think will keep him .. Whatever happens and IF Yao comes 70% iam content with this team ..
That's fair Spacemoth, I mainly was just comparing the two to do a bit of perception meets reality. Amare is considered a strong athletically gifted pf and I was just showing that the measurements show that PP is not that far off at all, in fact he comes in a bit stronger. Amare had question marks concerning his character coming in, which is why he slipped to 9th overall. Patterson had question marks concerning his size and age. Amare proved his doubters wrong, no reason PP can't do the same. Also Amare was 20 before he played his first NBA game, so I am not sure how he was only 18 at the combine. I agree with you that PP is more of a Banger than these versatile finesse forwards. Again, my post was not comparing their games but rather it was to illustrate the proximity of their age and measurements.
I don't see how you find enough minutes for both Hill and Patterson, if they're both coming off the bench. I think Morey picked up another trade piece, and if no sign and trade happens, it wouldn't surprise me to see Morey make a move just to free up some play time. Let that sink in folks, the Rockets have a problem with not enough minutes to go around. Amazing. .
According to Rileydog's informative thread, Morey said Patterson has the exact measurements of Al Horford, Atlanta's PF playing out of position at center. I'm not sure how much similarity there is between the two players beyond their measurements (Horford is a #3 draft pick and an All-Star reserve who's known for his rebounding and passing) but I guess physically, Patterson has the components to be a star player. It sounds like barring a trade, Jordan Hill will get PT at the 5 while Patterson play the 4. It will be interesting to see if and how their games mesh.
