And you know that because you don't like him much? Why can't I compare Brewer to Outlaw if you are comparing Redick to Steve Kerr? You are talking about his range on three point shot. Shawn Marion could shoot that jumper when he just entered the NBA. So the trend is that his shot got a lot worse with more practice and playing time. Nice way to support your claim. And what does it have to do with Shawn Marion? a normal guy can run ugly, and guy with a deformed leg can run ugly, does it mean because they both run ugly the deformed guy will run as fast as the normal guy? What I mean is there's a tendancy to inflate Brewer's value by overrating athleticism, he sure brings other things to the table, but terms like "lock down defender" or "Joe Johnson" should be reserved until he actually shows it on the court. So men with bigger size drafted because of athleticism cannot be compared to smaller men? I don't see reasons not to. The point of comparison is don't overhype a player due to his athleticism, so Brewer gets some boards and assists like every good college players, what exceptional strength do you see in him as a player except his athleticism?
In huge situations like game 6 of the nba finals like Jordan vs. B. russell, you're damn right Tmac is going to be guarding the best player, no matter what.
Redick's college stats are almost identical to Allen's and far better than Kerr's. Kerr never scored 28 points per game in college -- or at any time in his career -- not even close. Brewer also has a much better chance of being another DerMarr Johnson than the second coming of Shawn Marion. DerMarr might be special someday, but when? Next season will be his 6th in the NBA. How long will we have to wait for Brewer? In contrast, Ray Allen was productive the day he stepped onto an NBA court: he scored over 13 ppg as a rookie, and only got better as the years went by. I expect Redick to be similar, at least at first. Whether he will reach the heights that Allen achieved, I don't know. But I expect Redick to be, at the minimum, a solid contributor to our team. Panda wasn't comparing Brewer to Outlaw. He was just saying that Brewer is far, far likelier to be closer to Outlaw than Marion. I agree. DerMarr Johnson might be an even better comparison.
Awhile ago Phil Jackso was asked in an interview, In all seriousness, who really is better Michael or Kobe? PJ said that the truth was that if Kobe played Michale one on one, Kobe would win 9 out of 10 times. He said Kobe is without question the single most gifted individual basketball talent he has ever seen, and having coached both in practice every day he realizes that. BUT PJ went on to say, that if he had a choice between Kobe or Michael he would take Michael every time. His reasoning was because he said Michael was a superior 5 on 5 player to Kobe. As PJ said the NBA is a 5 on 5 game not a 1 on 1 game. He said Kobe could not touch Michael in a 5 on 5 game, and he doubts he ever will. I think a lot of people here have forgotten basketball is a 5 on 5 game, not a 1 on 1 street exhibition or even a 2on 2 or 3 on 3. Redick is without question a superior 5 on 5 player to Brewer and Carney, but people would rather have a 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 player like Brewer or Carney instead. Well would you rather have Kobe or Jordan?
I like Redick plenty, I just don't think he compares well with an All-Star like Ray Allen. Let's see, one is a SG and one is a PF, one has NEVER had to develop an outside jumper. Redick and Kerr can be compared because they are both SGs and both are good shooters. And Brewer can't? Actually, you're the one that brought up Marion saying that he developed his shot in college when I showed that his 3-pt shot didn't develop until he got into the NBA. Brewer IS a better shooter than Marion was coming out of college. The STATS show that Brewer was a better shooter in college. I kind of understand your analogy, but I was just making the point that an ugly shot (like Marion's) doesn't matter if the shot goes in. I understand that people tend to overrate athleticism. But people were in favor in Brewer before he showed how athletic he was in the workouts. Brewer was already a great defender in college BTW. If you think we need to wait before we call Brewer a "lock down defender" or "Joe Johnson" until we see him on the court, I understand that. But then the same must be said when you posters say Brewer is the next Ray Allen or that he can be the 3rd scorer we need. You don't see the fault in comparing Brewer, a potential Top 10 pick, to 3 Big Man that have been ALL BUSTS because they were selected #1, #1, and #2? I like how you posted that every good college player gets some boards and assists, so what does that say about Redick who only grabbed 2rpg and 2apg? The thing I like about Brewer is that he does everything well and not just one thing great. Brewer is a player that can play defense, get some rebounds, handle the ball, pass, drive and finish, and shoot. The ONLY thing Redick has going for him is his shooting, do you not agree?
He was being sarcastic when he mentioned Bo Outlaw because he thought you comparing Redick to Kerr was ludicrous. BTW, I am having doubts that Brewer can shoot, even if he did it at college level. JVG is giving me these doubts over the past few days when he mentioned Brewer's shot.
If it's such a pet peeve that people compare Redick to players's he is actuallu similar to, why don't you and others at LEAST bring up names similar to Brewer. Shawn Marion is repeated over and over. How many people here have even sen an NBA game? 1. Brewer is a superior passer and ball handler. 2. Brewer has a higher bball IQ. 3. Brewer can NOT shoot and NEITHER can Marion yet people use this as a basis to say Brewer will be fine. Marion can NOT shoot and it's ridiculous that people keep saying he can. 4. You can start comparing Brewer to Marion when Brewer goes from being a poor shot blocker and rebounder especially by his size and athleticism to a VERY good one like Marion. Redick to Ray Allen is a lot closer than Brewer to Marion, and any observant NBA watcher would know that.
And one more thing Brewer is a perimetere player that likes to have the rock all the time, Marion is a garbage man that plays totally off the ball.
Actually, Panda was comparing Brewer's weird shooting form to Outlaw and Marion. For which I responded that you cannot compare his shooting to Outlaw because Outlaw is a PF that NEVER had to develop his shot. He was saying that you he or may not develop a shot like Marion's, but I guess he didn't know that Brewer is already a better shooter than Marion when he was coming out of college. But oh well, this thread is getting way to long for me.
Trust me RD, I have "sen" lot's of NBA games. I'm not comparing Brewer to Marion, I'm just saying that Marion has been able to become a good shooter despite his weird shooting form, the comparisons stop at that. I have said it over and over that Brewer really reminds me of Josh Howard. Shawn Marion CAN shoot well enough, period. Weren't you the one that pointed out that Miami would have been leading the Finals if they had a shooter? Well it just so happens that they won the NBA Championship w/o that shooter. BTW RD, you never answered a question I had on your "Any average defender could hold Marion to 8ppg post." IF any average defender can hold Marion to 8ppg, what do you think they would do to JJ Redick?
Let's not get carried away here...... Marion can shoot and saying he can't simply because he has ugly mechanics isn't fair. He's had seasons where he shot almost 40% from 3-pt range and has a career 35% 3-pt shooting percentage which isn't bad. Although most of his points come off fast break and put backs, his mid-range accuracy has improved over the years and he has surprisingly become a pretty well balanced player on the offensive end. Marion is one of the most athletic and versatile players in the league and based off of most reports that appears to be the same case with Brewer and this year's draft. Marion and Brewer both have similar heights/weights/frames so I suppose that is the basis for which are comparing Brewer to Marion. Personally, I don't see it since Marion players A LOT bigger than he really is anywhere on the court whereas I see Brewer as more of just an athletic swingman. I think comparing him more to a cross of Josh Howard and Andre Iguodala could be more appropriate. As for the Redick/Ray Allen comaparison, I don't like it. Not to drag the whole Redick/athleticism issue through the dirt again but he's simply not the athlete Ray Allen is. Nobody, not even the psychotic out-of-control Redick lovers (dadakota, rockets dynasty, etc) would even be so nuts as to suggest Redick could carry an NBA team the same way Allen has all throughout his career. Not that thats even a bad thing from a Rockets standpoint, since we clearly aren't looking for a franchise player. Just a solid and intelligent potential 3rd gun, which Redick potentially fits the bill for. Let's just not carried away and try to label him something that he's not.
I like that Brewer kind of does it all, but he is far from good at any of these things, but scoring. He scores 18ppg and that's putting up numbers in college. Getting 5rpg and 3apg is not doing everything well. That's just having something on your stat sheet. If Brewer scored 18ppg, grabbed 8rpg and dished out 4-5apg, that's doing everything well. You have to dominate in college to be a mediocre skill guy in the NBA. Everything you do well in college gets worse when you are playing against bigger, stronger and smarter NBA talent. My problem with Brewer is that he's not NBA ready in any of his mediocre talents. He'll take years to get to a high level. I think he will get to that high level in 3-5 years, but I want a guy for next year. Day one contributer is what we want. The ONLY thing Redick has going for him is his shooting? Redick also can hit his free throws at a high rate and knows how to draw a foul. He can spread the floor for Yao to work. He can make his defender run his a-- off all game while he runs around trying to get open looks. He can hit a mid range jumper. He's got a quick and high release. He's used to playing at a high level because college players brought their 'A' game against him. NBA guys will bring their 'C' game against Redick which is comparible to an 'A' game in college. It's not just shooting, they say he's the BEST pure shooter that the college game has ever seen. What if he becomes the best pure shooter that the NBA has ever seen? You don't pass that up. You pick that at #8 if he's there. (Barring a top guy falling to #8) "Ew, Brewer is coming to town, let's play our best." No team said that. Game plans didn't start and end with Brewer. Yes, he was good in college, but he didn't have to play against teams that feared him every night. Game plans weren't developed to stop Brewer and he dialed in for 18 a night. That's it. Redick, on the other hand, faced the best defenses that teams could think of and he averaged 27 or 28ppg??? That's doing more than just shooting. That's finding a way to score night in and night out no matter what it took. That says more about Redick's drive than a work out with no defender. Both players will have to adjust to the speed and strength of the NBA game, but Redick will no longer have game plans written about him. He'll be that 3rd or 4th option that kills teams when the first 2 options aren't working. Redick has proved that he has the ability to shake a game plan, double teams, running at him and everything else teams threw at him and now there won't be a defense planned for him(as a Rocket). Not until the playoffs. Brewer's strength is being the trash man. His best offensive skill will be the put back. We need that skill too, but not from a SG position. Yao needs a player at SG that can get him open and a great shooter running around on offense will do that. Redick's one weakness that I don't like is that during the playoffs when teams know what he does, they can adjust for it. A guy like Brewer is probably harder to contain because he does a variety of things for you. Brewer's one weakness is that it's going to take him a while to develop an NBA game. Redick's contribution might dissappear in the playoffs, but he might help us be a 1,2 or 3 seed instead of 7,8 or lotto. I want to host the 6th,7th and 8th seed, not be them. I believe Redick's regular season play will lift us to a higher seed than 5th. Yes, Redick has shooting going for him, but what that shooting does for the team is what I'm interested in. I suspect his weakness on defense will improve because of JVG. Draft offense, teach defense. If that's our motto, who's our man?
good post. i'm moving more and more to reddick is the guy i want at that's it, unless we trade up or someone falls.
I'm starting to think the same. I've read some great posts about Brewer and the argument holds water. The problem with the Brewer arguments are always against Redick instead of saying what Brewer WILL do in the NBA. If anyone has any evidence for what Brewer WILL do in the NBA and use that as the argument to draft him, I'm all ears. I would love to read it. I was convinced he(Brewer) was our guy when someone said how versatile he was, but then I started thinking about it. There is no way a 3apg college player is going to run the point next year(SG-yes SF-yes PG-no.). He may become a point-SG/point-forward, but he can't be that close to being a ball handler when he only collected 3apg. NBA point guards are good defenders when players bring the ball up. The highlights make it look like Brewer could easily run the break, but I don't personally believe for a second that he could bring the ball up for 20 minutes a night without giving up TO's for fast break points against us. NBA points know a lot of little tricks and are very very quick. I don't think he's ready yet. The highlights of assists that Brewer got were from fast break assists. That's a great skill to use in the NBA, but that doesn't mean he can run the point. So, he gives us the versatility of playing SG/SF. Mostly SG though because Tmac plays a lot of minutes at the 3. My argument may be wrong, but if I'm right, that makes Brewer as one dimensional as Redick in terms of playable positions. And he can't shoot as well as Redick. If you want SG/PG versatility there is a player named Mike James that has real NBA ready PG/SG skills. I would do whatever I could to get him within reason. If he wants 8million a year we'd have to pass because of financial reasons, but if he wants the full MLE, do it. He kills two birds with one stone. He's improved almost every year in the NBA too. He's won a championship. He plays good defense. He's the athletic versatile guy that can be plugged in immediately. The Rockets have a positive looking future even without signing anyone. We're built just like the NBA champs. That's a great start and FA's know that too. One healthy season and we're the next big deal.
Brewer isn't Josh Howard. He's Marquis Daniels (slightly bigger) (worse shot) He's not Josh Howard. It just shows you haven't seen Brewer play if the Mav you compare him to is Howard, when he isn't like Howard and the Mavs have another guy (Daniels) that he is very much like.
Using your logic Marion is a better 3 point shooter than T-Mac. Yes Marion is a "good shooter" because he shot a decent percentage. The wonder worker Steve Nash strikes again. And yet another person that apparently hasn't even watched a Suns game. Look, Marion shooting 35-40 from 3 on wide open shots that he has all day to get off does not make him a good shooter. Marion hitting a few three's all year not with a defender on him, or even a hand in his face, but just a defender running at him does not make him a good defender. This reasoning would say T-Mac is a worse 3 point shooter than Marion because he shoots lower being doubled, trapped falling away from 26 feet with a hand in his face than Marion shoots wide open taking all day to shoot the damn thing. This is exactly the sort of reason why people that base everything on stats have no business running an NBA team and if this is the way Morey thinks he may well turn out to be the worst GM of all time.
Yawn. But the same doesn't go for Redick does it? Everything you just wrote is just a re-hash of being a shooter. The part I bolded is just a ridiculous statement. A NBA "C" game is ten times better than anything Redick or Brewer has ever seen, and how do you know that NBA guys will only bring their "C" game? Have you ever seen a Duke game? Redick gets all of his points from shooting the ball. People keep saying that he is more than a shooter but they're not proving it. What else can he do besides shoot the ball? Shoot FTs? Exactly.
don grahamleone, If you read this forum enough, you know by now that I'm hoping we take Brewer. I have done a ton of reading up on the guy, so I figure I can do at least a decent job of calming your fears about him. So here goes... First of all, I don't think anyone is expecting him to play extended minutes at the PG position. His height, weight, and length should allow him to guard the bigger/stronger point guards of the league that prefer to post up. This is where I believe he would be used. More on the defensive side of the ball than anything. Although, he does have a nice handle and very good court vision. You mentioned that the 3.3 apg average leads you to believe that he won't really be able to play the PG on the offensive end in the NBA. Well I can't sit here and guarantee you that he can, but I can give you an example that might make you feel a little better. Joe Johnson, a guy that doesn't have nearly the same ball handling skills or court vision of Ronnie Brewer, put up 6.5 apg after being traded to the Atlanta Hawks where he primarily ran PG. He did also have 3.26 tpg, but that's still a very respectable 2:1 ratio for a guy that was thrown into a new position, and on a new team no less. The reason I bring him up is that he also played SG/SF at Arkansas just like Brewer. However, look at Johnson's #'s in his 2 years there... 16.0 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 2.2 apg, 2.7 tpg 14.2 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 2.6 apg, 2.3 tpg and Brewer's... 12.2 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 3.4 apg, 2.6 tpg 16.2 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 3.4 apg, 2.0 tpg 18.4 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 3.3 apg, 2.2 tpg As you can see they were very comparable to Brewer's numbers, yet the assists were down and the turnovers were up. Johnson was much like Brewer in the way they both played SG and SF, but were also capable of running the show from the PG at times. Like I said before, there's no way to accurately predict what will translate to the NBA from a guy's college skillset, but it's encouraing to see that Johnson was a similar player in the same Arkansas program, didn't have quite the dribbling/playmaking ability that Brewer does, yet he was still able to have success at PG in the NBA despite his low college assists numbers. Another thing I would like to point out is that every time Brewer had an off night in the scoring column, he showed up significantly in at least one other column of the stat sheet. I did a break down of it in another thread about a month ago, but off of my head I remember one game when he had an off night but still managed 5 steals, another where he dished out 9 assists, and yet another where he went to the glass to pull down 11 boards. His team won every one of those games. I know you said everything you've read about him on this board was in comparison to Redick, so I tried to stay away from that kind of talk, but I wanted to comment on what you said about Ronnie being essentially only as versatile at Redick in terms of positions he can play. I have to completely, yet respectively, disagree with you there. In my opinion there is no doubt that Ronnie can effectively play SG on both sides of the court. I also believe he can play minutes at the SF on both side of the court. Same goes for PG, where I believe he can fill in at least for short stints. When/if the Rockets go really small, there's an outside chance he may even see minutes at PF (vs. players like Antoine Walker, Boris Diaw, Al Harrington, Antawn Jamison, James Posey, etc.). Redick, on the other hand, still has question marks at his natural position of SG. He did measure out a little taller than expected at roughly 6'5", but athleticism is still an issue. I'm not bashing him and saying he's slow as molasses like some people might assume that I am. I just have worries about a guy with average athleticism and limited ball handling abilities coming in to play arguably the single most athlete laden position on the court. Speaking of ball handling abilities, if you think Brewer would have a tough time bringing the ball up, you'd have to cover your eyes for Redick. There's also no reason to believe that he'd see time at SF unless we went small in a way that would rival most high school teams. Basically I see it like this in terms of where they will be able to see playing time... Redick PG - Unlikely. SG - Definitely. SF - Very unlikely. PF - Never. C - Never. Brewer PG - Possible, bordering on likely. SG - Definitely. SF - Definitely. PF - Unlikely, but possible on rare occasions. C - Never (the one exception may be against Boris Diaw). Again, sorry to bring up Redick, but I felt the need to clear that up. I guess I could write some more, but I need to go run some errands so I'll leave it at that for now. Just take everything I've said for what it's worth to you. I've decided to stop arguing with people over who we should draft. If people want to disagree with what I've posted, I'm fine with that, but I'm just not going to waste a bunch of time posting back and forth while accomplishing nothing. I hope this post was useful.
Ok Joe johnson is a BETTER comparison by far than Josh Howard and Shawn Marion kudos on that. I used to live in Fayetteville, I watched most of Brewer's games and most of Joe Johnson's games. The difference between the two is that Johnson is a good outside shooter with good range and Brewer looks like he's in slow motion compared to Johnson. I think I could safely describe Ronnie Brewer as a poor man's Joe Johnson, and that's actually a pretty accurate comparison.
Obviously Joe gets the nod on 3PT shooting, but I feel that Ronnie is a little more effective at midrange and penetrating. Ronnie's defense also deserves a bit more credit than the poor man's Joe Johnson comparison, in my opinion. How about a poor man's Joe Johnson on offense, and Josh Howard's long lost younger brother on defense?
