TEAM CHUCK VS. TEAM SHAQ

Maybe it's a slow news day but I thought I would do a quick write up on the Rising stars draft. Here's the total pool:

Name POS Min WP48 PoP48 Drafted
Drummond C 986 0.35 7.8 5
Leonard SF 896 0.256 4.9 6
Faried PF 1431 0.242 4.5 4
Davis PF 1021 0.198 3.1 2
Tristan Thompson PF 1549 0.182 2.6 12
Vucevic C 1589 0.166 2.1 14
Parsons SF 1805 0.158 1.8 11
Irving PG 1344 0.135 1.1 3
Kidd-Gilchrist SF 1196 0.135 1.1 15
Walker PG 1668 0.088 -0.3 19
Barnes SF 1226 0.088 -0.3 9
Lillard PG 1890 0.075 -0.7 1
Klay Thompson SG 1714 0.059 -1.2 7
Beal SG 1273 0.055 -1.4 8
Rubio PG 518 0.05 -1.5 10
Knight SG 1585 0.046 -1.6 16
Shved SG 1154 0.044 -1.7 20
Thomas PG 1140 0.025 -2.3 18
Zeller C 1235 -0.016 -3.6 17
Waiters SG 1223 -0.042 -4.4 13

Giving these teams:

Team Chuck Team Shaq
Player PoP48 Player PoP48
Davis 3.1 Lillard -0.7
Faried 4.5 Irving 1.1
Leonard 4.9 Drummond 7.8
Beal -1.4 K Thompson -1.2
Rubio -1.5 Barnes -0.3
T Thompson 2.6 Parsons 1.8
Vucevic 2.1 Waiters -4.4
Knight -1.6 Kidd-Gilchrist 1.1
Thomas -2.3 Zeller -3.6
Shved -1.7 Walker -0.3
Avg 0.87 Avg 0.13

My initial impressions:

  • Under no circumstances should an NBA team ever (EVER) let Chuck or Shaq anywhere near their draft board, because.. holy hell. I like Lillard, but drafting him first instead of Drummond or Davis is just plain BAT. SHIT. INSANE. For that matter, taking him over Irving is WHAT. THE. HELL.
  • The guards in this pool are terrible. There's Irving and Walker, and not much else. I wonder if any of the SFs will play shooting guard?
  • On paper, I'd think that Chuck's team would destroy Shaq, because Shaq isn't likely to play Drummond anywhere near as much as Chuck will play Davis and Faried.
  • On the other hand, much of why the bad players here are bad is because of turnovers. But turnovers won't be that big a deal until the fourth quarter, because until then, no one's going to be playing defense. Guys like Faried and Leonard are not likely to be nearly as impactful as they would be in a "real" game. Furthermore, Shaq also isn't likely to play Waiters or Zeller much, both of whom really skew his average player's PoP.
  • WTF Damien Lillard first? REALLY? Lolz.

Categories: Rising stars

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Thomas Burris

Not really sure why you would hate Chucks team. Granted he ended up with 5 of the 7 worst players, but only because the guards are terrible and Shaq was over-drafting them anyway. Aside from not taking Kemba Walker, I think he had a pretty Wins Produced friendly draft. This would be a great experiment if the game was legit to see if a team full of dominant bigs can really beat a team full of "scorers" and "shot producers"

107 days ago

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Arthur North

I'd just like to point out that because of the nature of this kind of game, I don't think WP really matters here. People aren't trying on defense, or going hard for rebounds. The nature of the competition is different, so we can't compare it to regular season stats where there is much more competition.

It's like when players were playing exhibition games during the lockout, it wasn't as if Kobe or Chris Paul were any better or worse than Michael Beasley or Josh Selby.

107 days ago

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Patrick Minton

Thomas,

Chuck drafted better than Shaq. And even, from a game theory perspective, I can see drafting Davis 2nd instead of Drummond, on the theory that Shaq is stupid enough not to draft him 3rd...then he passed on him 4th, and let him have Drummond anyway.

Because any time you have a chance to draft two dominant bigs, you pass on it, right?

Arthur,

I basically agree. I thought that is what I was saying in my 4th bullet point, and why I said that "on paper" Chuck's team is much better.

I expect it will be a pretty close game since neither team will play defense until the 4th, and basically every NBA player is capable of lighting it up vs. no defense.

107 days ago

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Jon C

I think Chuck starts Rubio or gets him into the game and then him tossing lobs to Davis and Faried becomes the story of the game. Rubio's WP is artificially low this season because he was coming back from injury. He is playing a lot better than those first two or three weeks. And his game is perfectly suited for this game and for the bigs on his squad.

106 days ago

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nich obert

Worth pointing out, Beal started horribly and then turned really good once Wall came back. Considering some of these guys total output is only 40 games and they're not even 20, I think I'd preach some lenience on Shabarqley for going with some guys who may have gotten better in the kplast month or so. 15 games of good play is a small sample size, but when it's over a third of their total output and its not their first 25 games in the NBA, it may be more relevant than the bigger small picture.

106 days ago

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nich obert

Really though, it's all about washing the taste of the Skills Challenge out of people's memories. If one team wins by 100, cool. Great story, greater highlights!

106 days ago

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bagman 1980

Local sportswriter on why Barkley could be good Suns GM:

http://www.azcentral.com/sports/suns/articles/20130214charles-barkley-phoenix-suns-gm-would-give-relevance-hometown-team.html?nclick_check=1

99 days ago


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