Originally Posted by
Jabberwalker
I'm not arguing that AD will suffer because of Asik's presence near as much as Evans. It won't help AD though. If Ryno is on the floor instead of Asik, then one of the two are likely the case either:
A- Ryno's man (most likely a PF) is on the perimeter and whoever was guarding AD (likely a C) will easily be blown by because of AD's speed and size or
B- Ryno's man stays guarding the paint forcing the roster to adjust and leaving someone (likely Ryno) open for a three.
Now play that out with Asik. Either Asik leaves the pain, his defender doesn't care and will continue to guard AD meaning that AD will have to get by whoever picks him up from the pick and roll as well as Asik's man, or AD's passing is going to have to improve greatly to hit Asik in traffic if Asik stays near the basket, or Davis is going to have to take more jumpers (aka less high percentage shots).
Of course that scenario doesn't mean near as much as the Reke situation but everyone saying he'll just clean up Reke's misses isn't thinking about math.
Let's say we're a good rebounding team. Reke will struggle to get to the basket and will either turn the ball over or put up much worse shots than before. Although we just improved our chances of rebounding the ball, we still haven't put it in yet. Put backs are high percentage shots but now you have Reke shooting a low percentage at the hoop, say 40%, we get the rebound from his shots at the hoop 50% of the time (that's a ton), and make a tip in from those rebounds 70% of the time (again, a ton).
.6 (this is the percentage of the time he misses at the rim) x .5 (chance we get rebound) x .7 (times we get the ball in the hoop from the rebound) x 2 (what the points are worth) = 0.42 points per miss.
So now we increased his turnover rate while driving in traffic to get to the hoop for the .42 points per times he misses. Is that really worth it? Or would you rather have a cleaner drive, and cleaner look at the basket because a player who can stretch the defense is on the court?