Thoughts On Fortson

[wfcooper@tiac.net (Bill Cooper)]

Very interesting trade.  I'm a lot more enthusiastic about Ron Mercer
than a lot of people on this list (basically because I think the 3
point shot is about the easiest skill to learn in basketball... I'll
be shocked if Ron doesn't become  reasonably proficient at it).  But
basically I think that Ron is a pretty set commodity.  He should be a
least as good a player as Rolando Blackman, but he won't be a good as
Clyde Drexler.  

	What's interesting about this trade, is the huge difference in
the perception of Danny Fortson.  A lot of people on this lest (and
maybe the Celts) thin he's the next  coming of Charles Barkley.
Meanwhile, if you look at what the Nuggets gave up to unload him (What
you would expect to be a pretty high draft pick, and a contribution
towards meeting EWs salary), the Nugs think he's the poor man's
Michael Cage.  That's a pretty big spread.

	Not having had much of a chance to see Denver play I went to
hunt down some stats.  First of all, as everyone knows he had a fairly
limited role on the team for the first 12 games (until Lafrentz got
hurt).  Since I was looking at the stats on Doug Steele's page, I
could only compare numbers for the first half and second halves of the
season, but it looked to me as though Danny was probably playing under
20 minutes a game early in the season.  He upped this to 32 minutes a
game over the last 25, and got his Tendex up to nearly 20.  Per 48
minutes he was over 27, which would put him about 8th among power
forwards in the league.

	As many people have pointed out this was due to monster
rebounding numbers.  He basically average .4 boards per minute played
(19.2 per 48 for the season).  On the other hand, he also averaged .15
personal fouls per minute - there is just no player in the history of
the NBA who was a major contributor, who committed fouls at anything
like this level.  As a result he fouled out of 9 games.  I was pretty
worried at this point (anyone remember Lonnie Shelton?).

	Looking a little further 2 more things emerged.  It did seem
that Fortson's rebounding made some difference to the team's overall
stat's.  Over the second half of the season he improved his def.
rebounding from .255 to .265 pre minute (and he played more).  The
Nuggets also improved in defensive rebounding from the first to the
second half.  So he was taking defensive rebounds away from the other
team, not just his teammates (a la Rodman). 

	He also made big strides in controlling his fouling.  Over the
first half of the season, he committed .182 fouls per minutes of
playing time (DeClerq territory), but by the second half, he had
dropped that number to just .126 (still too high, though).  And he
fouled out 7 times in the first half (despite only playing 24
minutes), but cut that to just 2 in the second half.  He seems to have
accomplished this mostly by being less aggressive on the offensive
board, as he went from .161 OR/min. to .139 (still a very good
figure).  

	It seems to me likely (but it would be nice to have some
confirmation), that at the start of the season it was Fortson's job to
go into games, be very aggressive, and not worry about the fouls.
Then Lafrentz went down, and he got more minutes, but continued to be
aggressive.  The result is that he fouled out of quite a few games (I
bet he fouled out of 6 or 7 of games 13-25).  So he began to tone down
the act, dropped his fouls considerably, and still managed to make a
very sizeable contribution.  It demonstrates ability to adjust to a
new role, and a pretty impressive learning curve.

	On the other hand, I would be surprised if he improves a great
deal on that 27.0 tendex/min. number (the septuagenarian Barkley
posted a 30 this past season).  So we're probably looking at the
7-10th best power forward in the league, using a measure that
underestimates the importance of defense.  That's a whole lot better
than Michael Cage.

Bill Cooper