Re: Right Now In My Draft Strategy, I'm Leaning Towards...

[Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>]

Way Of The Ray wrote:

> - Pau Gasol with the 10th pick.
> I'd take him at 21, if I thought he be available,
> but if he's that good, he won't escape the
> teens ala Sacramento drafting Stojakovich
> with the 14th pick in 1996.

    I've never seen Pau Gasol play, but he looks like Shawn Bradley in
terms of build. Antoine Walkers' wrists are probably thicker than
Gasol's biceps, if you go by the "es.telebasket.com" photos.

    Who knows he might be very good, but I doubt he'll contribute
anywhere as quickly as Kukoc or Nowitzki did.

    One of the easiest things in the world is making superficial
analogies to former stars. Pau is tall, skinny, young and European.
Therefore he's the "next Kukoc" or the "next Nowitzki".

    These analogies break down, as soon as you look at the stats. This
shouldn't surprise anyone, really.

    Nowitzki was and is simply a GREAT outside shooter. The ball floats
into the bottom of the basket like it did with Bird. In the case of
Gasol, he did shoot a Pierce/Walkeresque .369FG% (17/46) from European
3-point range this season. But 46 shot attempts in 36 games hardly makes
him a Nowitzki clone. As many have noted, he looks more like "ET" than
Nowitzki.

    But at least there is the Kukoc analogy. Kukoc was a skinny, weak
defender at small forward but that is where the analogy ends. Just as
Nowitzki brought great shooting and rebounding, Kukoc brought great
passing and court sense. This season, Pau Gasol racked up 24 assists in
33 games played, or one assist for every 24 minutes of playing time. His
total assist-to-turnover ratio was 24/50. This guy gets a "lot of
touches" but doesn't seem to do much to help his teammates.

    By the way he averaged 5.33 rebounds in 24 minutes of playing time.
That's pretty good, but not something to write home about considering
he's 7-1.

    I'm talking about stats though. I've never seen him play yet. Really
at this stage, the best thing you can say about Gasol is that at least
he'll give Moiso a decent chance to actually play more minutes than
someone. Defensively, we're talking some serious "crouching poodle
outbreak".

    I don't know. Let the scouts decide on his upside. But I think we
should drop these preconceived "Kukoc" and "Nowitzki" analogies if they
don't fit. This could be yet another "monkey see, monkey do" draft pick.
NBA GM's aren't that different from Wall Street stock analysts when it
comes to herd mentality.

Joe

p.s. I appreciate the hard-to-find URLs (links) that Way has been
posting to the list lately. For a long while, his "value added" in this
regard was IMO hugely overrated by his supporters, but lately he seems
to be back to his old ways and that's really welcome on any basketball
list. There's no doubt he's seriously into basketball. No doubt he gets
to watch a lot more ball than me.

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