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Re: Delk For Daniels Almost As Bad As Anderson For Olowokandi Tal k

At 01:53 PM 7/26/02 -0700, bird wrote:

> From: Kim Malo <kimmalo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> THANK YOU for saying that. That was definitely my feeling watching him (I'
> ve gone through the list of PG skill set he didn't exhibit before and won'
> t bore you with repetition) and I've been wondering what I was missing
> from everyone everywhere's insistence that he's a backup at point who can
> shoot.

What does it mean when we say "This guy isn't a [position]"?  If I guy
plays that position then that's what he is.
Parcells disciple, are you <g>?

It's a good and fair question. What I meant anyway is that there is a general job description, including some critical key elements, and the player doesn't at least competently fill a reasonable percentage of those. Doesn't have to be all of them, doesn't have to be superlative. It's not necessarily stats so much as what the 90s business buzzword refers to as core competencies. If you want to get fancy with it you can even weight their relative importance.

Anyway, an example - PG's key job at one end of the floor is to set up the offense. One of the core competencies tied to this is therefore court vision. Other positions CAN have it (Bird had some of the best every and Walker's ain't bad) as a bonus, but PG HAS to have it IMO. Delk from what I saw didn't look around him very much and did not seem to see what was there when he did. Without that you can't begin to distribute, control tempo, etc


 I agree with the overall
assessment of Delk's point abilities, though, as he seems to have
regressed, even, from his days in Sacramento, but I think he gets labeled
a "backup point" because he's not good enough to start there, really, and
is one of those "shooting guards who doesn't shoot all that well", so
"starting shooting guard" isn't really his forte either.
Yeah, but the single core competency he is known to have is the ability to shoot, which belongs to the SG. It's a bonus in the point or else a lower level core competency (the old keep the defense honest) but it's the defining one in a SG and it's his leading skill.

I can go down more of these, but the net results to me are that he's a SG rather than a PG. He has at least some SG core competencies but doesn't even have enough of the PG core competencies from what I saw to be branded a swing guard or tweener. You can argue that he isn't a particularly good SG either, but he's a better SG than he is at any other position on the court.

Kim