This is both hilarious and ridiculous. The City of New York has launched a “C’Mon LeBron” campaign begging the Cavs Megastar to leave Cleveland this summer. Smartly, Mayor Bloomberg alludes to both Knicks and Nets highlights in his intro… remember kids, Brooklyn residents vote in the mayoral elections too:
So, just to recap: In anticipation of Draft Night, last week, I looked back at the Nets’ history with lottery picks. When examining how the Nets fared with picks number one through four, we saw that the Nets never pulled away as a true winner with those picks – with Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson have amazing potential but ultimately flaming out, and Chris Morris and Dennis Hopson never playing at a level that justified their high selection. Now, we’re looking at the Nets remaining lottery picks – the slots where good talent can be found, but is even less of a guarantee than the top four picks.
I came across this information from NetsDaily, and when I read the title I did a double take. “It couldn’t have been straight up could it?” I said to myself. When I realized it was a proposed straight up deal, I was initially shocked. The Nets just turned down the #2 pick of the 2008 draft because they didn’t want to give up a role player who will more than likely be cut by the Nets. There was (and probably still is) a bit of outrage, and I was right there with them…
Then I thought about it some more, and you know what? This is a very smart move by Rod Thorn. I’m not even talking about the cap situations, which you guys probably already know about (only $500,000 of Dooling’s contract counts against the books if he is dropped by the 29th vs. Beasley’s nearly $5,000,000). This was a smart move because the Nets already have a better version of Michael Beasley on their roster, Yi Jianlian (and if you want to talk about salary, Yi’s contract for next year is about 1 million less than Beasley’s). This isn’t a joke either, I am dead serious.
Now, I am all about upgrading the huge hole at the PF spot (because there is one), but Beasley isn’t the one to do it. Preferable, we need an inside guy to start the game with a “stretch 4″ coming off the bench. Yi is that “stretch 4.” Bringing in Michael Beasley doesn’t fix that problem, since he basically does the same thing as Yi. Don’t believe that Beasley is a stretch 4? He shot 104 threes last year. What’s worse he shot 27.5% while shooting over 100 threes. That’s not the only similarity (with Yi winning out) between the two
Offense
Here are a few numbers from the fantastic tool, MySynergySports (a tool that tells you how successful a player is in certain situations – and even lets you watch video of it):
Iso Sets
Post Ups
Spot Ups
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