Signing Drew Gooden Is a Good Thing.

Posted by Rob Mahoney on July 27, 2009 under Commentary, Roster Moves |

For once, I’m going to save all of you the abstractions and play this one clean: signing Drew Gooden to a one year, $4.5 million dollar contract is a definite positive for the Mavs.  What once was a hole in the rotation and a salary cap exception is now a serviceable power forward with shades of center.

If you’re at all down on Drew Gooden the player, there are two things that should calm your fears.  First and foremost, one-year deals are nothing short of precious.  It affords the Mavs some instant gains without any long-term financial commitment.  If Gooden turns out to be all stats with no substance, or if his floating on defense hurts more than his work on the boards helps, the Mavs have all the power in the world to cut him loose.  On top of that, his one-year contract gives him (almost) instant expiring status, meaning he could be a welcome cog in a trade deadline move.  Second, the alternatives out on the free agent market weren’t great.  I’m still high on Rasho Nesterovic and Ike Diogu, but one is a Toronto Raptor and one has a duffel bag full of question marks.  Gooden has been on the floor, he’s an established player, and his flaws are documented.  But see, that’s the important thing.  With Diogu, the Mavs could’ve been getting a lot of different things.  A potential stud in the low-post.  An overpaid big who can’t get off the bench.  A great player who just hasn’t seen the right opportunity.  A forward-center who looks great against third string units, but struggles against the big boys.  If the Mavs truly are going for broke and launching an all-out offensive towards the NBA title, then taking on a Drew Gooden makes much more sense than a player with Diogu’s mystique.

Drew Gooden’s game is chock full of flaws.  It’s one of the reasons why no team has truly been satisfied to have him as a candidate for major minutes.  As of late, his jumper has been errant.  For a forward who is primarily in the Jermaine O’Neal face-up mold, that hurts.  He’s also not the headiest guy on the court, and has a tendency to the beat of an invisible, possibly nonexistent drummer.  I wouldn’t say that Gooden’s selfish or that he doesn’t fit into a team dynamic, but if his individual skills are a strength, then his lack of awareness and grasp of basketball in its entirety is almost certainly the balancing weakness.  If you ask Drew Gooden to guard one guy and never budge from that one assignment, he’d be fine.  The reason why Gooden is often considered troubling on D is because NBA defenses are so much more complex than that.  There are specific rotations to be learned, patterns of help D that are primarily effective against certain players, and techniques used to slow not only your man, but the entire opposing team.  These are the areas in which Drew Gooden ultimately falls a little short.  He’s not disastrous enough in these regards to fall out of a rotation entirely, but still sufficiently limited in accomplishing the goals of team defense.

And in spite of all of the weaknesses I’ve listed out for you, I still feel 100% comfortable saying that Drew Gooden is a boon for the Mavs.  Gooden’s low-post scoring is superior to every other Mav on the roster; he knows how to score and has a nose for the ball coming off the glass.  These are not only marketable skills for a center (and make no mistake, the Mavs don’t sign Drew Gooden without the notion that he will play some center), but paramount ones.  The best teams in the league have a player (or players) who are fully functional around the basket in a capacity greater than that of Erick Dampier.  Not only can Gooden convert the garbage buckets that Damp has made a steady diet of, but he’s also very creative from both blocks, and plays like a fluid post scorer should.  Functionally, DG is obviously a bit different than Dwight Howard or Nene or Shaq.  He doesn’t threaten to pull down the basket with every drop-step, and he’s much more likely to throw up a baby hook than throw down a thunderous jam.  But that’s interior scoring that the New Wave Mavs can use to both account for the loss of Brandon Bass and complement the growing core.

For the record, Gooden’s playoff series (the ever-impactful freshest thing on our minds) was a bit of an outlier.  These were not the best five games of Drew Gooden’s life, and no, it’s not indicative of old age for a guy who is a deceivingly young 27.  During the regular season, Gooden transitioned to a career-low in shot attempts with the Spurs, adjusted to a new offense, and still managed to put up numbers that are almost universally superior to Brandon Bass (if only by a hair).  Then again, the numbers have always been kind to Gooden.  His advocates will always have that to stand on and his critics will always have that use against him.  But regardless of which camp you may find yourself in, it’s hard to argue with the logic of this deal given the way thinks have shaken out this summer.