One of the more glaring problems with debates over positionality is that they take place so far beyond the court. The aspirations of those discussions are lofty, and as such, redefining position involves a lot of staring at clouds, supposing what shapes they might be.
That makes any way to bring that conversation just a little bit closer to Earth pretty invaluable.
Tom Haberstroh did just that with his latest post at Hardwood Paroxysm, in which he analyzed the intersection between traditional positions and shot location. Thanks to HoopData, Haberstroh was able to statistically ascertain the shot selection of a “typical” point guard, etc. Based on that data, he then determined which players fit those standards best, and which were the most divergent from their positional norms.
A quick look through a list of the latter reveals why the positional revolution should be near and dear to all Mavs fans. We know that Dirk Nowitzki is not normal. Not typical. Still, it means something to be able to make those sentiments a bit more concrete; to say that Dirk Nowitzki’s shot distribution makes him one of the five most deviant power forwards in the game today. To know that Shawn Marion’s shot selection puts him the farthest away from small forward normality. To recognize that Jason Kidd, despite living in a space reserved for the point guard ideal, is — and this is Haberstroh’s term, and one I’m eager to adopt — a positional contrarian.
It’s not easy to place where this kind of analysis fits into the bigger picture, but as is the case with everything anyone has done with positionality thus far, it’s a step. There are interesting conceptual issues here, but the ultimate hope is that work related to or even directly based on Haberstroh’s will eventually tether the positional revolution to the hardwood.
It didn’t take long for Mavs fans to latch on to Rodrigue Beaubois. It was more than just the usual rookie intrigue; from the moment Beaubois stepped on the floor a Maverick, he was a scoring sensation, bending and breaking the limits of our expectations with every bucket. One designed play embodied Beaubois’ allure perfectly: the point guard-to-point guard alley-oop. The sequence showcased Beaubois’ athleticism and Kidd’s impeccable timing, but more importantly, it worked. Very well, in fact. So well that the Mavs ran it fairly frequently — or at least, as frequently as you would run a lob play for a 6-foot-2 guard — and far more often than not, Kidd’s oop found Beaubois right at the basket.
Of course as the season went on, and teams grew wiser and wiser to Beaubois’ leaping abilities as well as Kidd’s intentions, Dallas ran the play less and less. It was broken up here or there by this team or that, and when Beaubois was buried in the rotation mid-season, so too was the play.
The sequence is easily identifiable (not many Maverick sets trigger with the same hand-off action on the wing) though, and for little purpose other than re-living one of Beaubois’ first NBA highlights, we’ll break down the set-up using FastDraw.
Note: The numbers do not indicate positions, but actual jersey numbers. For this example, the Mavs’ lineup will consist of Kidd (#2), Beaubois (#3), Dirk Nowitzki (#41), Shawn Marion (#0), and Brendan Haywood (#33).
The play begins with Kidd bringing the ball up on the left side of the floor, while the other four players remain stationary. Kidd hands off the ball to Beaubois, and begins to cut toward the baseline.
Nowitzki sets a pick for Kidd, who attempts to brush his man off on Nowitzki’s screen. From there he continues to cut baseline, heading toward Marion on the opposite wing.
Marion sets a similar brush screen for Kidd, who rounds the corner and heads back out to the perimeter while Haywood runs interference with another screen. Keep in mind that the purpose of these picks isn’t really to free up Kidd as it is to draw the attention of the defense. If the Mavs are running three screens for Kidd, it seems clear that they want him open in a specific spot. In a sense they do, but the screens here, while certainly beneficial in executing the play, are largely misdirection.
Beaubois dribbles to the top of the key as Kidd cuts up the sideline, positioning himself to make a simple feed back to Kidd.
Kidd receives the easy pass from Beaubois, likely with his man still trailing behind. At this point, the play resembles a set designed to open up Kidd for a three-pointer, but he doesn’t shoot. A defense may misread this as early success, thinking that they’ve botched the Mavs’ primary option on this play. Dirk heads to the free throw line extended, as he often does when the Mavs’ sets break down. Beaubois, after making the pass back to Kidd, begins to drift back to his prior spot on the left side of the floor.
Rather than receive the ball at the elbow, Nowitzki is another decoy. He sets a screen on Beaubois’ man at the elbow, and Beaubois darts toward the basket while the defense watches Kidd and Dirk. The opposing bigs are likely with Nowitzki, who is moving in the opposite direction, and Haywood, who is standing on the right wing. This allows Beaubois to cut to the rim, and finish with an undeterred slam.
Kurt Helin, my fellow ProBasketballTalk-er, had a chance to interview Caron Butler. Here are Butler’s thoughts regarding what the Mavs’ areas for improvement in the coming year: “Controlling the glass, focusing on defense. Because we can score with the best of them. We have a great player, we have a Hall of Fame point guard and whole bunch of other guys that want to get it done and are willing to sacrifice whatever to win. We’ve just got to put it all together and we will.” Butler also noted that he’s been working with the needs-no-introduction Tim Grover.
Kevin Arnovitz has a great interview with Texas Legends’ coach Nancy Lieberman, who is getting serious mileage out of her catchphrase (which you may remember from my interview with Lieberman earlier this summer): “Making the irregular regular.” Here’s Lieberman on her voice as a coach, and what the voice will mean to men who haven’t had all that many female basketball mentors: “I think the end message will be similar, but the methods and how they get the information could be different. I’m excited about it because I’m not going to be in practice f-bombing people. That won’t be me. I’ll be firm and I’ll be fair. We won’t tell people what to do. We’ll explain what we’d like them to do. We’ll show them what we want to do. Then, they’ll do it. I will work their tails off. Trust me. I’m not as nice as I’m faking it on this conversation. I will work them really hard, but I’ll love them on the other side. And they need to know they’re loved and cared for. But that doesn’t mean you can walk over me, through me. That won’t happen. But look, I’m going to kill my guys so I might as well be nice to them. I have high expectations. I haven’t made it in a man’s world for 35 years by being soft, scared or insecure.”
Mike Krzyzewski on Tyson Chandler’s play for Team USA, via Chris Tomasson of FanHouse: “Tyson has been outstanding. We have a relationship from the 2007 qualifying team (and in 2008 when Chandler came close to making the Olympic team) … He doesn’t need the ball. He’s stronger. I bet he’s at least probably 15 pounds heavier and stronger than he was in 2007. He feels healthy.”
Caron Butler thinks the Heat could make it to 73 wins. The Bulls’ sacred 72-win mark is seemingly unbeatable, but next year’s Miami Heat have definite advantages those Bulls were never afforded. The ‘95-’96 Bulls are certainly one of the best teams to ever lace them up, but is Caron wrong? Isn’t the combination of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade — with Chris Bosh and a hell of a supporting cast — enough to at least bring the Heat into the discussion?
Kelly Dwyer is ranking the top 30 players in each of the five conventional positions, beginning with point guards. You can see the first installment (30-21) here, and the second (20-11) here. Jason Kidd comes in at #12, which may seem a bit harsh, but consider the 11 PGs likely to top Kidd in Dwyer’s rankings (in no particular order): Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Steve Nash, Jameer Nelson (already confirmed as #11), Rajon Rondo, Chauncey Billups, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Devin Harris, Tony Parker, and Tyreke Evans. Of those 11, which would you pick Kidd to best in the coming season?
From Caron Butler’s blog on HoopsHype: “Aside from the Tyson Chandler trade, my team has had a pretty quiet offseason. I’m not surprised. We had a great roster already. The management looked at the team and thought change wasn’t needed.” Well…that’s certainly one interpretation of the summer’s events.
Last week’s foray into the positional revolution was a good start, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. As I noted previously, Drew Cannon’s positional system isn’t coming out of the internet womb fully-formed; a lot of adjustments and tweaks are necessary for the model to become viable. Still, Cannon’s design offers a welcome starting point for both discourse regarding positional fluidity and, hopefully, some eventual long-term change in the way we think about and define positions.
There is no end to this process. Even if we successfully shed the five traditional positions in favor of some other system, players and their roles will continue to evolve. It’s critical that we’re constantly challenging the limits of positionality to match with the on-court product. Note that those limits aren’t being tested without reason. It’s important that positional rhetoric remains descriptivist in nature. We’re not saying “this is the way that position X should play,” but rather “this is the way that position X does play.”
With those things in mind, any model proposed here needs to be poked and prodded. Finding the leaks is an important step in the process. I’ll be the first to concede that no positional model will ever be perfect, but tinkering with the system’s imperfections is the the path that will bring us all closer to that flawless standard.
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Thus far, Cannon’s defensive positions seem to be the source of the most controversy. While there is some confusion over what Cannon’s designations do and should mean, the most glaring problem was captured perfectly by Tom Ziller:
The problem with the way this new development is framed is that it still relies on demonstrably imprecise labels. If Rodrigue Beaubois is a “D1″ — meaning he guards point guards despite often playing shooting guard next to Jason Kidd or J.J. Barea — then you’re assuming there are “1s” for him to guard, which is just the type of assumption the Positional Revolution aims to destroy.
The point of a new nomenclature is to do a better job describing what players actually do, and do well. If “1s” no longer exist, in favor of the Cannon/Mahoney use of “scorer” or “creator” for offensive roles, what does a “D1″ do? And is that by necessity (due to size or athleticism) or ability? Is calling Beaubois a “D1 Scorer” any different from calling him a “guard”? A more useful classification might be something like “DPick-and-RollA+” or “DPostC-”.
In their original context, defensive designations like D1, etc. are actually very counterproductive. If the hope is to move away from traditional positions, it makes little sense to lean so heavily on them.
Yet Ziller’s suggested variant, while useful, is both highly subjective and goes well beyond what position is thought to bring to the NBA discussion. There are some skill valuations inherent to positional delineation, but in my eyes (and this point is certainly up for debate), it’s important that positions describe and group without necessarily assessing how well a certain player executes their role. Those types of appraisals require far more nuance, and using them to define players via position sacrifices the accessibility of those classifications.
In addition, the wide variety of defensive abilities each NBA player is asked to display makes it difficult to pin down a primary role via skill set. For purposes of convenience, the defensive positions should be as short as possible, so saying that Dwight Howard is a “DPick-and-RollB+/DPostA/DHelpA+/DHelpPostB/DRebounderA+,” while descriptive, is probably a bit silly. Yet, if we’re going to classify players by their skill (and skill level, in this scenario), Howard’s post defense is no more important than any of those other facets. How would one accurately and succinctly convey all of that information in a usable (and more importantly, re-usable) manner?
I think the key is to step away from skill descriptors, particularly at such depth. While it makes sense to describe a player’s offensive role as a “scorer” or “rebounder,” defense functions much differently. A player’s defensive position (not utility, position) hinges on, again, not how well a player defends, but what purpose they serve. Or, for simplicity’s sake, what types of players they’re able to defend.
Who a given player is able to defend certainly ties into the respective skills of both the defender and their offensive counterpart. At a more basic level though, a player’s defensive range is determined by the various heights and speeds he’s able to counter. I’m not talking about the height and speed of the defender, but rather, the ranges of those two variables that a defender is physically able to contest.
Thus, I offer the following modification of Cannon’s defensive positions:
We’ll use the original D1, D2, D3, etc. designations, but with each describing a certain range of relative size and speed. D1 no longer represents a player’s ability to defend point guards per se, but their ability to defend shorter, quicker opponents. Likewise, a D5 would indicate one’s ability to defend bigger, slower players, regardless of one’s own size and speed (Chuck Hayes, for example, is 6′6”, but would be a D5 because of his ability to guard taller, stronger players).
A few notes:
With this system, we eliminate the idea that there are 1s or 2s to guard, and instead simply assume that there will be players of different sizes on the court. Someone will need to guard them. Teams don’t have to match small with small, but they do need to match a small opponent with a D1 (even if that D1 would be a shooting guard or small forward by most conventional standards).
It’s important that the boundaries between the size/speed of D1 vs. D2, D2 vs. D3, etc. are nonspecific. This is not meant to be measurable, as creating the necessary framework would involve drawing far too many arbitrary brightlines.
Positions are meant to be convenient. As such, we really do need to sacrifice some depth for the sake of easier use and better understanding. The point isn’t to create some undecipherable code that no other NBA fans can solve, but to create a relatively uniform system that’s a bit more descriptive and accurate than the current one.
These positions are different from traditional ones, particularly because they account for defensive versatility and cross-matching. For a basic example, let’s take Rodrigue Beaubois. He may start at shooting guard this year, but in the Allen Iverson mold, will mostly be cross-matched on opposing point guards. So from a positional standpoint, it makes far more sense to call him a “Scorer, Creator/Handler, D1″ than it does a shooting guard. It gives us a bit of insight into what kind of players Beaubois will be guarding, as well as his offensive responsibilities.
For a more complicated example, look at LeBron James. He’ll be listed as a small forward, but we know his offensive role is more far-reaching than the limits of a traditional wing. Additionally, LeBron has become such a useful defender that he can guard all kinds of positions. Thanks to his incredible combination or size, speed, and strength, one could make a legitimate argument that James is actually one of the few players capable of defending all five traditional positions. His ‘SF’ label has never done him justice on offense, and now it’s just as constricting defensively.
There’s still something to be said about how a player defends that’s completely unaccounted for. It’s distinct enough from the question of ‘How well?’ that it could technically be incorporated, but I see no simple way to incorporate it. Something to put on the wish list, for sure, but at this stage those distinctions seem a bit too complex.
Another concern is addressing players who can’t really defend anybody. Regardless of where we put the bounds of a positional system, there are going to be exceptions. There will always be someone who doesn’t fit neatly into the given categories. Tentatively, these players will be addressed as ‘D0,’ but it’s certainly an idea worth revisiting.
Please, leave questions and concerns over this system or propositions for other defensive positional models in the comments. Feedback is a crucial part of this process, and every reader is an invaluable part of the refinement of this system.
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve installed the Disqus comment system, which is a much better format for conversation/interaction/response. Sign up for an account if you’d like and if you haven’t already, and play around with the functions and settings.
Tom Haberstroh calculated the league’s top bargains by using WARP2 (Kevin Pelton’s updated version of WARP, or wins above replacement player) and contract values. One Mav came up pretty high on the list. It wasn’t Dirk Nowitzki, who is undoubtedly Dallas’ top producer independent of salary. It wasn’t Rodrigue Beaubois, who generated a ton of points on a measly contract. It was frequent scapegoat Jason Kidd, who is a veritable WARP-generating machine.
A few follow-ups on yesterday’s post regarding new positional designations: The Thunder (courtesy of Royce Young), the Knicks (courtesy of Seth Rosenthal), and the Rockets (courtesy of Tom Martin). Great player classifications and questions all around.
Mark Cuban, on his blog: “What I have learned in 11 years in the sports business is that the dumbest guys in the room are always the media guys. Some do a decent job of reporting, most just spew opinions. And those opinions change more often than they brush their teeth. So what the media was saying was of zero impact or influence on what i was going to do. Listening to the media only increases your odds of failing at whatever you are doing. So I ignore them.”
Aykis Yerocostas of Pick and Scroll has been profiling the unsung heroes of each NBA team, and his pick for the Mavs is Shawn Marion: “Age and injuries have slowed down the Matrix from his stellar Phoenix days, but he’s still a player that can have a big impact on the court. He’s a stellar rebounder for his position (career 21.2 DRB%, although only 15.2% last year), and a good defender too. Last year when he was on the court, Dallas performed 3.3 pp100 better on offense, and 3.5 pp100 better on defense. His very good FG% comes from his great shot selection, as he tends to take the majority of his shots around the rim or from less than 10 feet. He’s very good at taking care of the ball (10.6 TOV%), and playing defense without fouling.”
Positional certainty has never been a luxury the Dallas Mavericks could afford during the Dirk Nowitzki era. Yet year after year, the team’s flaws are diagnosed according to the standards of a conventional lineup. Dallas needs a better center. A better shooting guard. A better point guard. Hell, anything that isn’t power forward. Dirk has been the one constant, and despite his unconventional and unique talents, the success of his team is ultimately measured by way of an antiquated tradition.
No longer. Or at least as minimally as possible in this space.
It may be naive to think that the mainstream basketball audience will soon abandon the five conventional positions, but that doesn’t mean those of us in this corner of the universe can’t strive to be better, smarter basketball fans. I’m ready to take a hop (more than a step, but well short of a leap) in the way we classify players. With that, I’ll cue Drew Cannon of Basketball Prospectus:
But what do you really need from a lineup?
On defense, you need to be able to guard your opponents. This means you have to be ready for speeds and heights of all kinds. You need to have a player capable of guarding each of the five traditional C-PF-SF-SG-PG positions. We’ll call the players capable of defending each position “D1” through “D5,” respectively, with speed/athleticism on the x-axis and height/strength on the y-axis:
And on offense what do you need to be successful? You need to be able to make shots (from the field or free throw line), avoid turnovers, and clean up the offensive glass–at the very least to the point where you aren’t handing over points by doing the opposite. This means that you need someone who can take care of the ball, someone who can put it in the basket, someone who can get the ball to that guy, and someone who can get the ball back when someone misses. We’ll call these four characters the Handler, the Scorer, the Creator, and the Rebounder.
Quick point. The Creator and the Handler have to be the same guy. Because you can’t have your Creator losing the ball all the time before he can feed your Scorers, and you can’t have your Handler with the ball all the time but unable to get it to the Scorers.
…It boils down to this: On defense, you have to be ready for whatever the offense throws at you. But on offense, you really just need to rebound and protect the ball enough to let your scorers go to work (or protect the ball just enough that your dominant rebounding can keep putting points on the board despite below-average scoring, etc.). Really, how you put points on the board is your business. The defense is just reacting.
This is more than just a quaint idea.
I’m sure Cannon’s model isn’t a perfect one, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a start, and nothing more. Just as the traditional formula yielded point-forwards (or even point-centers…word up the the Antoine Walker experiment), combo guards, and other atypical cogs, I’m sure that this framework will allow for a few more offensive player designations yet. What matters is that we move away from a nondescript and misleading method of classifying players in favor of something — anything — that actually manages to advance basketball discourse.
To those still clinging to what they know, I’d ask this: what’s a power forward? What characteristics link Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, Rashard Lewis, Lamar Odom, Reggie Evans, Tyrus Thomas, and J.J. Hickson? Not rebounding. Not scoring. Not skill set. Not height relative to their teammates. Not even the spaces they occupy on the floor. I’m at a total loss as to the criterion that would group that bunch together, which makes the assessment “Player X isn’t a real power forward” pretty much worthless. I think I know what it means, but without the ability to define the contemporary power forward, how could I really know for sure?
Conceptually, this is nothing new. Players like Dirk have been bending positional bounds for years, and the basic tenets of fluid positionality have been preached by a number of NBA scribes. Yet this system makes enough intuitive sense to work, and gives the thought a more practical and literal application.
If you’d like to join me on this little adventure, I’d love the company. If not, that’s fine, too. This post isn’t meant to convert, but primarily to do two things:
Inform as to what the hell I’m talking about when I write that “Jason Kidd is a D2,” in the future.
Bring the idea to the forefront. Even if you’re not ready to buy into an overhaul of positional classifications, I hope this at least gets you to think about what those classifications mean (or don’t mean).
This could be fun, but I’m going to need a lot of help. Here are the initial offensive and defensive positions for all of the current Mavs according to my own assessment, but they’re not infallible. Are there offensive profiles that aren’t represented? Is it fair to list Shawn Marion strictly as a rebounder? Or Jason Terry as a D2? Let me have it. Rip this idea to pieces. Tear it down so we can build it back up with stronger and smarter ideas, making our collective analysis that much better in the process.
Alexis Ajinca - D?, Large body J.J. Barea - D1, Scorer-Creator/Handler Rodrigue Beaubois - D1, Scorer Caron Butler - D3/D2, Scorer Tyson Chandler - D5, Rebounder Brendan Haywood - D5, Rebounder Dominique Jones - D2/D1, Scorer Jason Kidd - D2/D1, Creator/Handler Ian Mahinmi - D5/D4, Rebounder Shawn Marion - D3/D2/D4, Rebounder Dirk Nowitzki - D4, Scorer-Rebounder DeShawn Stevenson - D2, Abe Lincoln tattoo Jason Terry - D2 (I guess?), Scorer
Dirk officially signed his new contract with the Mavs yesterday, and here are the yearly values, according to Eddie Sefko: $17,278,618/$19,092,873/$20,907,128/$22,721,381.
Congrats to Dominique Jones, who made the All-Summer League Team in Vegas. At the beginning of Summer League, we all figured Rodrigue Beaubois would be in thie position, but Jones’ offensive efficiency and defensive excellence weren’t necessarily surprising, but they’re definitely welcome.
Omar Samhan on his decision to play professionally in Lithuania next season (via Jeff Caplan): “I didn’t have any offers for guaranteed money [in the NBA]. A lot of people wanted me to come to training camp, but they couldn’t guarantee anything. And, if I did make a team, I wouldn’t get playing time, I wouldn’t get a chance to develop a ton…So, it’s going to give me a chance to go over there for a year or two and really develop as a player. I plan on coming back and being an NBA player for the next 10 years.”
Jason Kidd will help out Team USA this summer. He just won’t, y’know, play.
Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News has a featureish piece on Ian Mahinmi for those that aren’t acquainted with his career in Austin and San Antonio.
Via Mike Fisher of DallasBasketball.com, Dirk Nowitzki will not be playing in the FIBA World Championships this summer. Dirk has been leaning that way for awhile, but we now have confirmation.
Dirk Nowitzki is the Mavs’ free agent alpha, which makes every slight modification in his plans an item of interest.
First, Nowitzki opted to fly to the States rather than have Donnie Nelson meet him in Germany. No big — Dirk calls Donnie before he boards the plane, and Nelson agrees to meet Nowitzki at his home in Dallas. Then, word came that Dirk won’t be coming to Dallas on Thursday at all, but will wait one more day and meet Nelson on Friday. Also not of monumental concern; although the Mavs want to reach an agreement with Dirk as soon as possible, one day isn’t going to make radical difference in their free agent plans either way. However, there is one note that makes that one day layover a bit more interesting: Dirk will be spending it in New York.
Don’t sound the alarm just yet. Even if Dirk chooses to meet with another team (the Knicks and Nets being the obvious possibilities) while in NYC, it really doesn’t make that big of an impact. While it’s better for the Mavs if Nowitzki speaks to them and them alone, there is absolutely no way that Dirk would agree to a deal without first meeting with Cuban and Nelson first, and there’s no way that Cuban and Nelson let Nowitzki go without offering him everything they can. If we know what we think we know about Dirk, he wants to stay in Dallas and he wants to play for a competitive team. It’s likely that neither one of those things would happen in either New York or New Jersey. Both teams are set to make substantial jumps next season if free agency plays out favorably, but their rosters are still very incomplete and on a far different timeline than Dirk.
Maybe Nowitzki really does want to get a second opinion before he signs with the Mavs, or maybe he doesn’t. At the moment, Dirk’s exact motives for staying in New York for a day are unclear (the company line states that Nowitzki is simply trying to stay low-key and dodge the fanfare — believable, though convenient), but we do know that he’ll be meeting with Jason Kidd for dinner. That doesn’t mean much either, but at this point it’s all we’ve got.
Even though everything in the Mavs approach with Dirk seems to have changed, nothing really has. Nowitzki still wants to return, and the Mavs still need him to. Whether the negotiations take place in Dallas or Würzburg matters very little, as does Dirk’s location at this very minute. The Mavs will have their chance to make their pitch, Nowitzki will hear them out, they’ll work together, and almost certainly come to some sort of agreement. Of all of the premier free agents, Dirk’s destination is still the most inevitable, and while news like this gives us something to bat around in the interim, there’s nothing to fret about.
Ryan Blake, the NBA’s director of scouting, on draft prospect Sherron Collins (via Jeff Caplan): “If Collins is down there, which he could be, he’s one of the better point guards in this draft, but it depends on how good you think he is. This is not a point-guard draft whatsoever, but the guy is tough, he’s quick and he’s proved it. He doesn’t have size, but you have [J.J.] Barea, who is very tough, comparatively, the same kind of guy.”
Caron Butler, through his Twitter account (@realtuffjuice): “Wherever I’m at next year I’m going to be a problem. (I love dallas)…I wanna win a chip in dallas and that a realistic goal luv holla in the am…I wanna win in dallas let’s get it(chip).” He also noted that he’s trying to drop about 14 pounds for next season.
Reebok is holding a celebrity baseball game in Frisco next weekend to benefit the Mike Modano Foundation and The Heroes Foundation, and Jason Kidd, Nancy Lieberman, and Mark Cuban will all be playing.
J.J. Barea, with a declaration that if he weren’t a Maverick, he would want to be a Net. It’s implied that it’s out of respect for newly-hired coach Avery Johnson, who coached J.J. during his first two seasons in Dallas.
Mike Fisher of DallasBasketball.com, channeling Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer: “Speaking of Shawne: As we noted a few days ago, he’s trying out in Charlotte and we wish him well. Even Larry Brown says Williams’ ‘past is no problem.’ But in the next breath, Larry notes that Shawne showed up for his tryout 20 pounds too fat.”
Jason Kidd, coaching consultant. It’s actually a pretty interesting idea, even if Kidd technically has no prerogative to help out another team or Byron Scott.
It’s readily apparent that the future of the franchise rests with Rodrigue Beaubois. It’s a heavy proclamation considering that Rodrigue just graduated from his rookie season in the league, and even more so given his limited playing time. Still, with his physical tools, impressive skills, and desire to improve, Beaubois the potential to be absolutely brilliant. He showed enough in 731 minutes as a 21 year-old that benching him in a crucial playoff game — even to play Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Shawn Marion, or Caron Butler — was something of a travesty. Beaubois is going to make something rather special of himself in this league, and if Mavs fans have their way, he’ll be doing so in a Dallas uniform.
He isn’t ready to make an immediate jump into superstardom; nothing about Beaubois’ game or constitution suggests that he’s ready to take over an offense right now. He’s a prince, even if at times he seems a kingly one.
Of course, the transferring of a throne is so rarely a simple endeavor. So few cede their power and privilege willingly, as to do so is not only to surrender what is rightfully theirs, but to come to terms with their own mortality. After all, kings may be kings, but they’re still men.
Jason Kidd is point guard royalty, but he’s far closer to curtains than coronation. He’s proud, he’s accomplished, and he’s still very productive (2010 playoffs excluded), but with Beaubois waiting in the wings (or more accurately, on the wing), questions of when Rodrigue will and should take over are more legitimate than ever. In the short-term, Beaubois will no doubt continue in his role as super-sub 2 guard, but no one should be deluded into thinking that is Rodrigue’s permanent role. He’s not just the heir apparent, but Kidd’s anointed successor. So say Mark Cuban, Rick Carlisle, and Kidd himself.
That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for Kidd to admit it when his time is done. But his declaration that he’s currently willing to hand over opportunities to Rodrigue? That’s a terrific first step. From my ProBasketballTalk compatriot Kurt Helin:
During a press call for the 21st American Century Championship, the celebrity golf event coming up next month in Lake Tahoe, Kidd said he wants to see Beaubois get more minutes next season, particularly during the regular season. All the better to rest the 37-year-old Kidd for the playoffs.
And if that mean’s coming off the bench, so be it.
“I would hope that’s what we’re shooting for, to develop Roddy this summer and to play him more next season,” Kidd said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to coming off the bench some next season.”
Jason is a man who understands his place on the team and in the league, and the recognition that it may soon be Beaubois’ time to man this gig full-time is an essential part of a peaceful transition. The last thing the Mavs need is Kidd grasping for glory when Beaubois if finally ready, and if nothing else, statements like this one from Kidd assure us that such a scenario is easily avoidable.
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