| The Good, the Bad and Thabeet |
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| Written by Chip Crain |
| Tuesday, 28 July 2009 06:18 |
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Hasheem Thabeet is supposed to be the defensive presence in the middle that the Grizziles have sought for so many years. Thabeet is also supposed to be the least NBA ready player taken in the lottery this season. That is particularly disturbing when you consider that Thabeet was taken with the 2nd pick in the draft. The good and bad news is both of these opinion about Thabeet seems to have been confirmed in the just completed Las Vegas Rookie League. First the good news, Memphis completed the summer league undefeated. No team was able to shoot even 40% from the field agains the Grizzlies. Opposing teams averaged a mere 69.2 ppg against the Grizzlies and that includes an 86 pt game by New York who is not exactly the type of team that challenges teams in the paint. Thabeet completely shut down DeAndre Jordan of the Clippers who had been averaging 18.5 ppg and 8.5 rpg heading into the game. So one could say that Thabeet's defensive presence had an effect on team's shooting. Now for the bad news and there is a lot of it. Thabeet, despite being taller than any other player in the league managed to shoot only 45% from the field. Many times Thabeet had a significant advantage over his defender but was unable to extrapolate that size advantage into easy baskets, usually do to a poor ability to establish deep position in the paint. Thabeet maybe tall but he is not strong enough right now to use that height advantage to his benefit on the offensive end. That isn't likely to change once he starts playing against legitimate big men in the NBA. Thabeet also was unable to grab rebounds despite his size advantage. There were many explanations for this from his trying to block too many shots to his presence forcing such bad shots that the rebounds were going out to the perimeter. While these excuses have some validity it still doesn't explain only 4.6 rebounds per game in 25 minutes a night. If Thabeet is supposed to strengthen the Grizzlies on the boards then he will have to show some ability that was not on display in the summer league. Former Tigers standout Joey Dorsey led the Summer League in rebounding at 14.8 ppg. And what about those blocked shots? What happened to the player who averaged over 4 blocks a game in the Big East last season? In the summer league Thabeet managed a grand total of 4 blocks. Darrell Arthur had 6 blocks in comparison. Hamed Haddadi, the Grizzlies other project big man, had 8 blocks in just over half the minutes of game time. Haddadi also had nearly as many rebounds. Now Haddadi did play against the 2nd string summer league players more than Haddadi and that helped his statistics somewhat but Haddadi looked more skilled offensively as well and has a far better passing game. The other major black eye was Thabeet's foul problems. In just 125 minutes of court action Thabeet committed 26 fouls. That's more than one foul in every 5 minutes of court-time. If he had been playing under NBA rules of only 6 fouls allowed per game (instead of the more generous summer league rules of 10 per game) he would have been player far fewer minutes despite the games being 8 minutes longer. Finally the issue of effort was brought up by the announcers of the games. This may hurt most of all as it appeared that Thabeet was not hustling up and down the court. Shooting can be improved with work. Defensive positioning can be fixed by work. Rebounding can be improved if the player is willing to work hard. A player without the desire to work on these things can't be improved. Thabeet needs to show Memphis he has the drive and not just the height to be an impact player in the NBA if Heisley and Wallace want to change the perspective of this team with its fans. So the only positive Memphis fans can take from the Summer League performance of the highest draft pick in Memphis team history is that other teams shot poorly against the team. Whether that was from Thabeet or just a high level of overall team defense can't be said for sure. Time will tell what the answer will be.
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Comments
pick. It seems he was blinded by the need of having a BIG and didn't really look at
whether he had that much talent. I don't see this guy ever developing into a quality starting center in this league. The Grizz will be fortunate if he even reaches Stromile Swift levels. And to think they could have picked Derozan, Hardin, Evans or even Jordan Hill! I still would have liked them to have picked Rubio even if he doesn't make it over here for two years. With the second pick Rubio would have had more money and motivation to actually jump to the NBA. But still why Thabeet? It seemed half the people in blogland knew this guy was a total bust and the other half just wanted the Grizz to pick him so their team wouldn't get stuck with him. This pick could go down in NBA history as one of the biggest flops of all time.
Not that I'm being an apologist, but many of Thabeet's blocked shots were on other players' fouls; there was one game where he was credited for 1 or two, but there were two additional blocks that saved potential baskets on fouls by other players that didn't count. I wasn't taking notes, but in the actual game footage that I saw, I noticed a definitive pattern of increased jump shooting while Thabeet was in the game vs. when Haddadi was in.
He definitely has work to do, but I look forward to what will happen during the season. With all this talk of him being a bust, I'm curious to see whether the guys who feed their families by doing game prep are going to keep their game plan unaltered when he's in the game. I know it's "just summer league" but that plan didn't work to well for the other teams in Vegas, and film footage geeks are taking note of this.
Again, with two other serviceable centers and five double digit scorers starting, why get our draws in a wad over Thabeet's deficiencies at this point? Our starters averaged like 85 points per game the second half of last year. We have a double digit rebounding starting at PF, and we have two other halfway decent 7 footers.
If "The Presence" has half the effect on the second team during the regular season as he had on the "scrubs" in the summer league, then he does as anticipated this season. Anything additional is gravy. He has to get stronger and smarter, and that leap won't occur, if it does, until the late second half of the season and/or next summer.
Thabeet's deficits are coachable.
He's got 7'3" on his side. He's young. He wants to improve. He's got good hands. Good hands are important. He's got a good 12-15 foot outside shot. Don't give up on him so early in the process.
As a sidelight, I appreciated Marcus Williams' court vision. I had always thought we needed a veteran backup point guard, but Marcus' play caught my eye on more than one occasion.