Friday, July 03, 2009

Greasy Fun Fact

From Kevin Pelton's breakdown of free agent shooting guards at Basketball Prospectus:
Believe it or not, there is actually a fascinating statistic featuring Mario West. Because he has spent the last two seasons with the Hawks as the most limited of defensive specialists, usually being called upon by Mike Woodson to play the final possession of a quarter/game, he has averaged just 4.6 minutes per game. Amongst players with at least 100 games, that is the lowest career minutes average since Paul Noel, who played for New York and Rochester from 1948 through 1952 in the BAA and the NBA. A couple of guys have come close, but no one else has averaged fewer than five minutes in an appreciable career since the 1950s. While interesting, this does not exactly bode well for West's future.

6 comments:

thirdfalcon said...

LMAO, KEEP CHASING YOUR DREAM GREASY!!!

Bronnt said...

I guess I'm among the few remaining that appreciates Mario West for what he is, limited though he may be. I'm not at all biased, despite the fact that I went to high school with him and had at least one English class with him (okay, maybe a tad biased).

He has the highest win% (in well-documented small sample sizes) of any other FA SG save Ben Gordon (thanks for the link). He's a 10% OR contributor, which is crazy for a 2 guard. His total rebound % was higher than that of Josh Smith.

Yes, he's an offensive non-entity, and he's not worth the QO (it actually boggles me that it exists for a player of his stature) but he did have a positive effect on defense and rebounding, and for a very marginal cost.

Bret LaGree said...

Bronn--

That's a fair point on the offensive rebounding. I'd assumed his OR% was inflated by playing far more than half of his possessions on defense, but that wasn't the case last season. Defensive possessions were 102% of offensive possessions last year compared to 110% in his rookie year but his OR% went up.

He probably gets that many offensive rebounds because teams don't have to guard him at all but fair play to him for taking advantage of that.

thirdfalcon said...

I'm with you on him Bronn. Most NBA teams never get much use at all from the end of their bench. At least Greasy has a clearly defined role that allows us to get something out of his roster spot.

I actually really like Greasy(and i like him 10 times now that I can call him "Greasy"). I think we're overpaying him, but that's really splitting hairs isn't it?

jrauch said...

The only reason he grabs any rebounds on the offensive end is that he's completely unguarded when he's on the floor.

When we have the privilege of watching Greasy play at the end of halves, or earlier if injuries force Woodson's hand to skip the lottery pick guard he has, for a guy who didn't play all that much at Tech, the result is startling.
We see what would happen if the NBA ever adopted the NHL's penalty box system, and what a power play might look like. I've seen his defender literally abandon him on the wing and run to the other side of the floor to double Joe Johnson. Its the reason he's able to fly in unimpeded for so many put backs and dunks. Other than that he's a nonentity.

I officially lost any hope for Greasy as a viable NBA player when he secured six fouls playing 8 minutes against the Lakers in 2007-2008 season, and getting the technical foul called on him for missing an uncontested dunk, hanging on the rim and trying to put the miss back in while hanging on the rim.

Only Greasy could turn two automatic points into a turnover, free throws for the other team, and a foul on himself.

Thing is, by all accounts, he's probably the nicest guy you'll ever meet, and I give him a lot of props for that.

But he can't guard anybody, he can't shoot. I don't see what purpose he serves.

thirdfalcon said...

I'd say his purpose is to piss off the Dwayne Wades of the world. It would be cool if he gave more hard fouls, or we could use him to knock down a player that is lighting us up.

Basically use him like a Hockey enforcer. He's usefull because he's replacable. He probably brings up the effort level in practice too.