Published: September 10, 2010
Guys, if you are like me and you come here and soome other pages everyday, i know that feeling. Thats why i will add here everything i read today elsewhere:
NBA 2010: Rookies Most Likely To Disappoint
By TheRookieWall.com
PF: Craig Brackins – New Orleans Hornets
Brackins is a solid talent, but to be honest this pick confused us. If the Hornets idea was to keep Chris Paul and build a contender, they should have kept their original first round pick, Cole Aldrich. He isn’t particularly athletic and lacks any real difference from current face-up power forward David West. That doesn’t seem like the formula to keep a superstar like Paul, but obviously the Hornets saw something we didn’t.
Starting From Scratch: Five NBA Teams Overdue For an All-Out Fire Sale
5. New Orleans Hornets
Either to make Chris Paul happy by surrounding him with more promising players or to make Chris Paul happy by shipping him off, the Hornets could use some remodeling.
With Peja Stojakovic and Emeka Okafor on their way down the road to irrelevancy and David West’s improvement seemingly tapered off, their doesn’t appear to be much room to grow for the Hornets.
The franchise needs to set its foot down against mediocrity, and not let the fact that they have a star point guard mask the fact that they continually fail to put together a successful postseason drive.
Now, I’ll keep them at five until I see how this experiment with Trevor Ariza works out but if he becomes a dud, the Hornets could find themselves higher on this list next season.
NBA Power Rankings: Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and The 50 Best Players in the NBA
42. David West
David West doesn’t have much that separates him from the average power forward in the league. He is slow and athletically challenged. Yet still he remains one of the most productive forwards in the league.
He has one of the best mid-range jumpers in all of basketball and he relies heavily on it. His post game is mediocre because he lacks the size, quickness and explosiveness to be really effective…but he does have a nice baby-hook and fade-away shoot. Most of his points in the paint come from transition and penetration for his teammates. He’s an underrated passer that has great court awareness.
Defensively West is sound in his positioning, but he’s too slow and too small to effectively stop some of the more versatile players at his position. He is an average rebounder and provides a little in the shot-blocking department. He also has active hands and does a great job of staying out of foul trouble.
West is a really smart layer but he’s peaked at what kind of player he will and can be.
He has a career PER of 18.8
2. Chris Paul
Chris Paul is easily the most efficient as well as productive point man in the NBA. He’s also one of the most competitive players in the NBA. It can be argued that he is in fact the head of that debate.
He excels at every aspect of offense not named post play and that’s only because of his size. He’s the best ball handler in the entire NBA and arguably the best passer. His vision is only rivaled by Kidd and Nash. Paul is an extremely gifted offensive rebounder. No one does more with less in my opinion.
Defensively, no player is better at generating turnovers than Paul. His size prevents him from being a major force in the individual department but he’s one of the top help defenders in all of the NBA. He’s an absolute terror when he’s focused.
Paul is a top-five floor leader regardless of position in my opinion…leads with his play as much as he does with his mouth.
His career PER is 25.6
BTW, this list is topped by Wade.-
NBA 2010-11: The 100 Biggest Questions Facing the NBA This Season
44. Will Chris Paul Remain Healthy the Whole Season?
Last year, Chris Paul missed eight games in November with an ankle injury, then had a knee injury that required surgery and knocked him out of action for nearly two months. In total, Paul appeared in only 45 games last season—meaning the team was in Darren Collison‘s more-than-capable hands for 37 games this past year.
This year, the Hornets won’t have Collison as a CP3 security blanket, as they shipped him away in exchange for Trevor Ariza.
The Hornets’ season completely depends on Paul’s health, as they’ll have zero shot at the playoffs without Paul running the show on offense. Even with CP3 guiding their team, they’ll have an upward battle towards the upper half of the Western Conference, but the first step towards that goal involves keeping CP3 healthy for all 82 games this season.
38. Who Will Have a Sophomore Slump? (Evans? Curry? Jennings? Etc.)
While we’ve got a whole mess of talented sophomores from the class of 2009 looking to make the second-year leap, a few of them will inevitably fall by the wayside in their second year as their draft colleagues overtake them.
The thought of the top three point guards from the class falling apart—namely, Tyreke Evans, Brandon Jennings and Stephen Curry—is hard to imagine at this point, as all three will only enter this year with a full year of NBA experience and a full NBA offseason under their belts.
Darren Collison could be an early candidate for this award, largely on the basis of how much more responsibility he’ll be shouldering in Indiana, coming in as the starting point guard from Day 1. Otherwise, Marcus Thornton of New Orleans will have a tough time maintaining the excessively hot shooting he managed last year, and it’ll be worth watching whether first-half-of-the-season Omri Casspi shows up for Sacramento, or if his lesser, second-half-of-the-season self returns for Year 2 instead.
37. Who’s Really the Best Point Guard in the Class of 2009?
The draft class of 2009 gave the NBA no shortage of All-Star caliber point guards, starting with the trifecta of Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings, who finished 1-2-3 in the Rookie of the Year vote last season.
Beyond the three lottery PGs, this draft class also happened to have a number of quality PGs buried in the late-teens/early-20s of the draft, namely Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson, Darren Collison and Eric Maynor. Already, Evans, Curry, Jennings, Holiday and Collison will enter the season with the starting role of their respective teams; that means 1/6 of the NBA’s teams will be led by this draft class already.
Evans, the Rookie of the Year, should enter this season as the tentative favorite, but Curry’s Team USA experience gives him a unique advantage in the race. Considering the upgrades to Jennings’ Bucks team, it’d be foolish to count him out, and with Darren Collison getting a fresh opportunity in Indiana to pair alongside All-Star Danny Granger, he could officially become the surprise of the class this coming season.
33. Will Chris Paul Force His Way Out of New Orleans?
A few weeks after LeBron decided to take his talents to South Beach, rumors started breaking out about Chris Paul catching the superteam fever and wanting out of New Orleans, ASAP. New GM Dell Demps met with Paul and reportedly eased the tensions between the two sides, but Hornets fans can’t be feeling great about Paul’s long-term future in New Orleans at this point.
Unlike Carmelo Anthony, his brother in trade demands this summer, Paul’s contract doesn’t expire after this year; New Orleans has him locked up through 2012.
The Hornets traded backup PG Darren Collison (aka Paul’s eventual successor had Paul left) and SF James Posey in a four-team, five-player deal in exchange for the Rockets’ Trevor Ariza—a move which sends a strong message to CP3, as Sports Illustrated‘s Paul Forrester believes. What if Paul doesn’t see his long-term future with a core of Ariza, David West and Emeka Okafor, though?
29. What Non-Lottery Rookie Will Have the Biggest Impact?
Last year, a shocking number of non-lottery players ended up becoming major impact players for their respective teams, largely due to injury.
Jrue Holiday took advantage of an injury to Lou Williams and Allen Iverson’s departure; Darren Collison electrified the NBA while Chris Paul sat out for two months; and Marcus Thornton took advantage of some major post-All-Star minutes to make himself look like the surprise of the draft.
This year, we’re sure to have an under-the-radar rookie emerge from the depths to shock the NBA like Collison, Thornton and Holiday did last season. Can Avery Bradley emerge as the next Nate Robinson on the Celtics’ bench? Can James Anderson become the next George Hill off the bench for the Spurs? Or will one rook land a surprise starting role like Collison and stun us all?
Ok, hope u enjoy the reading.
