Puffer's Posts - D-Fense, D-Fense

Last nights game against the Cavaliers was interesting for me from a couple of perspectives. First, it gave me another opportunity to carry on my Kapono watching. And second, I was able to add to my "Bargs in the paint" memory bank of significant moments. What I saw in both cases helped make me the happy camper I am today. Delfino having a "break out game" was defintely icing on the cake. And Ford, with 13 assists to 2 turnovers and only 8 shot attempts on a poor (25%) shooting night was like having that nice, light, whipped icing.

Kapono did not guard his position, which made everyone happy, since that would have had him trying to stop King James. That job fell to Anthony Parker, who managed to do a good job while only picking up 3 Personal Fouls. Kapono spent most of his time on either Devin Brown, or Larry Hughes. Both started the majority of their games last year, and both played on a team that went to the finals last year. Brown had slightly lower numbers than last year, on slightly more minutes, and Hughes had just 1 point under his season average, on 4 less minutes. So using the boxscore, you could say that Kapono was no worse on defense than the average NBA defender while watching either of his two assignments last night. At the same time, offensively, he got 12 points on 63% shooting, and also picked up 3 rebounds and an assist, all in 21 minutes, versus his opponents 32 minutes each.

Hey, I know this is reaching, but that's what the boxscore says. What it can't say, but I can, is that Jason fights around picks to stay with his man, plays smart help defense, alwasy keeping one eye on his assignment if he leaves to help, and he does a good job of switching.

What about Bargs defensive assignment? Gooden played a few more minutes, got a couple less points than last years average and only 6 rebounds, as against his last year average of 8. At the same time Bargs got 8 points and 5 rebounds in 22 minutes. He was 0 for 3 from the arc and missed 2 free throws. His problem is still stayijg in the game long enough to get in the flow. In the early going he had 5 personal fouls. Sam left him in for quite a while with 5, and eventually pulled him so he could play the rest of the bench.

Now Gooden is no Yao Ming, but he started in all 80 games he played in for the Cavs, and his team went to the finals last year, so this is a reasonable enough test of Bargs. Definitely a passing grade. He boxed out, was always pushing Gooden away from the basket and also played reasonably good help D. So he kept Gooden below his season averages, which makes Bargs better than Goodens average NBA defender. (Okay, I'm reaching a little, but youo get my point).

Now I don't know what you saw last night, but it was reassuring to me, amidst all this talk about Bargs not being able to play center, and ther being no "D" in Kapono.

Blood Flows Red on the Salary Cap

A few days ago on the altraps forum, Scott pointed out this article regarding the rather unprecedented (at least under the current CBA, as well as its immediate predecessors) hold-outs of two Cavs restricted free agents: noted Slobodan Milosevic fan Sasha Pavlovic and noted gay community icon Anderson Varejao:

The summers of 2004, 2005 and 2006 featured record spending in the NBA. Part of it was due to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2005 that bolstered the salary cap.Lots of max contracts were given out, numerous teams had, and used, giant amounts of cap space; lots of teams used their entire mid-level exceptions to sign mid-level players to contracts worth more than $35 million; and lots of restricted free agents got huge deals without having to get legitimate offers elsewhere.

That was the flow, now is the ebb.

(The article also points out that the Raptors were the only team in the NBA this summer to use their full mid-level exemption to lure a player away from another team -- the frankly somewhat bizarre signing of Jason Kapono. This is actually not entirely accurate, as the capped-out Bulls used nearly all of theirs in the understandable but certainly no less painful signing of Joe Smith.)

I've long argued that it's these mid-level deals and not the obviously bloated max-contracts to unworthy players that destroy a team's cap flexibility. Never in their Clipper careers will Cuttino Mobley or the Talented Tim Thomas be their team's highest paid player, but the Clips will be on the hook for a combined $14 million dollars for their dubious services for each of the next three seasons. Look around the league and you see a lot of toxic tandems like this, from Vlad Radmanovic and Kwame Brown for Lakers (nearly $15 million this season) to Kenny Thomas and Shareef Abdur-Rahim for the Kings ($13 million escalating up to $15 million over the next three years).

Of course, the master of the pointless mid-level exemption is still Kevin McHale of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Prior to this summer's firesale, the Wolves were on the hook for past MLE-like duds like rap superstar Troy Hudson ($6.5 million on average over the next three years), Marko Jaric ($6 escalating to $7.5 million over the next four years) and Mike James (an average of $6.5 million over the next three years). Note that all three of them were point guards, and none have ever been good enough to start for anything resembling a playoff team. Dumping Kevin Garnett this summer was a useful distraction from the fact that the team is still on the hook for $18 million dollars for useless scrubs.