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Agree. Never saw Harden as Gordon but thought Johnson or Ellis was reasonable - a guy that chucks it a lot and sometimes gets hot. He's been better than that and is not really tradeable. But I agree that 6 months ago there was very little reason to dog on a GM that held on to a 20 year old 7 footer over a wing player.
Agree with both. Didn't see Harden being this good. I think the offense they have in place is a huge help for him.
I always saw Harden as a Paul Pierce clone with slightly better athleticism. He's always had a great ability to get to the basket and draw contact like Pierce, along with a good 3 point shot. He's been more efficient in Houston than I thought he would be, however, as I had suspected his efficiency in OKC might have been due to playing with strong teammates.
The Jeremy Lin of 2013? I didn't catch any Orlando games (thankfully) but Harris was instrumental in my fantasy league title.
What do you see as his ceiling? Tweener 3/4 types pretty much grow on trees and the only three who I can think of that have had a real impact (something that you would possibly call a top 50 player) are Shawn Marion, Antwan Jamison and Paul Millsap. Harris is nowhere near as skilled as Millsap or Jamison and he is nothing even close to the athlete and defender Marion was. For the most part tweeners are meant for a bench role similar to Thad Young.
Pretty much other than at least Lin plays an important position. SFs are probably the most replacable position in the NBA.
He's 20 playing his first real nba action. You're not really looking at the whole picture here.
I'm sure they would do Drummond or Kanter or Valen. Pierce?
WTF would they want with Pierce? Conley? No. Hayward? No.
Agreed. Just because small forward is deep doesn't mean you can pick any guy and call it even. He is 20 and playing well. Reminds me a bit of al Harrington, although I've admittedly only seen highlights.
What is the ceiling for Harris? I just don't see a very high ceiling for a player that can't shoot and can't guard either position he would play.Premier said:I'm sure they would do Drummond or Kanter or Valen. Pierce?Kev4029 said:
Guy has had a 15 year career. Could do worse.
Agreed. And I could easily see Harris having a similar career. That's a very nice career (and you are right, their games are pretty similar) but that is not a top 42 asset in the NBA type of career. Being the 42nd best asset in the NBA means that most teams have only one better asset on their team. That would be similar to something like owning the 3rd or 4th pick in a random draft. I'm not arguing that hes not a nice player or that the Magic didn't make a good trade just that he should be more like the 100th best asset not something mentioned in this column.
This is extremely disingenuous and you know it. He was strapped to the Bucks bench with no chance to play meaningful minutes for 85% of the year.
Not necessarily disagreeing with some of the Tobias negatives, but he's shown major talent flashes in a very short amount of time, and he's very young. IMO many teams would give up quite a lot for that based on the upside. Could he plateau or turn into someone like Jason Thompson? Absolutely. But we know upside is highly valued and he's shown it.
He shot 47% from the field with the Magic.What is the ceiling for Harris? I just don't see a very high ceiling for a player that can't shoot and can't guard either position he would play.Premier said:I'm sure they would do Drummond or Kanter or Valen. Pierce?Kev4029 said:
His FT with MIL this year was 89%. Dipped to 72 with the magic. He was 82 last year as well. Let's just call it around 80 and call it a day. Either way, I don't see how he's a terrible shooter.The contract is part of what plays into this. I think the basic premise is that he's really cheap to keep around, and there's a greater than 0% chance he could develop into one of the top 50 or so players in the league based on skill at some point in the future. You don't have to be one of the top 2 players on a team for this to be the case - you just have to have a nice contract and have potential to be if things pan out. Kobe Bryant is a lot more skilled and anyone would take him ahead of Harris on that basis, but when you consider one guy is getting old and has a bazillion dollar contract while the other makes nothing and has some upside, Harris could be considered "a more valuable" asset from the contract perspective.
Difficult to say at 20 years of age. If we say there's a 1% chance that he becomes an All-Star, that's a lottery ticket worth owning based on his contract number. To me that's the premise of the ranking and a lot of these rankings in this article.What is the ceiling for Harris? I just don't see a very high ceiling for a player that can't shoot and can't guard either position he would play.Premier said:I'm sure they would do Drummond or Kanter or Valen. Pierce?Kev4029 said:
We had a similar argument earlier in the season with Abe calling Parsons the best contract in the NBA.
What's the last sentence mean? You think the magic are going to stop drafting or trying to sign guys because they have Harris now?You're really all over the place here.
His full season numbers (or career numbers for that matter), advanced and per36, were very similar to his Orlando numbers other than his increased usage and decreased efficiency with Orlando.
If you think the Magic should treat Harris as a top prospect in the NBA, they are going to be awful for years, until they get lucky again and draft somebody like Howard.
He is low but it isn't really surprising. Toronto gets very little media attention, they were well out of the playoff race and he didn't really have any big games to get noticed. His best game was probably vs WAS, 24/10 16/18 FT. Outside that game, he only cracked 20 points once and that was early in the year. As much as Simmons loves basketball, I doubt he watched any Raptor games down the stretch. Tough to appreciate a young big if you don't see them play.
There's only so many exceptional or even good players to go around. That what makes guys that have a non zero chance of being good to exceptional while costing almost nothing worthwhile assets.
This is why I've been asking, what is his ceiling. If his ceiling is something slightly better than Al Harrington (which I think is what Abe was suggesting), then hes not anywhere near a top 50 asset. I don't think that just because hes a decent player with a cheap contract that he should be a great asset. A player of his current ability is easy to find, to make him untradable the Magic have to be sure he is going to be a stud sometime soon. That isn't happening. How many teams are looking to trade for Jeremy Lin or Landry Fields after they played great for 30 games?
I don't think that's what anyone is suggesting - in fact I don't even think that's what this article is suggesting. He intentionally left out lottery picks on their first contract and things because that's "too easy". This is more of a best of the rest type of deal - scrappers that make less money than their play would suggest they should and guys that have a chance to develop into something but were low picks still playing on their first contract. It doesn't place him above 400 other assets or anything of that nature.
You mean other than his mentions of MKG, Klay Thompson, Andre Drummond, Jonas V, Kanter, Favors, Cousins, Hayward, plus the other guys that he'll put in his top 40 or whatever (Irving, Wall, Davis, etc).
Someone was willing to give Lin a pretty big contract, so I would presume that there would have been a number of teams willing to trade for him if he had the contract of Harris. Most likely he never becomes great, odds of any player taken outside of the top few picks is slim. But teams aren't looking to have fire sales on their late lottery picks, because there is a non zero chance they are eventually good or great.
Leaving to go hit some bars prior to the Nuggets game here in about 20 minutes, then have tickets for the game today.So...the playoffs start soon.
Wat
Maybe I'm misunderstanding his column - he did format this incredibly poorly. Still, it seems to me that any guy that would be a lottery pick tomorrow and actually makes less than one probably holds some decent value. Those are the types of players/contracts that any rebuilding team should love to have. Is that "top 50", "top 100". I dunno, I haven't really put a TON of thought into this. But it doesn't seem strange that these sorts of players would make a list of the more valuable assets in the league. Outside of landing a top pick or signing a guy to a max deal in FA, there's not a lot of ways to land guys who have the sort of ceiling you're looking for outside of getting lucky with enough Harris type players.
Wat
Edit for some substance: A) I've never said he was a top prospect in the nba. I think he had a very good 6 weeks with Orlando and has some major upside given his youth, body and scoring ability. He's a big fluid kid who can move. You can use that. He's also shown some very good rebounding ability which shows me he doesn't shy away from action. B) what does my opinion have to do with the future of the magic? You realize I'm not Rob Hennigan right?i don't necessarily disagree with you about Harris, but IMO if you were to put together your top 50 list, it would have guys toward the bottom that would be open to a similar line of criticism. There's only so many exceptional guys in the league.
Yeah, I don't think there is any team that trades players 43-50 for Harris while Orlando probably does; especially Faried, Kanter, Valanciunas and Drummond (ignoring that they have Vucevic and redundancy . The other guys (Thompson, Vasquez, Butler, Parsons) are just young, league average players with potential upside but will likely never be more than league average.
To me it looks like there's some chance Butler could develop into a poor man's Scottie Pippen. That's where the value of these sorts of guys comes in.
I'd be quite confident in saying he'll develop into a good role player but doubtful of much more. And yes, there is value in a good role player but that value isn't one of the top 50 assets in the league, regardless of salary. Right now, he brings exactly what Matt Barnes does. Barnes is cheaper and has a ton of experience. All Butler has on him is youth.
Butler shot 3s better this year than any of Barnes' seasons. He gets to the line more frequently. His free throw percentage was better than any of Barnes' years. He's a better defender. His game still is developing while Barnes' isn't. Exactly what holes do you see in Butler's game? And about salary, Butler only makes $3M over the next two years.
