Amazing how Amare went to the Knicks and reinvented himself to become the 100 million dollar man. The guy buys into the coach's philosophy and the Knicks start surging. Along comes Carmelodrama, who has all this excess baggage of bad habits, and he's already looking for excuses after a 7-9 start. The guy is weak, soft, and a perennial loser. I wouldn't want that bum on my team.
why he ever wanted to go from the west with the open run and gun style to the east where there is more defense and half court pounding.... just don't get it... The Clippers would be the spot for him.... always a built in excuse for loosing and in the big city.
still, if we had drafted him, we could have traded him to some other team for way more than a late 1st round draft pick (as was the case with Tay). So even if one doesn't like him as a player, he's still worth a dozen times what you get for Tay in return.
That's assuming he played enough to get some sort of worth.... Larry didn't like playing rookies much, and if he was a big a headache here as he was to the coach in Denver he may have been glued to the bench. He's shown he doesn't deal with not getting his own way, so I think if he gets drafted by Detroit he never becomes an all star, atleast not till he was traded away for not much more then Darko was.... Now if we had drafted Wade I feel he would have taken the challenge and forced his way into the lineup....
Good thoughts, but you're talking about the ideal situation Ralphi. He'd have never fit into our defensive style of play back then, and his value woulda dropped til Joe just gave him away. He woulda made a nice human victory cigar though....
Amare is the exact same player he's always been. I wouldn't exactly call putting on another jersey a reinvention. And Carmelo has made the playoffs every year he's been in the league. The Nuggets hadn't since 8 years previous. They've won an average of 48 games per season with him. Perennial losers typically lose, right? Thats not even getting into how the Knicks problems are deeper than Carmelo.
Season over, stats are in. Just a quick wrap-up, hopefully someone like TaS will find some more interesting tidbits. Player Comparison Finder | Basketball-Reference.com Pretty even I would say. Both played roughly the same amount of minutes. Cousins attempts almost double the amount of FG's Monroe does. Greg's % far better and actually finished 6th in the league at 55.1. Both players have room to improve their FT shooting. Greg only averages 3 FTA per game, but this was still good enough for third on the team which speaks more for the team itself. Both guys very solid rebounders and led their respective teams. Double-doubles: Cousins 26, Monroe 21. For comparison, this was better than guys like Scola (19), Millsap (19), Blatche (17), D.West (16), Nene (14) and M.Gasol (14). Cousins higher in assists, but counters this with a terrible TO rate (3.3 per game). Despite having half the amount of assists Cousins has, Monroe still kills him in A-TO ratio (1.3 to 0.7). Hopefully we will see more plays run through Greg next season. Monroe led the Pistons in O-Reb, D-Reb, T-Reb, and Steals. Cousins led the Kings in FTA, O-Reb, D-Reb, T-Reb and TO. I find the Advanced stats on Basketball Reference interesting. They are found through the link above. Here is a snippet. For those into Win Share stats, Monroe had 6.6 (led team) to Cousins 1.1 (9th on team). LeBron led the league with 15.6. Player Efficiency Rating: Cousins 14.6, Monroe 18 (league average is 15). Monroe led the Pistons in Offensive Rating (23rd in league) and 2nd in Defensive Rating (behind Ben). Cousins was worst on his team in Offensive Rating (which was surprising). He was tied for 1st in Defensive Rating. At the end of the day, some will argue this the most telling stat: Cousins 14 techs, 3 ejections. Monroe 0 and 0. And it would be hard to fault their view.
Nice summary. We lucked out that we didn't have the opportunity to pick Cousins. It's just never a good idea to have a jerk of a teammate on your roster. Hell, at least with Rasheed Wallace, his teammates loved having him on the team. Everyone hates playing with Cousins.
That's a pretty nice summary. I don't know the actual formulas, but I suspect that Cousins' turnovers are killing his advanced stats (as they probably should). To me, this is similar to Amir's personal foul problem in prior years. It's a really bad quality to have, but it is 1) the side effect of trying to do the right thing (i.e. defend/ help out or pass to a teammate) and 2) is easier to correct than things like poor shooting, poor athleticism, etc. If you told Cousins, you get $10M if you have 0 turnovers next game, he could for sure do it, but his assists would also be 0. So, he's trying to do the right thing, but the game hasn't slowed down for him yet. I never really was that interested in Cousins over Monroe, I just got caught up in defending Cousins' stats when I felt like they were being minimized. If they were both FA's next year, I'm not sure who would command the higher price. Cousins' attitude didn't derail him and Monroe's athleticism proved to be workable. So, in essence, they both performed a little better than the critics said they would. I'd prefer Monroe, but there are GM's out there who would see more athletic upside in Cousins still.
Monroe did finish 3rd overall in top 50 Rookies for 2010-11 behind you know who and was two slots ahead of Cousins. Just glad there was not a thread called 8 months later Terrico White or Jordan Crawford the Detroiter who finished 14th in the top 50 rookies and was the 27th player picked in the draft. Crawford was a decent when he played... 2011 NBA Rookie Card Page - ESPN
Monroe finished 6th in Rookie voting. I think he was a little hard done by, being outvoted by Landry Fields and Gary Neal. Code: 1st 2nd 3rd Total Griffin 118 - - 590 Wall - 91 22 295 Cousins - 11 48 81 Fields - 12 26 62 Neal - 3 10 19 Monroe - 1 12 15
Yeah, this is pretty sad. I mean, obviously the only one that matters is the top vote, and Griffin was the runaway choice, but Monroe should have been above Neal and Fields. But what are you going to do... NY and LA media...
Monroe had a better rookie season than Cousins too, and he was decisively better than Neal and Fields. Whatever. Not like we, as Piston fans, aren't used to our own players not getting recognition by the national press.
It hardly matters - we know we ended up with a cornerstone big man. Now, let him fly under the radar for awhile and work hard, expand his game and build up his athleticism and strength and then build our team around him. Let's find out if his other potential core partners will be Stuckey, JJ, Daye, and Gordon, and let's draft a super defender rebounder to compliment him.
Yep, there is only two guys (Griffin/Wall) in this rookie class I without a doubt rather have on the team and one (Cousins) who I feel would add about the same value longterm. It was a great pick.
Player G GS MP FG FGA FG% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS DeMarcus Cousins 81 62 2309 432 1004 .430 276 402 .687 217 482 699 204 85 68 268 332 1143 Greg Monroe 80 48 2222 303 550 .551 145 233 .622 248 353 601 105 93 45 81 196 751 Greg is a better off-rebs player
