The Crevice’s First Annual “How Could You Be Moe Harkless” All-Stars
Yes, yes, I know, the name’s overplayed. But it’s still so good.
It’s time to write meaningless columns. I’m starting a new tradition here at The Crevice: honoring negativity and breeding cynicism. And that’s what the “How Could You Be Moe Harkless” All-Stars are rooted in: low expectations.
Take Moe Harkless, for example. Low expectations coming in to the NBA parlayed into a surprisingly good rookie season with Orlando, where he capitalized on his athleticism and energy to turn in what should’ve been a second team All-Rookie performance (fuck off, Kyle Singler, you horrific vampire with no sense of pilar fashion). And right when Orlando thought they had a perfect combo forward to pair with Tobias Harris, Victor Oladipo, and Nic Vucevic (what a core), he got injured and hasn’t improved since. He’s a 10 point a game energy guy who starts for a mediocre Western conference team. At least he’s finally got a grown man’s name.
The HCYBMH All-Stars aren’t quite an honor. Rather, they’re more like predictions: young players who were previously strictly role players who’ll get a bigger role and bigger stage to shine in the upcoming season. I’m giving out these awards to guys who I don’t think will be able to capitalize on their increased role. Oh, the wonderful sweet and sour taste of negativity.
Point Guard: Kyrie Irving
There’s no harm in wanting to be the man. If we subscribe to the lazy maxim that the NBA is apparently being “sissified” by stars teaming up together, then Kyrie Irving’s desire to grace another franchise with his presence should be admired. But if you want to be the man, then you have to live with the consequences should this experiment go sourly.
So… it’s time to shit on Kyrie.
This is the pseudo-intellectual who tries to make hollow exegesis about the power of the media by claiming that he believes the Earth is flat. Kyrie is mindless drivel. And ironically, if we replace a few letters in that last phrase, we get what Kyrie does best on the court: mindless dribbles.
Let me tell you what has “sissified” the NBA: the Mamba mentality. The disease of me that Pat Riley so eloquently captured isn’t commentary on today’s NBA. It’s reflective of the time that cultivated the Mamba mentality: the early 2000s. Kobe and McGrady and Carter holding the ball on the wing, dribbling away precious shot clock seconds, and then hoisting ugly midrange fall-aways. Kobe made more of those misguided shots than the other two, and that’s why his legacy persists. That may be an oversimplification, but you get my point.
Kyrie is an elite shooting guard in the body of a point guard, much like Allen Iverson. The difference between Iverson and Kyrie is that Iverson at least tried on defense, even though it was mostly gambles in the passing lanes. Kyrie’s assist average hovers around 5.5 per game for his career, and in recent years, most of these were borne out of the system and necessity. Swinging the ball around is contagious, and sometimes, you just have to pass out of a hard to finish layup.
Sure, Kyrie’s hit probably 50+ clutch shots in his career, but without LeBron James, he basically wins once every three games. Maybe his years with LeBron have taught him how to lead a team of cauterized puppets to the playoffs, but chances are, he hasn’t. What does being the man on a team even mean? For the Cavs, Kyrie is the leading shot taker, tends to be the number one option in the clutch, gets to play in the Finals every damn year, and has one of the best off-court brands in the league. What else do you need to be the man? Step out of LeBron’s shadow?
He’s the point guard on the HCYBMH All-Star team because next season, he’ll be scoring 25 to 28 points a game for a 30 win Phoenix Suns team, and within a few years, Devin Booker will want to be the man elsewhere. And the Mamba mentality sissification of the NBA continues.
Shooting Guard: Malcolm Brogdon
This is going to cut deep with my podcast co-host, CJ Norsigian, so here’s a disclaimer: I love Malcolm Brogdon. He’s the type of player that any championship contender wants as the first guy off their bench, or even the fifth option on the starting lineup. He’s the type of player who can probably help change a culture as a leader on and off the court. He steadies offenses with his above-average three-point shooting and good decision-making, provides good defense, especially against slower or bigger point guards and faster and smaller wings. But, Brogdon is what you see is what you get. He’s Open Office. What teams in need want is LaTeX: hard to unlock its full potential, but it’s got everything you need to be the best typesetter in the world.
That was a horrid analogy.
Though he should be playing off-ball, Brogdon is nominally the starting point guard for the upstart Milwaukee Bucks, averaging 14 points, 5.8 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per 36 minutes en route to Rookie of the Year honors. As a lead guard for a team with two forwards who are perfect for this NBA’s pick-and-roll heavy offenses, he ranked on the 56th percentile of all pick-and-roll ball handlers, averaging only 0.81 points per possession, where he used 31% of his possessions as the PnR ball handler. On top of that, he turns the ball over once every six PnR possessions. What’s most alarming about Brogdon’s offensive game is that he ranks on the 13th percentile as an isolation scorer, with only 0.55 points per possession. I know what the lovers are going to say: he didn’t have a huge isolation usage, that’s not his game, he’s on the 90th percentile as a spot-shooter, he doesn’t turn the ball over too much. But here’s the problem with Brogdon’s offense, and it’s not on him: after a certain point, not turning the ball over isn’t enough, and the Bucks have no other option than to rely on him as a creator.
Sure, Giannis is the focal point of the Bucks offense, and Parker will be (hopefully) a 20 point a game scorer for the rest of his career. Middleton is an underrated creator and scorer as a big wing. But outside of those three, none of whom can really orchestrate an offense to the point of the humming machine levels of Golden State, Cleveland, Houston, or Denver, Milwaukee doesn’t have much else. And that’s a necessity in this league. If the Bucks expect Brogdon to be the primary point guard of the future for this roster, their offense will never get too much better.
Let’s turn our attention to Brogdon’s defense, just for a second. He was really good last year, even though the advanced stats don’t quite agree with the eye-test. But, a lot of Brogdon’s foot-speed limitations are mitigated by Giannis and his albatross wingspan coming in from the weakside. Remember the Raptors series last year? Brogdon was the third best scorer for the Bucks in that series, so he was needed on the floor. But he lacked the lateral quickness to keep up with guarding Kyle Lowry. So, Delly was recruited off the bench to guard the point for the decisive Game 6, and Brogdon shifted onto DeMar DeRozan. That’s when DeRozan got hot, and the rest is history.
Say the Bucks end up getting a good point guard next off-season when they find a way to offload the Henson contract to pair with Giannis and they commit to a top eight rotation of said point guard, Giannis, Jabari, Middleton, Thon Maker, Snell, some rotation big, and Brogdon. That’s when Brogdon will be most useful, hitting open three point shots and only running pick-and-rolls in a pinch.
There’s another salient reason why Brogdon is the starting shooting guard on the Moe Harkless team: he’s older than Moe Harkless.
Small Forward: Rodney Hood
Another Duke player, how cute.
This is the moment when I thought that Rodney Hood could be the best player from his draft class:
He’s a prototypical wing: good, if not great, shooter, good, if not great, defender, great, if not nuclear, athlete. He was a great foil for Gordon Hayward, hitting open shots off Hayward-Gobert action and being able to attack close-outs. As a tertiary part of an inside-out offense, he became one of those supremely promising, role-playing young guys that everyone traded for in NBA 2K16.
With the Gordon Hayward exodus, Hood will likely shift to playing mainly as a small forward, alongside smaller guards in Ricky Rubio, Dante Exum, and Donovan Mitchell. From time to time, I go looking for your photograph online. From time to time, he’ll be sharing the floor with Joe Ingles in those massive, defensive-minded lineups that Quin Snyder loves to throw out there. That’s all fine and dandy.
But here’s the problem: RODNEY HOOD IS THE INCUMBENT NUMBER ONE OPTION. Who else is on this team that can create his own offense from the perimeter? Rubio’s a creator for others, and most of the offense will stem from Rubio-Gobert or Rubio-Favors pick-and-rolls. And Snyder will probably spend several possessions a game, dumping it down to Favors on the low block or letting Iso-Joe cook. Mitchell and Exum will get a few touches to use their quickness and athleticism to get to the rim and create in that fashion.
But the lion’s share of the perimeter creation will fall on Hood’s shoulders. And I’m not sure if he’ll ever amount to anything more than Harrison Barnes on the Mavs.
Take a look at those possessions above. Granted, they’re from two seasons ago, but Hood was plagued with injuries last year, and I swear his play creation hasn’t improved since. In the first possession, he doesn’t allow for enough time for Gobert to fully set the pick, and he’s bailed out by great baseline movement by Trevor Booker. The lane’s entirely clogged by three attentive defenders, and Hood’s not the best midrange pull-up shooter (around 34%). Hood then does that asinine screen rejection that Coach K loves to run and gets bailed by a re-screen by Booker. The pass to the rolling Booker comes way too early, and he again gets bailed out by a runner from a 6'7" power forward, certainly not a great shot. The last possession isn’t even a pick-and-roll and is a simple read to capitalize on Lillard’s lazy off-ball defense.
The Jazz are a popular pick to win more than 45 games next year. Heck, I picked them to win that many. But they need to develop a great team offense predicated on quick ball movement and Rubio’s creativity, not reliance on isolation from their big wings if they want to contend in the West.
Power Forward: James Johnson
I won’t be a prisoner of the moment. This isn’t an overreaction to a 4 year-$60 million contract for a glorified role player who has had only one solid season in his career.
Bloodsport (which is the coolest nickname in the NBA) is going to keep coming off the bench and he’ll be a great foil in the frontcourt for Hassan Whiteside. He can run a little pick-and-roll:
He’s an enforcing presence on defense:
He just had his best season, a season that may just have been a fluke.
Spoelstra used Johnson as his tertiary creator, behind Dragic and Waiters, and he delivered with 8.9 assist points created per game, a career high by far. He was a 56% eFG spot-up shooter, tops in his career by six whole percentage points. But he’s a 30 year old stretch four who isn’t quite adept at shooting and his athleticism is waning. How many former first round flameouts who had their Renaissance nine years into their career during a pivotal contract year continued to play at that level? I can’t think of any.
Johnson’s appeal last year was that he grossly outplayed his contract. He can’t do that anymore, even if his overall play doesn’t drop.
Center: Nerlens Noel
Nerlens Noel is the second best center-type for the NBA. The best is the Karl-Anthony Town/Anthony Davis mold of do-it-all beasts. And if you can’t have that, you want a springy, defensive-minded rim-runner à la DeAndre Jordan. Noel has shown that he has the athletic ability to block a lot of shots and play off guards in pick-and-roll scenarios, converting on dump-offs and lobs.
Here’s the issue with Noel: on the toggle bar of rim-running centers, I’m worried Noel is more Brandan Wright than DeAndre Jordan, the guy who dunks a lot but needs to play next to a defensive minded stretch four who can rebound.
Don’t take me wrong, I’m rooting for Noel. Now that the Mavs have some semblance of a future core in Dennis Smith-Noel pick-and-rolls, and Harrison Barnes-Seth Curry two-man games from the elbow, I want Noel to be good, so Rick Carlisle can finally move forward from Nowitzki. But it’s important that the Mavericks fully evaluate what they have with Noel, especially before they resign him in restricted free agency.
Noel served as the PnR roll man for more than 20% of his possessions last year, yet he only converted 1.10 points per possession, amounting to the 67th percentile. And even though his per minute rebounding statistics are good (nearly 10 a game), it isn’t quite what it needs to be if he’s going to be slated in frontcourts with Barnes (not a great rebounder for how big he really is), Dirk (good, God), and Dorian Finney-Smith (exactly). Noel should be gobbling up defensive rebounds at his size and athleticism, especially given the putrid rebounders he plays with.
And then it’s the defense. If we rank the players who played more than 20 games last year, Noel ranks 22nd in largest decrease in opponents’s field goal percentage from within 6 feet, behind the likes of Mike Dunleavy, Amir Johnson, Wilson Chandler, and… wow… Maurice Harkless. Add that to the fact that somehow Noel’s opponents seems to have an overinflated field goal percentage near the rim, and we see that his athleticism doesn’t quite translate into solid, consistent rim protection.
That is what Noel does best: he’s a weakside shot blocker, and his natural speed allows him to stick with perimeter players on switches. But, as the defensive anchor for a lineup that features several defensively inadequate players and a rookie point guard who’s prone to lapses, he’s going to have to be more of a middle linebacker than the free safety he’s been playing the past few years.
I can envision Noel’s best form to be on a team of switchy, rangy wings. Imagine him as the center on the Milwaukee Bucks. I just had to clean my laptop… But, unless Dennis Smith and Rick Carlisle can unlock something in him that I just can’t see right now, Noel’s ceiling may just be a 12 points, 8 rebounds, and 2 blocks a game boulevard of broken dreams.
Honorable Mentions
Here’s a few guys who didn’t quite make the cut.
- Jaylen Brown, Boston’s next Jeff Green, as in “Boy, he sure is athletic, but gee whiz, I wish he can just put it all together soon.
- Robert Covington, the guy that will just never be able to regain his three-point stroke, but hey, he was a 37% three point shooter once
- Zach LaVine, light-skinned Jamal Crawford who can dunk
- Ivica Zubac, the rich man’s Papagiannis
Here’s the bottom line: I’m picking nits in this column. All of the nine players I mentioned in this article are top 100 players in the league, maybe top 120. Except for Zubac. But this is all about tempering our expectations. If we expect that these players aren’t going to take some kind of leap that their past history doesn’t indicate, we won’t be disappointed when they don’t. But if Kyrie Irving becomes a smoother version of Russell Westbrook or Malcolm Brogdon becomes some hybrid of Kyle Lowry and Jimmy Butler or Rodney Hood becomes the black Gordon Hayward or James Johnson becomes Paul Millsap or Nerlens Noel becomes DeAndre Jordan or Jaylen Brown becomes Robert Covington and Robert Covington becomes 2012 Luol Deng or Zach LaVine becomes Kevin Johnson or Ivica Zubac becomes Robin Lopez, we can be pleasantly surprised.
I really need the season to fucking start.
