I Love The Point Guard Revolution

You know his response will be a 17-rec’d post about why it’s awesome to have a post rec’d more than 4 times and how easy it is to get those rec’s.

…but I think you went a bit far by suggesting that Beasley can be a dynamic scoring wing player ala Kobe or Jordan.

I agree that a team that has 4 or 5 players who can pass and who move the ball can be very successful without a great PG. But I’d rather start with a great PG.

Besides, we don’t have any great wing players on this team. Not Wes, not Bease and not Derrick Williams/.

a team can succeed without a Zebra, so long as they have a Unicorn.

Truly dynamic wings are, IMO, far rarer than distributing PGs. As a team with a 2-decade long drought of wings, the Wolves and their fanbase are well aware that it’s the Jordans and the Kobes (and Wade, Manu, Pierce) that are winning titles. Dallas is one of the exceptions to that basic principle, but as you stated yourself, they played their game “to perfection” (and let’s not sell Kidd’s influence short, as this role we’re discussing is really about orchestrating an offense, stats be damned). See also Chauncey Billups, 2004 Finals MVP.

However, we’ve seen how ineffective it can be to have a coach that stresses the importance of ball movement and getting the best shot possible every possession without a bunch of players that can distribute the ball. And it seems silly to focus on Dallas’ offense when during the most important times of the game it came down to nothing more than: 1) give Dirk the ball anywhere on the floor; 2) let him take a shot that is virtually impossible to block; and 3) hope that shot goes in. When you have that at your disposal there’s hardly a reason to have a point guard. Here’s a news flash for you: there’s only a handful of guys (I’m being generous) in the league that can take an unblockable shot, there’s really only one guy that can make that unblockable shot with any sort of regularity, and that one guy is not Michael Beasley.

Ignoring the fact that Dallas has Jason freaking Kidd, one of the best passers of this generation starting at point guard, the point you make is valid. If you have tons of great passers for their position, it’s better than relying solely on the point guard to do that. But it’s also a hell of a lot more expensive and harder to do. A great point guard is way easier and cheaper to build around than anything outside of a dominant defensive center (and for that reason, while Paul and Dwight might not be the best two players in the NBA, they’d be my top 2 options for starting a team).

And if your dynamic scoring wing isn’t a good passer, he’s not anywhere near as useful as a fluid offense. That’s Beasley’s problem. He’s never going to be able to really run the offense from the wing. The ball is going to stop with Beasley a lot more than anyone else on the team, and if he’s taking bad shots—even if he’s making a few—he’s less useful than the players who pass better and take better shots.

First off, I’d like to reiterate that I don’t actually know if Rubio will be good enough to make this work. I added that in the comments, but it’s probably something that I should have included in the post itself. Ricky might not be able to handle this pressure, and the Wolves might still be a mess next year. It might take a while to make this work.

Second, I think Beasley has demonstrated brilliantly why an iso scorer who doesn’t score efficiently tends to not help a team very much. I think there’s enough athleticism and ability on the rest of the Wolves team where if an active offense, initiated by the point guard is the plan, you don’t don’t really need to go back to Beasley and hope and pray he creates a good shot. If you can get Ricky a little bit of space, the defense will have to adjust, and then ball movement after the first pass can continue. Moving the ball, starting with a good pass, rather than holding the ball and waiting for a Beasley shot is the main difference here. Ricky doesn’t have to do everything, he just has to start the play.

And of course, if Derrick Williams is kind of like Beasley, but with more range, then Beasley is completely unnecessary.

They shot a good percentage from beyond the arc, but in a ball movement offense, you’re going to get more open looks, and I’d like to see more of them come from deadly 3 point shooters. Beasley’s decent, but he’s not terrifying from deep by any means. And if that 3 point shooter is a better defender (not that big of a stretch), it’s an easy decision for me.

But it’s certainly something reasonable people can disagree on. Ebomb makes good points for keeping Beasley above, too. That was just my logic behind that statement, but considering that keeping Beasley isn’t really going to be such a disaster for the Wolves, I’d hardly start shouting about FO incompetence if they didn’t take my advice.

This accidentally turned into a “Why I’d trade Mike Beasley yesterday” post. My fault for not being clear enough on this one.

Right, but the idea I threw out there was certainly lazy and ill-explained. People obviously should have questioned why the hell I’d do that before finding out how good Ricky and Williams are.