I thought Stauskas would have had a shot at a Duncan career or maybe a bench guard like Caris.
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Trey was an awesome college player but he had quite a few things working against him at the pro level. He’s undersized, not overly explosive, average passer, and was a below average NBA 3 pt shooter. You better have at least one elite skill and athletic trait to make it as a 6’0 PG.
Hardaway has the skill of being a high volume 3 pt shooter. He’s a streaky shooter but he’s a solid irrational confidence guy that on good nights is very valuable.
Stauskas seemed to lose his confidence early in his career and never got it back. I think he struggled with NBA length and athleticism and while a good shooter, never was able to shoot at high volume and was a defensive liability.
McGary probably could have a had a solid NBA career but obviously injuries and other issues prevented that.
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I mean both Burke and McGary were clearly undone by substance abuse, it’s pretty well documented and neither really denies it
Like I don’t think smoking a ton of weed is a serious health issue but it’s clear Mitch prioritized that over ball
Burke’s been pretty honest that he sort of drank his initial opportunity away
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McGary just star-crossed.
Academy Award winning acting from Mo
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I would die for them
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I would die for Franz to get a different haircut
(I do think it’s funny how the personalities we know are seemingly pretty real in that Mo is doing all the talking and Franz just hoops)
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Game volumes were down in the past 14 days due to the 3 rounds of NBA Cup play, but still, we press on:
Isaiah Livers hasn’t played since his hip injury mentioned last time (it’s just 4 more games, but 2 weeks). He’s missed 7 straight with what is being referred to, now, as a “strain”.
Let’s dive deep on Danny Wolf! Wolf has continued his relatively strong play, cementing his rotation role. Most importantly, he’s playing a lot - 24.5 minutes per game over the 5 games in our sample, which is relatively on par with fellow Nets rookies Drake Powell, Egor Demin, and Ben Saraf (Nolan Traore is MIA), as the Nets have opened their rotation to the youngsters in the past 3 weeks (and the team has actually played better - not well, but better). Wolf averaged 11.4 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 2.2 assists in his time on 41.3% shooting (39.1% from 3, 47.8% from 2) despite never really playing to those averages (a pair of 17 point games matched with some tough shooting nights where he got 7 or 8 points). I do think his shot mix is interesting - exactly 1/2 of his shots this season have come from 3 (at Michigan that number was roughly 30%), where he’s shooting 40.5% (33.6% on 220 attempts over his college career, the accuracy is roughly what he did at Michigan). 1/4 of his shots have come at the rim (where he’s shooting a somewhat poor (for this player type) 54%, and another 1/4 are “other twos” - mostly floaters, which he’s been fine on (42%). Diving deeper - he’s had 13 possessions this year as a pick and roll ball handler, scoring 9 points and handing out 1 assist. He’s had 0 post-ups, and 0 isolation plays - his highest volume (and most productive) play type has been on spot-ups, which makes sense if you consider his high three point volume, the degree to which his shooting there has driven his scoring, and the percent of which are assisted (93%). So his success has been different than what it was at Michigan (not saying it’s better or worse lest I be dubbed a hater - it’s different!) - much more hinging on catch and shoot threes than playing with the ball in his hands. If the shooting bump we’ve seen so far holds, that seems good! If not, the two point scoring, as it was at Michigan, is still a challenge. It’s worth noting that 93% of his threes so far are assisted vs. 65% at Michigan - this could have something to do with his shooting bump. Despite the shooting, the Nets offense is actually worse when he plays - where he’s ACTUALLY making an impact (harder to attribute) is defense - the Nets’ defense is allowing an OKC level 105 ortg when he’s on the floor. A huge part of this is defensive rebounding - the opponents grab 27% of their misses when he’s off (this would be top 8 in the NBA), and 22% when he’s on (this would be bottom 4 in the NBA). Danny, himself, posts a defensive rebounding rate of nearly 23%, in other words, really good. This is a lot, but to summarize: Danny’s shot well, and done so in a way that may be durable given the shift from OTB threes to off-the-catch threes. He is not, however, doing his “7-foot point guard” act. His greatest value has, actually, been defensively where he needs to guard well for this mediocre a crew to play this well on that side, but also driven a massive rebounding swing. The shape of who he is today, basically, is “3 and (very good) D” four-man.
Moussa Diabate seems to have lost some tick (about 5 mpg down from prior season average) to Ryan Kalkbrenner, who has been one of the more pleasant surprises of the draft. So, his raw numbers have declined with that, but he’s still the same dude. He amde 5/9 shots and grabbed 24 boards in 4 games, blocking 2 shots. Moussa was mentioned by John Hollinger as one of the 7 most “undervalued” (in contractual terms) players in the league:
Listed at 6-10 and 210 pounds — although Diabaté told me he’s up to “225 to 230” now — Diabaté would seem an unlikely candidate to sport a 19.0 percent offensive rebound rate. That rate is the highest of any player with at least 400 minutes played. Even if you lower the bar to 250, it’s topped by only two much bigger and broader players: Houston’s Steven Adams and New York’s Mitchell Robinson.
It took a while to build up to this point. A rail-thin forward at Michigan who showed good mobility, it seemed as if Diabaté’s best pathway to success would be as a tall 3-and-D perimeter player when the Clippers drafted him 43rd in 2022. But the “3” part never came around, and on a veteran Clippers team there wasn’t a lot of daylight for playing time — just 33 games and 259 minutes in two seasons.
Once he landed in Charlotte in 2024, injuries pressed Diabaté into service as an emergency center — a position he had barely played even at lower levels.
At that point, it became clear Diabaté’s bounce and energy were much more useful closer to the basket. Watch any Hornets game over the past two years, and, in the midst of what’s often been hard-to-watch basketball otherwise, you’re immediately struck by Diabaté flying around and corralling the torrent of missed shots coming off Hornets fingertips. He told me the rebounds are the result of his energy being harnessed in the right way.
**“**I really think that’s something that I always had, in the sense that I’ve always been somebody that had energy,” Diabaté said. “I think the offensive rebound is just an effect of my energy, if that makes sense.
“It’s not like I look for it specifically, like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna get offensive rebounds.’ It’s more so, ‘OK, I gotta find a way to get going,’ or, ‘I just gotta play hard.’”
That same energy had also made him a vacuum cleaner on loose balls, even if it sometimes takes him two or three stabs to stick a fork in it, something his teammates rib him about.
**“**We give him crap about his hands,” teammate Kon Knueppel said. “He’ll drop a pass, but then he’ll go get an offensive rebound over three guys. His knack for the ball and just the shape he’s in, to be able to compete at that level is very, very impressive.”
Caleb Houstan was 1/2 from three in the first game of our sample (a 23 point loss), and spent the rest of the time in the G League.
Jett Howard scored 8 points in 14 minutes in the NBA cup game vs. the Knicks, but only played 1 other game of the past 2 weeks, playing 4 minutes and missing a shot. He was 3/5 (2/4 from 3) against the Knicks.
Franz Wagner scored 57 points on 39 shots in the first two games of our sample, then 7 on 4 shots prior to picking up a high-ankle sprain, shelving him for a good amount of time, and fouling a possible All-Star nod. He had 9 boards and 9 assists, and shot 5/10 from 3 in those 2 games. Lots of “how bad are the Magic with only Paolo” data incoming (they won 1 on the back of a 35 point night from Desmond Bane, then lost to the Knicks in a game Paolo was 10/15 inside the arc and 0/7 from 3).
Jordan Poole is back (!) scoring 38 points in 2 games, shooting 14/34 from the floor and 5/20 (25%) from 3. The 9/14 from 2 is pretty good! The Pelicans did, amazingly, win both these games but one was against the Bulls so that doesn’t count.
After a 1/10 stinker in the first game since our update, Caris Levert has played pretty solidly, making both his shots (for 4 points) in his next game, and then posting three consecutive double digit scoring nights in which he shots 11/21 from the floor and 6/12 from three. Levert also posted 18 assists in these 5 games, including 8 in a romp over the Hawks.
Tim Hardaway Jr., after a slower shooting stretch, continues to pour in shots - he’s scored 13 ppg. He only shot 11/33 from three, continuing that stretch of relative mediocrity, but also continued his two-point tear, making of 10/16 (63%) from inside the arc, and shooting 13/15 from the line. His three point shooting started unsustainably hot, but he’s been able to maintain strong efficiency on the strength of his shooting inside the arc. 75% of Hardaway’s two-point baskets this year have been assisted, compared to 57% on his career - I call this the Jokic effect.
Don’t mean to short shrift him, but Duncan Robinson is always the easiest guy to recap. He made 10/24 from 3 in 4 games (41.7%), was 3/4 from 2, and scored 42 points in 4 games (all wins). He’s making 40.3% from 3 this year.
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Love your breakdown on Danny!
He may not be the 7 foot PG yet, but he’s made enough “WOW!” plays that fans are starting to see the vision!
Think an underrated aspect of drafting Wolf is that he had a lot of outs? He needed to make an improvement somewhere in his game to be a pretty typical back end starter/front end rotation guy? But he had a high enough floor with a lot of his skills that you could imagine it coming a lot of places. I obviously had my particular guess and still feel good about it.
I remain skeptical his shooting ability has changed radically already but over the course of a few seasons it certainly could and it’s really obvious how that player fits into the NBA.
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Was curious about this so looked it up, these are the Brooklyn PNR splits since 11/28 (when it looks like Wolf started playing) :
So he’s definitely handling it a decent amount for a 7-footer and doing the PNR stuff. Obviously at Michigan he was doing almost all of the PNR stuff at times, which isn’t going to be the case in the NBA.
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I think the coaches are telling Danny to shoot it when he’s open at 3s instead of pump faking as he did at Michigan. That probably explains the uptick in 3 pt shooting.
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NBA.com’s stat’s site has him with 13 P&R possessions as the ball handler
(this doesn’t include Sunday’s game, I believe, as he’s now appeared in 11 games)
These suggest to me him running P&R is infrequent, and when it happens, not particularly good (tiny sample)
I think there’s obviously a pretty big shift from unassisted to assisted, which is where I’d attribute it (and also to sample size)
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Wolf last year:
34% on C&S threes (62), 33% on OTD threes (51)… I bet half of those OTD threes could have been catch and shoot, but he hesitated, dribbled, and stepped back or whatnot like you said.
This year, he’s 50% on C&S threes (32) and 25% on OTD threes (8). Don’t think anyone would expect him to keep shooting that well from three.
Synergy stats show him doing it about as much as anyone else on the roster during the time he’s been playing. That’s the only reason I posted it.
He’s definitely spotting up too – something he struggled to do last year efficiently – but still playing a lot of PNR and DHO. It’s not like they are turning him into a screener and pick and pop big.
no, NBA.com has him somewhere under 10 possessions as a screener (they don’t give stats below 10 possessions),
I’m confused as to the disparity in data as nba.com’s #’s are from synergy per their site, unless I am incorrectly calculating 1.3 possessions per game across 10 games as 13 possessions.
(googling suggests NBA.com’s stats may be from Second Spectrum?)
The thing Danny did well at Michigan that I was positive he wouldn’t be able to do adequately was guard non-centers. So I guess I’m not shocked, now, to see he’s good defensively.
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That drove me crazy when I saw him do it.
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