What you're getting with Ben Gordon
Posted: Wed Jul 1, 2009 11:45 pm
I thought this might help those of you who want to kill yourselves right now.
First things first: I do think you've overpaid, yet I also really wanted to keep him. So did most Bulls fans. And that should say something. You overpaid to get him because you had to, yet Dumars went out and targetted him because he's good. I mean, he really is.
In simplistic terms, you can say somewhat accurately that he only has one plus-NBA skill - his jumpshot. You'd be right, in a sense. But this isn't a midget Casey Jacobsen or Eddie House you've got here - Ben Gordon is an other-worldly, fantastically brilliant shot maker. Really. He can hit any jumpshot - falling forwards, sideways, backwards, from his arse, with 7 footers draped all over him....anything. He rarely gets blocked, and he never misses the open ones. He can hit any shot that's not a layup with a largely unparalleled frequency - the only shotmakers at guard better than him in this league are the elite players of the game.
As for his shot selection, it's not nearly as bad as you think it is. Every now and then, he'll have a shocking night where he chucks up tat, but he's really not the chucker that you think he is. There's a bit of it, but not much. And the tradeoff comes when he's in a zone - when he gets hot, he gets superunrealisticallysweetChristlookathimgo kind of hot, where he will take and make as many 27 footers as the game clock allows. This benefits your team, not hinders it. Seriously.
The rest of his game is pretty average. His rebounding is average (although since he's almost always the smallest guy on the court, 3 and a bit per game is all right), and his dribbling is a bit sloppy. The Bulls drafted Gordon expecting him to be able to play some point down the road, but he can't - he dribbles too high, loses the ball in traffic more often than is comfortable, and dribbles off his foot quite a lot. He also has very little passing vision - it's not a selfishness thing, he just can't do it. He's much improved at getting to the rim, though, and he draws a lot more foul shots than he used to. His scoring efficiency is very nice from a shooting guard - he averages about 1.30 points per shot, and was more efficient than Kobe last year. Shooting 40%+ from the three point every year while taking that many shots is bloody hard to do, and it does wonders for a man's efficiency.
(His interior finishing is pretty bad, though. At least he put the floaters to bed.)
As for his defense.......well, it's not great. But it's also not bad. It used to be bad, but he got a lot better. He is quite obviously better when defending the point guards, as I'm sure all 6'1 guys are (he's listed as being bigger than he is), but if Stuckey can pick up the two's for him (like Hinrich used to do), then you should be fine. His defense is probably on the negative side of average, but it's not abhorrent. Like everything else about his game, it has improved for five years.
Off the court, Ben is a consummate professional, who never speaks out of turn, and who works out hard in the offseason, even in the year that he didn't have a contract. He almost never misses a game, has developed some fine swagger over the years (it's great fun when he grabs his balls after making a particularly key three). He was once convicted of hitting his girlfriend, but it's no secret, and it's up to you how much that matters.
It appears that most of you are against this, and against Gordon in general. But I implore you that you'll like Gordon the player.....probably. He probably is about $10 mil overpaid over the life of the contract, but such is the nature of unrestricted free agency. Pretend it doesn't exist, and you'll like him more.
First things first: I do think you've overpaid, yet I also really wanted to keep him. So did most Bulls fans. And that should say something. You overpaid to get him because you had to, yet Dumars went out and targetted him because he's good. I mean, he really is.
In simplistic terms, you can say somewhat accurately that he only has one plus-NBA skill - his jumpshot. You'd be right, in a sense. But this isn't a midget Casey Jacobsen or Eddie House you've got here - Ben Gordon is an other-worldly, fantastically brilliant shot maker. Really. He can hit any jumpshot - falling forwards, sideways, backwards, from his arse, with 7 footers draped all over him....anything. He rarely gets blocked, and he never misses the open ones. He can hit any shot that's not a layup with a largely unparalleled frequency - the only shotmakers at guard better than him in this league are the elite players of the game.
As for his shot selection, it's not nearly as bad as you think it is. Every now and then, he'll have a shocking night where he chucks up tat, but he's really not the chucker that you think he is. There's a bit of it, but not much. And the tradeoff comes when he's in a zone - when he gets hot, he gets superunrealisticallysweetChristlookathimgo kind of hot, where he will take and make as many 27 footers as the game clock allows. This benefits your team, not hinders it. Seriously.
The rest of his game is pretty average. His rebounding is average (although since he's almost always the smallest guy on the court, 3 and a bit per game is all right), and his dribbling is a bit sloppy. The Bulls drafted Gordon expecting him to be able to play some point down the road, but he can't - he dribbles too high, loses the ball in traffic more often than is comfortable, and dribbles off his foot quite a lot. He also has very little passing vision - it's not a selfishness thing, he just can't do it. He's much improved at getting to the rim, though, and he draws a lot more foul shots than he used to. His scoring efficiency is very nice from a shooting guard - he averages about 1.30 points per shot, and was more efficient than Kobe last year. Shooting 40%+ from the three point every year while taking that many shots is bloody hard to do, and it does wonders for a man's efficiency.
(His interior finishing is pretty bad, though. At least he put the floaters to bed.)
As for his defense.......well, it's not great. But it's also not bad. It used to be bad, but he got a lot better. He is quite obviously better when defending the point guards, as I'm sure all 6'1 guys are (he's listed as being bigger than he is), but if Stuckey can pick up the two's for him (like Hinrich used to do), then you should be fine. His defense is probably on the negative side of average, but it's not abhorrent. Like everything else about his game, it has improved for five years.
Off the court, Ben is a consummate professional, who never speaks out of turn, and who works out hard in the offseason, even in the year that he didn't have a contract. He almost never misses a game, has developed some fine swagger over the years (it's great fun when he grabs his balls after making a particularly key three). He was once convicted of hitting his girlfriend, but it's no secret, and it's up to you how much that matters.
It appears that most of you are against this, and against Gordon in general. But I implore you that you'll like Gordon the player.....probably. He probably is about $10 mil overpaid over the life of the contract, but such is the nature of unrestricted free agency. Pretend it doesn't exist, and you'll like him more.
