5th Annual SI Player Ranking: #10 Center

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jonathanlambert33

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We will be starting our 5th annual SI player rankings.  Last year we only go to the SF position, but I'm quite determined to get the rankings completely finished this year.
 
Don't be afraid to share your opinion, whether it's a popular one or not.  We will once again be going 10 spots deep at all 5 positions.
 
Please remember these two things, please vote on the polls and vote for the best player, don't be a homer.  Most of the polls will be open 24 hours, but if the first place vote getter gets 5 or more votes than the second vote getter than I will close the thread if I'm around. Nola and I will be guys running the polls in order to try to get this done this time around. 
 
 
Remember, this is based on who is currently the best player, not who has the potential to be the best.  Who would you take today?
 
2015 SI C Rankings
1) Marc Gasol
2) DeMarcus Cousins
3) Dwight Howard
4) Al Horford
5) DeAndre Jordan
6) Rudy Gobert
7) Nikola Vucevic
8) Tyson Chandler
9) Hassan Whiteside
10) Joakim Noah
 
2014 SI C Rankings
Incomplete
 
2013 SI C Rankings

 
2012 SI C Rankings
Incomplete
 
2011 SI C Rankings
 

jonathanlambert33

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Which is exactly the reason guys like you and nola aren't voting for him.

Cause a center who is one of the best rebounders in the league, plays good (not great) defense, and is effective offensively (regardless of how he gets his shots, minus FT shooting) isn't anywhere near consideration to be a top ten center. Ya'll are right.

I don't even like delving into stats but he is top 10 among centers in the following:
Estimated Wins Added
Value Added
PER
Rebound Rate (1st offensively)
PPG
FG% (and yes I know TS% is awful but that's obviously due to FT)
RPG
BLKPG

And like I said he is top 20 in the league in defensive rating. Sitting at 11. Which you can laugh off if you'd like, but go look at the list. All of the guys in front and behind him are certainly considered good defenders in this league.

I just fail to see how he "isn't even in consideration." Obviously he has his deficiencies like every other player in the world, I've never said he is a perfect player on either end of the floor, nor do I think he is at all. But not even considering him as top ten is just fucking stupid, I'm sorry. Dude had a good coach for the first time in his career last season while playing for a pitiful team the last 3 years, and still has put together a pretty impressive body of work. Including your boy Coach K keeping him on the USA roster last year.

But go ahead and vote for a guy who played half a season, a year removed from the d-league if you really want to. Excluding Drummond there is like 4 guys I would still take over Whiteside.
Wanted to reply to this while I had the chance. First matter being, I can't speak for CC, but me not voting for Drummond has nothing to do with who he plays for. Nothing. I agreed with what CC said, about how if he wasn't in Detroit he wouldn't be considered, but I didn't really mean it that way. Of course he's considered, I considered him, but in my opinion if he wasn't a Piston he wouldn't have votes. That's what I meant.

I just don't think he's as good as let on. I think he's young, I think he's got a lot of technical things to improve in his game. He's not very sound fundamentally and he's not very sharp mentally, and it hurts him and the Pistons. You, Sal, made the comment about how he's top 10 amongst C's in wins added, value added, and PER. Do you guys really know what PER is? I'm sure you do, but it's directly related to the things you can keep up with in the box score, the things he excels at. Rebounding, shot blocking, even steals. So it's not all that shocking that he would rate so highly in PER. If you have nice raw stats, 90% of the time you're going to have a nice PER.

The things I don't like about Drummond are all things that you can't look up in the box score, and things most fans don't even recognize when they watch. His basketball IQ needs to improve, he's prone to failing to recognize when he needs to rotate defensively and that often leads to him being late on rotations. Sometimes he fails to read them completely. He's so athletic that sometimes he can make up for it, but alot of the time he can't either. I think he's lackadaisical at times.

I think he fails to really recognize and digest the scouting report. Take the PnR for example, he's an ok PnR defender, nothing special. Probably somewhere around average. But it's no where close to where he should be. There's a few different reasons for that, I get the sense that he struggles to recognize and digest that nights scouting report. I see him ice when he is supposed to hedge, I see him hedge when he's supposed to ice. He helps on guys that he does not need to be helping against. Another thing I see him do, is he reads the screener and not the ball, which leads to him playing the wrong defense. Post defense is something else I've touched on, he's not a very good post defender. Another thing that really bothers me? Yes, Andre is a great rebounder. But he doesn't put forth very much effort at blocking out, and it shows in what he allows his opponents to do on the boards. Did you know Detroit actually gave up the 3rd worst opponent rebounding percentage in the league last season? That Andre allowed his opponent to pull down 11.2 boards a night against him?

Just little things that you don't see guys like Tyson Chandler, Joakim Noah, and Timofey Mozgov making mistakes on. Even Hassan Whiteside, I was critical of him but as he played more he got better. He excelled defending the PnR, he was timely on his rotations and not only knew where he was supposed to be but where his teammates were supposed to be as well.

There are also a number of things I don't like about Andre offensively. Free throws obviously, how do you play him late in games? Another thing you touched on is offensive rebounds. Andre is obviously a great offensive rebounder, which is great, but he's also among the leagues worst at doing anything with that offensive rebounding. He was in the 28th percentile at putting the ball back in the rim after rebounds. He shot the 9th worst fg% on putbacks in the league at 49%. Take that against a guy like Whiteside who excelled at finishing plays, as he was in the 78th percentile amongst guys like AD, Gasol, Tyson Chandler, etc. He finished 67% of his putbacks. He was also in the bottom 8 amongst C's at finishing around the rim in general, at 58%. I don't want to make this a thing, but Hassan finished 71% of his shots. Point being, as good as he is rebounding, Andre can't finish.
 

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I appreciate the scouting report of the guy I watch 70+ times over the course of a season. 
 
Like I said, he has deficiencies in his game. And I would agree with your assessment. I was more or less just stating that not even considering him here is stupid, which is what CC said.
Every player on that list that is left has long post list worth of stuff that he doesn't do well just like you summed up for Drummond. But they also have positives too, like him. For the 100th time I don't think Drummond is a perfect player and he needs to improve on a lot of things, most of which you touched on in that post.
 
If you think his negatives outweigh his positives that much, than so be it. I just personally don't feel like anyone on that list, or a few guys voted ahead of him for that matter, would improve the team if they were replaced with Dre. 
 

jonathanlambert33

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To take one out of your book, if you think the guy I noted above with all those things that he needs to work on is a top 10 (and in your case, 6th* best) center, "then so be it."  I'm just saying man, you voted Drummond the 6th best center but also said you agree with my assessment, something has to give.
 
 
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jonathanlambert33

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and you brought up the Cousins argument all over again, I'm not trying to be a dick but if you don't think a guy like Tyson Chandler would improve Detroit then you're either a homer when it comes to Andre or just don't have a clue.
 

RipCity32

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nolafan33 said:
To take one out of your book, if you think the guy I noted above with all those things that he needs to work on is a top 10 (and in your case, 6th* best) center, "then so be it."  I'm just saying man, you voted Drummond the 6th best center but also said you agree with my assessment, something has to give.
 
 
*= 
And like I said, every player on the list has things you could point out as negatives in their game. I've been merely pointing out what I think Andre does well, ala reasons I think he is a top 10 center. 
 

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And Tyson would make us better defensively obviously. 
 

jonathanlambert33

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and even the things he does well come with caveats, which is my counter point lol.  The rebounding for example, he may be the best offensive rebounder in the league, but he can't do anything with it when he grabs the rebound.  So what value is there really in that?  For example, Andre may have pulled down more offensive boards than DeAndre Jordan but he only scored 114 more points and took 146 more shots.  
 
there's no point in continuing this, it's not going to go anywhere.

RipCity32 said:
And Tyson would make us better defensively obviously.
and offensively, for reasons stated above (and reasons not stated at all)
 
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