I upped these posts in the FA thread, but I just wanna expand on it briefly here -
17 points, 17 rebounds, 1 steal and 2 blocks against the Pistons - outperforming and outrebounding both Drummond and Leur. He's averaging 10 ppg, 10 rpg this month while starting + co-anchoring one of the best defenses in the league (even when he wasn't starting, he was still an integral part of the team's defense).
This is why the Spurs have been the most successful franchise over the last 20 years: they've basically been the only team who know how to scout properly + understand player value. And why other teams spend $70m on Noah.
Zaza ($2.9m/1-year) and Dedmon (*$6m/2-year) aren't that far off of providing the same impact as Noah ($72m/4-year) and Biyombo ($72m/4-year).
On Dedmon v Biyombo -
A lengthy rim protector who grades as an elite rebounder and who can struggle on the offensive end of the floor. While Dedmon shot 55.9 percent last season, the bulk of that scoring was around the rim and he took just 30 field-goal attempts outside of 10 feet. He’s essentially a lob threat only, with few ball skills, though his assist rate ticked upward and he posted the best true-shooting percentage of his career this year (60.6 percent, thanks in part to a surge to 75 percent from the line). He’s a high-energy player who subsists primarily on easy buckets, and he’s improved in each of his subsequent seasons.
Defensively, Dedmon allowed opponents to shoot just 45.7 percent at the rim when he was in defending distance and had a 34.6-percent contest rate, numbers nearly in line with Biyombo’s in a smaller sample, per Nylon Calculus. Advanced metrics and on-off numbers don’t show Dedmon’s impact being nearly as extreme at the team level, but his overall impact graded quite strong by DRE. Individual stats, particularly on the defensive end, need to be taken with the proper context, but Dedmon’s small-sample results are at least encouraging.
17 points, 17 rebounds, 1 steal and 2 blocks against the Pistons - outperforming and outrebounding both Drummond and Leur. He's averaging 10 ppg, 10 rpg this month while starting + co-anchoring one of the best defenses in the league (even when he wasn't starting, he was still an integral part of the team's defense).
This is why the Spurs have been the most successful franchise over the last 20 years: they've basically been the only team who know how to scout properly + understand player value. And why other teams spend $70m on Noah.
