Eric Gordon was below average last season

I think what people are getting all upset about is that your tone in the other post seemed to completely ignore potential and likelihood for improvement. What you actually wrote wasn’t wrong, but the tone of it was somewhat misleading. Well that and some fans are just upset b/c EJ is one of the few bright spots on the team.

I think most fans were disappointed with EJ’s performance last year. I was definitely critical of him. But I also think that it’s very reasonable to expect him to improve quite a bit this year and the year after. At some point he’ll likely have a jump of some sort. The question will be how much of a jump he’ll make.

So yes, he was below average last year but not only is he very young, but some of that can likely be attributed to the state the team was in.

He definitely has a long way to go (which you said). This year will be crucial for him. If he doesn’t make a significant jump, it’ll be cause for concern.

He’s closer to average than below average. He’s in the pile of mediocre shooting guards that’s hard to distinguish from one another.

is that it indicates that Clyde had a better career than Kobe has had to date. Which I think is simply false. Clyde was a great player, but give me a break.

But I still don’t know of a statistic that properly rewards players for playing solid defense. Rondo gets a lot of steals because he has long arms and a keen eye, but what about the vast number of players that play defense with their feet, rather than their hands? There’s no statistic for “made the opponent take a low percentage shot” in these calculations. That’s where EJ’s defense excels. Much in the same way that Paul Pierce improved his defense, the stats don’t show it, but the wins column will. I mean… uh… nevermind our wins column.

Well, I think my point about the limitations of these metrics stands, though.

But since you are using that table to create your opinion of Gordon, is it safe for me to assume that you would use the same table to compare Drexler & Bryant? Or any grouping of players in the league? I mean, that is what you did, right?

I.E. better than EJ. That should be telling.

he was hampered by injuries early on and that seemed to affect him most of the season. He just wasn’t himself most of last season, which can be seen in the lower FT% and 3pt%. He also had very few high scoring games, but I will take that if it means he will be the efficient scorer he has shown he can be. I think playing for team USA will help his confidence a lot. I am not sure EJ will ever fix his rebounding because it just doesn’t seem to be a priority to him. EJ’s future still looks bright and if he can avoid injuries he seems like he can erase the last years mishap.

I know your post said to ignore it, but if you have the #‘s already…I’m curious to know what it is in relation to Kobe or Drexler.

Good job of backing up the stats from last year. I think most view his last year as a disappointment, but if you take his first two years as a whole and compare it to how players typically perform at 19,20, & 21, as would any competent GM or player evaluator, it paints a different picture.

i.e., the attack on FT% is a bit of a waste when considering he’s a career 80.3% shooter out of two years.
i.e., would you attack the memphis grizzlies for not signing a competent free agent to replace oj mayo?

Given these facts, do you really figure Eric Gordon to be a below average player in his 3rd & 4th year seasons?

Were Gordon’s backups better last year before Olshey? We don’t know the exact depth chart, but remember Butler was our starting Small Forward last year. This year, the depth chart figures to be Gordon/Foye/Butler/Warren.

Seems that the subject of debate comes down to bias: You weren’t a fan of his from his rookie year, i.e., “Eric Gordon is over-rated by almost everyone on this board”, and with the transition of GM’s obviously the line has been drawn in the sand so that team John_R, Mikey P, and now ClipperChuck are hyper-critical of a front office that used to get a free pass, and where analyzing Gordon’s 2nd year (the lesser of his two years) where he missed significant time due to injury is a supposed knock on the FO’s lack of talent evaluation. In the end, you may have helped combat some excessive homerism with your efforts, but building a case against this Front Office isn’t achieved here, it’s more in line with the Brian Cook signing, a guy who doesn’t figure to see the floor much.

Every thread turns into a war of words with two or three members bashing each other and our Clippers coaches, players, front office, etc…

I am sick of all the negativity on this site. I wanted to come to this site and hear Clipper fans cheer for our players and our team and talk positively about our team, but it only seems that many members are on here to bash every player, every move by the front office, and every opinion. Many of you seem to only post things that will get people all riled up.

All I have to say to you is maybe Donals Sterling isn’t the reason for the Clippers lack of success. Maybe it is people like John R and others that constantly bring up the negatives and never give the Clippers any respect. I find it hard to believe that a team like the Clippers based in LA can have so few fans that want to stand up for their team. That is why I like Clipper Darrel so much. I would join him in his fan fair if I could, but living in Illinois makes that impossible.

Anyways, the Clippers have been around for 26 years, and I know they haven’t won much, but trust me there are other fan bases in sports with not only teams w/o chips but cities that have no sports championships much longer than 26 years.

I look at the Chicago Bulls, who started there franchise in 1966, and they did not win their first championship until 1991. That fan base went 20+ years w/o a championship and I am sure those six championships in the 90’s were more than just sweet. I know they were as I was growing up just finding the game of basketball.

I will leave you all with this. We need to be patient with this team. These guys are young many under the age of 22. There is no denying that we have talent in place. We might not win a championship in the next two years, but the potential is their for guys like EJ, Blake, Aminu, and others to develope into stars and carry this team to a championship.

Finally, I hear alot of people say we need to follow the OKC Thunder. I think that is spot on with what our franchise is capable of doing. Nobody thought the Thunder would turn things around so fast, and now they are one of the better teams in the west. The Clippers have the same opportunity to do the same.

I will talk to you guys in October!

Nothing I’ve read has convinced me that the statistical analysis available to the general public — i.e. not Darryl Morey’s proprietary stuff, since we don’t know what it is — is complete enough for it to be regarded as pure unadulterated proof in the way that it is for baseball, largely because they are two very different games.

While baseball is primarily a series of one-on-one matchups in which each individual’s contribution can easily be counted at all times, basketball is a team game in which teammates’ strengths and weaknesses have a dramatic impact on one another’s numbers. It’s not enough to simply line up everybody’s numbers and say “player X is better than player Y” because, unlike in baseball, if you took player X and put him on player Y’s team, and vice versa, their numbers would not remain constant. For example, Chris Kaman’s rebounding numbers were better before Marcus Camby arrived than they were when he shared the court with Camby. Does this mean that Kaman suddenly became a worse rebounder, or could it be that he had fewer opportunities because a teammate was sharing the load?

While it’s easy to characterize those of us who disagree with John R. as irrational, optimistic Pollyannas, there’s something equally irrational about pretending that statistical analysis in basketball has advanced to the point where it provides unassailable proof of everything. Very few of us are arguing that Eric Gordon is great, or doesn’t have flaws, or is the second coming of Kobe Bryant. But most of us who watch every minute of every game know that he’s a promising young player who has room to improve. Unless someone made a Godfather offer for him, it would be foolish for the Clippers to trade him, and a waste of energy and resources for the FO to look at upgrading that position given the other holes on the roster.

And PS, the notion that the original post was measured and reasonable is a bald-faced lie. Saying the stats show he had a below-average season last year is one thing. Saying “he has to get to average and has a long way to go to get there” is another. The implication of that sentence is that Gordon is not only below average but far below average. That’s a crock, and it was said simply to provoke by someone who loves stirring up debate but is too closed-minded to ever consider anyone else’s opinion on anything.

I bet most everyone would raise their hands on that one, but it certainly cannot be true that all of us are have above average intelligence…right?

I think there is a certain type of confidence bias that some of you are labeling as homerism. Fact is, most of us watch EJ more than other SG’s…that doesn’t help the eye test proponents when your eye isn’t evaluating players with the same level of frequency or intensity.

Stats can be a great tool and basketball definitely needs better metrics in evaluating player performances.

With that said, I honestly wouldn’t expect players on a losing team to really have great outcomes when scrutinized closely. There’s a reason why they lost more than won, right?

I’m curious to know what EJ’s performance looks like under team wins versus team losses. What is his variance in performance when the team wins or loses? Is it his rebounding, shooting, etc.? This is interesting to me because it gives us a better sense of where he needs to improve in order to greatly increase his team’s winning %. Ultimately, I think this is the real value of advanced stats. Not just how one did compared to his peers, but what one did to help his team win.

Earlier, I pondered that 20 ppg would be a great jump for him to make this season and whether that would translate into a lot more wins. But looking at the win % whenever he scored 20+ ppg was not very encouraging (only 35% 7 wins out of 20 games). So, perhaps its not scoring that needs to improve…?

I don’t expect John R to go through the trouble of doing this…would love to myself, but I honestly don’t know if I have the time to today. Any takers?

But he’s so nice and wholesome and has the best nickname ever (hobbit). Plus he’s somewhat under-utilized (maybe it’s his own doing) and still REALLY young, so I’m willing to give him a pass. This year will definitely be a put up or shut up year, assuming Griffin and Kaman are healthy.

Also I remember being annoyed when his lack of rebounding came up in some game threads, simply because at that time with the abysmal play that was taking place and 100 other things that could have been bitched about, it was like “you pick THAT?”. That was more of a time and place thing than a “you’re wrong, and don’t you ever criticize my hobbit” thing.

I have to wonder about these advanced statistics’ ability to properly measure a player’s ability to help his team win games.

Based on an Insider article I just read about Corey Maggette:
“And here’s a little-known nugget about Maggette’s game, according to Neil Payne of Basketball-Reference: He had the highest offensive rating of any high-usage player (23 percent of possessions or more) in the league against top-10 defenses last season… …Maggette also ranked in the Top 25 (24th) in the league in PER last year.”

We all watched Maggette. I watched him an extra couple of seasons because I tune into Warriors games regularly. He has his moments, but was he really the reason why our 05-06 team was so successful? And where were the wins for the Warriors last season, if the advanced statistics show Maggette as being such an elite player? I realize these were just offensive statistics, but he couldn’t have been that horrible defensively to offset such high offensive numbers.

Everyone back home in Oakland hated “Maggette Spaghetti,” as he was referred. We didn’t particularly love him in the end of his time with the Clips. He appeared to be a ball hog who went after his own numbers more than the team’s. I must be missing something here.