Post-draft thoughts (1 of 3)

It was a particularly busy week at work, with lots of time on the road sans internet connections. Consider this some belated thoughts from Wednesday night.

Telfair of course is the big story.

It’s difficult to evaluate Telfair in context, because there’s very little precedent for his career. To my memory he is one of only three point guards to have gone straight from high school to the pros. The other two were Shaun Livingston and BronBron. LeBron lasted less than one season playing the point in Cleveland. As he bulked up they moved him first to SG and now SF. The Clippers traded for Cassel so they wouldn’t need to rush Livingston into starting, and he played inconsistently but well in ~25 min/g this last season. This is in line with Bassy, who averaged ~20 min/g his rookie year and ~25 this last season.

The conventional wisdom is that PG is the hardest position to learn to play at the pro level. Most PGs spend 1-2 years in college and then take another couple of years to adjust to the NBA game. Consequently almost every NBA PG who amounted to anything didn’t come into the league until they were a couple years older than Telfair is now (Kidd:22, Stockton:23, Tim Hardaway:23, etc.). I’ve spent some time digging and I can find very few examples of people who were above-average NBA point guards in their early 20s. Magic came into the league at 21, but played a lot of SG his rookie year next to Norm Nixon (21st NBA all-time assists leader). Mike Bibby came in at 20 (Telfair’s age now) and averaged 30 mpg for an 8-42 Grizzlies team. The only other comp I could find was Isiah, who joined the Pistons at 21 and averaged 33 mpg and 8 apg his rookie season. Any discussion of Telfair should start with acknowledging that the kid just has an incredible amount of talent to have been holding his own as an NBA PG at ages 19 and 20. You have to be doing something well if the only players who played better than you in the pros at about the same age were Magic, Bibby and Isiah.

Talent in this case means that Telfair has all the PG traits that are very difficult to teach: court vision, passing ability, an instinctive understanding of how to create high-percentage shots for teammates in the half court and in transition. These are all mental/psychological things that other PGs with tons of physical ability (I’m looking at you, Marcus Banks) never developed.

I mention Banks only because there’s some talk in the Boston sports media about whether Telfair is going to be another PG experiment like Banks, bound for the same disappointment. If people want to compare the two let’s start by observing that at the same stage of their careers Marcus Banks was finishing up his second season at Dixie State Junior College without any scholarship offers from the major conferences. I’m not knocking Banks, but on one hand you have someone who at age 20 was finishing his second season in the pros and another who ended up attending a school in the Mountain West Conference after avg. 16/4 in JC.

There have really been two big knocks on Telfair’s game:

The first is his outside shooting ability, which is absolutely essential for a slashing PG to keep NBA defenders honest. The thing is that after athletic conditioning this is one of the easier things for a dedicated player to improve once they make the pros. Tony Parker is only one example of many PGs would came into the league with a mediocre/bad FG%. Jason Kidd and Tiny Archibald are two others. With Telfair, there’s some reason to believe that his shooting has already gotten better. His eFG% improved from .413 to .444 from his rookie season to last, partly because his 3PFG% improved from .246 to .352. In general, Telfair doesn’t need to lead the league in efficiency. He only needs to get good enough that defenders can’t sag off of him on the perimeter. That, combined with his first step and driving ability and you have someone who will be unguardable in single coverage by all but the most elite perimeter defenders. Even if he never makes this leap, then he may very well have a career path like Maurice Cheeks, Sherman Douglas, Pooh Richardson and other starting PGs who had long, successful if unexceptional careers.

The second real knock on Telfair is his size. At 5’11”— 6’ if you’re feeling really generous— Telfair is going to be a strictly average NBA defender at best. And even being average is going to take a lot of work and competitiveness on his part. Taller PGs like Chauncey Billups will post him up every chance they get. There’s not a lot he or the team can do about this other than to set up a defensive scheme that doesn’t call for him to be a the guy to stop the other team’s first option.

Let’s define a ‘true’ PG as someone who can break down perimeter defense with dribble penetration, is willing and able to make accurate passes to team-mates, and has enough BBIQ to move the ball to generate a high-percentage shot somewhere on the court. Let’s say if you can do those three key things, you’re a true PG. Everyone else— no matter how well they play defense, set picks, hit three pointers, etc.— are shooting guards playing out of position. I’m also ruling out players like Stephon Marbury, who could do all the above but choose not to in favor of scoring 30ppg.

Here’s the thing: there has always been a limited supply of talented true PGs in the NBA. Since expansion I’d guestimate that there have only been about half as many true PGs to go around as there are teams that want/need them. This has caused lots of teams like the Celtics to take small shooting guards with some other skill set (e.g. Mike James, Milt Palacio, Dana Barros, David Wesley, Delonte West) and play them at the point. Rick Pitino and Jim O’Brien famously declared the point an irrelevant position and manned it with the best defending, three-point shooting guards they could find for cheap.

There’s no question the Celtics now have a 20-year old, gifted, true PG prospect. At worst, I suspect that Telfair will be a 10-year decent NBA starter (think TJ Ford pre-injury or Kirk Hinrich) starting at the latest in 2-3 years. If he were going to bust out for lack of skill it would have happened already. At best Telfair has the talent to become a several-time All Star. In the most barren NBA draft in years, is that good return on the 7th pick? Sure. The players I’ve mentioned above that are rough comps for Telfair’s career so far all went top 3. This doesn’t mean that Bassy is going to have a career close to theirs. Just that if you want a chance at that kind of lottery ticket, you don’t normally get the chance as late as the 7th pick in the draft.