DALLAS CROTONATS REUNITED
"Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team - no one more important that the other."
Roster:
Anderson Varejao / Robin Lopez / Joel Anthony
Lebron James / Elton Brand
Jeff Green / Mike Dunleavy / Linas Kleiza
Thabo Sefolosha / Ben Gordon
Kyrie Irving / Aaron Brooks / Keyon Dooling
Front office:
General Manager: Edgar
Co-General Manager: Roy Hobbs
Head Coach: Larry Bird
Assistant Coaches: Frank Vogel & staff
| Player | Position | Drafted | Age | Height | Points | Rebounds | Assists | Blocks | Steals | eFG% | 3PT% |
| Lebron James | SF / PF | 1st (1) | 27 | 6'9" | 27.1 | 7.9 | 6.4 | 0.8 | 1.9 | .554 | .362 |
| Kyrie Irving* | PG | 1st (18 ) | 20 | 6'2" | 18.5 | 3.7 | 5.4 | 0.4 | 1.1 | .517 | .399 |
| Anderson Varejao* | C / PF | 3rd (22) | 29 | 6'10" | 10.8 | 11.5 | 1.7 | 0.7 | 1.4 | .514 | .000 |
| Elton Brand | PF / C | 3rd (23) | 33 | 6'9" | 11.0 | 7.2 | 1.6 | 1.6 | 1.0 | .494 | .000 |
| Ben Gordon | SG / PG | 5th (10) | 29 | 6'3" | 12.5 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 0.2 | 0.7 | .501 | .429 |
| Jeff Green | SF / PF | 6th (1) | 25 | 6'10" | 15.2 | 5.6 | 1.8 | 0.4 | 0.8 | .482 | .304 |
| Robin Lopez | C | 7th (3) | 24 | 7'0" | 5.4 | 3.3 | 0.3 | 0.9 | 0.3 | .461 | .000 |
| Thabo Sefolosha | SG / SF | 7th (4) | 28 | 6'5" | 4.8 | 3.0 | 1.1 | 0.4 | 0.9 | .532 | .437 |
| Mike Dunleavy | SF / SG | 9th (4) | 31 | 6'9" | 12.3 | 3.7 | 2.1 | 0.1 | 0.5 | .557 | .399 |
| Joel Anthony | PF / C | 6th (12) | 26 | 6'9" | 3.4 | 3.9 | 0.1 | 1.3 | 0.6 | .559 | .000 |
| Linas Kleiza | SF / PF | 10th (21) | 27 | 6'8" | 9.7 | 4.1 | 0.9 | 0.5 | 0.1 | .478 | .346 | |
| Aaron Brooks | PG | 11th (8 ) | 27 | 6'0" | 9.6 | 1.1 | 4.2 | 0.0 | 0.5 | .485 | .328 |
| Keyon Dooling | PG | 12th (13) | 32 | 6'3" | 4.0 | 0.8 | 1.1 | 0.0 | 0.3 | .488 | .333 |
* player acquired in trade
Introducing The CrotoNats Reunited:Lebron James -- There's probably no need to spend a lot of time on Lebron James. He's the MVP and the Finals MVP. He was huge in the playoffs. He came up clutch repeatedly in the Finals.
Concerned about him playing PF?
He played 24% of Miami's total minutes at that position, and dominated the opposition. He had a ridiculous 37.1 PER there while outrebounding and outshooting opposing PFs. He also more than doubled the scoring of the players he was guarding.
Kyrie Irving -- Kyrie Irving is disgustingly good. He was a 19 year old rookie last year, and yet he scored at a rate very similar to Russell Westbrook and Derrick Rose. He was near the top of the league for PGs in FG% and 3PT%. Oh, and
he was statistically the most clutch player in the entire NBA.
Is he ready? Yeah, yeah he is. He improved as the season went on; in March, he averaged 19.9 points, 5.0 assists, 6.7 assists, 41.3% 3PT%, and 45.8% FG%. Those are all-star numbers, which is where you'll find Irving next year.
Anderson Varejao -- What's the ideal center for a Lebron James team? A hustle guy who loves to rebound and play defense, and who has great chemistry with Lebron? A guy who gets under opponents' skin and who is mentally and physically tough? A guy who has played deep into the playoffs, and who has Finals experience? All of those things are Anderson Varejao.
Jeff Green -- Green has proven that he can play very well in an offense with an elite SF and a dominant PG. Young, athletic, and versatile, Green is a perfect option in this offense. He's shown the ability to shoot from outside, he's got a very refined post game, he can hit the mid-range J. He can stretch the offense out. He's a nice defender, especially against SFs, and offensively he creates mismatches.
Thabo Sefolosha -- The player we probably received the most inquires on in this process was Thabo Sefolosha. Why? Because people recognize what he can do.
Thabo was statistically the best perimeter defender in the NBA last year. In the playoff, he guarded Tony Parker, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, and Lebron James, and he guarded all of them well. He also added an elite-level three point shot last year, and he's always been a solid rebounder.
Elton Brand -- We'll defer to Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus here:
Brand meets every criteria for Defensive Player of the Year. He plays for an elite defense and his Synergy numbers are outstanding (at 0.67 points per possession to roll men, he's second to Garnett, and he was second among the big men I looked at with 0.59 points allowed per post-up). Brand is a little behind Garnett in box-score defensive stats and RAPM value, but the gap between the two is narrow.
Brand's defense -- in the post, defending the pick-and-roll, and overall -- is being compared favorably to Kevin Garnett's. Let that sink in. He's also a good rebounder and a nice floor-stretcher; he was more efficient on jump shots than Chris "Ru Paul" Bosh, for instance. Playing with Lebron makes him even more valuable.
Ben Gordon -- Picking Ben Gordon in the top half of the fifth round was a risk, but one that paid off for us. Gordon quietly had a very solid year last year, averaging 16.7 points per 36 minutes, and
shooting 42.9% from three.
Robin Lopez -- Varejao + Lopez is going to make a colorful front line at times. This kid is young, has great size -- a true 7'0" -- and is the new starting center on the "real" Hornets. He's a high energy player, a good rebounder, a good defender, and a competent scorer.
Mike Dunleavy -- Yet another ultra-efficient CrotoNat with great size and shooting ability. In fact,
Dunleavy ranked 11th in the entire league in points scored per possession. He ranked 10th in spotting up, 17th off screens, 16th on handoffs, and 21st in transition. Dunleavy should be starting. Instead, he's providing us with amazing depth.
Joel Anthony -- All Joel Anthony does is win championships. Well, one at least. All Joel Anthony really does is play great defense. He's the epitome of a role player who works hard and does dirty work.
Aaron Brooks -- Another spark plug off the bench, Brooks has shown that he can score -- 19.6 points and 39.8% 3PT% in 2010 -- and can run an offense. We'll fill out backup PG slot by committee, and Brooks is an excellent option there.
Keyon Dooling -- Dooling showed what he can do in last year's playoffs, when he played great defense and shot 39.3% from 3PT, with an overall eFG% of .552. It's not a fluke, either; Dooling has consistently stepped his game up in the playoffs, where over his career he's a 38.4% 3PT shooter and has a career .519 eFG%. Plus, he's a proven leader in the locker room.
Linas Kleiza -- Want to know something interesting about Linas Kleiza?
He was the #1 post defender in the entire NBA last year, shutting down opposing PFs and SFs who were stupid enough to try to post him. Overall, he was the 29th best defender in the NBA in terms of points allowed per possession. He's an excellent rebounder and shooter. Oh, and he just dropped 25 points on the US Olympic Team, so we all know the dude can score.
Coach: Larry Bird (Frank Vogel)Larry Bird is fourth all-time in winning percentage as a head coach. Vogel has the Pacers in the top ten in both offensive and defensive rating this year. Together, they'll make beautiful music together.
The Game PlanSo, our strategy was basically one word: "Lebron". No, not really, but building a contender around Lebron is pretty much a no-brainer. Still, we had a plan that was more than "fill out the roster with big names". Rather, we wanted to draft certain types of players who have been proven to help teams win.
Robert Ayers wrote a research paper on the most effect two- and three-player combinations in terms of winning. His findings were summarized by
ESPN.com:
Ayers found the two-player combination that had the greatest positive effect on wins was a versatile, 3-point shooting wing with a high-scoring, high-rebounding center. Throw in a high-scoring, high-usage point guard and you have the most effective three-player combination.
In all, four combinations of three different categories had statistically significant positive impacts on a team’s performance. Of those four combinations, three featured a versatile, 3-point shooting wing -- think Paul Pierce. Now take a moment and try to count how many players in the league fit that mold. For this group, we’d be talking about players clustered around a per-game stat line of roughly 16-4-4, shooting about 37 percent from the field. Only nine players in the league this season are approaching that stat line, and only four -- James Harden, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Luol Deng -- are wings. That particular player type fits very well with many other different combinations of players, but finding one that’s suitably talented to help lead a team is exceedingly rare. Scarcity is often the limiting factor in achieving fit.
We had the versatile wing in Lebron. We knew we needed to find a second scorer to put beside him, and we knew we needed a strong point guard. Thus, the original decision to draft Steph Curry. However, we saw an opportunity to improve our team by moving Curry, which led us to subsequently build around the Lowry/Granger/Lebron core. At the time, surrounding Lebron with good shooters and big "names" seemed like a strong strategy.
To make a long story short, an opportunity presented itself to acquire Kyrie Irving, and we jumped on it. Irving is a high-usage point guard who shoots amazingly efficiently. He's the perfect fit next to Lebron, and that acquisition completed our team. We took another lesson from Ayers in filling out the rest of the roster. He noted that players who players who shoot 5.5 3PT attempts per 40 minutes, hit 35.7% of those threes, and who average 5.3 assists per 40 minutes are commonly found on winning teams. There have been a total of 28 such seasons over the last three years. The Mavericks own two of the players who have had such a season, Aaron Brooks and Keyon Dooling.
That's without getting into our strong defense (we drafted three members of Basketball Prospectus' All-Defense team), or our clutch performers, or our ultra-efficient play. Lebron + interior defense + perimeter defense + Irving + shooters. That's going to be a tough team to beat.
The Rotation:
We're completely leaving this up to Coach Bird and Coach Vogel. How many minutes are our guys going to play? I have no idea. As many as needed to put our team in the best position to win. We expect all 13 guys to get playing time over the course of the season.
In terms of lineups, there are dozens we can run out there and still be effective. There's the base lineup:
Varejao
Lebron
Green
Thabo
Irving
There's our best offensive lineup:
Brand
Lebron
Green or Dunleavy
Gordon
Irving
There's our traditional lineup:
Varejao
Brand
Lebron
Thabo or Gordon
Irving
Our team has the versatility to create matchup nightmares for any team in this league.
Is Lebron Playing PF For Reals?
He is. Or at least, in the playoffs he will for large stretches. He's the best PF in the game. We'll limit his minutes there during the regular season, and he'll play plenty of SF regardless, but the guy is capable of playing the position at an elite level.
We do love the versatility of this squad. We'll show lineups where the frontline is Lebron / Brand. We'll have lineups where our 2-3-4 are 6'9" Dunleavy, 6'10" Green, and 6'9" Lebron. Even when we go "small", our guys still are equal or bigger than most opponents.
By the way, it looks like the real life Heat might be following this strategy. Here's Pat Riley this week:
We have proven that with LeBron playing at the four spot, so to speak, that we're so much better as a basketball team than we are with a conventional center and power forward.
Best Move:
Kyrie Irving for Kyle Lowry + 6th Rounder (Thomas Robinson). I don't think this trade was horrible for Yoki, as Lowry is still young and Lowry could have been a nice piece to help teach his young guys how to play. T-Rob would have fit well into that core, too. For us, though, this was a game-changer.
Worst move:
I liked all of our draft picks. The one that will get the most criticism is the pick of Ben Gordon. However, Gordon is a great sixth man (who has willingly accepted that role), he still scores at a good rate, and he's amazingly efficient. He's a great shooter who has a history of making big playoff shots when they count.
That said, I will note that the two picks we might have changed at the last minute were two picks where we submitted a list. Those are the Gordon selection, and the choice of Robin Lopez. We're happy with both, but we could have easily gone in another direction if we'd gotten a chance to see the talent on the board.
"The [Voided] Trade":
... in which we traded Thabo Sefolosha (a player we love), Aaron Brooks, and Tyler Zeller for Tyreke Evans, J.J. Redick and Reggie Evans.
I'm not even going to try to justify it. There was no collusion there, but I think nick made a really bad trade, and I'm glad that all parties agreed to void it. This is a game, and we'd rather not ruin others' enjoyment of it.
Strengths:
- The best two-man combo in the NBA on offense.
- Excellent shooting
- Amazing efficiency
- Elite athleticism
- Lock down defenders
- Guys who come up big in the clutch
- Role players who are used to coming off the bench
Weaknesses:
I've got nothing.
The Trump Card:
Lebron is learning from Larry Legend. Come on, folks, that's unfair.
Outlook:
Championship or bust. This team is built to win now, and that's what it should do.
Topic: 2012 CB Draft Southwest Division Press Conferences (Read 50798 times)