[j0Shi]

http://thedissnba.com/2012/11/30/bli...get-more-burn/

I’d call Wright a power forward, ESPN has him as a center, but either way, with Dirk out Wright is the Mavericks best big man and needs to be playing a lot more. The funny thing is, Wright has been an average or above average player practically his entire career, including last year when he absolutely killed it…for the Dallas Mavericks! Between this and the Mavericks recent signing and apparent intention to start Derek Fisher, the shiny Mavericks analytics team has certainly lost some of their luster.



Now, at first glance, the above numbers would seem to suggest that Elton Brand has in fact been the Mavericks best big man. If these three were point guards that might be the case, but they’re not, they’re power forward/centers. Their main jobs are to score, rebound, and defend. Anything else is just gravy.

At scoring, Brandan Wright has been, and continues to be, elite. He only takes really good shots, makes a lot of them, and shoots his free throws well. In contrast, Elton Brand has been downright awful at shooting this year. Brand is the 335th best shooter in the entire league, and big men almost always have higher field goal percentages than guard! His shooting has been so bad that it absolutely destroys any other value that he may offer.

Brand is better than Wright at rebounding, while they are both much better than Kaman. Wright is actually a better defensive rebounder than Brand, while Brand cleans up on the offensive glass, which very well could be a result of how godawful terrible Brand has been shooting the ball.

On defense all three have been pretty close. Brand has a 103 D Rating (lower is better), Wright a 105, and Kaman a 106. By O Rating, however, Wright has a 123 (higher is better), Kaman a 102 and Brand an abysmal 97. The Mavericks overall D Rating is 106.5, and O Rating is 104.1. Wright has therefore slightly helped the D, while being a massive boon to the offense. Kaman has been a bit below average on both, and while Elton has played the best big man defense, his aforementioned terrible shooting makes him a complete offensive liability.

Although for some reason he gets all confused with the rebounding (in fact Wright is by far the worst rebounder of the three) I assume this is preaching to the choir for some.

Maybe the release of Murphy will pull him back into the rotation at least until Dirks return. After all he is still the only big men with a net+ in +/- and leads the team in PER. He got benched for the rebounding struggles but as far as I'm concerned he doesn't need to grab a single board as long as the team is winning.