- Thread starter
- #1
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2007
- Messages
- 127,713
- Reaction score
- 2,100
It's a tad long but I liked it so I posted it.Fast Track
by Keith Langlois
Friday, January 18, 2008
Now that the “Why doesn’t Joe Dumars sign Chris Webber” flood has slowed to a trickle, the question I probably get asked more than any other is some variation of this: “How come Amir Johnson isn’t in the rotation?”
One of the dozens of Amir Johnson mutation questions came in the other day. And I’ll give this one – Alex from Sterling Heights, take a bow – an award for creativity. Here’s how it started:
“Who am I describing? Drafted three years ago as an amazing young talent but needs minutes to develop. A great shot-blocker and rebounder that shoots a very high percentage with a lot of moves to go strong to the basket. This guy will quite possibly be an All-Star eventually. … You might assume it’s Amir Johnson, but it also describes Andrew Bynum.”
Well, yes and no.
They were both 18-year-olds taken in the last draft (2005) that allowed high school kids to go directly to the NBA and they’re both very tall guys compared to the population at large. So it’s easy to look at Bynum’s explosion this season and make similar assumptions about Johnson – or grow increasingly frustrated that his appearances come mostly in the closing minutes of frequent Pistons blowouts.
But it’s more an apples-to-oranges comparison than apples-to-apples.
Bynum is a legitimate 7-footer, maybe bigger, with a frame that could easily carry 300 pounds. He’s listed at 285 now. Johnson is at least an inch shorter, maybe two, but his frame is much different. Johnson is around 225 or so now. In a few years, he could probably carry 240 or so comfortably. But he’s never going to be a back-to-the-basket bruiser. Johnson’s strength – when his weaknesses allow him to get on the court and prove it – is that he’ll many nights be the best athlete on the floor. Bynum’s strength is going to be that he’s pretty nimble for a guy who almost always will be the biggest guy on the floor.
It’s not quite as extreme as comparing Shaquille O’Neal to Amare Stoudemire, but it’s not that far off, either.
There’s also this: Andrew Bynum was the 10th player taken in the 2005 draft and there are at least seven teams kicking themselves for not taking him higher. (Really, beyond Chris Paul and Deron Williams, only Marvin Williams from that draft class should even be in the discussion. No. 1 that year was Andrew Bogut. Who wouldn’t rather have Bynum’s future than Bogut’s? The others taken ahead of Bynum: Raymond Felton, Martell Webster, Charlie Villanueva, Channing Frye and Ike Diogu.)
Amir Johnson went 56th. Yeah, he’d be a lottery pick now, but it’s a measure of how far he’s come in two-plus seasons that we’re talking about him at all today
No one is surprised when a lottery pick develops into an All-Star, but high school kids taken at the bottom of the second round are lucky to crack an opening night roster, let alone hang around the league long enough to qualify for a pension, never mind be talked about as a future All-Star.
If Bynum hadn’t gotten hurt the other night – a knee injury is expected to cost him eight weeks – he might have gotten consideration for this year’s All-Star team. He’s averaging 13.1 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2 blocks a game for one of the NBA’s most surprising teams.
Amir Johnson has the potential to join Bynum as an All-Star someday. He does too many good things to claim otherwise. Despite rarely getting to touch the ball offensively unless he goes and gets it himself via an offensive rebound, Johnson puts up eye-opening numbers despite short minutes.
Consider: Antonio McDyess is the Pistons’ leading rebounder. He averages one board every 3.7 minutes he plays. Johnson averages a rebound every 3.1 minutes. Jason Maxiell is a spectacular shot-blocker. He averages a block every 18.5 minutes of playing time. Johnson averages a block every 8.8 minutes.
You have to be careful about extrapolating those numbers – twice as much time doesn’t necessarily mean twice as much production – but it speaks to Johnson’s ability to get from Point A to Point B quicker than most.
Right now, Johnson is clearly at his best in the open court, playing at a faster tempo. That’s a tough skills set for this team, because the Pistons are just as clearly at their best when they move the ball and make the defense play for most of 24 seconds every time down. The Pistons have not been a very effective team in transition. Rodney Stuckey is going to change some of that, but Johnson will have to get better in half-court situations to force his way into the rotation.
Johnson is an instinctive shot-blocker and has an uncanny knack for retrieving the ball and scoring from tough angles around the rim. But he’s at the opposite end of the continuum from someone like Rasheed Wallace when it comes to understanding the nuances of big-man play at both ends – from pushing his man off of his desired spot, to defending on the perimeter, to establishing position in the post and a hundred other such items that, away from the ball, get none of the play that a spectacular put-back dunk or swatted shot always will command.
“A total understanding of what we’re doing,” Flip Saunders said the other night when asked what’s standing between Johnson and a more significant role. “Being able to defend his position without getting in foul trouble. Even when he’s played 12 minutes, he’s picked up four or five fouls. That’s going to be it as much as anything. It’s a combination of (strength and experience).”
He doesn’t have Bynum’s size and he doesn’t have Bynum’s strength. And through a combination of circumstances, he surely doesn’t have Bynum’s experience. As the 10th pick of a team that finished 14 games under .500, Bynum was going to get minutes. Johnson came to a team loaded in experienced big men coming off consecutive trips to the NBA Finals. While Bynum played in 128 NBA games over his first two seasons, Johnson played 163 NBA minutes.
So the explosion Bynum appeared to take this season over last wasn’t completely out of the blue. If Johnson’s circumstances become favorable – if playing time somehow presents itself to him on a team with three high-quality big men ahead of him in the pecking order – no one within the Pistons will be surprised if Johnson takes a similar great leap forward. Someday.
Which brings us to the other common mutation of the Amir question: Is he going to grow as impatient, and thus as disenchanted, with withering on the bench as Darko Milicic did and provoke a trade out of Detroit?
No one has seen a hint of that yet. He’s very much a wide-eyed kid who works hard every day and finds obvious joy at holding down a job doing what he loves best. Would he rather be playing? Of course. But he signed a new contract to stay in Detroit last summer knowing that Rasheed Wallace, Antonio McDyess and Jason Maxiell were all coming back. Everyone – from Joe Dumars and his staff to Flip Saunders and his assistants to Wallace and his playing peers – keeps telling him to work hard and the payoff will be his, and he keeps nodding his head and putting in the work.
It’s a brand of patience Pistons fans would be wise to adopt.
