NBA 2014 Off-Season Thread

Foggy_sl said:

Wade > Love (Wade was an absolute stud with championship pedigree)

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Ridiculous. The amount to which people overrate Wade boggles my mind. I'm not even going to get into why I don't like his game and how Love matches better with LeBron (I purposely matched up guards against guards and bigs against bigs, but let's have it your way)...let's just go straight off of results in this case.

(PER - Player Efficiency Rating, OWS - Offensive Win Shares, DWS - Defensive Win Shares, TVA - Total Value Added (my formula, then divided by games played and minutes played))
Player 1: 25.6 PER, 8.1 OWS, 4.7 DWS, 41.62 TVA/GM, 1.12 TVA/MIN
Player 2: 26.9 PER, 10.6 OWS, 3.7 DWS, 47.73 TVA/GM, 1.31 TVA/MIN

Player 1 is 2010/11 Wade. Player 2 is 2013/14 Love. By any statistical measure, Kevin Love is an upgrade.

I'll concede that Wade was more productive then than Irving is now, but it's a wash compared to last year's Wade. And Irving *should* be better this year than last year, whereas Wade is only getting worse.

2014 Wade: 22.0 PER, 3.5 OWS, 2.0 DWS, 33.74 TVA/GM, 1.00 TVA/MIN
2014 Irving: 20.1 PER, 4.6 OWS, 2.1 DWS, 35.73 TVA/GM, 1.02 TVA/MIN

As far as comparing James against himself...he developed a post game and a shooting touch since that first season in Miami. He's definitely a more complete player now.

Now, part of what made Miami great a couple years ago was how effectively they closed out and played team defense. That type of thing we can't know until this team gets out on the court. There won't be a power struggle and the problem the Heat had that first year where Wade and James were useless on the floor together because they played the exact same game as each other, though.

Fair point, but Love's numbers aren't going to drop as much as Wade's did. I think it actually helps Love because he's going to benefit from more space and can hit jump shots. Wade couldn't do that. Irving is a better shooter than Wade ever was, as well.

I'd look up Bosh's stats leaving Toronto, but my stat site just crashed on me. Let's say that the three come out as a wash. I still think it favors Cleveland, but just discount the big three for a moment. Wouldn't you rather have the rest of Cleveland's roster than what Miami had that first season?

(Just loaded up Bosh's stats...I forgot how good he was that last year in Toronto. 25.0 PER with a 9.6 WS. I don't know that he could have kept up that contract year performance even if he had stayed, but I've always said Bosh took the biggest hit to his game to make those teams work, but even I forget how much sometimes. The fact that they basically turned him into a jump shooter because Wade couldn't is just sad.)

Slaythe_sl said:

Djay, how can you hate Wade so much but I never hear you rag on Derozan? DeMar is like a 2 inch taller shitty version of Wade.

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I'm sure you could have before last season. Not sure if it was on this board or one of the old ones. I hated DeRozan's game. You could see it in his body language when he was going to try to score no matter what and ignore the rest of his teammates. I didn't bring it up as much because people weren't slobbering over his knob like Wade's.

DeMar changed his game this last year, though. His AST% has been going up every year he's been in the league and his 3pt% has been steadily rising, as well. Not where I'd like it to be yet, but he's stopped forcing the game and is playing within an offense. Also, he knocks down a much better % of his free-throws than Wade. Not to mention the 9.8% career turnover rate compared to Wade's 13.8%.

But I totally ragged on DeMar before this season and probably into it until I realized he was playing differently.

Closest I could find in a quick search:

NBA 2013?14 Season

Yeah, I can see it...more so before this last season, which is why I did dislike his game so much. Like you even said in that thread...he was one-dimensional, like how I see Wade.
I see DeRozan moving away from that. Maybe he regresses this year, but I certainly hope not.