When The Music's On, You Dance

The last night of the NBA season, when most teams really aren't trying, creates opportunities for unheralded players to defy observers' prior beliefs about what they can do. Stars sit, and the men on the court stop bothering to play D. Hence we get eruptions like the following:

Trevor Ariza: 11 of 18 from the field, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, 2 blocks, 26 points in a loss to New Orleans

Steve Blake: 8 of 12 from the field with 4 three-pointers, 10 rebounds, 11 assists, 2 steals, 23 points in a win over the depleted Lakers

Jeff Pendergraph: 11 of 15 for 23 points in a loss to Golden State

Bill Walker: Six 3s, 7 rebounds, 28 points in a loss to Toronto

DeMar DeRozan: 9 of 11 shooting, 9 rebounds, 24 points in the above-cited Knicks-Raptors game

DeJuan Blair: 12 of 21 from the field, 3 steals, 23 rebounds, 27 points in a loss to Dallas

Jeff Teague: 11 of 19 from the field, 24 points, 15 assists in a win over the Cavaliers

Other renowned players (most notably Stephen Curry) had great offensive games last night, but I have attempted to highlight heretofore quiet role players who, raging against the dying of the light, showed decision-makers what they could potentially do if featured next season.

Steada Treated

In our last installment, we looked at the 2010 cohort of role players who have remained on one team for six solid years. Here are a few more whom we omitted in that post:

TONY ALLEN (Boston 2004-present)
SASHA VUJACIC (L.A. Lakers 2004-present)
Each of these guys has been lucky to follow the journey of joining a team at the lowest point of its sinusoid curve, and then watching as the team climbs toward a championship, all while remaining a non-core role player. Sasha "The Machine" was drafted in 2004, immediately prior to the trades of Shaquille O'Neal and Gary Payton. My, but that Lakers team was bad (34-48) in Vujacic's first year, driving coach Rudy Tomjanovich into a second retirement. He hit a couple big shots for Los Angeles when it hit a scurvy fate in the 2006 and 2007 first rounds against Phoenix, but now that the Lakers are title contenders again, he averages 7.6 minutes and 2.5 points, having been supplanted in the rotation by Shannon Brown. He is lucky enough to consort with beautiful tennis star Maria Sharapova, though.
As for Allen, he plays decent defense and the Celtics sometimes view him as their "Kobe stopper". It's surprising that he's hung around for six years, though, as he is probably not the caliber of player that an elite team would like to have as their best backup wing.

DORELL WRIGHT (Miami 2004-present)
Wright has experienced the opposite trajectory to Vujacic and Allen: He was inducted into the Miami side in 2004 at their very peak, just after they acquired Shaquille O'Neal for the trio of Odom, Butler, and Grant. Miami won six playoff series and a championship in Wright's first two years, although he did not receive much serious run. Wright's best season was 2007-08, in which he averaged 25 minutes, 8 points, and 5 rebounds. That was also Miami's worst: Dwyane Wade had several injuries, Shaquille O'Neal was tired then traded, and the team blatantly "tanked" in hopes of a high draft pick. As Wade and Miami have haltingly returned to form in the last couple years, Wright's utilization has sunk. He is still on the team, though his contract is set to expire in June and some analysts think Miami will soon trade him for luxury-tax relief.

Prior to this week, I was planning to include all the guys below on my list of long-tenured role players. However, recent developments have moved me to see them as distinct creatures. I now feel inclined to create a new category: "Guys Who Did Not Ascend to All-Star Status Until Their Sixth or Seventh Season With The Same Team". This list would include Gerald Wallace (a 2010 All-Star in his sixth year with Charlotte, and his ninth overall), Chris Kaman (a 2010 All-Star in his seventh Clippy year) and Josh Smith (the most popularly mentioned 2010 All-Star snub, in his sixth campaign with Atlanta).

And here is another category: "Guys Who Seemingly Have All-Star Talent At Times But Have Never Put It Together For A Sustained Period, Yet Remain On One Team For Six Years": Luol Deng, Andris Biedrins, Andre Iguodala, Tayshaun Prince, and Kevin Martin are the charter members of this club. Richard Jefferson, who played for New Jersey from 2001-2008, also qualifies. Other than the big Latvian, these guys are all lanky wing players. Does this mean that good-but-not-great wing players are scarce and teams are afraid to lose them? Or that analysts have a tendency to overestimate the potential of slashers who really aren't all that?

We All Did What We Could Do

Last year, we identified several role players (by which I mean, roughly, players who have less than a 10% chance of ever making an All-Star team) who have stayed with one team for six seasons or more.

Surprisingly, not much has changed since then: while a handful of teams parted ways with their yeomen (Etan Thomas, now of the Twin Cities), several other mainstays made it to one additional season (Sam Dalembert, Brendan Haywood, Erick Dampier, Dan Gadzuric, Nick Collison, Jeff Foster, Luke Walton). Notably, the above list includes almost entirely big men. Clearly, we should infer that skilled, coachable tall guys are difficult to find. (For purposes of this post, I am counting the current season as already complete, so a guy drafted in 2004 has already completed six seasons with his team, and thus could make it aboard this list.) Let us examine the latest cohort of Hard-Workin' Studs, who have now stayed with a single squad for six. Some of these guys belonged on my 2009 list, as they've been on their team since fall 2003, but I neglected to extol them then.

ANDERSON VAREJAO (Cleveland 2004-present) Derided for his floppy hair and floppy defense, Varejao actually has become the second most-valuable player on the Cavaliers, the Scottie to LBJ's Jordan. He plays energetic defense and always knows how to help a teammate when needed. On offense, he sets very sturdy screens and scraps well for rebounds. He is not yet much of a shooter, but most of his teammates take care of that burden.

NENE HILARIO (Denver 2002-present)
Nene's first few seasons in the league were beset by calamities: a torn ACL on the first day of the 2005-06 season, and later, a thumb injury and a cancer diagnosis in 2007-08. Lately, though, he has been playing quite robustly, earning some informal All-Star nominations. He helped to lead his team to the Western Conference Finals last May and might do it again this year. I still maintain that he belongs on this list, as his chances of ever making the Western conference All-Star team are low in a competition against Andrew Bynum, Greg Oden, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Kaman and both Gasol brothers. It is likely that we have seen the best Nene can offer.

KIRK HINRICH (Chicago 2003-present)
Hinrich was a serviceable point guard until the Bulls fortuitously received the top pick of the 2008 draft, wherein Derrick Rose presented himself for plucking. Hinrich plays good defense for a 6'3" guard and is often called "tough", which I think is code for "dirty". He is not a great NBA point guard, though, as his passing, shooting, and handling skills are not at the level of the PG greats. His shooting percentage this season has fallen to a horrible 38%. Recently, rumors have surfaced that Hinrich could be traded to the Lakers or Celtics; he would certainly be a wonderful addition as a sixth man on those two contenders, while the Bulls might be happy to be freed of his $9 MM salary obligation in 2010-11.

TRAVIS OUTLAW (Portland 2003-present)
Outlaw never has fulfilled the promise suggested by his auspicious membership in the '03 draft class, which has heretofore produced eight All-Stars. The guy can run the floor like a U. Bolt and energize the Rose Garden crowd, but unfortunately Portland coach Nate Macmillan believes in a slow game. Sadly, just as soon as fast-breaking PG Andre Miller joined the team this past fall, Outlaw's dream of ooping till Tuesday was slain. In this, his seventh season, he has spent the majority of the stretch healing a broken foot (the same injury that felled his fellow 3, Martell Webster, last season). Talk is that Portland may want to trade him in the next few days, as his contract expires in June and he would likely not be re-signed.

LEANDRO BARBOSA (Phoenix 2003-present)
Barbosa and Amare Stoudemire are the longest-tenured Phoenix players, the latter now in his eighth Sunny year and the former in his seventh. During the Suns' days atop the Western conference from 2004 to 2007, Barbosa won a Sixth Man of the Year award and looked like a future star. Of late his performance has regressed, though; his 2009-10 stats are depressed in nearly every category. On the court, his famed speed no longer looks lapine. Barbosa has figured in many recent trade rumors involving Phoenix, as it would be impossible to posit him as a core member of the team going forward.

WILLIE GREEN (Philly 2003-present)
Green is now in his seventh season with the Sixers. He seemingly peaked in 2007-08, averaging approximately 12, 2, and 2. This season he averages 9, 2, and 2 in five fewer minutes, suggesting that perhaps there is a ceiling to his willingness to exert non-shooting effort. Many players would be giddy to turn in a 12-point best, but that seems paltry for a $4 million man. Philadelphia has not had a proper shooting guard since Aaron McKie in 2001, and it has been surprising that Green could not make it as their new 2. It's been even more surprising that the Sixers have kept the man so long.

JASON TERRY (Dallas 2004-present)
Terry won Sixth Man of the Year in 2009, a nearly impossible feat as a third point guard (or, perhaps, a 6'2" shooting guard). Clearly, Dirk Nowitzki likes playing with Terry, who previously logged five seasons with the Hawks — a tenure that saw them miss the playoffs every season. Terry is a likeable player and a prolific scorer: perhaps the best man on this list. Like current Hawk Jamal Crawford, Terry has successfully escaped the fate of a Marbury, Francis, or Iverson, all tagged as short guards with little discipline.

Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now

In a recent article, Charley Rosen at Fox Sports identifies the most underrated role players in the league. I was curious to compare his list against our recent compilation of role players with the longest uninterrupted tenure on a single team. The only player who appears on both his list and mine is Jeff Foster; I actually expected to find more overlap. Surprisingly, many of the excellent role players whom Rosen (rightly) identifies as high-quality and unappreciated have bounced around from team to team: Raja Bell is now on his fifth team in nine seasons and Steve Blake has been employed five times in six seasons (although that includes two stints with Portland). I suppose it is true that even some MVP-caliber players, notably Chauncey Billups, need a few years to get their groove going, and while they are grooveless, teams may give up on them too quickly.

Rosen also mentioned Kendrick Perkins, Udonis Haslem, and Tayshaun Prince, non-all-stars who all have played 6+ seasons with their respective teams. I should have included these three guys on our original list, but perhaps an unconscious parameter in my original list was the exclusion of players who have helped their teams to a championship. That provides an obvious justification to keep them around, and obviates the need for clever explanation of their long tenure.

The Last Thank-You

This post concludes our series on the role players who have received entirely too much loyalty from one team. Why is the market not churning more for these players? We previously reviewed some reasons here and here. The last reason I can offer is an explanation that is non-trivial, but not terribly interesting: Inertia. Sometimes economic actors is simply too lazy to do a deal to shake up their asset structure, because they are not in the mood for transaction costs, or perhaps they are not in “roster optimizing” mode. (Yes, crazy, I know.) Otherwise I can’t explain why some of these guys below stuck around for so long.

LUKE WALTON
This is now Walton’s sixth season playing small forward for the Lakers. Surprisingly, his role has shrunken with each passing year. As a rookie in 2004, he achieved notoriety when his teammate Kobe Bryant complimented him during the NBA Finals as a better passer than Shaquille O’Neal. When Malone, Payton, Fisher, O’Neal, and Fox departed after the 2004 Finals, Walton found himself the primary sixth man (and later a starter after Caron Butler was traded for Kwame Brown) on a team also featuring Smush Parker and Chris Mihm in starting roles.

Butler’s departure didn’t help Walton’s career much in the long run, though: since then, the Lakers have signed Vladimir Radmanovic as a free agent and traded for Trevor Ariza, who perform skills (shooting and defense, respectively) that Walton can’t. Today, Walton has only played in 21 of the team’s 29 games this season, averaging 11 minutes and earning $4.4 million for his efforts (with $22 million left on his contract over four more years).

MATT HARPRING
This is Harpring’s seventh year with the Jazz. Like his teammate Kirilenko, Harpring has spanned the transition from the Malone-Stockton era to the new era of Williams, Boozer, and lovable east Europeans. Coach Sloan clearly likes something about Harpring, just as Sloan showed nine years of loyalty to Greg Ostertag (then brought Ostertag back for a tenth season after his brief stint in Sacramento). Since undergoing knee surgery in 2007, Harpring has averaged only 16.6 minutes per game. Perhaps he serves a useful role for Sloan: someone needs to be the bench sparkplug who spells stars when they are slowed. According to lore, Harpring is tough like a linebacker when he is on the hardwood. But that’s a lot of loyalty for a guy with a highly limited role. He couldn’t even step in as a starter even when both Okur and Boozer were unavailable earlier this season.

Every encomium to Jerry Sloan’s 20 years as Utah coach has specified his “toughness” and his “hard-nosed” ethos. Other than being tough, another common denominator with many of his favorite players is that they are white. Utah has historically seen a higher than typical incidence of starring white players, including Ostertag, Jeff Hornacek, John Stockton, Kirilenko, and Mehmet Okur. This isn’t to say that those guys were/are untalented or undeserving of their roles, but there are a limited number of star-caliber white players, and the Jazz always seem to end up with a few of them. The Jazz’s biggest star, Karl Malone, liked to call himself a “black redneck”, whatever that is.

(But the Jazz are not the ‘whitest’ team in the league, at least right now. To wit, the Lakers currently field Gasol, Radmanovic, Farmar, Vujacic, Walton, Mihm, and, until recently, Coby Karl.)



COREY MAGGETTE
Maggette is a quasi-all star: He routinely puts up 20 points per game, but he is not known for his defense, and it is hard to imagine him ever making an all-star team, particularly now that he is on a team full of shooters with Crawford and Ellis. Amazingly, the Clippers held on to him for 8 years until letting his contract expire after the ’07-’08 season. I call this amazing because he doesn’t seem to show much demonstrable contribution to team wins; the Clippers’ lone good season in his span there, 2006, happened because they acquired Sam Cassell in his contract year and Elton Brand slimmed down. Besides that, the Clips’ record has been desultory, and the waxing and waning of Maggette’s “performance”, as it may be, had no apparent correlation with team success. Already, his new team, Golden State, is talking about trading him after only 28 games.

MICHAEL PIETRUS
Pietrus spent six inconspicuous and undistinguished seasons with Golden State, during which the team sucked almost the whole time. Pietrus was lucky to participate in a minor renaissance in the spring of ’07, when the team defeated Dallas in the first round of the playoffs and came reasonably close to a conference finals trip. Like other guys on this list (but unlike the humbler players discussed in our earlier “Thanksgiving” posts), Pietrus was frequently quoted in his local paper whining about not receiving a bigger role on the team. Nellie used him mostly to play stout defense and shoot corner 3s, but perhaps Pietrus wished to take a more featured role in his time on the court, like his friend Boris Diaw. In any case, his contract expired in the summer of ’08 and the Dubs said no thanks. Pietrus signed on with Orlando, where so far he has been part of a frequently revolving rotation of starting 2-guards with Keith Bogans and J.J. Redick.

AUSTIN CROSHERE
Croshere had a few brief moments of sunlight in the 2000 NBA Finals, when he hit some big shots against the Lakers. Like Tyronn Lue in the ’01 Finals and Speedy Claxton in ’03, moderate success on the biggest stage can lead to outsized paydays due to faulty perception by those who hold the purse strings. Croshere stuck with Indiana from his draft selection day in 1997 all the way until 2006, long past the date when it became clear that Croshere would not develop into a championship-quality star. Like Jeff Foster, Croshere had the odd experience of joining Indy at the height of the Reggie-Smits-McKey-Davis Brothers days, then seeing that team dismantled and a new title-contending squad of Artest and O’Neal built on its ashes, then sticking around for yet more rebuilding. Today, Croshere plays for the Bucks, where he has averaged 7 minutes in 11 games this season.

DESMOND MASON
Mason doesn’t quite qualify for my list, but I regard him as a puzzling case anyway. Drafted in 1999, he spent three years with the Seattle Sonics, then three with Milwaukee, then two with the Oklahoma City Hornets (being an OK guy), then one with Milwaukee, and now he’s back in Oklahoma City … with the Thunder (née Sonics) this time. So that makes three franchises and three cities that have shown remarkable affinity to him (and he to them). Maybe those cities are hungry for abstract expressionism?


As a further note, I am curious to ask: Which superstar-caliber players stayed on one team for the duration of their careers? Off the top of my head, here are some: Isiah, Magic, Stockton, Robinson, Bird, McHale, Reggie Miller, Willis Reed, Elgin Baylor. Among today’s stars, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Paul Pierce are in their thirteenth, twelfth, and eleventh years with their present teams, and a migration elsewhere seems unlikely.

But Hakeem didn’t do it; at the end of his career, he had the ignominy of joining the Raptors in their darkest days. Nor Barkley, nor Iverson, nor Wilkins, nor Kidd, nor Drexler, nor Ewing, nor Garnett, nor Pippen, nor Shaq. Many of these guys joined title contenders late in their careers after hopes had run dry on their first clubs. And it worked for many of them: Drexler, Garnett, and Shaq won titles late in life, while Barkley and Pippen got to at least the conference finals. Jordan and Malone had things under control, until greed marred their pure résumés and led them to join new teams while well past their prime. Nash’s greatness didn’t emerge until after he had switched teams twice. LeBron, Amar'e and Bosh will probably leave their original clubs soon. Looking at an older era: Kareem, Oscar, Wilt, and Dr. J all switched teams.

I mention all this in the context of the role players to discussion to highlight that long tenure with one team really is rare, even for the greats. Jeff Foster is possibly the luckiest man in this league.
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And with that, we say to these well-pampered role players: Begone with ye! Take your overstuffed contracts and inflated egos to Russia, or Greece, or maybe to the Timberwolves, where at least you’ll have company in mediocrity. Stop holding back potentially good teams from realizing their awesome power!

Thank You Very Much, Part II

A few days ago we gave you our better-late-than-never Thanksgiving post, illustrating role players who have received undue fealty from their teams.

In the last post, we outlined some reasons that might explain why some jobronis see supranormal tenures with their teams: (1) Teams are eager to avoid switching costs relating to retraining new reserves; (2) The players receive irrationally rich contracts that render them nearly untradeable; (3) Players like the stability of remaining in one city.

After some further thought and reading, let me now introduce two further reasons why role players may enjoy such long tenure. (4) The players are good enough to be stars, but more mature or skilled players are starting ahead of them, and the team doesn't want to lose the asset to a competitor. This may be why Portland kept a young Jermaine O'Neal for 4 years to ride the pine behind Rasheed Wallace, and why, today, Utah keeps Paul Millsap around despite having two other all-star power forwards, or Orlando JJ Redick. And (5), the team may have non-basketball reasons for keeping a player around. In some less urban communities like Utah or Indiana, some fans may be wary of players (OK, I'll say it: usually black) who appear "thug-like" with cornrows and tattoos and so forth, and clean-cut guys like Rasho Nesterovic (or heck, Al Thornton, who doesn't have any tattoos either) have marketing potential that outweighs their basketball abilities.

Anyway, let us now go forward with our spotlight of thankful scrubs. Again, our focus is on role players (non-all-stars) who have played for the same team for at least six consecutive seasons.

VINNIE JOHNSON
This guy goes all the way back to my childhood. The Pistons did not emerge as a contender fully formed; it took years of careful building to create the eventual two-time champs. Vinnie came aboard in a trade from Seattle in the fall of ’81 after being picked early in the ’79 draft. The core of Isiah, Laimbeer, Vinnie, and Kelly Tripucka added coach Chuck Daly in ’83, then Joe Dumars in the 1985 draft, then substituted Adrian Dantley for Tripucka in 1986 (then Aguirre for Dantley in ’89). In the ’86 draft Detroit picked up two Renaldo Balkman-type hustling rookies in Rodman and Salley. Meanwhile, the Bad Boys needed bruisers to truly be bad. Rick Mahorn signed on in ’85, and James “Buddha” Edwards joined up in the summer of ’87.

For almost ten years, until the Bulls knocked off the Pistons in the spring of ’91, Vinnie was the first guy off the bench. Some Pistons pundit (I don’t know which; perhaps George Blaha) dubbed him the Microwave, because he heats up in a hurry. What a brilliant nickname! Surprisingly, he never won the Sixth Man of the Year award, though it began in 1983.

PAT GARRITY
This guy convinced Orlando to employ him for nine years in a row from 1999 until 2008, when he finally retired. When you hit the prime of your career and your scoring average drops from 4.6 and 4.9 to 2.2, that’s probably a good idea. What does he do that is useful? The stats don’t reveal anything obvious. For a few seasons he was stroking the 3-ball at better than 40%, but in the last four seasons he couldn’t do that anymore. Maybe he hustles better than most. Perhaps in a world of imperfect information, a team is better off sticking with the bum they know, rather than the bum they don’t know. If they are comfortable with the role Garrity plays, and decently sure enough that they cannot find a better and equally well-behaved replacement, why go through the fuss of finding someone new?

DEVEAN GEORGE
This guy was lucky to be the best available talent on the board when the Lakers (they of Bryant, O’Neal, and Glen Rice) made their first-round choice in the 1999 NBA draft. This guy logged a total of 3 minutes in the NBA Finals at the end of his first season in June of 2000; yet somehow he acquired a reputation as a defensive stopper who propelled the team to their three-peat. George logged seven seasons all told with the Lakers; it probably helped that after most of their stars left in the summer of ’04 (see above), he was a genuine keeper compared to the other alternatives. Today he is a backup for Dallas, but low on the depth chart behind Josh Howard and Gerald Green. With Howard out nursing a bad ankle, George has played about 20 mpg in the last two weeks and is shooting 3-pointers at nearly a 50% clip, making two such buckets per game. Not bad.

JEFF FOSTER
Foster is now in his tenth season of employment by the Pacers, believe it or not. He has seen four coaches (Bird, Thomas, Carlisle , O’Brien). He has served as the backup center for Rik Smits, Jermaine O’Neal, and now Rasho Nesterovic. He has played in the NBA Finals with the Rik Smits-Dale Davis-Reggie Miller-Jalen Rose-Mark Jackson squad, then the Eastern Conference finals with the Artest-O’Neal-Tinsley-Miller team, and last season held down the fort for a hopeless lottery dweller. This season he seems to be part of the rebirth of the team. Perhaps he will be around for the next down cycle, also. He’s like George W. Bush in a way, who had the bad luck to preside over two recessions. Better to be like Bill Clinton, who like Vinnie Johnson on the Pistons, never tasted hard times as US president.

JASON COLLINS
Jason lucked out in the draft: while his brother was taken by a Jazz team suffering steep decline as Malone and Stockton aged, Jason went to the New Jersey Nets just as Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson came aboard. Similar to Devean George, Jason Collins thus was able to contribute to an NBA Finalist in each of his first two seasons out of college, and has perhaps been coasting on that reputation since then.

While he’s a good defender, he’s terrible on offense, and not much of a rebounder. Incredibly, Jason Collins stuck with the team for almost seven seasons until New Jersey , desperate to find a paradigm-busting frontcourt scorer who could salvage the Kidd era, traded Collins to Memphis for Stromile Swift last February. (That didn’t work too well, as the Nets traded away Kidd to Dallas just nine days later, in a brilliant move by Rod Thorn.)

JARRON COLLINS
Jarron Collins is even luckier than his brother, as Jarron is now in his eighth consecutive season of employment by Utah, the only team whose jersey he has ever donned. He’s started very, very few games over that span; Utah’s starting center used to be Greg Ostertag, and lately has been Mehmet Okur. Like his brother, he’s a smart guy, but not the most athletic jumping bean in the can. Like Foster, Collins saw the dying days of the Malone-Stockton era, and has since stuck around for the rise of the Williams-Boozer-Kirilenko squad that has won three playoff series in the last two years. I still don’t understand why Utah employs him. With rookies Kosta Koufos (who put up 10 points and 3 rebounds in 6 minutes on Friday night) and Kyrylo Fesenko backing up Okur, who needs this big lug?

MALIK ROSE
Malik Rose joined San Antonio as a rookie in 1997, the same year Tim Duncan joined the team. A 6’7” power forward, it is not clear exactly what he brings to the table as an undersized “big”. He doesn’t have a lot of bulk like Charles Barkley or Paul Millsap, and he doesn’t have amazing leaping ability like Dennis Rodman. It is said that he is a good locker room presence, but hell, I could be a good locker room presence. I don’t drink or smoke, I’m polite to my boss, and I like to host my co-workers for parties at my place.

Rose managed to stay with the Spurs (and grab two rings) for almost eight seasons until February 2005, when he was traded to the Knicks for Nazr Mohammed, who eventually helped the Spurs win a championship. Meanwhile, today Rose is still stuck on the hapless Knicks, who haven’t been able to trade Rose due to his absurdly large contract (seven years, $42 million, signed back in the heady summer of ’02, when George W Bush could do no wrong and the whole country seemed Hot in Herre) for a player of his lackluster abilities. Right now they are just happy to see his contract expire in a few months.
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In our next and probably final installment of this series, we will consider role players who stayed way too long, including Austin Croshere and Corey Maggette.

Shukran ya Ustaadh

Our Thanksgiving post has come a little late, but it took us a while to come up with the piquant content that we pride ourselves by. Our theme today is the giving of thanks, in honor of last week’s holiday here in the States.

We at Jordan Pushed Off would love to have a budget to hire research assistants to crunch some numbers for us. Unfortunately, money’s tight in these credit-crunched days, and we spend all of our spare cash on ESPN Insider and NBA Finals tickets. So, our capacity to run data analysis is not as broad as we might like. Let us still proceed with some speculation.

What do you think is the average tenure with a single team for role players — that is, players who have never made, and likely will never make, an NBA all-star team during their career? (I realize that this definition may capture several players who are certainly better than “role player”, like Tayshaun Prince, Richard Jefferson, Marcus Camby, and others, but I can’t think of a better line of demarcation.) I would guess that the average such tenure is three or four years. Every summer there is an active free agency market for role players, good general managers are not afraid to jettison unproductive bench players and try again the following fall with someone new. Joe Dumars tried Carlos Delfino, but he sucked. Then he tried Jarvis Hayes to play backup 3, but he sucked too. This year he’s going with Walter Herrmann. If Herrmann sucks, I am sure Joe will find a way to dump him in 2009.

Yet there are some role players who have somehow managed how to stick with their team, year after year, often drawing paychecks far out of proportion to their ability. (In fact, the causal relationship may go from bad contracts to lack of tradeability to unreasonably long tenure on a team). Longevity is nice: it means one home, stability for your kids, a secure relationship with management, the ability to pick out enjoyable community programs, perhaps favored groupies if that’s your thing, and fans who keep bringing the love year after year. It is these players of unusually long longevity with one team whom, we feel, have the greatest responsibility to give thanks for their lot in life. We will focus on role players who have played for the same team for at least six consecutive seasons.

NICK COLLISON
Collison spent his rookie season in 2003-04 recovering from shoulder injuries, so this is really only his fifth active season. Still, Seattle/Oklahoma has continued to place faith in Collison as a starting power forward, when he has delivered only 10 points and 9 rebounds (in 28 minutes) in his best season. He can’t even block more than one shot per game. Those are “energy guy” numbers, folks. I suppose when your starting shooting guard registers at 6’9” and 215 pounds, you don’t have a lot of quality control. Sadly for the Thunder, they have Collison booked for two more seasons after this one, at over $6 million per.

SAMUEL DALEMBERT
The big Quebecois-née-Haitienne was drafted by the Sixers in 2001, just after Philly made the Finals with a center squad of Dikembe Mutombo, Matt Geiger, and Todd MacCulloch. Mutombo was looking wizened at the time (though incredibly, he played 7 more seasons, until 2008), Geiger was at the end of his career, and MacCulloch only played two more seasons due to a genetic foot disorder. So a fresh and spry center to play with Iverson seemed like a good idea.

It is said that big men take the longest to mature. Dalembert finally became a serviceable starter in his sixth and seventh seasons, averaging over 30 minutes, 10 points, and 10 rebounds. So far in this season, his eighth with the Sixers, he has regressed, though, averaging only 27 minutes and 6.5 points. Philly doesn’t really have another decent center on its roster (its fifteenth man, 35-year-old Theo Ratliff, has played only 5 times for a grand total of 35 minutes) so it is puzzling why Dalembert can’t get more floor time.

DAN GADZURIC
The giant from Holland (and then UCLA) was drafted by Milwaukee in 2002; this is his seventh season with the team. His high point came in 2004-05, when he started 81 games and averaged about 7 points and 8 rebounds. The following summer, with Gadzuric eligible to sign an extension at the end of his rookie contract, the Bucks locked him up through the 2010-11 season. That’s right; unless Milwaukee can find a taker via trade, they are looking at nine seasons of the Gadzuric Era. After that transaction, Milwaukee brought in Andrew Bogut, the top pick in the draft, to play the 4, and brought in Jamaal Magloire to be their starting center. The following year, Bogut was promoted to starting center, and Charlie Villanueva or Brian Skinner got the nod at power forward. If you can’t beat out Magloire or Skinner for a starting spot on a non-playoff team, what are you doing? Gadzuric’s points per game hovered around 5 for the first two Bogut years, and have dropped to 3 in the subsequent two seasons. Yet Milwaukee is still happy to employ him.

My experience with Dutch men has been that they are uniformly very tall. Like, huge. And indeeed, the few Dutch players to make the NBA have all been centers: Rik Smits, Francisco Elson, and Dan Gadzuric. Incidentally, both Gadzuric and Elson now play for the Bucks.

BRENDAN HAYWOOD AND ETAN THOMAS
These two were both drafted in 2001 (Michael Jordan acquired both) and have platooned at center for the Wizards ever since. Amazingly, this is the eighth year that the Wizards have employed Haywood and Thomas together, even though (i) they are mediocre pivotmen on a team that needs a powerful low-post scorer to succeed, and (ii) they hate each other. In recent years they have fought at least three times. In their reluctant-tag-team roles, they remind me of Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld, or maybe Cousin Balki and Cousin Larry, or Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, or maybe even Shawn Michaels and John Cena. In a way they sort of remind me of my cats (seriously, click the video, it’s short and funny): They bring a lot of bluster to their skirmishes, but ultimately don’t do a lot of damage.

I suppose together they would be a quality center, delivering about 15 points and 12 rebounds per 42 minutes, but paying a combined

12 million per year to these guys seems more inflated than the list price on a Palm Springs condo development circa ’06.

I have a strong hunch that this season will mark the end of the Thomas-Haywood pairing. The rise of rookie Javale McGee, plus the months-long wrist injury to Haywood, plus the ouster of coach Eddie Jordan, will surely upset the lazy equilibrium that kept the two big galoots together for over seven years.

ADONAL FOYLE AND ERICK DAMPIER
Golden State picked up two centers in the summer of 1997: Adonal Foyle and Erick Dampier. Amazingly, Dampier stuck around for seven seasons until the summer of ’04, when his contract expired, and Foyle eventually played a total of ten years with the Dubs. During the seven seasons they played together, their combined average stats were as follows, by my calculations: In about 44 minutes per game, 13.5 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 3.3 blocks. About the same as Haywood and Thomas. Then why, in the summer of ’04, did the Warriors sign Foyle to a six-year, $42 million contract? (And why did Dallas reward Dampier with a seven-year, $73 million contract at the very same time? Isn’t it clear that these guys suck? Dampier sure didn’t contain Dwyane Wade’s drives at the time Dallas most needed him.)

These guys remind me of Thomas and Haywood: one nerd, one jock. Thomas, of course, is an anti-war activist and a published poet. Meanwhile, Adonal Foyle founded a network of college student clubs that push for public financing of campaigns. Not sure what Foyle thought of Obama’s every-day-is-Christmas routine.

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In part 2, coming Thursday, we will consider more role players who should give thanks to their loyal teams, including Malik Rose and the monstrous Collins brothers.