Now that Victor Oladipo is back, Maurice Harkless isn't getting any playing time off the Orlando bench. The newly 3 point crazed coach Jacque Vaughn has opted to continue playing Evan Fournier big minutes off the bench instead. Payton, Oladipo. Harris, a stretch 4 (currently Channing Frye), and Vucevic is their core team now and they want shooters off the bench to make up for their poor shooting backcourt. They also drafted Aaron Gordon #4 this year and he makes Maurice Harkless redundant in a lot of ways. He's got a year and a half left on his rookie deal and it seems unlikely they'll go out of their way to re-sign him, so he shouldn't be hard to get.
Why would we want him? I recently started a topic talking about Possible PF's to Target. I used the season finder tool at basketball-reference to try to simulate the ideal PF for our team and generated a list of options based on the results. I thought I should try applying the same strategy to perimeter defenders and see what I could get. My first attempt was rather simple: active players, beginning in the 00-01 season, defensive rebound % >10 (we have to secure the rebound to finish off defensive possessions), steal % >3 (cheating a bit, but assuming a good defender is going to come up with more steals than a bad one), and blk % >1 (because I want an all-around good defender). I also set games played > 25 to eliminate small sample size players and again sorted them by defense rating. It was a very small list. You can see that list here:
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Test List #1
Only 20 individual seasons met the criteria and 7 of them belonged to Tony Allen and 6 of them to Ron Artest. I figured I must be on the right track if I created a search for perimeter defenders that overwhelmingly hit on Tony Allen and Ron Artest, probably the two greatest perimeter defenders of this current generation. Unfortunately, it didn't suggest any possible targets. Of the remaining names, only Eric Bledsoe made the list more than once and he just got a huge extension from Phoenix so he's out. I've seen enough of Jan Vesely to pass on him and the others are past their prime and/or not going anywhere.
So I had to broaden the criteria a bit. Dropping the steal % requirement down to 2.5 produced 101 hits seen here:
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Test List #2
That's a decent list of defensive roleplayers. I sorted out the C/PF players who made the list, the PGs (there were a couple believe it or not), the older vets, and so on and the result was this list of potential candidates for the role of wing defender off the bench:
Maurice Harkless, Draymond Green, Chris Singleton, Thaddeus Young, Jimmy Butler
Now you'll notice I didn't name this topic "Young SF/SGs to Watch" and that's because we already have Ben and Rudy so the situation is a little different for this position. The way I see it, we're looking for a bargain player who can come in and do the dirty work off the bench when Rudy and Ben need rest. Omri has been able to back up the PF, SF, and SG positions this season and I love what Omri has given us but I think we need one more SG/SF defender. Derrick Williams has shown he's not going to cut it. Nik Stauskas is still on the radar but he's too shaky this season to be relied upon.
That eliminates Jimmy Butler as he's going to get at least $11 million per season after this year. It probably eliminates Draymond Green as well as Golden State seem pretty adamant about keeping him. Thaddeus Young is expensive as well and he's mostly played PF in the NBA. So the two remaining options are Chris Singleton (an interesting player I wouldn't mind taking a chance on who was waived by Indiana in pre-season so he's currently a free agent) and... Maurice Harkless.
So that's why I think we would want Harkless. We've got Darren, Ben, Rudy, and DeMarcus. Ray seems like a good bet to get backup PG minutes in the future. We need another wing defender and a solid defensive role player PF to push JT into the third big role. I'm not going to propose trade scenarios because that's all anyone will read if I do. But I think it would be a good idea to open up discussions with Orlando while Harkless is currently riding the bench and see what it might take to pry him loose.
Why would we want him? I recently started a topic talking about Possible PF's to Target. I used the season finder tool at basketball-reference to try to simulate the ideal PF for our team and generated a list of options based on the results. I thought I should try applying the same strategy to perimeter defenders and see what I could get. My first attempt was rather simple: active players, beginning in the 00-01 season, defensive rebound % >10 (we have to secure the rebound to finish off defensive possessions), steal % >3 (cheating a bit, but assuming a good defender is going to come up with more steals than a bad one), and blk % >1 (because I want an all-around good defender). I also set games played > 25 to eliminate small sample size players and again sorted them by defense rating. It was a very small list. You can see that list here:
.
Test List #1
Only 20 individual seasons met the criteria and 7 of them belonged to Tony Allen and 6 of them to Ron Artest. I figured I must be on the right track if I created a search for perimeter defenders that overwhelmingly hit on Tony Allen and Ron Artest, probably the two greatest perimeter defenders of this current generation. Unfortunately, it didn't suggest any possible targets. Of the remaining names, only Eric Bledsoe made the list more than once and he just got a huge extension from Phoenix so he's out. I've seen enough of Jan Vesely to pass on him and the others are past their prime and/or not going anywhere.
So I had to broaden the criteria a bit. Dropping the steal % requirement down to 2.5 produced 101 hits seen here:
.
Test List #2
That's a decent list of defensive roleplayers. I sorted out the C/PF players who made the list, the PGs (there were a couple believe it or not), the older vets, and so on and the result was this list of potential candidates for the role of wing defender off the bench:
Maurice Harkless, Draymond Green, Chris Singleton, Thaddeus Young, Jimmy Butler
Now you'll notice I didn't name this topic "Young SF/SGs to Watch" and that's because we already have Ben and Rudy so the situation is a little different for this position. The way I see it, we're looking for a bargain player who can come in and do the dirty work off the bench when Rudy and Ben need rest. Omri has been able to back up the PF, SF, and SG positions this season and I love what Omri has given us but I think we need one more SG/SF defender. Derrick Williams has shown he's not going to cut it. Nik Stauskas is still on the radar but he's too shaky this season to be relied upon.
That eliminates Jimmy Butler as he's going to get at least $11 million per season after this year. It probably eliminates Draymond Green as well as Golden State seem pretty adamant about keeping him. Thaddeus Young is expensive as well and he's mostly played PF in the NBA. So the two remaining options are Chris Singleton (an interesting player I wouldn't mind taking a chance on who was waived by Indiana in pre-season so he's currently a free agent) and... Maurice Harkless.
So that's why I think we would want Harkless. We've got Darren, Ben, Rudy, and DeMarcus. Ray seems like a good bet to get backup PG minutes in the future. We need another wing defender and a solid defensive role player PF to push JT into the third big role. I'm not going to propose trade scenarios because that's all anyone will read if I do. But I think it would be a good idea to open up discussions with Orlando while Harkless is currently riding the bench and see what it might take to pry him loose.
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