Basketball Free For All

Everyone ready for the home stretch?  We’ve got 3 weeks left before most fantasy playoffs begin in Week 22.  However, don’t view this as a time to coast as it could be more important than ever to pay attention to your teams.  Whether you’re fighting to make the playoffs or simply looking to make those final tweaks to bring home a championship, the moves you make now could potentially decide your entire seasons.  So FOCUS! 

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With most of the attention in Philly on newly anointed head coach Eddie Jordan and his highly anticipated Princeton offense, one third year forward out of Georgia Tech is quietly building a name for himself. Thaddeus Young is making a case to be considered one of the best mid-draft picks of the 2007 NBA Draft after being taken twelfth overall.

Last season, Young was asked to shoulder a much bigger role and his minutes spiked from 21.0 minutes per game in his rookie season to 34.4 minutes per game last season in 74 games. Those are big time minutes for the lesser known sophomore. At the Sixers’ recent media day, Young was asked how he has grown heading into the upcoming season.

I think I’ve grown a lot going with each season. Going into this season, I’ve been working on a lot of different things. I have been trying to get better at ball handling and shoot the ball a little more. Right now it’s not really about me it’s about this team and we are going to go out there and continue to work hard and try to defend, that’s the most important part. You guys have seen us in transition, we are going to go out there and do the thing we know how to do. I don’t think anyone’s going to be prepared for what’s going to happen because they are not use to the Sixers being the team that’s going to do a lot of passing and cutting.

Source: Philadelphia 76ers

With a lot of the talk focusing on how Elton Brand and Samuel Dalembert are going to be deployed down low, not much mention is being made of Young’s role next season. Young should be splitting time at the three and four next season and should be fine whether starting or coming off the bench.

The good news is that early indications from training camp point to Young being a starter, as he has been getting run with the first unit, sliding Andre Iguodala to the shooting guard position.

With Andre Miller failing physicals in the Pacific Northwest, the Sixers will no longer have a pure distributor on the floor. The current plan is to start Louis Williams at the one despite the fact that he is more of a shoot-first (or attack-the-rim-first) than a pass-first guard.

But in Jordan’s system, not having a distributing point guard doesn’t matter as much as it would in other systems. The ball-handling duties will be distributed more evenly, and thus we can expect a slight bump in assists across the board in Philly.

With that in mind, take a look at Thaddeus’ career per-36 minute averages. He has averaged 15.3 points on .510/.736 percent shooting, 0.5 threes, 6.0 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.3 blocks and 1.6 turnovers. As mentioned before, we can probably expect a bump in his assists next season as Jordan’s offensive scheme is adopted and implemented.

In addition to a slight assist bump, another reason to be bullish about Young’s prospects next season is his three point shooting. Hold up, you say. Young is definitely not a great three point shooter (career .339 percent shooter). However, on a team that was arguably the league’s worst three point shooting team last season, Young should have ample opportunities to make it rain.

How bad were the Sixers from behind the arc last season? They couldn’t be that bad could they?

No sugarcoating it here; the 76ers were absolutely awful from deep in 2008-09. They were dead last in three point shooting percentage (.318 percent relative to the league average of .367), second to last in attempts (1072 versus a league average of 1486) and second to last in threes made (341 versus a league average of 545). Yuck.

Let’s revisit Thad’s quote about what he’s been working on recently:

I think I’ve grown a lot going with each season. Going into this season, I’ve been working on a lot of different things. I have been trying to get better at ball handling and shoot the ball a little more. Right now it’s not really about me it’s about this team and we are going to go out there and continue to work hard and try to defend, that’s the most important part. You guys have seen us in transition, we are going to go out there and do the thing we know how to do. I don’t think anyone’s going to be prepared for what’s going to happen because they are not use to the Sixers being the team that’s going to do a lot of passing and cutting.

Young has worked this summer on skills (ball handling, shooting) that will help him succeed in Coach Jordan’s system. He has the skill, he has the drive and he has a proven record of recent fantasy relevance. Last season, Young ranked 74th in per game value and 69th in cumulative value according to Basketball Monster.

Granted, Elton Brand missed a significant portion of last season (missed 53 games) but once a young, talented player like Thaddeus breaks out, it is rare that they regress without suffering injury (unless his name is Rudy Gay that is). With a Buser Sports average draft position of 109 and a Yahoo! O-Rank of 102, Young can certainly be had late enough to outproduce his draft position by a round (or two).

If there is any coach that can successfully get his players to play their best basketball, Coach Jordan is definitely the man. Arguably that is one of the reasons why the Wizards Bullets continually fell short in the playoffs with EJ in charge. They were already playing their best basketball while teams like the Cavaliers kicked it up a notch in the playoffs. Hard to punish a guy after getting the best out of his players for all 82 games.

The real story is that Eddie became the scapegoat for an entire franchise that got Arenased out of over $100 million. If there’s any coach that can be relied upon to maximize his player’s values, it is certainly Jordan. For that reason alone, Young should be worth a gamble in the middle rounds of fantasy drafts.