Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Would you make the trade?

Wisconsin senior center Ethan Happ does almost everything well - except shoot. He has attempted five 3-pointers this season, and missed all of them. He shoots 47% from the free throw line. BUT - he averages 18.3 ppg, 10.5 rpg, and has 30 blocks. Nice stats by any standard. But what is most amazing is that he leads the team in assists - by a ton - from the center position. He is averaging 4.9 assists per game! As a center! Yes, that leads the team. In fact, it is almost double (118 to 61) anyone else on the team. In fact it is third in the entire Big Ten, and they have some pretty fair point guards in that conference. His assist to turnover ratio is 1.74, which ties him for 9th in the Big Ten.

Now, the question is: If you are a head coach, and your center is putting up numbers in assists and turnovers that most point guards would be happy to have, are you willing to swap that for his deficiencies in shooting? (I seem to remember a fellow named Chamberlain who got traded to a team full of Hall of Fame scorers (guys like Elgin Baylor and Jerry West), so he switched his role and became the only center in NBA history to lead the league in assists. In fact, he had a 22/25/21 triple-double game in which the third number was ASSISTS!)

LINK

No comments: