Austin Rivers on pace for historically bad season

[Built Ford Tough]

Thanks to the Chris Paul trade, the New Orleans Hornets joined the Portland Trail Blazers as one of two teams with a pair of picks in the lottery of last June's NBA draft. After taking Kentucky forward Anthony Davis No. 1 overall, the Hornets were also able to add another top one-and-done prospect, Duke guard Austin Rivers, with the 10th pick.

 

While Davis and Rivers were once considered perhaps the top two prospects in the country coming out of high school, they have had very different professional debuts. When healthy, Davis has lived up to the hype he generated as a National Player of the Year and national champion during his lone college season; he leads all rookies in PER. By contrast, Rivers has struggled with the transition to the NBA, in several ways -- that includes making only 34.6 percent of his shot attempts inside the 3-point line.

 

In fact, Rivers is on track to make dubious history during his rookie campaign. Two months into the season, Rivers projects to rate nearly seven wins worse than a replacement-level player by my player metric, which would be the worst WARP score in the 34 seasons on record, starting with 1979-80, the first NBA season with the 3-point line.

 

The rest is an insider article so I won't post anymore, but basically Rivers is on pace to have the single worst WARP (wins above replacement player) of any player in the 3 point era. He is on pace for a -6.9 WARP which would surpass Jason Collins' -6.5 mark that he had in 2006-2007.

 

The author, Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus, doesn't try to clam that this is an end all stat or anything and that certain players like defensive specialists who put up little to no stats, like Collins, don't usually reflect well in WARP. He also acknowledges that in order to have a historically bad WARP you actually have to be good enough to get minutes and mentions that players that limited players who get overexposed on bad teams, such as rookies like Rivers, tend to rate poorly as well.

 

I just found it interesting just how badly he has been this year not only via the eye test, but basically every statisitical metric out there as well.

[Check my Stats]

Dion Waiters should be thanking him for helping cause people to not look so much at his equally bad season.

[Built Ford Tough]

Dion Waiters should be thanking him for helping cause people to not look so much at his equally bad season.

 

I can't agree with that (them being equally as bad).

 

By no means am I saying that Waiters hasn't been bad this year, but he hasn't been Rivers bad.

 

Per 36 minutes Waiters is averaging 16.5 ppg, 3.9 apg, 1.3 spg.

Per 36 minutes Rivers is averaging 9.8 ppg, 3.4 apg, 0.8 spg.

 

Both of their advanced stats are terrible, but, again, Rivers has him clearly beat on the incompetence radar.

 

Waiters - 11.5 PER, 45.2 TS%, 25 USG% with 10.9 TOV%, OPP PER of 15.6

Rivers - 6.7 PER, 42.5 TS%, 17.8 USG% with a 13.7 TOV%, OPP PER of 18

 

I can't even use the whole "draft placement" argument because everybody and their mother knows (except for Cleveland, I guess) that Waiters was a huge reach at 4 and shouldn't even have been considered in the top 8.

 

I can agree that Rivers horrible start to the year has taken some of the attention off of Waiters, but they definitely haven't sucked equally.

[Kenneth35]

He should have stayed 1 more yr at Duke.

[htownborn]

Chad Ford called it earlier this year

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S4rJSz8FaA

[RecruitScoop]

Chad Ford made those guys look like fools... as usual.

[DunkinDerozan]

He should have stayed 1 more yr at Duke.

 

Agreed. One more year at Duke with coach K, playing against players he can actually play against would have done him better in his development.

[JYD]

He sucks. He can't shoot. He can't pass. He's a tweener. A 6'2" slasher who calls himself a PG.

Edited December 28, 2012 by JYD