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Isaiah Canaan PG/SG – 6’0, 201lbs - 27 years old - 5 years of experience
Only played 4 minutes for Houston, yet in 19 games with the Suns, Canaan continued to look engaged on the defensive end as he had done to end the previous season with Chicago. Canaan has never been the shooter in the NBA that his reputation suggested he would be, and his playmaking is unremarkable, but if this defensive ball pressure keeps up, he might play a while longer in the NBA, even with the ugly shooting.
Isaiah Canaan PG/SG, 6’0, 201lbs, 26 years old, 4 years of experience
Brought in to be a bench shooter on a team that knew it would shoot poorly, Canaan himself then shot very poorly, while not proving to be a reliable ball handler or an especially impactful defender. Unable to make plays out of the pick-and-roll, Canaan is thus a spot-up shooter on offence and a somewhat enthused yet undersized defender of point guards on defence. And Pat Beverley, he is not. There may be a role if the shot comes back, but even with a return to his career three-point shooting mark of 36%, he is a marginal NBA talent.
Player Plan: One year at the minimum salary remaining, with only a $200,000 guarantee and a pre-moratorium guarantee date. The team needs shooters, but Canaan has not exactly proved he is one, and a couple of reasonably average perfor-mances as a playoff fill-in are not enough to overlook a poor season of being a small shooter who doesn’t shoot well.
At point guard, Chicago has five options. The remarkably inconsistent Rajon Rondo, who turned his play around down the stretch of the season but who had struggled so badly prior that almost got bought out at one point, is flanked by the far younger quarter of Jerian Grant, Michael Carter-Williams, Cameron Payne and the small shooting guard that is Isaiah Canaan. All five, particularly the latter four, and even more particularly the latter three, have been consistently unreliable (although Grant emerged as the season went on as the less ball-dominant presence who could pick his spots alongside Wade and Butler).
Houston - Isaiah Canaan: Canaan lead the prodigiously high scoring Rio Grande Valley Vipers, who have averaged 128 points on their way to a 102 record. Canaan records 21.7 of those points per game, alongside 9.2 assists, and is the catalyst to much of this dynamicism, running the pick and roll, collapsing defenses and kicking back out, knifing to the hole to finish, all opened up by the threat of the jump-shot. Being constantly on the attack does lead to some mistakes, but a very acceptable number of them, and Canaan has shone as one of the best players in the D-League so far. Recalled this week to cover the injured Patrick Beverley, Canaan has an opportunity to make it translate.
The leader and best player of an extremely fun Murray State team, Canaan is mostly a shooter. And he's an explosive one. The 37% three point percentage belies him somewhat, as Canaan can take over games purely from deep, and often has done. He can create these looks off the dribble, hit them off the catch-and-shoot, has a high quality pull-up jumper, and shoots so quickly that he still gets them off despite his lack of size. He does, however, take a few too many. Such is the side effect of being an NBA talent in a mid-major conference. And at 6'0, he doesn't have much in the way of point guard skills, save for a solid handle. Nevertheless, Houston has James Harden to run the offense. In theory, if he proves he can defend the position, Canaan is a good fit alongside him.
