Rodney Hood

Hood is the best player on this list, a scoring wing who averaged 16.8 points per game over the first two thirds of last season, and who scored double figures in two NBA Finals games as recently as three months ago. His unsigned status is not down to whether or not he can get a contract, but merely a question of how big it should be; Cleveland have leveraged his free agency to temper suitors in a marker that is largely positioning itself for the summer of 2019, while Hood is reconciling potentially positioning himself in the same market with the understandable desire to get as much as he can now. In tandem, then, the two have seen Hood remain unsigned, while the bulk of the available money out there has been spent. Cleveland have been down this road before with both Anderson Varejao and Sasha Pavlovic some years ago, and would rather the situation not extend into training camp like those two did; nevertheless, it seems likely Hood will be back with the team, in some form.

Rodney Hood
SG/SF - 6’8, 206lbs - 25 years old - 4 years of experience

Although he was barely used by the Cavaliers in the postseason, Hood had done OK with them in the short regular season time that he had managed. His minutes and usage were down from his Utah days, when, as a sixth man on a team lacking offensive options, he had some free reign to try to get his own shots. But his efficiency was about the same, and on a Cavaliers team with a piss-poor wing rotation, Hood should perhaps never have gone out of the line-up. He was poor at times, but they all were.

The volume of shots Hood was allowed to take in Utah, even when his free-roaming play-breaking style went so counter to the team’s general overall offensive ethos, may have been deliberate to work up that trade value. Either way, it tempered in Cleveland. Hood is a good outside shooter and a good mid-range shooter who is almost always looking for one of the two, rarely getting all the way to the rim, instead preferring to spin in for a turnaround or a fall-away.

He is a good shooter from all over and his desire to create looks for himself can be interpreted as an ability to do it. But now, as has always been the case, he needs to do other things to support that. Hood needs to learn to play as a decoy, to pass out of the screens, to pass when on the move, to not shoot so much, and to defend his position better than he does now. He can do it, but doesn’t always. And if he commits to doing a bit of rebounding, too, that would also help.

Player Plan: Expiring rookie scale contract. Qualifying offer is small and should be extended, but it will hard to justify matching MLE offers considering he was used so little anyway. And if Rodney can get offers bigger than that, then, well, well done to him. At the right price, he is an asset on a team with few. At the wrong price, he compounds all the problems.

Rodney Hood
SG/SF, 6’8, 206lbs, 24 years old, 3 years of experience

Rather than breaking out, Hood posted pretty much exactly the same some of season as the two before it. He shot pretty much the same shots on pretty much the same efficiency. That said, he was off to a good start until being slowed by injuries, eventually losing his starting spot. 84.4% of Hood’s shot attempts are jump shots, with an overall shooting percentage on jumpers of 36.1%, and they mostly come from three-point range, on which he shoots 35.7%. There’s not much else on defence save for the occasional hook shot off a short drive, and the defence is unremarkable, his metrics being buoyed by having Gobert clean up behind him. With health next season, and a bit more consistency, maybe Hood can break out.

Player Plan: One year of rookie scale salary remaining. Also extension eligible. If he will take an MLE-sized extension, gladly do so, but it doesn’t seem likely that he would. In which case, set him the challenge to prove himself as an all-around player.