JaVale McGee

JaVale McGee
C - 7’0, 270lbs - 30 years old - 10 years of experience

After reinventing himself and salvaging his NBA career with the Warriors last season, McGee returned this season on another minimum salary contract in order to do much the same of the small yet effective menu of things that he produced to such great effects in 2016/17.

In marginal, mostly negligible ways, McGee was slightly less effective this season. He looks slightly fewer shots, and made them slightly less efficiently. He got to the free throw line much less often, although he did happen to hit them at a career-best mark this year, and he also rebounded the ball a lot less. What I'm doing here, though, is measuring McGee by his own indefatigable standards. By any other measure, JaVale McGee was one of the most effective small-minute role players in the league this season.

Knowing what JaVale is going to do does not mean you'll be able to stop it. You cannot stop him running to the rim, out-sprinting almost every other centre in the game, and finishing athletically in the half court with aplomb (sometimes). You cannot stop the lobs, the activity, the length, the sheer presence he makes whilst out on the court. McGee's knack for the absurd continues to follow him around, and to be sure watching him constantly bite on every fake when playing perimeter defence is kind of frustrating. But the energy, length and the effectiveness with which he now plays in this smaller role of his will come to define his career more so than the absurdity does.

Hopefully, anyway.

Player Plan: Expiring minimum salary contract, his second in two years. Please take a third, JaVale!

JaVale McGee
C, 7’0, 270lbs, 29 years old, 9 years of experience

Kudos to McGee for finding the right team on which to rejuvenate his career, and in doing the right things to make it happen. Gone are the post touches and the occasional delusions of grandiosity away from the basket; instead, he stuck to what he did best, running opponents off the court, throwing himself at the glass, contesting everyone and everything, and using the gifts of spring and length that so few others have. And he couldn’t have done it much better. His pick-and-roll defence needs work still, but what a bounce-back season it was.

Player Plan: Expiring minimum salary. Was so ridiculously effective at what he did that he can rightfully command more than that, and may get bigger offers on the open market. Both parties surely know, though, that this the best situation for both his abilities and his enjoyment. His non-Bird rights are enough for $2,794,382 next year, which hopefully is enough.

Despite paying him $11 million a season, the Denver Nuggets routinely play center JaVale McGee less than half of the game. Last season, McGee averaged 18.1 minutes per contest, and thus far this season, despite his ascension to the starter's job, that number has in fact gone down to only 15.8. It is certainly a unique situation, one perhaps befitting of such a unique player.

Denver were able to do this last season because of their great riches at center. In addition to JaVale, the Nuggets last year boasted both Kosta Koufos and Timofey Mozgov, thereby giving themselves three options better than any one of the Bobcats's first option. All merited minutes, and for all to get them, all had to lose some.

Those not listed here include Joakim Noah, a high quality two-way centre whose slow start belies his proven quality, the injured Tyson Chandler, and Andrew Bynum, the great unknown who was once a great known. The enigmatic JaVale McGee is also not listed - for all his well documented bursts of ineffectiveness, the position must surely be deep if he is not one of the 20 centers in the NBA - as well as quality role players such as Anderson Varejao, Zaza Pachulia, Sam Dalembert and Chris Kaman. Even further down, proven veterans struggling with either injury (Andrew Bogut) or misuse (Omer Asik) are also left off, as are some up-and-coming youngsters (Steven Adams, Greg Smith, Kosta Koufos).

[...] Chris Broussard talks in reverential tones about Beal as a "man," just as the panel had also done previously about Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist. He then talks about the Wizards's need to resolve what he calls a "knucklehead factor," something JVG piles on with, saying that to call it that is to be kind. The players who left the Wizards in the last few months = JaVale McGee, Nick Young, Roger Mason. Have those guys been stabbed in the back? No. They've been stabbed in the front. Without ever naming names of who is meant, reputations have just been blackmarked indelibly forever. And I don't mean Roger Mason's.

JaVale McGee

For whatever reason, Flip Saunders really did not want to play JaVale McGee last year. He instead persisted with playing Fabricio Oberto, despite how bad Oberto played. The whole science of signing him was equally terrible, but we won't talk about that here. We don't need to, because it's already talked about here. To put it succinctly, McGee's PER of 17.0 annihilates Oberto's 5.7. And while Saunders finally got it right towards the end of the year, McGee still didn't even get 1,000 minutes on a team that won only 26 games. There's really no defense for that.

Most obviously salary dumping were the Washington Wizards. If they could find a way of consistently getting the ball over halfcourt, the five that they traded away (Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, Dominic McGuire, DeShawn Stevenson) would own the five they received (Zydrunas Ilgauskas, James Singleton, Quinton Ross, Al Thornton, Josh Howard) so badly that it would need a book written about it. The Wizards traded away the three best players amongst those ten and basically removed their own frontcourt; with buyouts of Ilgauskas and Fabricio Oberto looking inevitable, the Wizards will have only Singleton, Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee in the front court. This isn't good. (At least it will mean Flip Saunders has to play McGee, something he's basically avoided all season for no obvious reason.)