What's up with Mitch? [McGary]
I'm a casual NBA fan -- I don't follow everything going on. So was a bit surprised to not see Mitch on the bench in these playoffs.
Looking into it, I see he took a leave of absence in April for undisclosed reasons -- he's not listed as injured. I'm not looking for baseless speculation as to what the leave was all about. Family, most likely.
I see from his Twitter feed that he is now traveling with the team and in his usual Big Puppy mode, smiling and bouncing around. So I guess the break from the game left him a little bit out of the kind of shape these guys need to be in for the playoffs? Or is it tactical?
NBA people -- any thoughts on why he isn't back on the Thunder's bench?
""I appreciate you guys interviewing me, and I know you're concerned with where I've been the last few weeks. But I'd just like to leave that as a private matter, and that's it. I'd appreciate if you'd respect that."
I don't follow the NBA, outside of the Pistons, so I'm not sure if he's not playing due to injury, minutes available or lack of familiarity in Donovan's system. Looks like Billy Donovan likes rotating a three-man rotation of Ibaka, Adams and Kanter up front.
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that Mitch was instrumental in Michigan kicking Florida's ass in the Elite 8 three years ago!!!
J/K
I think a lot of it is that Steven Adams turned into a beast after they drafted Mitch. With him, Ibaka, and Kanter around there really aren't any minutes for Mitch. Especailly since he and Adams are pretty similar players.
I'm not aware if there are off-court things going on, but the on-court reality is that he isn't close to contributing in a playoff game. He's behind several vets who don't even play themselves behind the primary 3 bigs the Thunder have. If one of those 3 was to get hurt McGary might be a candidate to be activated. As it stands now he's the 6th big man, playing in a league that's more likely to use a 4th wing player than their 4th big.
Pretty sure for most the games against the Spurs I've seen him in street clothes in the first row of people behind the players bench.
I didn't realize he had played so little this year. Seemed like he played a fair amount last year (during the regular season) ...
I see they have recalled him from the D-league ten [!] times this season:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/mcgarmi01.html
I guess that's a good sign? They want to get him playing time, but can't do it without sending him down. [Falls into the category of "good problems to have."] But they also want him up-to-speed with the Thunder in case they need him -- so a lot of shuttling back and forth. You don't do that with someone you don't think is useful, right?
I get what you're saying but OKC doesn't actually have much frontcourt depth beyond their top 3 (which includes 2 guys who are the same age as McGary). Mohammed and Collison are 38 and 35, respectively and don't need meaningful minutes,yet play ahead of McGary.
None of Michigan's players had positive seasons this year with the exception of Tim Hardaway (who emerged as a rotation player on a playoff team and seemed to be improving on defense) and Glenn Robinson (on the fringe of the rotation guy on playoff team).
Stauskas, McGary, and Burke all saw their stock fall further. There is still some hope for Nik, but McGary and Burke look like they will top out as end of the rotation players and may be in Europe within a couple years if they don't make significant improvements. Jamal Crawford won 6th man of the year but actually showed some age for the first time.
Caris could be Michigan's best NBA player soon after he enters the league.
Even though he hasn't panned out as a megastar, the guy averaged 12.8, 12.8, and 10.6 PPG a game in the NBA. You'll have a hard time finding a double digit scorer in each of his first seasons completely flaming out and not finding his way on an NBA bench. If Steve Blake can carve out a career with the Pistons, and actually get meaningful time in the playoffs, something tells me Burke's in the NBA to stay.
But he's been pushed out of the rotation in consecutive years by rookies and/or journeymen. The ppg total is irrelevant. Utah didn't have anyone else and was a rebuilding team. They gave him a shot but he didn't capitalize and now they are ready to move on. He'll get a shot elsewhere, but his second chance may well be his last.
Trey's an inefficient volume scorer who isn't a great ball distributer and a defensive liability because of size.
Say what you want about Blake but he had a tangible NBA skill (ball distribution/passing) and developed a serviceably efficient 3 point shot. This kind of thing happens all the time where an inferior overall player has a long career because he is a good role player. Can Trey become that? If so, what skill/role does he offer? Can he be a Jamal Crawford type of scorer off the bench? Can he be a game manager? Both seem optimistic.
One difference between the two players is Blake is a much better 3 pt shooter. For his career Blake has shot 38% from the 3 pt line, and that percentage has gone down his last couple of years. He had a number of years where he shot 40%+ from the 3 pt line. You can carve a niche in the NBA by being a solid 3 pt shooter.
Burke on the other hand has shot 33%, .318% and .344% from the 3 pt line in his first 3 seasons.
Blake has NEVER been known as a good shooter. His career FG percentage is horrible, as is Burke's.
Blake has had one, count em, one season with 10+ ppg. The rest of his career has been incredibly low.
Blake averages about 40 three point attemps a year. He doesn't shoot from the outside at all. Burke has a ton more future potential.
Let's not get some weird revisionist history about Steve Blake. The guy has been a backup, sometimes third string PPG for his entire career. Burke has at least shown some ability to score at a very young age.
As for ball distribution, they both have basically identical A/TO ratios.
You're trying to argue that Trey is better than a 36 year old barely hanging on in the league and you are failing badly. You're comparing two guys who could be waived or traded for nothing at a moment's notice. The difference is that Blake's already had a long NBA career while Burke looks like imminent bust.
Steve Blake has taking over 2,700 3s in his NBA career and hit 38% of them. Trey's at 33% on almost 1,000 attempts (in 3 years). Taking a lot of 3s when you shoot that percentage is not a good thing.
Steve Blake has 347 starts to Trey's 111 and this year started 2 more games than Trey did (Zero)
Blake's been in the league for 13 years now - that fact should tell you all you need to know about how irrelevant the PPG stat is.
Trey's played less minutes each year. Last year he lost his job to a rookie who wasnt very good. This year his competition was Raul Neto and Shelvin Mack.
I'd love for Trey Burke to turn things around but his downward trajectory and failure to play over weak competition doesn't portend well for his future.
Not sure what you're getting at. OKC has Adams, Ibaka, Kanter, Mohammed, and Collison all fighting for the same minutes that McGary would play. That is a 3-deep roster at the two big positions on the floor when most teams probably rotate 4 guys at those spots.
I think Mitch probably is lacking in some areas to be a major contributor at the NBA level, he's clearly been plagued with some off-the-court challenges during his career, and the other fact is that he got drafted by the wrong team in terms of available playing time. A lot of teams could use a high energy guy that could come off the bench at the 4 or 5 position....just not OKC.
McGary is 23 years old and should probably be ahead of 35 and 38 year olds. He's also WAY behind Adams and Kanter who are the same age.
I'm not sure playing time is the missing elixer here. Trey and Nik have gotten plenty of that and they may be out of the NBA before Mitch is for all we know. Yes, Mitch could get more time elsewhere but the fact is that he is a limited player and needs to play beside somebody who is a better rim protector and/or floor stretcher.
OKC is an exellent franchise for talent development and McGary is lucky to be where he is rather than say Sacramento and Philadelphia.
Again, a double digit scorer in all three years, and the market for a backup PG is always hot. Hell, the Pistons could have used him in a big way during the playoffs. Steve Blake looked beyond lost during the playoffs. The drop-off after starting PG to backup PG tends to be astronomical. Guys like McGary are everywhere.
Trey will not be in Europe. Mitch will be gone before Burke. High energy big men can be had anywhere. Look at what Baynes did. He provides exactly what McGary does and the Pistons paid him a pretty low salary in today's NBA.
Rudy Fernandez: 9ppg
Andray Blatche: 10.1ppg
Gilbert Arenas: 20.7ppg
Juan Carlos Navarro: 10.9ppg
Blatche played 9 years in the NBA.
Arenas played 12.
Fernandez was drafted because he was a combine warrior.
Navarro was a 2nd round pick who played basically one season and wanted to stay in Spain.
We are talking about Burke, after three seasons of moderately OK basketball going to Europe in a couple of years. And that's not happening.
of value.
I'm not a fan of Blake, but he runs the offense without screwing up. Anyway, he's one of the worst PGs in the NBA and was routinely mocked by many NBA pundits.
Pistons payed Baynes a lot and Baynes is both bigger and better than McGary.
When you say someone can "run an offense wtihout screwing up." Hell, I could do that lol.
And even so, I disagree with that sentiment. Blake screwed up plenty in the playoffs. The team was lost at times with him on the court.
You want him to have that confidence but you also want him to understand he can't (try to) play like that in the team context.
Trey's best selling point as an NBA prospect was his intelligent game management (low turnovers despite high usage in college) combined with good shooting. Neither has materialized. He had the upside to become something like Jameer Nelson (undersized guard who can effectively run the offense and score on a great 2nd unit, but is outmatched as a starter) or, in the right situation, a Derek-Fisher-like 5th option on a winning team is now tracking a lot closer to his downside (which, given his size, is out of the NBA).
If I'm an NBA GM I wouldn't give up a 2nd round pick for him. Not when Tyler Ulis and Kay Felder are going to be available - at least they have the potential of being good 3 point shooters at the NBA level.
Trey deserve another shot, and will probably get one as a backup somewhere. But has to do what he did at Michigan: play intelligently as well as bravely.
[Iverson would still be good in the NBA. One of a kind, but Russel Westbrook has a lot of the same characteristics and he's a top 10-15 player in the league.]
Playing time would definitely help his development. OKC just doesn't have much to go around. NBA teams don't really practice that often and if he's 5th or 6th in the big man rotation, he's also 5th or 6th in the practice time rotation. So of the little actual development NBA teams offer, he's getting even less. He'd be better off any place he could play -- including Philly and Sacramento -- because at least he'd be playing and have something to offer in free agency eventually.
The NBA is very much a make it right away, or not at all league. Limited roster spots, not much time for development, and 60 new guys a year coming to take your spot.
It doesn't really matter if McGary plays 4 hours of in-game basketball (3 mpg x 82 games) a year or 16 hours of in-game basketball (12 mpg) in the context of how much time (100s of hours) that he will spend per year working on his game.
Some teams like Dallas have a coach focused on each individual player's development. NBA teams practice all the time and the guys who aren't played are definitely getting extra work in. The NBA spends more time on development than any league on the planet.
He does seem to get injured from time to time. It seems to be a CHRONIC problem. Maybe it's because he's so tall and grew so fast, just like a WEED.
Or maybe he had to leave to tend to his girl friend Mary Jane who just had root extraction.
I don't know what you're trying to say, could you please be a little more BLUNT? Otherwise you are a real DRAG.
......well, i just plain think he smokes a lot of cannabis, a.k.a. "marijuna".
he smokes it, like a cigarette.
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He did return from his leave of absense on 4/20
For everyone that downvoted me for this, I feel bad now. Maybe you can all give me a call and we can HASH things out? In the meantime, I am going to try and get out of this depression by eating a big BOWL of ice cream.
The problem being that, with snow in the forecast, they may not see GRASS in a while. This causes them to get their noses out of JOINT.
And if you're in a city and cooped up indoors, you still might see a ROACH or two. Don't worry, they will feel better once they do some spring cleaning, and focus on domestic chores. Perhaps they will BAKE or something until the weather clears.
So am I reading you guys correctly? That Mitch is having the same issues in the pro's that caused him to miss time at college? That he's learned nothing from having sit out and miss games and he's STILL to this day dealing with the same bullshit that kept him from playing for us???
I feel kinda stupid now. I didnt know his back was still bothering him.
I seen him in a D League game not that long ago.
I seen't it too.
Two...
...anything. He's also behind some pretty good players.
Morgan and McGary (with some help) bested Adams and fellow future NBA player Lamar Patterson?
http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/boxscores/2012-11-21-michigan.html
Exhibit number billion for why college production shouldn't be weighed very heavily in NBA projections.
Kind of also reminds of how Joe Dumars got killed around here for taking KCP over Trey...
I remember being bummed when he picked CMU (and the chance to play with his dad) over us. Seems like that was decades ago, but he just graduated last year from TCU.
He's also behind Collison and Nazr Mohammed, who aren't great players. They are however vets who know their role and won't screw up.
Mitch is undersized (length more than height) to be a starting big in the modern NBA. His energy could keep him in the league as a bench hustle guy for a while, but in some ways he was born 20 years late to be the old-school PF he could be.
It's not hard for me to imagine a basketball world in which Mitch is a high-achieving NBA player - but I also started watching basketball in the late '80s.