As you know, the NBA trade deadline passed last week. If you’ve been keeping up with it all, I’m sure you can rattle off all the big trades. If not, here’s a quick run down:
1) The Pau Gasol trade
2) The Shaq-Shawn Marion trade
3) The Jason Kidd trade
4) The Cavs’ 11 player swap
There were several others, but those were the big ones.
Anyway, yesterday marked the debut of numerous players on their new teams. I’m going to leave the breakdown of their performances to someone else.
Instead, I’m going to shed a little light on part of the trades that I haven’t heard anyone else talk about yet.
After the Grizzlies shipped Pau Gasol over to the Lakers, the role of starting Power Forward was freed up.
Filling this position has been a player named, Hakim Warrick. You may have heard of him before (I know I had). He had shown quite a bit of promise in the past, but he received limited playing time due to Gasol.
Let’s check out how he is doing now that he is getting the playing time:
2/2 – 14 points, 5 rebounds, 2 blocked shots in 24 minutes
2/5 – 4 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocked shots in 22 minutes
2/8 – 8 points, 4 rebounds in 24 minutes
2/9 – 12 points, 4 rebounds in 20 minutes
2/12 – 24 points, 13 rebounds in 32 minutes
2/13 – 23 points, 8 rebounds in 34 minutes
2/19 – 22 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocked shots in 39 minutes
2/20 – 20 points, 7 rebounds in 39 minutes
2/22 – 15 points, 9 rebounds in 34 minutes
2/24 – 21 points, 9 rebounds in 43 minutes
This averages out to 16.3 ppg and 7.1 rpg over the ten games since Pau Gasol left.
Compare that with Pau Gasol’s averages for this season (19.6 ppg and 8.4 rpg). Sure, everyone would take Pau’s preformance over Hakim Warrick’s, but the fact of the matter is that Memphis didn’t drop down that far in production.
There definitely is some potential with this Memphis team. They’ve got multiple good young point guards, Hakim Warrick is playing well (and he is only 25), they have several draft picks in the upcoming draft, and they now have more cap room.
But really, the reason I’m hyping Hakim Warrick so much is because I was getting killed at the PF/C position in fantasy basketball, but I had the forethought to pick up Mr. Warrick (I dropped the corpse known as Kendrick Perkins). So, I just wanted to let other fantasy owners know to pick up Warrick if he is still available.
February 25, 2008 at 9:52 pm |
but u cant deny.
Lakers now is really on form, and i feel that they are championship quality.
February 26, 2008 at 2:32 pm |
The Lakers are definitely good now. I didn’t go into any of that because I know other people have gone on and on about it. But no one seemed to have talked about Hakim Warrick and some of the lesser known players who are now getting a chance to play.