All right, now that I’ve gotten my stupid joke post out of the way, what does the signing of Anthony Parker REALLY mean for the Cavs?
To be honest, some of my take on this will depend on the details of his contract, which no one seems to be discussing publicly right now. The trend this off-season seems to be that unless a given player had a break-out season or was a major cog in a team that contended for the championship, his new contract will be worth 40-60% less annually than his previous contract. Last season Parker made $4.5M. If the trend holds for him, then the Cavs should be paying him around $3M this year. Far from an exorbitant amount.
The second question is: how long is the deal? I personally would love it if it was a one-year deal, but I doubt that’s the case. Parker is 34 years old. Giving Danny Ferry a little bit of credit, I’ll assume that it’s a two year deal averaging $3M a year.
Performance-wise, then, here’s what we’re getting for $6M over the next two seasons…. [Note that I’m ignoring his time spent in the Euro leagues (2001-5) because a) I don’t have easy access to his numbers, and b) even if I did, I have no confidence in how they would translate to NBA production.]
Over the entire course of his NBA career, Parker has averaged 45.8% shooting from the floor, 41.5% from 3, 81.7% from the foul line, with 3.4 boards and 2 assists per game for good measure.
What constitutes his NBA career? 3 seasons with Philly (1997-2000) playing very limited minutes and 3 seasons with Toronto (2006-9) as a starter. Now when I say “very limited minutes” in Philly, I mean it: Parker appeared in 37, 2, and 17 games in those three seasons, averaging 5.3, 1.5, and 10.9 MPG, respectively. So for statistical purposes, those three seasons are so insignificant that they can effectively be thrown out.
This leaves the guts of his NBA career as his past three seasons with the Raptors. In that time, he played 73, 82, and 80 games. Of those 235 total regular season games, he started 226 of them and averaged just under 33 minutes per game overall.
The good news is that in the 2006-7 and 2007-8 seasons, Parker was a remarkable shooter: 47.7% FG, 44% 3pt FG, 12.5 pts per game. Obviously, the traditional threshhold as a 3 point shooter is 40%. Sink that percentage or better and you’re considered an offensive asset from behind the arc. Again, his total career average is 41.5%. So if percentage alone was the determinant, Parker really should have been in the 3 point contest every All-Star Weekend since 2006.
However, if you go back to just those 2006-7 and 2007-8 seasons, Parker is shooting even better than that: 44%. If you shoot 44% from 3, you’re beyond an asset. You’re a total assassin. As a reference point, Ray Allen - widely considered to be the deadliest and most consistent 3 point shooter in the current era of the NBA - is a career 39.8% 3 point shooter. His best single season of triple-shooting was his 2001-2 season with Milwaukee: 43.4%. So you could argue that from an isolated perspective, Anthony Parker has been a better distance shooter than Ray.
Incidentally, Ray Allen turns 34 in under 2 weeks. The Celtics will pay him $18.4 million this season.
In addition to the offensive stats, Parker has something that none of our guards from last year have: size. He’s 6’-6”, 215 lb. Supposedly (and here I have to rely on scouting reports from sports journalists), he’s still athletic, defends well on the perimeter, and can create his own shot.
Also on the positive side, the minuscule number of minutes he played in those first three seasons should make everyone feel significantly better about his age. His time with the Sixers combined totals less than a single “true” NBA season, even for a bench player. In addition, most European leagues have seasons significantly shorter than the NBA. So even though there’s no way to Benjamin-Button his actual age, we can agree that Anthony Parker’s 34 years have considerably less basketball mileage on them than his NBA peers.
All that said, here are the discouraging elements of his performance: of his 3 significant seasons in the NBA, last season was easily Parker’s worst from an offensive perspective. 42.6% FG, 39.0% 3FG, 11.7 points per game. His turnovers per game have risen each of his three true seasons (from 1.0 in 2006-7 to 1.6 in 2008-9). His PER was a career low (12.2) in 2008-9 and has never even reached “average.” (15 is the PER of an “average” player. Parker’s career-high PER since signing with Toronto is 14.4, which he reached in both 2006-7 and 2007-8.)
That said, his assists per game jumped from 2.2 in 2007-8 to 3.4 in 2008-9. He had a career-high in steals (1.4 per game) last season and has been a consistent rebounder his entire time in Toronto, averaging around 4 boards per game.
So now that I’ve gotten all those statistics out there, what’s my actual take? I can’t believe I’m saying this…but I think this signing could actually work very well for us. And this is coming from someone who has been dreading this deal for the past six weeks.
I’m less than enthused by the fact that a 34 year-old was one of our prime free agent targets…but the comparatively low quantity of wear on him calms me down. His consistently below average PER worries me…until I realize that I’m not 100% sold on PER as a great rating of a player’s performance. Especially since I still haven’t found a reliable individual defensive rating.
I’m troubled by the fact that last season was Parker’s worst real season from an offensive perspective…but to be fair, there were extenuating circumstances. Parker had been the starting shooting guard for practically every game of his previous two seasons as a Raptor. 17 games into the 2008-9 season, Sam Mitchell was fired as head coach. When Jay Triano took over, one of his first moves to try to shake up the roster was to bench Parker in favor of Jason Kapono. Parker’s role changed again when Jose Calderon went down for a month early in 2009. The entire time Calderon was out, Triano started Parker out of position at point guard (which may account for the jump in his assists last season). Even though Parker eventually regained his starting job at the 2, Triano’s roster juggling continued throughout the remainder of the season.
I mention all of this because everything I’ve heard from pro basketball players makes me certain that jerking around a player’s minutes, role, and expectations is the easiest and most effective way to throw his game completely out of wack. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that Parker’s performance decline last season may have had less to do with a real devolution in skill than with the fact that on any given night, he had no idea what position he would be playing, how many minutes he’d get, who else would be out on the floor with him, and as a result, how he should tailor his play in order to help his team win.
As far as the Cavs are concerned, I’m also going to go ahead and assume that Coldstone’s plan is to have Parker be the first guard off the bench next season. Personally, I hope to God that Boobie gets right again in the off-season. But if he plays like he did last season, think about whether you’d rather see him leading the second unit’s back-court or Anthony Parker. I’d ask you to specifically remember that we had multiple games where we were unable to leave the second unit in for the entire 4th quarter despite being up by 20+ points.
Finally, one other thing to think about. Since every Cavs fan is now required by Ohio law to draw comparisons to Orlando, let’s take a quick look at Mickael Pietrus. In theory, this is the most likely guy for Parker to match up against when we play the Magic in 2009-10, since he will still be Orlando’s first guard off the bench.
Pietrus dwarfed our other guards all last season. How big is he? 6’-6”, 215 lb…literally identical to Parker’s height and weight. Pietrus’s best 3 point shooting year was 2006-7. He shot 39% from 3 that season, or equivalent to Parker’s worst year behind the arc. From the standpoint of his career averages, Pietrus shoots 4% worse overall than Parker, 9% worse from 3, and 15% worse from the free throw line. Pietrus outrebounds Parker by about 1 board per 36 minutes and gets .5 more blocks, but Parker gets twice as many assists. However, Pietrus wins decisively in one other respect: his player page on www.basketball-reference.com is sponsored by Cheap Paris Hotels, whereas no one is apparenly willing to pay $20 / year to have their name at the top of A-Parker’s page. Victoire le France on that one.
In the interest of full disclosure, would I rather have Trevor Ariza / Ron Artest for 5 years of the MLE or Anthony Parker at 2-3 years for $6M per? You bet your ass I would rather have Ariza or Artest. Do I wish we would’ve at least made a run at Josh Childress to potentially have him do the same things that we’re going to ask Parker to do? Absolutely. But as we’ve been over already (see my earlier post on the Cavs’ problems in free agency), the Cavs simply didn’t have the resources to get those guys. After doing all this analysis, I feel a hell of a lot better about Anthony Parker than I did this afternoon. Clearly, he is not a name that got anyone other than the Cavs’ front office excited. But would I rather we be paying for ‘Sheed or Big Baby to be my first option off the bench? Uh, no. If Parker can return to anywhere near the form he had in his first two season with Toronto and Coldstone can insert him into a comfortable spot in the rotation, I really believe he can help us.
On the flip side, if I wake up tomorrow and find out that Ferry signed him for 3 years at the full mid-level exception, something in my apartment or at my office WILL get thrown.
On the other hand, if Parker does produce this year, I pledge this right now: Jose Mesa Is Dead will sponsor his page on basketball-reference.com for 1 year. Don’t ever let it be said I won’t put my money where my mouth is.
-T.
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