Patience Is A Virtue.

The Brandon Roy/Dwayne Wade comparison has been made many times by many people, and for good reason.  The two have nearly identical offensive styles; both use a blend of attacking the rim and a deadly mid-range game to completely dismantle an opponent’s defense.  They can make that defense collapse at any time, and both have a rare aptitude for consistently finding the open man that is created by their penetration.  So, this evening I decided to take a gander at how the two compared as rookies.

Now, this wasn’t the first comparison I was inspired to do of a Blazer and someone with a similar style.  Actually, my interest in comparing rookie seasons started with my blog post entitled “What Will Greg Oden Be?” in which I looked at Greg’s season against the player that I think his style will most resemble: Dwight Howard.  As I discussed in the post, the two rookie seasons are not at all dissimilar, especially when you consider the discrepancy in minutes.

Well, when I looked at Roy and Wade side-by-side, I was amazed to find that they had EXTREMELY similar rookie seasons.  In the major categories of points, rebounds, and assists, the two were nearly equal.

Roy: 16.8 / 4.4 / 4.0

Wade: 16.3 / 4.1 / 4.5

Field goal percentage and steals were also very close.

Roy: 45.6% / 1.2

Wade: 46.5% / 1.4

They put up these stats with a difference in average minutes per game of only 24 seconds.  Roy shot better from 3-point range (37.7% to 30.2%), much better from the charity stripe (83.8% to 74.7%), and he also had 1.2 less turnovers per game.

While this was fun and interesting, we already know how good Brandon Roy is.  Will Roy be Wade?  No – Roy will be Roy.  LaMarcus Aldridge, on the other hand, is still learning and developing a lot.  From my perspective, he and All-Star David West play a very similar game.  West is beefier and shorter, but they both have an unusual blend of low-post skills and ice from 18-feet.  Right now, West is much more polished, but he has also been in NBA for three more years.  Therefore, it interested me to see what West looked like earlier in his career.

In his first two years in the League, David West didn’t average much more than 18 minutes per game, so it’s hard to compare his rookie and sophomore seasons with Aldridge.  However, West’s third season saw a big jump in minutes to 34 min/game, during which he scored 17.1 points and grabbed 7.4 rebounds.  L.A. matched those numbers last year with 17.8 and 7.6 in his second season.  We’ve yet to see what this year will bring, but after a semi-slow start, he has averaged 19.1 and 6.4 on 51.4% shooting during the last month; the reduction in rebounds no doubt a result of adding Oden.

The only remaining comparison that really stands out to me is Rudy and Manu Ginobili, mostly because of how often it has been mentioned.  I don’t consider them nearly as similar as the other associations I’ve made, but to be honest, I’m still figuring Rudy out.  They are both nimble 6-6 guards who can handle the ball, shoot, and pass; we can be sure of that.  Manu attacks the rim more than Rudy does, but I don’t know what Manu looked like as a rookie, so I can’t make a judgment on that right now.  Rudy gets the nod in 3-point percentage (39.7% to 34.5%), and it’s impossible to shoot better than Rudy from the freethrow line.  In any case, they are certainly similar in enough ways that it is worth discussion.

Manu only averaged 20 min/game as a rookie, and Rudy is currently only averaging a little over 25 min/game, so I’m not sure that there are enough minutes to really read into most of the stats.  Rudy is averaging 10.7 / 3.1 / 1.9 points, rebounds, and assists; Manu averaged 7.6 / 2.3 / 2.0.  What is worth noting, though, is a fairly low field goal percentage by both (Rudy: 42.1%, Manu: 43.8%), as we’ve all noticed that Rudy seems to be having a little trouble with shot selection.  Ginobili has since raised his career FG% a bit to 45.4%, so I considered the idea that European players may need some time to acclimate their shot to the NBA game.  With this in mind, I looked up the FG%s for other notable European imports during their rookie seasons.  What I found surprised me:

Dirk Nowitzki: 40.5% (career: 47.1%)

Peja Stojakovic: 37.8% (career: 45.7%)

Hedo Turkoglu: 41.2% (career: 42.8%)

Jose Calderon: 42.3% (career: 49.7%)

Tony Parker: 41.9% (career: 48.8%)

Mehmet Okur: 42.6% (career: 45.8%)

These are just a few foreign stars that came to mind, and I only looked up shooters (as opposed to big men, like Gasol, whose FG% we can’t compare to Rudy’s).  I encourage anybody who feels like it to look up more players; it certainly caught my attention as soon as I saw the relative uniformity of these statistics.  Regardless, whether it has anything to do with being international or everything to do with being a rookie, all of those guys shot near or worse than Rudy is shooting, and most of them have become much more efficient since.  Keep in mind, too, that their FG% in recent years is better than their career numbers (the career numbers being brought down by the low rookie numbers).

So, what am I predicting?  Nothing, actually.  Nothing in this post, at least.  Instead, I'm making a plea for patience.  It is rare that a player makes a significant impact on a team in his first few years; usually only the special ones do it.  We seem to be expecting that of ALL of our young guys.  Our team has all the potential in the world; what’s the point of being nit-picky and impatient right now?

[I welcome anybody to critique my current comparisons or to suggest new ones with other Blazers.  To me, these are the ones that particularly stand out, but I’d certainly love to look at others (possibly Batum/Prince once he gets more playing time).]