Coming off a 31-point performance this evening, Evan Turner continues to impress so far this season. Averaging the same amount of playing time as he did last year, Turner is putting up nearly 10 more points per game in what appears to be his last year on the 76ers’ roster. This strong improvement would seem to warrant a long-term deal from his current team but Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer feels Turner and the Sixers will part ways either by trade in February or free agency next summer, regardless of Turner’s play this season. Turner is motivated by Philadelphia’s lack of interest and promises to be “a gem” to whatever teams he winds up on in the future. Here’s more news from around the league:
- One of the reasons the 76ers may not be interested in Turner returning to their roster is the talent in store for next year’s draft. Three of the players predicted to be in the top of that draft, Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, and Jabari Parker, will play on the same court this Tuesday at the Champions Classic in Chicago. In addition to those three players, five of the Draft Express projected top 10 picks for 2014 and 18 of their top 100 players will all play in the event. Of course, this is no secret to the 76ers or any other NBA team as Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv reports there are expected to be over 80 NBA personnel on hand to watch these future NBA picks compete against each other.
- Shane Battier, known for his deep interest in analytics, explains the impact he anticipates SportVU technology will have on contract negotiations in the NBA to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel.
- Mark Cuban told Eddie Sefko of The Dallas Morning News he expects “there’s a good chance” one or two NBA expansion teams are on the horizon. Cuban believes expansion will occur before a current NBA team relocates.
I could actually see that happening. I feel like the talent pool in the league right now is really deep and there is a lot of good talent that arent even in the NBA right now in the D League and in International leagues…Thats what makes it as hard as it has ever been to be in the NBA. I’d like to think though, that this possibility is still 5-10 years down the road…
Shane Battier is a very smart person. When he speaks, you listen…As a stat fan, I’m SUPER excited for SportVU, but I also havent had the chance to look into it yet. The sample sizes are too small IMO to gather any real information. The other issue is that NBA.com isnt publishing everything you can get from SportVU to the fans yet. Its a really good start, but as time goes on, it will get better and better. To this point, there are teams, such as the Heat, that had their own system of evaluating, using their own analytics to evaluate players such as Joel Anthony. This will just make those things more accurate.
As for the 76ers…I said it the other day. I dont know if it necessarily makes sense to purposely give up on their young core if they are actually performing to their potential…Assuming they dont get too expensive (which doesnt seem to be the case unless Turner and Hawes put up ridiculous numbers this year), Michael Carter Williams, Evan Turner, Thaddeus Young, and Spencer Hawes, with Nerlens Noel waiting in the wings is a nice, young core to build around (All being 25 or less). Add shooters around them and another playmaking PG to come off the bench and you should have a pretty good team. You could argue that they would be a top contending team this year had they not given away Vucevic and Harkless, and even Speights. The young guys didnt seem to fit in with Doug Collins and the 76ers lost some good core pieces. They currently have 2 1st round picks in next year’s draft and they could use them to fill out their roster and add more talent around their already good core. I dont know that tearing it down and building around 1 of the top draft choices in 2014 necessarily makes them one of those teams that is good enough to be a championship contender instead of good enough to make the playoffs and have a mid tier draft pick…I think the core they already have is arguably good enough to eventually be a contender if they fill out the roster properly. Regardless, its going to be difficult for any team to build b/c the league is so deep. There are a lot of teams that are in that range where anything can happen in the playoffs