Sampson, a cousin of former NBA star Ralph Sampson, was named the frontrunner by SBP executive director Noli Eala. Digging up his Basketball-Reference page, Sampson does indeed look the most intriuging of the candidates. He's played 72 games in the NBA, started in 5, logging 631 minutes along the way. The advanced stats numbers are pretty interesting. But remember that small sample sizes skew a player's numbers, so most of what will follow is meaningless (or at least, don't take it exactly as it is stated, and understand the limitations of the numbers) but still, fun to talk about.
He posted a TRB% of 21.8; that is the amount of rebounds he grabbed in relation to how many were available while he was on the floor. If he played meaningful enough minutes to qualify for the NBA/ABA career leaders list, that would put him #2 behind only Dennis Rodman and his 23.44 mark. CJ Giles had TRB% of 17.1 and he accomplished that playing in the D-League while Sampson got his in the NBA. So Sampson rates positively against Giles on that, at least.
And this is more a result of the sample size being too miniscule to matter, but it would be interesting to note that Sampson had a 12-game stretch with Sacramento in 2005-06 where he posted a robust PER of 24.4. For those of you of who don't understand the stat, PER creator John Hollinger made an easy reference guide to PER marks. That 24.4 ranks somewhere in between "Bonafide All-Star (22.5)" and "Weak MVP Candidate (25.0)." In fact, that 24.4 is approximately what Kobe Bryant posted last season. Sampson holds a career PER mark of 13.0, which falls under "In the rotation (13.0)" but even that is very likely skewed by his minutes.
Earl Barron's BR page, meanwhile, tells us he played in 82 NBA games and started 15. He also played around twice the number of minutes Sampson has. His advanced numbers are a lot more down-to-earth. In three-ish seasons, he has never posted a double-digit PER and in fact finished with a negative-PER in his first season in the league. He played only 8 games that year. He does have a USG% of 22.4, though. Usage rate measures the number of possessions a player was involved in while he was on the floor. That 22.4 falls somewhere in the Antonio McDyess-Rashard Lewis territory. Sampson had a USG% of just 12.0.
Barron, though, consistently put up negatives in Win Shares, mainly because of his contributions (or lack of it) on the offensive end. Sampson had contributed 1.4 wins in his career, beating out Barron's -0.8.
Shaun Pruitt doesn't even have a Basketball-Reference page. That probably tells us more about him than Sampson's and Barron's page tells us about them.
So based on statistics that may or may not matter, we can probably possibly kind of tell that Jamal Sampson might be a sort of better player than the other two candidates for the spot or even Giles himself. Maybe.
I think.
4 comments:
Based on my little knowledge of Sampson and Barron, they are inferior offensive players to Giles but they might be able to provide more defense. That means Toroman will have to change up his system a little bit since Giles was more of a finesse big man while those guys are more of a ruggid type of a big men. Sad to see Giles go but I felt that we needed a Dwight Howard and not a Chris Bosh since we have a Bosh(hopefully....) in Aguilar already.
im more interested in these guys as defensive presences, though. i think thats where we really need a big guy. sampson looks like he might be a beast on the boards. cant be sure at this point.
yeah. as far as i can remember, he was more of a dependable 3rd center for the nuggets during the days that every damn big man of the nuggets was on the injured list. I sure do hope they'll get the right guy this time around. It's interesting that an articles is suggesting that Vroman and Giles can both play for Lebanese national team. Isn't there a max of 1 naturalized player per country. You got any idea how to get any gear from Smart-Gilas? Maybe tshrit or a jersey.
no idea. i hope jerseys become available. haha. pero malamang chris tiu jersey lang bebenta.
yeah, 1 naturalized per country. there was a small controversy before tianjin about teams trying to pass of american players as locals. i doubt they'll get away with playing both vroman and giles because its acknowledged that vroman is naturalized, and well, the SBP probably has proof that giles is not lebanese.
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