George O'Brien said:
Tonight's game was typical Diaw. He had 8 points, 8 rebounds, 3 blocks and 13 assists. He even hit nice jumper and after a couple of bad misses.
I was wondering when the last time a team had two players with more than 10 assists each in a game. Both Nash and Diaw had equal or more assists than the Blazers combined.
Agreed, Diaw is way better at this point(16 games in) than anyone on this board, or elsewhere, predicted. I think that conventional evaluation using the typical compiled stats fail to indicate the value of Diaw. For example, how many times did his 'D' change shots without getting a block? Did his 'D' or his passing change the opposing teams strategy offensively or defensively, and thus the success of their approach. He has "flirted" with triple doubles 4 times, but doesn't have one yet. In last nights game, would a 10, 10 ,10 performance(triple double) really be better than 8 13 8. How much better? Oh, by the way, he had 3 blocks and changes the other teams interior offense by clogging the passing lanes during the blazers offensive setups. I think he is a serious impact player, and that all the stats, as conventionally used, do not tell the story. Hopefully, he wont be recognized to be as good as he is, and wont be too expensive to resign. Oh yeah, I noticed that on ESPN no suns player was in the top 16 for the player efficiency rating for last nights games: the suns shot 56%, had 15 blocked shots, 33 assists, 8 guys in double figures scoring, limited the Blazers to 37% FG, and outrebounded them 50-36. I guess players PER ratings are penalized by team play. That makes sense, since Nash had a mediocre PER last year in spite of being the best team player in the NBA and the MVP.
