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Player Rasheed Sulaimon

The situation still makes me sad, but he would have fucked this up.
 
It is a real shame it did not work out for RS. It seemed like he was cut out for Duke University more than most recruits.
 
After the win at UVa, lots of talk of believing in your brother, doing things for your brother, being a happy family by the players in the post game interviews. Focusing on those things so much, one has to believe the dismissal was done to strengthen them. My theory is that Sheed prob didnt have a worse attitude than other notorious players before him, but K knew the potential of the group and thought he was holding it back severely with all the negativity. Too much "I" not enough team (was he the highest usage player when he was on the court?). That's all I can come up with.
 
Seemed like Quinn's post-game remarks were pretty telling. Lots of talk about why they chose Duke, playing for the guy beside them, etc.

Still curious about what single event led K to dismiss him, though. Must have been something.
 
Remember after either the Miami loss or the NC State loss, I think, when K said something in his postgame interview about the team having issues with chemistry or camaraderie or something like that. At the time we wondered wtf he was talking about, since all we had heard to that point was how much everyone loved everyone else. I guess that applied to everybody but Sheed.
 
Randomly digging through some stats today... I didn't realize how much Sulaimon was hurting Duke's offense. In ACC play, Sulaimon was 8th among Duke's 9 scholarship players in offensive rating (only Allen has been worse), while being 2nd in usage, only a bit below #1 Okafor but much higher than #3 Winslow.

I think Duke's usage distribution is still not quite ideal, but taking Sulaimon out of the picture makes it look much better. A 107 rating player using 25% of possessions while on the court, and playing 20 minutes a game... this will mess up Duke's offense. We replaced his minutes with Matt, who is at a more respectable 111 rating on a much more reasonable 19% usage.

Chris Jones of Louisville, who is widely considered to be a toxic abomination of an offensive player, is at 114 rating on 26% usage in ACC play. Sulaimon makes him look like an analytics god.

Defense is a completely different story, if defensive rating is to be trusted. Sulaimon is #3 on Duke in ACC play, only a bit behind #1 Plumlee and #2 Okafor, and a bit ahead of #4 Winslow and #5 Jefferson. Matt's defensive rating has been really bad, hovering around the likes of Tyus and Cook. I think Sulaimon being dismissed has already benefited Duke overall, but for it to be inarguable, Matt is going to need to pick up his defense. Given Matt's rate of improvement in all aspects over his career, I think he can pull it off.
 
Any rating that has Okafor as our second best defender isn't of much value, imo.

It seems to continually overvalue bigs who rebound at a decent clip. I understand that defensive rebounds end a possession, but again, this is where I get off the analytics bandwagon. It also had Mason as our best defender in 2013, when by any sane person's eyes it was Kelly.
 
Defensive rating really slants in favor of big men and against guards, which makes Sulaimon and Winslow's grouping with Plumlee, Okafor and Jefferson in the 101-103 range pretty impressive, even if you consider the stat in a vacuum to be almost entirely worthless (I do). I think a fair use of the stat is to look at guards on one team together, bigs on one team together and wings on one team together, which of course winds up making the stat almost entirely worthless, since there are usually at most 2-3 players to compare in each group.

Kentucky by defensive rating in SEC play: Towns, WCS, Dakari, Lee, Harrison, Lyles, Harrison, Ulis, Booker. If you look at the full season, to include Poythress, it's basically a 100% correlation between size and defensive rating.

For an exception, Aaron Craft his senior year had the best defensive rating on his team, and his team was #3 on defense. I interpret that as meaning Craft's defense is the standard for a point guard. TJ McConnell was very close to beating out Aaron Gordon for #1 defensive rating on the #1 defense. I think the new stereotype for white point guards is that they play great defense but have broken shots and no range.
 


Yeesh. Anonymous sources, FERPA. We're never going to get the whole story. This has the potential of turning into a real mess. For everyone's sake, I hope the school had a better plan in place to respond to the allegations, after what transpired in 2006.

This much I opine with some certainty: he should/would not have been dismissed on the basis of rumors and allegations, so from the basketball end, there's more to the story as well.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
Still can't believe his usage was so high in the offense. Disgusting.
Click to expand...

He was raping our offense.
 
Sulaimon's potential life:

1. Get full ride to Duke.
2. Shoot 3s and defend.
3. Don't sexually assault anyone.
4. Play in NBA.

Instead:

1. Get full ride to Duke.
2. Miss layups while falling over.
3. Sexually assault lots of people.
4. Be pariah.
 
That's a real tough situation for the staff. Sexual assault is a major deal but what are you supposed to do when 2 girls make an accusation when the 2 girls won't go to the authorities. Basically the staffs only choice was to make a judgment that is outside of their expertise. Count me in the crowd that thinks a guy shouldn't be crucified over this without a trial. The media shitstorm is coming though.
 
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