A lot of you must have already forgotten what it's like watching Ben play. Afflalo doesn't have to be anything other than steady for us to be successful. Hit your shots, don't let your man decimate you, and provide leadership/toughness. Ben could not provide any of those things at any point in the last 3 years. Just by not being a complete and utter useless spot in the starting lineup, our wins will increase by 3-4 games, possibly more. There have been many games that Ben has cost us over the years, either by not defending his man or not hitting his shots. He hasn't earned **** other than earning the right to be traded. He's terrible. Spare me the story on potential please.
I don't like Ben as our starter and I'm not thrilled about AA either.
You said: "Hit your shots, don't let your man decimate you, and provide leadership/toughness".
So Afflalo is better at hitting shoots but because of his shot-selection he has exactly the same TS% as Ben and while he is the better offensive player is production amounts to the 51th highest PER among SG's out of 76- better than Ben, but still pretty bad- another example is him being 42th amongst SG's in ORPM with -0.67, again pretty terrible but better than Ben.
About his defense by all accounts he's pretty terrible- players shoot 1.4% better on him which is the same as Ben but while AA's mark is the worst on the Knicks outside Calderon, Vujacic and rookie Grant- while Ben was about average as it relates to our team.
DRPM puts AA as 84th out of 96th SG's which is beyond terrible, while Ben ranks 39th.
DBPM has AA with -2.4 while Ben is -1.2.
So by the numbers (and my eye test if you trust it
) Ben is the better defender, he isn't good but he's better.
I'm gonna take the provide leadership as looking at team production while he played.
So +/- has AA at -2.1 which is the worst mark on the Knicks other than Grant and our beloved D-Will, while Ben is a +0.3 which is 2nd best on our team after DMC.
And if you look at real plus-minus AA ranked 80th amongst SG while Ben was 56th.
So I don't like both of them starting and while there is a chance AA will rebound if I say that I also have to respect the chance Ben will develop.