If Donte reaches his prime could he be close to form of Rashard Lewis in his prime?

[kingzallday]

I think I said this in another thread but Greene reminds me of a Josh Smith type player with a jumpshot.

 

[AriesMar27]

I think I said this in another thread but Greene reminds me of a Josh Smith type player with a jumpshot.

if greene had smiths athleticism i would **** my pants... the only thing that donte does that reminds me of smith is the inconsistency and the love for shooting threes... which smith no longer does...

 

[Uncia03]

I don't think that Donte will ever be the shooter that Rashard is.
However, we've been so excited about Brockman over the last few weeks. His career high in rebounds is what...10?

Sometimes the numbers don't matter, it's the impact on court.

Last season Donte just stood at the 3-point line on offense. He didn't move, he just waited for someone to pass him the ball, and more likely than not he'd shoot and miss a 3.
On the defensive end, he was not good. Not unexpected considering the college he played for.

This season he's shown glimpses of the defender he can be. He's also shown a willingness to attack the rim and create for other players. If he can get a consistent outside shot to keep the defense honest while maintaining his aggressiveness towards the rim, that is all I want out of him from an offensive standpoint. So if he ends up only averaging 8-10 points a game, but locks down the other opponents primary wing scorer while giving you 7 boards, 3 assists, 1.5 blocks, and a steal, I'll take that any day of the week.

I am rooting for him to be an impact player for this team. I was not expecting anything from him this year, so what he's shown me so far has greatly exceeded my expectations. Now, I hope that he continues to develop, and with the spectacular job being down by Westphal and his staff, I have expectations that we'll see continued growth and maturity by Donte Greene.

 

[bajaden]

I don't think that Donte will ever be the shooter that Rashard is.
However, we've been so excited about Brockman over the last few weeks. His career high in rebounds is what...10?

Sometimes the numbers don't matter, it's the impact on court.

Last season Donte just stood at the 3-point line on offense. He didn't move, he just waited for someone to pass him the ball, and more likely than not he'd shoot and miss a 3.
On the defensive end, he was not good. Not unexpected considering the college he played for.

This season he's shown glimpses of the defender he can be. He's also shown a willingness to attack the rim and create for other players. If he can get a consistent outside shot to keep the defense honest while maintaining his aggressiveness towards the rim, that is all I want out of him from an offensive standpoint. So if he ends up only averaging 8-10 points a game, but locks down the other opponents primary wing scorer while giving you 7 boards, 3 assists, 1.5 blocks, and a steal, I'll take that any day of the week.

I am rooting for him to be an impact player for this team. I was not expecting anything from him this year, so what he's shown me so far has greatly exceeded my expectations. Now, I hope that he continues to develop, and with the spectacular job being down by Westphal and his staff, I have expectations that we'll see continued growth and maturity by Donte Greene.

I would love if Donte could average 10 points, 7 boards, 3 assists, 1.5 Blocks, and 1 steal. It would be a giant leap up from where he is right now. At the moment he is averaging 2.6 rebounds per 20 minutes of play. To put that in prespective. Brockman is averaging 4.0 rebounds per 11 minutes of play. And by the way. Those 10 boards that Brockman got as a career high, were grabbed in 16.46 minutes. Donte is also averaging 1.3 assists per game against 1.5 turnovers a game. To go with his 0.5 blocks a game. He is however averaging 9 points a game. His overall shooting percentage isn't that bad at 46.9%. His three pt shooting is still less than stellar at 33.8%.

I think one could safely say that he has quite a ways to go to get to the stats you would wish for, much less be compared with Lewis or Josh Smith. Thats not to say he can't become that player, but I think its important to keep prespective. Too many times a player becomes unpopular because the fans have a higher vision of what that player can be, than what real talent dictates.

 

[dbfish]

Donte doesn't have to shoot like Rashard or be as athletic as Josh Smith ( heaven knows we wouldn't want to see Aries mess his pants). All Donte has to do is be himself and continue his growth as a fine player, maybe even one of star status. Personally if we keep Kevin, fine. I see Donte as the starting SF in the future. That being the case I see Omri getting the 6th man job over Garcia. Not bad having energy guys like Omri, Garcia and Brockman coming off the bench at the first sign of trouble. Oops. I forgot Beno. Sorry Sergio fans. I think he will be the odd man out.

 

[Uncia03]

I would love if Donte could average 10 points, 7 boards, 3 assists, 1.5 Blocks, and 1 steal. It would be a giant leap up from where he is right now.

.....

I think one could safely say that he has quite a ways to go to get to the stats you would wish for, much less be compared with Lewis or Josh Smith. Thats not to say he can't become that player, but I think its important to keep prespective. Too many times a player becomes unpopular because the fans have a higher vision of what that player can be, than what real talent dictates.

You know what's odd. When I was in summer league this year I got autographs from Tyreke, Omri, and Coach Westphal. I didn't get anything from Donte, because frankly I wasn't even sure he was going to be part of this team for much longer. But after the last few days, and reading my posts even I have to conclude that he must be my favorite player of all time, or some such, which really isn't the case.

I will admit that I do get excited about his potential because frankly, when was the last time we had a hyper-athletic SF who had great potential and then saw it all develop to see that player help lead the Kings to great success? I can't think of anyone, though this smacks of how we let Wallace get away. (Though their games are quite different.)

I want him to reach his potential because it bodes great things for this Kings team. And again for me it's not so much about how many points he can put up, but how he can impact a game. That is why I referenced Brockman, as sometimes his impact isn't necessarily quantified in the boxscore.

So I know I referenced numbers which I'd love for him to meet someday:
10 points, 7 boards, 3 assists, 1.5 Blocks, and 1 steal.

After you posted that it would be a big leap for him, I thought I'd look into the numbers for him.

The first thing that popped out to me was his very inconsistent playing time. If you look at the game logs for all of December and this first part of January, you'll see that his minutes are all over the place.
They average out to 22.6 minutes a game, but here is the breakdown:

# of Minutes.....# Games Played
10-15....................4
16-20....................3
21-25....................5
26-30....................4
31+.......................2

As you can see, he's got twice as many games where he played between 10-15 minutes (4) compared to games where he got over 30 minutes. (2)

Now there have been a number of games where he wasn't having much impact on the floor, so I don't actually have a problem with his low minutes in those cases, but it's also been noted times where he's been playing very well, and then gets pulled and forgotten about.

I also agree that at this point, Casspi is by far the steadier hand, so if Westphal decides to go with Casspi over Donte in certain situations, especially when Casspi has been playing as well as he has been, I have no problems with that at all. But it should be noted that in the same number of games Casspi has had 11 games where he's played over 30 minutes as opposed to Donte's 2 games. So if the minutes for the two players were reversed, I'd imagine we'd see a very different picture.

I would like to see the minutes be more consistent with Donte. Because if he is seeing inconsistent minutes now, what is it going to look like when Kevin and Garcia come back? This is really the time to be getting him a lot of minutes to help with his development.

Now, back to the stats. So he's averaging 22.6 minutes/game in December and January. I decided to bump up his numbers to see what he'd be averaging if he was getting 36 minutes a game.
Here they are:
14.4 points, 4.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.4 blocks, 1.1 steals

Now his boarding definitely needs work, but when you look at the log he'll have games with 0-2 rebounds, and then others with 5-7 rebounds. His rebounding definitely suffers when he's playing out of position at the SG spot. So if he got all his minutes at the SF, I'd expect better rebounding numbers. But all in all, taking his really inconsistent 22 minutes and bumping them up to 36 minutes, and his numbers actually look close to what my upper limit expectations are for him.

Now we both know that in real-life it doesn't really work that way. You can't project numbers based on minutes because they will always end up inflated. But I hadn't checked out his numbers when I tossed out my ideal statline, so I was surprised when they actually came out fairly close per 36 minutes based on the last month or so of play.

I think as he increases his mental focus and steadies his play, he'll begin to earn more consistent minutes, and hopefully we'll see him put up the numbers, but more importantly have the impact that he is capable of having to help this team win.

 

[Arby's Roast Beef]

I remember comparisons ranged across a wide spectrum of long three point bombing big men such as Tim Thomas, Jonathan Bender and Rashard Lewis, but he's clearly not like that. For reference I have a thumbnail scouting report of him on the other thread, where in rapid summary I depict him as a good finisher with range but an inconsistent jumpshot, but with very good defense and even greater defensive potential. Going forward, I really think his defense is going to be is primary asset here--he's doing things that few others do at this stage, and unlike some other defensive stoppers he's got versatility and some flashes of an role playing inside-outside game. I think the offense is just cream on top of the defense, which pretty much negates those offense-first comparisons made up top. Trying to think of a current player he can relate to...I know this is a very acute comparison, but maybe Josh Smith? Sure Donte has a better jumpshot than Smith (anyone has a better jumper), but both combine flashes of stat-stuffing defense with decent enough offense and versatility. Donte's faarrr from the rebounder and passer Josh Smith is and definitely less athletic, but it's not a terribly bad comparison.

I guess the point is that Donte's an amalgam of many different players--he's simply put, unique, at his peak. I'd like to say that he's Jared Jeffries defensively (don't scoff, Jeffries is a very underrated defender), and Andrei Kirilenko offensively (reasonably, but not terribly effective, offense).