Empty the Bench

By Brian Spencer

Debuted last week with Joakim Noah taking on Greg Oden (link below), “Who You Got?” is a new ETB series that looks at two NBA players’ futures and tries to answer the following: if you had to pick one of these players for the remainder of their career, regardless of salary implications and their hypothetical future teammates, who would it be?

Previously:
- Chicago Bulls C Joakim Noah vs. Portland Trail Blazers C Greg Oden

Their Connection

There were three guards taken in the first 15 picks of the 2007 NBA Draft: Ohio State freshmen Mike Conley (4th), Texas A&M senior Acie Law (11th), and Eastern Washington sophomore Rodney Stuckey (15th). Sorry, Atlanta Hawks, but unfortunately there are no mulligans on Law, who played sparingly and showed little in two seasons with the Hawks before being shipped to the Golden State Warriors. He’s currently riding the pine for the Chicago Bulls, his third team of the season, and faces an uncertain NBA future moving forward as an unrestricted free agent this summer. He’s likely headed to Europe.

That leaves Conley and Stuckey. Despite playing just one season for a very good Ohio State team, Conley was pegged as a definite top-five pick, jockeying with and eventually losing out to Al Horford to be the third-overall pick behind Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. Just 19 years old on draft day, Conley drew favorable comparisons to Chris Paul.

Stuckey, on the other hand, was more of an unknown coming out of small Eastern Washington. A true scoring machine, yes–he averaged 24.2 points on 47% FG over his two collegiate seasons–but questions about how well his game would translate to the NBA, as well as which guard position he was best suited for, lingered. Optimists saw shades of Dwyane Wade, and betting on that upside was a gamble everybody knew Detroit Pistons GM Joe Dumars was ready if Stuckey were there.

The Case for Mike Conley

Still only 22 years old, Conley still has room to grow. Plenty of it. His development in Memphis has been slow, and for an impatient team with a dwindling fanbase, that’s a problem. For all the whispers of Conley turning a corner in this his third full season, he’s still shooting in the low 40% range, hasn’t shown an ability to regularly get to the free-throw line (just 2.3 attempts per over 2 1/2 seasons), and for a true point guard has displayed anything but a CP3-esque knack for setting up his teammates, though to his credit he’s upped his per-game assists by over 1 compared to last year (from 4.3 to 5.4).

Conley does seem to have a decent handle on the game, however, and if it’s a game manager the Grizzlies need, he’s more comfortable sitting back, getting his team into the offense, and looking for his shot second than Stuckey is. His three-point shooting is surprisingly strong, with near identical pers this season and last of 1.1 per game on about 40%; granted, that’s on just 2.7 attempts per, but it’s a promising sign.

As the coaching staff trusts him more and more, and as talent around Conley continues to improve–we saw what he could do in college with a dominant presence in the paint (Oden)–he should improve along with it. Already rumored to have been on the trading block, though, I question whether the Grizzlies are still committed to him in the long-term.

The case for Rodney Stuckey, and the final verdict, after the break…

The Case for Rodney Stuckey

At 6-5 and 205 pounds, Stuckey has a good 4 inches and 20 pounds on Conley. When he puts his mind to it, few NBA defenders can stop him from getting into the paint and/or creating his own shot, a talent never to be underestimated in today’s hand-check free league. That’s where comparisons to Wade still hold up, though for whatever reason and no matter how hard he tries, Stuckey still seems to get little respect from the officials and doesn’t get as many whistles as probably deserves.

Like Conley, the 24-year-old Stuckey still hasn’t found a consistent rhythm from the field: as his shot attempts have gone up this season in the toothless Pistons offensive attack (15.5 per), his field-goal shooting has plummeted to 40%. He’s also not much of a three-point threat at this stage in his career, but he seems to realize that and is only taking 1 attempt per. Despite his low efficiecy shooting the ball, he’s increased his scoring to 17.7 per, up from 13.4 in his second season, and in December averaged nearly 21 points per on 44% shooting.

The kid can score. According to head coach John Kuester, he can defend, too, and has the talent to be special on that end:

“(Stuckey) has a chance to be one of the best defensive guards I’ve ever been around because he’s so strong, he’s got size and he’s athletic,” Kuester told Bret Bakita and Michael Grey on “The Starting Lineup” on WBBL. “He’s got a huge upside, both offensively and defensively, and he’s got a bright future with us.”

But is he a shooting guard or a point guard? The Pistons have groomed him to be the latter since the day he arrived, and while he’s averaging right around the same number of assists (5) as Conley, he’s clearly most comfortable in shoot-first, pass-second mode. Maybe it doesn’t matter–talent is talent, after all–but with the team’s backcourt situation muddled at best, it’ll be interesting to see how much longer the team keeps trying to force what some call a square peg into a round hole.

The Verdict

With all due credit to both of these gentlemen, when I see Mike Conley, I see a younger Chucky Atkins. Yeah yeah, I’m crazy, but that’s how I see it. Conley’s ceiling is obviously still much higher than Atkins’ ever was, but search your feelings, Grizzlie fans, you know it to be true: both are undersized, both are mediocre-at-best shooters, both are… okay, I’m exaggerating here, but save for the millions of dollars he’s made by turning pro early, Conley should have stayed in school for at least another season or two. He wasn’t ready, and by starting in his NBA career on a bad Grizzlies team, his development has, I think, forever been stunted.

I have to go with Rodney Stuckey here. If the ’07 draft was held again today, he’d arguably be a top-five pick and still has the potential to be a 20+ point scorer and, perhaps, to be an All-NBA defender. I don’t think you can say that about Conley. Plus, I’ll take a guy who physically resembles Dwyane Wade over one who mirrors Chucky Atkins any day.

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