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As has hopefully become abundantly clear, I place a premium upon quality artwork in my administration of this blog.  That’s why I’m so excited to introduce Josh Frankel, the newest addition to my staff.

Josh has been generating NBA comics since 2007 at his blog, Garbage Time All-Stars.  His comics have also appeared on Yahoo!’s Ball Don’t Lie blog and in Basketball Prospectus.  He lives in an amorphous region known as Golden State and “is a big fan of inbounding the ball off of an opposing player’s back.”

On the illustration above, in his own words:

An amusing side effect of the so-called super-team is the way every meager scrap of off-hand nothing is swaddled in over-caffeinated analysis.  Throw in a media drooling to see their Riley-as-executioner story reinforced and a superstar who’s preened under the microscope for too long and you get posts about every stray raised eyebrow, mush-mouthed post-game comment, and, yes, light grazing of shoulders.  The body language says everything!  They’re not smiling enough!  What can the towel boy tell us?  There are layers of meaning in this passage of gas!

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This edition of ’94 Toons depicts the subject of Daryl Morey’s central dilemma this trade season: the Knicks picks. How much are they truly worth and should that value be cashed in?  It’s a classic case of ‘bird-in-the-hand’ risk analysis: the picks could be as high as #6 and #2, but could also even possibly fall out of the lottery.  In a trade, their value would surely lie somewhere in between, begging the question of whether to wait the hand.

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Predictably, this week’s edition of ’94 Toons, drawn by Troy Palmer-Hughes, touches on the issue of the day: Carmelo Anthony.

The illustration depicts one possible outcome from an Anthony acquisition: content in his ways to the detriment of the greater good.  Can Carmelo make use of his talents in sacrificing for the team?

Conventional wisdom has held overwhelmingly in favor of a pursuit.  This blog has endorsed such a trade. But the case against is equally compelling.

A reader, Blake, writes:

Melo is Allen Iverson at the 3. Would you trade anything important for AI? I wouldn’t.

later expounding:

Having Melo on the team is akin to throwing away possessions. He stole the ball and rebounded more than he fouled and turned it over, netting 2 possessions. But last season, for every 10 shots he made, he missed nearly 12. Teams get about 25% of the offensive rebounds. Thus Melo threw away about 9 possessions a game with his shooting, for a total of 7 possessions lost each game.

For comparison, Lebron James netted 4 more steals and rebounds than turnovers and fouls. He missed 10 shots for every 10 he made. Considering offensive rebounding, that’s only 7.5 possessions a game that are lost via shooting, with a total of 3.5 possessions lost per game.

Lebron loses 3.5 possessions fewer every game than Carmelo. For a team getting 1 point per possesssion (not that great of an offense), that’s 3.5 points on the scoreboard. That’s often the difference between a win and a loss. In fact, last year the Rockets averaged only .3 points less than their opponents. Throwing away 7 possessions does not help close that gap.

…

Here are the total possessions lost for a few other SFs:

Paul Pierce: 4.3 possessions lost

Gerald Wallace: actually gains his team 1.8 possessions

Andrew Iguodala: 2 possessions lost

…

The difference in efficiency matters. Carmelo is a great athlete, yes, but just because his game seems good and powerful doesn’t mean it is.

The stat-geek community has been vocal in its belief of Melo’s true worth.  Might there be a fraction?  Morey himself has expressed this team’s need for a true superstar.

Writes Blake:

When Morey says superstar, I doubt he means what ESPN calls a superstar. He means a statistically productive and/or defensive superstar. He gave up a minor star in Rudy Gay to get a defensive star in Battier. Melo probably isn’t a superstar in Morey’s eyes.

’94 Toons is a bi-monthly cartoon illustrated by Troy Palmer-Hughes with commentary from Rahat Huq.

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For quite some time, since the blog’s inception, I have been wanting to test the limits of editorial expression.  My initial vision of a basketball publication included, as one of its major elements, a regular cartoon feature as seen in other genres.  The problem though was feasibility, and up to this point, I was just never able to find an artist.

That’s why I’m so excited to introduce my newest feature, ’94 Toons, and our newest contributor, Troy Palmer-Hughes.  ’94 Toons will be a bi-monthly cartoon, drawn by Troy, with commentary by me.

Troy also illustrated the images on the sidebar of the two men representing the Houston Rockets’ past and present – Yao Ming and Hakeem Olajuwon.

A little bit about Troy:

“Long, long ago, in a small, dusty shop in a quaint village by the western sea, Troy Palmer-Hughes was one of the first girls to test-play a little game called ‘Dungeons and Dragons’.  That led to a life of drawing knights, dragons and unicorns, and assorted other beasties, and a career in the entertainment industry.  These days, she produces independent film, themed entertainment projects, and draws for a wide variety of interesting clients.  She and her husband, horses, and dog reside on a 10-acre ranch in a rustic canyon on the outskirts of Los Angeles.”

Our inaugural edition depicts the elephant in the room: Yao Ming’s health in the face of renewed expectations.  Pundits abound predicting greater successes after a summer of breaking the bank.  Still, all will again be for naught if the Rockets’ center’s track record stays to form.  Apart from the day’s optimism, what reason do we really have to believe that this time, for Yao, anything will be different?

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