{"id":658,"date":"2006-04-27T19:52:33","date_gmt":"2006-04-28T01:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/2005-player-stats-and-the-case-for-renaldo-balkman\/"},"modified":"2006-04-27T19:52:33","modified_gmt":"2006-04-28T01:52:33","slug":"2005-player-stats-and-the-case-for-renaldo-balkman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2005-player-stats-and-the-case-for-renaldo-balkman\/","title":{"rendered":"2005 Player Stats and the Case for Renaldo Balkman"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you haven’t noticed, the offseason will be reserved for administrative notes in this space. In this instance, I’d like to direct you to individual stats from the 2004-05 season<\/a>, which I just posted. <\/p>\n

In doing so, I’ve noticed there is a select group of guys that posts a Block Rate of at least 6 and a Steal Rate of at least 2.5 over a full season. Among power conference players, the list in 2006 was Shelden Williams, Joakim Noah, Al Horford, and Julian Wright. All will eventually be first round picks, perhaps lottery picks. <\/p>\n

There was only one power conference player in the 6\/2.5 club last season. That player was…Shavlik Randolph?? Er, I mean, Shavlik Randolph! Anyway, Randolph leaving Duke early was widely viewed as a practical joke gone bad, but he did manage to get fairly regular non-garbage time minutes after catching on with the Sixers as an undrafted free agent.<\/p>\n

The other point is that South Carolina’s Renaldo Balkman, whom I mentioned in passing a couple of times last season, barely misses the 2006 list at 5.9\/4.1. Balkman isn’t among the top 75 juniors listed at DraftExpress<\/a>, and ESPN’s Chad Ford has just placed him at #127 overall on his big board<\/a>. Balkman’s raw numbers are unimpressive: 9.6 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 1.9 apg. But USC played at the 16th slowest pace in D-I, and Balkman only played about 25 mpg.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Balkman declared for the draft<\/a>. It’s probably no more than a Pittsnogle-esque information-gathering move, and probably will be met with a collective yawn by the basketball community. But given his impact on defense against solid competition and<\/i> that he has a competent offensive game<\/a>, I think it’s a good bet that he’ll be earning NBA money someday, whether it’s this season or next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you haven’t noticed, the offseason will be reserved for administrative notes in this space. In this instance, I’d like to direct you to individual stats from the 2004-05 season, which I just posted. In doing so, I’ve noticed there is a select group of guys that posts a Block Rate of at least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}