FanPost

On Kevin Seraphin...



This post was inspired by a comment on the "You Can Do Better, Gary Neal" article where someone (Israeli Spur Fan, IIRC) posited the idea of trading BLAAAAAIR and Neal for Washington Wizards big man Kevin Seraphin. If I were Ernie Grunfeld, I'd take it. Reasons after the jump.

Seraphin would be a perfect fit on the Spurs due to the following reasons:

He's French. Being on the same team as Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, and Nando de Colo should help him ease into the team. Of course, an unintended side effect is that Spurs games will now have to be also broadcast in French, in addition to its ongoing Spanish broadcasts. But knowing PATFO, he'll use that to his advantage, letting the wee Frenchman make plays in his native tongue to confuse defenses.

He's got good shot selection. He shot 53.1% in his sophomore season, which while not on the Tyson Chandler tier of field goal percentage, is solid for a young big man. He shot 68.4% at the rim, and a pretty solid 46.1% from close and 44.6% from true mid range. While he shot a mediocre 37.5% on the long two, he only attempted that shot 16 times throughout the entire season. Playing with an elite point guard in Parker should help, as he was assisted on 61.6% of his shots, and this is with a very good but inconsistent point guard in John Wall.

He's figured out how to stay on the floor. While his fouls per game increased slightly into his sophomore season, his minutes had doubled - and per 36 minutes, he only had a respectable 4.1 fouls per 36 as opposed to his rookie foul rate of 7.1 per 36. Considering Pop dislikes foul prone big men (save for hack-a-Shaq situations), he shouldn't find it too difficult to continue reducing his foul rates.

He's an advanced stats wunderkind. His PER ranks in at a pretty nice 15.8, which is slightly above average (and for a bad team like the Wizards, average is the equivalent of good). Although he only had 105 in both offensive and defensive rating, these were improvements from his rookie season, where he had 95 offensive rating and a horrid 110 defensive rating (and considering the Wizards had a 101.0 offensive rating and a 106.2 defensive rating as a team, he was a net benefit on both ends of the floor).

It's also a trade that works for both teams. The Wizards have a pretty loaded frontcourt, with veterans in Nene and Emeka Okafor and young prospects like Jan Vesely wrangling for minutes. Meanwhile, the Spurs are in need of size in the frontcourt, and although it would seem counterintuitive for the Wizards to get a smaller big in Blair, he would likely bring a confidence the Wizards have yet to see since the Gilbert Arenas days. Plus, they also get a sharpshooter in Neal, and the Wizards' biggest problem was shooting.

Of course, at the end of the day, I'm fine with the team as they are right now (as long as the Red Rocket gets no minutes by April), but if there's one trade PATFO can consider, it's this one.

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