NBA Free Agency: Michael Beasley and Wayne Ellington find new homes
By Ben Beecken
Another day, another pair of former Wolves finding new homes via free agency.
Yes, we’re to that point in the off-season. Every day or so, it seems, you’ll pull up NBA free agency news on your internet machines and see a slew of former Wolves — from the darkest of the dark ages, generally — signing up to play bit roles on teams around the league.
There were a lot of fringe-rotation-type players on the squads of the Randy Wittman and Kurt Rambis eras, and many of them are still bench-hopping across the NBA.
This week has already seen Michael Beasley sign a non-guaranteed contract with the Memphis Grizzlies and Wayne Ellington agree to lace ’em up with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Beasley is an interesting case — after (predictably) floundering upon signing a large three-year pact with the Phoenix Suns a couple of years ago, he found work with the Miami Heat a year ago, occasionally playing legitimate minutes for one of the best teams in the NBA before finding himself in street clothes as a healthy scratch for many of Miami’s games come playoff time. His defensive focus appeared to eventually be his downfall, but it was still his most productive offensive season since his first stint in Miami (read: he jacked up a ton of shots in Minnesota and Phoenix).
The Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs both had Beasley in for workouts this off-season, and both passed on signing the former number-two overall pick to a contract. Ultimately, Beasley ended up in Memphis.
Yes, two of the more analytically-savvy organizations in the NBA in San Antonio and Memphis seriously considered, and in the Grizzlies’ case, ultimately did sign Beasley to a deal. Michael Beasley, who was, analytically-speaking, one of the very worst players in the league in 2012-13 for the Suns while playing more than 20 minutes per game. In fact, this side of Austin Rivers, I’d argue he was the worst player in the NBA that season.
It’s a bit of a puzzle, to be sure, but it’s certainly due to a combination of his insane natural ability, and the hope that his analytically-sound college performance may eventually translate to the NBA.
College-to-NBA projection systems are far from foolproof, and there isn’t a “consensus” model that “works”. But it’s pretty much universally agreed upon that steal rate and rebounding rate, especially for big men, are two of the most accurate predictors of NBA success. And Beasley rebounded at a historic rate as a freshman at Kansas State.
Memphis is trying to catch lightning in a bottle, and why not? Nothing to lost on a non-guaranteed contract, and there certainly is an immense amount of talent inside Beasley’s 6′-9″ frame.
As for Wayne Ellington, it is a bit surprising that a contending team didn’t ink him to a deal. Ellington has more or less been making it Wayne since he entered the league with the Wolves as the 28th overall pick in the infamous Jonny-Flynn-over-Stephen-Curry draft of 2009. Early in his career in Minnesota, he had not quite accepted the role of a specialist, and was not an overall net-positive contributor.
Since leaving the Wolves, however, Ellington had decent seasons in 2012-13 (split between Memphis and Cleveland) and 2013-14 (Dallas). Despite playing less than nine minutes per game for the Mavericks, Ellington shot three-pointers at a crazy 42.4% clip while hoisting up better than one attempt per game in his limited playing time.
He seems to be the perfect fit as a ninth-man that can provide offense off the bench, but he’ll likely be given a chance to expand his role on the mish-mash that is the 2014-15 Lakers roster. Best of luck to Wayne, of course, as he was a fun player to root for in Minnesota.
We’ll have the rest of FanSided’s Top-50 NBA players later today, so keep your machines tuned to DWW.