Ides of March: National Player of the Year?

The contest for national player of the year was pretty much a two horse race until last Saturday afternoon, when the talking heads of the world starting flipping their lids over some guy named Hasheem Thabeet. I saw Dick Vitale ramble for a minute or two, speaking only in nicknames about Thabeet, losing everyone, and then turning to the Wisconsin crowd that had formed prior to the Wisconsin – Ohio State game he was to call later that night and saying “how bout this crowd!” (They went nuts). Anyone who’s seen Billy Madison knows that Vitale ripped one straight from Billy's playbook. During the academic decathlon that would decide his fate, Billy incoherently tried to explain the Industrial Revolution through the children’s book “The Puppy Who Lost His Way” before yelling “Knibb High Football Rules!” and winning back the crowd. The principal’s response was basically how I felt about Vitale and everyone else’s newfound Thabeet obsession.

Why was everyone so caught up on Hasheem Thabeet? We’ve been hearing about him all year about how he blocks and alters shot inside. He’s improving offensively, sure, but why pretend to insert his name into the discussion for national player of the year now? Well Saturday afternoon, Thabeet had 25 points, 20 rebounds, and 9 blocks against Seton Hall, who also happens to be my alma mater. Why that’s important is because well, I actually watched the game, and I happen to know a little bit about Seton Hall. I’m not sure if anyone else actually watched it, it was at noon (I personally had to set my alarm for 11:30 am to make sure I could catch it) and Georgetown v. Syracuse was on the World Wide Leader at the same time. Let’s talk briefly about this game. First of all, Seton Hall’s tallest player is 6’9”. His name is John Garcia, that's him above, fouling someone from NAIA has-been Cal Baptist earlier this season. John is an underrated part of the Seton Hall team, they can't win without him (mainly because their tallest player on the court would be 6'6" without him), but John has two incredibly bad knees and can barely jump, never mind dunk.

On Monday night, in a pre-game interview, when asked about Thabeet, Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon complimented the Tanzanian on his shot blocking ability, but also mentioned two things that we spot on. Thabeet is a help-defense shot blocker, which means someone is generally always open when he goes to block a shot (something I was yelling at my TV during that Seton Hall game). Secondly, Dixon commented that shots that get blocked are generally bad shots. Not bad in the sense that they’re getting blocked, but bad in the sense of bad shot selection, as in most probably won’t go in anyway. Jamie Dixon knows what’s up.

Back to the Seton Hall game that suddenly put Thabeet in the “running” for national player of the year. Against what is essentially a four guard offense with a heavy set center who would be about the fourth tallest person on the court for Connecticut, the Huskies kept throwing up alley oops and Thabeet kept dunking the ball until he reached those 25 points (by the way, half of all of Thabeets field goals made this season are dunks). Getting 20 rebounds for him in that game is like going to your local middle school and outrebounding a bunch of highly skilled sixth graders playing on an eight-foot hoop. As for the 9 blocked shots, there are few teams in America who have poorer shot selection than Seton Hall (it's part of their 'every time we have the ball let's pretend it's a fast break!' offense). It got to the point where everyone was driving the lane and hoping Thabeet would whiff in a block attempt. Better yet, Thabeet is supposed to be a terror on defense. Now back to the aforementioned John Garcia. He averages 8 points and 7 rebounds a game. Against Thabeet? 22 points, 13 rebounds, and 6 blocks! It’s a career day against the best defender ever! John Garcia for player of the year! By the way, if the Big East’s second leading scorer, Jeremy Hazell, doesn’t have a bad day with missing wide open shots and everything, Seton Hall wins. I’m not kidding, go back and watch the game.

This article is a few days late at getting its point across. This was meant to be a warning against jumping on the Thabeet bandwagon like the media tried to do over the weekend. DeJuan Blair beat me to the point on Monday night with his one handed-reverse suplex of Thabeet. Oh, and he outplayed him. Like, by a lot. 22 points and 23 rebounds to 5 points and 4 rebounds a lot. Oh, and Thabeet only blocked 2 shots, because Jamie Dixon figured out how to tell his guys to find the open guy once Thabeet leaves his man, and of course how to not take bad shots. There are a few other instances of Thabeet being outplayed this season (Greg Monroe of Georgetown comes to mind), but the fact of the matter is, his numbers every game just aren’t good enough, look them up. I don’t mean to pick on one player with Thabeet, but he can’t really be considered a national player of the year candidate. The fact of the matter is, what Thabeet did on Saturday, Blake Griffin and Luke Harangody do consistently. I don't mean to discount the likes of Jerel McNeal, Gimp Curry, Jeff Teague or even DeJuan Blair, but if it's okay with everyone else I'd like to move on to the two horse race now.

It’s down to Luke Harangody and Blake Griffin. It was all Griffin until Notre Dame’s sudden change of heart (where they actually start showing up and playing) in their 33 point win over Louisville last Thursday. Harangody had 32 and 17 after his abysmal performance against UCLA. Just when Harangody, who can score from almost anywhere on the court, was in contention to make this contest interesting, Blake Griffin pulled one out of that annoying Michael Jordan/Mia Hamm “anything you can do I can do better” commercial (can someone explain to me why when MJ is playing goalie he's trying to block a shot from 30 yards away from goal and about 2 feet away from Mia?) and scored 40 points and took down 23 rebounds against Texas Tech on Saturday. Woah. Both dominating performances. Let’s take a look at this table:


20+ points and 15+ rebounds in a game is what I consider a dominating performance. Griffin has done it 12 times, Harangody 9. What’s even more amazing is that there are two players with a combined twenty-one 20 point, 15 rebound games this season. Griffin has more, but now lets only include "good" and power conference teams (yes, I am including Davidson and UAB despite not being in power conferences and DePaul, despite being…well, DePaul):


Look at that, only a one game difference. Now what’s the best way to sort this all out? I say the best way is for Notre Dame to make a run, finish something like 10-8 in the Big East, and get an 8 or 9 seed in Oklahoma’s bracket in the NCAA Tournament. Then we can see them square off head to head and let that, instead of a whole resume over the course of this season (which, in a vacuum, are very similar resumes), do the deciding. Yeah, that would be nice, but for now take a look at this. I call it reality:


I think that just about says it all. Griffin is the best player in the country on the best team in the country (come next Monday), while Notre Dame languishes in the bottom half of the Big East. Hmm, Notre Dame 5-7, 14-10 and Seton Hall 5-7, 14-10. Maybe I really should look into this John Garcia for player of the year thing.