Mavs Moneyball Staff Reactions to the Derek Fisher Signing, Part 1

Alan Smithee: Derek Fisher is not a good NBA player. He is not a passable NBA player. He is at the bottom of every comprehensive metric, yearly. He has been in legitimate contention for worst NBA regular, for a while. If he had spent a decade in Atlanta and not on the Lakers he would have been retired for a while now, and nobody would give two shits about him.

Plus didn't he nearly go to jail?

At least Dojo and Roddy could be auditioning for other teams via trade. They're not winning anymore with Derek Fisher's rotting corpse than the two kids. Either way there has to be a better option out there.

It's just going to be Carter, Murphy and Fisher scurrying off the bench to go hoist threes all year long, isn't it? I could tolerate losses if there was youth and excitement and some sort of upside. Not the bottom of the barrel scrapping to keep the team mediocre.

Kirk Henderson: I'm incapable of writing anything without cursing or in all caps at the moment.

AndyTobo: Y'all crazy. Fisher sucks but he hasn't had more than 1.2 TOs a game since 2007. Collison has had more than 3 a game since the beginning of the month whereas Collison has averaged around 3 in November, and struggled to throw a simple inlet pass to Dirk in the preseason, the single most important pass the Mavs need to make. Dojo and Roddy could certainly audition how much they blow, but I think other teams get that. John Stockton isn't available at this point in the season.

That middle sentence didn't make sense but Collison has averaged 2.7 in November.

Alan Smithee: The idea that Derek Fisher is going to be a great distributor and not make mistakes seems misguided to me. The triangle offense required him to advance the ball past halfcourt, hand it off to somebody else, and go spot up. Nothing else. Last year he was 33rd in the league in assist/turnover ratio. Darren Collison was 22nd.

And there's little evidence suggesting Fisher can even spot up effectively anymore. What we've also known for a while is that he can't get his own shot, at all, and his defensive reputation has always been a few steps ahead of where any real impact could be quantified.

I think what this is really about is that there was a period last year after Fisher went to Oklahoma City where the big story was how Fisher was such a good locker room guy and how cool that was to have on a young team. Then when OKC went to the Finals it somehow became a notch in Fisher's belt. Even though the entire time he was stinking the place up. Somehow this meme caught on and was accepted as fact. Fisher was really good for OKC, even though if you just watched him, and didn't read stories about how nice his speeches were, you'd think he was really bad.

Dallas wants intangibles, the principle value of which seem to be that you can't prove they don't exist, and any gains achieved can be accredited to such intangibles, without any evidence whatsoever.

Fisher has managed to get rid of Troy Murphy, so there is actually a silver lining here.

AndyTobo: Fisher sucks and he's not a good point guard. But if he's not more in control of the game than Collison, he certainly is more so than Dojo. He seldom does anything, but he seldom makes BAD passes. Even this year his typical 4.5 assists to 1 or so TOs isn't, by ratio, much better than Collison's 6.5ish to 2.5ish. But with serving sizes like that, maybe ratio isn't the best way though I love it as a stat in general.

I mean, you know. J-kidd was 10th in the league last year, but even he had 2.9 assists to turnovers, not all that much better than Collison or Fisher, but nobody thought Kidd had any trouble getting the ball into Dirk at the right time, and I'm worried about that for Collison. If we can trade for your beloved Calderon or whatever, that would obviously be much better, but this isn't the worst idea the Mavs ever had.

Alan Smithee: That's only because the Mavs have had a lot of bad ideas. It seems like Collison is taking the blame for the team's collapse, which seems a little unfair. I think he's been, on the whole, OK, though clearly pretty inconsistent.

Maybe Fisher can teach Collison to file a great tax return, but I don't think there's much he can show Collison on a basketball court. The fact that we're even having a conversation about him just shows that he's a classic example of how being any part of a championship team can elevate you far above your deserved station.

Should we go get Mark Madsen to teach Chris Kaman to dance?

AndyTobo: I think it's pretty clear we should get Joey Crawford to teach Kaman how to dance, after recent events, but while I think you're absolutely right about why the Mavs got Fisher, that is their enormous hard-on for vets, I don't think any of us thinks that it's Fisher's vettiness that will be any good to this team. I also think Collison's been great, but the motor of this team is getting the ball to Dirk despite tough defense and I'm not convinced he can do that and I think Fisher probably can. I've been wrong before, I will be wrong again.

Fisher can't shoot, can't drive, can't play defense, but do I think he can get it to a great player in a spot the great player likes without turning it over very much? Well, yeah, that's like his career, basically.

Alan Smithee: Even if he can't do that, even if he falls down and poops his old-man shorts on accident, the team will probably still hurt their hands patting him on the back. If the Collison is really behind Derek Fisher on the trust-list for Dallas, then just go ahead and trade him. ASAP. Because there has to be a better option. Calderon. Devin Harris. Somebody.

Josh Bowe: Again, there's no point in taking away more minutes from Roddy and Jones unless you're done. It's OK if the Mavs have given up on them (it still sucks) but they HAVE to trade two of the three (Collison, Roddy, Jones). You can't have three guys on the last year of their deals coming off the bench. Get something for them and move on.