Sometimes fans or teams make snap judgments, and often those initial perceptions stick. Let’s go through an exercise today in taking another look at a few situations:

In case you didn’t notice, the Kevin Love/O.J. Mayo gap is shrinking. The Grizzlies are 2-15 in their past 17 games, just fired their head coach and now, indeed, have a worse record than the Wolves (11-30 vs. 13-27) after losing twice to the Pups. The considerable cooling of O.J. Mayo has played a role in that cooling off. Mayo was shooting a robust 46.7 percent from the field before the Grizzlies went into that tailspin. He was being hailed as the top rookie of the year candidate. He averaged 23.1 ppg in November. That cooled to 18.1 ppg in the first seven games of December, but the Grizzlies still won five of those games partly because he was still shooting straight and getting those points without jacking up too many shots 46-for-96, 47.9 percent). Since the losing has begun, however, Mayo’s numbers have fallen considerably. He’s shooting just 40.6 percent in his past 17 games and is averaging just 16.3 ppg in January. A rookie in a slump? Perhaps. A cooling off period after an overachieving hot start he couldn’t sustain? A league starting to figure him out? Perhaps.

But it’s worth noting that Love started perking up right about the time Mayo started falling down. Indeed, in January when Minnesota has won seven of nine games, Love is averaging 11.4 ppg and 10.4 rebounds despite playing an average of just 23.1 minutes. The overall raw numbers between he and Mayo are hard to compare because Mayo still averages 15 more minutes per game. But one reasonably fair measure is John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating stat. Love is fourth among rookies at 16.45, while Mayo is 11th at 15.52. In short, both players have been about what we thought they were. This is not Brandon Roy/Randy Foye redux (though that gap is also shrinking … but we’ll pick our battles today), particularly when considering the trade as a whole.

*Flip Saunders won an average of 59 games during the regular season in three tries with Detroit. This year’s squad is, at the midway point, on pace for 48 wins and a seed no better than fourth. If the Pistons were tired of losing in the conference finals (as Flip did in all three years there), they shouldn’t have to worry about that this year.

*Is Jeff Kent a Hall of Famer? That question has been bandied about lately, with Kent muddling through a retirement press conference yesterday. We guess it depends on your point of view. Playing primarily second base, Kent amassed some staggering numbers: 377 home runs, more than 1,500 RBI. He crushes Ryne Sandberg, a HOFer, in those categories and even batting average (.290 to .285). Sandberg, of course, was an excellent fielder while Kent was certainly not. In the “comparable player” part of Baseball Reference, Kent is paired with 10 players — five HOFers and five who are not. Three of the HOFers were catchers; one was Sandberg; the other was Jim Rice, who just made it in (and just barely) this year.

Finally, and fairly or not, we believe there is a sort of “sniff test” for the Hall. That is to say, what does your instinct tell you when you think of that player. This will probably drive Brandon crazy, but we believe it. And we say Kent fails that test. Not because he was surly. Just because he didn’t have that extra something to make him memorable. He’s a HOVG player. Hall Of Very Good.

*And perhaps we were a little premature in crowning the Gophers men’s hoops team.

Fasola-link! No more overhead wires on light rails?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.