An Appreciation For Marc Gasol.

This is a continuation from last night’s post.  That post can be found here.

I’ve done some thinking in the past few hours and I stand by my previous statement.

First, let’s look at Gasol’s value as compared to other centers across the league.

Dwight Howard is obviously still the best center in basketball.  He was injured to end the year, and his constant “trade me/don’t trade me” drama is a distraction, but he’s still #1 and one of the best four or five players in the game.

After Howard, things get pretty interesting.  Andrew Bynum stayed healthy and was downright dominant at times throughout the season.  He plays well on both ends, but still struggles with his maturity, even as recently as game 5 of the Lakers’ first round series against the Nuggets, when he said that he thought closeout games were easy and proceeded to stink for the next two games.

Still, it seems like Bynum’s upside is higher than Gasol’s, but his floor is lower.  Gasol may be the better player right now, but it’s doubtful as to how much he’ll actually improve, where Bynum still could.

Any Bynum-for-Gasol trade would be intriguing, especially since that would team up the Gasols with the Lakers again, but I don’t think either side would do the deal, as the Lakers still want to flip Bynum for Howard and the Grizzlies seem to like their potential Gasol/Gay/Conley core going forward.

So at worst, I have Marc Gasol as the game’s third best center, and second depending on the day.

After him, you have guys like Tyson Chandler, Al Horford, Nene and Joakim Noah.  Those guys are all great players, but don’t have the two-way capabilities that Gasol, Howard and Bynum have.

Chandler, Nene and Noah are all defensive specialists and Horford is a great scorer, but is a little undersized when trying to guard bigger players.

The best thing you can say about Gasol after the past two years is that he raises his game in the playoffs.

Gasol’s last two games, with his team’s back against the wall no less, have doubled as two of his finest performances in his entire career.  You can chalk that up to the fact that Memphis finally got him touches and decided to run the offense through him more, but you have to hit shots for a team to keep going to you, and Gasol is the one guy on the team that when he’s really rolling, he can get everyone else open looks at the basket, especially when he mans the high post and has Zach Randolph on the block.

You always hear about players making other players better, but Gasol truly does that.  He can score in the post, he can hit a 20 foot jumper, he’s an excellent passer.  Quite simply, he’s a world-class offensive player.

Put simply, if the Grizzlies win game 7 on Sunday afternoon, it will be because they got another big game from their best player.  Last season, that player was Zach Randolph.  This season, between Zach’s injury and Rudy Gay’s struggles, the torch has been passed to Big Spain, and rightfully so.

Not too shabby for a guy that was regarded as a throw-in to the trade of his brother Pau to the Lakers in early 2008.