I saw Bryant playing for Washington maybe one or two times and don't really remember anything.
But he was a ghastly defender with Indiana. Distracted, soft - weak lower body strength. Has he improved? His numbers don't show anything special, but I don't believe in numbers to measure defense.
The shot-selection and improvement on 3s is nice to see, but it's still only 33 made 3s in a season.
His defensive rebounding numbers are fine, but the Wizards were the 2nd worst defensive rebounding team in the league - not a lot of competition from his own teammates (Howard injured, Portis only arrived midseason). His contested rebounding % was 43.1%, which, again, is fine but far from spectacular - a bit above Al Horford but well below Aaron Baynes, for example.
And he isn't a passer.
While I understand the allure of energy bigs with highly efficient scoring, I'm wary of offering this kind of contract (or anything even close to the MLE, even if below it) to a big who is:
* a mediocre defender (bit speculative on my part).
* a mediocre passer.
* a decent but not elite rebounder.
* a good but not elite athlete.
* a developing but far from established 3 point shooter.
* unable to create shots and unlikely to ever be.
Wasn't there the Gilbert Arenas rule or something like that to deal with players coming off their rookie deals who are restricted free agents but their teams do not own full bird rights? Something that allowed them to keep their young star (like when GSW lost Arenas to Washington). So situations like this wouldn't occur.
Has that rule gone in the new CBA?
It remains the same. But there's still a loophole that allows a team to pry away a player from a capped team by offering a salary larger than the non-taxpayer MLE for 4 years (and then fit the average annual salary under their available cap - that's why Boston would need to use cap-space to make the Wizards wouldn't match).
