It seems that the ones that really want Noel haven't seen him play much and just go off of his defensive stats, height, and athleticism. The other camp that feels he's overrated understands the holes in his game by watching him closely.
This is quite a confident statement. Are u a Philly fan or something? is that why you watch the Sixers so often? Because I doubt anyone here has watched many Sixer games (they're so darn hard to watch).
I watch them because of Draft Kings. A smart approach is to go roster heavy with whoever they're playing, so I tend to watch them more than I'd like too and probably more than most on here. I don't like to form opinions based on limited number of viewings, which I think is really the case when those speak so highly of him. If I didn't have a confident opinion I wouldn't be so adamant.
If you watch him so often, why does him playing out of position not seem like a valid argument to you? I mean, unlike Dieng-Towns, the Okafor-Noel pairing has obviously not worked out. But that doesn't mean Noel will keep performing that way, unless you think that there's no way he can improve even with a new team.
Because nothing ever changes when he's playing with Okafor or not. Today for example, he came off the bench, albeit some minutes were with Okafor, and he finished with 5 pts and 8 reb in 27 minutes where he was a -16 (worst on the team).
Why is Okafor the issue? Save for a hot streak late last year, which looks like an aberration, has he really done anything at all? Is playing the center going to improve his atrocious hands? Is he going to have better footwork? A lower turnover rate? A higher overall skillset? So a team has to adjust their entire offense and rotations to make Noel not look awful offensively? Is he worth it? Is he really the defender people make him out to be? Both advanced metrics and game tape say otherwise.
The stats say differently. The Sixers have a net rating of -11.6 with a defensive rating of 104 with Noel in the game without Okafor on the season. When Okafor plays with Noel on the bench, the Sixers have a net rating of -18.3 with a defensive rating of 112. Lineups with both of them on the court have a net rating of -25.1 and a defensive rating of 112.
So the Sixers play their best when Noel is on the court without Okafor, but they play especially bad when both are in the game.
Last year Noel was responsible for the Sixers playing good defense in the second half of the year. On the year they played like the 22nd rated defense in the league without him on the court and the 5th rated defense with him on the court.
I believe if you add Noel to our young core then we have an elite defense to hang our hat on for he next 5-8 years.
But aren't we already a very good defense? I believe we are rated top 5 or top 6 or something on defense, and that it's our offense which ultimately lets us down most frequently.
If so, adding Noel sure as hell will not fix that.
Just for the record, I would suggest checking Noel's Real Plus Minus stats. He does have a pretty decent defensive RPM (+1.5 last I checked) but he has an absolutely atrocious offensive RPM (was around -4.0 last I checked).
That brings his overall RPM of around -2.5
To me that number tells you all you need to know. Does he improve a team on defense? Yes, he does.
Does he improve a team enough on defense to overcome how much he hurts them on offense? Not even close.
Yes I think his defense is good enough to overcome how much he hurts the offense, right now. But right now is a lot less important for this team than how a player will perform down the road. Noel has so much potential on both sides of the ball.
Noel is a guy with great athleticism but not much offensive game other than dunking. Well it just so happens guys like this succeed all over the league when put on good teams that get them the ball in a position to score.
In our offense Noel would have much more opportunity to show off his athleticism while rolling to the rim. The C's spacing is a million times better than the Sixers and that space makes it infinitely more likely Noel would succeed on offense here.
Okafor was suspended for 2 games and the Sixers started Noel at center and flanked him with 4 non-bigs against 2 bad defensive teams (NY and Denver)
Game 1-
6 pts
6 reb
3-11 FG
0-2 FT
0 Blk
4 TO's
32 min
Game 2-
14 pts
5 reb
5-8 FG
4-7 FT
2 Blk
5 TO's
31 min
His numbers didn't exactly spike up. You compared him to highly athletic players that can catch lobs and finish at the rim. The major difference between him and guys like Drummond, Noel, Whiteside, etc., are his hands. Noel's hands are awful. Time and time again you'l see teammates place the ball in perfect situations for him to finish and he'll literally fumble the ball way. That, along with his lack of strength are things that look like they will plague him forever. I mention the strength because of Noel's bone structure, primarily the width of his clavicles, which are a tell tale sign of how much weight a player will likely be able to add.
