Player Grades/Report: J.J. Hickson
2011-04-28(Note on Player Grades: They are going to be low across the board. This is not because I am a mean person. This is because the team won 19 games, with most of those wins coming at the beginning and end of the season. The team appeared to have something of a mini-renaissance at the end of the year, but this is only because they literally managed to set expectations to zero during the middle of the season. This was an awful season, and it was an awful season because the players did not play well. There are very few ways around this. The grades will be done on a curve according to each player’s role on the team, but no grading curve is steep enough to reward the kinds of efforts we saw this season.)
Our first report of the season is for J.J. Hickson, who led the team in minutes this season. After the whole thing with LeBron happened, the New Cavaliers were supposed to be built around two things: youth and athleticism. Hickson, who barely played in the 2010 Conference Semifinals, has both in spades, and immediately became one of the team’s building blocks. With Zydrunas Ilgauskas gone, a new coach preaching uptempo offense, and a brand-new jumper, Hickson seemed poised for a breakout season. When Hickson scored 21 points in the season opener and 31 points in the third game of the season, things looked pretty darn good.
Unfortunately, Hickson didn’t have another 20-point game in 2010. Hickson’s jump shot vanished just as quickly as it appeared, and without it, Hickson was forced to force things on offense. Things went poorly. In the month the Cavs forgot to win a game, Hickson barely shot over 40% from the floor, and the last three months of the season were the only ones that Hickson shot better than 45% in.
Late in the season, Hickson started to click with Ramon Sessions and Baron Davis, and the results came. Hickson looked much more confident offensively, and ended the season on a tear, averaging 19.5 points per game on 52% shooting in the month of April.
While Hickson showed some serious flashes over the course of the season, he still wasn’t a consistent offensive option, and his defense was just as much of a liability as it ever was. This wasn’t a new version of Hickson — it was the same guy with an infinitely longer leash.
2010-11 Grade: C+
What Hickson Does Well:
Hickson excels in two areas. The first is scoring at the rim, especially off of assists. He can jump, he can get off the floor quickly, he has decent touch around the basket area, and he covers ground extremely quickly. He’s slowly getting more comfortable with his left hand around the rim and incorporating some counter-moves, but most of his success comes from finding seams, attacking them, getting off the ground, and putting the ball in the basket. He’s at his best when he can move without the ball, catch, and dunk, but he’s also pretty good at getting the ball in the 12-15 foot area, taking one or two big dribbles, and attacking a late-rotating defense.
Hickson led the team with 3.3 made baskets at the rim per game, and 64% of those baskets were assisted. With Baron Davis replacing Mo Williams full-time next season, Hickson should get more assisted opportunities than he did last year, and that’s a big deal. Hickson will likely continue to try and incorporate more of a post-up and perimeter game next season, but he’s always going to be at his best when he can just catch and dunk, and that requires a good passer.
Hickson also had a really good rebounding year. While I wouldn’t call him a dominant force on the glass, he did average over 10 rebounds per game throughout 2011 (calendar year), and he finished 9th among power forwards in rebounding rate. While some of those numbers are probably inflated because of the rebounders around Hickson (they sucked), Hickson’s rebounding was very solid for a good part of the year.
What Hickson Does Poorly:
Literally everything not mentioned above. Hickson’s defense was an issue when he was starting next to Anderson Varejao. When he was forced to start next to Antawn Jamison and had to try and make up for Jamison’s mistakes, he had no chance. He doesn’t rotate quickly enough, he doesn’t really block shots or take charges, he doesn’t defend the post very well, and he never quite looks engaged defensively. So there are some problems there.
Hickson’s offensive game has some problems as well — it lacks refinement in a major way. Just over half of Hickson’s shots came from inside the restricted area last season, and he made 59% of those shots. When Hickson ventured away from the immediate basket area, things didn’t go so well for him — he shot 36% from the non-restricted areas of the paint, 30% from midrange, and didn’t make a three. Those are not favorable numbers. Hickson’s jump shot was just good enough for him to shoot it when he should not have, and his post game is still far too dependent on low-percentage fadeaway shots instead of good positioning and footwork. Even though Hickson put up some nice numbers near the end of the year and had games where he looked unstoppable, he’s still a work in progress on offense.
Outlook: If the Cavs were capable of going into win-n0w mode next season, they’d have to make some decisions about Hickson’s spot in the starting lineup. Fortunately for Hickson, they have no choice but to try and build around their youngsters. Hickson is far too talented to give up on, but he’s also far to raw to have complete faith in, especially on defense.
There’s a chance that Hickson will hit his ceiling and become one of the best power forwards in the league. As of now, however, he’s an undersized center offensively, a lackluster power forward defensively, and probably best suited for a bench role on a good team. I don’t know if Hickson will make the big leap next season, but I do know he’ll be given more than enough chances to make it.
Basketball IQ racially charged – how so? If Duncan was used as the example of the hight basketball IQ guy that is non-athletic but still excells would that be better? Duncan is extremely smart and skilled – that’s what makes him a HOFer. If he had JJ’s athletic ability, then we’d be considering him with the likes of Jordan as greatest player ever. Of the top 10 PF’s in the league (Love, Z-Bo, Garnett, Smith, Boozer, Bosh, Dirk, Amare, Duncan and Gasol) – this list is according to Kelly Dwyer – only Love and Duncan lack the athletic nature that… Read more »
i don’t think of basketball IQ as a reflection of intelligence. i think of it referring to a player’s understanding of the game and what he should be doing at any given moment. it is more intuitive than intellectual.
WJC is right. It’s not like Kevin Love has figured out how to control a basketball with his jedi mindtricks or anything. He can’t leap like JJ can, but he’s big, really wide, strong as hell, and he has insane hand-eye coordination that shows in both his ability to snatch rebounds in crowded areas and in his ability to knock down shots. That’s not “IQ,” that’s natural athleticism. Love is a pretty smart player (though it doesn’t show on defense that often), but the idea that you could put his genius mind in a real athlete’s body (Hickson, for example)… Read more »
I think that Hickson had an ok season, but next season, he will be a star. He has all the tools and the drive to become a very solid player.
JK, appreciate your intelligent discussion of Hickson’s positives and negatives without getting into questions of “basketball IQ” – or any IQ, or for that matter whether the man is mentally competent. I think the actual facts you point out – eg, “slow to rotate” – are valid, without needless and baseless assessments of his basic intelligence. He’s still a young player learning to play at the blindingly fast pace of the NBA.
I’m so sick of these comparisons of the athletic simpleton vs the white genius,
He deserves at least 1 more year of extended playing time [always assuming there is a season next year, and it’s not wiped away by a lockout] to see if he can show improvement. He has the potential to be a solid, if not great, player if he can stay in the game mentally and improve his weaknesses.
JJ is young and athletic, nobody can deny that. His basketball IQ, hands and shooting abililty are in question. As ‘good’ as he sometimes appears, there is a reason Mike Brown and Byron Scott decided to sit him on the bench. What I hope JJ is doing right now is a lot of reading and watching a lot of video! He needs to understand how the Princeton offense works and what his role is as a power forward, he also needs to study about defensive rotations. If he studies dilligently, then his relatively poor hands and shooting ability will be… Read more »
Looking solely at his age, Hickson is slightly above what I think of as the curve for an athletic 22 year old big. He has been put in a position to fail often. A Mike Brown defense exposes the PF more than any other position, and I refuse to believe the Cavs even had a defensive scheme for the first 50 games of last year. A team that depends on JJ to be its best defender on the floor has massive problems. The Cavs were such a team for huge stretches of gametime last year. It’s positive that he kept… Read more »
One of the problems with players like Hickson is the amount of money they cost. Hickson has demonstrated that he does not have the basketball IQ to be a dominant player in the league. He has really only been effective on office when someone else creates his shot – Davis or Lebron – and really struggles on defense as he has very little ability to anticipate what is going to happen and/or his mind appears to be somewhere else (I’m not going to mention that thing he does when he is only kind of paying attention on offense and the… Read more »
Hickson is an enigma wrapped in a question mark. I tend to think the light went “on” as the season went on however. Part of the reason his numbers cratered in the middle of the season had to do with his spat with Coach Scott. Once his pouting was over he became an asset, especially on the offensive end. He clearly has significant room to improve, and hopefully he reaches his potential. I am not as concerned about the position we try and pigeon-hole him into; he played well at the five and tended to float at the four. It… Read more »
Basically Hickson was extremely physically gifted but mentally retarded when it came to basketball fundamentals. There is not much else to it. If this guy gets up to par mentally with his physical gifts he will be a definite stud and a great building block for this team. If he still is making the same bonehead mistakes then I think it will be time for the Cavs to move forward without him.
I think you are spot on on Hickson. He has an incredible amount of athleticism but he has no clue how to use it properly. We were all hoping to see a more matured(basketball mindset) Hickson but during the slump he continued making the same mistakes over and over, showing the fans how little he had grown as a player. On the other side, we saw what he was capable of doing when a proven pg was handling the ball and looking to pass. Davis brought a new look to Hickson and when Ramon was not being selfish, Hickson was… Read more »
A fair assessment.