So How Good Is Chris Paul? You'll Be Surprised To See!

What exactly is the difference between a Tier One player and the field? That's a question I field often and usually my response is A LOT. But to give some better perspective I decided to delve into the 2008 numbers and give you some more clarity. Chris Paul finished the season last year as the number one overall player, and entered this season much the same. He and LeBron James are in a class of their own as Tier One players. In my opinion, you should only trade FOR Tier One players, and once you have one, you never give them up (barring a big injury, or a Shawn Marion like fall from grace!).



'But Wait!' some will say, I'm getting offered this guy AND this guy. Sure sure, just to show you how much of a difference a Tier One player makes, I'm going to do some comparing. Let's say you hold Chris Paul and someone offers you Jason Kidd AND Pau Gasol for him, two bona fide first round players who both had great seasons last year. Let's take a look at the numbers:





Chris Paul

78 games, 1781 points, 861 assists, 216 steals, 64 Treys, .503 FG%, .868 FT%, 231 TO's, 432 Rebounds, 10 blocks



Jason Kidd

81 games, 731 points, 702 assists, 160 steals, 131 Treys, .416 FG%, .819 FT%, 185 TO's, 500 Rebounds, 39 blocks



Pau Gasol

81 games, 1528 points, 284 assists, 52 steals, 1 trey, .567 FG%, .781 FT%, 157 TO's, 780 Rebounds, 81 blocks



What's the difference now between having CP3 and having Kidd and Gasol, besides the extra 4 games of stats involved?



478 points, 125 assists, 0 steals, 68 treys, .480 FG%, .732 FT%, 111 TO's, 848 rebounds, 110 blocks.



Do those stats look familiar? Of course they do! They can be found by anybody sitting on your waiver wire right now. In fact, your waiver wire players probably have many of these stats dominated. To reiterate what I'm trying to say, CP3 and any random waiver wire guy are at least equal to Jason Kidd and Pau Gasol. Still don't believe me? Well I went digging, not too far because I didn't feel like wasting time on a settled subject, but I also didn't need to go far. I found, waiver wire extraordinaire Ronny Turiaf. Here's his 2008 numbers.



Ronny Turiaf

79 games, 470 points, 166 assists, 34 steals, 0 treys, 50.8 FG%, 79 FT%, 70 turnovers, 360 boards, 168 blocks



So Ronny Turiaf and CP3 together will beat Kidd and Gasol in 7 out of 9 categories. SEVEN OUT OF NINE CATEGORIES. With just Ronny freakin Turiaf! If you can somehow scour a better WW pickup than ole Ronny, or just have someone that you already drafted and is in your rotation or on your bench that's better than Turiaf, well you might just take all 9 categories.



The moral of the story here folks is that Tier One players like CP3 and LBJ are just untouchable. Sure there are changing of the guards, as players like Chris Johnson in the NFL joins Adrian Peterson in Tier One. Or when CP3 replaced Shawn Marion in the top tier. But I, for one, don't see either of these guys going anywhere anytime soon.



Two things for you all to take from this. First, if you can get one of these guys, DO IT. It only takes one so I don't advise being greedy and grabbing both of them, but if there's a shot at getting one of them, go for it! Secondly, this is why I ALWAYS play the auction draft format. I do my utmost to make sure I spend whatever it takes to land Chris Paul or LeBron James or Adrian Peterson or Albert Pujols or whatever. The advantage is so huge it is worth it. If you are a yahoo player, and they are still stuck using the yesteryear snake draft format (which as you can now see if very unfair), I advise finding a third party website that let's you auction draft, then take your results back to your yahoo league (hint hint, ESPN let's you auction draft for free!).



P.S. if there are any math nerds out there, kidd and turiaf had similar attempts from the FT line and from the field, so the percentages are an accurate comparison. Just sayin, Thief's got it all covered.