June 29, 2018

Ryan Anderson
PF – 6’10, 240lbs - 30 years old - 10 years of experience

This was frankly a bit of a troubling season for Ryan Anderson. By the end of it, his own team had deemed him completely unplayable, let alone there being any other team out there that may find some value in trade for him.

In theory, Anderson's excellent outside shooting ability from the front court positions would serve perfectly within Mike D'Antoni’s four-out - or ideally, five-out - offensive units. But that in practice has not worked, because while Anderson does remain a good shooter, the rest of his once-versatile offensive game appears to have left him. More pressingly, defensively, he was little to no help within the new Rockets scheme.

Houston flank their isolation-heavy offensive scheme with a switch-heavy defensive unit that requires length and lateral mobility from its front court players. P.J. Tucker, Luc Richard Mbah A Moute and Trevor Ariza were successful in this; Ryan Anderson, with his slow feet and lack of perimeter instincts, was not. Considering he is also not a rim protector, thus rendering him in ineffective in any small ball centre line-ups, Anderson had no place on the team defensively, thus also insuring he had an increasingly little place on it offensively.

The future for Anderson in Houston looks somewhat bleak, then. And if there is to be one, it is likely only due to the fact that his contract will make him untradeable.

Player Plan: Anderson has a problematically large two years and $41,686,181 remaining. Stretching it would mean an MLE-sized lump of dead salary on the cap for five years, which would in a sense mean no MLE for five years. So that’s not the route to take. If he can be key contractual filler in a big deal, that would be ideal (even though it’d mean more sweetener is required). If not, he will just have to come back, play better and redeem some value.

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June 29, 2017

Ryan Anderson
PF, 6’10, 240lbs, 29 years old, 9 years of experience

Anderson has this worrying habit of completely disappearing in the playoffs, and has had it his whole career. He did so again this season, at a time when, in the absence of Nene and the strength in depth up front of the opposing San Antonio Spurs, he was needed more than ever. The regular season Anderson is an important scorer, mostly from outside but also capable enough round the basket and on the increasingly rare post-fallaways (although as a Rocket, the threes volume was enormous and will remain so). He won't roll, but his pops are lethal, shooting more than 40% on threes on a very high volume. But when he's not doing threes, he's not doing much. And for whatever reason, in the playoffs, he becomes terminally streaky.

Player Plan: Three years and circa. $61.265 million remaining, with no options. It is said that the team is trying to move Anderson’s contract in order to open up significant cap space. Perhaps attaching the next player listed to it will help with that.

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