Then there’s Derrick Williams. Speaking strictly as a Timberwolves fan, I’ll be the first to say that Williams has not been amazing. He’s made his share of bone-headed plays. But he should be playing more. A lot more. And the primary reason is that for all his rookie faults, he’s still having a decent season. And, far more importantly, he is so much better than Michael Beasley that…well, I have no words:

Raw Stats
Min WP48 Wins PTS REB AST TO BLK STL PF
Beasley 194 -.114 -0.5 20.0 9.2 1.7 4.2 0.5 0.7 4.5
Williams 106 .142 0.3 19.5 11.3 1.4 4.1 0.0 2.3 5.0
Average SF 146 .099 0.3 19.1 7.3 3.2 2.4 0.8 1.5 3.7
Average F 144 .099 0.3 19.4 9.4 2.8 2.4 1.0 1.5 4.2

Shooting Efficiency
FG% 2FG% 3FG% FT% eFG% TS% FGA PPS FTA
Beasley 40.2% 40.3% 40.0% 41.2% 42.5% 42.9% 21.5 0.93 4.2
Williams 51.5% 61.9% 33.3% 41.7% 57.6% 56.2% 14.9 1.30 5.4
Average SF 42.6% 45.1% 36.7% 77.6% 48.1% 52.4% 16.3 1.17 4.4
Average F 44.9% 47.7% 35.1% 73.9% 48.8% 52.7% 16.4 1.19 4.7

Note that I am comparing Beasley to SFs and Williams to a combinations of the average SF/PF; Williams WP48 would be higher if we treated him as an SF and Beasley’s would be even lower if we treated him as a PF (see Calculating Wins Produced for the section on how we adjust for position).

Basiically, if you gave all of Beasley’s minutes to Williams, the Wolves could easily have won 4-5 games by now. No, I’m not joking. Beasley is truly earth-shatteringly bad. To put in perspective what a selfish chucker Beasley is, he ranks 8th among small forwards the NBA in FGA per 48 minutes (50 minutes minimum), but fifty-first in true shooting. No, not 51st in the NBA, 51st among small forwards. That means that essentially all of the starting SFs and two-thirds of the back-up SFs in the league are shooting better than he is, but he’s shooting 22 shots per 48. And I don’t keep stats for “contested 22-footers per 48″ but having watched every Timberwolves game I’m going to guess he leads the league by a fat margin, ahead of even Kobe (I’m guessing that’s the reason that he’s 25th among small forwards at getting to the line, despite all those shots). Oh, yeah, and he turns the ball over a shit ton. In short, Beasley is the very definition of a player that shoots you out of games. Every single time they choose to iso Beasley instead of just letting Ridnour or Rubio create off the dribble / pick-n-roll, a Timberwolf pup dies in the wild.

Williams is as turnover prone as Beasley, but I can chalk Williams’ TOs up to rookie mistakes and a general rookie “over-eager” attitude, which he may learn from. Most of his TOs come from ill-advised passes. Beasley, however, is a third-year player; the vast majority of his turnovers come from him trying to “create a shot” (a phrase that I guarantee I’ll be ranting about in a future article) and I don’t expect him to change anytime soon.

Yea can't disagree with that, Beasley has been terrible. His head must not be in the game because a lot of his shots are awful bricks or don't even hit the rim. Basically he's playing exactly like McCants did his last year on the wolves.

Ball stoppers are never a good thing. Thus Arenas, Ellis, Beasley, JR Smith, Jamal Crawford, Nick Young, and the rest of the slew of shoot-first ball hogs (Iverson and Marbury included) ultimately chuck at the expense of their team. The truly great scorers would always involve their teammates for the sake of involving their teammates (see Chris Paul, Michael Jordan, Steve Nash). Just because you CAN score 30+ per game doesn't mean you should. Sometimes you need to move the ball through your teammates so they feel good about hustling.

Beasley sitting in favor of Tolliver might be the best thing to happen to this team so far. If we would only get one more player (SG) who can create but won't do so selfishly and at the expense of the team, we can turn the corner. Beasley is not without value to our team even, just that in a framework where ball movement stagnates (as it does with Luke) he tends to become a chucker. I still like him as a front court player catching the ball in position to score or make a move.

Beasley looks extra bad when in the game with Rubio because Ricky gets easy shots for everybody and it looks super ugly when Beas stops the ball and takes a dumb shot. Beasley can be somewhat useful when Ricky isn't in the game though because we don't have anyone else that can score when things break down. So I think the obvious moves are that Rubio should be in the starting lineup and Beasley should come off the bench.

Or I would gladly just take a SG version of Beasley. Beasley for Nick Young. SGs who can create but aren't selfish fall under the "good player" category and we're not going to get one unless they're willing to trade D-Charge. Which they aren't. So let's trade a flawed SF (Wes/Beas) for a flawed SG.

That blurb you posted is pretty telling, CW.

I mean, the guy has had a miserable start to the season. This is no mystery. He could pick it up, he could not. I don't think he is necessarily going against Rick's wishes. Rick is trying to put Mike in different positions to attack and score off the dribble but it isn't working from Mike's end.

Still wishing we would have signed Jamal Crawford. He is what we want in Beasley. Rough start with Portland, but he fits the mold of a creator.

I guess Martell is our season savior once again