Last Jannero Pargo Post

I wasn't going to comment much on Pargo's departure since Dave Berri covered it quite well statistically and Ryan Schwann covered the personal aspect of it excellently. But a few of you have e-mailed in the last week asking for my take things. So I shall oblige.

I definitely hate to see Jannero Pargo, the person, go. He was a terrific guy on the court and off of it, and I don't think you can find a single Hornet fan that didn't enjoy his wild gunning. I'm sure the rest of the Hornets are sad to see him go, and I'm sure the front office seriously considered re-signing him.

But player and personnel decisions are never made in a vacuum. Like Mike at HornetsHype and I have mentioned numerous times, Pargo's departure makes a ton more sense if you consider the current roster and payroll. Re-sign Pargo and we're paying a 3rd string point guard 6.25 million dollars. Any way you slice it, that makes no sense. I'm coming closer and closer to deeming the Houston trade failure, if only because the Rockets dumped James' contract on us.

And this isn't just about the dollars. Matt of Pounding the Rock mentioned that any player can walk up the court and chuck the ball up at a 35% rate. While I think that's a little unfair to Pargo (because of his defensive efforts), I agree with the general sentiment.

On top of all that, we have a pretty biased view of Mike James as Hornet fans. We saw him play a paltry 183 minutes, in irregular intervals, with various injury issues. Anyone who claims to accurately judge a player in 183 minutes is not to be believed. 183 minutes? That's barely 5 or so full games. You really want to write off his first 11,000 minutes because of his last 183? Be my guest, just don't aspire to be a GM.

James has outperformed Pargo in his career at basically... everything.

• 37.8% to 36.5% 3P shooting
• 25.3% to 22.3% assist rate
• 13.3% to 14.7% turnover rate
• 213 to 13 Games Started at point guard
• 3.0 to 3.2 personal fouls/36 minutes
• 53% to 47.8% True Shooting Percentage
• 73% to 84% of shots coming on jumpers
• 13% to 19% of inside shots blocked
• 15.1 to 11.7 PER

Sure, Pargo is 4 years younger than James. MJ hasn't played much defense since his Detroit days. But in his Piston tenure, he was a defensive sparkplug so I wouldn't be surprised if Byron could whip him into shape.

I'm happy that Pargo could help us out these last two years. I'm happier that it will be Mike James out there for the next two.