Does Eddie House Have a Point?
Posted by Zach Lowe on Jun 17, 2009
In all the thinking I’ve done about this off-season and beyond, I didn’t spend more than a second considering Eddie House’s $2.86 million player option for 2009-10. Of course he’d take it. He’d be a fool not to.
But over the weekend House’s agent, Mark Bartelstein, essentially threatened that House would opt out of his deal, saying House had “outplayed his contract” and that several inferior players will earn more than $2.86 million next season.
That argument doesn’t hold a lot of weight with me. It’s not the Celtics’ fault that the Lakers agreed to pay Sasha Vujacic $5 million per season or that Bucks signed Dan Gadzuric to a six-year, $36 million extension in 2005. The fact that other teams overpaid mediocre players does not mean Eddie House is underpaid.
I’d be more willing to listen to the reverse argument–that players in Eddie House’s pay range are obviously worse than House, and that therefore he is underpaid. With that in mind, I looked up all the players–other than those still on their rookie deals–scheduled to earn around $2.8 million or less next season. This is the entire group, according to DraftExpress:
Mark Madsen ($2.84 million)
Sebastian Telfair ($2.5 million)
Maurice Evans ($2.5M)
Tony Allen ($2.5M)
Ricky Davis ($2.48M)
Chuck Hayes ($2.1M)
Jarvis Hayes ($2.06M)
Anthony Johnson ($2.06M)
Brent Barry ($2.06M)
Antoine Wright ($1.98M)
Travis Diener ($1.74M)
Francisco Elson ($1.7M)
Jose Juan Barea ($1.65M)
Devean George ($1.6M)
Brian Skinner ($1.3M)
Malik Allen ($1.3M)
Donyell Marshall ($1.3M)
Devin Brown ($1.1M)
D.J. Mbenga ($959K)
Royal Ivey ($959K)
Yakhouba Diawara ($940K)
Anthony Roberson ($855K)
Tarence Kinsey ($855K)
Louis Amundson ($855K)
Will Bynum ($825K)
Adonal Foyle ($700K)
The upshot: There just aren’t a lot of veteran NBA players who make as “little” as Eddie House is scheduled to make next season. Still, I’m not sure if this helps or hurts Eddie’s argument. On the one hand, this is an uninspiring list, and Eddie contributes more than most of these guys. On the other hand, there are some guys here, especially in the top tier, who are at least as valuable to their teams in their own ways as Eddie is to the Celtics–Chuck Hayes, Anthony Johnson and Brent Barry especially.
So let’s look at some of the non-rookie-deal players immediately above Eddie on the salary list and come to a final conclusion, after the jump.
Here’s that list:
Steve Blake ($4.0M)
Keyon Dooling ($3.6M)
Charlie Bell ($3.6M)
Brian Cook ($3.5M)
Brian Scalabrine ($3.4M)
Matt Bonner ($3.267M)
Eduardo Najera ($3.0M)
Taken together, I think House is fairly compensated at $2.8 million. He’s a one-dimensional player who can’t create his own shot and can’t run the point against good defenses. (In fairness, he’s pretty damn good at that one dimension, and he’ll win you a few games a year with it). He’s nothing more than average defender at best, and Doc is clearly afraid to use him for extended minutes against teams with big guards or good scorers in the back court–whether that fear is well-founded or not. It’s the main reason Doc initially went with Tony Allen when the Bulls inserted their small line-up during the Greatest First-Round Series Ever–Doc simply wasn’t comfortable with House guarding Rose, Gordon or Hinrich for long stretches. (Of course, when Doc finally got sick of Tony Allen clanking awkward runners with the game on the line, swallowed hard and sent Eddie out there for Game 7, it sort of turned out well).
(Side note: Eddie’s defensive numbers in the last couple of years aren’t as bad as I’d thought. His defensive ratings since joining Boston–100 in ’08, 103 last season–are outstanding, but that stat–a measure of how many points a player yields per 100 possessions–is about 80 percent determined by team performance. So let’s look elsewhere. According to 82games.com, the C’s defense gave up about three points more per 100 possessions with Eddie on the floor, which isn’t surprising, considering he spends a lot of time out there with fellow back-ups. (The gap was only 0.7 points per 100 possessions in ’08). Lastly, according to the newish stats at Basketball Prospectus, House’s direct counterpart on the other team performed only at about 93 percent of “his” (that’s a collective “his”) regular offensive level when matched up against Eddie.
My head hurts. Can we just agree he’s average, at best, and can’t be counted on to guard good players consistently? Thanks. End of side note).
So what’s the verdict? What should the C’s do if Eddie really opts out? I say call his bluff. But in doing so, be willing to pay him exactly that $2.86 million if he can’t find it on the open market and decides he wants to come back. But I’m not comfortable going any higher right now, and I don’t think we’ll have to. Eddie will pull the trigger on the option.
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