Jason Collins
Player Info
- Height: 7’0″
- Weight: 255 lbs.
- College: Stanford
- Age: 31
- Years Pro: 10
- Position: Center
- Team: Atlanta Hawks
- Role: Garbage Time Big Man
At this point in his career, Jason Collins is a backup big who will only see playing time if the Hawks bigs are in foul trouble, if the Hawks need to use his fouls, or if the game has entered garbage time. Collins minutes have been seeing a steady decline since his 2007 season as they have decreased every year. This past season, Collins only played a total of 114 minutes in just 24 games, all career lows. When he does see minutes, Collins doesn’t do anything particularly well. He is below average when it comes to finishing at the rim (something that is important for centers), and his defensive rebounding rate is less than half of the league average for centers.
Strengths
Taking Fouls
When Jason Collins gets on the court, his main responsibility on the defensive end is to take hard fouls. This is because Collins isn’t going to see the type of minutes where being in foul trouble matters. Out of the 30 defensive possessions (according to Synergy) that Collins saw this year, he committed a foul on a shooter during five of them. That means that right around 17% of Collins’ defensive possessions, as described by Synergy, end with a shooting foul. Only one of these fouls ended with an And 1 situation (and that game from a goaltend after the foul).
In the playoffs, the Hawks used Collins to try and draw offensive fouls on Dwight Howard. In these two videos, Collins is defending Dwight in the post and when Dwight makes his move, Collins tries to slide in and draw the offensive foul. On both of these plays, a foul on Collins is called, but it doesn’t really hurt the Hawks which is why they have Collins in doing this.
Weaknesses
Offensive Game
Watching Collins work on the offensive end, you start to see why he is a guy who is stuck at the end of the bench. He doesn’t have the strength to back down his man or the skill to face-up in the post.
Here Collins makes the catch on the block in pretty good position. However, he seems unable to move his defender with his body, and he eventually has to settle for taking a step back jumper off of the dribble. It goes as well as you think it would.
Here, Collins inability to back down his defender leads to a turnover. Collins again makes the catch in pretty good post position, but because he can’t back down Josh Boone he has to try and dribble past him. The result is a turnover with a carry being called on him.
In addition to not being able to back down his defenders, Collins also has a tough time dealing with double teams. In the above clip, Collins makes the catch in the post and is quickly double teamed. Instead of quickly kicking it out to the open man, Collins holds onto it and he is eventually forced into taking an outside jumper that he misses.
Jason Collins’ inability to work in the post and handle double teams leads to him floating out to the outside, where he is even less effective. 50% of Collins’ shots were listed as catch and shoot jumpers by Synergy. As you can see from the clip above he really isn’t effective stepping away from the basket, but his inability to post up forces him to step away. This is the main reason why Collins put up only .67 points per possessions last season, ranking him 441st in the entire NBA.
Lack of Rebounding
In addition to his inability on offense, Collins really doesn’t bring much on the defensive end (except his fouls) or on the glass. Collins averaged less than 1 rebound a game (0.6 to be exact) during his time on the court, but his lack of playing time wasn’t the real reason he couldn’t grab boards. We know this by looking at his rebound rate, which looks at his percentage of rebounds during his time on the court. Collins total rebounding rate is only 7.2, which is less than half of the league average (which is 14.8).
Sure, part of the reason for his low rebounding rate is that he is playing in garbage time (in garbage time you see guys jacking long threes, and when this happens long rebounds take place making it hard for big men to grab rebounds). However, you would like to see Collins grab a few more boards, especially if he is trying to earn some playing time.
