Comparing Dajuan to PG's from last 38 years

Okay, it is debatable whether Steve Woodberry, Marcus Garrett and Tyrel Reed are true PG's. And please let me know i I missed any. Unfortunately I do not have the +/- for the last 35 years. I will provide what I have though.

Shooting: This is probably Dajuan's weakest argument as an elite PG. Of the 24 PG's on this list, he is dead last and by a good amount in FGM per 40 minutes. He simply is not an offensive PG as compared to the other KU PG's from the last 38 years. Mark Turgeon is next low at 3.0 FGM per 40 minute compared to Dajuan at 2.32. And it is not that he can;t shoot. His FG% of 46% overall is pretty decent. In fact it is 10th best of the 24 PG's. So he can shoot pretty well he just doesn't do much of it.

Attacking the Basket: There is no direct way to measure this other than some combination of 2pt FG's made and FT's attempted. In terms of FT's attempted, Dajuan is again last by a mile. He has attempted 0.77 FT's per 40 minutes. The average of the other 23 PG's is 3.8 per 40 minutes. Dajuan is 1/5th of the average of the other 23 PG's. This is, to me, the biggest blow on Dajuan. Mainly because this severely increases the ability to defend Dajuan for our opponents. This makes making a game plan to defending KU an easier prospect for opposing coaches. Even Aaron Miles who I never considered to be a hyper aggressive PG shot 3.53 FT's per 40 minutes.

3Pt Shooting - Again Dajuan is last with 3 PG's not in the mix since they were before the 3Pt shot. Dajuan makes 0.63 3FG per 40 minutes. Even Aaron Miles who was the quintessential non-perimeter shooting PG at KU made 0.98 per 40 min. The average for the 21 other PG's is 1.9 per 40 min. Dajuan is about 1/3rd of that number. And one irony of this is that he is in the top 1/3rd of PG's in 3FG%. He has hit 41% from his career which is good for 7th, better than Jeff Boschee.

Rebounding -- KU has had some pretty good rebounding PG's. None better than Marcus Garrett. But then again, he is not exactly a PG. My favorite PG rebounder was Cedric Hunter. He was an amazing rebounder for his size. He was so scrappy and ball savvy. Only Mark Turgeon is worse at rebounding than Dajuan. Dajuan grabs 2.74 rebounds per 40 minutes. The average for all PG's is 3.93. So Dajaun is not off the charts bad, but he is well below average.

Fouling -- Dajuan is not a foul waiting to happen but he tends to get into foul trouble more than the average KU PG. Dajuan has 3.45 fouls per 40 min. Devonte' was the gold standard at Kansas for PG's. He was a very good defender but managed to avoid fouling better than any other PG. Devonte' had 2.1 fouls per 40 min. That is just amazing. Dajuan's 3.45 is 20th out of 24 PG's.

Scoring - We have already talked about shooting where Dajuan is low man on the totem pole. So it is no surprise that in scoring he is low man. He averages 5.84 points per 40 minutes. That compares to Mark Turgeon in 23rd place at 8.56 points per 40 minutes. The average KU PG has scored 13.9 points per 40 minutes led by Sherron Collins at 18.5.

Assists -- Okay, here is where Dajuan is going to shine a bit. Dajuan is 9th of the 24 PG's in assists per 40 minutes and an impressive 1st in A/TO ration. Simply stated, Dajuan is not going to hurt you with silly TO's. He is a smart ball-handler and I would bet his A/TO ration will actually improve on the current 2.89 for his career. Mark Turgeon, a bodaciously smart ball handler was the gold standard at Kansas with an A/TO of 2.38. Dajuan is simply in another league from all previous KU PG's in terms of smart ball-handling. This seems to me to be the main reason why he gets the minutes he gets. His 5.7 assists per 40 minutes is not outstanding but it is very good. As I said, that is 9th out of 24 KU PG's. It is not close to the true assist PG's in KU history. Aaron Miles is the gold standard at an amazing 8.9 assists per 40 minutes. Jacques Vaughn, Mark Turgeon and Cedric Hunter were also great facilitators all having 7.7 assists per 40 minutes or better. But Dajuan's 1.97 TO per 40 minutes played is just outstanding. It is not as good as the otherworldly 1.43 TO per 40 minutes from Tyrel Reed, but Dajuan is a super savvy ball-handler who makes few silly mistakes with the ball.

Steals -- Maybe one of the most direct measurements of defensive ability. Dajuan shines here as well. There is no arguing that Dajuan is one of the better defensive PG's KU has had. He is 4th of the 24 PG's in steals per 40 minutes at 2.39. Of course, we had the luxury of having 2 PG's on the same team that were the absolute gold standard for defense and that, of course was Mario Chalmers and RussRob. Those two guys would have had unbelievable number had they been the only PG on the roster since they shared time. Those two were unbelievable on defense. Aaron Miles was not quite in their category but also elite and brilliant. Dajuan is just a notch behind Aaron.

+/- : Okay, now for the +/-. The most significant accolade paid to Dajuan is that he makes the team better when he is on the court. Comparing +/- across season is difficult to do since it is so tied to the SOS. So I will just compare for now (maybe I will attempt to make a more meaningful comparison across seasons later) Dajuan to the other players on the team last season and this season. So recall that my +/- is more robust than what you get from other sites. I break it out into offense and defense and I also have the +/- over replacement (or the delta). So let's look at each of these. If you claim that Dajuan makes KU better offensively the 2021 season +/- lends some credibility to that. He led the team in KU points per minute at 1.94. KU scored 1.81 points per minute last season overall and 1.94 with Dajuan on the floor. So one could argue effectively that KU was offensively better with Dajuan on the court last season. But defensively it was just the opposite. Dajuan had the poorest defensive +/- on the team last season. The team was clearly less effective defensively with Dajuan in the game based on the +/-. The net total was that KU was better with Dajuan on the court having a +/- per minute of +/- per minute of 0.17 compared to a +/- per minute of 0.14 with Dajuan on the bench.

So clearly, if you are talking smart ball-handling and defense, Dajuan would be elite. No question about it. Those are his strengths and they are important and good strengths. But when you layer in virtually every other measure, Dajuan's comparison to the other 23 PG's of the last 38 years gets more strained. If you are inclined to extoll Dajuan your argument is going to be based on the fact that his lack of offense and rebounding is mostly offset by his superior smart ball-handling and his facilitating the offense. There is certainly data to support that argument. What he brings to the table, smart ball-handling and defense does mean a lot to the success of the team. But does it fully offset his complete lack of offense (comparatively)? That is a challenging question and will somewhat be in the eye of the beholder.

Now here is where it gets completely subjective. Looking at the this list, who would you not trade for Dajuan? Each of us will answer this question differently based on many factors, subjective fanship not being the least. For me, and let me say this again, this is just my personal pinion and preference. There are only 2 PG's on this list that I would not trade for Dajuan for sure. They are Josh Selby and Charlie Moore. I'm on the fence for Jeff Hawkins and a little less on the fence for Elijah Johnson and Naadir Tharpe. But if push came to shove, I would say only 2 or three of these PG's would I not trade for Dajuan.

And finally for the 10,000th time, I am not negative about Dajuan. What I am a bit negative about is the seeming lionization of Dajuan in the face of what seems to me to be pretty convincing data that he is not elite, simply solid. At least that is my assessment.