A Prayer of Thanks
By Jerome James

Dear God,

Thank you for making me 7 feet tall.

Thank you for making the guy who guarded me in this year's playoffs 6-foot-7.

Thank you for allowing me to play the only 3 good games of my career against this guy who is 6-foot-7.

Thank you for creating crack-cocaine addicts like Isiah Thomas.

Thank you for giving front office positions to crack-cocaine addicts like Isiah Thomas.

Thank you for all of the money Isiah Thomas gave me today, because it is cool to have a lot of money.

Amen.

OK, seriously. Like most of you, I'm not exactly sure what to make of this deal the Knicks made today. On one hand, it's hard not to be intrigued by Jerome James. He's really tall. He's not bad on help defense -- per 48 minutes, he was sixth in the league in blocked shots last season. And he had those three or four games in the playoffs this year where he looked like the greatest center who ever lived.

Then, well..... then there's the other side of the coin that reminds you this is Jerome James we're talking about. And a 30-year-old Jerome James at that.

What does that mean? It means Isiah Thomas just committed $29 million over 5 seasons to a player who has a career scoring average of 4.9 points per game and a career rebounding average of 3.5 per game. And considering he's 30, WYSIWYG. In other words, he's not exactly what Jay Bilas would call a rising prospect with unlimited upside potential.

Granted, James has only averaged 15.2 minutes per game in his career, so using per-game averages isn't really fair. But there are a handful of obvious reasons why he's gotten such limited playing time.

First, he's about as foul prone as Travis Knight used to be back in the day, meaning more often than not, he's forced to sit due to foul trouble. Of players who played at least 50 games last season, James was third in the league in fouls committed per 48 minutes. (Danny Fortson was first.)

Second, as I mentioned a couple of months ago, he's a defensive retard. Think Slava Medvedenko with blocking ability, but basically with the same basketball IQ. Sure he can block shots, but if you really think about it, blocks totals, like steals, are a pretty bad way of evaluating a player's defensive ability. Beyond standing in the paint and swatting layup attempts, James is pretty clueless on the court and pretty easy to exploit.

Third, his turnover rate is throw-up-in-your-mouth atrocious. In the 268 games he's played over five seasons, he's committed 17.8 turnovers per 100 possessions, which, believe me, is a disaster. To give you an idea of how bad that is, I would guess the league-average turnover rate is around 11.0. An elite turnover rate is around 7.0 or 8.0. Steve Francis, who's generally considered turnover prone, had a rate of 12.9 last season. So if 8.0 is great, 11.0 is average, and 12.9 is bad, what's that make 17.8?

You might look at James's career field goal percentage, 49%, and think he has decent potential on offense. But when you consider his inability to avoid making mistakes, you can't blame his teammates for refusing to pass him the ball, or his coaches for refusing to put him in the game. He's what you might call a turnover waiting to happen.

In the grand scheme of things, the money isn't a big deal for the Knicks. They're financially screwed anyway until 2007, when Allan Houston's contract expires, so any contracts they add until then are only gonna hurt the owner, who has to pay the luxury tax.

So the money aspect isn't the basis of my knock here. I just think it's a meaningless signing, one that doesn't do anything for the Knicks except tack on another overpaid mediocre player.

At least the New York tabloids will have someone new to rag on, I guess.