Kenneth “Fareak” Faried: good power forward? It’s hard to say. His advanced stats point to him being good. Since advanced stats are, by definition, more advanced than normal stats, they are a good thing to use when you want to determine the goodness of a player. But even his normal stats also look good. He shoots high percentages from the field and rebounds a lot while not turning the ball over. His numbers are found in greater quantity and quality than the numbers that other players around the league possess.
But if he were as good as Basketball-Reference would have us believe, wouldn’t he get more than 26 minutes per game? His stats are such that he’s almost sort of an all-star. That type of player usually receives a lot of minutes. You can talk at me about “roster construction” this and “too many bigs” that but the truth of the matter is, if a player is really good, it doesn’t matter how many players have to ride the pine in order for the good player to get minutes. The coach tells all those other dudes to die and then the fringe all-star plays thirty-five a game.
Does Fareak even play defense? Who knows. If I knew I would be able to make an informed judgement, but alas.
We also have to take into account that Faried is the product of two mommies. I don’t know exactly how I’m taking that into account right at this moment, but it definitely seems like something that we should all be keeping in mind. Maybe we had better start by saying things that reek of subtle homophobia.
DTB’S FINAL VERDICT OF TRUTH: Kenneth Faried is a player of indeterminate goodness.