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| When he has gotten playing time this season, Mason Plumlee has excelled. |
At Duke, Mason Plumlee was a star. He started most of the games he was in as an upperclassman and put up big numbers, averaging around a double-double and shooting way above 50 percent in his junior and senior seasons with the Blue Devils under famed Mike "Coach K" Krzyzewski. So when he was picked with the 22nd overall selection in this summer's draft by the Nets and became a bench player, it was a bit of a hard transition for Plumlee to make. Not only did he have to get used to the NBA's high level of play, but he also had to get used to being a reserve.
Thankfully, Plumlee has been able to acclimate himself to the professional ranks of basketball quickly as he has already established his game as one that can be dominant in the paint. He played his best game of his young career on Saturday night in the Nets' loss to the Clippers in Los Angeles. Missing four of their five starters (and Andrei Kirilenko) due to injury, the Nets turned to Plumlee and other reserves to have a big role against LA. Mason stepped up, scoring 19 points on 7-10 shooting versus one of the NBA's most intimidating frontcourts of Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan.
In that game, Plumlee couldn't be stopped in the post as he time and time again found a way to put the ball in the hoop, even when he was fouled or double-teamed. It's that pure knack for scoring which made the Indiana native such a top player at Duke and will make him a solid NBA player. However, by no means is he a perfect player already. He went 5-for-12 from the free throw line on Saturday, bringing down his season FT% to a brutally low 41.7%. Free-throw shooting was his main weakness in college and it's continued to be a big problem in the pros.
Brooklyn, which is already a pretty poor free-throw shooting team, needs the points lost by missed field goals badly, as noted by the seven points they lost by against the Clippers. If Mason had hit all of his free throws (or maybe just missed one or two), then the game might have played out differently and the Nets could have sneaked out a win somehow. Plumlee has got to become at least decent from the charity stripe because anything less than 60 percent (possibly a little higher) just isn't going to cut it. Hack-a-Plumlee is not something Jason Kidd wants to see from opposing teams.
Faults aside, the rest of Mason's play so far in relatively limited playing time is highly promising. He's shooting over 65 percent from the field and is averaging a respectable 16.1 points per 36 minutes, which is solid for someone who doesn't see consistent PT from game to game. Plumlee has also been rebounding at a nice rate of around eight per 36 minutes. Another good attribute of his play so far is the fire and intensity he plays with, which may be an example of Kevin Garnett's influence on the younger Nets.
With Andrei Kirilenko out for an unknown amount of time and the restrictive playing schedule for fellow power forward KG, Mason might be seeing more minutes floated his way in the near future, should he continue to be as effective on the floor as he has already been this season. The emergence of Plumlee as a reliable offensive threat for the Nets gives them yet another weapon to use against opposing defenses and gives Jason Kidd the good problem of having too many solid players at his disposal.
Brooklyn probably didn't expect Plumlee to become relevant so soon in his NBA career, as players picked outside of the lottery normally don't have a huge impact right away. We don't know if Mason is going to be able to keep his great play up, but we do know the Nets got their money's worth with their 22nd overall selection.
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