Guess who's back: Brandon "The Bee" Bass

I don't know how many times I've jinxed things this season: I've written a post praising Jeff Green's preseason performance and he struggled for the next 3 months, I've praised Leandro Barbosa and he struggled to get minutes for an extended period only to get injured later, I've talked about our chances to steal the 3rd seed from the Knickerbockers and we've failed miserably since then... If you're not convinced yet, let me give you five names from my fantasy league roster: Danny Granger, Lou Williams, Jared Sullinger, Chase Budinger, Marcus Camby. They've all had season-ending injuries.

Luckily this jinxing thing works the other way too, because Brandon Bass woke up after I wrote a post criticizing his post-Rondo injury performance. Oh boy did he wake up. I'm here to pay him the respect he deserved.

To briefly recap the previous post; I analyzed Bass' expectancy that his usage would go up and he would play better following Rondo's injury. Well, not only that his usage had gone down, but despite an increase in the minutes he had logged he still unacceptably underperformed. The only positive note was that he made more of his shots percentage-wise, but that didn't really affect his production in relative terms.

Now let's see how things have changed since I wrote that post:

Bass' first 60 games:




Bass' last 11 games:





Well, in a nutshell, everything is better. He's taking more shots and making them, his output went up by 39%, he's pulling rebounds like he's never done before (and that's not just figurative speech), he's fouling less and blocking more. Basically, he's giving the fans the Bass they've waited all season long. What's more, his advanced stats draw an even prettier picture. Compare the two:



He's grabbing 19.7% of the defensive rebounds available! Given that he plays alongside Kevin Garnett who's in top 15 in defensive rebounding pct, that's pretty impressive. His effective FG% is through the roof. If he shot like that all year long, he'd rank 6th in that category. Look at that offensive rating, holy cow. And the best part is that his usage has not changed. Yes, he's getting 3 more minutes on average, but he's making full use of those and the rest.

My previous post was titled "the curious case of Brandon Bass," because, well, his slump was the most interesting phenomenon of the season next to Jason Terry's inconsistencies. However, Bass has played great this month, and his hard work on the glass and reliability for his shot earned him a nickname that is derived from his initial. He's working like a bee, and stinging his opponents where he needs to. (Hmm, maybe I overdid this paying respect business. Oh well.)

Keep up the good work, Bass, and please don't fall into another slump now that I've praised you. I don't want to feel bad yet again.

Note: Special thanks go to our reader Dionis for the idea!