Does Mike Dunleavy, Jr. Matter?

Question: If a small forward spends 11 years averaging 12 points, 4 rebounds and 2 assists a night for a series of Lottery teams, then falls in a forest, does anybody hear him? Or, to put it differently: Does Mike Dunleavy, Jr. matter?

This question occurred to me this past Monday when I was clicking through the previous night’s box scores. That night, Dunleavy logged 28 minutes for the Milwaukee Bucks in a two point loss to the Pistons. He took seven shots, made three of them, and totaled nine points, two rebounds and a turnover. It was an unremarkable game for an unremarkable player on an unremarkable team. This exact thing could be said about the vast, vast majority of Mike Dunleavy Jr.’s 426 NBA games. So, what do we make of his career?

 

Let's start with a statistical perspective. John Hollinger’s PER is calculated so that 15.00 is the median score among the NBA’s roughly 320 qualifying players each year: Dunleavy presently has a career 14.67 mark.

Not only is Dunleavy average for his career on as a whole, he’s been average in a stunningly consistent manner. According to PER analysis, over his 11 respective seasons, he has ranked as the 183rd, 119th, 151st, 203rd 156th, 67th, 149th, 189th, 147th, 93rd, and 105th best player in the league in his respective seasons.  He's never truly threatened to get much better or worse.

To add some qualitative flavor to those numbers, on HoopsHype.com, his scouting report reads: “Good fundamentals... Decent shooter and good passer... Nice ballhandling skills for his size... Plays smart... A little bit too slow... Pretty soft... Gets overpowered.” Whoever wrote this could have just as easily typed… “Eh? He’s fine, I guess…” without losing much. Because, as an NBA player, that’s who Mike Dunleavy is: He’s fine, I guess.

All of this raises two questions for me.

First, the NBA is the hardest league in the world to enter. The college and overseas ranks are filled with “high upside” projects. So, in a world where “fine, I guess” usually comes with a ticket to the Israeli League, how has Mike Dunleavy – who has never been better than “fine, I guess” – managed to stick around for 11 years and counting?

Second, not only has Dunleavy been consistently and enduringly average, but he's done it in a vacuum. In 10 full seasons, he’s played in one playoff series, a  2010-11 Indiana Pacers 4-1 loss to the Bulls. So, my question is, if Mike Dunleavy has done little in his career aside from produce meaningless statistics for meaningless teams, is there anything inherently meaningful about his career? Can you be greater than the sum of your parts, if the sum of your parts is nothing?

Here’s what I think.

First, as to why no front office has seemed to ask itself, “Hey, is it just us, or is Mike not very good?” then dumped him in favor of a second round European they have stashed away overseas. To be honest, I have no clue. Here are a few possible theories.

·         Dunleavy was the 3rd overall pick, and top 5 picks who aren’t total busts have their value permanently artificially inflated. I think there are some people out there who assume he’s still about to break out. He's 31.

·         Dunleavy’s unique brand of mediocrity requires little coaching. If you have a young roster, or a bunch of knuckleheads, Dunleavy is probably a bit of relief. I don’t imagine that Scott Skiles & staff devote much of their Bucks practice time to working one on one with Dunleavy. Possibly as result of being a coach’s kid (I use the term “coach” generously as pertaining to Mike Dunleavy, Sr.), my guess is that when the coaching staff talks about their system, etc… Mike generally gets what they’re saying. He’s like the quiet, obedient kid in Cheaper By the Dozen: he may not be important to the story, but all 12 kids can't be making noise. In that case, “fine…I guess” is good enough.

·         He’s not trying to be a stud. Mike Dunleavy is a testament to the pragmatic spirit of the Beta Male. To his credit, he has never had a period where he tried to make himself a star or land himself a mega contract. Even in those rare moments when he appeared to be an above average player (like when he averaged 19.1 ppg for the 2007-08 Pacers), he’s never taken more than 13 shots a game. It's easy to shoot yourself out of the league, and he hasn't.

·         He’s a huge locker room guy. This is the explanation I’m least willing to accept. Mike Dunleavy has been a fringe public figure for almost 15 years (since he began at Duke) and in that time, I’ve never seen a shred of personality from him. I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard him talk. No way this guy is a dominant force in an NBA locker room.

Second, is Mike Dunleavy ultimately more important than the sum of his 11 mediocre seasons? I’m torn on this, because intuitively I feel like there’s some value in longevity. But, I say no because, to this point, Dunleavy’s career doesn’t tell us anything at all about the sport, or the league. It's completely non instructive. He doesn’t correspond to any archetype. He’s not a reference point or“that kind of guy.” Here’s what I mean.

Based on Basketball Reference, the ten players who have had the most similar impact, in terms of Win Share, to Mike Dunleavy through ten years of a career are as follows: Jeff Foster, Jerome Williams, Jim Washington, Kyle Korver, Bill Bradley, Kurt Thomas, Robert Reid, Tom Gugliotta, Caron Butler, Orlando Woolridge.

Let’s take Washington, Bradley and Reid out of the discussion, since they played in too different an era for comparison. That leaves us with seven points of reference: Foster, Williams, Korver, Thomas, Gugliotta, Butler, and Woolridge.  

Butler and Gugliotta have both been All-Stars, and Woolridge averaged 20+ points on 4 occasions, so I’m eliminating them as points of comparison because their mediocre careers didn’t persist on a mediocre arc. That leaves us four comparisons for Dunleavy: Foster, Williams, Korver, and Thomas.

But each of these players is memorable because they connect us to well-known NBA archetypes: the “junkyard dog” (Jerome Williams, Kurt Thomas), the “goofy 7-foot white center” (Jeff Foster), and, “the three-point shooter” (Kyle Korver). These archetypes are an important mechanism for how we understand the game. When we talk about how average players can outlive expectations in the league, we know "these kinds of guys" fit the bill.  There's a sense of posterity to all of it.They're our reference point. But who is Mike Dunleavy? What does he represent? Who came before him? What do we look for in what will come after? What does his career say about what it takes to make it a decade in the NBA? Not much. Not much at all.