Al Jefferson's Inefficiency

When I was complaining about the sweetheart deal that Kevin McHale gave to the Celtics, some people were defending it in comments. At the center of any such defense is, necessarily, an overrating of Al Jefferson. Make no mistake, he's a pretty nice player. In particular, he's a very good rebounder. Even here, though, a simple look at 12.1 boards per game -- good for fourth in the league -- is a bit misleading. Look at him in terms of rebounds per 48 minutes or rebound rate and he drops down a bit.

But it's on the scoring front where Jefferson's status as a solid 20-10 guy looks most suspect. His usage rate is sky-high and he plays a lot of minutes per game. That bumps up his points per game despite the fact that, as you can see above, his shooting efficiency is kind of unimpressive for a center. One doesn't want to overstate the case here, he's obviously a nice prospect. But there's reason to think he's not really as nice as he seems -- surrounded by terrible players in Minnesota they're giving him tons of shots and he's scoring some, but other prospects on this list (Biedrens and Bynum come to mind especially) might well be putting up better numbers in Jefferson's situation.