Michael Redd vs. The Boston Strangler

In a theoretical post a week ago entitled "Bucks should trade Michael Redd", I off-handedly compared Redd to another #22, former 76ers SG Andrew Toney, aka "The Boston Strangler". My point was that, like Toney, Redd could be an important component of a winning, championship team, but that, like Toney, he could never stand alone as the team's key component.

I decided to compare the two player's career numbers to see how accurate my historical analogy was. It turned out to be eerily accurate (which is surprising because most of my historical analogies are bullshit). In fact, if you equalize the minutes and attempts from the field, and flip-flop Redd's rebounding numbers with Toney's assist numbers, they are almost equal. Indeed, their career Eff48 scores are almost exactly equal (Redd: 23.82; Toney: 23.80).

If you recall back to the 80s, Toney, while deadly in the playoffs, needed the combination of Julius Erving and Moses Malone to win a title. And my point in the aforementioned post was that Michael Redd, while a spectacular scorer, will need something on that order to get the Bucks over the top. And, given that he will eat up a large chunk of the Bucks cap number for years to come, and that the Bucks are not exactly positioned to take on any amount of a luxury tax penalty, Redd's salary probably prohibits the Bucks from building a championship team. Of course, extended overpayments to both Dan Gadzuric and Bobby Simmons don't help the situation either (they combine to eat up almost as much of the cap as Redd for about as long).

Redd vs. Toney

Michael Redd........Eff48 (23.82)....PPG (19.3)....FG%(45.1%)....Rpg (4.2)....Apg (2.0)
Andrew Toney........Eff48(23.80)....PPG (15.9)....FG% (50.0%)....Rpg (2.2)....Apg (4.2)