lowe on picking up option for Rivers

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Rivers, the no. 10 pick and an NBA blue blood, has basically been a disaster; his rookie season was one of the worst ever among guys who actually played real minutes. He improved just about every facet of his game in Year 2, but he still barely cracked 40 percent from the floor, struggled to finish at the rim, bricked away midrange shots opponents happily gave him, and looked off open shooters in favor of wild floaters.

Rivers would earn $3.1 million in 2015-16, about the equivalent of the taxpayer midlevel exception, if the Pellies pick up that option. That doesn’t sound like much, but it could limit New Orleans’s ability to pivot into being a major cap room team if Omer Asik bolts in free agency.

The Pelicans won’t have much cap flexibility as long as they keep Asik’s $12 million cap hold on the books, and they may need to do that in order to keep his Bird Rights — and the right to go over the cap in re-signing him — in a frothy big-man market. They could in theory re-sign him with cap room, but Rivers’s $3.1 million might torpedo that plan. And if Asik jumps ship, Rivers’s option could be the difference between major cap room and sub–$10 million room.

The Pelicans could also stay over the cap, which would put the midlevel exception in play, but they don’t need Rivers’s contract to do that.

In the chaos of LeBron James Day, the Pelicans considered both trading Rivers and waiving him with the stretch provision to make sure they had enough room to complete the Asik deal with Houston. To be clear: Stretching Rivers was an absolute last resort, and New Orleans demanded real assets for him in trade talks, per several league sources.

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Rivers has clear NBA skills, and he piled up some big numbers when Monty Williams unleashed him in New Orleans’s last 10 games. Anthony Davis sat several of those games due to injury, and Rivers had to work in wretched lineups featuring combinations of Al-Farouq Aminu, Jeff Withey, Darius Miller, Luke Babbitt, and Anthony Morrow. But those games had the air of meaningless pickup joints, and the big numbers came with a few nights of inefficient Rivers chucking.

Rivers is a crafty ball handler who can get into the lane, particularly with a vicious right-to-left crossover and Eurostep — it’s just that nothing good happens when he gets there. Rivers isn’t an explosive leaper, and he struggles to finish through rotating big men at the basket. He tries to finish over and around them with crazy floaters and layups, many of which are semi-blind prayers hurled off the backboard. Rivers shot just 48.6 percent from the restricted area last season, the third-worst mark among 119 guards who attempted at least 75 such shots, per NBA.com.

And he sure as hell isn’t passing the ball in there. Rivers assisted on just 19.3 percent of New Orleans’s baskets while on the floor last season, a number we’d expect from a scoring wing with decent passing skills, and not a guy who entered the league with ambitions of playing point guard. Rivers shared a lot of his minutes with Tyreke Evans and Brian Roberts, but he also ran the show a bit, especially toward the end of the season. You could make a fun slideshow of Rivers hoisting hopeless layups while Morrow stands with his arms raised, pleading for the ball, in Rivers’s direct line of sight.

Rivers has also shot horribly from midrange, which is why opponents muck up the Pelicans’ spacing by ducking way under screens on Rivers pick-and-rolls:

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The driving did pay off in one way: Rivers got to the line nearly five times per 36 minutes, a strong number, and a big jump over his rookie season. He’s a pesky on-ball defender with the length to guard wing players, and he very quietly hit 49 percent of his spot-up 3-pointers last season. Rivers doesn’t have gravity off the ball yet — guys sag off him without much worry — but if he keeps shooting the deep ball like that, he’ll (slowly) earn it.

Rivers has passing vision, and he’ll probably start using it more once he finally realizes he’s not the mega-scorer he wishes to be.

This is a really tough call for the Pelicans, especially since the Williams and Rivers families are close.

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