Goin Down The Road Feelin Bad

The Miami Heat signed former South Florida high school star Keyon Dooling today. So what has Dooling become since leaving the neighborhood?

"He's a guy who can score points and has a chance to develop into a very good player," said Heat coach Stan Van Gundy in this morning's Sun-Sentinel.  First of all, Van Gundy implies what we all know - that "he has a chance to develop into a very good player"  means that Keyon Dooling is not a very good player right now, and that he has a much greater chance of peaking somewhere between mediocre and awful. A guy who can score points?  On the stats page for ESPN, they list 108 players as being "Shooting" Guards.  Of these 108,  Dooling ranked 100th in 3-pt field goal percentage. 100th.

But they didn't hire Dooley to be the Shooting Guard.

"I'm going to feed Shaq as much as possible until he can't take it anymore or tells me not to," Dooling said. Well, that's promising.  At least Keyon knows who is supposed to get the ball, and that he is being hired to back up Dwyane Wade.  So how good was Keyon at making decisions last year? His average of 2.0 assists to turnovers would have ranked him 57th out of 84 point guards.  By the way, Wade ranked 74th.  Damon Jones, who apparently was deemed to costly, ranked 2nd in all of basketball.

So what we've got on our hands here is a local kid who can't shoot and can't pass backing up our potential star kid.  Wouldn't this be a great spot for a guy with a little experience and discipline?  Don't the Heat know anything about replacement value?  Dooling is NOT a substitute for the more expensive Jones or Mike James. He's a scrap heap, dime-a-dozen kind of guy, chosen to be the third guard on a team with a three-year window on winning a championship.

The Heat did absolutely the right thing in trading for Shaquille O'Neil. Finding the supporting actors to your Superstar is infinitely easier than actually getting the Superstar.  Signing Michael Doleac is a great example of that.  Signing Keyon Dooling isn't.