Ryan Gomes Revisted

Categorized as: Boston Celtics, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Draft Guide 2006
Posted on: July 24th, 2006

In my Boston Celtics fantasy preview, I nonchalantly penciled in Ryan Gomes for a 15th round draft pick (a last rounder in the draft that constantly plays in my head morning and night), behind Al Jefferson and Kendrick Perkins. I received a comment about sticking Gomes way down at the bottom:

Ryan Gomes definitely shouldn’t be in the basement of this list. He’s gonna log serious minutes and if anyone gets injured, gets traded or fails to live up to potential, he’s right back to 35 minutes a game and a starting nod.

My first thought? You should be happy that I stuck him in there at all, dickface! No, seriously, dickface was his handle. My second thought was that I should have at least written something about Gomes in the preview, who, in another mediocre Celtics season, brought a little excitement and a lot of effort to the team. His story is also one that I wish we could see more often in the NBA – Gomes, a power forward out of Providence College, was selected with the 50th pick in the 2005 draft. Considered too small for the NBA (listed at 6-7) and despite being a late second round pick, he busts his ass when given an opportunity and wins a starting job through a little bit of luck and a lot of determination. Instead of celebrating Gomes in the preview, I end up rewarding failure by devoting about 20 times more words to succubus Michael Olowokandi. Just a horrible display of priority setting.

However, I don’t make Disney movies and I’m not going to draft Gomes because he’s NBA small and a good story. I do think that a 15th round placement was a little harsh, though, so I wanted to revisit Ryan Gomes to see exactly how on or off my recommendation was.

To start off with, I took Gomes’ per game stats from his starts (February 10th through April 19th – 33 games) and ran that through my personal player rating system. Gomes as a starter (with a 12.4/7.6/1.6 line) ended up being ranked at 107, sandwiched between Chris Duhon and Vladimir Radmanovic. So, last year starter Gomes would be worth an 11th round pick. However, Gomes was averaging 34.5 minutes a game during that stretch, which barring another injury or two, is likely more than he’ll see this year. With a healthy Perkins and (for the time being) Jefferson, I could see Gomes around the 25 – 28 minute mark a game, with the chance to jump back up in the thirties with an injury or trade.

There is also the fact that Gomes was a rookie last season. Sure, he was a 23 year old rookie, but by all accounts, he’s still improving. The three most similar players to Gomes from basketballreference include Matt Harping, Rodney McCray, and Udonis Haslem. Those aren’t bad comps, although nothing to celebrate. On the plus side, all three saw a pretty healthy jump in stats during their sophomore seasons (well, 2nd healthy season for Harping), so it’s not too out there to say that Gomes should see a good bump in his stats this season.

So, the exact round to draft Gomes depends on how much his anticipated improvement offsets any decrease in playing time. I’m not going to try to predict what the Celtics roster will look like come November nor what Doc Rivers is going to do with that roster. Any type of trade or injury could bump Gomes back up to 35 minutes a game, in which case he could be worthy of a 7th or 8th round pick. Fortunately, I don’t think too many fantasy leagues hold drafts in July, so we can sit back and see what happens to the Celtics roster over the summer. Based on what I know today though, if Gomes is still sitting undrafted in the 10th or 11th round, I’d be willing to take a chance on his upside.

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