Kyle Singler Season Review – The Bench Warmer
The OKC Thunder player who spent the most time warming their bench this season was Kyle Singler.
The next player up in the Thunderous Intentions player season reviews is Kyle Singler. He’s become the brunt of jokes and odd stats on the TI twitter feed for the better portion of the season. And, he’s basically known as the guy who keeps Nick Collison company at the end of the bench.
While reviewing his stats it occurred to me — here is a guy who (like Norris Cole) was a contributor with his original team. Many pundits thought his ceiling was yet to be tapped and saw promise for Singler moving into his career.
During the Eastern Conference Finals when Jonas Jerebko became a factor for Boston it clicked me back to the Pistons. While with the Detroit, Singler played in every game his first two seasons and averaged 28 minutes per game. So, what was it Lawrence Frank and Mo Cheeks saw in Singler the Thunder are missing? Was it simply a matter of those Pistons teams being so bad it afforded Singler more minutes? Or did he reach his threshold without room for improvement?
In his two full seasons as a member of the Thunder the minutes and game regression continues. After appearing in 68 games for an average of 14.4 minutes last season he dropped to 32 game apperances this season averaging 12.0 minutes per game. Primarily his minutes skewed to garbage time.
Singler’s averages of 2.8 points and 1.5 rebounds aren’t even the most concerning part of Singler’s game. Upon his arrival to the pros he was considered to be a potential ‘3 and D’ specialist.
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Prior to arriving in OKC Singler averaged 38.4 percent onhis3-point shots. But he’s been in free fall bottoming out this season with a 18.9 percent 3-point average. Certainly it could be the personnel on the court with him or the fact he’s not getting enough consistent minutes to get into a flow. But, the job of a reserve is to always be ready. Something Singler hasnn’t shown a propensity for. .
Moving forward Singler is under contract with the Thunder via a 5 year $25 million deal. As my cohort Tony Heim wrote there is suspicion OKC may use the stretch provision to cut him this summer in an effort to free up immediate cap space.
Though nothing is set in stone it seems Singler’s days may be numbered as a member of the OKC Thunder.