Jared Dudley's Not A Journeyman, He's On A Journey, Man

There's a word for the type of player that works for four different teams in four years' time, and it's not usually a compliment. The word is journeyman, and the implication is that a journeyman player in some way deserves to be on the journey. Due to some flaw in his game, or some complicating factor that makes him a difficult fit, the journeyman is surplus to the team he played for the year before. And off he goes.

But let's not call Jared Dudley a journeyman. That wouldn't be fair, because there doesn't seem to be any particular flaw that sticks out as the reason why Dudley was traded in each of the last three offseasons. Instead, we'll posit that the 6-foot-7 sharpshooter is simply a chameleon. As he's moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Milwaukee to Washington, Dudley has slowly but surely morphed from a shooting guard (where played 55 percent of his minutes during the 2011-12 campaign) to a small forward (where he played 80 percent of his minutes from 2013 to 2015) to a power forward (where he's played 93 percent of his minutes this year). It's a journey, but it has taken Dudley across the court as much as across the NBA.

In each of those stops—Phoenix, LA Clippers, Milwaukee, and now Washington—Dudley has played his role fairly well at worst, and expertly at best. He has shot better than 36 percent from beyond the arc in each of those four stops, and he has for the most part played good defense both on an individual and team level. The only place where it could be said he was not in excellent form was with the Clippers, and even that was due to a well-known injury issue that Doc Rivers insisted he play through as the team dealt with other injuries elsewhere on the roster.

Still, Dudley himself doesn't seem all that surprised that he's bounced around these last few years. "No, [it's not strange]," he said. "I had injuries. At the Clippers, I couldn't bend my knee. Couldn't move. So they wanted to get rid of me. Then I was in Milwaukee, had a great first half of the year. Second half, couldn't really move [because of] my back. Had back surgery. Now this year, this is me fully healthy. The most I've been healthy in three years, since my Phoenix days. With my health, you see the production back like I did in Phoenix."

Dudley, at 30, is in the midst of arguably the best season of his career. He's knocking down a career-high percentage from beyond the arc, which provides crucial space for John Wall to operate in the half-court. In the 1,293 minutes they've shared the floor, per NBA.com, Washington has scored at the rate of a top-six offense. In 1,491 minutes with that duo either split up or not on the court at all, the Wiz have scored like the Nets.

Stretch Fours aren't a new phenomenon, but since Dudley was a stretch player before he started playing the four, he's a bit stretchier than most. You can't leave a near-46 percent shooter open from deep. Or, you can, but Wall will find him every time. Play stick coverage on Dudley, though, and you risk Wall driving into the heart of your defense. Covering their pick and pop dance has proven extremely difficult, for extremely obvious reasons.

"You look at the way the league is going, and how you're valuing yourself," Dudley said. "For me, I have more value at the four where three-point shooting is at a premium. When you're on a team that has stars, the pick-and-roll coverages for someone like John, you got to have spacers there. For me, I can always bring an advantage offensively where if they switch, my point guard has a big man on him, and if they don't switch, I'm usually open."

Of course, playing the four is not all about open triples and offensive spacing. In the last week alone, Dudley has wrangled with Anthony Davis, Taj Gibson, and Kevin Love on defense. "The tougher side is the defensive side," Dudley said. "The toughest thing is the rebounding aspect, when you're smaller and they're already underneath you." Dudley helped hold the aforementioned trio to a combined 38 points on 13-30 from the field while chipping in 31 on 11-24 (9-19 from three) himself. The trio out-boarded him 32-12 in those games, but he also ran them ragged on one end while making them work for every single inch of the floor on the other.

Dudley is strong enough to hold his own in the post for the most part, only really yielding there when guys realize they can just shoot over him and stop trying to bully him around; this happened with Kristaps Porzingis in New York a few weeks back. He also happens to be an expert positional defender and ace back-line communicator. It's that last trait that's made the transition to full-time four an easy one, Dudley said.

"It's been fine because I think when you're at the four and five, you have to communicate the most on pick and rolls and that's my strength, my huge advantage," he says. "I'm very good at—on the pick and roll—getting up, calling it, directing it. You can be a position defender. You don't always have to block shots. We don't really have a lot of guys that block shots. We're just taking charges, being there and making them finish over you."

Given those attributes, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that, despite his size deficiency, the Wizards have also defended better—by 1.5 points per 100 possessions—with Dudley on the floor than off it. Not only that, but their defensive rebound rate is practically identical, too. Teams that go small typically trade defense and rebounding for a goosed-up offensive efficiency, but Washington's small-ball group is better on both sides of the floor. (The version where Bradley Beal is healthy also has the 13th-best pace-adjusted scoring differential of the 48 five-man lineups league wide that have played at least 175 minutes this season.)

Eight years into his career, Dudley has also come to the point where he views himself as an elder statesman, and he asserts himself as a leader in whatever locker room he joins. He's spoken openly about taking Milwaukee's young players under his wing last year, and he's tried to be a voice in the Wizards' locker room as well, albeit without overstepping his bounds.

"You play the role that you're naturally comfortable with," Dudley said. "You don't try to be something you're not. For me that's to be a leader and to give my opinion on things. But to be a leader, sometimes you have to follow, you have to listen. I listen to John. I listen to coach." And they listen to him, too.

And yet, despite the fact that Dudley is shooting and defending and leading better than he ever has, the Wizards aren't doing much winning. And so, at the trade deadline, they dealt away a (protected) first-round pick for a player that is (ideally) a souped-up version of Dudley (with potential attitude issues): Markieff Morris. Sitting 2.5 games back of a playoff spot at the deadline, Washington had to make a move—and the gamble on Morris is probably a worthy one. At his best, Kieff brings the same strengths Dudley does—outside shooting from the four spot, average-to-slightly-above defense—without giving away size and with the added ability to create for himself in the post or on wing isolations.

Considering (a) Dudley's contract is up at the end of the year; (b) Morris is four years younger, has a higher ceiling and might even wind up costing less than Dudley over the next three seasons (he's owed a total of $24 million through 2019); and (c) the Wizards are still ostensibly positioning themselves for a run at that Kevin Durant guy this summer, it makes financial and basketball sense, on paper, to replace the old head with the young gun. But then, that's the same kind of sense it made for the Suns and the Clippers and the Bucks to move on from Dudley the last few years, and all three teams are probably wishing they had a player exactly like him right about now. And if Dudley's journey takes him to another NBA city next season, he'll be ready to help.