PCTI Players' Poll: #1 Abe

The Brat’s Preamble: This was the one sure thing. But that doesn’t mean it should go without giving some credit. As this exercise has pointed out, there’s a certain arc most of the brethren follow. Abe has held the number one spot unofficially from the beginning of PCTI up until the eve of PCTI V while showing little signs of slowing down.

Everyone knew going in to PCTI I that Abe was the superior player. What few realized – or didn’t understand to the extent he’s demonstrated – was his superhuman ability to play without a drop off no matter what off the court shenanigans he partakes in the night before. Abe doesn’t get to the point of physically struggling near as quickly as the majority of PCTI and once he gets there he somehow seldom shows any ill effects. He has also demonstrated in his own often understated way, he will compete his ass off. In fact in recent years he’s been more vocal, as if embracing his alpha dog status. Much like Actor he doesn’t make a wealth of plays for others but has supreme timing on knowing when to strike and when to blend in to the flow of the game.

In PCTI IIII Abe actually had a down year. He’s been held to single digits only five times in 24 games and had never scored below nine points in any PCTI game through the first three. Yet last year he had eight points in game one, six points in game three and three points in game five. Is he showing signs of coming back to the pack, or was this simply his off year? If the answer is the latter, he still found a way to deliver for his team when they needed it, in so keeping his perfect record intact. He turned in several big rebounding performances when he failed to score well and went for a career high in scoring in game four. If he is in fact coming back to the pack, he has little to fear. At this point, the rest of us are but a speck in his rear view mirror.

Voting Breakdown: highest vote, 1. Lowest vote, 2. This obviously tells the whole story.

PCTI Record: 4-0. Or perhaps this tells the whole story.

Lifetime Stats: 14.4 ppg (1^st and it’s not particularly close), 7.0 rpg (3^rd), 38 assists (8^th, a really pedestrian number for a PCTI founding father who touches the ball a lot), 6 blocks (8^th), 17 steals (T-5, there’s a four way tie for fifth with Sabin, Donnybrook, and Skillz),  39.3 percent shooting (8^th, any argument against Abe would probably start here. He shoots a nearly identical percentage as BMac and Spotlight), 31.7 percent from three (6^th, only one third of PCTI shoots it at better than 30 percent from distance) and the all-important Sabin Productivity number: 187 (4^th)

Lifetime Bests: 23 points (PCTI IV, game four), 15 rebounds (PCTI II, game one), 4 assists…(multiple)

Other Notes: It’s worth mentioning, if you made a list of most shot attempts ranked 1-16 and a list of top PCTI scorers, ranked 1-16, the two lists would look nearly identical. You could argue that if anyone took as many shots as the top scorers in PCTI, they’re likely to average about the same amount of points. Of course the truth is that what really sets the top scorers in PCTI apart is not their ability to make shots but their ability to simply consistently create shots.

Also, as a final note to this exercise. The final question was to see if there were any gripes about PCTI that were hovering below the surface. The answer to that, by and large, is no. Six votes came in for “the videos being too expensive, I rarely watch them” and the obvious choice, “Dan The Boy sucks as commish” only got four votes, surprisingly.

As for Abe, a vote here and a vote there was all. Specifically, one vote each for overrated, most fun to see lose, has played out of his mind and off court MVP.

In closing, see you boys in Denver!