Do you know what the second and third best things for a Mike D'Antoni led team is (the best being, of course, Steve Nash)? Athletic bigs who can run the floor (allowing D'Antoni to play smallball while still ably defending opposing 4s and 5s) and wings who can catch and shoot.
Let's look at the Knickerbocker rotation for 2010-2011, starting with their expected top three bigs:
Amare Stoudemire
Anthony Randolph
Ronny Turiaf
All can run the floor (assuming Ronny Turiaf's heart holds up). Stoudemire is, of course, one of the most coveted things around - a high volume, high efficiency scorer (we'll see if that holds true without Steve Nash, but for the moment we'll give him the benefit of the doubt). Stoudemire's weaknesses as a big are a lack of defense, a lack of blocked shots, and a lack of rebounding. Who best to pair him with? How about a big who can do those things. Both Turiaf and Randolph would be top 15 blockers if they could see the court often enough. They're both fairly well regarded defensively overall. And Randolph would be a top 20 rebounder (again, if he could get enough minutes). About the only thing you could nitpick would be that Turiaf is an even worse rebounder than Stoudemire. Anyway, I'd hope the majority of the minutes over the next few years will ultimately go to Stoudemire and Randolph anyway (unless they get someone even better). Those two fit together (and in D'Antoni's system) very nicely.
Now, let's look at the Knick wings:
Danilo Gallinari
Kelenna Azubuike
Roger Mason
Wilson Chandler
Gallinari is a perfect fit for Mike D'Antoni. First, he's Italian. Second, he's a career 39% three point shooter, which is pretty amazing for a guy who takes 6.4 threes per 36 minutes. Then there's Kelenna Azubuike, a career 41% three point shooter, on 3.7 threes per 36 minutes, and a fairly good defensive player. Roger Mason has been 38% on 6.2 threes per 36 minutes. Then, there's Wilson Chandler. A player who probably doesn't fit into D'Antoni's longterm plans unless he can either a.) improve his outside shooting or b.) become a lockdown defender.
What are the positives so far? Gallinari and Randolph are ridiculously young and will only get better with age. Stoudemire (if he stays healthy) is only 28. Azubuike is only 26. If the Knicks want, they can keep those four together for the life of Stoudemire's contract, and even if he starts to trail off, the other three will get better. What are my concerns?
At point guard, according to the depth chart on ESPN.com, the Knicks have Ray Felton (who we'll get to in a second), and Toney Douglas, who I wouldn't even call a point guard if not for seeing that. Douglas hits threes (39% on 5.8 attempts per 36 minutes), so that works for a D'Antoni wing (which is what he should really be playing, because he certainly isn't distributing the ball like D'Antoni would like his point guard to), except that Douglas is probably too small to defend most wings.
Raymond Felton is a mediocre career scorer (49.3% TS on 21.1% usage rate) who will hopefully get more efficient as he won't be needed to score as much playing on this Knicks team as he was on a Bobcats team that didn't have many offensive weapons. He's also an alright distributor, but not great. He plays alright defense. In general, he's alright. But, he isn't great. And unfortunately for the Knicks, they may need a great point guard (or at least one that's a great fit) in order to compete with the top Eastern Conference teams.
So, maybe even more so than Carmelo, Knicks fans should be hoping they somehow figure out a way to get Chris Paul out of New Orleans without giving up any of their best guys (this seems impossible), or that they manage to pick up a rising young PG some other way (like, say, if Ricky Rubio, who seems to love to do nothing beyond set up his teammates, which would work nicely with all these shooters and Amare). Of course, getting Melo would be nice, too.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Importance of Being Lamar: Why mismatches are so great.
I love Lamar Odom. And not just because he has a really high tolerance for sugar. I love him because he (and other players who create mismatches) are so underappreciated. I'm going to spend the rest of this post in a hypothetical scenario with entirely made up numbers to show you why I feel that way.
Let's pretend that defense (separating out "perimeter defense" and "post defense") can be expressed as numbers from 1-100, with 50 being the average defender in the NBA. Let's also pretend that height has a defined effect on defense, such that if you are more than two inches shorter than the player you're guarding, you lose 5 points of defense per inch (why 5 points? I don't know). Let's further fabricate a speed rating for every player, also from 1-100 (with 50 being league average), and say that being one point slower than your opponent makes you one point less effective at guarding him.
Now, let's fictionalize an NBA team with these characteristics:
POS Per Post Ht Speed
G 60 30 6'1" 90
G 60 40 6'5" 70
F 55 55 6'7" 60
F 40 60 6'10"45
C 30 60 7'0" 35
Let's say Lamar Odom is on a similarly constructed team of his own and playing "power forward" (I use quotes partially because I tend to dislike the classically defined positions in basketball, but also because Lamar Odom in particular, as you'll see, falls outside of these definitions). Defensively, his versatility allows him to adequately cover other power forwards, small forwards, and even some guards and centers, while even rebounding well for his position (his defensive rebound rate was eighth in the league, surrounded mostly by centers in the rankings). But, he also provides huge value offensively. Which box score stat shows this? None of them. He doesn't score a bunch. He gets some assists, but not a ton. His offensive rebound rate, while still nice, isn't amongst the league leaders. He does do the following -
Guarding a similar team to themselves, those five defenders above have effective defense ratings of 60, 60, 55, 60, 60 (I'm assuming the three smaller offensive players play primarily on the perimeter and the two larger players play in the post). Now, put Lamar Odom on the offense (and we'll assume the following teammates are the smallest threats offensively: the small guard and the small forward - Derek Fisher and Ron Artest?). We'll call Lamar's speed "45", just to not give him any additional advantage beyond his mismatchability (I just coined a term). Since Lamar primarily plays offense on the perimeter, if the defense played straight up, without cross-matching, they'd have effective ratings of 60, 60, 55, 40, 60. All other things being equal, the defense will probably cross-match to more effectively play defense, because you'd rather hide your bad defensive match-up on someone who isn't an offensive threat. One possible cross-match scenario would be this:
The guard match-ups remain the same, but the smaller forward covers Lamar, while the larger forward covers the offense's smaller forward. This gives us 60, 60, 37, 55, 60 now, but at least the 37 is on a non-threat. So what happens here? Lamar is defended fairly well, so he ends up producing somewhat normal offensive numbers, but now a teammate has the mismatch (created by Lamar's presence) so that he's able to more effectively produce.
So, if this effect of Lamar being on the floor doesn't show up in his box score stats (points, assists, rebounds, etc), where does it show up? How about as one cause for the fact that he's currently eighth in adjusted plus-minus over the last two seasons, while posting pretty mediocre box score stats (his PER of 16.6 and 15.9 over the last two seasons are barely higher than the league average of 15.0).
So, did I just make up numbers to illustrate my point? Sure. But, you can change the numbers and it will still work - creating mismatches doesn't necessarily benefit the player responsible in his classic stat line (in fact, in some scenarios it could end up hurting him, if he ends up with a better defender covering him), but it certainly benefits the team. (Rashard Lewis is another player who has a similar effect - pedestrian box score stats, but tenth in the league in adjusted plus-minus over the last two seasons, and unlike Lamar, you'd have a harder time explaining the discrepancy by saying he's a very good defender).
Let's pretend that defense (separating out "perimeter defense" and "post defense") can be expressed as numbers from 1-100, with 50 being the average defender in the NBA. Let's also pretend that height has a defined effect on defense, such that if you are more than two inches shorter than the player you're guarding, you lose 5 points of defense per inch (why 5 points? I don't know). Let's further fabricate a speed rating for every player, also from 1-100 (with 50 being league average), and say that being one point slower than your opponent makes you one point less effective at guarding him.
Now, let's fictionalize an NBA team with these characteristics:
POS Per Post Ht Speed
G 60 30 6'1" 90
G 60 40 6'5" 70
F 55 55 6'7" 60
F 40 60 6'10"45
C 30 60 7'0" 35
Let's say Lamar Odom is on a similarly constructed team of his own and playing "power forward" (I use quotes partially because I tend to dislike the classically defined positions in basketball, but also because Lamar Odom in particular, as you'll see, falls outside of these definitions). Defensively, his versatility allows him to adequately cover other power forwards, small forwards, and even some guards and centers, while even rebounding well for his position (his defensive rebound rate was eighth in the league, surrounded mostly by centers in the rankings). But, he also provides huge value offensively. Which box score stat shows this? None of them. He doesn't score a bunch. He gets some assists, but not a ton. His offensive rebound rate, while still nice, isn't amongst the league leaders. He does do the following -
Guarding a similar team to themselves, those five defenders above have effective defense ratings of 60, 60, 55, 60, 60 (I'm assuming the three smaller offensive players play primarily on the perimeter and the two larger players play in the post). Now, put Lamar Odom on the offense (and we'll assume the following teammates are the smallest threats offensively: the small guard and the small forward - Derek Fisher and Ron Artest?). We'll call Lamar's speed "45", just to not give him any additional advantage beyond his mismatchability (I just coined a term). Since Lamar primarily plays offense on the perimeter, if the defense played straight up, without cross-matching, they'd have effective ratings of 60, 60, 55, 40, 60. All other things being equal, the defense will probably cross-match to more effectively play defense, because you'd rather hide your bad defensive match-up on someone who isn't an offensive threat. One possible cross-match scenario would be this:
The guard match-ups remain the same, but the smaller forward covers Lamar, while the larger forward covers the offense's smaller forward. This gives us 60, 60, 37, 55, 60 now, but at least the 37 is on a non-threat. So what happens here? Lamar is defended fairly well, so he ends up producing somewhat normal offensive numbers, but now a teammate has the mismatch (created by Lamar's presence) so that he's able to more effectively produce.
So, if this effect of Lamar being on the floor doesn't show up in his box score stats (points, assists, rebounds, etc), where does it show up? How about as one cause for the fact that he's currently eighth in adjusted plus-minus over the last two seasons, while posting pretty mediocre box score stats (his PER of 16.6 and 15.9 over the last two seasons are barely higher than the league average of 15.0).
So, did I just make up numbers to illustrate my point? Sure. But, you can change the numbers and it will still work - creating mismatches doesn't necessarily benefit the player responsible in his classic stat line (in fact, in some scenarios it could end up hurting him, if he ends up with a better defender covering him), but it certainly benefits the team. (Rashard Lewis is another player who has a similar effect - pedestrian box score stats, but tenth in the league in adjusted plus-minus over the last two seasons, and unlike Lamar, you'd have a harder time explaining the discrepancy by saying he's a very good defender).
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Five thousand reasons why Delonte West is still awesome
Since this is the second ever post to this blog and it's already another post about a new player for the Boston Celtics, I'll keep it short (since I don't even like the Celtics, in fact they mostly seem like a bunch of unlikeable guys except for their newest addition, the one I'll mention if I ever get out of these parentheses).
Delonte West is awesome for about 84,528 reasons. Not the least of which is this:
On September 17, 2009 West was pulled over for a traffic violation while riding a 3-wheeled motorcycle. During this stop it was found that West had a 9mm Beretta pistol, .357 Magnum and a Remington 870 in a guitar case
I don't condone carrying around weaponry, but if you're going to, a guitar case is the proper luggage. There's also the fact that Delonte West may or may not have slept with Lebron James' mother. And there's this (it's a shame the actual video seems to have been erased from history, but there's a little bit of transcript at the link).
It also turns out that Delonte West is pretty good at basketball when placed in the right situation. Things Delonte can't do: guard big wings, be a first option for initiating offense for himself and teammates, stay away from teammates' mothers. Things Delonte can do: hit open threes (career 37.3%), defend either guard spot (except against the aforementioned big wings if they can manage to post him up).
Where can a guy like that find a situation that's right for him? On any team with superstar wings who can already initiate all the offense, cover a big wing when needed, and manage to avoid sleeping with Lebron's mother. What kind of teams are these? The current Celtics and Lakers come to mind, and the Cavs up until THE DECISION. I was actually a little surprised that the Lakers didn't pursue West when they were shopping around for a "point guard" (you don't really have to be able to play point guard to be the small guard on the Lakers or any triangle team when you have a guard of Kobe's caliber). Maybe Phil Jackson was just getting nervous that he was running out of white guys to give oddly large amounts of playing time to (note: Kukoc was actually good, I just felt like I had to include him for some reason, maybe to piss off Scottie Pippen when he reads this).
Oh, and it's awesome when Delonte dunks on someone.
Delonte West is awesome for about 84,528 reasons. Not the least of which is this:
On September 17, 2009 West was pulled over for a traffic violation while riding a 3-wheeled motorcycle. During this stop it was found that West had a 9mm Beretta pistol, .357 Magnum and a Remington 870 in a guitar case
I don't condone carrying around weaponry, but if you're going to, a guitar case is the proper luggage. There's also the fact that Delonte West may or may not have slept with Lebron James' mother. And there's this (it's a shame the actual video seems to have been erased from history, but there's a little bit of transcript at the link).
It also turns out that Delonte West is pretty good at basketball when placed in the right situation. Things Delonte can't do: guard big wings, be a first option for initiating offense for himself and teammates, stay away from teammates' mothers. Things Delonte can do: hit open threes (career 37.3%), defend either guard spot (except against the aforementioned big wings if they can manage to post him up).
Where can a guy like that find a situation that's right for him? On any team with superstar wings who can already initiate all the offense, cover a big wing when needed, and manage to avoid sleeping with Lebron's mother. What kind of teams are these? The current Celtics and Lakers come to mind, and the Cavs up until THE DECISION. I was actually a little surprised that the Lakers didn't pursue West when they were shopping around for a "point guard" (you don't really have to be able to play point guard to be the small guard on the Lakers or any triangle team when you have a guard of Kobe's caliber). Maybe Phil Jackson was just getting nervous that he was running out of white guys to give oddly large amounts of playing time to (note: Kukoc was actually good, I just felt like I had to include him for some reason, maybe to piss off Scottie Pippen when he reads this).
Oh, and it's awesome when Delonte dunks on someone.
Shaq is a Douche and a Poor Basketball Analyst
From ESPN.com's rumors:
Shaquille O'Neal, who played at LSU, told The Times-Picayune on Friday that he was interested in signing with the Hornets, and even had discussions with former general manager, Jeff Bower.
"It didn't work out," O'Neal said.
O'Neal eventually signed with Boston because they are unselfish.
"I like that they play together and nobody really worries about shots," O'Neal said. "When I was with Cleveland, guys who couldn't even play were worried about shots. Why was Mo Williams taking 15 shots, and I'm only taking four? If LeBron James takes 20 shots, that's cool. ... So I said, let me get with a good team for the last two years. I don't mind people calling me a journeyman. I've been programmed to move around every three years."
Why would anyone want to play on the same team as Shaq? Sure, he still contributes something on the court (although not nearly as much as he thinks, but we'll get to that in a second), but is it worth how much of an asshole he can be to teammates and former teammates, as we've seen numerous times over the years? Granted, Kobe deserved whatever he had to deal with from Shaq, since he's a sociopath and would make you want to kill yourself if you were friends with him, except for the fact that he has oodles of money, so you'd probably still want to hang out with him just so he could pick up the tab. But, Steve Nash didn't deserve to have his television show idea stolen! And now he's making fun of poor Mo Williams?
But, the real travesty is how wrong Shaq is. Besides his fuzzy math about taking four shots per game (he actually took 8.7 last year, which was slightly more than Mo Williams on a per minute basis), he's also wrong about his implication that he should be getting more shots and Mo Williams should be getting less.
Mo's true shooting percentage last year was 58%, while Shaq's was 56.6%. Now, that's not a huge difference, but you should also take into account that a post player like Shaq has his shooting percentages boosted artificially by getting offensive rebounds / putbacks, which are definitely good things, but Shaq's argument seems to be that he should have had more plays called for him, so we would ideally want a representation of his scoring in those situations. (Mo Williams also has a boost to his TS%, since he would shoot some technical free throws for the team).
The other thing to consider when thinking about overall offensive efficiency is turnover rate. Shaq turned the ball over on 15.7% of the possessions he used. Mo Williams only turned it over 15.5% of the time. And this doesn't take into account that Mo Williams averaged 5.6 assists per 36 minutes to Shaq's 2.3 (you can obviously turn the ball over while trying to score, but you can also turn it over while trying to set up the team's offense or feed the ball to a teammate who's in position to score, which Mo Williams did far more frequently than Shaq).
So, overall, Shaq is a bad teammate, but he's an even worse basketball analyst.
But, the real travesty is how wrong Shaq is. Besides his fuzzy math about taking four shots per game (he actually took 8.7 last year, which was slightly more than Mo Williams on a per minute basis), he's also wrong about his implication that he should be getting more shots and Mo Williams should be getting less.
Mo's true shooting percentage last year was 58%, while Shaq's was 56.6%. Now, that's not a huge difference, but you should also take into account that a post player like Shaq has his shooting percentages boosted artificially by getting offensive rebounds / putbacks, which are definitely good things, but Shaq's argument seems to be that he should have had more plays called for him, so we would ideally want a representation of his scoring in those situations. (Mo Williams also has a boost to his TS%, since he would shoot some technical free throws for the team).
The other thing to consider when thinking about overall offensive efficiency is turnover rate. Shaq turned the ball over on 15.7% of the possessions he used. Mo Williams only turned it over 15.5% of the time. And this doesn't take into account that Mo Williams averaged 5.6 assists per 36 minutes to Shaq's 2.3 (you can obviously turn the ball over while trying to score, but you can also turn it over while trying to set up the team's offense or feed the ball to a teammate who's in position to score, which Mo Williams did far more frequently than Shaq).
So, overall, Shaq is a bad teammate, but he's an even worse basketball analyst.
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