Monday, November 10, 2014

Is Kirk Goldsberry running for public office?

He is after all perfecting the art of lying without lying.

This is not the first time I've read something he wrote and thought "wow, that is just wrong", and then I reread it and its more like "wow, that is wildly misleading".  Here we have a few exerts from his piece

They are shooting the lights out, as per usual; an elite shooting club in all three ranges on the floor, they rank first in close-range shooting efficiency, fourth in midrange efficiency, and fifth in long-range efficiency. The Warriors also have the highest true shooting percentage in the NBA.
Enter Kerr, supposed prodigy of both Phil and Pop. Early indications suggest that at least some of that prodigal hype is warranted. In the preseason, Kerr lauded Andrew Bogut’s abilities as a passer and discussed how Bogut will help the new-look offense:
Through a few games, they’ve done exactly that, making some gorgeous basketball in the process. This season, the Warriors guards are cutting more often and more intelligently than they have in the past, especially when the bigs have the ball.
The Warriors’ guards were already a huge pain to defend, but if Kerr can design schemes that regularly get them quality looks like these, well, it’s not hard: Stephen Curry plus Klay Thompson plus open shots equals a fantastic offense.

What conclusion would you draw about the Warriors offense so far?  Would you laugh if I claimed that they were #16 in efficiency?  Would you be incredulous if I told you that they were worse offensively than either of the past two seasons under Jackson- by 3.4 and 2.3 pts per 100 possessions.  Some of that decline is due to missing David Lee early in the season, but the truth has been that GS is still struggling to generate a good offense.

Why the discrepancy?  How can a team #1 in TS (by a lot) be #16 in efficiency?  The Warriors are turning the ball over at an abhorrent rate.  How bad?  More than 33% worse than the 76ers last year. 

There is a reason why when discussing the "fantastic offense" he neglected to mention the fact that Bogut and the rest of the team just decide not to cheat and hand the ball to the opposition more than 20% of the time.

GS has played some astounding basketball so far this year, but almost entirely on the defensive end, and they were handed their first loss last night thanks largely to their 26! turnovers, including 4 from their starting C that is "boosting" their offense this year. 

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, I've noticed similar things with Goldsberry before. He often simply ignores big pieces of the puzzle.

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