I would say that there was a significant turning point during the 2015/2016 NBA season, the Warriors, on their way to 73 wins (but no championship) had an offensive rating of 114.5 for the season, 8.1 pp100 higher than the league average and 15.7 higher than the bottom of the league 76ers. That world is largely gone, a 114.5 rating would have been 4th in the league last year and it would be 4.1 pp100 better than the league average, and 10 points above the bottom. GSW still had the top offense at 115.9, but the median caught up by 2.7 pp100, and was up about 5% over the 15/16 season. There has also been a small decline in oreb% over that span, which is part of a longer and deeper decline.
This shift has significantly decreased the value of a specific type of player, ironically one that those same Warriors just handed a max contract to. The math here is fairly simple, an average ortg of 105 is equivalent to a TS mark of 52.5% if we assume that turnovers and offensive rebounds basically cancel each other out in terms of total possessions, the decline in oreb% has actually made this not true anymore, with the average team grabbing 10.3 orebs a game to 14.1 TOs a game last season, so a 54.6% TS rate is needed to bridge that gap at a 105 ortg. At a 110 ortg the average TS mark needed is 57.2%.
So lets talk about a few players, D'Angelo Russell first. His best season to date had him with at 53.3% TS mark and a 31.9% USG with a fairly average TO rate. 5 years ago his teammates would have needed to average a 55.5% TS mark on the court next to him to pull the team's ortg up to average, last season it would have to have been 59%. This is a large jump and a major reason why Brooklyn's ortg with Russell on the floor was almost 2 points below the league average, despite him playing over 60% of his mins with Joe Harris and his 65% TS mark.
The numbers are similar for Russell Westbrook's (what is it with Russells?) career averages, and much worse on his last season numbers. But even worse is that these two players are joining the top two offenses in the league, even with lower usage rates than in previous years their negative impacts will be hard to cover over. Assuming a 25% usage rate the rest of the Warriors would need a TS mark of almost 70% to keep their offense at the same level, and to put that in perspective the average Steph Curry 3 has a TS rate of 65% so even an offense that was 25% D'Angelo and 75% Curry 3pters (with average rebound and TO rates) would be notably worse than last year's Warriors offense. Their offense is going to look especially anemic when Curry sits while Klay recovers from his ACL tear.
Westbrook is harder to guess at, he has had large swings in his efficiency over the past few years, but at 31 he is unlikely to have a career best season in TS, and his career best of 55.4% isn't exactly great. He also hasn't accepted a role with sub 30.9% TS in the last 9 seasons despite playing most of that time with either Durant or Paul George, so I expect high usage/low efficiency for him as he runs himself into decline.
We can apply this to other players in the league, Andrew Wiggins looks like a terrible bet to be a valuable contributor with one caveat. His low, low TO rate which gives a glimmer of hope, as Minnesota managed the #4 offense in the league two seasons ago thanks to the #1 TO rate and the #4 oreb rate, as well as the #3 FTr. Of course that was with Towns and his high efficiency scoring. Mitchell in Utah is another candidate for dumping while he is at peak value, because if he is still scoring at this level when the league catches up to these shifts he will be untradeable on what is likely to be a max contract in 2 years time. Dennis Smith Jr is another who should be jettisoned ASAP, and Denver needs to do some serious thinking about Murray.
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
The Returning Lakers
This is just a short one, and more of a 'whaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt' post.
Of the players from last season that the Lakers are bringing back they appear to have chosen the worst preforming. Some of this is due to the trade for Davis, but it is still perplexing. Rondo was -10.9, and even next to Lebron he was -4.8, McGee's -5.1 was much worst than Chandler's +5.5, or Zubac's +3.1. KCP's -3.3 was better than Lance's -3.8 so that is something I guess, but it wasn't good.
Of their other signings Avery Bradley has been bad the last two seasons and average the year before that, and while Cook shouldn't be judged on pure +/- since he was backing up Curry he was in the 2nd percentile, and adjustments (ie RPM) hated him as well.
Jared Dudley has been a solid plus for years, and if they weren't getting a 34 year old who hasn't been able to stay on the floor much in recent years I'd like that signing a lot more.
That leaves us with Danny Green and Demarcus Cousins. Green had an astonishing +17.4 on/off last year, but it was pretty fluky. Besides shooting a career best 45.5% from 3 he spent almost all of his time on the floor with multiple other starters on the deepest 5 team in the league. He's a fine player but none of his previous years are remotely this high, and his prior two seasons were average to good. The other caveat is that he is 32 this season, which is a fairly bad zone for a 3+d player. JR Smith's value dropped from rotation player on a championship level team to borderline league player between age 30 and 32, Demarre Carrol's defensive value dropped well off last season in his age 32 year, it is likely that Trevor Ariza's last good defensive year was age 32, and that was below his prior production. Numerous other examples could be conjured, though clearly not every player who fits this role collapses right as they turn 32 it should at least be cause for building some redundancy given how well multiple shooting wings has worked next to Lebron. As it stands a decline from Green defensively gives them no on ball defenders worth playing.
Honestly its underwhelming, we are left with Kuzma and Cousins not yet discussed though. Kuzma is an offensive player on a team that is going to be searching for defense all season long, and at their most heavily filled position. Its hard to see large net value coming here unless he can lock in as an off ball defender who knows his rotations. He is young enough to do so. Cousins then is most of their upside, and he was statistically very solid outside of a high foul rate last year. I would assume that comes down with another year past his injury.
In a lot of ways this team reminds me of the last few years of the Kobe/Gasol Lakers (not the Dwight/Nash year) or the last seasons of the Kobe/Shaq Lakers with the Kobe/Shaq Lakers being the best comparison.
Shaq's peak years, and his playoff runs, are about as good of a value comparison as you can find for Lebron's peak, and Kobe's early-mid 20s value is a good match for Davis. These teams were trotting out a veteran supporting case with Rick Fox and Robert Horry in their early 30s along with a late 20s Derek Fisher.
I would also argue that the league was weaker then than it looks this season. The Spurs were a one star team in their title season and the Pistons one of the weaker title winners in recent memory (though still a strong team) the next.
Of the players from last season that the Lakers are bringing back they appear to have chosen the worst preforming. Some of this is due to the trade for Davis, but it is still perplexing. Rondo was -10.9, and even next to Lebron he was -4.8, McGee's -5.1 was much worst than Chandler's +5.5, or Zubac's +3.1. KCP's -3.3 was better than Lance's -3.8 so that is something I guess, but it wasn't good.
Of their other signings Avery Bradley has been bad the last two seasons and average the year before that, and while Cook shouldn't be judged on pure +/- since he was backing up Curry he was in the 2nd percentile, and adjustments (ie RPM) hated him as well.
Jared Dudley has been a solid plus for years, and if they weren't getting a 34 year old who hasn't been able to stay on the floor much in recent years I'd like that signing a lot more.
That leaves us with Danny Green and Demarcus Cousins. Green had an astonishing +17.4 on/off last year, but it was pretty fluky. Besides shooting a career best 45.5% from 3 he spent almost all of his time on the floor with multiple other starters on the deepest 5 team in the league. He's a fine player but none of his previous years are remotely this high, and his prior two seasons were average to good. The other caveat is that he is 32 this season, which is a fairly bad zone for a 3+d player. JR Smith's value dropped from rotation player on a championship level team to borderline league player between age 30 and 32, Demarre Carrol's defensive value dropped well off last season in his age 32 year, it is likely that Trevor Ariza's last good defensive year was age 32, and that was below his prior production. Numerous other examples could be conjured, though clearly not every player who fits this role collapses right as they turn 32 it should at least be cause for building some redundancy given how well multiple shooting wings has worked next to Lebron. As it stands a decline from Green defensively gives them no on ball defenders worth playing.
Honestly its underwhelming, we are left with Kuzma and Cousins not yet discussed though. Kuzma is an offensive player on a team that is going to be searching for defense all season long, and at their most heavily filled position. Its hard to see large net value coming here unless he can lock in as an off ball defender who knows his rotations. He is young enough to do so. Cousins then is most of their upside, and he was statistically very solid outside of a high foul rate last year. I would assume that comes down with another year past his injury.
In a lot of ways this team reminds me of the last few years of the Kobe/Gasol Lakers (not the Dwight/Nash year) or the last seasons of the Kobe/Shaq Lakers with the Kobe/Shaq Lakers being the best comparison.
Shaq's peak years, and his playoff runs, are about as good of a value comparison as you can find for Lebron's peak, and Kobe's early-mid 20s value is a good match for Davis. These teams were trotting out a veteran supporting case with Rick Fox and Robert Horry in their early 30s along with a late 20s Derek Fisher.
I would also argue that the league was weaker then than it looks this season. The Spurs were a one star team in their title season and the Pistons one of the weaker title winners in recent memory (though still a strong team) the next.
Monday, July 8, 2019
Lebron's decline
Working through the Laker's in several parts. The tough one is this one, Lebron's decline and there simply aren't any comparisons to use in NBA history. It would have been nice if Jordan had retired 67% fewer times, but here we are and we will do what we can.
First off there has been some significant evidence of decline for Lebron over the past two seasons. His on/off numbers have been the 2nd and 5th worst of his career, his FTr has spent 4 years below his career average, as has his steal rate. The most interesting point to me though was his offensive performance relative to the league last season. Thanks to Cleaningtheglass.com we have percentile ranks by year for his performance and in terms of total points scored per shot attempt Lebron was in the 80th percentile. Something for a mere perennial all-star to be proud off, but for James its a notable drop and his lowest finish since the 2007 season. Even if we should give him a bump for shooting poorly on FTs this season he would still be behind either of the two previous seasons. The average ortg in the NBA over the past 3 seasons was 108.8, 108.6 and 110.4, and while Lebron's production had managed to keep pace with the league-wide surge in offense over the previous 4 seasons this year he did not, and actually fell off while overall offense rose.
Looking around to recent great players we see Dirk had his last elite offensive season at age 35, with down years at 33 and 34, Wade his at 31, Kobe had a single resurgent year at 34 after 4 high volume/medium efficiency seasons, Paul Pierce's last top offensive season was age 34, Allen Iverson at 32. Jordan himself was showing signs of decline during the regular season at age 34, before pulling it back together and trotting out what would be one, last, great playoff run.
I would expect a decline year for Lebron going into this projection, modest but noticeable. He has a much broader skill-set with passing and rebounding than the other great players mentioned here outside of MJ, so he should still remain a high impact player for a few more years, perhaps even until he is 40.
First off there has been some significant evidence of decline for Lebron over the past two seasons. His on/off numbers have been the 2nd and 5th worst of his career, his FTr has spent 4 years below his career average, as has his steal rate. The most interesting point to me though was his offensive performance relative to the league last season. Thanks to Cleaningtheglass.com we have percentile ranks by year for his performance and in terms of total points scored per shot attempt Lebron was in the 80th percentile. Something for a mere perennial all-star to be proud off, but for James its a notable drop and his lowest finish since the 2007 season. Even if we should give him a bump for shooting poorly on FTs this season he would still be behind either of the two previous seasons. The average ortg in the NBA over the past 3 seasons was 108.8, 108.6 and 110.4, and while Lebron's production had managed to keep pace with the league-wide surge in offense over the previous 4 seasons this year he did not, and actually fell off while overall offense rose.
Looking around to recent great players we see Dirk had his last elite offensive season at age 35, with down years at 33 and 34, Wade his at 31, Kobe had a single resurgent year at 34 after 4 high volume/medium efficiency seasons, Paul Pierce's last top offensive season was age 34, Allen Iverson at 32. Jordan himself was showing signs of decline during the regular season at age 34, before pulling it back together and trotting out what would be one, last, great playoff run.
I would expect a decline year for Lebron going into this projection, modest but noticeable. He has a much broader skill-set with passing and rebounding than the other great players mentioned here outside of MJ, so he should still remain a high impact player for a few more years, perhaps even until he is 40.
Friday, July 5, 2019
Why Charlotte, just why?
Refusing to offer Kemba the super max could have been a ballsy first step in a rebuild, a demonstration that Charlotte has finally gotten a handle on how to value players in the NBA and a willingness to take one bad season for the sake of longer term success.
Then they decided that Rozier was worth $19 million a season and basically shot to hell any possibility of gain from losing Walker. The only silver lining is that Rozier is generally bad and there is a good chance Charlotte ends up with a top pick this year. There really isn't much else to talk about for Charlotte as they boxed themselves into this position years ago, so lets talk about how that happened.
5 years ago Charlotte managed to squeeze out a playoff appearance with a very young team, their mins leader was a 23 year old PG and they had 3 top 7 picks under 22 years old on the roster. Their veterans weren't even that old, outside of a 29 year old center with bad knees that is. The trouble is that the 29 year old C and the 23 year old PG were the only strong players on the team. Their not old veterans also weren't very good, and neither were their high draft picks. After Al Jefferson's injuries and decline sank their next season Charlotte actually went out and made some savvy moves. They landed vets coming off down seasons and on expiring contracts and churned out a 48 win season, then they promptly forgot why those guys were available in the first place and quickly overpaid them.
Batum was available because he had largely peaked as a 23 year old and signed a 4 year deal right after. 3 years later he hadn't matched that productivity, let alone exceeded it, and Portland was ready to move on. Marvin Williams lacked any elite skills and was looking to be a good fit as a role player when he wound up in Charlotte. Neither of them should have been treated as irreplaceable, or even difficult to replace, rotation pieces but they were and their contracts ended up killing the one skill that Charlotte management had demonstrated over the previous 3 seasons. With no cap space left and no real growth from their high draft picks they couldn't improve their team and the not at all unexpected regression of Batum and Williams made them weaker.
Some of this is more obvious in retrospect but the loss of Kemba this season ought to have signaled a full reset, and the opportunity should have been taken to start accumulating long term assets. Instead they have committed a large chunk of money to a team with no upside and with no real reason to believe that money will ever be positively effective for them.
Then they decided that Rozier was worth $19 million a season and basically shot to hell any possibility of gain from losing Walker. The only silver lining is that Rozier is generally bad and there is a good chance Charlotte ends up with a top pick this year. There really isn't much else to talk about for Charlotte as they boxed themselves into this position years ago, so lets talk about how that happened.
5 years ago Charlotte managed to squeeze out a playoff appearance with a very young team, their mins leader was a 23 year old PG and they had 3 top 7 picks under 22 years old on the roster. Their veterans weren't even that old, outside of a 29 year old center with bad knees that is. The trouble is that the 29 year old C and the 23 year old PG were the only strong players on the team. Their not old veterans also weren't very good, and neither were their high draft picks. After Al Jefferson's injuries and decline sank their next season Charlotte actually went out and made some savvy moves. They landed vets coming off down seasons and on expiring contracts and churned out a 48 win season, then they promptly forgot why those guys were available in the first place and quickly overpaid them.
Batum was available because he had largely peaked as a 23 year old and signed a 4 year deal right after. 3 years later he hadn't matched that productivity, let alone exceeded it, and Portland was ready to move on. Marvin Williams lacked any elite skills and was looking to be a good fit as a role player when he wound up in Charlotte. Neither of them should have been treated as irreplaceable, or even difficult to replace, rotation pieces but they were and their contracts ended up killing the one skill that Charlotte management had demonstrated over the previous 3 seasons. With no cap space left and no real growth from their high draft picks they couldn't improve their team and the not at all unexpected regression of Batum and Williams made them weaker.
Some of this is more obvious in retrospect but the loss of Kemba this season ought to have signaled a full reset, and the opportunity should have been taken to start accumulating long term assets. Instead they have committed a large chunk of money to a team with no upside and with no real reason to believe that money will ever be positively effective for them.
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
The disappointing Nets
The title here is a prediction for just this year while they carry the dead weight of Durant's contract, but the consensus after upgrading their starting PG spot to Kyrie Irving is contention for a top 4 seed in the East. It sounds reasonable on its face, as the Nets were the 6 seed last season and just improved with a coveted free agent. There are two major caveats though.
1. The easy and obvious one is that the Nets were a very weak 6 seed, with only 3 more wins than the 10 seed and 1 more than the 8.
2. Their neutral point differential was driven by their bench squad plus their outgoing PG. The largest season to season moves in the NBA are where a positive player replaces a negative one, positive replacing positive leads to smaller moves, and the bench has been broken up. If you strip out the players who are moving on except for Russell (as a place holder for Irving) the remaining players had a +/- of -2.8 in 1,500 possessions, a mark that would have tied them for 25th in the league last season.
If we take that number at face value and assume that Kyrie plays 2,400 mins, or about 60% of BRK's PG mins and what would be his 2nd highest of the past four seasons, then he will have to play at a +3.9 pp/100 level above Russell's production to bring that team back to even and a roughly 0.500 squad.
Last season Russell was +3.5 better than Dinwiddie on the court (ie Russell on and Dinwiddie off vs Dinwiddie on and Russell off), and Dinwiddie's plus minus over the past three seasons would put him as a plus player, though his two positive seasons his numbers were boosted by a fairly low level of play. Using him as a neutral placeholder seems reasonable for this exercise right now. Roughly speaking Kyrie would have to be a +7.4 level player to drag the remenants of last year's Nets team to 0.500.
Over the past three years Kyrie has been a +7.3 or so player over his replacements, though that is pushed up by his final year in Cleveland at +9.1 which was a few injuries ago and a team that spent most of the year without a backup PG. Marcus Smart has been a roughly average, or a little below average, PG in terms of on/off +/- the past 4 years and Rozier below average.
An expectation of a +6 - +6.5 player for Irving sounds realistic, and the gap between him and Russell of 2.5 - 3.0 would be similar to the 2.7 gap between them in RPM, of course I roughly approximated the method RPM uses, so that isn't a surprise and mostly just indicates no major screw ups.
Now the Nets have added a few players, to start DeAndre Jordan is their new, likely starting, center. A big name his +/- productivity has fallen off a cliff since the splitting of LACs lob city. His own numbers are fairly flat but a sudden improvement in FT% has masked a large drop off in his finishing at around the rim. He has the potential for a solid season, but is two years past his last positive season and Kyrie is no Chris Paul either as a passer or on the defensive end.
Wilson Chandler is another addition and is going into his age 32 season. His last two years have been fairly mediocre as a bench wing with above average (for his career) 3pt shooting numbers.
Due to the disastrous history of the Nets they have little in the way of young talent on the verge of breaking out. LeVert and the recently acquired Prince are both still on their rookie contracts but are also both entering their age 25 season, RHJ's was recently not tendered the QO and Dinwiddie will be 26 this season. This leaves Jarrett Allen as their primary hope for a boost, and his defensive numbers last season were atrocious. With a 7'5" wingspan and good athletic ability he has the potential to improve on that season, but betting that it will happen specifically this year would be optimistic.
There are combinations of events that could push this team into the top 4 in the East, great health especially from Kyrie, Jordan fighting off decline or one of Allen or Prince really finding themselves as a defender, but the odds are that either enough of these won't happen or they are offset by down years elsewhere (Joe Harris not shooting 47% from 3 for example) that they are more likely to be in the 6,7,8 range of the playoffs than the 1-5 spots.
1. The easy and obvious one is that the Nets were a very weak 6 seed, with only 3 more wins than the 10 seed and 1 more than the 8.
2. Their neutral point differential was driven by their bench squad plus their outgoing PG. The largest season to season moves in the NBA are where a positive player replaces a negative one, positive replacing positive leads to smaller moves, and the bench has been broken up. If you strip out the players who are moving on except for Russell (as a place holder for Irving) the remaining players had a +/- of -2.8 in 1,500 possessions, a mark that would have tied them for 25th in the league last season.
If we take that number at face value and assume that Kyrie plays 2,400 mins, or about 60% of BRK's PG mins and what would be his 2nd highest of the past four seasons, then he will have to play at a +3.9 pp/100 level above Russell's production to bring that team back to even and a roughly 0.500 squad.
Last season Russell was +3.5 better than Dinwiddie on the court (ie Russell on and Dinwiddie off vs Dinwiddie on and Russell off), and Dinwiddie's plus minus over the past three seasons would put him as a plus player, though his two positive seasons his numbers were boosted by a fairly low level of play. Using him as a neutral placeholder seems reasonable for this exercise right now. Roughly speaking Kyrie would have to be a +7.4 level player to drag the remenants of last year's Nets team to 0.500.
Over the past three years Kyrie has been a +7.3 or so player over his replacements, though that is pushed up by his final year in Cleveland at +9.1 which was a few injuries ago and a team that spent most of the year without a backup PG. Marcus Smart has been a roughly average, or a little below average, PG in terms of on/off +/- the past 4 years and Rozier below average.
An expectation of a +6 - +6.5 player for Irving sounds realistic, and the gap between him and Russell of 2.5 - 3.0 would be similar to the 2.7 gap between them in RPM, of course I roughly approximated the method RPM uses, so that isn't a surprise and mostly just indicates no major screw ups.
Now the Nets have added a few players, to start DeAndre Jordan is their new, likely starting, center. A big name his +/- productivity has fallen off a cliff since the splitting of LACs lob city. His own numbers are fairly flat but a sudden improvement in FT% has masked a large drop off in his finishing at around the rim. He has the potential for a solid season, but is two years past his last positive season and Kyrie is no Chris Paul either as a passer or on the defensive end.
Wilson Chandler is another addition and is going into his age 32 season. His last two years have been fairly mediocre as a bench wing with above average (for his career) 3pt shooting numbers.
Due to the disastrous history of the Nets they have little in the way of young talent on the verge of breaking out. LeVert and the recently acquired Prince are both still on their rookie contracts but are also both entering their age 25 season, RHJ's was recently not tendered the QO and Dinwiddie will be 26 this season. This leaves Jarrett Allen as their primary hope for a boost, and his defensive numbers last season were atrocious. With a 7'5" wingspan and good athletic ability he has the potential to improve on that season, but betting that it will happen specifically this year would be optimistic.
There are combinations of events that could push this team into the top 4 in the East, great health especially from Kyrie, Jordan fighting off decline or one of Allen or Prince really finding themselves as a defender, but the odds are that either enough of these won't happen or they are offset by down years elsewhere (Joe Harris not shooting 47% from 3 for example) that they are more likely to be in the 6,7,8 range of the playoffs than the 1-5 spots.
Friday, June 28, 2019
Cleveland Cavs draft postmortem
The past two drafts have seen the Cavs take 3 on ball scoring guards in the first round plus a 2/3 wing. In the second year of a major rebuild they are looking for top end stars, players talented enough to carry a team back into playoff contention, and nothing else particularly matters out of these picks. Step one is to guess at how likely it is the Cavs landed a star with the #5, #8, #26 or #30 selection given the position they selected. Initially I was pretty surprised by the results, going back to all the drafts between 2001 and 2015 I counted the total number of on ball guards taken in the top 10 picks and binned either in 'good enough to carry a team to the playoffs consistently' and 'not good enough'. I came away with 11 instances plus Victor Oladipo, and I was fairly stringent in my selections leaving Mike Conley, Kemba Walker and DeMar DeRozen on the outside looking in. The list goes
Oladipo, Lillard, Irving, Wall, Harden, Curry, Rose, Westbrook, Roy, Deron, Chris Paul, Wade.
With only 48 guards taken by my count that is a ridiculously high 'star' hit rate of 25%, and pretty hard to trim down. Sure maybe you argue against Oladipo, but its still a very high hit rate with quite a few near misses who are valuable players.
The hit rate is so high primarily because almost not great guards have gone outside the top 10. Jimmy Butler (#30) I would say deserves inclusion in the group and Isaiah Thomas (#60) and Kyle Lowry (#24) could be debated or Klay at #11. No matter who you would put on either side of the threashold it is fairly clear that most of the great guards in the recent past have come in the top 10 and eyeballing some data I would say that production for this position is the most heavily weighted towards top 10 selections. If you accept my list then it is even more heavily weighted to the top 7 or top 6. Only Curry on my list was outside the top 6 and there were 7 guards taken at #7 and 13 taken between 8 and 10. The hit rate between #1 and #7 is 35% and between #1 and #6 is 39%.
This year the Cavs took Darius Garland at number 5, so a few approaches. One is the hit rate for guards taken at 4, 5 or 6. 5 guards make my list out of 17 selections, a 29% hit rate. 1 was taken at 5 exactly out of 6 selections or 17%, and 4 were taken 5, 6 or 7 out of 18 for 22%. So a reasonable placeholder range for Garland's chance at high end success is 15-30%.
I don't think it matters that Garland was not the first guard taken, Westbrook wasn't, nor was CP3, Curry, or Lillard.
The numbers don't favor Sexton at all, none of the guards drafted between 8-10 made the list, and one at 7. His range for top end outcome would be 0-8%. The major encouraging factor for him is that two guards just below the cutoff went #9 (DDR and Kemba) and using them you get a 33% hit rate for the 8+9 picks, 15% for 8, 9 and 10.
The numbers for Windler and Porter are very bleak. If we take Butler as the only example and assume that 40% of players taken between #20 and #30 are guards the hit rate for studs is around 1.67%. Add in Lowry and you can double it to 3.2%! Obviously this is even more fraught than our other estimates, but its a good enough start. Using the midpoints we have a 22.5% chance for Garland, a 4% chance for Sexton and a 1.67% chance each for Windler and Porter, and the Cavs have a 28% chance that at least one of these 4 guys will be a high end.
That is a rough outlook for the Cavs, and the reality of not landing a top 3 pick in either draft. They are headed back to the lottery for one more go at the ping pong balls, and by the numbers they should. It will be awkward if they end up with another pick in the 4-6 range and are staring at on ball guards and they probably need to do a lot of prep to ensure that they don't knee jerk away from taking another one because they need to keep boosting their odds.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Quick math for S.C.- can you "jack" net rating with Free Throws
In a thread at FeartheSword commenter S.C. complains that FTs late in a Boston game can cause net rating to get "jacked". Is this plausible?
In the game under discussion the Celtics had a 1 pt lead with about 1 min to play and ended up winning by 9 in part thanks to desperation fouling. How much could this effect net rtg over the course of a season? Well 8 pts over 82 games is worth less than 0.1 pts in final differential, so for a team to experience a substantial increase in their net rtg due to circumstances like these they would need 10+ events worth 8 pts to give them a fake improvement of a full point. Of course this assumes that they are never on the other end of the scenario, so they need to be on the winning side 10 more times than the losing to gain a full point. Even if they were very good/lucky and had a 2:1 ratio in their favor they would need to play 30 games a year that ended with desperation fouling. Not particularly plausible.
How about the 8 pt swing? Is that plausible? Well, no. Only 4 of those 8 pts were due to desperation fouling, the Celtics and Pacers had "normal" possessions until the Pacers missed a shot with 29 seconds left and started fouling. Realistically for a team to jack their net rating by +1 due to these games they would have to play them 60 times a year, and be on the winning side at a 2:1 ratio.
There are also lots of other potentially odd situations late in games that "effect" net rating, large leads where one team pulls its starters before the other, and teams dribbling out the clock and not working for a shot generally push back in the other direction. Anyway you look at it though it is very hard for these things to substantially alter a full seasons play because they are not common enough nor are they perpetually one sided.
In the game under discussion the Celtics had a 1 pt lead with about 1 min to play and ended up winning by 9 in part thanks to desperation fouling. How much could this effect net rtg over the course of a season? Well 8 pts over 82 games is worth less than 0.1 pts in final differential, so for a team to experience a substantial increase in their net rtg due to circumstances like these they would need 10+ events worth 8 pts to give them a fake improvement of a full point. Of course this assumes that they are never on the other end of the scenario, so they need to be on the winning side 10 more times than the losing to gain a full point. Even if they were very good/lucky and had a 2:1 ratio in their favor they would need to play 30 games a year that ended with desperation fouling. Not particularly plausible.
How about the 8 pt swing? Is that plausible? Well, no. Only 4 of those 8 pts were due to desperation fouling, the Celtics and Pacers had "normal" possessions until the Pacers missed a shot with 29 seconds left and started fouling. Realistically for a team to jack their net rating by +1 due to these games they would have to play them 60 times a year, and be on the winning side at a 2:1 ratio.
There are also lots of other potentially odd situations late in games that "effect" net rating, large leads where one team pulls its starters before the other, and teams dribbling out the clock and not working for a shot generally push back in the other direction. Anyway you look at it though it is very hard for these things to substantially alter a full seasons play because they are not common enough nor are they perpetually one sided.
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