Mike Conley did not have the best shooting night in the Grizzlies’ game against the Clippers yesterday, going just 4-for-11 from the field. However, one of those four makes caught my attention. Conley was able to take advantage of an overly committed Clips pick-and-roll defense and beat them for a mid-range jumper.
The Grizzlies start out the play in their “horns” set, with Conley handling the ball at the top of the key, Zach Randolph on the right elbow, Marc Gasol on the left elbow, Rudy Gay in the left corner and Tony Allen in the right corner. The initial action has Randolph setting a ball screen for Conley moving right, toward Conley’s off hand.
The Clippers choose to defend this initial pick-and-roll action by having Conley’s defender, Chris Paul, go under the screen while Blake Griffin, Randolph’s defender, does a soft show (Take note of where Griffin is on the court right now, he’s above the right elbow extended. This will be important in a minute) to discourage Conley from immediately taking the driving lane made available by Paul’s going under the screen.
But Conley doesn’t plan on taking that driving lane, because he’s about to get a second pick from Gasol coming from the other side, back toward Conley’s strong hand.
First, take a look at Griffin, he’s dropped down about two feet from his spot above the elbow extended to the point where he is now even with the elbow. Randolph’s roll into the middle of the lane drew Griffin back about two steps. Now, as Gasol comes to set a pick on Paul, who has just gotten back to Conley after going under the initial screen from Randolph, Griffin calls out the screen and motions to DeAndre Jordan to pick up Conley as he comes around – to do the same soft show that Griffin did on the initial action, giving Paul time to recover back to Conley again.
Initially, it appears as though Conley will take Gasol’s pick and keep going to his left. This is exactly what the Clippers expect to happen. After all, Conley is left-handed, and the Clippers no doubt know from their scouting reports that Conley only dribbles away from the pick 12.8% of the time he runs the pick-and-roll (via mySynergySports by way of Clipperblog’s Nick Flynt). So Jordan executes his soft show as Paul again tries to go under the screen, only this time, Paul tries to get a jump on Conley by going under a little bit too early. Conley senses this and crosses back over to his right, away from Gasol’s screen. When dribbling away from a pick, Conley pulls up for a jumper 26% of the time, drives all the way to the hoop 50% of the time and takes a runner or floater 24%.
Once Conley crosses over, Gasol turns his screen around and blocks Paul’s route from getting back to his man. Griffin, having been drawn a half step further into the lane by Randolph’s roll on the initial screening action, is too far away from Conley to seriously be a threat to block his shot (he’s still too busy calling out switches by the time Conley releases). This leaves Conley with a wide open 20-footer, which he nails. Conley sensed the way the way the defense was playing him and went against his tendencies to get himself an open look at the basket on a very nicely designed set play. The whole thing takes about 5 seconds.
There’s a part of my personality I’m not proud of. As someone who’s destroyed dozens of video game controllers, who once whipped a $90 universal remote at the wall instead of my younger brother’s face, whose reaction to a long-distance break-up was to violently and absolutely dismember a defenseless phone base with the receiver, I have empathy for Amar’e Stoudemire and his altercation with a certain now-infamous fire extinguisher in an American Airlines Arena tunnel. I’m not looking to excuse what he did—I won’t excuse my own actions either—but I think I can see where he was coming from: When a situation gets out of control, it’s sometimes easier to deal with the consequences of petty destruction than with what’s at the heart of the problem.
Stoudemire has not been playing well against the Heat. And even before that, there were questions about how Anthony, Stoudemire, and Chandler could all co-exist on the Knicks. With Anthony stepping his game up the last few weeks of the season—specifically when playing the four and with Amare out with a back injury—it was looking increasingly like Stoudemire was going to be the odd man out, relegated to the bench when he was supposed to be the first big piece of the new look Knicks two seasons ago. And all this in a season when he lost his brother Hazel in a car accident.
None of those things are a good reason to punch a fire extinguisher (which, semantics about “slapping with a closed fist” aside, is more or less what Stoudemire did) because there is in fact no “good” reason to punch a fire extinguisher. In his press conference, Stoudemire didn’t even try to give one, but what he said is telling. “I just walked by,” said Stoudemire, “wanted to make some noise (emph. mine), swung my arm, hit the fire extinguisher door and didn’t even realize i was cut at all until Josh Harrellson told me I was cut.
“Some players kick over ice coolers,” he continued. “Some players tip over tables. Some players even hit a chair. My thing was to hit the wall, I caught the fire extinguisher and I sliced my hand.” As it went with Metta World Peace’s elbow-drop on James Harden, a large chunk of the discussion around the incident centered around the intentionality of the act and, again, it seems the notion of intention has come up short. Stoudemire didn’t intentionally injure himself, but he intentionally swung his arm with the intention of making noise—as he said—and he didn’t do it not wanting to hurt himself. Rather, concern for his health was simply not at the top of his priority at that moment, but what was?
I would argue it wasn’t as simple as a desire to “make some noise.” When a situation is beyond our control, or even when our emotional reaction to a situation is out of control, it makes us feel better to break things, and not because destruction is inherently satisfying. In the wake of the incident, Stoudemire was criticized for being thoughtless, for not considering the consequences of his actions, but I suspect tangible consequences were just what he was after.
It can’t be easy to have your team go down 0-2 in the playoffs and know not only that it’s at least partly your fault, but that it’s not even a matter of just you playing better. There are systemic problems with the Knicks that have made them look like a half-dozen different teams this year. And each of those teams have had some success and some failure but they haven’t been able to put all those teams—the pick and roll Lin-led team of February, the Carmelo hero-ball team of the last month, the various other hybrids and Frankensteins that have taken the court based on injuries—on the floor at the same time. Does Stoudemire need to assert himself more? Does he need to step back, take on a different role? His game going to the hoop is limited by Chandler down low and his midrange pick and pop game is limited by Anthony outside of the paint. Faced with all these thorny, somewhat abstract questions of how best to play the game, it’s just possible that breaking something was the only way to get to fix something.
When I sent that poor, innocent phone to meet its maker, I was angry, yes, but I wasn’t out of control. It’s not as if the break-up came out of nowhere; it was, rather, something whose reality I couldn’t grasp. The things I was going to have to deal with—big decisions about where my life was going, where I was going to live, what the last five and a half years had meant, what was going to happen right then and the next day and the next—were too intangible. Smashing that hard plastic into jagged splinters meant that the next day, when I woke up impossibly hungover, I told my roommate, “Hey, sorry: I’ll get you a new phone.” And I had to go to Circuit City and buy a new crappy wall-mounted phone and hang it up in the kitchen.
I suspect when Amar’e Stoudemire swung his fist—whether at the wall or the fire extinguisher—it wasn’t because he had too much to deal with, but rather too little. Athletes work in an intensely physical world, asked to leave it all on the floor, to play with visceral intensity and then react with Zen-like calm to adversity outside of the hardwood. Stoudemire’s playing time, his role on the team, his fractured belief in being the first step towards a new Knick dynasty, all the injuries and whether they were slowly sapping his ability to play from him: you can’t touch these things, can’t break them. But you can put your fist through a pane of glass and then you can deal with that.
So… Well… See the thing is. I have no idea how that just happened. I’m glad I was just taking notes as we went because I would no idea how to sum up what just happened. The Grizzlies were cruising to a victory, they should have won that game, but they didn’t and now they find themselves down 0-1 after dropping a game at home. What. A. Game. Here are some thoughts, reactions, and just random outbursts I had throughout the game:
Pre-Game:
In the midst of all this Rondo craziness, I’m made aware of the fact that Chris Webber is going to be calling this game. Tony Allen? Chris Paul? Blake Griffin? Grit and Grind? Chris Webber? On TNT? OH MY GOD THIS CANNOT GET ANY BETTER!
Also looks like Zach Randolph will be in the starting lineup, interesting move given he’d been coming off the bench for most of the season.
1st Quarter:
Grizzlies are running their offense through their two post players, and getting very good results. Gasol is passing beautifully out of the high post, and seemingly scoring at will. Randolph has faced up on Griffin twice sinking the first jumper and missing the second. On the other side of the ball Memphis is doing a great job defending the side pick and roll. Considering that’s essentially the only play the Clippers run, if Memphis can continue to limit it’s effectiveness LA is in some serious trouble.
Also, Memphis is booing Blake Griffin whenever he touches the ball, apparently they hate fun in Memphis. Nothing but grit and grind.
The Clippers look incredibly lost right now. Four turnovers so far, the pick and roll isn’t giving it’s usual returns, and Blake Griffin just picked up his 2nd foul. This would be a great time for the Point God to show himself.
Can’t say enough about the ball movement from the Grizzlies this quarter. This shooting isn’t sustainable, but if the Grizzlies keep getting good looks every time down the floor, they shouldn’t have an issue taking this game, and ultimately the series. Predictably, Memphis has had a lot of success cutting after entering the ball into Gasol in the post. To me at least, this team is at it’s best when it’s running through Marc, he’s capable of controlling the offense in a way unlike any other big in the league(including Pau), sort of like a point center maybe? Also worth noting that OJAM checked in, hit a ridiculous three, and has been aggressive in attacking the rim so far. He could be huge for the Grizzlies in this series if he shoots well and stays committed to getting to the basket.
Paul finally finds an easy basket out of the pick and roll with a lob to DAJ, but follows it the next series with an offensive foul. Really hard to imagine a scenario in which the quarter went any worse for the Clips.
Grizzlies completely dominate that quarter, mostly due to their ability to neutralize Paul in the PnR and their offensive brilliance, especially Gasol, who finished the quarter 5-6 from the field for 10 points while also netting 4 assists. Worth noting that the Memphis crowd was absolutely fantastic that quarter, you could see the Grizzlies feeding off the energy after every made basket and defensive stop. Really, really fun stuff.
2nd Quarter:
Speights and Jordan getting chippy. You feel like Memphis is totally controlling the tone of this game, lots of Grit and Grind, also a lot of “WE WILL NEVER MISS ANOTHER SHOT EVER” which always helps. The Clippers so far are sticking to their team motto of “No help defense city”, or whatever it is I can never remember.
Worth nothing that the Grizzlies are 4-4 from behind the arc. Also worth noting that the Clippers are getting hammered. Like seriously killed. As in they are losing by a very large amount of points. Really, this is probably verym very embarrassing for them.
Eric Bledsoe made such a nice spin move I actually mistook him for Chris Paul for a moment. No seriously, that happened. Meanwhile, the Clippers have cut the lead to 13 and some of the energy from the initial flurry seems to be subsiding. This will be a very key stretch of the game, Grizzlies have to keep their foot on the pedal, so to speak.
OJAM is playing out of his gourde as he drills another three coming off a quick screen. OJ looks really good coming off the down pick to shoot, and while I didn’t love that shot, it went in. Also the word gourde is fun.
It’s just not a Grizzlies game without a hilarious Tony Allen fastbreak sequence. Difficult to describe this one other than to say that it ended with Allen barreling into the lane and essentially throwing the ball straight in the air and somehow drawing the blocking foul. All about the grit and grind.
Griffin is seriously struggling in this game. Can’t find any rhythm offensively, either in the post up, or in pick and roll situations, and defensively he looks lost in his rotations and help defense. This is where Griffin’s lack of offensive refinement really hurts him, without the free form points off of pure athleticism and against a good defense, he’s going to struggle to assert himself. Unfortunately, The Clippers can’t afford to have Griffin be a non-factor when he’s on the floor, they don’t have enough other scoring options.
The Grizzlies end the half with a pretty big exclamation. First Cunningham puts back a Gasol miss with a vicious slam that ignites the crowd and sends Dante into a JR Smith worthy post dunk celebration pose. Rudy Gay follows on the next possession with a nice jumper and then, while attempting to dribble the clock out for the last shot, Chris Paul gets whistled for an offensive foul. This leaves Memphis enough time for Conley to deliver a beautiful pass out of the pick and roll right to Gasol for the dunk. What an incredible way to end the half for Memphis, the had let the door creak open, only to emphatically shut it right back in the Clippers face. Memphis has come out swinging, and hit the Clippers right in the mouth, it’s up to LA to duck, dodge, adjust, and counter punch in the second half.
2nd Half:
Note from the first half: Memphis held Paul to 3 points on 0-4 shooting. Raise your hand if you saw that coming? (Don’t you dare raise your hand, liar).
Right to Griffin one-on-one versus Z-Bo to start the half, and he gets nothing on an awkward drive to the rim. Gotta agree with Webber, sending Blake on these iso missions seems ill fated. Better off finding ways to get him the ball in space, and/or while in motion.
Mike Conley takes a soccer dive to give Griffin his 3rd foul. Seriously just spectacular form on that dive, UEFA champions league worthy. Then to add insult to injury Conley starts drilling threes left and right extends the lead to 21 points.
Important point that I think is worth considering. Many are hoping or expecting Chris Paul to shred Memphis much like he surgically dissected the Lakers last year. While certainly Paul is more than capable of taking over games I think it’s also important to recognize the difference in opponent. The Lakers were not well equipped to defend Paul in pick and roll situations. They didn’t really have anyone to hound him on the perimeter and their bigs were generally lost trying to corral him on the pick and roll. In contrast, Memphis has a number of very capable perimeter defenders, and is disciplined in their pick and roll defense. So yes, given the opportunity Paul will engage “Point God” mode, but Memphis might not ever give him the chance.
While Memphis has not been terrific on offense during the season, I’m actually not that surprised the Grizzlies have had such an easy time scoring the basketball (generally due to the Clippers well known defensive woes). What I am surprised by, is the Clippers inability to get anything going on the offensive end. Paul has generally struggled against the Grizzlies pick and roll defense and Griffin has been borderline awful (3-10 from the field midway through the 3rd). The Grizzlies aren’t going to shoot this well every night, but if their defenses continues to befuddle and stymie the Clippers offensive attack it won’t really matter.
And Mike Conley has made 4 threes this quarter. Analysis: ALL GRIT AND GRIND BABY
At this point the Grizzlies are out there like Roy Jones Jr.: Dancing around toying with the opponent, equal parts domination and entertainment. This is a lot of fun to watch, unless you’re a Clippers fan.
I’m going to note for the 600th time that Marc Gasol is brilliant. He really is one of the best, if not the very best post passer we have in NBA. It’s so fun to watch him catch it in the high post and hit Tony Allen on a cut, or Rudy Gay on a lob. I think what I’m trying to say is I’m in love with Marc Gasol.
Really interesting that Conley and the Grizzlies have legitimately bothered and frustrated Paul. He’s committed uncharacteristic offensive fouls, turnovers, and travels. I honestly never thought I’d see Paul flustered like this. It feels funny.
Clippers put together a nice run to cut the lead to 12 at one points with about 4 minute left and are lurking. Would be really tough if Memphis found a way to give away this game after playing so well all night. Give credit to Bledsoe, and Young for providing a spark off the bench. Also, not surprisingly, Paul refuses to quit, despite being frustrated all came he’s taking advantage of Memphis’ lapse in intensity and picking apart the defense.
Mayo delievers the pass of the game on an over the shoulder touch pass, only to have Speights blow the lay up. I guess everything can’t go perfectly for Memphis.
Behind Nick Young nailing three 3-pointers in a minute, the Clippers have cut the lead down to 3 points with just under 2 minutes left to play. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHY ARE THE GRIZZLIES TURNING IT OVER EVERY TIME? IS NICK YOUNG ACTUALLY GOD? SO MUCH BUCKETS… AHHH
This would be an absolutely HUGE win if the Clips somehow manage to steal this one.
“At this point there’s not much left to say. The Grizzlies completely and totally dominated this game. If you’re the Clippers your defense has to be better, but really you have to be more concerned with your offense. You have to find ways to make the pick and roll work, you have to counter the aggressiveness and grit of the Clippers, and you cannot turn the ball over. You have to believe the Clippers will play better, you have to believe Paul will come out on an absolute mission to destroy them next game. As of now though, the Grizzlies have to feel like they are the better team, they have to feel like at their best they can control this series; that’s no small fact. The Grizzlies came out with a bang, it will be interesting to see how the rest of this series takes shape moving forward” -I wrote this above during the beginning of the fourth quarter and now, behind two Griffin made free throws, the Grizzlies are only up 1…
Chris Webber is spot on, Reggie Evans defense and rebounding, and general toughness have been huge during this incredible comeback. On multiple occasions he’s pushed Gasol and Randolph off their spot and forced them into turnovers or uncomfortable shots. Evans deserves a lot of credit if the Clippers somehow steal this one.
And just like that Evans hits a lay up to put the Clips up one… WOW
Gay hits a turnaround over Paul after getting the mismatch on a switch. That’s one of ways he will be so valuable to Memphis in the playoffs, now they have another go to scorer late in games.
Allen fouls Paul who hits both free throws to take the lead by one. Memphis completely bungles the last possession, wasting way too much time as Gay forces up a shot with the clock close to expiring. That’s inexcusable. Down one you have to get a shot up with enough time at least to rebound and have a second chance, and in reality you should leave enough time to foul, force free throws and get another shot at tying the game. Jesus. Cannot believe Memphis found a way to give that game away. Credit the Clippers who did not quit on the game. Also another great performance from Paul who despite struggling most of the game directed the offense brilliantly late in the game. But mostly just WOW. That was an absolutely incredible comeback. This could kill Memphis, this is the kind of loss that breaks your spirit. Series can be won on comebacks like this. Yes the Grizzlies are tough, but this could be a back breaker.
Quick Post Game Note: Charles opens up Inside the NBA with “That’s why I could never coach, right there.” Yup. Lionel Hollins has to be going crazy right now.
Charles again: “I didn’t like Memphis strategy, they started playing not to lose”.
The 2011-2012 regular season didn’t exactly go as planned, but was anyone actually naive enough to think it might? The league cobbled together a massive slate with little regard for their overextended teams, and took in another banner year despite the nauseating bickering that dominated lockout discussion.
The NBA turned its regular season — the savory main course that truly satiates a basketball die-hard’s appetite — into a formality. But that alone shouldn’t prevent us from enjoying the dessert to come, no matter how odd the seeding, how unpredictable the matchups, and how unsatisfying the previous dish.
The playoffs are here, and for now, that’s all that really matters.
(1) Players Are Compared To The Corresponding Positional Average And Minute Threshold. The idea behind this project is to explore player performance in relation to the average player at their position. Many lines have been blurred in the positional revolution, and while shooting guards and small forwards are doing very similar things on the court, basic differences between point guards and centers have endured. Big men are grabbing the rebounds, point guards are dishing out the assists, and the bulk of shots are coming from very different locations on the floor (on average). The comparisons won’t always be perfect, but using positional averages makes the exercise more useful in my mind.
Along the same lines, there is a general trend in the NBA that better players play more minutes. Even rate stats increase on average when breaking down positions at the higher minutes per game thresholds, so while it’s fun to compare Derrick Rose to Toney Douglas , it makes more sense to use other starting PGs as the measuring bar. I’ve broken each position group into two segments (10+ min/gm and 25+ min/gm) so the top players are subject to a smaller pool and the role players get an expanded basis for comparison. With teams tightening rotations up for the playoffs, high end matchups are far more likely to see now.
(2) I’ve Altered A Few Things To Make It More Intuitive. First of all, this exercise covers offensive and rebounding stats exclusively, because there aren’t enough reliable defensive metrics at the individual level to work with. Again, remember that defensive impact is not included in this analysis — I would recommend checking out 82games.com for +/- stats and counterpart PER allowed if you’d like to take a deeper look.
A trio of alterations have also been applied to make the data more understandable: (a) Turnover Rate is the only stat where a lower value is better, so I have flipped the values to make a lower TOR appear as above-average, (b) low sample size shooting zones — 3-9ft and 10-15ft — have been combined into a single value and (c) a 50 attempt minimum threshold has been imposed on each shooting zone to avoid misleading stats like Andrew Bynum’s three-point shooting percentage.
(3) Here’s An Example. Mike Dunleavy is a SF who plays 26.2 min/gm, so I compared his production to the averages for NBA SFs that played 25+ min/gm this season. For example, Dunleavy has an Assist Rate of 20.43, while the average NBA SF (25+ min) has an AR of 17.8. Dunleavy is clearly above average, but I compare his value by indexing against the average. Dunleavy’s AR is divided by the positional average and multiplied by 100, and the resulting value 114.7 means that Dunleavy is 14.7% better than the average SF (25+ min/gm) when it comes to AR.
The other night I was tangentially involved in a discussion between Brian Geltzeiler and Stephen Litel about the Timberwolves’ Anthony Randolph, who’s been playing well lately in the wake of injuries to the Wolves actually good players. It all stemmed back to this post, where Geltzeiler named Randolph his “12th Man of the Year” and said that when Randolph got playing time this year he “rode to the occasion and showed that tantalizing ability and athleticism that had made the Warriors and the Knicks before the Timberwolves believe he could be special.” His fundamental argument is that if Beasley and Williams were getting minutes and often squandering them, why not give Randolph the chance to show his talent? He sums it by saying, “AR has a ton of talent and is young enough and shows enough flashes, that it’s tough to quit on him.”
He’s certainly young enough, which is kind of the weird part of this. It feels like he’s been in the league forever, but it’s actually only been three years, and Randolph is only 22. Part of that illusion is created by the fact that he’s played for three different teams in those three short years—the Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Warriors thought enough of him to take him with the 14th pick of the draft and it’s not hard to understand what they thought they were seeing. It’s the same thing Geltzeiler’s seeing and his Draft Express profile from 2009 sums it up pretty neatly:
In terms of raw talent, no player displayed more glimpses of potential than Golden State Warrior Anthony Randolph …Randolph’s physical gifts are impossible to ignore, and are clearly a huge part in what makes him such a special talent. 6-10, with a pterodactyl wingspan (7’3″) and freakish athleticism, there are very few players in the NBA he can be compared to … What makes Randolph unique is his ability to create his own shot from the perimeter at his size, or operate as a super fluid one-man fast break. He possesses a devastating first step and excellent ball-handling skills, to go along with great coordination and extremely advanced footwork. It’s not rare to see him tap-dancing his way to the basket with the greatest of ease, often throwing in lightning quick spin-moves along the way, only to stop on a dime and then pivot in the opposite direction for an effortless finish … Randolph also didn’t shy away from taking his man down to the paint and showing his post repertoire. This is an interesting part of his game that can still be developed into a terrific weapon, as his excellent combination of quickness and footwork really makes him a big mismatch against small forwards and power forwards alike, despite his lack of strength.
Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Geltzeiler feels that Adelman didn’t make the most of Randolph, which I would agree with, if the above assessment were correct. But Randolph’s already played for two coaches who seemed to be perfect fits for making the most of his talents and neither of them could get anything meaningful out of him. Don Nelson has long been known for running with abandon, for not emphasizing defense, for loving athletic guys in that 6’8” to 6’10” range. But Randolph didn’t blossom there. So off he went to New York and Mike D’Antoni, the coach who plucked Boris Diaw from obscurity, who loves to run the break and get guys who don’t seem to fit anywhere to become essential cogs and flywheels in a smoothly working offense. In fact, D’Antoni’s great failure in New York—the one that led to his departure—was failing to work with the superstars, not the guys like Randolph.
Adelman is a coach players love, a guy who will keep guys in there when it’s working and is known to give players a lot of chances before relegating them to the bench. In January, Randolph played in 15 games, and although he only averaged 12 minutes, his per 36 numbers were pretty good for a reserve player (~16 PPG, 7.5 RPG). Furthermore, he saw the court in most of the games the team played that month (18 total). And then, it suddenly dried up for Randolph.
After the Wolves’ game against Houston on January 30, he didn’t see the floor again for more than a week, next appearing against Memphis on February 8. And then after that he didn’t get any playing time for three weeks until the Wolves played the Lakers on February 29. What happened?
In the last two weeks of January, even as Randolph was playing well, there were these stretches where he would seem to completely lose focus. Take this sequence against the Kings on January 16 (Randolph is #15).
Starting on defense, Randolph loses Jason Thompson as he cuts to the basket then tries to make up for it with a poor steal attempt. Tolliver manages to block the shot and on the other end, Randolph is left all alone to throw down the dunk. Which is great, but on the next defensive possession, he can’t keep Thompson in check and fouls him while giving up the basket. Then, on the free throw attempt, he fails to box out his man, who gets the rebound and then gets fouled (possibly by Randolph again, although it might be Williams) going up for the shot.
Two nights later against the Pistons, Randolph’s hazy defense was on display again.
Although the Wolves don’t appear to be playing zone, it’s not at all clear who Randolph thinks he’s defending at the beginning of this play. It looks like he indicates to Williams that he should take Maxiell while he takes Jerebko. He’s down in the paint on the left side not moving very much. In the picture below, everyone’s totally out of position.
It appears that Randolph is on Jerebko and Williams is on Maxiell, but Ellington’s man is Stuckey, who’s screened from him by Randolph. As the play evolves, Randolph and Williams switch and Randolph allows Maxiell to cut to the basket when he takes an ill-advised step towards the driving Stuckey. If you watch closely, you can see that’s actually the only time Randolph moves during the play. His feet are basically glued to the floor. That’s not the kind of thing that will endear you to a coach.
It’s not even all on the defensive end. From that same Pistons game, there’s this, where Randolph looks completely bamboozled on offense:
Waiting in the high post, he jumps out, clearly thinking that Barea is passing to him when Barea is in fact passing to Ellington. He sets a pretty decent pick to get Ellington free and then tips it out of bounds when Maxiell can’t control the rebound. It’s not damning play, which is probably how he kept getting minutes for at least a while longer. And keep in mind this is all from the guy who already simply ignored Ricky Rubio calling for the ball on the break.
All of this, though, is just prelude to his performance on January 30 against the Rockets. His line isn’t a total indictment, even if it’s not great (14 mins., 5 pts, 3 rebs, a -7 in +/-). But watching his minutes and focusing on him, there are lots of little things (some of which don’t get called against him) that point towards his head not being in the game: grabbing guys on screens, pushing guys on rebounds.
There’s also Randolph’s consistently weak screening. Svelte is something of an exaggeration for Randolph and maybe it’s down to his body, but time and again Randolph fails to set a pick that actually stops the defender from following the ball. The first screen he sets for Ridnour in this play is more like a screen door:
The second one is better, but then you can see that instead of rolling all the way to the hoop, Randolph stops short for some reason. Look at how wide open the lane is:
But because he stops—perhaps wanting to take a midrange jumper—Ridnour’s pass sails right past him and into Kyle Lowry’s waiting hands.
Here, he falls for the initial fake and then fades into the lane, where he fails to box his man out and gives up the offensive rebound and tip in.
And then there’s defense like this:
As the play starts, Randolph is on the right block defending Jordan Hill. As Hill crosses the lane, Randolph sort of stays with him, and then when Dragic drives the lane he bites completely, leaving his feet to challenge the 6’4” guard (remember, Randolph is 6’10”) and leaving Hill open for the easy dish and lay-in.
But perplexingly, he’s not all terrible and that’s where it gets frustrating because in the very same game there’s this, which is pretty much exactly what that Draft Express profile was singing hallelujah over:
Seeing Randolph catch the ball on the wing, swing it down, blow past his man and get to the hoop for a ridiculous dunk in just four steps is what makes people keep believing in him. And it’s why teams keep getting hurt by him because a lot of the time, he’s not even awful. He just sort of disappears. When he’s not engaged in the offense, he spends a lot of time setting up in the high post and then calling for the ball. In fact, he spends a lot of time calling for the ball period. Then on defense, his physical limitations come to the fore more than his strengths. At 205 pounds, he doesn’t have enough mass to defend centers or power forwards, but he’s also not fast enough to just blow by them most of the time. When he can get past them, as above, it usually requires a little nifty footwork, which Randolph often seems loathe to engage in.
When he got another chance against Memphis a week after the Houston game, things hadn’t improved. Here are four back-to-back offensive possessions from midway through the fourth quarter.
In the first one, he can’t seem to figure out how to set a screen for J.J. Barea. When it sort of works, finally, he rolls straight to the lane while Barea weaves around him (which, admittedly, is at least partly on Barea). He actually puts the feed from Barea in, but it’s a minor miracle they didn’t trip over each other on the way there. The point, though, is that he got to the basket and got points.
In the second one, when Marc Gasol leaves Randolph to defend Barea’s drive, Randolph catches it in space and drives (presumably mindful of the success he had on the last possession), but he jumps from well outside the restricted area more or less directly into Gasol and fails to put the layup in.
He actually makes the smart play in the third one, even if he hangs back because the contact on the last possession bothered him. Catching it near the right elbow, he pump fakes and gets Rudy Gay to back off him before he drains the midrange shot. The problem is that having sunk that shot, he pulls up on the next possession and takes a bad midrange jumper.
So Randolph uses four consecutive possessions and the result is four points on one half-decent roll, one bad drive, one good jumper, and one bad jumper. It’s just not a sequence of offensive possessions you can give him time and time again. This is what people mean when they talk about bad decision making, about settling. Randolph doesn’t seem to know what to make of his skillset any better than we do—any good decision seems to be a random one, and not grounded in any overarching sense of what his game is. Here, for example, he follows up a smart defensive play (drawing the charge on Marc Gasol) with an exceedingly boneheaded offensive one:
The jump ball leads to possession for the Wolves and Randolph has it right near the arc so he goes for the longest conceivable two point shot. Obviously. Because he’s Anthony Randolph. And that ability to blow past big men from the perimeter that he showed off against the Rockets? It fails him utterly here where he can’t get past Marc Gasol, blows the layup, and then fouls Gasol out of frustration:
Is it any wonder that he sat for three weeks after that game? The coaches Randolph has had so far have looked on the surface like ones who could make the most of his talents, but maybe what he needs is the opposite: someone like Larry Brown to break him of his bad habits.
But I also wonder if they’re even really habits. “Habit” implies consistency and Randolph seems more like a random number generator on the court. He’s like the basketball equivalent of Schroedinger’s cat. There are a million shades of gray in evaluating a player, but on a quantum level, it seems like it’s possible to make a Manichean evaluation of their talent, separating players into the ones who can play NBA basketball and those who can’t. But Randolph remains a paradox, a player who at any moment is a locked box inside of which basketball is simultaneously alive and dead.
We come now to the close of the curtain for this guano season that was thrown together. From the beginning, despite several indications that the league had multiple contingency plans in place regarding an end to the lockout, it always seemed like their plans were based around shells and commercials and sponsor engagements, not, you know, how to run the season and play the basketball. It seemed like the league was basically like ”Oh, we’re having a season? Uh…. THROW SOME STUFF OUT THERE JUST GET IT UP SO WE CAN TAKE THE MONEYZ.”
This year hasn’t seemed real, to be honest. Most of us had given up hope by the time Thanksgiving came around. I was covering college basketball games for draft and drinking excessively at my family Thanksgiving (more than usual). We’d all just kind of assumed the ride was over, that the league was dead. Neither side was moving and we’d hit the lawyers button. When the union decertified I kept thinking of a line from one of my favorite movies, “Other People’s Money” with Danny DeVito. In it, he tells opposing counsel for a wire and cable company he’s planning on staging a hostile takeover of, then liquidating the following line.
“Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. They have theirs, so I have mine. Once you use them, they f*ck everything up.”
And with that I had resigned myself to a winter without the NBA.
When I hit those lowpoints where I’m burned out about the league, or if I’m stuck in the doldrums of August waiting for training camp to start, I always think back to the imagery that compelled me to start an NBA blog in the first place. Those shots of the players walking into the arena with snow outside, looking pissed as all get out that they’re in Milwaukee in January. The antics of the benches. Gregg Popovich during timeouts. Nash’s no-look bounce pass, that one where he skips it up the court like it’s a stone and it somehow bounces higher on the second bounce than the first? The boxscore, which, being in Arkansas when I was a kid was what got me into the NBA in the first place. Pouring over them in the newspaper (A NEWSPAPER) and oggling at the numbers. Those thoughts always gave me something outside myself to look forward to, even in college, even when I was working three jobs out of college and my power had been turned off.
And that was all gone.
I thought.
I went to bed that night in November. I had been down the road too many times with false hopes and refused to buy into the idea that they would get something done that late at night. I’d also had like four glasses of wine because my family drinks wine like not only is it going out of style but if you don’t drink it now you’ll be stuck without anything alcoholic forever, but that’s not the point. So I closed up shop and decided to get some sleep, telling the guys that work with me at CBS to call me if anything happened.
I slept fitfully, confused, if you can sleep confused.
Ring.
Ring.
Golliver: “Hey, man, sorry to wake you.” (ALWAYS POLITE, THAT BEN GOLLIVER.) Ken just reported it. We’ve got a deal.”
Me: “OK.”
That’s all I had.
And then the celebration happened. Everyone who loves the NBA, at 2AM during Thanksgiving break celebrating like a peace accord had been reached. There would be basketball.
This season has made no sense. Somewhere along the way I found the delight that is the rhyme scheme of #seasonwithoutreason and stared (over)using it. The players were just trying to get through the year. You could tell that, being in the locker rooms, seeing them on the floor. Hell, the writers were just trying to make it. Because of the compacted schedule, it meant that there were fewer off days, as nearly every night was a massive game. Heat-Celtics Sunday! Then Bulls-Lakers Tuesday! Then Mavs-Spurs Wednesday! Then Heat-Lakers Thursday! Then Heat vs. Bulls vs. Lakers vs. Celtics in a battle royale on SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY. It was too much to keep track of. Everything flew by. Portland went from the fourth best team in the league to blowing it up and tanking in what felt like four weeks. The Celtics I’m pretty sure were ten games under .500 one day and then five games under the next, like they woke up and just erased the standings and wrote over them.
Trades were vetoed. Dwight Howard made a bigger mess of his public image than LeBron, which most of us didn’t think was possible. Ron Artest hit some dude in the head. JaVale ran the other way.
It was loony, but that’s the NBA. That’s what I’ve kept saying about the tanking stuff, about the flopping stuff. If you really want to get the “soul” of this league you have to get past “THE GREATNESS OF CHAMPIONSHIPS AND THE GLORY OF PLAYING WITH ALL YOUR HEART” and get to the insanity of guys playing in contract years, in the tattoos and Twitpics and planking and name changes and the fact that most of the players black and white are terrible tippers. It’s a nonsensical league, like if you put a nursery rhyme on mescaline and then sold sponsorships for it.
This season was everything we love and everything we hate about the league. The stars demolishing small market franchises because of their egos, while we celebrate how awesome it is to see James and Wade vs. Melo and Amar’e at MSG. The fact you have so much basketball on every night, while hating the meaninglessness of so many regular season games. The insulting showboating that is at the same time hilarious and the basis of play style. It was everything wrapped up in a too-tight tortilla, forced by the excessive greed of an ownership contingent and a NBPA that was unprepared and still managed to avoid most of the worst damage.
I’m glad it’s over, I hope it never comes back, but I’m going to miss it.
So we enter the playoffs with a wide open scheme, with no idea how the back to backs in the second round or lockout ball fatigue will affect play. We don’t know if the West is as wide open as it seems or if the Heat will pull their heads out of their ass. There’s a lot of hope for teams in these playoffs. And maybe that’s a good thing. So the lockout hasn’t done all bad things. It’s made some things open up, even if we lost 16 games per team in the process. Maybe there were some good things to come out of it.
Now let’s never do that again.
It’s time to move on. Time to get goin’.
The Season Without Reason is over. Time now for the turning of the postseason.
On one level, last night’s 100-88 loss to the Utah Jazz marked this season as no different from the last for the Phoenix Suns. If anything, it was a slight improvement, given the right (read: properly distorted) frame of reference; the 2010-11 Suns finished six games out of the playoffs. The 2011-12 edition will finish no worse than three games behind the eighth seed.
In every other way — every way that actually matters — this season is completely different. It is, in every conceivable scenario, the end of Steve Nash’s career in Phoenix. That strikes two powerful blows. The Suns, assuming Nash leaves, are about to get really bad. And they’re about to lose one of the most important players in franchise history.
They only have one player outside of Nash who would start for most teams, in Marcin Gortat, and a solid role player in Jared Dudley. Nash and assistant coach Elston Turner have done magicians’ work in making the rest of the pieces look passable on offense and defense, respectively. Shannon Brown’s play has improved since the All-Star Break, particularly when he joined Nash in the starting backcourt due to the loss of Grant Hill to an injured knee. Sebastian Telfair went from awful to “actually decent looking, you know, in the right kind of light and depending on how strong the well drinks are,” and he credits his improvement to the examples set by Nash in the locker room and on the floor.
But all of that is going to collapse the instant Nash decides to sign elsewhere this summer. Phoenix will have a decent amount of cap space once that happens, but the free agency market doesn’t appear to be quite as strong as we all assumed. Which player or players on that list can the Suns reasonably expect to make a run at?* Deron Williams? Not happening. Chris Kaman? …that’s actually a pretty Suns thing to do. Goran Dragic? Also a pretty Suns thing to do.
*If you say Jamal Crawford, I swear…
Barring a miracle, the Suns are going into “Get Bobcats bad”-rebuild mode, and that’s something that hasn’t really happened in Phoenix before. The longest postseason drought in franchise history is five seasons, and that came in the third through seventh seasons of the team’s existence. Since 1977, and including this season, Phoenix has only missed the playoffs eight times. The Suns have never won the championship, but they have the fourth highest overall winning percentage of current NBA teams. Phoenix consistently put together enjoyable teams who won a fair amount of games and, occasionally, made a deep run or two to the Western Conference or NBA Finals on the back of outstanding offense and average defense.
Nash was the epitome of that since he signed in the Valley. Even in the relatively lean recent years, he kept the team entertaining almost by force of will. His departure is about more than just an incoming lull in basketball in Phoenix, then. It’s about the death of an identity — one that gave rise to books and a style exemplified by an acronym, SSOL, and always entertaining games of basketball , one that adapted when coaches came and went — which always revolved around the player for whom it seemed designed, and who seemed designed to run it. Nash, for almost a decade, has been the Phoenix Suns. Until they are good again, he will remain the Phoenix Suns, an ever-looming shadow that colors and shades the perception of everything Suns-related. He is their victories over the Kobe Bryant-led Lakers and their losses to Ron Artest offensive rebounds. He is his own bloody noses and the black eye of Tim Duncan 3-pointers.
He will fittingly play his final game tonight, at home, against the San Antonio Spurs. Could it have been any other way?
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Photo by @AdamKoscielak
The time Nash spent as a Sun always had a Moiraifeel to it. Many besides Mark Cuban felt that Nash’s back ailments meant his playing days were numbered. Yet through personal dedication to fitness and health, his skillset and the by now well-documented methods and successes of the Warlocks on the Suns training staff, the threads of life for Nash as an elite player kept spinning. He said he wants to play for another three years, at which point Clotho is bound to get bored and potentially fall asleep at the spindle, rendering Nash some sort of basketball demigod capable of one day, in the year 2043*, vanquishing the unassailable records of John Stockton.
*Math not accurate.
While the thread kept on spinning into the future, the Spurs were always there to determine precisely what Nash’s Suns would do with his time on this basketball-playing plane for his journey to the Elysian Fields.* Phoenix and San Antonio met four times with Nash in purple and orange, and the Spurs three times decided that they’d seen enough of the Suns in the playoffs. Forget questioning David Stern’s allotment of suspensions for the aftermath of the Robert Horry hipcheck heard ’round the world; Gregg Popovich was the true arbiter of Phoenix’s fate, measuring their legacy to his liking.
*Potential locations for the Elysian Fields, as reported by a recent special on History (formerly known as The History Channel, so you can definitely see why this was a necessary name change): “Miami, New York, Dallas, Orlando, Utah, Indiana [...] pretty much anywhere that isn’t Phoenix.”
I’m probably not alone in having several years ago assumed that the severer of Nash’s ties with the NBA, and with the Suns, would be an injury or old age. For him to continue to play at this level, this consistently and for this many games even in an abbreviated season, is spectacular. It also affords Nash a unique opportunity; he gets to cut himself loose of his own accord and determine his own destiny for the rest of his career. He will get the Ray Bourque treatment, only better, as he won’t even have to demand a trade. He’s both thrilled NBA fans and served his obligation to Suns fans. Few, if any, will begrudge his inevitable decision to play Atropos and untie his binds to the Suns. He’s (likely) going to a better place, where championship dreams can become reality, and Jared Dudley — Shammgod bless him — isn’t the third best player on the team.
After last night, Suns fans began to brace themselves from the upcoming fall from grace. Awful basketball is the outlook for the future. It will be a kind of culture shock for Phoenix, which is accustomed to at least being entertained by the basketball team. It will have nothing, though, on the emptiness that comes from losing a basketball icon. We’ll still watch him, wherever he signs. We’ll cheer for him, too, hoping that he gets that ring.
And we’ll be a little jealous, too. After all, not many get to choose their own fate. It’s probably pretty nice.
As soon as the specifics of this season’s compressed schedule hit digital newsstands, there was a rush to grab a percussive utensil and begin banging on the drum of ‘fresh legs’. With more games, spread over a smaller span of time, the prevailing wisdom has been that this year’s playoffs, perhaps more than any other, would be influenced by health and rest. The flip side of that coin, that age and continuity would provide stability, is worth mentioning as well. But still we’ve seen, as expected, more teams following the Gregg Poppovich model, resting their stars and carefully counting minutes, hoping to preserve their production for when it’s needed most.
Looking at Dwight Howard, Al Horford, Chauncey Billups, and Jeremy Lin, it’s a certainty that injuries have changed the field. It remains to be seen what role endurance and exhaustion will play in the crowning of a champion. So who will be entering this year’s playoffs with the freshest legs?
The table below is an attempt to answer that question visually. The top nine currently available players in minutes played for each playoff team are shown on the graph. The X-axis marks the PER of each player. The Y-axis marks how many minutes they’ve played. The size of each point represents the Usage Rate of that player. Click on a team in the side bar to highlight all the players for that team. Hover over each point for more information on that player.
Before you go any further, I’ll acknowledge that this method is attempting to perform surgery with chipped flint, it’s both rough and crude. Looking at the top nine players in minutes played for each team, subtracting injured players like Dwight Howard, is not an exact replication of what each team’s playoff rotation will look like. For example, because he’s missed time with injuries, Manu Ginobili isn’t even in the Spurs’ top nine in minutes played. Derrick Rose, although included on this graph, is another example of a player who’s minutes have been reduced by injury, an injury who’s lingering effects could have just as big an impact on his playoff performance as the number of minutes he’s played. Still the graph gives us a rough idea of how the playoff teams have distributed their minutes. The PER and USG information provides some background on the relationship between usage, production and minutes. Flaws aside, I did spot a few things that seemed important.
The Spurs and the Magic, as of Tuesday night, were the only teams who didn’t have a player over the 2,000 minute plateau. By contrast the Lakers, Grizzlies and Hawks each had three players who have played over 2,000 minutes. If it hadn’t been for injuries it seems safe to assume that Horford and Zach Randolph would have passed that mark as well, giving the Hawks and the Grizzlies four each.
If you want to pick out a team that might be most affected by tired legs, I would point you towards the Indiana Pacers. Five of their players have played over 1,800 minutes this season. Although George Hill, who’s played just 1,200 minutes on the season has supplanted Darren Collison as the starting point guard the past two weeks, while Collison recovered from injury. The starting lineup the Pacers used most of the season, Collison – Paul George – Danny Granger – David West – Roy Hibbert, played 985 minutes together. That’s the most of any unit in the league and nearly 250 minutes more than the next closest unit. The Pacers’ have been able to rely on that group, along with Hill, because they’ve been remarkably healthy this season. They’ve HAD to rely on that group because their bench play has been inconsistent at best, abysmal at worst. If an injury, either from a traumatic play or the accumulation of wear and tear, hits one of those six players the Pacers could be in real trouble.
If you wanted to identify a team that might have created an advantage with the way they managed minutes, I’ll steer you exactly where you would have expected – the San Antonio Spurs. Poppovich has been able to drive the Spurs to the top seed in the West while keeping minutes down for Parker, Duncan and Ginobili. Even more impressive is that after Parker and Duncan, the next seven players in the Spurs top nine have all played at least 1,000 minutes this season. Poppovich has created a balance, allowing the bulk of his supporting cast to accumulate as much experience as possible. When they reach they playoffs Danny Green, Kawhi Leonard, and Tiago Splitter will have had plenty of opportunities to learn and practice, automatizing what’s expected of them. There will be no surprises or new assignments for the Spurs role players. Poppovich has set his team up for success both in the way he has held minutes back and in the way he has doled them out.
The playoff matchups are all but set, and in just a few days the whole affair will get under way. In any season, a twisted ankle or a sprained finger can send a team into a tailspin. It would be difficult to directly attribute an injury, or even a few poor performances, to tired legs but let’s watch and see what sort of patterns emerge.
We’ve all spent the last few days raising our voices and cutting people off, citing numbers, facts, past instances and personal biases to gain leverage in our debates over Metta World Peace and his elbow to James Harden’s head. We all have an opinion, and we all know where we stand on the punishment announced yesterday. It’s easy to debate about the perpetrator and the motives behind the act. It’s a lot harder to talk about the victim, which is at least partially due to the language we’re given.
James Harden surely has a concussion. That much seems evident. Taking a sharp elbow to the temple at point blank range from one of the league’s most tank-like athletes will inevitably cause some sort of cerebral damage. But what kind of damage are we talking about, exactly?
What’s the difference between a contusion and a concussion? After an hour of scouring different medical sources, contusions occur when a blow to the head forces the brain to collide with ridges in the inner skull, causing small blood leakage into the brain. The affected area is limited; either the area right where the impact occurred is damaged, or the polar opposite of the area (meaning the brain had slammed against the opposite side of the skull). A severe contusion can cause intracranial pressure to rise, and brain tissue to swell with fluid build-up, requiring surgery to clear. Thankfully, Harden’s injury—whatever it is—isn’t nearly that severe, as evidenced by the training staff clearing a second half appearance against the Lakers, and his teammates noting his good condition after the Tuesday win against the Kings.
Thamel’s article later states that Harden has a concussion. However, a brain bruise and a concussion are not synonymous; a person with a contusion can also be concussed. So what is a concussion? It’s tough to say. There is no standardized definition, and the language gets even vaguer in the realm of sports. Generally, it refers to mild traumatic brain injury that briefly impairs brain functions. Unlike contusions, concussions don’t occur in one specific area nor is there discernible bleeding in brain tissues. So while all cerebral contusions will technically feel the effects of concussion, not all concussions can be considered contusions.
The NBA unveiled a concussion policy this season, and it is vital for the wellbeing of the players involved in this league. It explains the tests that the league runs on players with potential concussions to both diagnose and check for clearance. What specifically constitutes as a concussion is still unclear, but then again, so are the complexities of the human brain. Slapping a concrete definition on concussions belies the singularity of each individual case. We’re still learning about how the brain works and recuperates. As basketball fans, we’re lucky—concussions don’t happen often. But a basic education of the implications and a sensible policy can play a significant role in keeping concussions as far away from the game as possible.
