web analytics
<

Profile Paroxysm: Linas Kleiza And The Raptors’ Potential Problem

March 10, 2012 in by with 2 Comments

Photo by Edmis on Flickr

Linas Kleiza’s 19 points in his last game were a lie.

Okay, not all of them. But with 8:42 left in the fourth quarter against Houston, the Raptors forward had seven points on 3-7 shooting. He’d just tried to do a bit too much, dribbling behind his back and attempting a floater off the dribble. The shot hit glass, no rim, causing a shot clock violation. It wasn’t even his worst miss of the game — in the first, he missed a baseline jumper off the side of the backboard. He was open.

Kleiza got his eighth and ninth points just over two minutes later when a missed DeMar DeRozan dunk fell into his hands directly in front of the rim. The rest came with under four minutes to go, with the Raptors up by 15 or more. Good looks in garbage time.

This could give you just about the worst possible impression of Kleiza’s role in Toronto this season. The most important takeaway from that quarter is not his scoring outburst in the final few minutes, but rather the fact that he was on the floor for the whole thing. It was the 14th time in 19 games that he’d played all 12 minutes in the final frame, and that number rises to 16 if we include a couple of games where heplayed practically every minute. Ironically, he didn’t close the single contest that he started, a game in Denver in which he got in a bit of a tussle with Al Harrington.

Against Memphis a few days earlier, he scored eight points in just over a minute in the tight fourth quarter. He also missed a potential go-ahead jumper with 14 seconds left, which was “too open” according to Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “I don’t mind taking those shots,” Kleiza said. “Not all of them are going to go in, but some of them are going to go in. It’s just the reality.”

In New Orleans on leap day, he made three of four three-pointers in the last stanza. “He’s one of my favorites as far as he’s great at making big shots,” Casey said. “He’s become one of the closers.” Kleiza finished with 21 points in that game, shaking off the rust from a sore ankle without the benefit of practice time.

Before that ankle sidelined him for three games in February, his missed time came courtesy of a much more devastating injury: a meniscal tear and a chondral defect in his right knee. He had microfracture surgery just over 13 months ago, costing him most of his 2010-2011 campaign in addition to this season’s training camp and first two weeks. “It’s tough news at first, but it’s not a choice,” Kleiza said. “[Rehab is] all you can do. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It’s a contact sport, things happen.” Yes —horrible, horrible things.

“The rehab is very slow, very slow and long,” Kleiza continued. “You’ve got to be very patient and a lot of things you’ve got to do yourself, you and the trainer. That makes it tough when you’re used to a team atmosphere your whole life. To be on your own all the time, that makes it tough.”

Fortunately, that adjective can be turned around and applied to the player. “He’s a tough guy, I love that. He’s edgy and we need that on the court from him,” Casey said. “He’s coming back from a tough surgery, so he’s still not 100 percent, but I’ll take whatever it is — 80 percent, 85 percent Linas right now.”

While much has been made of the compressed schedule putting players at risk for injuries, you don’t always think about how it affects guys who are recovering from them. “I feel like I’m getting there,” Kleiza said of his health. “The schedule is tough on me, especially when you’re coming off the injury and you still need to do work and rehab and there’s no time really. It’s game after game after game. It makes it tough when you don’t have practice time… but what can you do? That’s what we signed up for.”

The man making headlines recovering from injury in Toronto these days is Andrea Bargnani, easily the team’s most important player. He’s set to return from a strained calf tonight or tomorrow. Bargnani started the season playing at an All-Star level, with his coach saying his name in the same breath as Dirk Nowitzki’s and praising his effort on defense. The Raptors weren’t beating the league’s best, but they started 6-7 with him and 0-7 without him.

Now, they’re 13-26 and Kleiza’s shooting during this stretch has been invaluable for an undermanned offense. “He’s able to stretch the floor,” Casey said. “It creates space for DeMar and our guards to penetrate the paint because when he or Andrea’s not in there that paint shrinks up and there’s nowhere to go.” Playing with Bargnani, he shouldn’t have to do as much and he should get better looks. Their shared ability to play inside and out will present problems for most teams, allowing them to pick their spots depending on the matchups. “It’s just whatever the defense presents. Some of the guys are big and especially when I play the four I try to space,” Kleiza said. “That’s what I kind of try to do, play to my strength. If I’ve got a smaller guy, probably he’s quicker than me, so I try to get an advantage in the post.”

The Raptors aren’t your average 13-26 squad. They may not be relevant, but they’ve been competitive, losing close games because of slow starts and late lulls, things Bargnani’s presence could help alleviate. DeRozan is playing the best basketball of his career, James Johnson has calmed down and stepped up, and Kleiza never really even got to play with Bargnani — his season debut was the game in which Bargnani initially strained his calf. With a league-average defense and a near-league-worst offense, an efficient 23-point scorer rejoining the rotation is interesting. What’s even more interesting is looking ahead to next year, when Jonas Valanciunas will arrive in Toronto for his rookie season. Kleiza is looking forward to playing with him in advance of that, with the Lithuanian national team this summer. “He’s a good young player who’s got a very bright future,” he said.

“He’s a true center, that’s what the NBA lacks. I think we could definitely use him this year, too,” Kleiza added about the 19-year-old who’s already a superstar back home. “I think when he comes here, he’s going to develop into a very good player. He’s just got to put work in and not pay too much attention to what people around him are talking about.”

With a promising center on the way and Casey’s new and improved defensive culture, things are looking up in Toronto. But there will be other additions in the offseason and the most important one will likely come from the draft. As it stands the Raptors have the fourth-worst record in the league, but there are a handful of teams a game or two above them. The difference between the fourth and ninth picks in the draft is sometimes the difference between Russell Westbrook and D.J. Augustin, so the thought of Kleiza knocking down more threes as Bargnani draws defensive attention brings with it an unexpected problem:

There’s a chance we’ll soon be talking about the Raptors winning too many games for their own good.

Leaving Hope

March 9, 2012 in by with 1 Comment

As I watched the Blazers get embarrassed and emasculated by the Celtics tonight, I didn’t really feel anything. That’s the point we’ve reached with the 2011-12 Trail Blazers, the least watchable Rip City bunch since the depths of the Jail Blazers years. This team is almost worse, because every loss is an exercise in inevitability, the work of a team so bored with its own mediocrity that it’s content only to come up with new ways to suck.

Raymond Felton has started having isolated quarters of solid play seemingly to mock anyone who urges patience, all while playing the “don’t blame me for being out of shape—it’s all the lockout’s fault!” card. It’s taken Jamal Crawford all of three months to go from Brandon Roy’s possible successor to a guy the Blazers can’t even convince the Pacers to give them A.J. Price for. The one intriguing rookie on the roster, Elliot Williams, is now out with a dislocated shoulder. Gerald Wallace is both completely bored with the team’s awfulness and one of the only guys who seems invested in games at all. Everyone involved wants to wash their hands of this year as soon as possible.

This is a team trapped in the worst kind of stasis a team can experience in a single season. They can’t win no matter what they do. Firing Nate McMillan, a fine coach who has taken up the Terry Francona mantle and completely lost a talented team, would throw the organization with no GM into even more disarray; playing out the season with him is only delaying the inevitable. Shaking things up at the trade deadline would run the risk of taking on more salary without necessarily adding long-term talent; standing pat with this roster means continuing this stunning display of futility. All we’re left to do is close our eyes and hope it comes to an end sooner rather than later.

Trade Deadline: Josh Smith Wants Out, We Want Josh Smith Out, It Won’t Happen

March 8, 2012 in by with 0 Comments

Photo from monkeyatlarge via Flickr

Even as Josh Smith is having a strong season for the Hawks he has let the team know he wants to be traded as the March 15 deadline approaches, according to people with knowledge of Smith’s thinking.And the reasons for Smith’s dissatisfaction with the team now have to make the Hawks wonder if they will be able to sign him to a contract extension next season.

via Atlanta Hawks: Josh Smith still wants to be traded | Atlanta Hawks.

Josh Smith is so… Josh Smith.

For better or for worse, there is no other player in the history of the NBA like Josh Smith. Literally. The 3 assist-2 block-1.5 steal thing? That’s Hakeem territory. David Robinson territory. I’d offer a third name but honestly, it’s just not out there. Josh Smith does everything on the basketball court, and while he’s not the best at anything, he pulls off the combination at a level that nobody else does. He’s a defensive freakshow, running over from the weakside to erase any semblance of resistance. He should have been an all-star somewhere between 1 and 3 times over the past 3 years, he’s playing on a fantastic contract, and he can do this, if he likes.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmSVT3OcLOc]

But it comes at such a price. The 21 footers that never stop raining down on the rim, but never in it. The blatant disregard for coaching or strategy. Those 2 or 3 games every month to which he doesn’t even bother showing up, no matter how much you yell at your screen and tear out your hair. And if the Hawks have finally decided that they’re done with the entire charade – even if the Josh Smith Show is the only thing that’s keeping them competitive in the first place – who can blame them?

Of course, that fits with us just fine. We hate Josh Smith in Atlanta, and we fully understand if he hates it as well. We hate that Joe Johnson’s mediocrity takes his credit, or that the wide array of backup guards to run through Atlanta during his tenure took his shot attempts. We hate the halfcourt isolation mess that has been trapping the fast break monster for 8 years now. We want Josh Smith free, with a coach that don’t care and a point guard with flair.

Josh Smith in Houston, an athletic monster who somehow holds together a collection of surprisingly effective parts? Yes please. Josh Smith in Boston, pairing up with Rajon Rondo to create an up-tempo juggernaut that’s just bad enough to constantly remind us how inherently flawed both players are in their excellence? Where do I sign up? Josh Smith in Orlando, combining with long-time friend Dwight Howard to make the paint area in the Amway Center a no-shot zone? Basketball brilliance.

The jump from theory to practice, though, is a hard one to make. Either will give up enough to get Josh out from Atlanta, or somebody will give up too much to keep Smith’s new squad good enough to keep him engaged. Odds are, come March 15th, the fans yelling “NOOOOO” at each bad shot will still be the scarcely observed tenants of Phillips Arena. It’s a shame, but with Josh Smith, we should be used to it.

Paroxysm At Gametime: Chandler Parsons, The Rockets’ Bright Spot

March 8, 2012 in by with 0 Comments

Photo by tomylees on Flickr

Kevin McHale is despondent. Or distraught, disappointed, distressed. Take your pick. His Houston Rockets just lost by 18 in Toronto, outscored 34-22 in a dismal fourth quarter. “It just looked like our guys were a half-step slow all night long,” he says.

Responding to a question about rookie Chandler Parsons’ impressive game, the Rockets coach is unable to stay on topic. “Chandler played well but he plays hard all the time. You play hard, good things happen. Chandler’s a guy who plays hard, but we have not been good since the All-Star break,” McHale says. “We’ve really got to get ourselves together. We’re going through a really rough stretch right now.”

It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to heap too much praise on any Rocket, despite Parsons’ team-high 19 points on nine shots, four rebounds, two assists, three steals and a block. This is Houston’s fifth straight loss since beating these same Raptors at the Toyota Center eight days prior. McHale’s team was seven games over .500 then, fifth in the West, knocking on the door for home court advantage. Now it is 21-19 and would be out of the playoffs if the regular season ended today.

The Rockets allowed the Raptors to shoot 68 percent in the first quarter and 67 in the fourth. Toronto is 28th in the league in offensive rating and managed to score 116 points at a rate that would rank as the most efficient in the league. “We’ve got to figure out what kind of team we’re going to be,” McHale continued. “We just have got to find a way to have more defensive effort, more defensive energy.”

Rewind just over four hours and McHale’s energy is completely different. Pregame, he strolls up to Parsons and assistant coach J.B. Bickerstaff and takes a seat next to the rookie on the sideline. He’s just like he was as a commentator for TNT, talking non-stop. Matt Devlin, the Raptors’ play-by-play guy and McHale’s booth partner in last year’s playoffs, joins him to catch up.

Parsons and Bickerstaff chat a bit more before the 38th pick in the 2011 NBA Draft heads back to the locker room. His pregame routine with Bickerstaff includes shooting from pretty much everywhere. It’s catch-and-shoot after catch-and-shoot, then it’s finishing at the basket with a bump or a push from Bickerstaff. “Before practice I shoot with him,” he said.  “Work on dribble moves, just shooting the same shot and work on free throws every day and then before the games. He’s been great for my growth and development as a player.” When Parsons airballs a turnaround jumper, Bickerstaff gives him a half-serious death stare.

After shooting, he spends some time with assistant coach Brett Gunning and his laptop. They watch video of the previous night’s game in Boston. While Bickerstaff is working with Parsons on offense, Gunning’s focus is the other side of the ball. “It’s what they keep every game, how many breakdowns you have individually and you watch it and try to learn from it,” said Parsons, whose ability to limit his breakdowns has earned him comparisons to Shane Battier. “He’ll show good and bad, different defensive clips that you did last game that you can improve on.” For about ten minutes, Gunning goes through these clips. Play, pause, explain, rewind, play.

If you only know Parsons as the king of the putback dunk, his defensive prowess might be a surprise. But his game has been less about highlights lately. “I think he teased us with that,” teammate Kevin Martin joked. “The first like four games he started, he had one a game, but I don’t think he had one since, so he’s got to work on that.”

Parsons knows his most valuable work has come on D. It’s the entire reason he’s gone from the second round to the starting five. “100 percent,” he said. “I’m an aggressive player on offense and I’m going to shoot the ball when I’m open, but I’m getting my minutes on the defensive end and rebounding the ball and just playing hard and giving 100 percent effort. I want to play harder than anybody else out there.”

Against Toronto, Parsons started the game as the primary defender on DeMar DeRozan. At shooting guard, he’s the Raptors’ No. 1 option, adept at slashing and shooting off screens. He also guards James Johnson, a do-it-all 6’9 forward similar to Parsons with his passing and ballhandling ability. When Linas Kleiza replaces Johnson due to early foul trouble, Parsons checks him. A sweet-shooting stretch four with a power post-up game, Kleiza is often the go-to-guy with Toronto’s second unit. Even on a night where his team collectively couldn’t stop anybody, Parsons deserves credit for accepting very different challenges.

He did this while playing 41 minutes in his third game in four nights and sixth in eight. He played the first 15 minutes and didn’t sit at all in the second half. Handling this kind of playing time on a regular NBA schedule is tough for most rookies — with this compressed schedule, it’s doubly impressive. Also impressive is how far he’s come from his opening night DNP.

Coming into the season, Chase Budinger was the starting small forward in Houston and Terrence Williams was the backup. After the draft, it was No. 14 pick Marcus Morris being called the “home run” pick based on his potential to play the three, not Parsons. Now, the Florida alum has started 33 games in a row and he isn’t surprised at the leap he’s made. “I’m always confident in my ability,” he said. “I’m going to work extremely hard, so it doesn’t matter about anybody else, what other people say. I know how hard I work and I know how good I can be, so I’m just going to keep trying to get better every day and I have very high expectations for myself.”

For some rookies, it’s difficult to balance that self-confidence with the need to fit in to a team concept. This isn’t an issue for him. “I can play with anybody. I’m unselfish, I move the ball, I don’t take bad shots,” Parsons said. “I think guys like playing with me, so just having a balance of being aggressive — when to shoot, when to pass, running our offense — it’s easy playing with guys as good as the guys we’ve got on this team, so they’ve been great to me and they tell me to stay aggressive and have fun out there and I just go out there and play.”

Parsons has good reason to think guys enjoy playing with him. “He goes hard and we love having him,” Samuel Dalembert said. “He listens. So many times you have rookies who think they know everything but that’s not him. He’s a humble guy off the court, he’s tough-nosed on the court.” Kevin Martin added that he isn’t surprised that the ex-Gator has become such a key part of the team. “It’s just a testament to how hard he worked over the summer, going overseas and playing and coming from a great Florida tradition with Billy Donovan,” he said.

“Overseas” is France, where Parsons signed in September and played three games in the Pro A Championship for Cholet. “It was definitely different,” Parsons said of his whirlwind post-draft French excursion. “When you get drafted, you expect to be coming to the NBA and go to your city you get drafted on. I definitely had a delay and I definitely had to hop through some serious hoops but it was a good experience for me and I’m really thankful for the organization that gave it to me, Cholet, just to go out there and play and compete and being in game situations. Because then when the lockout ended I was ready to go and I had been playing the whole lockout, so it was great for me financially and physically just to be able to go out there and play.”

If being ready physically helped him get started this season, his versatility helped him hold onto the starting role. “If you have a 3 man that converted over to the 4 or a 4 man that can convert over to the 3 or the 5, you really have something. And Chandler Parsons can do that, he’s a jack-of-all-trades,” said Raptors coach Dwane Casey. This was before Parsons scored 10 points against his team in the third quarter on a combination of drives and jumpers, in transition and in the halfcourt.

He’s equally comfortable driving and kicking and being the man spotting up, even if he’s still working to improve his 29.4 percent three-point shooting. “I can take it off the dribble and once I start knocking down shots more consistently it will be able to open up what I do best and drive and penetrate and help others,” he said.

Postgame, Parsons deflects a question about his solid third quarter. “It’s not about me,” he says. “Every night, we’re going to have guys that play well and score the ball. We shouldn’t be worried about that, we should be worried about the defensive end and rebounding.”

Sounds just like his coach.

Understanding Advanced Stats: Amar’e Stoudemire’s Declining FG%

March 8, 2012 in by with 4 Comments

Yesterday, Clint Peterson did a great job introducing everyone to our new Understanding Advanced Stats series here at HP. There’s a divide between those who know what they’re doing when it comes to understanding the statistical and analytic revolution in basketball and those who don’t, so we’ve taken it upon ourselves here to do a little explaining. Let’s dig in with Amar’e Stoudemire’s declining FG% this year.

Basketball Reference

Right away here, we can see from his Basketball-Reference page that Amar’e Stoudemire has been attempting less shots per game and making a lower percentage of those attempts this season. Whenever a player sees a decline in his FG%, it is usually a good idea to check out his shot distribution to see if he is taking more low percentage shots.

HoopData

As you can see on his HoopData Shot Location Chart, Stoudemire has seen a fairly sharp decline in his FGA from nearly every shot location. Stoudemire’s 3.9 FGA per game decrease is right there in front of us. A 0.8 FGA per game drop in At-Rim attempts, 2.3 FGA per game drop in attempts from 3-9 feet and 0.9 FGA per game drop from 10-15 feet adds up to 4.0 FGA per game drop total. His 0.2 FGA per game drop on FGA from 16-23 feet is offset by a 0.3 FGA per game rise in threes. Instead of FGA from 16-23 feet comprising 28.4 percent of his total attempts (5.4 of 19.0) last season, FGA from that distance now account for 34.4 percent (5.2 of 15.1) of Stoudemire’s total attempts. Being that his FG% on those attempts has dropped also dropped 9% from last season, you can start to see why Amar’e's total FG% is taking a drop.

mySynergySports

The top box here is Amar’e's Synergy breakdown from the 2010-11 season and the bottom box is this season. Take a look at his play type distribution. Plays that would get him shots closer to the basket, like Post-ups and plays where he is the P&R Roll Man have taken a steep decline. Post-ups constituted 12 percent 0f his possessions last season and that number has dropped down to 8.4 percent this year. Similarly, P&R Roll Man possessions accounted for 9.6 percent of his total possessions last season and that number has dropped to 8.6 percent this year. By contrast, Spot-ups, which accounted for only 10.1 percent of STAT’s possessions last season, have shot all the way up to 18.1 percent, and Off Screen plays have risen from 4.9 percent of his offense to 7.3 percent.

Spot-ups and Off Screen shots generally tend to come farther away from the basket than Post-Ups and P&R Roll Man shots, which explains why his FGA from the shorter locations (At-Rim, 3-9 feet, 10-15 feet) are declining but his Long 2′s (16-23 feet) have stayed pretty steady.

As you can also see, in each season Amar’e has shot a worse percentage on both Spot-ups and Off Screen plays than he has as a P&R Roll Man. His effectiveness on Post-ups has also taken a dip this year (down 18.5 percent from 53.4% to 34.9%), which can help explain the 17.7 percent drop in his FG% on shot attempts from 3-9 feet from the HoopData graphic above.

The presence of Tyson Chandler is the Knicks’ primary screener in the pick-and-roll has led to Stoudemire being used much differently this year than in years past. More often, he’s an outlet man coming in behind the primary action to stretch the defense or is spotted up in the corner for the same reason. This has led to him taking a higher percentage of outside shots than he normally does, shots that he is also hitting at a lower than normal percentage, and explains the decline in his overall FG%.

The Tragic Flaw Of Grantland’s Wire Bracket

March 8, 2012 in by with 0 Comments

Photo by big puffy shoes on Flickr

“Much of our modern theater seems rooted in the Shakespearean discovery of the modern mind. [The Wire is] stealing instead from an earlier, less-traveled construct—the Greeks—lifting our thematic stance wholesale from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides to create doomed and fated protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality. The modern mind—particularly those of us in the West—finds such fatalism ancient and discomfiting, I think. We are a pretty self-actualized, self-worshipping crowd of postmoderns and the idea … we’re still fated by indifferent gods, feels to us antiquated and superstitious. We don’t accept our gods on such terms anymore.

“But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak. Because so much of television is about providing catharsis and redemption and the triumph of character, a drama in which postmodern institutions trump individuality and morality and justice seems different in some ways, I think.”

—David Simon, creator of The Wire, from an interview with The Believer

So Grantland, in their continuing efforts to create an alchemical reaction between sports and popular culture, have started a March Madness-style tournament of characters in The Wire to determine, well, I don’t know, who’s the most awesome, I guess. As you can see from the link, they’ve thought a good amount about this and it’s not my intention to ruin anyone’s fun. If people want to make up dumb polls and play them out, you have to let them play. Got to. This America, man.

But as soon as I saw this, something about it struck me as being massively misguided, and this comes from a guy who once had every animal-themed band name square off and fight. It’s not that I think The Wire is too good for this, that fiction should stay away from sports; I could, after all, see a bracket in which detectives from Phillip Marlowe to Dale Cooper to Horatio Caine (YEEEEAAAHHHHH!!!!) square off. Detectives are, after all, in the same line of work, attempting to accomplish more or less the same ends. That’s the first place where this bracket goes awry: the characters in The Wire (aside from a few exceptions like Marlo and Avon) are not after the same things, at least not in an immediate sense. Comparing a matchup between McNulty and Stringer Bell to a matchup between Duke and UNC only makes sense is Duke is trying to dismantle the NCAA itself.

To conceive of these characters as somehow in direct competition with one another is to mistake a genuine drama for reality television. The way character arcs intersect and collide with one another in The Wire is part of what makes it so compelling in the first place. Beefs turn into alliances out of shared goals (consider Omar and Brother Mouzone), people in power create monsters they can’t control (think of the way Valchek’s crusade empowers the detail), characters’ best trait are also their downfall (how McNulty’s dogged competitiveness makes him both “real police” and a terrible husband).

That last point relates directly to the epigraph to this post, where creator David Simon talks about the connection of the series to Greek tragedy. The classic idea of the tragic flaw runs through the heart of The Wire and it’s yet another reason why having these characters compete in a tournament cheapens them. This bracket idea leads to people arguing about who’s harder, Avon or Stringer, when in the actual narrative fabric of the show, these two characters both strengthen and weaken each other at different points. Stringer’s entrepreneurial streak helps them succeed once Avon’s street-level tactics have gotten them to a place of power. But then these same traits turn on them, threatening the empire they’ve built.

This is where it starts to get really weird, though, because the same thing that shortchanges these characters in a tournament is the same thing that creates meaning in an actual bracket-style tournament like March Madness. Many teams (like characters in a story) are flawed in ways that are also strengths, and running into a buzzsaw of an opponent who matches up just right can be their downfall. Teams predicated on offense run their opponents out of the gym until they run into a team that slows them down. Methodical half-court teams get countered by swarming defenses. But this similarity to classical narrative structures in a tournament is actually why this whole Smacketology thing is backwards.

What we love in March Madness are the storylines, the upsets, the Cinderellas. But those narratives are created by the structure of the tournament being imposed on a set of “characters” with the same goal. The tournament is seeded, the bracket is set, and then we watch as teams overcome their seed or live up to it. A structure is built around them and then we revel as they upend it. It’s a common narrative in Western culture: the triumph of the underdog. It’s in “Die Hard,” in “The Seven Samurai,” in “Oliver Twist,” in “Annie.”

But it’s not in The Wire. The characters in The Wire don’t overcome. As Simon says, “[T]hose characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed.” This is perhaps nowhere more movingly illustrated within the series than when D’Angelo Barksdale is being interrogated towards the end of the first season:

“Y’all don’t understand, man. Y’all don’t get it. I grew up in this shit … All my people, man. My father, my uncles, my cousins: It’s just what we do. You just live this shit until you can’t breathe no more. I swear to God, I was courtside for eight months and I was freer in jail then I was at home.”

The characters who do achieve some measure of personal victory in The Wire often do so quietly, whether it’s Cutty or Bubbles. And yet they’re the ones who will be shortchanged in a contest that pits them against more cold-blooded characters like Omar and Marlo. Yes, Marlo is, in some sense, “the last man standing,” but his final scene hardly feels like a victory. As each season ends and we enter the carousel of images from across Baltimore, the inescapable conclusion is that these characters are trapped in a narrative that keeps repeating itself, that keeps chewing them up and spitting them out.

Bracket tournaments (and all sports playoffs, really) generate their most compelling narratives through upsets, through the disruption of order. We crave it as viewers and part of what made The Wire such an achievement was its refusal to give us that. As Grantland’s Smacketology proceeds, we’re sure to see just such upsets and those upsets will offer the winner a measure of transcendence that the series itself would never afford them from within its structure. This is the disservice that Grantland is doing to these characters. Because in the world of The Wire, as Prez says, “No one wins. One side just loses more slowly.”

Understanding Advanced Statistics: Player Efficiency Rating

March 7, 2012 in by with 7 Comments

Advanced statistics are a lot like going to the dentist as a kid. You might hear a lot of negative talk about them if you’ve never experienced them before. You might not understand the purpose of them. Most likely, you’re scared of them. Then once you check it out for the first time, you find out it’s not so bad after all.

Here at Hardwood Paroxysm, we are embarking on a journey to make understanding advanced statistics a little less painful for everyone involved. Clint did an excellent job yesterday highlighting some of the key sites that can be used to view advanced stats along with pointing out specific ones such as effective field goal percentage (eFG%), true shooting percentage (TS%), and offensive & defensive rebounding percentages (ORB% and DRB%). Today, I’ll be covering one of the most common advanced stats that you will see: Player Efficiency Rating, or as it is more commonly referred to, PER.

Who came up with this?

PER was developed by ESPN.com’s own John Hollinger.

What is it?

Essentially, PER is a rating a player’s per minute statistical production. Think of it as one number which accounts for rewards a player for his positive contributions (e.g. points, rebounds, assists, made FGs, blocks, etc.) and penalizes him for his negative accomplishments (e.g. turnovers, missed shots, personal fouls, etc.) on the court. Now, promise that you will stay with me after I show you the formula for calculating PER. Ready? Here it is:

First, begin with calculating the unadjusted PER (uPER)

where

Then, plug uPER into the following equation in order to adjust for team pace

Adjusting for pace allows us to compare players across different eras and styles of play. For instance, the Suns’ famous Seven Seconds or Less offense would provide more opportunities for a player to boost his PER given the increased number of possessions he is given throughout a game; taking pace into account normalizes these results so that everyone is on equal footing.

Still breathing after all that? Good.

Where can I find this?

The easiest way to find PER is straight from the source himself. Hollinger updates PER daily on ESPN.com and can be found here. If you don’t immediately bookmark that link, you can simply go to ESPN.com – NBA – Stats – Hollinger Player Statistics (look in the upper right hand corner of the page if you don’t see it at first on the Stats page). Alternatively, basketball-reference.com has PER as well. Just go to any player’s page and look under “Advanced.”

Why should I care?

I will start off by saying this; PER is far from a perfect stat. It’s biggest shortcoming is that there are a lot of events that occur going on in a basketball game that are extremely, if not impossible, to quantify. A defender hedging properly on a pick and roll or forcing a ball rotation to a poorer shooter is not something that is going to show up in a box score, but it is a positive contribution to the team. Since PER is limited to only incorporating those that can be quantified, defensive stalwarts who do not rack up considerable amounts of steals and/or blocks may not have high PER’s. Additionally, due to the NBA not keeping turnover stats prior to 1978, Hollinger has not calculated PER for anyone before that year. Luckily for us, the guys at basketball-reference.com went ahead and tweaked the PER formula to estimate the PER for players who played before all currently tracked stats were kept.

Despite its flaws, PER is one of, if not the best, stats that we currently have to measure a player and assess his total contributions on the floor. To put some context around the actual PER numbers, let’s set some parameters and look at how the numbers translate to certain player roles. Per Wikipedia:

Type of Player

PER
A Year For The Ages

35.0
Runaway MVP Candidate

30.0
Strong MVP Candidate

27.5
Weak MVP Candidate

25.0
Bona Fide All-Star

22.5
Borderline All-Star

20.0
Solid 2nd Option

18.0
3rd Banana

16.5
Pretty Good Player*

15.0
In The Rotation

13.0
Scrounging For Minutes

11.0
Definitely Renting

9.0
The Next Stop: D-League

5.0

*The league average PER is always set at 15.00.

According to basketball-reference.com, here is a table of the top 20 career PER leaders:

Rank

Player

PER

1

 Michael Jordan*

27.91

2

 LeBron James

27.23

3

 Shaquille O’Neal

26.43

4

 David Robinson*

26.18

5

 Wilt Chamberlain*

26.13

6

 Dwyane Wade

25.77

7

 Bob Pettit*

25.35

8

 Chris Paul

25.27

9

 Tim Duncan

24.75

10

 Neil Johnston*

24.63

11

 Charles Barkley*

24.63

12

 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar*

24.58

13

 Magic Johnson*

24.11

14

 Karl Malone*

23.90

15

 Dirk Nowitzki

23.66

16

 Hakeem Olajuwon*

23.59

17

 Kobe Bryant

23.54

18

 Larry Bird*

23.50

19

 Kevin Garnett

23.37

20

 Oscar Robertson*

23.17

If you’re scoring at home, that’s 12 of the top 20 career PER leaders being in the Hall of Fame while the other eight are currently active and will find themselves first ballot Hall of Famers shortly after they hang up their sneakers for good. One of the best tests when developing a statistic of any type is seeing if the results make sense when applied to a number of historical seasons. PER certainly passes this test with flying colors.

For comparison’s sake, here are the top 20 PER leaders for the 2011-12 season:

Rank

Player

PER

1

 LeBron James

33.14

2

 Dwyane Wade

28.34

3

 Kevin Durant

27.24

4

 Chris Paul

25.99

5

 Derrick Rose

25.09

6

 Kevin Love

24.98

7

 Dwight Howard

24.45

8

 Kobe Bryant

23.90

9

 Kenneth Faried

23.64

10

 Russell Westbrook

23.39

11

 Blake Griffin

23.20

12

 Al Jefferson

23.12

13

 Greg Monroe

22.97

14

 LaMarcus Aldridge

22.88

15

 Andrew Bynum

22.77

16

 Ryan Anderson

22.75

17

 Paul Millsap

22.70

18

 Stephen Curry

22.25

19

 Andrea Bargnani

22.09

20

 Steve Nash

21.99

Essentially a who’s who of the league today, right? At the top of the list, you will see what almost seems to be an outlier. While it has become en vogue for the casual NBA fan to mock LeBron James for his perceived “unclutchness”, the fact remains that LeBron’s 2011-12 season is arguably one of the greatest seasons, statistically speaking, in the history of the league. The highest season PER ever recorded by John Hollinger was Michael Jordan’s 1987-88 season where he posted a sensational 31.71 PER. Basketball-reference.com, using their adjusted formula discussed earlier, has Wilt Chamberlain’s 1962-63 (31.84) and 1961-62 (31.76) seasons ranked as the greatest of all time. LeBron is currently on pace to shatter all of those if he maintains the current path he is on.

In the way that batting average, home runs, and RBI are looked at as ancient statistics in baseball, a mere look into points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks is no longer an appropriate way to look at a player’s performance in the NBA. Using rudimentary stats like points per game to shape your argument with intelligent basketball fans is going to get you at best laughed at, and at worst ignored in this day and age. Beginning to understand advanced statistics will allow you to talk smarter about the game of basketball and understand that some of your previously held thoughts are not necessarily true. There is more than just the “eye test” when watching games; hopefully now you are better prepared to interpret everything that you are seeing on the floor and understand its ramifications.

Now, that wasn’t so painful was it? Of course, just like your dentist told you to brush up when you get home, I will now tell you to go brush up on your advanced stats. Enjoy!

What Do Teams Owe Fans?

March 7, 2012 in by with 0 Comments

Photo by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region via Flickr

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The weather is starting to warm up. March Madness is just around the corner. And the NBA playoffs are just a couple months away. Naturally, with the playoffs on horizon for 16 teams in the league, only two months separates 14 others from the end of the year. Those 14 teams are currently at a crossroads, and it puts fans in an interesting position.

There are generally two types of teams at this point in the season: teams that are clearly awful who could realistically finish as one of the five worst teams in the league (e.g. Bobcats, Hornets, Wizards, Kings) and those that must make the choice to either push for a playoff appearance or position themselves for a high pick in the lottery (e.g. Bucks, Timberwolves, Trail Blazers, Jazz) as no one wants to end up at the bottom end of the lottery. If the Internet is any indication, you will find fans arguing vociferously on both sides. Some make the argument that making the playoffs, even if it results in a first round drubbing, is good as it builds a winning culture. Others argue that a true winning culture is built through acquiring good players, and the top of the draft is one of the best places to do accomplish this. This leads to the question: How much do teams “owe” their fans?

Consider this: Per Team Marketing Report, the Fan Cost Index for attending a game this year is $301.06. Fan Cost Index is comprised of “four average-priced tickets, two small draft beers, four small soft drinks, four regular size hot dogs, parking for one car, two game programs and two least-expensive, adult-size adjustable caps.” In a down economy, dropping $300 for a night of entertainment for a family is not a cheap night out; heck, it’s not really a cheap night out in a booming economy, but I digress.  If mom, dad, and their two kids have saved up their money and head to the arena, they wish to be entertained and get at least close to their money’s worth. While expecting a win isn’t always realistic, there is a reasonable expectation that both teams will compete as hard as they can from the opening tip to the final buzzer.

A hectic, compressed schedule this year has managed to add a slight twist to the usual question marks surrounding just how much effort a team is going to give on a particular night especially late in the season. There is now a premium on keeping stars healthy, limiting minutes for key contributors as much as possible, and embracing the philosophy that simply getting to the playoffs, not seeding, is considered a success this year. As a result, occasionally there will be games like the Spurs played two weeks ago. The Spurs were red hot having won 11 games in a row prior to rolling into Portland to take on the Trail Blazers. Rather than going for a dozen wins in a row, Gregg Popovich looked at his veteran team  playing its third game in four nights and elected to sit Tim Duncan and Tony Parker for the duration of the game. To no one’s surprise, the Spurs were blown out from the opening tip, found themselves down 18 points after the first, 23 at halftime, and lost 137-97. The home team got the win and went home happy, but how many of those fans truly felt like they got the full experience of a real NBA game? What percentage of people walked out of the Rose Garden feeling good that their money was well spent?

Teams that are perceived to be tanking are in the same boat. Whether it’s resting their best players due to mysterious injuries that just happen to come up at the end of the year or flat out not playing those players under the guise of “letting the young kids get experience,” there are multiple ways to boost the odds of losing a game without simply laying down on the court. In a way, this is even more frustrating from the fan perspective because the team has gone from being poor all year to being completely unwatchable. Only the most devoted fans at this point would watch the game on TV at home for free, let alone pay money to watch it in person.

Back to the original question at hand: how much do teams owe their fans? I would argue that a team is responsible for the five guys on the floor at any given time to give their best effort. Walking up and down the court, having your centers take three pointers like it’s the All-Star Game, trying to recreate an And-1 mix tape, etc. out on the floor should not be tolerated as it makes a mockery of the game of basketball. Short of that, however, I am largely on the side of teams not particularly owing the fans much.

Basketball is entertainment for fans, but a business to those within it. Front offices and coaches are going to make decisions which they feel put their team in the best position going forward. Whether that means playing its same lineups and rotations from games 1-82 or throwing five minimum salary players out on the floor for the final 10 games of the year will differ from team to team, but the fact remains that no team consciously makes decisions to make themselves weaker in the long term. While top picks are far from a sure thing, teams are going to vie for a higher pick if the opportunity presents itself. It is the fan’s responsibility to educate himself and make himself aware of the situation that his team currently faces. For example, there is no excuse for being blindsided when a team, who can secure itself more ping pong balls in the lottery, opts to play its second unit an obscene amount of minutes in one of the final games of the year. It may not be what you want, but it’s to be expected as long as the current lottery system remains in place. So the next time that you log on to buy tickets to see your team play the final week of the season, all I ask is that you keep the phrase “caveat emptor” in mind, for you should beware the effects tanking can have on your experience.

Understanding Advanced Stats: Somewhere To Start

March 6, 2012 in by with 5 Comments

When citing advanced statistics for a variety of situations — everything from predicting to what might happen in an upcoming game to attempting to discern what actually did happen after the fact, to sporting a spirited debate and everything in between — I often get asked what a particular metric means within it’s context and without. In the wake of the recent Sloan Sports Conference there was a renewed vigor from followers who were desirous of finding a way to ease into this fast-growing aspect of analyzing what their eyes are seeing on the court.

“Where do I start if I want to understand advanced stats? Half of this makes no sense to me, and the other half is gibberish.”

Don’t worry, even experienced, learned statisticians find some of the material over their head, which makes perfect sense as much of it is extremely complex, a satisfactory conclusion being reached only after a lengthy process that may have led the researcher in several directions before finding the elusive eureka door. A large portion of the focus at this year’s Sloan was brainstorming a way to bring these fringe fans into the circle of understanding.

Shrinking the space between the analytics community and the “average fan” has been a thread through this entire event. Multiple panels and presentations have found themselves circling the idea of why that gap is closing, the rate at which it’s closing, how to speed up the process and whether it’s possible to close the gap completely.

For the most part the themes with a basketball slant presented at Sloan — “fit,” “space,” “physical performance,” “pressure,” “chemistry” — are foundational enough for even the most casual fan to interact with. However, the vehicles for discussion used here at Sloan are largely inaccessible and decidedly unpalatable for large swaths of sports fans.

One of the ideas that drives this effort is “language containers.” The premise is that human language has evolved into a means of capturing ideas by providing containers in which to place a concept. To fully and completely master a concept you must understand all the language that defines and informs that idea.

For example, to be entirely fluent and comfortable with the concept of subtraction your language container must include: “take-away,” “less than,” “smaller than,” “fewer,” “deficit,” “debit,” etc. To understand the concept of usage rate, you have to build a language container that includes the definition of a possession. The concept of a possession, in turn, requires its own container, built on the understanding…

Language and concepts, Ian Levy, Special to TrueHoop

…and so on.

No wonder “average fan” loses interest quickly, ending up mired in and mucking through antiquated per-game box scores or eschewing stats altogether in favor of “my eyes tell me all I need to know.” Presented this way, trying to get advanced stats to stick in the mainstream made even myself start searching through the cobwebs to see if I possessed the necessary 55 gallon drum of a language bucket.

So let’s start with the basics, a couple very useful and mostly self-explanatory metrics that can quite easily become part of your statistical vocabulary, something to build on (and we’ll continue on to even more useful sites and metrics in future posts *that can help you win that Twitter debate with me, if you’d like).

*This is the part where I admit that the catalyst for my finding ever-more-complex metrics started out just so I could stump my detractors. I love a great debate as much as anyone, so I sometimes spent hours staring at a series of complex numbers until the light would finally go on and I’d find context and the real-time ability to apply it. Naturally, once I went through the eureka door there was no going back. Suddenly whole new possibilities of understanding had opened in a glorious avalanche of application

Every coach in the NBA will say that valuing a possession is vital to success. But what does this mean, exactly? Are all field goal percentages and points scored equal? Hardly.

Enter eFG% (effective field goal percentage) and TS% (true shooting percentage). Common sense will tell you that the farther you get from the basket the less likely a shot is to fall, however, the long two is the lowest percentage shot in the NBA while 3-point percentages are at all-time highs. eFG% takes into account that a made three is worth more on the scoreboard than a made two, while TS% goes a step further and adds in free throws to the equation. Since about one in three offensive possessions ends at the free throw line you can see why this is relevant. TS% gives a measurable value to a player or team’s efficiency on offense, and is the more widely used of the two metrics, offering more information at a glance.

HoopData

An advanced stat everyone can understand and apply is shot location, and no one chronicles it better than our TrueHoop sister site HoopData.

Last season someone asked “What the hell happened to Paul Millsap’s rebounding numbers?!” A good question considering Millsap was a three-time NCAA rebounding champ who went from pulling down almost 10 rebounds per game per-36 minutes to barely 8.0. What made it especially perplexing was that it was long assumed by many that in the absence of “that stat-padding, rebound-stealing Boozer” that Millsap had backed up for years, he should be bringing down at least 12 rebounds per game. And Al Jefferson’s rebound numbers weren’t going up opposite Millsap in the starting lineup, so where’d they go?

I suspected I knew already. First stop, HoopData. Mystery solved.

Spending twice as much time as before in the outer Mongolia of the basketball floor naturally means you’re not in a position to fight for boards as often as you used to be. But there’s two ends to a basketball court, so if this mystery was to be solved successfully it would have to mean that those missing rebounds were on the offensive end, which brings us to our next stop.

BasketballReference 

At first glance the numbers don’t conclusively back up our assertion of where the missing glass went. Per game, Millsap’s rebound numbers on the D-glass were up one per-game, which makes sense since he was now starting, playing more minutes, while his O-reb numbers were down only 0.1 from the previous year, not nearly the drop we’d expect to see and seemingly not enough to account for the noticeable drop. But since he was now in a starting role, playing more minutes, we bounce down to the next box, per-36 minutes, where per-game numbers are normalized to a degree. Even that difference was negligible.

This is where an understanding of advanced stats can help unravel a quandary. The next box down, that dreaded “Advanced” stats box, gets bypassed by the majority of fans, simply because it’s largely not understood. Really, those “%” signs are no more intimidating than “!!!1!1!!1!” once you get it.

It stands to reason that not every team or player plays at the same pace or the same amount of minutes, meaning that one that plays faster and longer has a chance to amass more basic box stats than one who doesn’t. What these ADV%s do then, is to further equalize a metric by putting it on an even plane by adjusting for both pace and volume. This has the effect of making it the most accurate measurement for a variety of comparison purposes.

Suddenly, those two missing Millsap rebounds per game, or more accurately, precisely 1.9, can’t hide anymore, and we see that the difference is indeed on the offensive glass as we first suspected. We have confirmation and a deeper understanding of what’s happened, all thanks to advanced stats. Sans understanding, this cannot be rectified, making Millsap a better, more complete player.

You may have noticed that Millsap’s rebounding numbers have, well, rebounded this year. If this Advanced Stats 101 was useful to you let me know, because we can go on to the next level of the advanced stats world and explore why specifically that is in future offerings with things like mySynergySports and 82Games, and more.

See, that hurt a lot less than say pulling fingernails, didn’t it? Advanced stats are your friend and companion in a new world of information and technology. If you run into a wall in your exploration, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and I’ll point you in the right direction if I’m able, or we can learn it together. It is, after all, an ever-expanding world of statistics, and there’s some pretty stellar stuff on the immediate horizon.

___

More fairly simple advanced stats sites that can help you understand your team or a game better

TeamRankings NBA Stats

PopcornMachine Game Flows

Pro tips

• On most sites if you mouse over the stat heading column header it will give you a short explanation of it

• Many sites’ stats are sortable by column heading when you click on them

• HoopData and BasketballReference both have advanced stats box scores for games

• PopcornMachine game flow player mouse-overs are helpful in showing a player’s +/- in a particular matchup, one of the less suspect uses of this now-mainstream stat. Their box scores further break down player performance by quarter when you click on a player

If you want more, let us know. Advanced stats aren’t an exclusive club for bald guys and geeks, and NBA Fan has been called by many the most intelligent fan in sports for good reason, and we’ve barely scratched the surface today.

Let Them Advertise On Jerseys – And Everywhere Else

March 6, 2012 in by with 4 Comments

When the NBA’s board of governors — that is to say, a group of team owners that will convene with no fan and/or player representation — meet in April, the participants will actively discuss possibly putting ads on NBA jerseys. As it currently is with most European football teams and WNBA squads, the ads would likely be prominent and, to most NBA followers, jarring. And we don’t mind falling in line with the obvious reaction in pointing out that the brand abuse and cynical sell-out would in no way be worth the potential millions these ads would raise in terms of sponsor exposure.

That is to say, “can the conversation now, you greedy [blanks].”

via The NBA might consider putting advertisements on jerseys | Ball Don’t Lie – Yahoo! Sports.

This is a great step in the right direction.

Don’t get me wrong; I can absolutely see where anyone who opposes an expansion of advertising onto the actual product on the floor is coming from. It’s distracting, it’s cynical and it’s simply nothing more than a ploy to make more money.

To which I respond: isn’t that exactly what the NBA needs? The NBA isn’t in the best place financially, something David Stern reiterated during the All-Star break. Every revenue stream should be explored for a league that was on the precipice of losing a season as recently as November. A new source of income might allow owners to rest on their laurels and not innovate ways to cut costs, but Adam Silver has insisted that even after cutting so many costs and compromising on a new CBA, the league is still struggling to keep its metaphorical head above water. Sure, a lot of that is the owners’ own doing; costs needs to be constrained, and money needs to be spent more intelligently. What if that’s not enough, though? Taking options off the table because they’re distracting is a fine idea in theory, but until the NBA shores up its financial situation, disregarding any solution without exploring the possibilities seems like a bad idea. How distracting is an advertisement really going to be when your favorite player is breaking down a defense or streaking to the rim for a Newton-shattering dunk, anyway? And arguments about “we’ve never had ads on jerseys before, why start now?” fall flat in a world where spectators are turning more and more to watching games from the comfort of their own home, with HD programming and twitter conversations galore. The dynamics of generating revenue in professional sports are shifting.

In fact, I don’t think that advertisements on jerseys go far enough. Why isn’t the tip-off sponsored? Free throws should come with bail bondsman phone numbers. The sky’s the limit for in-game ads and sponsorships. Yes, we as fans pay out the nose to follow our favorite players and teams. Yes, it’s upsetting to think that’s not enough for these greedy owners, owners who can’t seem to stop themselves from spending into the red. But the name of the game is profit; the less potential for profit, the more likely we are to lose a season in the future.

It also could mean a new revenue stream for players*. I would argue that placing an ad on a jersey doesn’t turn the jersey into a billboard; it turns the player into a walking, talking, JaVale McGee-ing advertisement. The players should get a cut – a large one – of any new revenue. No one wants to hear about basketball related income anymore after this summer, but this seems to me to be the very definition of BRI. Without the players, there would be no jerseys on which to advertise and no revenue. Divvying up new resources with the players would go a long way toward proving that ownership realizes it’s in a partnership with the players. From the players’ perspective, generating more money through a new source would help offset some of the financial losses the players took during the lockout.

*I’d love to be able to argue that it could mean a reduction in ticket prices, too, but we both know that’s not going to be the case. Though it’s perhaps not insane to consider a future in-game experience similar to visiting a non-subscription website – you get in for free, but you’ll pay by being forced to watch ads.

This is likely an inevitable progression. Perhaps we’ll soon live in an era where a commercial for a fast food restaurant leads into a “find which player is wearing the super-secret advertising patch and win a free milkshake!” contest. After all, we already deal with TV timeouts and in-game car insurance “races” on the Jumbotron.

It’s annoying, sure. But instead of rallying against it, I believe we’re better served by getting out ahead of the issue and forcing it to work for us – and for the players. You can have your new moneymaking toy, NBA owners. You’re just going to have to share it with the rest of us.

Page 20 of 363« First...10«1819202122»304050...Last »