Continuing the quest to bridge the gap, another edition in the Hardwood Paroxysm series of Understanding Advanced Stats

Often we see fans and media alike speculating that a certain player tweak in a lineup could make the team better overall. How can we know, or how can we support this assertion properly without watching it actually play out?

The first thing I’m going to want to know is how these players match up in efficiency differential, measuring the difference between what they score on offense to what they give up on defense. Let’s pick on the Suns today.

On hoopstats.com we find Marcin Gortat ranked as the sixth-best center in the NBA at eff diff with a +21.0 on the season and Channing Frye the 28th-best in the category at a +12.7 (click on the “Full” lists located at the bottom of each category).

It would seem like Frye would put up enough points on a regular basis to supplement that potent pick-and-roll from Gortat to make the Suns frontcourt fairly highly ranked. By clicking on “Top Frontcourts, Full Frontcourt Rankings,” then column heading “Pts” to sort results automatically we see that indeed the Suns have the 11th-highest scoring frontcourt in the league.

But we have a problem. The Phoenix Suns, while scoring plenty also seem to be giving up too much on defense when we find they’re one of only two frontcourts in the top 15 in scoring that also carry a negative eff diff of -2.4. This means they’re allowing more points collectively from the power forward and center positions than they’re putting up.

Of course, this is collectively, as a team, so we can’t simply pin it on one or two guys and call ‘em out on Twitter for sucking at defense. There’s also second and third unit personnel that contribute to these overall results, even if the bulk of it is on the ones that garner the bulk of the PT.

Since both starters in the Suns’ frontcourt carry a positive eff diff it’s likely the backups causing the team’s overall rating to drop into the red. BasketballValue holds virtually endless sortable tools that take us a step deeper into our quest to uncover the truth of the matter. Here we can see each individual’s long-term effect on the team’s overall ORtg and DRtg (offensive and defensive rating, which you should understand already if you’ve been following along with the series. Because you have, right? Right?!) On and Off the court.

Over at 82Games we can see simple +/- ratings for our target players, Gortat, Frye, and their backups Robin Lopez, Markief Morris, and occasionally Hakim Warrick.

 

Sortable “Simple Ratings”

 

While we never advocate reliance on ‘overall rating’ type metrics for players since we believe that “fit” within a team’s roster and coaching schemes, financial considerations and other factors play a considerable part in player evaluation, it can be useful to gauge quickly how a player stacks up in certain statistical categories.

The main components of the ‘Simple Ratings’ are a production measure (a variant of John Hollinger’s PER rating) for a player’s own stats versus the counterpart player on the other team while he is on the court, as well as a simple on court/off court plus minus. This rating is actually more of a placeholder until the more sophisticated analysis we produce is made public, but still offers a good fast read on player performance.

By clicking on “5-Man Units” we are able to go more in-depth, glean insight into who does and doesn’t work together better on the court both on offense and defense. These are laid out by position from point guard to center, left to right. For these next few images, remember, sample sizes.

Legend:

• Min = the total minutes the unit was on the floor.

• Off = the unit’s points per possession.

• Def = the unit’s points per possession allowed.

• +/- = the team net points for the unit.

• W = number of games a unit outscored its opponents while on the court.

• L = number of games a unit was outscored by its opponents while on the court.

• Win% = the winning percentage for the unit based on Wins versus Losses.

 

The first result (1) is basically a control we’ll measure the rest of the lineups against since it’s the most used by a lot, the starters who play the bulk of the minutes.  We find that as Morris is subbed in for Frye as rotational substitutions begin to take place that the defense gets better, pretty good in fact, giving up an estimated 0.97 points-per-possession, but somehow, as Ronnie Price is subsequently subbed in for Jared Dudley anything gained by the starting unit is suddenly lost.

Popping over to Price’s page we can see the top 20 5-man units he’s been used in.

Looking at result lines 1-5 we see that it’s not so much Ronnie Price himself destroying the productivity of the lineup, but where head coach Alvin Gentry has played him. Price at the point with any lineup of bigs isn’t so bad, it’s whenever Gentry has opted to play Price in the backcourt opposite Nash that things go to hell in handbasket.

Price is a little guy at the 2 by NBA standards, listed at a generous 6’2″ soaking wet (trust me, he’s not), leaving him at a disadvantage as a defender aside from his slippery quickness and freakish bursts of energy that net a few passing lane pick pockets, so putting him next to Steve Nash leaves undue pressure on the Suns bigs to make up for unheeded penetration by the opposition.

As the bigs are forced to rotate over to help, opposing players penetrating have a plethora of options inside a few feet out in which to convert an easy attempt. The big men on the floor are then penalized as a whole for a defensive breakdown on the perimeter they could truthfully do little about if the opposing offense is in any way the least bit competent at decision-making.

While Price, Shannon Brown, Morris, Warrick, and Lopez all individually carry season-long minuses in simple +/- rating, something interesting emerges when we revisit the most-used lineups.

This group actually plays very well together as a backup unit with a collective positive +/- and competent offensive and defensive PPP ratings.

The moral of the story here is that Alvin Gentry should never, everrrrrr, play Ronnie Price in the same backcourt as Steve Nash. Unless he doesn’t like winning.

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Sebastian Telfair would like a word with you.

Sort the Suns’ best and worst On-Off Court defenders. Go ahead. You could use the practice.