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Tag Archive - Mo Williams

Chauncey and Mo: Two Cats, One Court

December 17, 2011 in by with 0 Comments

Via Flickr, National Maritime Museum

Four points guards on the roster. Who do the Clippers think they are, the Minnesota Timberwolves? Not to mention three of which are All-Stars. How do you get that many potentially fragile egos on the court successfully?

The obvious place to start is with Chauncey Billups at the 2-spot, which actually makes complete sense, as outlined by also-traded-(back)-to-the Clippers-from-the-Heat Kevin Arnovitz. Chauncey at the starting SG was my immediate reaction as well, so it was nice to see some additional supportive numbers to what the eyeball test had indicated. Billups has always been a shoot-first point anyhow — an approach that’s served he and his teams well throughout his career.

But, what about Mo?

My initial reaction was that Williams is also a shoot-first PG-type, so where does he fit into this all? HP’s own Amin Vafa took a look into the potential of this blowing up in the Clips’ faces, but Mo insists he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon (well, unless he was hacked. Again). We all realize Vinny D isn’t exactly the brightest boat on the bay, and the current Clippers backcourt depth chart reads thus…

…which isn’t helping anyone, especially the development factor of Bledsoe. Let’s slide Mo over as the primary backup at shooting guard and see if his history compares favorably to such a switch as it has in Billups’ case.

First stop was 82 Games, which has breakdowns of players’ Production by Position, where we find Mo actually played better as a 2 than a 1 for both the Clippers and Cavaliers. But, small sample-sized? How do the numbers hold up over a larger sample size?

From 2008-09 to present (Mo was traded last year from Cleveland to Los Angeles)

Mo Williams as a SG

PER 18.7, Per-48 Min PPG  27.4, Per-48 Min APG 7.3, % Team Minutes 11.5%, Win% 48%

Mo Williams as a PG

PER 15.7, Per-48 Min PPG 21.8, Per-48 Min APG 8.1, % Team Minutes 32.0%, Win% 53%

• PER has been better as a SG than a PG every team, every year

• Played a higher % of team’s positional minutes at the SG than PG in Cleveland before traded to the LAC in 2010-11 season

• Number of assists at either position is negligible, and in fact has posted more dimes as a SG two times

• His team’s Win% is not largely affected by which backcourt position he’s played, overall

• Has twice posted a higher Win% as a SG than as a PG

• Best PER posted as a SG for CLE in 08-09, 22.0

• Most PPG per-48 posted as a SG for LAC in 10-11, 30.6

• Most assists posted per-48 as a SG for CLE in 10-11, 12.1

• 08-09 Mo played 23% of the Cavs SG minutes. That Cleveland team went 66-16 and went to the Eastern Conference Finals

Whenever Chris Paul needs a breather the Clippers can rest assured that they have a plethora of capable points to spell him — indeed, the ClipShow easily boasts the deepest backcourt in the NBA, with four fellas that can feed Blake Griffin at any given time, a formidable threat. Should they have need, the Clips could throw out a different All-Star point guard for 120 consecutive minutes.

And both Billups and Williams are more-than-capable shooting guards. No need to squabble.

Where The Energy Wasn’t: Still Chomping At The Bit In Cleveland

May 12, 2010 in by with 0 Comments

Okay, so everybody is talking about LeBron James … so much to the point where the mounting dead horses are going to be hell to deal with come game six. But LeBron probably wouldn’t have it any other way, him being talked about, good or bad, that is.

Over on TrueHoop, Kevin Arnovitz has a great video breakdown of James’ poor game five and instances of him watching the action, among other very un-King-like activities. Arnovitz also highlights a fast-break play (at the 43 second mark of the video) where Mo Williams might have failed to recognize LeBron’s presence in transition.

While, in my opinion, it’s questionable whether Williams should have found LeBron in that specific instance, there was another missed fast-break opportunity for LeBron and the Cavaliers which raises some questions.

What have LeBron’s teammates been told about his injury and how to treat him on the court? Have they been asked not to throw alley oops only attainable by LeBron so he can go attacking the rim with reckless abandon on the house, the defense and his elbow?

Let’s watch …

Note: At the first pause in the .GIF, LeBron seems to have all the step he needs on Tony Allen. However, also note that he doesn’t seem to be calling for the lob — maybe he’s nominating himself as a decoy, maybe he wants Mo to take Rasheed Wallace, and maybe something is off.

At the second pause … sure, Rasheed is hanging back. But c’mon, he’s not falling that far off Williams … and it’s LeBron f-ing James. Who’s really doing to stop a lob to him?

But alas, Williams pulls up for a shot just as LeBron is slowing down his train … like it was some preordained and coordinated act between the two. It just makes you wonder … not only is LeBron treating the game different, but his teammates seem to be treating him differently as well. LeBron is where the energy wasn’t.

It’s a head-scratcher, huh LeBron?

What say you Mike Brown?

Oh, still chomping.

Note: As a Wizards fan who blogs about the team at Truth About It.net, I’m fairly confident that the Cavaliers will win both games six and seven. Here’s to hoping they prove me wrong.

NBA Playoffs: Celtics and Cavaliers Display Faces of Lion, Faces of Lemon

May 4, 2010 in by with 2 Comments

I was G-chatting with Matt and Ben earlier today, and they were all “Whatevs, brah — I see how it is. You think you can cover these playoffs without us? YOU NEED US. Who set this thing up? Us. That’s who. Who do your readers trust? Us. That’s who.”

And then they did this:

Lion Face – The Takeover

There’s not really any way to express how good Rajon was with the written word. Through two games, this is Rajon’s series. For the second straight game, he did pretty much whatever he wanted on the court and was by far the best player on the floor for loooong stretches. A floor he often shared with LeBron James mind you. About his Game 1 first half, I wrote that he played about as well as any human could. Tonight? He might have been even better. The 19 assists don’t even tell the whole story. He was Boston’s heart and soul and if he plays like this in Boston as well, the Celtics could be well on their way to the Eastern Conference Finals. In summation, Rajon Rondo not only sounds like the name that should belong to some sort of ancient sun god — he might be one.

Lemon Face – Cleveland’s Half-Time Speech

I have no idea what happened in the Cavs locker room during half time. But it didn’t work. 12 points in the third. Twelve. Uno. Dos. Unacceptable. Particularly when you, perhaps relatedly, give up 31 on the other side. I mean, Cleveland’s offense was hitting on zero cylinders all game long (91.5 offensive efficiency, 42.9% eFG%, 4/21 from three and 26/38 from the line for the game), but the third was particularly gross. And a lot of it came against Boston’s reserves given the team’s foul trouble. You can’t win a playoff game scoring 38 points in the second half. Not even at home. Not even after you watch the NBA MVP trophy being handed out to your captain before the game. This is not 1998 and Jeff Van Gundy is not hugging Alonzo Mourning’s leg.

Lion Face – Throwback Sheed

At this point, mocking Sheed’s tenure as a Celtic isn’t even funny anymore. There are no jokes that haven’t been made already, and everyone in the universe knows how that his inability to contribute can be blamed on his doughy exterior, half-hearted (at best) effort and unwillingness to do anything consistently beside hoist errant three-pointers. Tonight, none of that mattered. Sheed, in just 18 minutes, was a true difference-maker and showed us all the qualities that once made him one of the most feared, versatile power forwards to ever lace ‘em up. He hit 7 of the 8 shots he took and 3 of his 4 trey attempts. 17 points on 8 shots without even going to the line. CTC.

Lemon Face – Mo’ Williams, Mo’ Problems

You know what you did. You did it last season against Orlando, and you did it again tonight. If you don’t learn how to play a meaningful playoff game without having to wear a diaper for fear you might soil yourself on any given evening, your team will not continue to advance. Real talk.

Lion Face – PEEERRRRK

You knew it was going to be a good night for the big fella when you saw him hit a mid-range jumper early in the first quarter. KG kicked it over. Perk looked at the rim. No one challenged. And he was like “I’ll take anybody’s money if they just giving it away” before re-gathering and letting it fly. Twine music. Throw in some solid interior defense even before that shot when Cleveland unsuccessfully tried to run some offense through Shaq to start the game, and Kendrick had a lot to do with setting the tone for how this game would unfold.

Lemon Face – Kevin Garnett’s shooting

8/21. Not cool, dude. Not cool. /headbuttsmirror

Lion Face – Kevin Garnett’s Other Stuff

Nice work. /headbuttsmirror

Lion Cub Face – Antawn Doing His Job

You were dull, not all that stand-out-ish and generally Antawn-ian. But you did your job. You hit some shots (6/11 from the field and 2/5 from three), spaced the floor, played enough defense and rebounded well enough. Nothing to get too excited about, but this should be all that Cleveland really needs from you. Still, you’re going to have to have at least one 25+ point game in this series. It would be wise to try to make that happen in Game 3. Please advise.

Lemon Face – Anthony Parker Not Doing His Job

What would ya say … you do here? Quit trying to penetrate. You’re not good at it. Spot up, keep the ball moving and perhaps drive-and-kick a little. No one is going to let you get to the rim. This is the Boston Celtics defense — not the California Penal League. More importantly, play defense. They need you to control Rondo and other perimeter players and generally control penetration. Do what you are good at. Not the other stuff.

Lion Face – Al Roker’s Press Conference

Way to call out your team for putting up a game like that at home against a conference rival. Mike Brown was fiery, unapologetic, demanding and down-right pissed off in his post-game talk. “Aint a goddamn thing that’s going to be given to us in this series,” he said unhappily. A lot different than his giddy reaction after Game 1.

Lemon Face – LeBron

You were 1/7 on shots from outside of the paint. You only took 1 shot in the second quarter. And it’s not like you were creating a lot of great looks for teammates instead — not by your standards anyway (only 4 assists for the game). You turned the ball over 5 times. You missed 5 free throws. You had a few steals and that one insane — yet somehow now expected every game — chasedown block on Tony Allen, but your defense was not particularly good. You took some plays off, didn’t fight through screens all the time and missed some assignments. Sure, you finished with 24, 7 and 5 on not-terrible shooting — but that’s not enough. You don’t have Manu Ginobli or Pau Gasol. You have to play better for your team to win in these next — you hope — three series. If not, there won’t be three series at all.

NBA Playoffs: Bulls Prep for Losing Games 2, 3 and 4 by Losing Game 1

April 18, 2010 in by with 13 Comments

The Bulls will probably have just as much chance in this series if they game plan based on the above video as they will if they actually try to figure out scheme in which the players who wear their jerseys can beat the players who wear Cavs jerseys. Because none exist. The talent differential is simply too great, and the Bulls offense is simply too incompetent. They just can’t score regularly — they didn’t in Game 1 and they didn’t all season long — and that’s not particularly helpful when you’re matching up against the 6th best defense in the NBA.

In order to win a single game, the Bulls will need to get both inspired effort and dead-eye shooting from just about every member of their 8-man rotation, which consists of Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and six other mediocre-at-best basketball players. In Game 1, they got neither of those things. Thus, they lost. Stellar analysis, I know. But it’s the truth. No one played well, aside from their second-year point guard for small stretches.

On the good side, Rose made 13 shots on his way to 28 points, piled up 10 assists and grabbed 7 boards while also creating some good open looks for his teammates on some drive-and-kick action and having at least one extended stretch of high-level play in the third quarter. Good stuff. But on the other hand, he missed 15 shots (to finish 13/28 overall), turned the ball over an inexcusable 7 times and, worse still, got to the line only twice. That’s just not going to get it done. Especially considering he played weak defense and allowed himself to be screened out of the play much too often.

But, aside from knuckling up and playing better D (which, let’s face it, wasn’t the side of the floor where Chicago really lost this game), what more would we have Rose do? He certainly needs to get to the line more, but it’s not like he was settling for jumpers and not penetrating. He drove plenty. He just didn’t finish enough or force enough contact, both of which are probably a helluva lot easier said than done when Cleveland’s entire interior is rotating to where you’re going to be before you even get there since there is no one on Chicago’s roster capable of burning them with the outside shot. When there is nothing to respect aside from Derrick getting to the cup or dumping the ball off to a big if the rotation is sloppy, the defense is just going to collapse and contest every inside shot with multiple guys. Some of Rose’s interior looks weren’t bad shots, per se. They were just tough looks and off-balance floaters that he isn’t used to taking since he normally doesn’t have to be that creative once he gets by an initial defender.

So, sure, we can look at Rose’s 13/28 night and say “you have to shot better … you can’t waste so many possessions.” Or we can look at Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich’s collective 9/25 shooting and say “I guess a Rose drive into the teeth of the defense that ends up in a turnover isn’t all that much worse than what would have probably happened otherwise.” Throw in Taj Gibson’s 4/10 night and a 4/9 evening for Noah, who I really can’t recall doing anything useful on offense (zero offensive boards, for instance), and it’s not as if the possessions wasted by Rose were likely going to be better utilized by anyone else in this failure pile in a sadness bowl that is the Bulls’ 27th ranked offense.

The nugget of potential effectiveness I did see that perhaps the Bulls should pursue a little deeper is Hakim Warrick in the post. Warrick played less than 10 minutes, so we probably won’t see much of him in Game 2 either, but he converted a little turnaround move over some good defense by LeBron in the second quarter. Then they went right back to him on the block and, while unsuccessful with the shot, he got another, similar good attempt up. Them being the Bulls and them being coached by a terrible, terrible, terrible coach, they of course never tried this again, but it looked like something that might provide four or five fewer wasted possessions in Game 2. And this is coming from someone who thinks that Hakim Warrick, for lack of a more poetical or adult word, sucks.

As for the Cavs, they were the Cavs.

Jay-Z style, what more can I say? Andy Varejao was diving into the stands and grabbing 15 boards. LeBron was impressively putting up a mediocre-for-him 24/6/5 line with a couple nice blocks (which were broken down in an awesome yet, as SLAM’s Marcel Mutoni put it, “pause-worthy” Sports Science segment about his swatability during half time). Shaq was being his average, large self. Mo Gotti, a name that I only use in an ironical, Black Mambaesque way, was getting buckets (8/14 overall and 3/7 from three). Jamison showed why his acquisition easily makes this the best team LeBron has ever played for by knocking down half his attempts (7/14) even when his outside J wasn’t falling (only 1/4 from deep) and collecting 10 boards. And Anthony Parker and Delonte West existed.

Yup. That’s the Cavs.

And at this point, the only thing the Bulls should be doing is investing in brooms. But, hey, at least they get to play 86 games while the Raptors only got 82. So there’s that.