NBA Offseason 2017 (543 views)

[eric]

Paul George and Russell Westbrook.

We can estimate how much a player has the ball in their hands by doing USG% * (1 - %AST) + (1 - USG%) * AST%; that is, the number of possessions a player finishes unassisted plus the number of assists they generate on possessions their teammates finish.

Paul George since Danny Granger's de facto departure in 2013 has been about 32%.
Westbrook after his rookie year was about 50% for five years, then 60% the next two years, then 70% last year because f!@# memes.
(Yes, next year is year number ten for Westbrook. No, that is not possible. Yes, it still is anyway.)
This is a pretty interesting graph because his touches didn't jump until the third year post Harden.
But also because Durant was hitting around 36%, so George should be able to slot into pretty much the same role.

Durant was low-key a pretty middling shooter until year five, when he put up exactly 1.08 pts/tsa for five straight years.
George has a similarly metronomic consistency, albeit at the far less impressive level of 1.00. (League average is about .97.)
Last year he put up 1.09, but unless he suddenly discovered Dirkian touch from midrange that was probably a fluke.

This is important because Westbrook's woeful .908 last year was also a career high.
And he hasn't substantially improved over the incredibly modest .905 he put up in year four.
And it's year ten.
So he's probably not going to.

So we already know pretty much what Russaul OKC is going to look like.
A worse version of Durant in George.
A much worse version of Ibaka in Kanter.
A better version of Perkins in Adams.
And Andre Roberson still gettin' dem checks.

[eric]

In a broader sense, George has always been underqualified to be a first option. In OKC he's overqualified as the third option. (Westbrook is first AND second option.) That always works out great for the team, but rarely for the player. But what are the odds that Westbrook's style of play chases an All-NBA small forward to California?

...again?

[TimPig]

No way George sticks around after this year unless OKC somehow wins it all (which won't happen), right?

[eric]

for Butler

Taj Gibson career 3PA: 35
Taj Gibson career FG%, 16-23 foot jumpers: 37%


Andrew Wiggins at least takes threes.
But he takes a lot (60%) more long twos.
So his points per long jumper works out to .81 for his career
and a robust .89 last year


Jimmy's not as bad but he's also not as inexperienced.
So his .87 career number doesn't seem like it's gonna budge much.


Jeff Teague at least makes threes at an average level.
And he takes way more threes than long twos.
So his points per long jumper works out to .96 for his career, which is roughly league average.

Karl-Anthony Towns is a g0d d@rn monster.
He put up 1.01 in 2016 on mostly long twos, where he hit a Nowitzki-esque 50%.
In 2017 he flipped his shot selection and took mostly threes, ending up with 1.00.
He's by far the best jump shooter on the team.
And he's on track to put up as many assists as Wiggins and Gibson put together.
And still not break 3 per game.


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It's a mess. If you ask me, the play is to play Wiggins at power forward. He's rail thin but he's fast and long, if people wanna post him up just have him front and recover. His only NBA caliber skill is penetration, which will be even more effective against 4s, and while his shooting is bad even for a big man it's not calamitously bad at that position. He's going to get absolutely torched on the boards because he doesn't rebound, box out, or frankly pay attention in those situations, but these are the breaks.

Butler at 3, bring in another shooting PG to play 2 to cover up the lack of playmaking and shooting in the rest of the lineup. Butler's gonna be guarding the best perimeter player on the other team anyway.

Bring Gibson off the bench and let him do his post up and holler routine if you really must, but playing these five together in a starting unit is just horrible.

[Bankz]

Wolves should be excellent on defense and will need to be... Think they can get into the playoffs out west

[[Account Deleted]]

I was thirsty for some more MVP-flavored Hatorade

[eric]

worst career playoff FT% all time, min 40 FTA

36% Andrew Bogut
36% Bo Outlaw
27% Andre Roberson

Give that man $10m a year!!!

[Lazy Pete]

Always good to pay a guard who gets subjected to the Hack-a-Shaq treatment

[FectaDEEZ]

I think Wiggins can take a leap in three point percentage this year.

[kn88]

Tim Frazier
Jodie Meeks
Mike Scott

Championship

[kn88]

eric

Please explain to a brotha why Caldwell-Pope is about to get crazy money. I rarely watch the Pistons when they aren't playing the Bullets, but he doesn't seem to be anything special. Inefficient, doesn't rebound at a great rate, and isn't much of a playmaker. Is he some great defender or something? Is it just that there aren't too many good young wings in the league? I'm confused.

[eric]

Jul 8, 2017 11:39:19 GMT -6 kn88 said:

eric

Please explain to a brotha why Caldwell-Pope is about to get crazy money. I rarely watch the Pistons when they aren't playing the Bullets, but he doesn't seem to be anything special. Inefficient, doesn't rebound at a great rate, and isn't much of a playmaker. Is he some great defender or something? Is it just that there aren't too many good young wings in the league? I'm confused.

I have two guesses. The short one is that GMs just make a lot of bonehead decisions.

The longer one: there's a lot of groupthink that you need wings to beat the Warriors, because match-ups, and so any wing player who people believe can shoot threes and defend is a valuable commodity. KCP can't really shoot threes and individual defense is almost impossible to measure, but the facts don't matter, only what GMs believe matters. (This is part of why everyone rolled their eyes at the Tim Hardaway contract even though he's factually a better player than KCP.) The Pistons were also in a JR Smith in Cleveland scenario where they were over the cap regardless, so the choices were bring KCP back or bring in a vet min / exception level guy, and every other team knew that and so gamesmanship contract offers come into play too.

With Detroit and pretty much every other team out of the picture, though, the contract should be smaller, and because of that he may go with a one year deal and hope there are more teams with cap room next year.

[MJ]

So yeah KCP

[eric]

Let's Trade Kyrie Irving!

Wants to go to the Spurs, Wolves, Knicks, or Heat.

Danny Green and Patty Mills
Why: The Cavs need defense desperately. Mills and Green both have good defensive stats (Mills maybe because he backs up Tony "The Turnstile" Parker), and are both very good shooters (both shoot 40% from three). When Kawhi went down the Spurs had no ideas on offense, they need a second star player.
Why Not: Mills can't be traded until January 2018. Otherwise I think this is the clear best trade available.

Jimmy Butler

Keep dreaming Cavs fans.

Gorgui Dieng?
There are no good options on the Wolves team.
Why: Dieng is a fine player, but...
Why Not: the Cavs already have too many bigs.
Why: You could shave a tiny bit of salary which probably saves them $15m in luxury tax or whatever, but...
Why Not: you might as well pack LeBron's bags if you make that trade.

Courtney Lee and Lance Thomas
Why: Like the Spurs guys they can both shoot, but
Why Not: they're older and while Lee has a good defensive rep his defensive stats are wildly inconsistent, and
Really Why Not: neither of them plays point guard so unless you're dying to give Point Shumpert another spin it's not a good fit.

Goran Dragic
Why: This is the like for like swap of a shoot first point guard who doesn't defend. The money works if you add Justise Winslow, good luck with that.
Why Not: It makes the AARP Cavs even older, and Dragic has had issues in the past playing with another primary ball handler.

.

Bottom line, of Kyrie's choices I love the Spurs trade, but I worry for everyone that it's gonna end up being the Knicks trade or, God forbid, Kyrie and RJ for Melo.

[Souper Troopers]

Mills and Green for kyrie?

What's is this? A raptors/lakers Sidney moncrief trade?

[ANK1990]

Wiggins

[eric]

Kyrie for Thomas, Crowder, Zizic, and a pick

Clearly this makes the Cavs more flexible going forward in terms of bottoming out, so let's just look at rosters.

All we have on Zizic are 20 games of European competition. Here's what we know:
-didn't take a single three
-shot 36 of 56 from the line for 64% ± 13%
-put up 14 and 11 per 36 minutes on 65 FG%
-remarkably high ORBs and slightly high TOVs
-name is pronounced ZHIH-zhitch. Like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
So... Tristan Thompson 2.0 maybe? If he can play defense like Tristan he's interesting, especially if it means the Cavs can move TT's fair value contract and stick with Zizic's comically underpaid rookie deal.

Crowder has been hyped as a three and D guy for years. Last year was his first year above 34% from three, and his percentage from long two cratered, so I have my doubts.

Thomas v Irving. Okay. Let's look at Thomas' career first. Here's his TS% by year:
57.4% - 2012
57.4% - 2013
57.4% - 2014
57.9% - 2015 with Phoenix
57.9% - 2015 with Boston
56.2% - 2016
62.5% - 2017
He probably didn't suddenly become Steph Curry last year, and he'll probably go back to the 57%s this year. Which is fine! 57 TS% is a perfectly good number. The only reason I bring it up is because Irving for his career puts up 56%, and he does it while being assisted on fewer of his baskets (32% vs. 43%) so we can be reasonably sure Irving is a slightly better scorer.

Let's also talk about shooting, because a player playing with LeBron is gonna have a lot of shooting opportunities. Overall Irving is a very slightly better shooter: 38% from three, 44% on long twos, 1.05 pts/tsa overall vs. 37% 41% and 1.04 respectively for Thomas. On catch and shoot attempts, the scales tip considerably. Thomas shoots a very respectable 40% on catch and shoot threes pretty much every year. Kyrie due to his lower volume sees more variation but over the past three years combined he averages 44%. 38 to 37 is very slight. 44 to 40 isn't.

And let's close with defense. As I've said many times defense is very hard to measure. Everyone agrees both players are bad, but is one worse? Well, their on/off defensive numbers for the past three years (i.e. when they were on non joke teams) are +2.7 for Irving (poor) and +6.2 for Thomas (woeful).

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All in all, I think Thomas will regress from his numbers last year and so the Cavs will overall be worse off. Crowder is certainly an improvement over Iman Shumpert as the third wing but I don't think that's going to mean that much. I don't think he's quick enough to play shooting guard full time, LeBron is never going to move to power forward no matter how much we all want him to, and I think JR (only 32) has a bounce back year anyway that makes him hard to displace from the starting lineup on his merits. I also think they should be legitimately concerned that Thomas is on an expiring deal. Their flexibility will evaporate very quickly if they're paying Thomas $30m instead of Irving $20m in the 2019 season.

[Lazy Pete]

I don't get how you like a Patty Mills - Danny Green combo but poopoo IT and Crowder. I think you significantly overrate Green, and Patty Mills, while a good player, hasn't ever shown to be capable of carrying the offense. We just had a whole season of IT thriving in that role.

Green is a good defender, but so is Crowder. Green has been replacement level on offense the past two years. Crowder will never be the 3 pt threat that Green was in his heyday but I think he slots better next to LeBron as a Battier-type player. His contract is also still one of the best in the league.

[Lazy Pete]

and even if you think Mills and Green are superior, the Brooklyn pick is the best asset in either trade

[eric]

Aug 23, 2017 12:57:19 GMT -6 Lazy Pete said:

I don't get how you like a Patty Mills - Danny Green combo but poopoo IT and Crowder. I think you significantly overrate Green, and Patty Mills, while a good player, hasn't ever shown to be capable of carrying the offense. We just had a whole season of IT thriving in that role.

Can IT carry an offense, sure, but so can LeBron and Love. It's role duplication, whereas Mills is a better shooter (even counting for how his looks are different) and a much better defender, plus you don't have his impending free agency hanging over your head all season. The whole reason the Cavs made this trade in the first place is Kyrie was sick of being a secondary primary guy. He already had a max deal, you don't think Isaiah will chafe at reduced numbers in his last contract year with career $29m earnings? Meanwhile Patty Mills doesn't even complain when he's coming off the bench.

Green is a good defender, but so is Crowder. Green has been replacement level on offense the past two years. Crowder will never be the 3 pt threat that Green was in his heyday but I think he slots better next to LeBron as a Battier-type player. His contract is also still one of the best in the league.

Can we not compare Jae friggin' Crowder to Shane Battier.

Aug 23, 2017 12:59:07 GMT -6 Lazy Pete said:

and even if you think Mills and Green are superior, the Brooklyn pick is the best asset in either trade

And like I said the Cavs clearly gain in flexibility. Not gonna get too many Win Shares next year out of a draft pick, though.

[Heebs]

Jae's corn rows look like whatever the hell lines Battier's skull.

How is that for a comparison?

[eric]

Aug 23, 2017 14:05:00 GMT -6 Heebs said:

Jae's corn rows look like whatever the hell lines Battier's skull.

How is that for a comparison?

Super, super racist.

You can take the boy out of Indiana, but I guess you can't take the conFEDERESAHHH out of the boy

[Odin]

Aug 23, 2017 17:12:30 GMT -6 eric said:

Aug 23, 2017 14:05:00 GMT -6 Heebs said:

Jae's corn rows look like whatever the hell lines Battier's skull.

How is that for a comparison?

Super, super racist.

You can take the boy out of Indiana, but I guess you can't take the conFEDERESAHHH out of the boy

your usage of "boy" seems racist

[eric]

Aug 24, 2017 4:56:18 GMT -6 Odin said:

Aug 23, 2017 17:12:30 GMT -6 eric said:

Super, super racist.

You can take the boy out of Indiana, but I guess you can't take the conFEDERESAHHH out of the boy

your usage of "boy" seems racist

herb and i have been "boys" since our days growing up in the "hood" of the Gemstone "III" Players' Corner

[eric]

Some comparisons.

2011 Miami Heat
LeBron James (year 8)
Dwyane Wade (year 8)
Chris Bosh (year 8)

2018 Oklahoma City Thunder
Paul George (year 8)
Russell Westbrook (year 10)
Carmelo Anthony (year 15)

Russell Westbrook is deeper in his career now than any of the Miami Big Three were when they joined.

.

All awards and stats as of joining the team:

2011 Heat
LeBron (four All-NBA 1sts, two MVPs, .22 WS/48)
Wade (one All-NBA 1st, two top-five MVP finishes, .19 WS/48)
Bosh (one All-NBA 2nd, .16 WS/48)

2018 Thunder
Westbrook (two All-NBA 1st, one MVP, .17 WS/48)
George (three All-NBA 3rd, .15 WS/48)
Carmelo (two All-NBA 2nd, one top-five MVP finish, .13 WS/48)

Man for man, the Heat were simply better players than each of their Thunder counterparts, which doesn't even take into account how Westbrook and even moreso Carmelo are likely in decline. George is the least decorated of the six and will probably be the best Thunderer next year.

.


2011 Heat
LeBron (32 USG 34 AST, .86 points per long jumper)
Wade (33 USG 35 AST, .80 pplj)
Bosh (25 USG 11 AST, .89 pplj)

2018 Thunder
Westbrook (33 USG 42 AST, .86 pplj)
Carmelo (31 USG 16 AST, .91 pplj)
George (26 USG 17 AST, 1.01 pplj)

The Thunder offer better floor spacing with shooting across the board, but Wade is a more prolific passer than Carmelo and George put together, and the "but X's teammates were bad so who were they supposed to pass to" argument loses a lot of water when you notice that Wade had exactly two teammates score 10+ ppg in the 2010 season. They also are probably going to play Andre Roberson who literally generates negative points per long jumper.

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2011 Heat
LeBron (twice All-Defensive 1st)
Wade (twice All-Defensive 2nd)
Bosh (none)

2018 Thunder
Westbrook (none)
George (one All-Defensive 1st)
Carmelo (lol you serious?)

While Bosh was never awarded All-Defensive, he is widely regarded as a good to great defender in this time period. Westbrook is not. Carmelo has never been, and certainly isn't about to start now.

.

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There are people talking about these Thunder as contenders. They wouldn't have to be as good as those Heat, the most successful team of the past 15 years, for that to be true. But being older and worse is not a great place to start. The Spurs are going to be better on defense, the Rockets are going to be better on offense, the Warriors are going to be better on offense and defense. Hard to see how OKC turns any of those around, and hard to call them a contender until they do.

[BKay Jewelers]

i mean okc would be a contender if they hadn't trade for melo

[TimPig]

Oct 2, 2017 13:40:42 GMT -6 BKay Jewelers said:

i mean okc would be a contender if they hadn't trade for melo

Kanter is the difference? Or is it Doug McDermott?

[BKay Jewelers]

Oct 2, 2017 13:46:12 GMT -6 TimPig said:

Oct 2, 2017 13:40:42 GMT -6 BKay Jewelers said:

i mean okc would be a contender if they hadn't trade for melo

Kanter is the difference? Or is it Doug McDermott?

having melo irl is like having a big that shoots too much in sim league

he's just less efficient than your other pieces but is gonna take a lot of those inefficient shots. melo would be best off the bench but he won't do that and okc will be worse because of it. kanter and mcdermott are both meh but not negatives.

[skrouse]

Oct 2, 2017 13:40:42 GMT -6 BKay Jewelers said:

i mean okc would be a contender if they hadn't trade for melo