NBA Discussion Thread

[iowatreat54]

Originally Posted by Forenci

I don't understand what's so funny? He didn't care about stats so he was driving to the basket to try and get his team back?

Just speaks to how good LeBron is and the rest of his team hasn't shown up.

Oh I meant it's funny that he couldn't pass the ball, whether because he didn't want to or just didn't trust anyone else to do anything (which is a legitimate reason not to). It's just funny that you get 9 assists in 3 quarters pretty easily, then go basically 10 mins without one for whatever reason. You would think some one could fall backwards into 1 lousy assist.

Also, it's funny because I'm facing him in fantasy. Also, I dislike Lebron despite marveling at his abilities.

[bigbluedefense]

Originally Posted by Brodeur

Jeremy Pargo and Daniel Gibson: upper tier point guards.

He's a compiler. I'm gonna laugh when the inevitable happens and we all realize he sucks again.

[bigbluedefense]

Originally Posted by iowatreat54

Yes, but you say it's overrated, then use it in your own argument. If it's overrated, don't use it as support, especially when you incorrectly say Melo is more efficient than Durant.

I said he's more efficient than years past, not more efficient than Durant.

[yo123]

Efficiency is overrated in the sense that guys like Jamal Crawford are still valuable despite being inefficient.

But you want your best player to put the ball in the basket 1 out of every 2 times as opposed to one out of every 2.5. It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Obviously basketball isn't played in a vacuum and guys like Rose and Melo deserve more leniency for being the only scorer on their teams, but the blanket "efficiency is overrated" claim doesn't really make sense, being that efficiency basically just measures the amount of possessions you waste to get your points.

[Brodeur]

Originally Posted by bigbluedefense

He's a compiler. I'm gonna laugh when the inevitable happens and we all realize he sucks again.

Again? At no point has he ever sucked. And he's leading the entire NBA in rebounding by over 2 rebounds a game, stop with this compiler BS.

[yo123]

And if Varejao gets traded to a good team he'd probably just go back to being what he was, a very good defender and rebounder, without the scoring. In a normal situation he isn't close to an all star, but he doesn't suck either.

[Brodeur]

Originally Posted by yo123

Efficiency is overrated in the sense that guys like Jamal Crawford are still valuable despite being inefficient.

But you want your best player to put the ball in the basket 1 out of every 2 times as opposed to one out of every 2.5. It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Obviously basketball isn't played in a vacuum and guys like Rose and Melo deserve more leniency for being the only scorer on their teams, but the blanket "efficiency is overrated" claim doesn't really make sense, being that efficiency basically just measures the amount of possessions you waste to get your points.

I don't think they should get more leniency. If Chicago wasn't stupid enough to let Brewer/Korver go for nothing and then sign Bellinelli/Hinrich, they'd be a good team without Rose. and the Knicks are a good team without Melo. They force far too much, which is a large part of why they can't bring their teams to the next level.

[BuckeyeDan17]

He isn't going to be traded anyway because we aren't going to get what Grant wants for him ( a lottery pick or a young potential star). The FO will have an unrealistic price tag on him and he will remain put.

[yo123]

Originally Posted by Brodeur

I don't think they should get more leniency. If Chicago wasn't stupid enough to let Brewer/Korver go for nothing and then sign Bellinelli/Hinrich, they'd be a good team without Rose. and the Knicks are a good team without Melo. They force far too much, which is a large part of why they can't bring their teams to the next level.

So what if they're still good without them? They still aren't nearly as good without Rose as they are with him, same goes with the Knicks and Melo. Either team without those guys would get run out in the first round without a problem unless they got lucky with their draw.

They both force too much at times, but the main reason they can't get to the next level is Lebron. Simple as that.

[iowatreat54]

Melo-less Knicks beat defending champion Miami Heat by 20. Knicks supporting cast obviously best in the league, so Knicks would be good even without Melo and he's not really valuable.



/2010 anti-Rose argument whenever Rose was out for 5 minutes or a game.

[y.f.s.]

Originally Posted by yo123

Efficiency is overrated in the sense that guys like Jamal Crawford are still valuable despite being inefficient.

But you want your best player to put the ball in the basket 1 out of every 2 times as opposed to one out of every 2.5. It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Obviously basketball isn't played in a vacuum and guys like Rose and Melo deserve more leniency for being the only scorer on their teams, but the blanket "efficiency is overrated" claim doesn't really make sense, being that efficiency basically just measures the amount of possessions you waste to get your points.

I actually read a really good interesting on Grantland the other day about misses that lead to offensive rebounds and/or points. Yes, it focused around Kobe.

Basketball is a game of sequences. Unlike baseball or football, it is a relatively continuous free-flowing sport. The actions within a game are hard to separate because they are chronologically intertwined, and every event in every game is influenced in part by preceding sequences of actions. Every game is its own ecosystem characterized by teamwork, athleticism, and frequent episodes of magnificence. But the same things that make basketball so captivating to watch also make it more difficult to measure and to analyze.

Most basketball statistics refer to discrete events such as shots, steals, and rebounds that occur within the continuous context of a flowing game. Basketball is very different from baseball, but in the basketball analytics world, too often we treat our sport as if it were baseball; we kid ourselves and say a rebound or a corner 3 is akin to a strikeout or a home run, a singular accomplishment achieved by a player that's fit for tallying and displaying in a cell on some spreadsheet on some website.

But, unfortunately, it's not that simple. In reality we all know crediting a wide-open corner 3 solely to Matt Bonner, Kawhi Leonard, or Danny Green is akin to giving Javier Bardem sole credit for No Country for Old Men. Bonner, Leonard, and Green get great looks because of the splendidly directed, infinitely complex ecosystem that is the San Antonio Spurs offense. Over the last two seasons Matt Bonner has made 210 out of 480 3-point attempts (44 percent), which is incredible. However, how would these numbers differ if he played for the Wizards? Corner 3s are more like touchdowns than they are like strikeouts. They are punctuation marks at the end of complex strategic sentences. We may be really good at tallying those punctuation marks, but we are not so good at diagramming or even understanding those sentences; within our box scores and spreadsheets we are failing to give credit where it is due.

Goes on to talk about other things, like how Kevin Love taking 3s is an efficient shot, but overall it decreases the offensive efficiency of Minnesota because it pulls him away from the basket and largely negates his biggest strength - rebounding and getting easy extra possessions/points.

Also....

As another example, consider the cases of Elton Brand and Derrick Rose. Conventional wisdom suggests Elton Brand is a better mid-range shooter than Derrick Rose. Over the last two seasons Elton Brand made 381 out of his 782 mid-range jumpers (49 percent). This is really impressive because as a whole the league shoots only 38 percent from mid-range. During the same window, Derrick Rose made 294 of his 724 mid-range shots (41 percent), which isn't bad, but it's much closer to average than to elite. Again, field goal percentage does not tell the whole story. The Bulls rebounded 152 of Rose's 430 misses (35 percent), while the Sixers rebounded only 63 of Brand's 401 misses (16 percent). Looking at these shots through another lens, 62 percent of Rose's mid-range shots result in points or a fresh possession for the Bulls. For Brand, 57 percent of his mid-range shots result in points or a fresh possession for the Sixers. Which is better?

So yeah, efficiency is overrated in and of itself because a "missed shot" has so many variable outcomes.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...ic-kobe-assist

[Brodeur]

That article is horseshit.

[y.f.s.]

Originally Posted by Brodeur

That article is horseshit.

Because Kobe.

[iowatreat54]

Originally Posted by Brodeur

That article is horseshit.

No matter what anyone tells you, don't ever change Brody.

[yo123]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the point of that article because I skimmed it. But attaching value to Kobe for missing shots that get happen to get rebounded through no action of his own by the Lakers' frontline that is annually the tallest and most skilled in the league doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[MetSox17]

I was actually gonna post a different article, dealing with efficiency as well.

The debate mostly centers around the search for the proper balance on each team, and whether there is value in simply having guys who can create shot attempts — even if a few of those attempts each night are blatantly bad. Math in a vacuum suggests teams would be better off shifting possessions from heavy-usage players to low-usage players who have been monstrously efficient in their rare chances; this is the "get the ball to Tyson Chandler more often!" argument. Studies of actual basketball suggest that asking Chandler to do more would result in more bad stuff from him — turnovers, offensive fouls, misses, and air-balled mid-rangers like the one he launched last week in San Antonio. Having a ball hog like Carmelo Anthony — playing less like a ball hog this season — might actually have value, as he allows teammates to find their happy medium on offense.

The dream is to find the right balance, and there is no easy statistical formula for that. Roster context matters, and we haven't even talked defense. For every example of a team's offense sinking without a ball-dominant star (Hi, Pacers!), we could probably find another offense thriving without one (Sorry, Amar'e.)

The evidence is all over the place. With Thanksgiving upon us, let's take a moment, though, to give thanks to some occasionally unpopular shot-chuckers who might have more value than their detractors think.

It's a good read if you haven't checked it out already.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...chuckers-squad

[yo123]

Read that one a few days ago, really good stuff. Zach Lowe is one of the better NBA writers out there.

[Rob S]

Whatever, this debate is pretty dumb. KD, Lebron and maybe Paul are the only 3 that should be considered for MVP. If you're talking about who should be "in the conversation" below them, Melo absolutely deserved to be mentioned.

[Rosebud]

Originally Posted by Brodeur

I'd probably go...

1. Durant
2. LeBron
3. Paul
4. Duncan
5. Z-Bo
6. Varejao (yeah I said it)

lol you're almost as bad as BBD in this thread.

[Brodeur]

Originally Posted by Rosebud

lol you're almost as bad as BBD in this thread.

Hey, if you peeps want to ignore data, go ahead. Makes sense, you ignore data because 0-0 seems to excite you.

[y.f.s.]

Originally Posted by yo123

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the point of that article because I skimmed it. But attaching value to Kobe for missing shots that get happen to get rebounded through no action of his own by the Lakers' frontline that is annually the tallest and most skilled in the league doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

What the article is trying to do is disassociate the offensive rebounding and extra possessions as a vacuum stat. Do they simply get more offensive boards because theyre tall?

That's why I brought up the Love and DRose/Elton Brand examples, I thought they were more interesting and less polarizing than Kobe taking bad shots and the Laker bigs gobbling everything up.

[Rosebud]

The Cavs are terrible, if he was an MVP candidate his contributions should at least be making them not terrible. Regardless of any other data.

[pierce2walker]

Originally Posted by y.f.s.

What the article is trying to do is disassociate the offensive rebounding and extra possessions as a vacuum stat. Do they simply get more offensive boards because theyre tall?

That's why I brought up the Love and DRose/Elton Brand examples, I thought they were more interesting and less polarizing than Kobe taking bad shots and the Laker bigs gobbling everything up.

Well being tall helps. The Lakers and Bulls are very good rebounding teams over the last few years. In terms of Brand and Rose, that's not a fair comparison because when Rose misses he potentially has his 2 bigs battling for the board. When Brand takes a jump shot, there is only 1 potential big to get the board. Also what if a team's scheme calls for everyone to get back on defense (nobody hits the offensive glass), versus a scheme that calls for everyone to hit the offensive glass?

So, in theory if I was playing out there and missed 100% of my shots, but had 2 godly rebounders on my team that got a putback dunk on every miss, would this make me incredibly efficient?

[Rosebud]

Originally Posted by pierce2walker

Well being tall helps. The Lakers and Bulls are very good rebounding teams over the last few years. In terms of Brand and Rose, that's not a fair comparison because when Rose misses he potentially has his 2 bigs battling for the board. When Brand takes a jump shot, there is only 1 potential big to get the board. Also what if a team's scheme calls for everyone to get back on defense (nobody hits the offensive glass), versus a scheme that calls for everyone to hit the offensive glass?

So, in theory if I was playing out there and missed 100% of my shots, but had 2 godly rebounders on my team that got a putback dunk on every miss, would this make me incredibly efficient?

I think that's part of the point, because Rose still has multiple bigs to rebound the ball, him shooting from midrange is more efficient than if Brand is shooting from midrange where only one other big cna get the board. Kinda like how a lot of Melo's offensive rebounds are of his own shots, where he just puts it on the rim and out jumps guys for the tip in, yes it took two shots and rebound to score, but it was one short sequence of events.

[y.f.s.]

Originally Posted by pierce2walker

Well being tall helps. The Lakers and Bulls are very good rebounding teams over the last few years. In terms of Brand and Rose, that's not a fair comparison because when Rose misses he potentially has his 2 bigs battling for the board. When Brand takes a jump shot, there is only 1 potential big to get the board. Also what if a team's scheme calls for everyone to get back on defense (nobody hits the offensive glass), versus a scheme that calls for everyone to hit the offensive glass?

So, in theory if I was playing out there and missed 100% of my shots, but had 2 godly rebounders on my team that got a putback dunk on every miss, would this make me incredibly efficient?

Does it make you/the shooter more efficient? No, but it doesn't hurt (and might actually help) the overall efficiency of the offense.

Saying it's not fair for Brand/Rose is the perfect example, and it goes back to the Kevin Love point. Kevin Love is good at shooting 3s, but they'd probably be better off with other guys taking those shots and making them at a lower rate, and then Love cleaning up with extra possessions and points by simply beaing near the basket. It doesn't make the shooter more efficient, but it's probably a more efficient basketball sequence. If Kobe misses a bad midrange shot with his bigs in good rebounding position, go ahead and mark it against his shooting %, but it's a shot you want him to take almost every time.

What this really means in the big picture is that having a stretch 4 is a really overrated concept, provided those extra possessions and points outweighs what you give up in transition defense (the flipside of this would be the Celtics with KG for example - he's bailing to the other side of the floor as soon as a shot goes up.)