NBA - The upside down

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

The thing is Gobert locks down the paint fine but he’s never had the mobility for switching on to wings that Mobley has. He certainly doesn’t have it anymore if he did have it earlier in his career.

He was doing it just fine for us before he got hurt. Utah messed up because they built a team around him cleaning up a bunch of other guys being terrible defenders.

[briantw]

10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I just think it's interesting Cleveland has five guys in the top 12 and that Mitchell also rates higher by def rating.

Anyways, no one is saying Mobley isn't an excellent defender. But he still has not shown he's as complete as you're hoping he will be five years from now, with the key word being hope. Like right now he's not as good as Gobert was when he was at his best and everyone shits on him now. 

I’d say that guys like Mitchell and Garland are rated as high as they are because they can gamble for steals knowing that Mobley and Allen are behind them to cover for them.  Having two great defensive bigs who can both switch and defend the three point line makes life a hell of a lot easier for guards and wings. 

[Proudfeet]

52 minutes ago, briantw said:

Any stat that lists Darius Garland as the third best defender in the league is clearly not accurate.  The dude puts in effort but he’s not a great defender. 

It doesn't say Garland is the third best defender. It says that when Garland is on the court, his team measures well adjusted for possessions, pace and apparently point differential compared to league average. 

His team is right behind him at 8-10, 12 and 22. He just rates the best because he probably missed some blowout games when he was out injured.

35 minutes ago, DMC said:

Doesn't mean the metric is garbage though, just mean it has an inherent flaw - as most do.

I don't see the point in win shares. It's supposed to measure pace but does it really quantify it properly? I think that the formula has some presumptions that may not translate well. E.g. close games vs blow outs, use of individual stats for rating but team stats for win shares.

Here's the formula from Basketball reference

Spoiler

Crediting Defensive Win Shares to players is based on Dean Oliver's Defensive Rating. Defensive Rating is an estimate of the player's points allowed per 100 defensive possessions (please see Oliver's book for further details). Here is a description of the process (once again using LeBron James in 2008-09 as an example):

1. Calculate the Defensive Rating for each player. James's Defensive Rating in 2008-09 was 99.1.
2. Calculate marginal defense for each player. Marginal defense is equal to (player minutes played / team minutes played) * (team defensive possessions) * (1.08 * (league points per possession) - ((Defensive Rating) / 100)). For James this is (3054 / 19780) * 7341 * ((1.08 * 1.083) - (99.1 / 100)) = 202.5. Note that this formula may produce a negative result for some players.
3. Calculate marginal points per win. Marginal points per win reduces to 0.32 * (league points per game) * ((team pace) / (league pace)). For the 2008-09 Cavaliers this is 0.32 * 100.0 * (88.7 / 91.7) = 30.95.
4. Credit Defensive Win Shares to the players. Defensive Win Shares are credited using the following formula: (marginal defense) / (marginal points per win). James gets credit for 202.5 / 30.95 = 6.54 Defensive Win Shares.

____

 

VI. Does This Work?

Because this metric is designed to estimate a player's contribution in terms of wins, it makes sense to see if the sum of player Win Shares for a particular team closely matches the team win total. For the 2008-09 Cavaliers the sum of player Win Shares is 67.9, while the team win total is 66, an error of 66 - 67.9 = -1.9 wins. For the 1964-65 Royals the sum of player Win Shares is 43.5, while the team total is 48, an error of 48 - 43.5 = 4.5 wins. These errors are actually close to the "typical" error; looking at all NBA teams since the 1962-63 season (the last season we have complete player splits), the average absolute error is 2.74 wins and the root mean squared error is 3.41 wins.

 

14 minutes ago, briantw said:

Yeah, the main issue with Gobert is that he’d get played off the floor when it counted.  Mobley can defend wings as easily as bigs and his length throws off a lot of smaller guys.  

Gobert defended fine on the Jazz. He's not excellent against wings but he's not terrible either. The Jazz's problem is that their strategy is to prevent threes or funnel the opposing players to Gobert which doesn't work when he isn't in the paint.

And his offense is ninety percent dependent on the person passing him the ball and he can't take advantage of his size as you'd expect an average center to versus a small lineup. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Proudfeet said:

I don't see the point in win shares.

I think win shares per 48 are a good first glance metric to see how a player is impacting his team.  But yeah, as I intimated, breaking it up between offense and defense presents much more validity issues as compared to, say, baseball or football.

[Proudfeet]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

I think win shares per 48 are a good first glance metric to see how a player is impacting his team.  But yeah, as I intimated, breaking it up between offense and defense presents much more validity issues as compared to, say, baseball or football.

Perhaps. I just don't think it is significantly more accurate than plain defensive rating, so I don't know what it is trying to achieve.

__

Anyway reflecting on the defensive win shares a bit more, I think it's more damning on LeVert as he was Garland's replacement and the other starters (common denominators) are bunched up. Not sure how much of it can be mitigated from him having to play with the bench more when Garland is healthy.

[DMC]

Per the mothership, Kyrie has asked to be traded by the deadline.

[Rhom]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

Per the mothership, Kyrie has asked to be traded by the deadline.

He’s the gift that keeps on giving.

[Argonath Diver]

I was actually becoming impressed there for the last month or two that the Nets seemed to collectively put their heads down and just play good ball. Jacque Vaughn rolling his eyes during a post game interview when asked about Ben Simmons' knee injury was interesting. Now, hey what a surprise, Kyrie is doing Kyrie things. 

Three of the most easy-to-root-against chumps leading that team I can think of.

Edit: Dang I left this in the text input window before remembering to send it for 20 minutes and of course y'all already talking about it.

[DMC]

Kyrie Irving is totally Gary Cole from Talladega Nights.  "Yep, I guess things are just about perfect...it's making me feel kind of itchy."  "How bout we go get kicked out of an Applebee's?"

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

I’d say that guys like Mitchell and Garland are rated as high as they are because they can gamble for steals knowing that Mobley and Allen are behind them to cover for them.  Having two great defensive bigs who can both switch and defend the three point line makes life a hell of a lot easier for guards and wings. 

Sure. And I think there are some problems with defensive metrics. Over the years I've seen mediocre guys get surprisingly good advanced analytic stats while guys we know are good appear to be meh. I think the eye test generally does tell us who is elite and after that you just want to see effort from the players who aren't. 

47 minutes ago, DMC said:

Per the mothership, Kyrie has asked to be traded by the deadline.

KD has to fight him at some point. This has to be near the mountain top of worst sports decision ever made, leaving Curry and the Warriors for this shitshow. 

[BigFatCoward]

Kanye >>>>>>> trump >>>>> kyrie. What a fucking arse goblin. 

[Relic]

No headlines for Kyrie for 2 months = new headlines for Kyrie. Stfu. 

[DMC]

As if on cue, Bill Simmons just posted a new version of his Trade Value Rankings - where it should be emphasized salary and age are important factors.  Mobley ranked 13th and Banchero 15th - both in the "Budding Franchise Guys" section along with Haliburton and Edwards.  Wagner ranked 25th.  KAT ranked 27th.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

35 minutes ago, DMC said:

As if on cue, Bill Simmons just posted a new version of his Trade Value Rankings - where it should be emphasized salary and age are important factors.  Mobley ranked 13th and Banchero 15th - both in the "Budding Franchise Guys" section along with Haliburton and Edwards.  Wagner ranked 25th.  KAT ranked 27th.

Which Wagner, you have two of those, no?

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Which Wagner, you have two of those, no?

LOL, Franz.  Moe unsurprisingly did not make the list.  As a Magic fan do feel like noting that both Wendell Carter and Jalen Suggs made the honorable mentions list, while Bol Bol made the "toughest omissions" list.  There were 21 players between those two lists, and then Simmons ranked the Top 70.

[briantw]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

As if on cue, Bill Simmons just posted a new version of his Trade Value Rankings - where it should be emphasized salary and age are important factors.  Mobley ranked 13th and Banchero 15th - both in the "Budding Franchise Guys" section along with Haliburton and Edwards.  Wagner ranked 25th.  KAT ranked 27th.

Kyrie as a Dishonorable Mention.  

[DMC]

1 minute ago, briantw said:

Kyrie as a Dishonorable Mention.  

Heh, yeah, I enjoyed Kyrie and Ben Simmons having their own category as the only two dishonorable mentions.

[briantw]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Heh, yeah, I enjoyed Kyrie and Ben Simmons having their own category as the only two dishonorable mentions.

Seeing four Cavaliers on that list warms my heart, though.  Three in the top twenty-two!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Back to back fight night. The 90's are alive. What a weird altercation.

[DMC]

Suggs, McDaniels, and Prince also ejected.  Suggs was clearly just trying to break up the fight.  As I intimated in the politics thread, I don't think anyone but Bamba and Rivers should have been ejected.