Good news for Prospectus readers: We’ve been able to work out a few of the technical kinks and the NBA team and player stat pages now feature 2009-10 stats. These are your only place to get some of BBP’s exclusive stats, including WARP and the NBAPET defensive metrics. Right now, the player cards only have 2009-10 numbers, but we’re working on getting 2008-09 alongside for comparison and ultimately being able to add career stats. Stay tuned … .
Brandon Jennings‘ 55-point outing last Saturday left in its wake a lot of gushing columns, my own included, but also a handful of dissenting viewpoints. I suppose that’s to be expected in the modern media world, where opinions are commodities; someone has to take the contrasting position. There’s a semi-valid point that we’re getting caught up in what Jennings is doing and not taking a careful, nuanced look at his game and its flaws (most notably a turnover rate that is on the high side, though committing a lot of turnovers is not always a bad thing for a young player).
I take a little more exception to the argument that Jennings only did it against the Warriors. If it was that easy, opponents would be dropping 55 on Golden State every night, y’know? There’s only so much air that can be taken out of putting up 50-plus in your eighth career game. The critiques of Don Nelson’s gameplan seem to miss the crucial point that there is no way to defend a quicksilver point guard hitting with deadeye accuracy from beyond the arc short of keeping the ball out of hands and leaving the remainder of your defense vulnerable.
In the bigger picture, Bethlehem Shoals nails the way I feel about Jennings in a brilliant piece on FreeDarko. Naturally, I lean much more toward the analyst end of the spectrum than Shoals, but like him I find that what Jennings has done early in his career leads me back to the reason I became a fan in the first place. I remember talking about this once with another writer, and surprising him with my answer that I fell in love with basketball because of its visceral nature, the emotions, and the connection between a crowd and the players that cannot be replicated in much larger baseball and football stadiums. I know that doesn’t always come across in my writing, but I hope the thoroughness of my work is a testament to my passion. (As discussed by Kelly Dwyeron the latest Disciples of Clyde podcast.)
I don’t think Shoals and I are alone, which was actually part of the fun of Saturday night. It was the first transcendent individual performance of the Twitter era, and a virtual community was created as NBA scribes and fans tried together to make sense of what they were seeing. There’s something pure and child-like in that sense of wonder and anticipation, and I’m certainly not going to apologize for it.
I do believe that it is important and fair to paint an accurate picture of a player’s abilities, in that there is often a tendency to hype players up only to personalize their inability to meet those expectations. We attribute the incongruity between expectation and reality not to our own shortcomings as analysts, but to some failing of the athlete. This is most common at the team level, where fans will make a youngster out to be their savior–despite evidence to the contrary–only to turn on them. However, Chuck Klosterman devoted an entire chapter of his latest book, Eating the Dinosaur, to Ralph Sampson, who was victimized by this exact conundrum on a larger scale.
I’d be worried if that’s what I thought was happening here. Maybe in the long run it will prove the case. With the exception of those who want to make Jennings the final word and not an anecdote on the debate over the one-and-done rule, I don’t see it. Since the expectations, especially in the short term, were relatively modest for Jennings entering his rookie season, there’s a sense of trying to figure out exactly what to make of his early dominance. I especially get that from Bucks fans, who have been hammered with years of disappointment and mediocrity (see Frank Madden’s day-after post on BrewHoop in particular).
So let’s be careful not to let ourselves with carried away with expectations for Jennings, but let’s also enjoy what we’re seeing. Isn’t that the point of following basketball?
IN RELATED: I’d also respectfully ask we lay off poor Jordan Hill. If you want to criticize Donnie Walsh, that’s fine. While The Painted Area’s M. Haubsraises some excellent points about the hypocrisy of GMs’ concerns about Jennings, I do tend to think the fact that Jennings was passed over nine times (albeit for better talents than Hill) and might have slipped much further had the Bucks not selected him is a defense for Walsh. If we can’t compare GMs to each other, what is the standard? But while Walsh made his choice and will have to own up to it the remainder of Jennings’ career, Hill did nothing to put himself in this position. His career should be judged a success or a failure on its own merits, and not because of where he happened to go in the draft.
North Carolina and Ohio State will collide tonight in Madison Square Garden (ESPN2, 9 ET) in what promises to be the proverbial best game of the year so far, one that pits two top-15 teams against each other on a neutral floor. The Tar Heels are one of the most athletic teams in the country, and yet even Roy Williams‘ roster can’t claim a freak of hoops nature like Evan Turner. Surprisingly scrappy performances from Memphis and Gonzaga this week notwithstanding, tonight for the first time in 2009-10 we’ll see two elite teams picking on someone their own size.
Both teams have of course effortlessly rolled over the overmatched opponents that have come to their respective arenas thus far, so the team stats here are useless. (Quick example. Right now the Buckeyes’ efficiency margin is clocking in at a rather robust 0.49, meaning Thad Matta’s group has outscored their opponents by the moral equivalent of a full half-point for every possession they’ve played. That is quite good!) What I do find interesting this time of year, however, are the individual numbers, especially which players are taking the shots.
Which players are taking the shots
%Shots: percentage of team’s shots taken during player’s minutes
Through games of November 18
%Shots
William Buford, OSU 33.5
Deon Thompson, UNC 32.0
Evan Turner, OSU 27.9
Jeremie Simmons, OSU 23.0
Tyler Zeller, UNC 22.6
David Lighty, OSU 22.6
John Henson, UNC 21.9
William Buford has spent much of OSU’s first two games applauding reserves from the bench during garbage time, but when he’s in the game he is going to shoot, period. The same can be said for Deon Thompson, who has also been an absolute monster on the offensive glass over the Heels’ first three games.
Each team might fairly be said to be in the midst of reconfiguring. The Buckeyes are trying to add defense to an offense that in 2008-09 was absurdly and indeed historically accurate in its shooting. This year’s return of David Lighty from the injured list should help that process along, as will continued beastly efforts from Turner on the defensive glass.
Speaking of the return of defensive stalwarts, Marcus Ginyard is back in action this season for UNC. With a multi-positional stopper like Ginyard playing alongside a rebounding and shot-blocking hybrid like Ed Davis, the Heels give every indication of being excellent on D this year. (You really should buy this book for a fuller discussion of both teams.)
Last and not least, tonight’s game follows in some extraordinary footsteps. On November 29, 2006, these same two teams played an absolute jewel of a game in Chapel Hill, one that UNC won by the score of 98-89.
I realize three years is a millennium in college hoops time so here’s a quick refresher. Florida that year returned all five starters from a national championship team, but the Gators had just lost in OT to Kansas in Las Vegas, opening up the number one ranking for the Buckeyes. An injured Greg Oden was yet to make his college debut and Matta’s team had easily won its first six games at home, thanks to veterans like Ron Lewis and Jamar Butler and a “Thad Five” that included Mike Conley and Daequan Cook. As for Williams’ team, sophomore Tyler Hansbrough was welcoming freshmen like Brandan Wright, Ty Lawson, and Wayne Ellington.
The feeling nationally was that Ohio State wasn’t deserving of a number one ranking, and I agreed. But I’d also looked at the Buckeyes closely enough to know that this technically overrated team was actually being qualitatively underrated. I was sure they could give Carolina a game, even without Oden.
Well, I was right or else I wouldn’t be bringing it up now. In our book last year I nominated that game, albeit somewhat sheepishly, as one of the best regular-season games I’ve ever seen.
Both the Buckeyes and the Tar Heels showed me not only that they were as talented as advertised but also, more importantly, how seamlessly cohesive and even intelligent they could be at insanely high velocities on offense. I had to reach back to Illinois in 2005 to think of one offense that looked as good as both offenses looked that night….
There were some incredible numbers put up for offense in Chapel Hill that night, and even Roy Williams was quoted as saying, “You sit there and marvel at the level that kids are playing at offensively.” But when I lavished praise on both teams in a day-after piece, I got some dissenting responses from readers who said, in effect, it wasn’t good offense, it was bad defense from young players with no “fundamentals,” etc.
Later I shared that feedback with a former player who, coincidentally, had won the defensive player of the year award in his conference. He’d also seen that game, and when I told him of the readers’ objections I thought I could actually hear him rolling his eyes over the phone. “People have no idea,” he said, “what it takes to play that level of offense, how hard it is to make shots when you’re running full-speed for 40 minutes.”
Here’s hoping for a game even half as good tonight.
BONUS record-straightening! In the wake of Iowa’s 52-50 loss at home to Duquesne on Tuesday night, the “We stink!” lamentations of Hawkeye fans have started to ricochet around the web and by Godfrey I won’t have it! Don’t get me wrong: I myself picked Iowa to finish last in the Big Ten this year and I am well aware that Todd Lickliter’s team lost by 12 at home to Texas-San Antonio in their opener. I am not nominating the Hawkeyes as the second coming of UCLA ‘73. But surely there’s no particular shame attached to losing by two to the Dukes, who return four starters from a 9-7 A-10 team that came within six points of an NCAA bid, losing to Temple in the conference tournament title game. (Note however that Melquan Bolding did miss the Iowa game with a broken wrist.) In fact last year Ron Everhart’s team rather quietly featured one of the top offenses in the country, one that made an Ohio State-like 55 percent of its twos. This was no tomato can that rolled into Iowa City the other night.
I will not be the least bit surprised if Iowa loses games this year that make their fans cringe justifiably. This was not one of those.
At last, the book is right here on Amazon. This is the item that will guide you safely through the early-season hype and panics. This weekend when you’re watching, say, Georgia Tech play in Puerto Rico you can just flip to page 33:
“In spite of our record,” Paul Hewitt has said, “we weren’t far off.” I know that sounds like standard coach-speak after a tough season, but in this case the standard coach-speak is in fact correct.
Then again maybe your team is Kansas. Turn to page 56. It would have prepared you for Tyshawn Taylor’s game against Memphis last night:
As a freshman Taylor was superb on offense in a supporting role, if–and it was a huge if–he didn’t cough up the ball. Taylor made an outstanding 56 percent of his twos, but more than any other Jayhawk who saw regular minutes he struggled with turnovers.
Or let’s say you’re taking in Syracuse against the winner of North Carolina vs. Ohio State in Coaches vs. Cancer. That would be page 96:
Syracuse has the tools and the talent to compete for a Big East title. But if they struggle, this could be an ugly offensive year with too many forced shots.
Michigan in the Old Spice Classic? Page 108:
The largest single difference between a team that was battling Blake Griffin in late March and one that went 10-22 the year before was accuracy from the field.
For all you Cal fans following the aforementioned Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, please turn to page 130:
Cal will have a short front line, so blocks won’t be their specialty, but if their defense is going to rise to a level that earns the team a top seed in March, it would help if they forced a few more turnovers.
And let’s not forget the fans of Tennessee’s best team by a country mile, the basketball team. They should proceed directly to page 162:
It’s a tribute to how far Bruce Pearl has brought this program in just four seasons that a 10-6 conference record and a first-round NCAA exit comprise a down year….This particular rebuilding year achieved better results than the Vols used to see in their peak years.
Not to mention the book was way ahead of the curve on this whole Evan Turner mania: “The best all-around [NBA] prospect in the country.” (Page 15.)
College Basketball Prospectus 2009-10, now available for just $16.95 on Amazon. I might be a trifle biased, so take it from Luke Winn’s cover blurb: “The analysis from Prospectus isn’t just original. They’re working with information no one else has.”
Well, being the generous souls we are, we decided to share that information with all of you. Dig in!
I am by no means an analyst of the NFL. I leave that to Aaron Schatz and his superb crew at Football Outsiders. But I am both an NFL fan and a voracious consumer of sportswriting and analysis. And in the wake of the Indianapolis Colts‘ thrilling come-from-behind 35-34 victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday night, it struck me that the game threw a harsh light not only on a growing divide between two ways of “covering” sports, but more basically on two differing conceptions of how sports should be perceived and described.
At root there are two ways you can write up Bill Belichick’s now infamous decision to go for it on fourth-and-two from his own 28 with a six-point lead and 2:08 to play in the game. Like this:
This was as bad as anything the Red Sox ever did. Had it been a playoff game, it would have been right up there with Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, Aaron Boone, and History Derailed in Glendale, Ariz.
And Bill Belichick played the part of Grady Little.
Or like this:
Really, no matter how you play with the numbers, it will come out about the same. Try it. There is almost no way–without suppressing the numbers–to make the percentages even out. The Patriots’ best PERCENTAGE chance was to go for it on fourth down. Of course, football is not really a percentage game for most of us, is it? No, it’s a game about emotion and passion and momentum.
When the game ended and Belichick’s gamble failed, people lined up to bash him–and normally I’d be all for this. Former Patriots player Rodney Harrison called it the worst coaching move Belichick ever made. Former Patriots player Teddy Bruschi wrote that Belichick dissed his defense by not believing they could stop the Colts over 70 yards. Tony Dungy said, “You have to punt there. You just have to punt there.” And so on and on.
But–and believe me, I’m not trying to defend Belichick’s last-minute coaching here (more on this in a minute)–I think in many ways all these knocks sort of miss the point. This is who Bill Belichick is, who he has always been. He is about winning the game without passion or prejudice. He doesn’t give a damn if there were some hurt feelings on his defense.
I see what you’re thinking. The first excerpt must be from an old-school unabashed Plaschke manque; the second is obviously from some daring young quantitatively savvy blogger in his jammies.
You’re half-right. The first excerpt comes to us courtesy of an old-school unabashed Plaschke manque. It doesn’t particularly matter which one, for there are many, many writers I could have quoted there.
I can’t say the same of excerpt number two, which was written byJoe Posnanski. Note that Posnanski learned his trade not in his mother’s basement but at the Kansas City Star, his words appeared not on a message board but at SI.com, and he pulled his “percentages” in this case not from some obscure grad student blogger but from the New York Times.
In other words, ”traditional sports punditry” is denoted not by what kind of resume you have, how old you are, whether you sit in the press box, or even whether your thoughts are packaged in 800 words of ink, 1600 words of pixels, or two minutes of streaming video. No, “traditional sports punditry” denotes merely that you’re notstaying current within your own field: “What the hell is Belichick doing?” as opposed to “Whoa, talk about trusting the percentages–what the hell is Belichick doing?”
The days when you could stay current simply by talking to players and coaches ended emphatically this decade. Posnanski has stayed laudably current, plus he’s an outstanding writer. In this passage he links an understanding of the situation’s abstract quantitative imperatives to a perceptive–and, I think, correct–read of Belichick’s particular inner qualitative motor.
To be aware of what Posnanski calls the “PERCENTAGE”s, ones that indicate that probability was in Belichick’s favor over the course of a thousand tries, does not rule out disagreeing with the coach in this single instance. But to not be aware of these percentages is to fail in the most basic journalistic sense. To write about a decision, much less try to criticize it, without displaying any understanding of its self-evident context is to fall down on the job in the ”why” department, even if you do get the who, the what, the when, and the where.
Humans would be well-advised to nail the “why,” by the way. Computers can now do those other four pretty well.
The NBA’s first in-season trade is done, and it’s one that has been in the works for a long time. The Golden State Warriors at last shipped out disgruntled swingman Stephen Jackson, sending him and Acie Law to the Charlotte Bobcats in exchange for Raja Bell and Vladimir Radmanovic.
As usual, there’s two key aspects to this trade: the basketball and the financial. While the latter is an apparent win for the Bobcats, the Warriors have made out well on the latter aspect. Next season, Jackson begins a three-year contract extension that will pay him $28 million over that span. Meanwhile, Golden State takes on just $7 million past this season (Bell’s contract, like Law’s, expires at season’s end; Radmanovic has one year left on his deal).
So, is the upgrade from Bell to Jackson worth it? Unlikely. Certainly, Jackson will provide much-needed offense for a Charlotte team that has been starved for points in the early going. The Bobcats rank last in the league in Offensive Rating, in large part because of a distinct shortage of players capable of creating offense for themselves or others. Count Bell among the offenders; a shooting guard who uses just 18.2 percent of his team’s possessions needs to do better than a .533 True Shooting Percentage. Jackson has never been especially efficient, but if motivated he should score about his efficiently while taking on a larger load.
Charlotte has been one of the league’s better defensive teams, so there’s the chance to improve if the offense becomes even remotely competent. Still, the Bobcats have started 3-6 and have been outscored by more than six points a night. What’s the upside here? .500? Lower? That doesn’t appear to be worth taking the ugly back end of Jackson’s contract, which takes him through age 35.
This is all about the money for the Warriors, who now have the chance to get under the cap in 2011, when they only have significant money invested in three players–Andris Biedrins, Monta Ellis and Corey Maggette. In the meantime, the biggest downside to this trade is that adding two rotation-caliber players further muddles Don Nelson’s inconsistent distribution of playing time. Bell could move on again to a contender for whom a defensive specialist makes more sense.
(John Hollinger, by contrast, argues the issue for Golden State is not taking a deal with Cleveland that could have yielded cap space and/or the chance to make unbalanced trades using nonguaranteed contracts this year. That’s all true, but I think the argument is the Warriors are such a mess right now that it’s too early to figure out their direction or what they need. Is Anthony Randolph a core piece? Can Ellis and Stephen Curry coexist in the backcourt? How long will Nelson’s reign of madness last? All of those questions are far more likely to be answered by 2011 than 2010.)
The news that Kevin Coble is out for the year with a foot injury is of course devastating to Northwestern fans. Not to plug the book yet again but, well, said book does make the case that Coble has long been woefully underrated nationally, due largely to pace-deflated per-game stats that look ho-hum. (And while the sports information office at NU was typing the words “out for the year,” Jeff Ryan decided to meet that description as well, suffering a season-ending ACL injury Friday night in the Wildcats’ 77-55 win over Northern Illinois.)
If there’s good news here, though, it’s that Bill Carmody is reportedly hard at work trying to talk Coble into taking a redshirt and coming back as a senior next year. Assuming Carmody is successful there, the ‘Cats would actually look pretty robust on paper for 2010-11. With Coble and Ryan out, the only remaining senior in the rotation in 2009-10 is Jeremy Nash. Everyone else you see in Evanston this year–most notably Michael Thompson and John Shurna–should be back next year.
Coble’s absence will almost certainly mean more shots and possessions for Shurna, who was notably effective as a freshman starter last year. Perhaps freshman guard Drew Crawford will develop this season into a Craig Moore-type perimeter shooter. Heck, seven-footer Kyle Rowley might even make something of himself in this his sophomore year.
Anyway, given all of the above I’m getting an early start on this bracketology ‘11 thing and penciling in NU as an 11-seed. Assuming Coble does indeed come back for a fifth year.
I am pleased to announce that the hard copy version of our College Basketball Prospectus 2009-10: Major-Conference Preview is now available for purchase online for just $16.95. Note additionally that if you’re an Amazon die-hard the book will be popping up there as well any time now. I will keep you posted.
Meantime the season’s first live chat on college hoops will be happening today. Click here to chat live starting at noon ET or to submit your question in advance. There’s a whole season spread out before us to talk about. Let’s hear what’s on your mind. Looking forward to chatting hoops with all of you.
Once again I take laptop in hand to dissent from someone I agree with completely. I am on the record as thinking one-and-done has got to go but every time I read a standard-issue anti-one-and-done piece such as Michael Rosenberg’s I wonder if maybe I should reconsider.
From this day forward take everything you encounter on one-and-done and put it through the following two-pronged “Worth my time?” detector. If the piece emerges unscathed it’s safe to read.
Gasaway’s EZ Screening Device for a Robust and Non-Hacky Critique of One-and-Done:
1. David Stern is not Dr. Evil, Mr. Potter, Mr. Burns, or whomever your favored stock figure of malignant malevolence might be. If I read one more piece that weeps openly over the plight of poor one-and-dones banished to “dorms” because Stern is off somewhere laughing like The Penguin while rolling in large piles of cash I will give up the present endeavor entirely and start using points-per-game in one-sentence paragraphs. To recap: David Stern is a dull and rather colorless but demonstrably effective professional who is in the business of promoting his professional basketball league. That is his job. It’s better for the NBA if their rookies arrive as well-known stars. Conversely, I feel it’s better for college hoops if NBA-bound players get to the league without a needlessly illicit and potentially win-vacating detour through the college ranks. What’s good for the league is not necessarily good for college hoops. This is called conflict and it occurs naturally, even and indeed sometimes especially between people of good will. It is the warp and woof of existence. It is not the product of Stern hatching schemes in a hollowed-out volcano.
2. American higher education is not such a fragile and gossamer-like chalice that it can’t withstand some knocks from a few notably diffident “student-athletes.” If you want one-and-done gone, and I do, say that it will be good for the college game to have it gone. Do not imply ominously (”It contributes to the mockery of education that is major-college basketball”) that MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Chicago will all collapse into rubble by 2011 if one-and-done is not killed. She’s a tough old gal, this thing we call higher ed in this country. If it can survive a genuine outrage like the long and unfailingly sleazy arm of Rod Blagojevichwreaking havoc in the University of Illinois‘ admissions office, it can certainly withstand the nonexistent spring semesters of 12 to 20 would-be one-and-dones per annum.
Someone, please, do a spirited defense of one-and-done. I’ll disagree with it but it can’t be any more dispiriting than what “my” side is putting out.
Programming note: First live chat of the year Monday at noon ET. Get your questions in line ahead of time here. Y’all come!
When a team goes from 56-26 and a couple of shots away from the Western Conference Finals to a laughingstock within two years, there is plenty of blame to go around. On Thursday, New Orleans Hornets head coach Byron Scott took the fall for his team’s disastrous 3-6 start when the Hornets fired him after five-plus years at the helm. Scott will be replaced by New Orleans GM Jeff Bower, who has served two previous stints as an assistant for the team in addition to his lengthy run in the front office. The Hornets also added Tim Floyd–their head coach in 2003-04, when Bower was his assistant–to their coaching staff to serve as Bower’s lead assistant.
There are plenty of explanations that can be offered in Scott’s defense. The Hornets’ wing positions have atrophied over the last two years, with Peja Stojakovic aging in dog years, Morris Peterson struggling to live up to the mid-level deal he signed with New Orleans prior to the 2007-08 season and Rasual Butler now with the Clippers, a victim of the Hornets’ high payroll. Injuries haven’t helped. Emeka Okafor missed all of training camp, making it difficult to get him comfortable in the system and with his teammates (surely part of the reason New Orleans is a dismal 28th in the league in Defensive Rating), and Ike Diogu has yet to play.
Ultimately, though, Scott sealed his own fate with his reluctance to trust young players. Part of an optimistic assessment of the Hornets in Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10 was the belief that Bower had upgraded the team’s bench by signing Diogu, trading for Darius Songaila and drafting Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton. Though Diogu has been unable to play, Collison and Thornton have been biding their time on the bench. Instead, the Browns–Bobby and Devin–have been given entirely too many minutes. Bobby Brown has the team’s second-highest usage rate (26.2 percent of possessions while on the floor) despite a dismal 44.4 percent True Shooting Percentage. All of that is consistent with his miserable rookie season split between Sacramento and Minnesota. Why was he playing over Collison, the Hornets’ NBA-ready first-round pick? Brown is nothing more than a replacement-level stopgap at shooting guard, and while he might be better than Thornton right now, Thornton at least deserves an opportunity–especially with the team struggling so badly.
Add in the fact that New Orleans apparently quit on Scott–as first witnessed by their unthinkable 44-point loss to Denver in Game 4 of last year’s playoff series, which probably should have signaled the end of Scott’s run as head coach–and a change on the sidelines was long overdue. We have little idea of Bower’s Xs and Os ability, and I would certainly feel more comfortable if Floyd was not prominently involved. However, one consistent trait when GMs are asked to coach their own teams is that they tend to play guys they’ve drafted. If Bower simply does that, the Hornets have a chance to get better. I still believe there’s enough talent on the roster–if only because of Chris Paul, who is having an MVP season–to not only make the playoffs but contend in the Western Conference. Last year’s study of midseason coaching changes showed they were best done by past playoff teams early in the season. By making a move now, New Orleans has given itself a chance to right the ship before it’s too late.
