NBA 2013 Season Thread for NBA Talking

[Latrinsorm]

NBA! NBA! NBA! NBA!

It's weird how much deja vu is going on this season:
-The East! The Heat obviously, the Celtics are still old but still kicking (but still old), the Bulls are still nothing without Rose, nobody else looks like a big threat.
-The West! The Lakers are incredible on paper but can they coexist, can the Spurs win now that Tim Duncan is decrepit, is this the year the Thunder put it all together, does anyone else in the West matter (no).
-What's going to happen to Dwight? Has he recovered from his surgery? What's he going to do after this season?

.

Watching tonight's game, I can't believe LeBron is playing so little in the post. I thought the point of Bosh moving to center was to make LeBron play power like he did when they won the Finals, but here he was doing the same old hang around the perimeter stuff. Very frustrating. (That he still finished with a very impressive line score for non-cyborgs is immaterial.)

I'm not liking Ray Allen at all. I only liked his spacing on one play (on LeBron's only post up) where he was open by 15' (and of course LeBron missed him). The ballhandling and passing is as bad as it ever was, the defense is just hard to watch.

I'm very pleasantly surprised by Rashard Lewis! He's hustling, he's rebounding, he's making good decisions on offense, he's setting good screens. The fact that he's never played defense before in his life shows, but at least he's trying now! That's something! (One game +/- can be misleading, but he was the only Heat player with significant minutes and a +.)

.

Lastly, after the Lakers started 0-2 and Kobe told everyone to shut up, I decided to look into it. It turns out that of the last 58 NBA champions (the shot clock era), exactly 5 have started the season 0-2:

1991 Bulls: by 8 to the 76ers, by 1 at the Bullets (back to back), and as I've demonstrated before 5 point losses (and wins) are more like ties anyway, so like Gunny Highway they were really 0-1-1.
1985 Lakers: by 1 at the Spurs, by 11 at the Mavs (back to back), same story
1982 Lakers: by 1 to the Rockets (double OT), by 2 at the Blazers
1958 Hawks: by 25 to the Celtics, by 17 to the Knicks on a neutral court (back to back)
1955 Nationals: by 3 to the Lakers, by 23 at the Celtics

So only one NBA champion since the introduction of the shot clock has had two statistically significant losses to start the season. The 2013 Lakers have lost by 8 to Dallas and by 10 at Portland (back to back). It also so happens that the 2013 Celtics have lost by 13 at Miami and by 11 to the Bucks, so throw them in too. I'm not saying the Lakers and the Celtics have been mathematically eliminated from title contention, I'm just saying it would be a major historical outlier and those don't tend to come along very often. It is also worth mentioning that 4 of the 5 teams won their next game, with only the 1991 Bulls losing again in another squeaker.

[thefarmer]

HardLin

He is going apeshit as the feature player, granted against meh teams but still. It's crazy. He's so good he's even letting Lin keep up those wacky Linsanity numbers, or close to it. I know it won't happen all year. It can't really. But it's the first time since probably the start of Yao in Houston that I've been looking forward to an NBA season.

[Soulpieced]

Beardsanity.

[thefarmer]

+1

[Latrinsorm]

An interesting statistical quirk: before tonight's games, the 3 worst defensive teams in the NBA (by far!) were the Celtics, Lakers, and Heat, with DRtgs in the 114s. What makes this even more interesting is that the current avg is 101, below last year's 104 and well below the 107ish of the previous few years. Obviously the Celtics are going to drop after tonight, the Heat aren't going to see a major change, and the Lakers didn't play, but in looking at a snapshot here's what we see:

-All three teams give up very high eFG% (a measure that gives 3P% additional weight proportional to its additional points): 1st, 5th, and 3rd respectively.
-The Lakers are miserable at forcing turnovers, 3rd worst in the league. The Celtics are mediocre and the Heat are right at league average.
-They're all pretty good D-rebounding teams.
-They're all slightly foul happy, but within 6 spots of league average.

The most interesting one is obviously the Lakers, because Dwight was supposed to be a huge upgrade over Bynum defensively. Historically, Bynum is a decent defensive rebounder (top 15ish) while Dwight is elite (routinely top 5). They're pretty close in PF/36 min, with Bynum taking a huge leap forward in that department last year, going from mid 3s to 1.8. We would therefore expect them to get better in DRb%, maybe get a little worse in FT/FGA, and the others are hard to say. It's conceivable that, as in OKC, an elite rim protector encourages perimeter defenders to gamble more, potentially generating more turnovers, but it's also conceivable that the Lakers perimeter defenders are just so poor that they still can't generate turnovers.

Let's keep these in mind when we compare the Lakers weaknesses so far to last year (again, keeping in mind that 3 games is a small sample yadda yadda): last year the Lakers were 6th best in eFG% allowed, dead last in TOV% forced, 6th in DRb%, absolute best in FT/FGA allowed, for an overall ranking of just about league average. They've therefore seen a huge drop off in eFG%, are just as terrible in TOV%, are pretty much the same in DRb%, and are slightly worse in FT/FGA. It could be that they've just gone up against some hot shooters and as that regresses so too will their position, to about league average...

...but is that good enough? Bynum and Howard have almost identical career TS%s (a measure that takes into account 2P%, 3P%, and FT%), then you'd have to give the nod to Bynum for passing stats (although he's still pretty terrible): 6.99 FGA/AST and .76 AST/TOV for Bynum, 7.44 and .49 for Howard. Although their offensive games are wildly dissimilar, the overall impact on the offensive end is at best the same (and if Howard keeps failing to crack 50% from FT, he just can't be useful in crunch time). If Howard isn't going to have a transformative effect on the Laker defense, and Nash is going to keep getting 4 touches a game (when he comes back from his BROKEN LEG), how is the Laker ceiling any different? Kobe and Pau didn't get younger. Mike Brown didn't suddenly become a good coach.

Again, small sample size, but I think it's an interesting peek.

[Bobmuhthol]

Celtics have the 3rd best defense in the NBA behind Chicago and Philadelphia. The whole raison d'etre of the Celtics is good defense.

[Latrinsorm]

Well, based on what? You don't have to convince me that the Celtics need to be great defensively to succeed given their poor offense, I'm suggesting that they are currently measuring as terrible defensively and in related news are not succeeding.

[Bobmuhthol]

I use Ken Massey's ratings for just about everything sports, so that's where I'm getting the defensive ratings, but to my knowledge he does not release the algorithms.

[Latrinsorm]

Interesting. I'm pretty sure they take into account last year, since they follow last year's ORtgs and DRtgs very closely. That makes a lot of sense for more robust predictions, but suffers for things like quick reads on major roster changes.

[DoctorUnne]

Do you still hate Ray Allen after his game winning four point play?

[Latrinsorm]

I don't personally dislike the guy, I just think he's a great example of big moments vs. total contribution. The Robert Horry of this year, if you will. Obviously that's overstating it a little because he's one of the great shooters of all time and shooting never gets old, but the advanced metrics have not been kind to him the last few years...

-PER averaging 15.3 over the past 3 years, barely above average.
-82games' simple ratings of 3.4, 6.7, 6.4 in that same span. (The 6s are respectable for a starter, top 25ish player, the 3 is not.)
-On/off court changes in DRtg of +5.2, +1.9, -2.9: trending in a very bad direction, although you could make the case that this is more due to Avery Bradley coming on than Allen falling off.
-Passing rating: 3.4, 4.6, 4.3. (This is the Tim Duncan - Dirk Nowitzki range, which is great for a 7 footer but very poor for a guard.)

A lot of this stuff wouldn't be as much of a problem if he fully embraced the Mike Miller / James Jones role. Every time he decides to isolate on offense like it was still 1998, he hurts the team. Every time he is entirely ineffectual on defense (as opposed to Miller / Jones being mostly ineffectual), he hurts the team. Every time he loses out on a rebound that Miller (but probably not Jones) would have gotten, he hurts the team. Are these ever going to show up on highlights? Of course not. The only thing we remember is the big 3, and he'll absolutely have those as well. All I'm saying is I think the net on the court will be negative, which in a smart organization like Miami will inevitably lead to the net off the court being negative as his minutes/roles are reduced.

[DoctorUnne]

We'll see what happens. In the playoffs though with your season on the line and you're down 3 at the end of the game, do you want LeBron taking that shot or Ray Allen? How about when you need 2/2 free throws to put the game out of reach? In my opinion there's no one better in the NBA with those scenarios than Allen. What Allen adds/subtracts on the court during the regular season is not really going to impact whether Miami gets the #1 seed. But that playoff scenario will happen at some point, and his contribution there will be pretty impactful to Miami's title hopes.

[Latrinsorm]

But what if playing someone else would have resulted in us not being down 3 in the first place? It's not like we can bench him for 47 minutes and expect him to be ready to shoot in those pressure situations.

[DoctorUnne]

It's impossible to know, but it's funny how frequently despite all the millions of variables that go into the final result of the basketball game, how many come down to the last play or possession. I think some of it's probably coaching and some of it's due to teams play more/less hard under certain game situations, but I get the feeling Miami would be involved in an equal number of close games whether it's Ray Allen or Mike Miller playing most of the minutes.

[Latrinsorm]

Are the Lakers really in trouble?

-They're 1-4, which is not great. (Insights like these are why I get paid the big bucks.)

-All of their games have been decided by more than 5 points and are therefore significant. However, their losses are all only in the 6-10 range.

-Their offense (as measured by ORtg) is 7th in the league. Their defense (DRtg) is 25th. This early in the season there's still plenty of movement to go in those stats.

-Nash has a serious injury, Kobe is nursing an injury. This would be bad enough anyway, but the Lakers (1) desperately need lots of time together if they have any hope of meshing and (2) are coached by Mike Brown, who is incapable of managing minutes. Last year saw 37.4 for Pau (most since 2006), 38.5 for Kobe (the most by any 33+ year old since 2004, the most ever for a player in his 16th+ season, not only that but only 4 men have ever played more than 35 per game in such seasons: Kobe, Karl Malone, Kidd, and Oakley).

-Kobe has been playing sensationally well, shooting 56% from the field (career high is 46.9%), 42.9% from 3 (career high of 38.3%), FTA/FGA ratio of .429 (his best since 2008). This has allowed him to pile up points with a modest (for Kobe) 29.7% Usage rate.

-Howard has been playing reasonably well, just a hair below his career high in PPG. His rebounds have taken a big dip, but that's to be expected playing next to Pau Gasol instead of Ryan Anderson. Speaking of, Pau has been mediocre, and everyone else has been middling to awful.

Aside from Pau and Nash, the Lakers are all at or above their ceilings... and they're 1-4!!! What happens when Kobe starts sprinkling in some 6 for 28 or 3 for 21 games? Do you pin your hopes on Nash bouncing back from his first serious injury since 2000 and retaining his elite form at the age of 38? Do you think they're going to suddenly play defense?

I think the answer is the Lakers are in trouble.

.

I watched the Nets-Heat game yesterday and something Ian Eagle said made me think. He mentioned how Wade's minutes were low (lowest of his career) and Allen's minutes were high (5th on the team, ahead of Battier by a solid 3.5 minutes per game), and wondered aloud if this was a two-part plan on Miami's part: promise Allen more minutes than he would have gotten in Boston and thereby acquiring him, keeping Wade's minutes low and thereby getting him closer to 100% for the playoffs, especially as his body continues to wear down. I thought this made a lot of sense, but then I thought that I would rather have Terrell Harris taking those minutes, and since I thought that every time Allen was atrocious on defense I thought it quite a lot. After 4 unremarkable college years and 2 unremarkable NBDL years, Harris had a few flashes of brilliance last year (including a 9/14/4 in the Chris Bosh vs. Atlanta game), and I think it would make a lot of sense to start building a young version of the Miami Heat shooter: athletic, make 3s (37% in college and NBDL), willing to accept secondary/tertiary/never touch the ball role (4 years in college and 2 years in NBDL = yes).

Then I noticed that Terrell Harris was in civvies and wondered just what the Heat roster looked like, and it turns out it looks really, really deep:

Point
Chalmers (established NBA player)
Cole (still finding his way)

Wing
James (#1)
Wade (superstar)
Allen (he makes 3s, but is visibly aging, not a good defender)
Mike Miller (ditto)
James Jones (ditto)
Shane Battier (ditto except can at least pretend to defend, and crucially can even do so against smaller PFs)
Terrell Harris (unknown quantity)

Bigs
Chris Bosh (clearly the best of the 3rd best players on each team, and has seen a huge upgrade in confidence and defensive meanness - this is the year he gets his first flagrant foul ever, I can feel it.)
Udonis Haslem (old as shit, but his offensive familiarity with Wade is unsurprisingly excellent. Watch how many times he lubricates Wade's isolations.)
Rashard Lewis (extremely crisp on offense, defense a work in progress)
Joel Anthony (started 51 games last year! and wasn't terrible!)
Josh Harrellson (big body, decent rebounder)
Dexter Pittman (same, plus is happy to take cheap shots, currently injured)

That's a great balance! A little light at point on paper, but James is obviously amazing at that, Wade isn't awful, and Bosh is very good for a center. 4 wings who can drill 3s plus Lewis - it's early but Miami is 3rd up from 9th in 3P% this year, which combines with the penetration of James/Wade/points into killmode squared. They haven't had an opportunity yet, but they have the capability to load up on bigs if necessary (Bynum when healthy, Lakers, Indiana, maybe Denver) without relying on mummies like Ilgauskas, Juwan Howard, Jamaal Magloire. I'll be very interested to see how they set the roster for Memphis on Sunday. The main 9 are clearly James, Wade, Bosh, Chalmers, Battier, Allen, Cole, Haslem, Lewis. The other 4 by game have been (when did that change from 12 to 13? anyway)...

Miller, Jones, Harrellson, Harris
Miller, Jones, Harrellson, Anthony
Miller, Jones, Anthony, Harris
Miller, Jones, Anthony, Harris
Miller, Jones, Harrellson, Anthony

We'll see how Spo tinkers, I think it'll be real interesting.

[SHAFT]

Someone should play a joke on Dwight Howard and tell him the lakers have hired Stan van gundy. Video tape it, would love to see the look on his face

[Latrinsorm]

I'm pretty shocked. I've made no secret that I think Brown is a very poor head coach, and that he was never the guy for this team. Okay. But there are only about 5-10 good coaches anyway, and most of them are already employed. The Lakers massively underachieved last year, why not fire him then and give a new coach time to install a new system? These Lakers already have huge, huge issues in assimilating with three guys who were the #1 guy on their teams last year. Now we're throwing out training camp + 5 games? What on earth is a new coach supposed to do? Dwight Howard is a free agent after this year! This chaos (and millions of dollars, admittedly) is supposed to convince him to come back?

Compound this with the fact that nobody but Phil Jackson runs the triangle, and he isn't coming back. The only ways to go are an offense new to everyone (which defamiliarizes everyone) or an offense familiar to Steve and Dwight, which automatically alienates Kobe. Kobe has never played in a traditional NBA system, and has always been a guy who will let his ego submarine the team. What coach is going to solve this at all, let alone on the fly?

Look at the names mentioned on espn.com.
-Phil Jackson: I happened to see a game from the 93 Bulls-Knicks series today. Phil Jackson's physical deterioration was frightening two years ago, forget about it.
-Stan Van Gundy: inconceivable.
-D'Antoni: again, Kobe has never played in a PnR system. Bring in the quintessential PnR coach? How is that going to work?
-Jerry Sloan: retired rather than deal with Deron Williams' bullshit, which doesn't hold a candle to Kobe's.
-Nate McMillan: got fired from the Trail Blazers after "underachieving" when Brandon Roy's leg fell off and they traded Andre Miller for Ray Felton and about 50 pounds.

Really a baffling move.

[Valthissa]

Our Friday night gabfest spent considerable time discussing why the Lakers fired Brown.

We ruled out 'because he isn't a very good coach' since they knew that when they hired him.

Our working hypothesis is that Jeanie Buss must have leaked to her dad that Phil thought this years laker's were worthy of his talents as a coach.

C

[SHAFT]

All signs are currently pointing towards Jackson as the replacement. If they do bring him in, I'm sure he'll miss a few road trips over the course of the season. The word on the streets is he's healthy, but who knows. I'd love to see it, being a lakers fan and all.

[Latrinsorm]

Hoooo-leeeeee shit, D'ANTONI??? REALLY???

Literally the last time he had a star wing player who wasn't overly keen on sharing the ball he got run out of town. This seems like a major issue!

His teams have always been up-tempo. In terms of pace:
1999 Nuggets - 6
2004 Suns - 5
2005 Suns - 1
2006 Suns - 1
2007 Suns - 3
2008 Suns - 4
2009 Knicks - 2
2010 Knicks - 7
2011 Knicks - 3
2012 Knicks - 5 (and he was only there half a season! Aside: doesn't it seem like he was in NY for a lot shorter than 3.5 seasons?)

2013 Lakers - 17
2012 Lakers - 20
2012 Magic - 29(!!!)

Who on this roster is going to run? Nash probably, Hill maybe, Ebanks if he's still on the team. Pau? Kobe? Dwight? Antawn? No. You can't have a team that half runs and half plods unless the half plodding is Kareem, and Dwight is not Kareem.

Who on this roster is going to stand in the corner to hit 3s a la Phoenix?
-Kobe is shooting at a good clip now but he's historically poor, not to mention that there's a 0% chance Kobe is ever going to just stand in the corner.
-Blake is historically a good shooter, but Blake and Nash as a defensive backcourt? Not even D'Antoni is that crazy.
-Same with Meeks.

Look at the 2010 Suns for a comparison: 40% or better from Grant Hill (SF), Channing Frye (PF), Jared Dudley (SF), and J-Richardson just missed the cut (large SG). The Lakers don't have anyone like that.

As if the roster concerns weren't enough, some guy named Steve Mills (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-12/los-angeles-lakers-hires-d-antoni-as-coach-to-replace-brown) claims that this means Kobe is getting phased out as a decision maker. That doesn't sound like shaky ground at all.

.

How on earth is this going to work?

[Atlanteax]

Maybe kids with 'anxiety disorders' should not be drafted into the NBA?


http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8635475/royce-white-houston-rockets-fined-every-day-remains-away-team

This guy attitude seems like he has gotten used to having everything catered to him in high-school and college...

[Latrinsorm]

If he's right and the Rockets are jerking him around, he's not the bad guy, and it's not that hard to imagine a company treating a mental health situation that way. If the Rockets aren't jerking him around, then he's just using it as an excuse and he is the bad guy... so it comes down to known unknowns. What makes the situation extra weird is McHale's absence: obviously it's for unrelated reasons, but he's by all accounts a players' coach and it's very plausible that he was willing to give the kid more leeway on that basis alone.

.

I watched the second half of the OKC-MEM game last night waiting for the Heat game to start.

Could the Thunder have hit their ceiling? It is apparently impossible for Durant to put on weight, and without it he's embarrassingly easy to push around on defense. Westbrook is still not a point guard. He repeatedly ignores Durant on offense and in general the Thunder are stagnant and unwatchable... except for when they punctuate the lull with sublime, frightening athleticism. One play I must have rewinded 10 times: Westbrook was trotting up on offense, took one step and was at full speed, one foot down a good two feet beyond the arc, one foot down, one foot down, and he had a layup. 7 foot strides!! It was just unbelievable. This is the year for my boy Thabeet (for real this time): he's getting minutes for the first time since 2010, could easily reach 10/10/2 blocks, adds some much needed size for the big boys in the West, people forget he only started playing basketball when he was 15, so on the development curve he's just graduating high school.

How is Memphis so much better on offense? Last two years they have been average offensively and top third defensively. This year their defense is about the same but their offense is top 3. Watching them last night I saw a lot of contested shots go in, but it turns out their eFG% is below average, so that's not it. (They are taking and making a lot more 3s, but it hasn't had a big impact on their overall eFG%.) Where they stand out in four factors are excellent TOV% and ORB%. The ORB% mirrors previous years and is presumably sustainable, the TOV% does not, so let's see if there's been any significant roster changes this year to last...

Z-Bo is back and healthy. (Unless Perk holds a grudge.) Historically he turns it over at 11.5% which is slightly worse than the 9.9% of Marreese Speights (his chief replacement last year and mortal enemy of spelling), plus Randolph obviously gets 100x the touches Speights did and his current 13.8% is worse than his usual. The PG Conley is up to 20.1% from his career mark of 14.9%, so it's not him either. The only starter who's dramatically better is Marc Gasol with a sparkling 5.2 TOV% to go with his excellent (for a center) 19.5 AST%. He's always had passing skill, but it's unlikely he can sustain that. In the past 10 years there have only been 5 centers to maintain even a sub 10 TOV% for a season (although interestingly 4 were also European): Marcin Gortat, Nenad Krstic, Primoz Brezec, Emeka Okafor, and Predrag Drobjnak, and none of them played the minutes Gasol will play. I tried to check for a difference in backup point guard but they didn't appear to use a backup point guard last year. My best guess is a combination of Gilbert Arenas, Jeremy "Don't Call Me Jannero" Pargo, and Josh Selby, so Jerryd Blayless is probably an upgrade there. tl;dr I would expect their turnovers to go up and their offense to go down, especially when their three point shooting comes back to earth. Pump the brakes on getting too excited for the Grizzlies.

.

Then I watched the Heat game. It started so promising, with LeBron regularly posting and toasting. It threw into sharp relief how frustrating it is for him to not do this against every time: the Clippers have good shot blockers and Caron Butler is a tuff guy at SF and LeBron went through them like butter. It's unbelievable how much of a whiner Blake Griffin is, to the point where even his teammates get openly annoyed with it. I know this is a little hypocritical coming from a fan of the team Dwyane Wade plays for, but SERIOUSLY. He's also trending worse: .146 techs per game in 2011, .167 in 2012, .375 so far in 2013.

Then it all came apart, although to be fair Chris Paul probably shouldn't be allowed to take three pointers from A THOUSAND MILES AWAY, he's almost by definition out of bounds. That shot was unreal, conservatively measured at 32 feet, but the barrage brought up some of the same questions we heard last year: going small with a roster that's small to begin with, can Miami defend the paint without giving up 3s? Opponents are shooting very well (.394, 3rd best in the league), especially in their big losses to NY, Memphis, and now LAC. (Although the Clippers graciously coughed up almost all of that lead for a misleading final.) Personally I think it'll end up being just like last year. The Heat gave up .363 from 3, 5th worst in the league, took some real beatings in the regular season (15 point to Indy who went 11 of 18 from 3, for instance), and then they won the title by closing down the paint.

.

What the heck happened to Indiana? Still good defensively, their offense has been an unbelievable train wreck. I believe I'm on record saying going with Hill over Collison was a mistake and that Hill wasn't a point guard, but there's got to be something else going on here, and it's certainly not missing Danny Granger's 40 FG%. Just a small sample size or what? David West is 32...?

[thefarmer]

Houston breakdown plz, L.

[Latrinsorm]

At a glance...
-Harden's usage rate is very high (30.3, which is astonishingly not in the top 5 so far this year).
-I would be very optimistic about Lin, whose turnovers are way down. The shooting will come around.
-They aren't as terrible on defense as I thought they'd be. Credit to Asik I would guess, although how he manages 3.5 friggin' turnovers a game is a mystery to me.

They're probably better than their record indicates: very close loss to Miami, close losses to Denver and at Memphis are nothing to be ashamed of, but they haven't really beaten anyone of import and they haven't really clobbered anyone either. With that said, they're shaping up to be exactly where they don't want to be: just about average, 7 or 8 seed at best. They're definitely looking up at the Spurs, Thunder, Grizzlies, and Clippers. I'm reasonably confident the Nuggets and Lakers will turn it around, that makes 7 at best. They need some wing help but are a little short on trade options and looking at potential 2013 free agents it doesn't look too promising... I don't see one name that is both marquee and likely to actually be available. Gordon Hayward is an interesting one, but I don't see how the Jazz would pass up on the team option. Roll the dice on Josh Smith? Make a run at J.J. Hickson?

The other thing to consider is that Lin is 24, Harden is 23, Asik is 26, and none of them rely on the kind of super freak athleticism that can vanish overnight or with one injury. They can conceivably keep this core together for a good long time and build slow, but I can't think of a time that's really worked. OKC built with very high draft picks, San Antonio the same, none of the guys they have are at the Durant-Duncan level. I guess we'll see! :)

[Drew]

Then I watched the Heat game. It started so promising, with LeBron regularly posting and toasting. It threw into sharp relief how frustrating it is for him to not do this against every time: the Clippers have good shot blockers and Caron Butler is a tuff guy at SF and LeBron went through them like butter. It's unbelievable how much of a whiner Blake Griffin is, to the point where even his teammates get openly annoyed with it. I know this is a little hypocritical coming from a fan of the team Dwyane Wade plays for, but SERIOUSLY. He's also trending worse: .146 techs per game in 2011, .167 in 2012, .375 so far in 2013.

Then it all came apart, although to be fair Chris Paul probably shouldn't be allowed to take three pointers from A THOUSAND MILES AWAY, he's almost by definition out of bounds. That shot was unreal, conservatively measured at 32 feet, but the barrage brought up some of the same questions we heard last year: going small with a roster that's small to begin with, can Miami defend the paint without giving up 3s? Opponents are shooting very well (.394, 3rd best in the league), especially in their big losses to NY, Memphis, and now LAC. (Although the Clippers graciously coughed up almost all of that lead for a misleading final.) Personally I think it'll end up being just like last year. The Heat gave up .363 from 3, 5th worst in the league, took some real beatings in the regular season (15 point to Indy who went 11 of 18 from 3, for instance), and then they won the title by closing down the paint.

The problem with small ball is that it all depends on effort defense. The heat are clearly not interested in breaking any regular season records and, especially on the road, they don't seem to put in the defensive effort level needed to play small ball. I think they are content to get into the playoffs with 55 wins and then go ham. Honestly it might make sense for Spo to use the Warden Joel Anthony and develop Pittman during the mostly irrelevant regular season. They aren't gonna pound Lebron on the block all game during the regular season and they aren't gonna play the kind of super high effort defense that lets the small ball excel during the regular season. Also there is something to be said about not giving your opponents too much tape on how you will be playing in the playoffs.

tl;dr- The Heat should play a more standard lineup during the regular season and switch to high intensity small ball when the post-season nears.

[DoctorUnne]

I think they are content to get into the playoffs with 55 wins and then go ham. Honestly it might make sense for Spo to use the Warden Joel Anthony and develop Pittman during the mostly irrelevant regular season. They aren't gonna pound Lebron on the block all game during the regular season and they aren't gonna play the kind of super high effort defense that lets the small ball excel during the regular season. Also there is something to be said about not giving your opponents too much tape on how you will be playing in the playoffs.

This is why I don't watch the NBA in the regular season. Thankfully, the playoffs take forever so I still get my basketball fix. Have I mentioned how perfect the calendar is set up?

January - NFL playoffs
February - Catch up on non-sports life
March - March Madness
April thru June - NBA playoffs
July/August - World Cup, Summer Olympics or enjoy summer
September thru December - NFL regular season, college football

[Latrinsorm]

The problem with small ball is that it all depends on effort defense. The heat are clearly not interested in breaking any regular season records and, especially on the road, they don't seem to put in the defensive effort level needed to play small ball. I think they are content to get into the playoffs with 55 wins and then go ham. Honestly it might make sense for Spo to use the Warden Joel Anthony and develop Pittman during the mostly irrelevant regular season. They aren't gonna pound Lebron on the block all game during the regular season and they aren't gonna play the kind of super high effort defense that lets the small ball excel during the regular season. Also there is something to be said about not giving your opponents too much tape on how you will be playing in the playoffs.

tl;dr- The Heat should play a more standard lineup during the regular season and switch to high intensity small ball when the post-season nears.I caught a glimpse of Pitt in the Denver game, it looks like he's lost another 20-30 pounds. I really hope he gets some run when he gets healthy, like you said the regular season doesn't matter that much so why not develop the younger guys?

At the same time, I think it's critically important to see what the older guys can bring, Allen and Lewis chief among them, and in real situations. It's not a coincidence that unheralded SGs/SFs have been going off on Miami with Wade hurt and Allen Allen. I continue to be impressed by Lewis' energy, but if he can't turn that into consistently productive energy by the playoffs, that's important. I'm also not loving the way Haslem is moving, if we have to drop him for defensive reasons we need to get Anthony/Pittman/Lewis(???) in his spot ASAP to learn how to approximate Haslem things on offense.

And a great refuse to lose game by LeBron last night. He's just the best. I would be a little worried about the minutes if he was a mere human, but he is obviously not.

[Stanley Burrell]

Mike Woodson has been secretly channeling the Qi of his mentor, Bob Knight the Greater Great. Once it's post-season, if Woodson keeps his goatee at a thick length, the Knicks are winning the championship like it's '94, except ... winning.

Watch, if Woodson throws a chair, Knicks are gonna be like the '96 Yankees starting out. The dudes at MSG won't even have to put the assembled pieces on top of the ice ... I was going to try and make some kind of analogy there. Alright then.

Completely unbiased post. And correct.

[Latrinsorm]

Three interesting historical standings in play this season...

3000 MP seasons
(prorated for strike years)
Wilt Chamberlain - 13
Elvin Hayes, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone - 12
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Gary Payton - 9
Walt Bellamy - 8

9 men. LeBron currently has 7. A few ways to look at 3000: 82 games of 36.6 MP, 63 games of 47.2 MP. So far in his career LeBron has missed no more than 7 games for any reason in any season (which in itself is an impressive stat), and 3000 / 75 = 40.0 MP. LeBron's career average? 39.9. It's definitely in play, although being 100% meaningless I doubt he or the Heat will be too eager to pursue it.

.

30 PER
PER is a metric devised by John Hollinger to describe the overall per-minute contribution of a player relative to an average (arbitrarily designated 15) that controls for pace. Because steals and blocks were only recorded in the NBA starting in 1974, players who were above-average in those categories (Russell, Wilt, Kareem) would probably have seen higher PERs than they did.

It turns out that 30 is a sort of magic number when it comes to PER. There have been a total of 16 seasons in NBA history to meet it:
Michael Jordan - 4 (1988-1991)
Wilt Chamberlain - 3 (1962-1964)
Shaquille O'Neal - 3 (1999-2001)
LeBron James - 3 (2009-2010, 2012)
David Robinson - 1 (1994)
Dwyane Wade - 1 (2009)
Tracy McGrady - 1 (2003)

LeBron's current PER: 30.4. (Currently in second place is Tim Duncan with 27.7. This 2.67 gap would be the largest of any non-LeBron won year since 2002, when Shaq was 2.67 ahead of... Tim Duncan.) Obviously the first thing he can do with another year is tie Jordan for the most of all time, but the second thing he can do is reach a tie atop the list of players with 30 PER and a championship in the same year:
Shaq - 2
Jordan - 1
LeBron - 1

.

MVPs
LeBron is already one of 8 men to win 3 or more NBA MVPs. (Moses, Magic, Larry 3, Wilt 4, Russell and Jordan 5, Kareem 6.) Obviously being one of the 5 most MVP-decorated players is fascinating enough if he gets the fourth, but heightening that is that he and Jordan would be the only non-centers in the group. (In that vein it's also worth remembering that Jordan is by far the smallest man on the list and the only true guard.)

There's also the concept of award shares I've described elsewhere. LeBron currently sits at 6th all time with 4.389. Even if he doesn't win, he only needs a .439 share to pass Bill Russell. (For reference, the second place MVP in the past three years has received a .735, .531, and .495 share.)

[Latrinsorm]

I was reading espn-nba carelessly: adjacent headlines were "Durant posts first career triple-double in win" and "Melo, Knicks bounce back in win" and somehow I put Melo in the first. Given his shall we say unflinching aversion to passing the ball so far this year, I briefly considered whether he could have racked up 10 blocks (absolutely not) or 10 steals (hugely implausible), then settled on seeing how far the 10+ assist game would raise his woeful-so-far average, so I clicked on the box score...

Melo: 26 points on 9 of 22, 9 rebounds, ZERO assists. MVP! MVP! MVP! (For the record, he does have 5 games with 10+ assists, two of which coincided with 10+ rebounds for a triple double.) Tonight puts him on track for 12.83 FGAs per assist and 2942 MP. He would be the first player with that particular combination since Moses Malone in 1982, and only four other men have ever pulled it off: Mike Mitchell twice, Elvin Hayes in 1980 and 1969, Bob Love 3 years in a row, and of course Wilt Chamberlain from 1960 to 1962, including the 50.4 PPG year. I had never heard of Mike Mitchell, but his per 36 career stats are surprisingly similar to Carmelo's:

22.0 pts, 6.2 reb, 1.5 ast, .493 FG%, .216 3P%, .779 FT%, 1.9 TOV, 3.0 PF - once traded for Ron Brewer
24.5 pts, 6.3 reb, 3.1 ast, .456 FG%, .322 3P%, .805 FT%, 3.0 TOV, 3.0 PF - currently plays with Ronnie Brewer

.

Houston is about to outscore the Pacers' 76 in two and a half quarters.

[Latrinsorm]

I thought of something potentially relevant with D'Antoni coaching the Lakers: I remembered reading Bill Simmons talk about how D'Antoni used an unusually small rotation back in the Suns days, and glancing at the last two Laker boxscores there could be a lot to it: 38+ MP for Dwight, Metta, Kobe, and Pau against the Nets, 36+ against the Kings. It's potentially relevant because all the Laker starters are old (Pau, Metta, Kobe) or recovering from serious injury (Dwight) or both (Nash), and it's plausible that such a short rotation could play them into the ground.

So I looked at the first 10 games of various NBA teams in two ways: the number of players with more than 24 minutes played, the number of players with more than 10 minutes played:

2009 Knicks - 6.1, 7.6
2012 Lakers - 5.1, 8.9
2011 Lakers - 4.9, 8.5
2008 Suns - 6.2, 7.7
2013 Heat - 5.3, 8.6

We see how Phil Lakers, Brown Lakers, and Spo Heat are about the same - 5 guys in the 24+ minute range, 8-9 in the 10+ minute range (suggesting that 10+ minutes is roughly equal to what we talk about when we talk about a rotation). We also see how the Mike Suns and Mike Knicks stand out - 6 in 24+, 7-8 in 10+. Consider also how Kobe's career splits are -0.3, -0.3, +0.0, -.004, +.004, +.000 in p/r/a/fg%/3p%/ft%, but last year his splits were -1.3, -1.0, -0.8, -.013, +.043, +.040. Everybody loves what a tough guy Kobe is, but his brain is writing checks his body can't cash anymore. If Mike exacerbates this, it's plausible the Lakers will have nothing left come playoff time, and it'll be another second round drubbing (at best!).

[Kembal]

Ok, Rockets destroying the Knicks (and not due to Lin going off) was unexpected.

[Latrinsorm]

Some pretty eye-popping quotes from this (http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8667785/los-angeles-lakers-pau-gasol-wants-more-touches-post) espn article...

.

New Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni simply felt Antawn Jamison gave the Lakers a better chance to win the game. Asked what he was thinking leaving Gasol, the four-time All-Star, on the bench [for the last 13 minutes of the game], D'Antoni said simply, "I was thinking, 'Boy, I'd like to win this game.' That was the reason."

1. ANTAWN JAMISON??? .250 from 3 on the season, 10 points and 7 rebounds per 36 minutes, First Team All-NBA Worst Defense Antawn Jamison?
2. You're saying this in public??? What is Pau supposed to think about that? How about Dwight? Pau was critical to this franchise winning 2 championships, now he's being benched for Antawn Jamison.

.

While Gasol took responsibility for his poor shooting, he emphasized that it's hard for him to get into the flow of the game when most of his shots come from the perimeter. "All my looks are jump shots," he said. "I would like to see something closer to the basket and not just rolling, especially when Dwight is there. But we'll see. We'll figure it out. We're just starting, pretty much." ... Asked whether Gasol's conditioning is good enough right now to play at that tempo, D'Antoni said, "That could be questionable. You have to ask him. But he'll be rested for tomorrow, that's for sure." Gasol admitted it's going to take time for him and the team as a whole to get into the kind of shape D'Antoni requires to play this style of offense. "I think we all need to improve our conditioning if that's how we're going to continue to play, speed the game up a little more," Gasol said. "Maybe the rotations should be a little shorter. Instead of playing 12 minutes straight, maybe we play eight, rest four, get another eight. Maybe that will help. But again, that's not totally up to me."

Maybe I'm overreacting, but it sounds like Gasol and D'Antoni are pretty much at each others' throats. It makes me wonder if Gasol is gone soon, and D'Antoni is currying favor with Kobe by picking on Pau. It makes a kind of sense: Pau isn't going to submarine the team, Kobe absolutely might, and Kobe's not going anywhere.

[thefarmer]

Thx Latrin for the recap earlier. It was interesting.

Also..


Andrew Bynum out indefinitely
Updated: November 24, 2012, 10:22 PM ET
By Brian Windhorst | ESPN.com
PHILADELPHIA -- Saying Andrew Bynum's knees "are not the same" as when they traded for him in August, the Philadelphia 76ers are now not sure when Bynum will be able to play for them -- if he plays for them at all.

Two weeks after the team announced they hoped Bynum would be cleared to return to practice on Dec. 10, Sixers general manager Tony DiLeo said Saturday the team no longer has any timeline for Bynum to return.

"Bottom line is Andrew is out indefinitely," DiLeo said before the Sixers played the Oklahoma City Thunder. "There are no timelines; we just have to wait and see how he reacts."
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8671136/andrew-bynum-philadelphia-76ers-indefinitely



So glad Houston didn't get end up with this guy.

[Latrinsorm]

Welcome!

What's most interesting to me about Bynum being out indefinitely is the reaction versus the reaction to Nash being out indefinitely. Legs grow back better than knees, but still. Everyone seems to take it as a given that Nash will be back and back to full power.

[Latrinsorm]

Lakers put up a whopping 77 points on the Pacers yesterday, back under .500. Dave McMenamin promptly writes an article lauding Kobe's "mental toughness" (http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/lakers/post/_/id/34738/bryants-mental-makeup-needs-to-be-matched) and ripping his teammates.

Kobe FGA last night: 28 (15 of which came from 16 feet or more, 15!)
Howard and Gasol combined: 19 (18 of which came in the paint, 18!)

Kobe uses last night (FGA + .44 * FTA + TOV): 43.72
Howard and Gasol combined: 29.92

Kobe points per use: .915
Howard and Gasol: .902

But Kobe scored 40 points, so it's obviously everyone's fault but his. Here's a thought: get more assists than your power forward. The Lakers are 7-1 when Kobe has 5+ assists and 0-7 when he has less. "Mental toughness", "excellence", give me a break.

[Atlanteax]

Lakers would probably had won had Kobe only committed 8 turnovers (or less!) than the 10 he registered...

[Ardwen]

the real question is, Where are the numbers on the King's Mascot and Dwight Howard's shooting competitions, the mascot winning is almost to comical to be true.

[Latrinsorm]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I decided to look up how common 10+ turnover games are. It turns out not very, but not astonishingly rare: 29 in the past 10 years. An interesting (albeit totally meaningless) stat is that Kobe is the last player to have a 10+ TOV game too, making him the first to hold that dubious distinction since D-Wade in the 2006 season. The second of these for Wade was an unbelievably bad game: 1 for 8, 15 points (13 for 13 from the line!), 10 turnovers, all in 29(!!!) minutes. Even more unbelievable is that that isn't even the record for least MP in a 10+ TOV game (since 1986, the beginning of br's game logs): the ordinarily turnover-averse Mark Jackson managed it in 28 matched up against the immortal Dana Barros.
the real question is, Where are the numbers on the King's Mascot and Dwight Howard's shooting competitions, the mascot winning is almost to comical to be true.This I had not heard of, but I looked it up and can see how it would enthuse Howard supporters and detractors alike. Support: he doesn't take himself that seriously, plays along, good sense of humor. Detract: he doesn't take himself that seriously, make a God damn free throw.

For grins, Howard is currently on track to miss 448ish free throws this season. This would be the 11th most all time, after...

1968 Wilt - 578
1962 Wilt - 528
1961 Wilt - 523
1967 Wilt - 489
1964 Wilt - 476
1966 Wilt - 475
1969 Wilt - 475
2001 Shaq - 473
1965 Wilt - 472
1963 Wilt - 453

1968 Wilt is pretty staggering: .380 FT% on 932 attempts! The most attempts of a player with a lower % is who else but Ben Wallace who shot .336 on 238 attempts in 2001. The 76ers finished 12th out of 12 in FT% in 1968. The 76ers without Wilt finish 5th. His FT% was so bad and so voluminous it brought down the NBA % by .008.

Oh and also he led the NBA in assists that year. No big deal. And the 76ers came within a 4 point loss in game 7 to the Celtics of getting to the Finals for a chance to repeat as champions. So Dwight should just do that, and throw in 20 rebounds and 20 points per game. That's not too much to ask, is it?

[DoctorUnne]

Dana Barros was my next door neighbor growing up. My dad (who was a contractor) built a basketball court in his backyard. He was a good guy. I went to his basketball camp for a couple of years.

[Latrinsorm]

A pretty bizarre story today about Bogut (http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8689937/andrew-bogut-golden-state-warriors-admits-microfracture-surgery-indefinitely). As recently as November 27th (http://www.nbainjurynews.com/2012/11/warriors-injury-news-andrew-bogut-expected-back-saturday.html) reports were that he would be back by Saturday, here we are 2 days later and the man himself seems to believe he'll be out at least another month. If that wasn't weird enough, he was apparently drawn into a team conspiracy to not mention that he had microfracture surgery and to not contradict his official day-to-day status dating back to early November. I can't think of a basketball precedent for this, or even think of a plausible line of reasoning.

[Ardwen]

There's no NHL so they are using their injury reporting system in the NBA now.

[Gsgeek]

Considering how often he's been injured, he should have been a center for the portland trailbalzers.

[Latrinsorm]

After watching their last two games, the Nuggets remind me a lot of the early 2011 Heat: all-world athleticism, plenty of talent, a little short on outside shooting, a lot short on offensive game plan. I don't think they'll turn it around enough to reach the Finals, but the parallels are interesting.

-Iguodala has always been a LeBron lite with congruent strengths and weaknesses
-Gallinari came up as a brilliant shooter but is putting up a Wade-ish .281 from 3 this year with Wade-ish slippery drives
-McGee has the offensive IQ of Bosh (a beautiful scissor cut against the Warriors), is struggling to find his place in the offense, makes some iffy plays on defense but tries hard, and the same for Koufos to Anthony
-Faried as a Haslem type, although he's hurting for the Haslem jumper

They've also had a very road-heavy schedule and still have the 8th cumulative point margin in the West. George Karl is a good coach, I see good things for them in the future.

[Latrinsorm]

More Lakers implosion news after their loss to the now 6-10 Magic, who entered the game 27th in Professor Hollinger's power rankings:

4th quarter starts. Lakers up 77-73. Lineup is Duhon, Meeks, Ebanks, Jamison, Gasol.
10m left. Lakers up 79-77. World Peace in for Ebanks.
7m left. Lakers up 84-78. Bryant in for Meeks, Howard in for Jamison.

At this point, Pau has been in the game for a total of 28 minutes and 5 minutes straight. Jamison has been in the game for a total of 22 minutes and 12.5 straight.

6m left. Lakers up 84-83. Jamison in for Gasol??? What???
6m left, down 84-86, Howard intentionally fouled: 2 for 2.
3.5m left, down 89-95, Howard intentionally fouled: 0 for 2. Gasol remains on bench.
3m left, down 89-98, Howard intentionally fouled: 1 for 2. Gasol remains on bench.
2.5m left, down 92-103, Howard intentionally fouled: 1 for 2. Gasol remains on bench.

Jamison's line after last substitution: 0 FGAs, 0 FTAs, 0 rebounds, 0 blocks, 0 assists, 0 steals, 0 turnovers, 0 fouls. The Magic end up scoring 30 points in 6 minutes.

.

Alright, so that's pretty awful. Never one to avoid throwing gas on a fire, Kobe Bryant after the game declares that Pau needs to "put [his] big boy pants on" (http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8704495/kobe-bryant-los-angeles-lakers-calls-pau-gasol-loss). I mean, really? Really? It's amazing to me how little flak Kobe receives for making a career out of publicly and erroneously criticizing his teammates when LeBron was public enemy #1 for one measly little celebration.

[Atlanteax]

Lakers really need Steve Nash back and healthy.

[Keller]

Lakers really need Steve Nash back and healthy.

You gonna accept the ND v Alabama bet?

I'll give you double the odds you suggested. so 1:50. I put up $20. If ND wins, you owe me $1000. If Alabama wins, you keep the $20. Deal?

[Atlanteax]

You gonna accept the ND v Alabama bet?

I'll give you double the odds you suggested. so 1:50. I put up $20. If ND wins, you owe me $1000. If Alabama wins, you keep the $20. Deal?

I will just settle for you being butthurt when ND is crushed.

[Keller]

I will just settle for you being butthurt when ND is crushed.

Figures.

[SHAFT]

How bout them Lakers?

[DoctorUnne]

LeBron wins SI Sportsman of the Year. Well deserved.

[Latrinsorm]

I don't know if it hurts the trade prospects for Gasol more to have him out indefinitely or have him routinely ignored on the court and degraded off it by his own team. We know the Lakers want to trade Pau because they already have, what's the plan here? Is there a plan? Really weird situation.

[DoctorUnne]

Lol at Wizards beating Heat

[Latrinsorm]

It happens. Even the 96 Bulls lost some bad games: to the 10 seed Nuggets, the 5 seed Knicks (which doesn't sound so bad except they lost by 32 on national TV), the 14 seed and expansion Raptors. You can even see some of the same storylines, like that 32 point loss. "Bulls give up 10 of 21 from 3, get beaten up by the size of Ewing and Mase, Kukoc is a soft big, that's their Achilles heel, they need great games from their superstars just to compete, the Knicks aren't intimidated." Have a look at actual news stories:

"This was not a fluke," said Hubert Davis (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/11/sports/pro-basketball-so-much-for-karma-knicks-stomp-bulls.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm). "We got into them tonight. We can be this kind of team."
"It was a difficult setback (http://articles.nydailynews.com/1996-03-11/sports/17997981_1_bulls-coach-phil-jackson-knicks) and potentially a humbling loss for the Bulls, who did not get any quality play from anyone other than Jordan (32 points)."
The Bulls fell to 54-7 after the loss, and just as the second article predicted they stumbled to an 18-3 finish, each of those losses coming by exactly 1 point - see? Jordan can't get it done in crunch time.

It happens. Sometimes a magnifying glass gives you an insight into a flaw, sometimes it just makes you blind to the whole picture.

.

Speaking of magnifying glasses, the Lakers are now 8-2 when Bryant has 5 or more assists and 0-8 when he has less, yet all we hear about is how Pau is a bad fit (which to be fair he is) and Dwight can't make free throws (which to be fair he can't). Kobe is routinely touted as one of the best of all time on the basis of team success, but whenever his team struggles it's always, always someone else's fault. Last night's headline: "Kobe's 39 points not enough". Come on!

[Drew]

Lol at Wizards beating Heat

Wizards are gonna win the title.

[Keller]

Wizards are gonna win the title.

every year from 2015 through 2022. Starting 5 of Wall, Beal, S. Muhammed, Andrew Wiggins, and Nene.

Unless LeBron opts out and signs with the Wiz - then move Muhammed to the bench, Wiggins to the wing, and add Lebron.

[DoctorUnne]

I thought this was a fantastic article.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8719297/how-kobe-bryant-missed-shots-translate-new-nba-statistic-kobe-assist

Although ultimately Howard's free throw shooting is going to be a huge problem unless he improves it. I don't understand... free throws seem like something anyone should be able to get very good at with enough practice. The difference in Howard's value if he shoots 75% from the line is enormous. If he had Kobe's DNA he would realize that and work at it until it happened.

[Drew]

I thought this was a fantastic article.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8719297/how-kobe-bryant-missed-shots-translate-new-nba-statistic-kobe-assist

Although ultimately Howard's free throw shooting is going to be a huge problem unless he improves it. I don't understand... free throws seem like something anyone should be able to get very good at with enough practice. The difference in Howard's value if he shoots 75% from the line is enormous. If he had Kobe's DNA he would realize that and work at it until it happened.


I have a better 3 point shot than free throws. In fact I can't hit anything straight on, and I practiced so much when I was playing when I was younger. But I never had anything better than 50% from the line.

[Latrinsorm]

I thought this was a fantastic article.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8719297/how-kobe-bryant-missed-shots-translate-new-nba-statistic-kobe-assistThe article has potential but really makes a bad choice in christening Kobe for two reasons: one, it's like naming a clutch performance after LeBron, you're just begging for overreactions; two, it obscures the underlying principle by focusing on Kobe this year. It so happens that the easiest shots to offensive rebound are close shots and 3s. Can I explain why stepping one foot forward and taking a long two makes a shot harder to rebound? no I cannot, I am merely citing an empirical fact. Here's why this is important: Kobe from 2009-2012 took 41%, 42%, 39%, and 37% of his FGAs from those two zones. This year that figure is up to 53%. (Where did this improvement come from? The 10-23 feet range, down from an average of 48% to 31%.) His FTA/FGA hovered in the .33-.36 range for those 4 years, this year it's at .44. His FG% is the highest of his career. And yes, the number of offensive rebounds for his team goes up too.

Combine this newfound shot selection with a usage rate in the 30s, what is still not an incredible FG%, and playing with two 7 footers and you get Kobe leading the league in shots that generate offensive rebounds. The key is the shot selection, though, and it's frustrating that the writer even points out Carmelo's similar foibles in this area, goes into a deeper discussion of mid-range vs. close range, and never once points out the astonishing change in Kobe's attack pattern.
Although ultimately Howard's free throw shooting is going to be a huge problem unless he improves it. I don't understand... free throws seem like something anyone should be able to get very good at with enough practice. The difference in Howard's value if he shoots 75% from the line is enormous. If he had Kobe's DNA he would realize that and work at it until it happened.Practice doesn't make perfect, though, perfect practice makes perfect. Shaq or Biedrins could practice their horrible form a million times and never get a decent %. The player has to sit down and say "this thing I'm doing is bad, I need to completely rebuild it under the direct control of a coach".

[DoctorUnne]

Practice doesn't make perfect, though, perfect practice makes perfect. Shaq or Biedrins could practice their horrible form a million times and never get a decent %. The player has to sit down and say "this thing I'm doing is bad, I need to completely rebuild it under the direct control of a coach".

Which you would think he has enough incentive to do (money, rings, all-time great status)

[Atlanteax]

No comment on Heat losing to the Knicks by 20 points for a 2nd time, and w/o Carmelo Anthony?

[Latrinsorm]

Which you would think he has enough incentive to do (money, rings, all-time great status)I would think that, but he's not the first and won't be the last player with incredible but ultimately unrealized talent. Just look at Kobe.

And to be fair, Dwight will have made $100 million in salary alone at the end of this year. I can't fault the guy too much for thinking "I really am great, haters gonna hate".
No comment on Heat losing to the Knicks by 20 points for a 2nd time, and w/o Carmelo Anthony?I have three comments:

1. I've never seen that two-man wedge screen deployed by Anthony and Battier at the end of the 1st quarter. Given Battier's recent return and Anthony's general lack of offensive awareness, it could very well have been accidental, but it's still an interesting concept.

2. I told you guys that for all his personal brilliance Carmelo wasn't that important to team success.

3. The Knicks go berserk from 3, Wade and Bosh play terribly. That didn't happen 4 times in last year's 7 game series, it's not going to happen this year either. Not worried.

[Atlanteax]

Another Kobe article, decently written, about how much of an influence he has on the Lakers due to force of personality ... it even mentions Peyton Manning.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8722474/kobe-bryant-flexing-power

[Latrinsorm]

Dwight Howard tells Steve Nash to take his maple syrup and shove it (http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8724580/los-angeles-lakers-dwight-howard-shuns-free-throw-pointers-kobe-bryant-sees-root), saying "I just have to go up there and shoot it my way and not get caught up in what everybody else is saying".

Steve Nash, career .904 FT%, second highest of all time, .0004 behind Mark Price. Good call there, Mr. Howard.

.

Another interesting point raised by Kobe: Shaq hit his free throws when they mattered. Let's test that hypothesis, shall we? Using basketball reference's indispensable play index +, we can find Shaq's playoff FTs starting in the 2001 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/event_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=onealsh01&event_code=fta&year_id=2001&is_playoffs=Y&team_id=&opp_id=&quarter=&time_remain_quarter=0-3&margin=0-5) season under the conditions that neither team is leading by more than 5 points and there are 3 minutes left in any given quarter, then scan the list for 4th quarter and overtime. It turns out he went 0 for 1 that year in a game the Lakers would nevertheless win against the Spurs.

Now 1 shot is probably one of those "small sample size" things you hear so much about, and it turns out 2002 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/event_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=onealsh01&event_code=fta&year_id=2002&is_playoffs=Y&team_id=&opp_id=&quarter=&time_remain_quarter=0-3&margin=0-5) is a bit more robust: 9 of 13 over the 4th quarter and overtime. Still, not terribly compelling size. Let's look at the regular season...

2001 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/event_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=onealsh01&event_code=fta&year_id=2001&is_playoffs=N&team_id=&opp_id=&quarter=4&time_remain_quarter=0-3&margin=0-5): 23 for 46 in the 4th, 6 of 11 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/event_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=onealsh01&event_code=fta&year_id=2001&is_playoffs=N&team_id=&opp_id=&quarter=5&time_remain_quarter=0-3&margin=0-5) in OT, total of 29 for 57, good for 50.9%, well below his season average of 57.2% but not significantly so (50.9 +/- 13.2).
Similar stories in 2002 (http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/event_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=onealsh01&event_code=fta&year_id=2002&is_playoffs=N&team_id=&opp_id=&quarter=5&time_remain_quarter=0-3&margin=0-5): 11 of 22 in 4Q and 0 for 3 in OT and 2OT. Putting both years together we have...

crunch time: 40 for 82 = 48.8 +/- 11.0
overall: 1525 for 2651 = 57.5

Probably the same, but definitely not better.

.

Does it really matter that Kobe was wrong? Not really. Maybe it speaks to his underlying, irrational belief in the property of clutchness. Or maybe his experience with being a mediocre to poor 3 point shooter that eagerly takes such shots with the game on the line and gets lionized for it (hit or miss!) has reinforced to him that narrative trumps numbers every time. If you just say it with enough confidence and get people to believe you, it becomes true.

[Latrinsorm]

So I decided to look through 82games.com regarding the Heat and found some interesting data, some expected and some not.

Ray Allen
1. ...is killing them on defense. With him off the court they're at 103.0 points allowed per possession, top 10 in the league. With him on the court that number balloons to 112.0, dead last.
2. ...isn't helping them very much and may even be hurting them on offense. Their points per possession goes down very slightly, but their eFG% and assist rate go down quite a bit.
3. With all that said, the lineup of Chalmers-Allen-Wade-James-Bosh has been *wildly* effective, netting 25 points per 100 possessions, balancing a horrific defense of 121 with an impossible offense of 146. Though I am usually leery of the by position figures, by those metrics Allen has been significantly more effective at SF than SG, which stands to reason given that his #1 problem is lack of quickness and he isn't terribly undersized at SF.

Udonis Haslem
1. ...is just killing them. His simple rating (a combination of own and opposing PER and net on/off) is at -13.4, which would be the worst in the league if he qualified (requires 40% MP, he has 37%). His jumper has completely abandoned him: 22.7 FG% on jumpers this year. This has perhaps led him to try too hard at getting close, resulting in a dramatic increase in turnovers. His rebounding rate is about the same, but he's fouling more and drawing charges less. Both the offense and defense are better with him off the floor.
2. ...may or may not still technically be a co-captain, but in any case is universally beloved and respected in Miami, and has an unnerving grasp of what Wade wants done during his isolations. After playing 90% of his minutes at PF last year, he's playing 67% at C this year - does whatever the team wants without complaint.
3. ...is 32 years old, and may just be done. Consider that Horace Grant averaged an 18.3 PER from 1991 to 1997, turned 32 and saw his numbers go off a cliff to 13.5 for the rest of his career. Or consider Pau Gasol, who is also 32, out of position, and just can't seem to overcome anymore.

Chalmers and Cole
1. By the same simple rating mentioned above, Chalmers is at -6.7 this year compared to last year and Cole is at +6.7. I really felt like Chalmers turned a corner last year, but this year has not borne that out.
2. After a reasonable -2.4 PER gap last year, the Heat are at -6.2 PER at point guard this year.
3. And the Heat have no other real point guard options. Ray Allen is too slow for 2 guards, he'll foul out in about 13 seconds guarding points.

Some of this also shows up in rotation specifics: last year's relatively successful 2Q starting lineup of Cole-Miller-Battier-Haslem-Bosh can't work anymore with Haslem's issues alone, but it's further compromised by putting Battier in the starting lineup and giving his sub spot to Allen. After winning the second quarter last year by 2.1 points, the Heat are tied in it this year.

On paper the ideal would be to just drop Haslem entirely. Starting 5 of Chalmers, Wade, Battier, James, Bosh; Cole and Anthony (currently at 7% MP after 42% last year) off the bench for sure, then two of Miller/Lewis/Allen/Jones. You can't just drop Haslem though, and you have to play Allen or he gets whingey, so I don't know how the Heat make it work as well as last year. The counterpoint is they may not really need to: the East is weaker, the Thunder are weaker, no one out West really looks like a juggernaut. If LeBron returns to last year's all-universe form from the all-world form he's currently puttering around in, maybe that's all it'll take to win 16.

[DoctorUnne]

Happy to see Ray Allen is apprently still helping the Celtics by playing for the Heat then according to you. Still think he will win a playoff game for you at some point.

[Latrinsorm]

An odd rock-paper-scissors developing in the East:

The Knicks have blown out the Heat twice.
The Heat have blown out the Nets twice.
The Nets are on their way to their second close win over the Knicks, and under remarkably different circumstances:

In the first New York New York game, the Knicks went a putrid 6 of 21 from 3, Carmelo had an incomprehensible 25 field goal attempts to 1 assist ratio, Jerry Stackhouse exploded for 14 points in 22 minutes, starting Nets front court of Lopez and Humphries.

Tonight they are an incendiary 12 for 23 so far, Carmelo at a much better (but still pathetic) 20 to 3, Jerry Stackhouse at 0 points in 19 minutes, starting Nets front court of Blatche and Evans (which is pretty staggering), same result.

.

Meanwhile, the Lakers. Dwight Howard leads the Lakers with 3 assists. Dwight Howard! 3! It's the second time this year the Lakers finish with 11 or fewer assists, only 4 other teams have even done it once. Kobe played 41 minutes. At 9-13, they need to finish 42-18 (70%) to match last year's four seed or they're taking their 25% road winning % into round 1.

[Latrinsorm]

Final thought: what's the record for number of head coaches in one season? You know you want to, Jim Buss!

[Gsgeek]

Final thought: what's the record for number of head coaches in one season? You know you want to, Jim Buss!

You know Phil is just saying either: Thank god I didnt take that job again!! or Serves them right for going cheap and not hiring me!!

[Latrinsorm]

A good article (http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/45058/heres-why-the-lakers-have-been-so-terrible) from Zach Lowe (of course) that among other things details Dwight Howard's physical issues, and how they are impacting the Lakers on offense and defense. Let's look at some of the stats...

-In the past 5 years, Dwight's TRB% (percentage of available rebounds acquired) has been eerily consistent, ranging from a low of 21.7% to a high of 22.0%, routinely in the top 2 in the league. This year he is at 18.1%, outside of the top 10.
-His BLK% has actually gone up slightly compared to that same 5 year span (5.3% vs. 5.1%) but so has his foul rate (3.7 per 36 minutes instead of 3.2).
-His traditional scoring stats are pretty indistinguishable: location, FG%, drawing fouls, missing free throws, assists, turnovers, it all looks very much the same.
-Zach brings up the point of PnR finisher, so if we look at Synergy we see that Howard is used as a roll man 7.4% of the time (34 touches) and generates 0.97 points per possession. Unfortunately we can't look at past years on Synergy's site, but we can compare to (for instance) Tyson Chandler, who is used as a roll man 38.3% of the time (80 touches) and generates an astonishing 1.46 points per possession.

The really baffling thing is Howard's on/off splits...
2011: +6.9 offense, -3.0 defense
2012: +2.4 offense, -6.8 defense
2013: -7.4(!) offense, +1.8(!!!) defense

It makes no sense at all that Dwight Howard makes the Laker defense worse unless Dwight Howard just isn't Dwight Howard anymore. Then the question becomes whether he's still recovering and/or getting back into shape (which is almost certainly the case) or whether major invasive back surgery has permanent negative implications for basketball ability (which seems pretty plausible too).

.

An interesting quirk in LeBron James' game this year is that he is shooting an astonishing .444 from 3, annihilating his career high .362 from last year. Again we unfortunately can't look into the past in Synergy, but the breakdown suggests this might actually be a maintainable % for him (which should terrify any opponent)... he is currently 17 of 28 from 3 in spot-up situations (and 4 of 4 in spot-up 2s), good for 1.69 points per possession, most of any player in the NBA. Better than Ray Allen (1.32), Ryan Anderson (1.10), Steph Curry (1.25), Kevin Durant (1.34). Everywhere else from 3 he's pretty miserable, including a putrid 5 of 17 in isolation 3s, but think about this for a second. What if LeBron has made himself into a spot-up shooter? It solves the problem of Wade and James duplicating each others' abilities (if only in one direction), it gives him a low effort way to contribute, it makes matching up with him with a traditional 4 even more brutal... it's very, very interesting if it's more than a small sample size quirk.

[DoctorUnne]

An interesting quirk in LeBron James' game this year is that he is shooting an astonishing .444 from 3, annihilating his career high .362 from last year. Again we unfortunately can't look into the past in Synergy, but the breakdown suggests this might actually be a maintainable % for him (which should terrify any opponent)... he is currently 17 of 28 from 3 in spot-up situations (and 4 of 4 in spot-up 2s), good for 1.69 points per possession, most of any player in the NBA. Better than Ray Allen (1.32), Ryan Anderson (1.10), Steph Curry (1.25), Kevin Durant (1.34). Everywhere else from 3 he's pretty miserable, including a putrid 5 of 17 in isolation 3s, but think about this for a second. What if LeBron has made himself into a spot-up shooter? It solves the problem of Wade and James duplicating each others' abilities (if only in one direction), it gives him a low effort way to contribute, it makes matching up with him with a traditional 4 even more brutal... it's very, very interesting if it's more than a small sample size quirk.

If my NFL picks superiority is not significant because of sample size then neither is this! I'm already regressing to the mean and I expect LeBron to do the same soon.

[Latrinsorm]

True, which is why it would be so fascinating to have last year's data. I've sent the Synergy people a polite email, so far nothing in response.

[Latrinsorm]

In honor of Carmelo Anthony missing what would have been the 667th game of his career, I thought I would look over his team's performance over the years when he is out.

The first surprising thing is that he is not very durable. Out of a possible 749 games including tonight's, he has played only 666, or 89%, or 73 of every 82. (By comparison LeBron's number is 710 out of 743, 96%, 78.) I've commented before about how Carmelo has the very poor fortune of being drafted so near an all-time great and indestructible basketball cyborg, but it's still surprising just how far he's behind. They're each listed at 6'8", Carmelo at 230 (seems about right) and LeBron at 240 (at least 20 pounds heavier in solid muscle IRL). Not only that, but even Carmelo's MP slouches in comparison: 36.2 per game (53rd all time) to 39.8 (6th).

But on to the real analysis. All I do is sum up the games Carmelo played in vs. the games his team played without him. I restrict myself to seasons where he played 70 games or 2000 MP (prorated for lockouts), and that turns out to be all of them except for the current one (of course).

His teams' records with him: 420-305, 59%, 48.2 wins per 82 games
Without him: 40-39, 51%, 41.5 wins per 82 games.
Thus his presence is worth 6.72 wins per season.

For reference, here are some other figures including two I have mentioned before, including how many total games missed to give a sense of sample size...
LeBron James - 26.86 (32)
Larry Bird - 18.15 (43) *
Hakeem Olajuwon - 16.64 (88)
Tim Duncan - 14.57 (71)
Carmelo Anthony - 6.72 (79)
Kobe Bryant - 4.94 (89)

* Game logs only go back to 1986, so we miss 13 relevant games from the first half of Bird's career.
** I would love to include Jordan in this list but he only missed 7 games in 11 qualifying non-Wizards seasons so there wouldn't be any point. However, the Wizards were 30-30 (.500) with him and 7-15 (.318) without him in 2002, so there is that.

[Latrinsorm]

Another tough night for Haslem. Started the game, played 18 minutes, scored no points, pulled down no rebounds, blocked no shots. He's the 21st frontcourt player to pull that off in the last 10 years. It's just bad. Anthony is back in the rotation, but Lewis needs to be the 3rd big. Or throw Pittman out there. Haslem is killing them. This is Willie Mays falling down in center field territory, give the guy some dignity and pull the plug.

[Latrinsorm]

Carmelo Anthony is getting a few mumbles of MVP support in the media. Two interesting stats:

1. Carmelo is currently putting up 2.0 assists per game. This would be the lowest such average for any MVP since Moses Malone in 1983. In fact, Moses Malone is the only MVP to not make it to 2 per game, doing it all three times he won the award.

2. Carmelo is currently 17th in the NBA in win shares (a made up stat). This would be the second lowest of all time, surpassing only Bill Walton's 19th place finish in the 1978 season, when he played 58 games. Of the 57 MVPs awarded...
30 were 1st in win shares (52.6%),
another 9 were 2nd (68.4%),
another 8 were 3rd or 4th (82.5%),
another 6 were 5th through 8th (93.0%)
...the remaining 4 were Steve Nash (10th), Allen Iverson (10th), Steve Nash (15th), and Bill Walton (19th).

[Atlanteax]

I'd say Carmelo Anthony is only getting MVP consideration out of quasi-desperation to see if determine if there is anyone other than LeBron who deserves to win it this year.

[LimChori]

If the MVP award was based purely on stats then you'd be right about Carmelo not deserving of the award.

Carmelo right now is playing on one of the best teams in the league and he has been their unquestioned leader.

Being the best player on one of the best teams should garner MVP consideration, especially, since there is no clearly defined second banana on the Knicks (Felton doesn't count).

[Atlanteax]

If the MVP award was based purely on stats then you'd be right about Carmelo not deserving of the award.

Carmelo right now is playing on one of the best teams in the league and he has been their unquestioned leader.

Being the best player on one of the best teams should garner MVP consideration, especially, since there is no clearly defined second banana on the Knicks (Felton doesn't count).

So how does that make him potentially the most valuable player in the league?

It *should* be centered on determining the player who is (1) playing exceptionally well, (2) individually compels team to 'over-perform' in wins, and (3) raises the level of play of teammates, augmenting #2.

I do not believe anyone can explicitly state/explain how Carmelo improves the play of his teammates. When Steve Nash won, it was clearly obvious. When LeBron won, you could perceive how his tremendous diversity as a player compels the Miami Heat to excel.

[Keller]

The Orlando Magic have a better record than the Los Angeles Lakers.

I repeat, the Orlando Magic have a better record than the Los Angeles Lakers.

[LimChori]

So how does that make him potentially the most valuable player in the league?

It *should* be centered on determining the player who is (1) playing exceptionally well, (2) individually compels team to 'over-perform' in wins, and (3) raises the level of play of teammates, augmenting #2.

I do not believe anyone can explicitly state/explain how Carmelo improves the play of his teammates. When Steve Nash won, it was clearly obvious. When LeBron won, you could perceive how his tremendous diversity as a player compels the Miami Heat to excel.

I never said that he deserves the MVP award, I only said that he deserves MVP consideration due to the success of his team.

But, since you asked this is why I think Carmelo should deserve the MVP award this season:

28.0 PPG (Second in the NBA) on a winning team (Knicks) that is performing far better then expectations. 26.3 PER and is clearly the leader on a team that has a super charged offense. Shooting at over a 40% clip from 3 and a overall 47% FG % while playing a new position (Power Forward).

With that being said though I'd vote Kevin Durant as the MVP over Melo as of right now.

[Latrinsorm]

If the MVP award was based purely on stats then you'd be right about Carmelo not deserving of the award.

Carmelo right now is playing on one of the best teams in the league and he has been their unquestioned leader.

Being the best player on one of the best teams should garner MVP consideration, especially, since there is no clearly defined second banana on the Knicks (Felton doesn't count).I would argue that Chandler has been their best player, and would even questionably suggest him as the leader for his enormous defensive presence and general yappiness.

I would also argue that the Knicks' excellent offense is due primarily to their very low turnover rate (best in the league after 4th worst last year) and very high 3P%, both of which are only loosely attributable to Carmelo. Felton has plenty of flaws, but his 12% TOV rate is very respectable, and a huge improvement over Lin's 21.4%. Having Kidd take 3s instead of Iman Shumpert, Felton instead of Toney Douglas, neither of these are Carmelo's doing.

His jump in points per game is eye-catching, but in 2010 he put up 28.2 a game on a team that was only 4 games out of 1st place at the end of the season, and managed to crack 3 assists a game while doing so. He received only cursory MVP votes then, I don't see why the case should be any different now. And to your point about expectations, this is his 3rd (2nd and a halfth) year on the team. It's not like the Knicks were a 7 seed without him and a 1 seed with him, which I agree would be compelling. He was on both squads, even though his level of play has increased we shouldn't believe that alone has lifted the Knicks.

I think it really just comes down to Atlanteax's point. Voter fatigue and desperation.

[LimChori]

I agree with the voter fatigue but, wouldn't Kevin Durant be a more logical choice for MVP consideration then Melo then?

[Latrinsorm]

Although it's weird to say I think Durant is suffering from the same problem. He's finished 2nd in MVP voting twice and entered the year as the clear #2, which is almost as boring as a clear #1. (Bizarrely, he finished 2nd in 2010, when the Thunder were the 8 seed. In 2011 the Thunder improved to 4th and he finished 5th, and in keeping with the general travesty of the 2011 vote he finished beyond Kobe who was playing with Gasol and 6th man of the year Odom. Kobe was 5th in scoring, Durant was 1st. I think people sort of remember that as Durant finishing 2nd because he was clearly the 2nd best player.) Meanwhile Carmelo hasn't gotten a single MVP vote the last two years, and as Steve Kerr brought up last night it was Carmelo who was the returning star that wrecked team chemistry last year. In that sense his storyline is much newer, and it doesn't hurt to do it in NY City instead of OK City.

.

Ugly MIA-DAL game, but there were two sequences that I thought were really telling:

1. 3:34 left in the second quarter, Dallas with the ball. Dahntay Jones has the ball on the right wing and is being guarded by Wade, Marion (guarded by James) offers a screen going towards the center of the floor, Jones hesitates. First cool thing: rather than waiting for Jones to move, James jumps him a la Joel Anthony, even throwing in Anthony's weird head wiggle thing. Marion slips the screen and stands politely in the corner where he presents 0 threat, Wade follows nonchalantly. Next cool thing: as Jones passes the ball to Collison (guarded by Mike Miller), James immediately switches again and aggressively contains Collison. Collison passes back to Jones, and James again switches onto Jones, who gets to the paint where Kaman has been standing looking goofy for the entire possession, but can't squeeze the pass through Bosh (effectively fronting Kaman) and Wade (nothing better to do so is in the paint).

Now, the man he was guarding did get into the paint, so it's not that James was terrifically successful with his 1-on-1 defense. What stands out is that three times in one possession he willingly and aggressively switched onto the ball handler. I really hate to pick on Carmelo, it's nothing personal, but when you watch a Knicks game keep track of how many times he (and a lot of other Knicks) lazily call for a switch as they jog halfheartedly into a screen. The Knicks still play good overall D because Chandler erases so many of these breakdowns, but it's one of the things you would want from a leader type (going back to our MVP discussion). Admittedly LeBron does the same thing at times, but especially since he's been on the Heat and especially in the past two years, he has routinely been the #1 engine on the court on defense. It's a little announcer-aphoristic to say, but I really believe when the biggest star on the team and in the league puts out that effort the other guys naturally fall in line, and vice versa. LeBron does so much that doesn't show up in the boxscore, and his boxscores are already pretty damn impressive.

2. O.J. Mayo has been putting up some good numbers and getting some good pub, and he's definitely rejuvenated his career. I haven't seen a lot of him, but from what I saw tonight he's a butcher on the defensive end. Twice, twice he bit on Wade pump-fakes from three. Biting on a Wade pump-fake ever is inexcusable, let alone from three, let alone twice. A lot of guys have made fine careers out of being one-way gunners (Allen, Ray), but people talking about him being an All-Star need to pump the brakes.

[Latrinsorm]

Carmelo can now lay claim to being a league leader... in technical fouls. (Jermaine O'Neal gets special mention though, for amassing 7 in a mere 319 minutes played, a 45 minute 34 second to the technical clip that obliterates Rasheed's 71m44s rate in his 41 tech season.) At 8, Carmelo is halfway to the automatic 1 game suspension at 16 techs, which is a little troubling given that the Knicks are only 31.7% through the season.

Lost in the shuffle in the game of who can be the biggest dickhead, the Knicks scored ***45*** points in the 4th quarter, 32 of which came in the 6:45 following Carmelo's ejection. As Carmelo left the Knicks were -18 in 41 minutes, they finished +14 in 7 minutes.

For his career, LeBron has 35 techs (one every 810 minutes) and has never been ejected. Carmelo has 102 (one every 236 minutes) and has been ejected 5 times. Rasheed's career figure is 317 and counting (one every 114 minutes) and 26 ejections, although he has only had 6 flagrants, so he's got that going for him. (Shaq had 36!!! Take it easy, big fella.)

[Latrinsorm]

Four notes about Kobe's 37 points last night...

1. Dating back to 1986, there have been 6 players with 41 or more FGAs in a single game. Allen Iverson, David Robinson, Chris Webber, and Dominique Wilkins all did it once (Robinson's famously to win the scoring title over Shaq). Michael Jordan did it 4 times. Kobe Bryant has now done it 8 times.

2. It is the least points out of any of those 16 games, surpassing Wilkins' 38 with 34. (Kobe also has the most points out of any of these 16 games with his 81, of course.)

3. He is by far the oldest to accomplish the feat, annihilating Jordan's age 29.92 with 34.33. This is even more astonishing when we remember that before last night Kobe had 43,375 regular season MP to Jordan's 24,111.

4. I've detailed earlier how Kobe's sudden (and astonishing) change in shot selection has been very much for the better, and last night was no exception, finishing right around 50% of FGAs from close or 3. But when it came time for a game winning shot, Kobe chose a contested 19 footer. This continued in overtime, with only 1 of 6 FGAs coming from the power zones. He could just have been tired, or this could be a habit he just can't shake. Now you may be saying "wait, the Lakers won, what's the problem?" The problem is Kobe isn't going to shoot 50% on long jumpers every night. Over the long haul he's going to shoot 40%, put his team in a relatively disadvantageous position to get the rebound, and not get fouled.

[Latrinsorm]

I watched the two big games yesterday.

-Hideous, hideous uniforms.

-I can't believe how dysfunctional the Laker offense is. They finally, finally started running the Nash-Howard pick and roll late in the game, and of course it was unstoppable, so of course the rest of the Lakers began sabotaging it. Even goodfella Pau Gasol decided to post up right in Nash's driving lane. (And I'm still not sure that dunk at the end of the game really happened.) It must be unbelievably frustrating being a Laker fan.

-World Peace's knockout elbow on Novak was frightening. I'm not 100% convinced it was unintentional, and I'm a big World Peace fan.

-If JR Smith and Kobe Bryant had guarded each other the whole game they easily could have put up 50 points a piece. Amusing to watch but sad to see how far Kobe has fallen on the defensive end. (And obnoxious how he'll probably be All-Defense 2nd team this year anyway.)

-I can't believe how dysfunctional the Thunder offense is. Durant is clearly the second best player in the league, and arguably the best on offense, and he goes minutes at a time without touching the ball. He finished the 1st quarter with ONE SHOT. It's a testament to Westbrook and Durant's unbelievable talent level that OKC is still the #1 offense in the league, but it has to be unbelievably frustrating to watch Westbrook making the same inexplicable decisions year after year after year. Not just bad decisions, decisions that could never possibly make sense to anyone who has ever played basketball.

-OKC took at least 7 seconds to inbound the ball on their disastrous final play. I couldn't believe they didn't call it, and I couldn't believe OKC didn't use a timeout.

.

At the end of the day, I don't think we really learned anything new. The Thunder and Lakers are unbeatable on paper but can't get out of their own respective ways (the Lakers much worse than the Thunder at that, obviously), the Knicks live and die by the 3 (17-2 when they shoot 36% or better, 3-6 when they don't), LeBron James is really, really good (yeah).

[DoctorUnne]

No love for the Celtics' blowout of the Nets? I can't wait until the #7 seed Celtics sweep the #2 seed Knicks in the first round!

[Latrinsorm]

Well, no. The Nets are not a very good team. They're (still) built on 3 players who are good but not that good in Johnson, Williams, and Lopez. If they hadn't resurrected Andray Blatche they wouldn't even be in the playoffs. They're 3-4 in close games and they've had reasonably good health, so they haven't been especially unlucky. A coaching change isn't going to help, who's even out there? SVG doesn't want it. I still can't imagine Phil coming back, and certainly not for this lumbering team. Jerry Sloan? lol.

I also am not too convinced the Celtics are making the playoffs. They're in now but only barely, they desperately need to rest Pierce and Garnett down the stretch, Rondo still hasn't made the leap.

[Latrinsorm]

Very baffling move by Spoelstra in the last Heat game, giving Harrellson 18 minutes off the bench with Haslem's injury opening a big man spot, more than doubling his season total. Meanwhile Lewis is languishing on the bench, having not played meaningful minutes since 10 games ago in Atlanta. Lewis started the season playing in every one of Miami's first 11 games and shooting a preposterous 53.6% from 3. His rebounding and defense were admittedly not good, but I at least thought his energy level was promising. Miami went 8-3, their 3 losses at NYK by 20, at MEM by 18, at LAC by 7 have all turned out to be against quality opponents. (And Lewis played very well in the Knicks and Clips losses.)

I just don't get it. We have tried and tested alternatives to Ray Allen's traffic cone defense in Miller and even Harris, why keep him out there rather than Lewis, who might turn into a less embarrassing defender with reps? Especially since we could do a lineup of (for instance) Lewis and Anthony as bigs, three good defenders on the perimeter (James/Battier, Wade, and Cole?). Lewis' sublime 3 point ability makes up for Anthony's generally putrid offensive game and vice versa on the defensive end, how is this a bad plan? The bulk of Lewis' time came next to Bosh and Haslem, both of whom (this year) are struggling on defense. Compare to Allen, who as a very poor perimeter defender exacerbates the Heat's low rim protection, breakdowns of which in turn result in more 3s, more rotations equals less energy to spend on the offensive end.

I think I said it before, but Haslem's injury really gives us the opportunity to explore a rotation of Chalmers/Cole at point, James everywhere, Wade/Battier/Miller as wings, Bosh/Anthony/Lewis as bigs. Also known as the same rotation that won the title last year, except Haslem has fallen apart so we substitute Lewis and hope we gain more on offense than we lose on defense, and with friggin' >50% 3 point shooting it seems we have a pretty good shot.

[DoctorUnne]

I also am not too convinced the Celtics are making the playoffs. They're in now but only barely, they desperately need to rest Pierce and Garnett down the stretch, Rondo still hasn't made the leap.

Maybe, just don't forget they were one win away from making LBJ retain the huge choke artist title and preventing about 1,000 lovefest emails from you in the last six months. And the only guy they lost since then is a guy you claim to have made your team worse.

[Latrinsorm]

It is strange how much worse they seem this year with the same roster. Looking at the 82games numbers, Garnett is about the same, they're getting more MP and production out of Pierce, Terry gives them about what Allen did, Rondo has taken a step back, Bass fell off a cliff, Green has been a little better than Pietrus, Lee has been much worse than Bradley (so his return might help even more than we think). The listed names put them at 6.858 weighted simple rating vs. 13.825 last year, but 82% to 73% MP. If we fill the gap with Stiemsma and Dooling (who were brutal) we get the same-ish MP and 10.321. Also, they were only the #5 seed last year and arguably only the 7th best team in the East, so I guess being on the fringe this year is expected with even a modest overall drop-off. It reminds me a little of how people are always too late to measure a superstar as being a former superstar, we remember them in the Finals rather than them struggling to knock off the 8 seed 76ers.

It feels weird to say this being a LeBron supporter, but 1 game really shouldn't convince you LeBron isn't a choke artist. Then again, 1 game shouldn't have convinced you he was in the first place, so I guess it all evens out, eh? :D

[Latrinsorm]

LeBron last night: 36 points, 8 rebounds, 11 assists. In the last 6 seasons, there have been 9 such games. LeBron has 7 of them, including 3 in a 16 game span in the 2010 season, are you kidding me? So that's pretty rad, but I don't think anyone on earth would be able to guess the other 2 players who had such games.

Ready?

Steph Curry
Mo Williams (and in a game LeBron played! Mo had 43, 8, and 11, LeBron had 23, 15 and 11. Blah blah blah triple double, but Mo Williams with 8 rebounds!! That's astonishing.)

.

LeBron's current season per-game rates: 26.3 points, 8.4 rebounds, 7.0 assists (at a 92 pace). The last player with 26/8/7? Michael Jordan in 1989: 32.5, 8.0, 8.0 (97 pace). LeBron is doing something that hasn't been done in Robert Griffin III's lifetime. The rest of the list: Bird 1987, Havlicek 1972 and 1971, Robertson 1961-1965. Also worth mentioning is that 0 of those men's teams won the title in the same year. The closest were of course Bird's 1987 Celtics, who lost the finals 2-4, the furthest were the '61 Royals and the '71 Celtics, who didn't even make the playoffs. Here's how the list looks normalized to a 92 pace:

LeBron 2013: 26.3, 8.4, 7.0
Bird 1987: 26.2, 8.6, 7.1

That's it! That's the list! How is there any question LeBron is the MVP? Give me a break here.

[Ardwen]

Did Bird win the MVP that year? Basing it entirely on stats just doesn't work when predicting the MVP

[Latrinsorm]

To be clear, I'm not trying to predict whether LeBron will win the MVP. I'm saying he should, just as Larry should have (for the fourth year in the row) in 1987.

Aside, check out the All-Star rosters from 1987...

East
Isiah Thomas, Mo Cheeks
Michael Jordan, Jeff Malone
Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Julius Erving, Dominique Wilkins
Kevin McHale
Moses Malone, Robert Parish, Bill Laimbeer

West
Sleepy Floyd, Alvin Robertson
Walter Davis, Rolando Blackman
Magic Johnson, Alex English, Mark Aguirre
James Worthy, Tom Chambers
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Joe Barry Carroll

14 hall of famers, 14!!! I count maybe 8 last year.

[DoctorUnne]

I am actually a LeBron fan. I just like giving you a hard time because of how biased you are in favor of the Heat and against everyone else, in particular the Lakers but to a lesser extent the Celtics. My money is on the Heat to repeat and I think LeBron will go down as a top 3 player of all time if he stays healthy.

[Latrinsorm]

To be fair to me, those two teams are currently 9 and 10 seeds. I was sure the Lakers were going to rebound, and their cumulative margin of victory suggests they will, but can you imagine if they don't make the playoffs? Two HoFers for sure, Pau has a decent chance especially considering international play, Dwight who knows but plausible. I can't think of a precedent for a super team not even making the playoffs.

[DoctorUnne]

Your biases haven't been limited to this season. Your analysis is insightful, comprehensive and spot on, but almost every piece of analysis is about how awesome LeBron and the Heat are and how overrated Kobe and the Lakers are. As someone who does the same thing for Brady and the Patriots I shouldn't be the one to throw stones, but it would be refreshing to see some balance occasionally!

[Latrinsorm]

Sometimes I gush breathlessly about Jordan, too!

I am grateful for your comments. :) I think it's just that Kobe and LeBron are far and away the most historically interesting players currently. (I still rate Duncan above Kobe, but Duncan's place in history is pretty secure and unanimous.) LeBron for his unreal personal statistics, Kobe as a figurehead for squints vs. scouts. I will try not to couch my intermittent praise for Kobe in such backhanded language, though.

[Latrinsorm]

So time for more Heat talking. A pretty embarrassing but ultimately meaningless loss yesterday (especially given the pretty blatant officiating advantage). In light of previous conversations I do want to go into further depth on why I dismiss Heat losses and (giddily) indulge in Lakers losses: the Heat are the #1 seed in the East, the Lakers are the #11 seed in the West. Ok? The Heat are going to get into the playoffs with excellent seeding. I keep believing the Lakers are going to get into the playoffs, but they keep going out of their way to attack my beliefs (and rest assured I have reported them to Anticor "Rifling" for these violations), and at this point it beggars belief to imagine them getting to #4 seed or higher.

The announcers referred several times to how LeBron had gone to Ray Allen for free throw advice. On the surface this is an idiotically simple move: Ray Allen is one of the greatest shooters of all time, currently sitting at 5th in FT%, 1st in 3P, 33rd in 3P% (perhaps 6th among non-specialists). I have a lot of criticism for Ray Allen (and more to come in this very post), but one thing he is really really really really good at is shooting. LeBron has adopted by my reckoning a third free throw form this season: initially a Durant-esque little wiggle, second a return to his personal form that had yielded middling results, finally a form that comes really close to lane violation but nevertheless accomplishes putting the ball in the basket. After mysteriously low FTA and FT% start to the season, he is 37 of 43 (86% ffs) over his last three games.

Why do I bring this up? Because as mentioned earlier, new Laker Dwight Howard recently took the exact opposite tack with Steve Nash (arguably an even better shooter than Ray Allen). LeBron for mostly better (and sometimes worse) has been willing to listen to people and rebuild various parts of his game. He's not the lanky kid who hung out at the perimeter (much to the delight of Pop), he has added (conservatively speaking) a million pounds of muscle, worked with Hakeem on his post game, worked with Ray Allen on his FT game, worked and worked and worked. If you ask me the mental strength to abandon what was working reasonably well to pursue what would work legitimately well is an underrated aspect of LeBron, and a shockingly underrepresented aspect of professional basketball players.

.

Now for Ray Allen criticism: Miami released Terrell Harris today with an eye towards shoring up their rebounding weaknesses. You know what might help shore up said weaknesses? Playing Terrell Harris instead of Ray Allen!!! This is so frustrating. Career TRB%s are 10% to 7%, Harris is on the upward part of his athleticism arc, Allen is six feet under. Long term perspective (because LeBron is an ageless cyborg), this is very near the end if not the last year of Allen's career, Harris is a kid. If we really must roll out an oldster, play Rashard Lewis instead of Allen. Lewis is just as capable as Allen of waving at opposing guards as they blow by him, his sheer height advantage (and history) suggest he'll be a better rebounder, just pull a Magic and call the 6'10" guy a guard. Keeping in mind that the Heat are still the #1 seed and Spo and Riley know a lot more about basketball than I do... come on!!! This seems like a pretty easy call.

.

Finally, Bill Simmons mentioned in passing that LeBron plays a lot of minutes; specifically that his MP/game is currently 6th all time which is both true and unreal. (The most unreal of course goes to Allen Iverson who is 4th and was a normal sized human being in today's NBA.) I wanted to chime in on this in two ways...

1) I may have mentioned this before but it continues to amaze: since LeBron has been in the NBA, he has played by far and away the most minutes. 28689 regular season to Joe Johnson's second place 27580, or a gap of over 1,000 MP. (Second place in combined regular season and playoffs is none other than Kobe Bryant, of course.) It is a testament to both his frightening MP/game rate and his unimaginable games played rate: of the 45 players with more than 20k MP in that span, there are exactly 2 who have played more games than LeBron's 720... Jason Terry (somewhat a surprise) with 732 and Andre Miller (duh) with 753. (LeBron is #1 with 719 games started, naturally.)

2) So what have you done for me lately? Today (before the start of Saturday's games) LeBron is 6th in minutes played per game. That's not very impressive, huh? But consider that he has played 125.6% of the minutes Carmelo has played (and in 31 team games to 32). If we may return to our previous MVP discussion, to vote Carmelo MVP over LeBron is to say that he is quite literally worth 5/4 as much to his team with his plus 2 points, negative 2 rebounds, and negative 5 assists. It makes me want to puke that some bonehead is going to give Carmelo a first place MVP vote. At least vote for Durant, who everyone likes and is going to take the league lead in MP/g after Thibodeau runs Deng into the ground.

[Latrinsorm]

You will not believe this article (http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8817247/dwight-howard-says-los-angeles-lakers-play-each-other) recently out of Laker land. Where to begin.

Dwight Howard: "We have to play like we like each other. Even if we don't want to be friends off the court, whatever that may be, when we step in between the lines or we step in the locker room or the gym, we have to respect each other and what we bring to the table."

It's not even a subtext, it's the full text: "KOBE, Y U NO BE MY FRIEND :C" Howard was always the Superman/wunderkind in Orlando. Many (myself included) focused primarily on how he would react to the on-court implications of coexisting with Kobe, in a completely-obvious-in-hindsight way it has turned out the off-court implications are just as severe if not moreso.

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Mike D'Antoni: "We need to play hard. We need to take accountability, each one of us. 'What's in it for me?' We need to get that out of our vocabulary and wonder what's best for the Lakers."

Possibly a shot at Kobe, but I think more likely a shot at Gasol. Kobe's been getting his without complaint, Pau's been the one saying "hey maybe I should shoot sometime? I'm pretty good at basketball. Guys. Hey guys. I'm open. Guys." Everyone knew Gasol was really good at basketball and really bad at D'Antoni ball, the open friction and criticism is still pretty amazing. Even more amazing that the Gasol-D'Antoni rift isn't (apparently) even the biggest rift on this team.

.

"When asked to compare the still-developing dynamic between himself and Howard to the run he had with O'Neal, Bryant laughed."

!!!

"That was a different dynamic. Shaq and I were a different dynamic," Bryant said. "That type of duo, you're not going to find another duo like that ever. There were other duos that were better than us, (Scottie) Pippen and (Michael) Jordan. But you'll never find a duo with two dominant personalities like myself and Shaquille. That was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing." Looking back on those years, Bryant said he's amazed the peace held as long as it did. "That just wasn't going to last," he said, laughing. "You have too many alpha males. What do you think would happen if you put Jordan with Wilt? It's just not going to happen."

This is one of the things that drives me up the wall with Kobe. He is such an intelligent player with such a firm grasp of history, then he goes on the court and hoists 40 shots. Kobe!!! Y u no be Pau Gasol's friend, Andrew Bynum's friend, Dwight Howard's friend, Steve Nash's friend, somebody's friend. You know you can't do it alone, we all know you know, you made a big deal out of doing so with Shaq and to a (much) lesser extent Gasol, why do you do the things you do???

.

When told of Bryant's quotes, characterizing himself as sacrificing during the O'Neal era, Howard asked for clarification. "He took a back seat?" Howard asked. "I was super young so I really don't remember too much from those championship runs."

Translation: Kobe is old as dirt, it's my time now, give me the damn ball.

Howard was then asked if he saw himself as the same kind of alpha male personality as O'Neal.

"You can't look at it as the alpha male. It's basketball. We're not a pack of wolves," Howard said. "There's different ways to lead a team. Sometimes you have to follow to learn how to lead. I've done an excellent job with guys of being somebody they can all come to if they have a problem. But if they're not working the way they need to work, I'm the guy that will tell 'em, 'Hey, you need to get in the weight room or get some extra shots up.' That's where I come in. I don't have to bark about it to you guys (reporters) or to the team." Howard then explained what his definition of an "alpha male" was. "If you're an alpha male, you don't have to always show that you're the alpha male," he said. "Just be who you are. You come in the room, people know you're there. My presence is felt every day and I don't have to come here and growl and snarl at people. I don't have to do all that." Instead, he said he tries to create a happy, enjoyable work environment. "(My teammates) like when I come in, have fun, and enjoy myself. Because they want to have fun and enjoy themselves too," Howard said. "If they can't do it, it's not a great working environment. I don't think you guys would want to come into work with a boss that's always telling you what to do. If you see the boss being at ease and having fun doing it, then you're going to have fun doing that. That's who I am. I've been an alpha male my whole life, but I don't go pissing everywhere to show people that I'm an alpha male. I just need to be who I am."

Just... I mean... are we going to see someone on the Lakers be the first player ever to commit a flagrant foul on a teammate? Personalities have clashed plenty of times in basketball and people get over it, but I can't ever remember a case where it was this public and shameless. We're not a pack of wolves? Don't tell me what to do??? I don't go pissing everywhere?????

Let's be clear on one thing, Kobe doesn't give a shit about what Dwight Howard has to say, or what Mike D'Antoni has to say, or what Jesus Christ in a leotard has to say. Kobe's going to be Kobe, Dwight Howard has demonstrated he is not the type to be the grown-up in any situation... so what do the Lakers do? At what point do you push your chips in on Dwight Howard and cut ties with Kobe? I hesitate to put anything beyond the abilities of Mitch Kupchak after the last 9 heists he's pulled, but surely he won't find any takers for Kobe's terrifying contract, right? (Thirty million god damn dollars next year.)

Not to belabor a point, but the Lakers are eleventh in the West. OKC-SAS-LAC-MEM are solidly entrenched, Mark Jackson has against all odds turned out to be a successful NBA coach, farmer's Rockets aren't going anywhere, Denver is figuring it out, that leaves one (1) spot. The Lakers have missed the playoffs five times ever, their organization is in disarray, after panicking away the head coaching spot are we really sure they won't panic away Kobe? Wouldn't it be amazing if the abrupt James Harden trade was the second most astonishing 2-guard move of the season? This is a bit of a conspiracy theory and licking of chops, but how crazy is it that this scenario is even remotely feasible? If Kobe does blow up this superteam, even if only in the court of public opinion, what does that do to his legacy? Does he, like Deron Williams, gain the coach-killer/team-killer label? Isn't is ri-god-damn-diculous that this would happen in a year where his on-court performance has been (after FORTY THOUSAND NBA minutes!!!) the finest it has been in a decade?

.

Man. I hope I'm getting carried away, because I do not know that the universe can bear the turmoil these potential outcomes would wreak.

[Gsgeek]

I'm starting to think that Kevin Love has brittle bone disease. He broke his damn hand again! How many injuries can a single team survive in one season?

Love, rubio, budinger, roy, lee, howard all undergoing/undergone surgeries.

[Latrinsorm]

Speaking of injuries, the Lakers!!

-Howard out for either at least a week or indefinitely, depending on who you ask, with a torn labrum. Fluke or a sign that he's lost the Superman-ian durability that hallmarked his first 7 seasons?
-Gasol out indefinitely with a concussion. Getting crushed in the face with an elbow will do that to a guy.
-Jordan Hill out at least a week with a torn hip ligament. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure torn ligaments are bad and basketball players get a lot of use out of their legs. Like I said, I'm no doctor.

The Lakers were getting 95% of their center minutes and 60% for PF from these three guys according to 82games.com. The only other true big (more on this in a second) currently on their roster is Robert Sacre (55 career MP). Forwards include...
-Antawn Jamison (plays mostly PF but did soak up 34% of Cleveland's center minutes last year)
-Earl Clark (1 career start, has played about 2/3rds of his minutes at PF over the years and the rest SF)
-Devin Ebanks (I remember him being listed as a SG, but especially this year he has seen mostly SF minutes, but clearly a wing player)

So it looks bad, but at the same time it might be just what D'Antoni wants. Check out the following positional splits for Kobe and Metta going from this year to the last three years...
Kobe: 59/20 SG/SF, 87/1, 61/9, 52/19
Metta: 57/13 SF/PF, 64/3, 55/5, 62/3
Kobe is playing a lot of SF for the first time since 2010, Metta is playing a lot of PF for the first time since 2008 with the Kings. Has this been successful? Well, the most common lineup with Kobe at 3 and Metta at 4 is filled out with Duhon, Meeks, and Howard, and +.26 per possession. (No team in the NBA is better or worse than .10 overall.) The same lineup with Nash instead of Duhon goes up to +.41... but what's going to happen without Howard? Nash-Meeks-Kobe-Metta-Gasol was -.12, and it looks like their only real options at center are Sacre (who knows but probably not great defensively) or Jamison (they might give up 200 points a game). Remember that D'Antoni isn't afraid to run out very iffy froncourts; Lee and Gallinari in New York, Stoudamire and Marion in Phoenix, even playing the 6'7" Marion at center in Phoenix. It'll at least be interesting to watch.

Although getting crushed for a week is important because the Lakers are still on the outside looking in (now 4 games out of a playoff spot), an even bigger setback might be to developing chemistry with the big names. It's already not going well, adding more time constraint and more pressure to win now surely won't help.

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I was surprised to hear the Bucks fired/split Skiles. They very nearly made the playoffs last year, got a new centerpiece in Monta, are in the playoffs this year, and with their roster they can't really expect to crack the top half of the East. Skiles is building an odd little track record as a coach: reasonably successful in Phoenix, Chicago, and now Milwaukee, but fired halfway through the 3rd, 5th, and 5th years respectively. Seems like a weird move.

[Latrinsorm]

Mike D'Antoni ups the small ball ante with a starting lineup of Nash, Morris, Bryant, WorldPeace, and Sacre. "Bigs" off the bench are Jamison and Clark, and with Sacre playing only 28 minutes one or both of them (or who the hell even knows who) played significant center minutes, my guess is Clark looking at who comes in and out. The spate of injuries (and MWP foul trouble) also made for some really bizarre substitution patterns, look at the starting lineup for the second quarter... Duhon, Morris, Meeks(!!!), Jamison, Sacre. Then there's the closing lineup for the same quarter... Nash, Meeks, Bryant, Worldpeace, Jamison, and you'll never believe it but that lineup gave up 8 points in 2 minutes, going 4 of 5 with no shot coming from further than 5 feet.

Even more astonishingly, the Lakers don't get completely killed, posting a DRtg of 108.6 which would only be 4th worst in the league. Even on the boards they only lost 42-37, Miami gets down 5 rebounds before they even tip off. Part of this may be Houston apparently following suit, only playing Asik 22 minutes, Morris (PF) 20, and Patterson (PF) 19 for a total of 61 minutes when they usually get 80 from them per game. I don't envy D'Antoni trying to make this work, but it is pretty fascinating to watch him try.

Kobe's troubled shooting night (8 of 22, 2 of 8 from 3) reminded me of something I meant to mention earlier, which was Carmelo's wacky line in the Honey Nut Cheerios game: 6 of 26 (yikes!) but 4 of 12 from 3, meaning he shot 2 of 14 (yikes!!!) from 2. I can't find any way to search for 2P%, but it's got to be one of the most prolific such stink bombs in recent memory.

[thefarmer]

Go Rockets!

[thefarmer]

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8832157/greg-oden-former-no-1-overall-pick-plans-resume-playing-career-sources

Sources: Greg Oden plans to return
Nearly a year removed from his latest knee surgery, former No. 1 overall pick Greg Oden has decided to resume his playing career, but is not planning to return to the NBA before the 2013-14 season, according to sources close to the situation.

Sources told ESPN.com that multiple teams already have expressed interest in signing Oden before the end of this season to a multiyear deal that would allow him to continue his rehab until he can get back on the court in training camp in the fall.

The Miami Heat are at the front of the line in pursuing Oden, two sources said, and have been keeping tabs as he recovers while also taking classes at Ohio State.

[Drew]

Well that could potentially help with Miami's rebounding problem. It's not a bad project to take on when you're loaded.

[Latrinsorm]

Haha, I thought "SIGN HIM UP RILEY" halfway through the second paragraph, sure enough. I'm a little leery of the Heat blowing one of their exceptions on a very unsure deal, especially after Roy's struggles, but I just tried to look up how many exceptions a team can use anyway and my eyes exploded, plus at least they're signing a young player for once. Greg Oden when healthy puts up Dwight Howard level TRB% and BLK%, and used off the bench his catastrophically high foul rate isn't as big a deal. Best of all it lets us keep pace with OKC's Thabeet by attempting to rehabilitate a snakebitten former high draft pick center of our own.

While glancing over the standings today (Lakers 4.5 games out of the playoffs), I noticed an odd quirk: Miami is 11-7 against the East (61%) and 12-3 against the West (80%), OKC is 15-3 against the West (83%) and only 12-5 (71%) against the East. Everyone else shakes out more like you'd expect, with a tougher time against the West than East. (Special note for Houston who is 14-2 = 88% against the East and 7-13 = 35% against the West.) Weird, huh?

[Ardwen]

His legs are about as sturdy as a house of cards in a hurricane, of course someone will pay him millions to get hurt again so for him its win win

[Latrinsorm]

Some statistical musings.

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Preamble, definition of terms.
1. PER is John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating, taking into account pretty much everything in the box score. Average is 15.
2. USG% is Usage Rate, estimates how many possessions a player uses by defining possessions = FGA + .44 * FTA + TOV and dividing against team total. With five players on the court, the average is (ostensibly) 20.
3. AST% is the same kind of idea, estimates how many teammate shots are assisted by subtracting off the player's FG from the team's FG and dividing into player's assists.

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Our sample for each of the following will be this season's 148 players who have played at least 800 minutes.

PER - USG
We know above that 15 and 20 are the averages, hence a player with PER - USG >= -5 has above average efficiency, which begs the question: how efficient are these 148 NBA players?

-The answer is, as you would expect, okaaaaay. They cumulatively have -673.5, which over 148 is -4.55, very slightly above average. 78 players are above -5, 70 are below, but the ones below are well, well below.
-By far the highest value is Tyson Chandler's 7.4. Next highest is Chris Paul's 4.5, and the rest of the top 20 are mostly guys like that: low usage / secondary big men or point guards. The only exception is LeBron James at 20th and -0.5, although Durant is right behind him with -0.6.
-There are some really sad values at the low end, lowlighted by Kevin Seraphin's -14.6. This is probably what happens when you abruptly pick the 16-23 footer as your favorite shot... and shoot 36% on it. Who's coaching the Wizards? sheesh. Perhaps interestingly, Seraphin is relatively lonely as a big man in the bottom 10: the only other entry is Glen Davis' 9th place -10.4. The rest of the bottom 5 are mostly unsurprising (Monta Ellis, Austin Rivers, Dion Waiters), but Ray Felton's inclusion surprised me (a little).
-Another surprising entry is Rudy Gay at 6th worst. Somehow he's only managing a 15 PER this year.
-The next slice of the NBA (400-800) stacks up to -4.68 per player, pretty close. There are 65 guys in the range of 120 guys that rate as above average, so about the same proportion, too. Headlined by Andre Drummond, 5.6(!), 711 MP; the black mark goes to Michael Beasley's beastly -15.9 in 730 MP.
-It's the <400 MP guys who really kill it, -9.12 on average.

.

AST + USG
You could think of this as playcall domination rate, because of course an assist can only happen if I'm the last person to touch it before you.

-Top 3, all over 70, are Russell Westbrook (shocker of the year), Rajon Rondo, and Greivis Vasquez.
-Highest non-guard is LeBron (another jawdropper), 7th place with 64.1. Next highest non-guard are Paul Pierce and Durant, tied for 30th with 48.8.
-Speaking of Westbrook and Durant, 3 of the lowest 11 values go to the rest of the Thunder starting 5: Kendrick Perkins 5th lowest with 19, Thabo Sefolosha right above him with 19.2, Serge Ibaka at 11th with 21.2. Only one other team even has two starters in this range, Detroit's Kyle Singler and Jason Maxiell.
-Absolute lowest is Bismack Biyombo's 12.8, combining an unbelievable 2.1 AST% with a pretty believable 10.7 USG%.

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AST - USG
There's a little wiggle room here, because a turnover can come from offensive foul (trying to shoot, pass, or screen), three seconds, bad pass (could be intending to assist, or could be trying to bail out a failed offensive maneuver, a la DWade's horrendous jumping contorted backwards passes, or could be trying to save someone else's errant pass), stepping out of bounds (same). Let's see who shakes out where, though.

-4 men stand well apart: Rondo (29.5), Jose Calderon (28.2), Paul (23.5), Vasquez (23.3). A distant fifth is Andre Miller with 15.2.
-In total only 41 of the 148 have positive values. Every one of the top 20 is either listed as a PG, clearly is a PG (Vasquez, Miller, Jack, Kidd), or is European (Shved).
-The positive non-guards: Boris Diaw (3.9), LeBron (3.7), John Salmons (2.4, although I'd call him a SG personally), Joakim Noah (0.5), and who else but Marc Gasol (0.1).
-We also see some separation with the bottom 4: Brook Lopez (-23.3), Carmelo Anthony (-22), Chris Kaman (-19.5), Seraphin (-18.3), fifth place is Nikola Pekovic (-16.9). The bottom 5 of guards are also pretty familiar names: DeMar DeRozan (-15), Kevin Martin (-13.5), Jamal Crawford (-11.9), J.R. Smith (-10.5), Jason Richardson (-9.8). The lowest point guard, and in fact the only one with a negative score is Rivers (-2.3). Although this is kind of a trick because Monta is listed as a SG, Rivers is apparently bad at everything.

Looks like a good read of pass-first-ness to me.

[Latrinsorm]

Why the outcomes of close games are not useful for predicting future results, case #348634786:

-43 seconds left, Blazers down 2 with the ball. Wes Matthews launches a step-back, contested (by Ray Allen, but still) 3. He hits that shot maybe 30% of the time (by Synergy he's shooting 5 of 15 on all isolation 3s), but it goes in this time. Portland up 1.
-Next possession, Ray Allen gets a spot-up, wide open 3. He hits that shot at least 50% of the time, but it doesn't go in this time. Portland still up 1.
-After 1 LA free throw make, Mario Chalmers gets a spot-up, wide open 3. Even accounting for his being ice cold, having not played for 16 game minutes, he's going to hit that shot at least 40% of the time, but it doesn't go in this time.

Sometimes bad shots go in, sometimes good shots don't. Over 48 minutes this mostly evens out. Over 43 seconds it might not.

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All in all last night's game was wildly entertaining but pretty poorly played on both sides (and the refs' side, come to that). Some of it was good defense, but there was a lot more bad offense. One particularly bad stretch for the Heat came as the third quarter closed. The announcers blamed it mostly on Joel Anthony, and to be fair he is really bad offensively, but I have an alternative hypothesis: for whatever reason LeBron James just hates Joel Anthony.

-It's definitely the case that he doesn't run the same offense with Anthony on the floor. Instead of his devastatingly, unfairly effective post-up game, he stands around at the top of the key, burns the clock, gets an Anthony screen, and routinely ignores him on the roll even when Anthony is alone under the basket. As mentioned earlier LeBron's spot-up shot has been amazing this year, but his iso shooting is as crummy as its ever been, and he's not quick/crafty enough to really get past/through most double teams the way a Westbrook, Wade, Ginobili can.

-Now you could explain this as Anthony has 0 shooting ability, therefore his man can camp in the paint and make LeBron's posting less effective, therefore no post... but Haslem's jumper this year has been just as atrocious as what Anthony would put up. (In fact, Anthony is 6 of 20 = 30% away from the rim, Haslem is 17 of 56 = 30.4%.) You also routinely see LeBron furious with Anthony for various infractions on the offensive end: not catching LeBron's pass, getting in LeBron's lane, etc. This is especially noticeable with LeBron because he never ever does this to anyone else on his team, even when he was playing with friggin' Sasha Pavlovic and Larry Hughes.

The next time they play I'll try and keep better track of what configurations LeBron runs this scheme in. I thought before it was just a question of falling back into old and inferior habits, perhaps due to getting tired, but the "I'll kill Joel Anthony's +/-" theory is growing on me (plus LeBron is a cyborg and doesn't get tired).

.

In astonishing contrast to that so-called offense was the Heat frontcourt of James-Miller-Bosh. Where are you going to put your slow-footed big as an opponent, especially once they start running pick and rolls with each other? The Miller-Bosh PnR was especially devastating. All three can make 3s, all three are at least gifted passers for big men, all three are unselfish, it's a nasty offensive combination. Looking at Mike's 5-man stats, this lineup is wildly successful when paired with Chalmers and Battier (+.3 per possession), frighteningly successful with Cole and Battier (+.45), and mediocre when paired with Wade and Allen (-.03). These are pretty obvious results: not being a terrific defensive lineup, they can't hide Allen's weaknesses and benefit from Cole and Battier's defensive prowess.

[Latrinsorm]

Three things from last night's Heat game.

1. LeBron James, 20k points (38th), 5k assists (55th).

12th person all time to combine those marks with 5k rebounds for a career. The others: Robertson (26/7/9), West (25/5/6), Havlicek (26/8/6), Kareem (38/17/5), Bird (21/8/5), Jordan (32/6/5), Karl Malone (36/14/5), Drexler (22/6/6), Payton (21/5/8), Garnett (24/13/5), Bryant (30/6/5), which would make a pretty awesome team if chemistry was irrelevant. It's also neat to see how the field collapses further if we go 20/6/6: Robertson, Havlicek, Drexler, maybe Bryant.

Where might he end up? I've mentioned before that 40k minutes is really the outer limit where people start to tail off, so let's extrapolate to there and see. LeBron's at 24.9 and 6.2 per 36 minutes, so let's bend him down a little and say 22 points, 5.5 assists for the next 11,000 some odd minutes. That puts him at...
26783 points, good for exactly 10th best if the standings are otherwise unchanged, and
6702 assists, good for 19th under the same condition.

Before we go further, are the standings going to be unchanged when LeBron retires? The answer is probably pretty much. The active guys ahead of him in points are Kobe, Garnett, Dirk, Ray Allen, Pierce, Duncan, and Carter. Kobe is already above 10th best (obviously), none of the others are going to get that high. They're all about as old, and Garnett is the closest at 1886 points away, which would take him two more seasons after this one to reach. He is under contract that long, but come on. The closest relevant active guy behind him is Carmelo, who is an astonishing 3,203 points behind and started at the same time, so. The assist standings are trickier. One guy ahead of him is Chris Paul, and he's obviously not going to catch him. Two really interesting cases are sandwiched around him: Tony Parker and Deron Williams. Parker has been in the league two years longer than LeBron, which seems impossible, so we can be pretty sure LeBron dusts him. Williams has been in the league two years less, but his assist rates have a really weird trajectory. They start low and get up to the 10 mark in Utah, but have taken a severe dip down to 7.6 this year. Throw in his being a poor shooter, a minus defender, and not being a great physical specimen, and it's not clear whether he'll have longevity comparable to LeBron, which is a really high bar and shouldn't be taken as an insult.

That 40,000 minutes puts LeBron three and a half seasons into the future at his current freakish MP/G rate, so let's call it 4. 14 seasons in, legendary status secure, at least 3 MVPs, at least 1 ring, rich to infinity and beyond. Does he even play any more? (Or even that far?) Keep in mind that only 25 players ever have even made it to 40k minutes. Just to see how far he can go, let's say he does play another 4 seasons for 18. (Only nine players have been season long starters for a team in their 18th season, which is counting KG this year but not Kurt Thomas.) 2500 MP per season doesn't seem too unreasonable, although it does put him at 50k, which only 3 players ever have done, although Kidd is knocking on the door. We'll tweak his numbers down a little more to 18 points, 4.5 assists per 36. This puts him at...

31783 points, 4th at best, I don't think Kobe's going to retire (or pass) until he gets past MJ on the career list so probably 5th
7952 assists, 12th behind Chris Paul (and assuming Andre Miller can put up 237 assists before he retires)

5th and 12th! Pretty impressive. He'd also join Robertson (currently 10th and 7th) as the only players with 7k rebounds and assists.

.

2. Windhorst's recent article anticipating the same subject, which I thought had a fantastic quote:

"I never have seen myself as a scorer." - LeBron

Which is true! I know I've talked about this before, but he's never been a great shooter (aside from this year's spot-up bombardment), he's not tremendously quick in absolute terms, he has barely any (legal) moves, he draws fouls well but is only an average FT shooter, he has never played with even a decent facilitating teammate (noting that Wade's facilitative role was severely drawn down after LeBron arrived). It's thoroughly ridiculous that LeBron is the 3rd highest points per game of all time. Higher than Durant, Kobe, Wade, Melo. Trailing only Jordan and Chamberlain. Thoroughly ridiculous.

.

3. I charted out all the offensive plays the Heat ran while LeBron was on the floor (after about the 8m mark in the first quarter when the broadcast started), so excluding transition. The first thing I noticed was that the Heat have a lot of attacks that are really transition even if not in the traditional sense. The best example of this came with 9m left in the third quarter. After an offensive foul by the Warriors, the Heat get the ball on the side in the back court. It doesn't even make sense to talk about "transition" in this situation, right? There's already one Heat player in the back court to receive the pass, LeBron jogs into the back court being trailed by his defender Green, then abruptly switches direction, received the pass, and blows down the court for a layup attempt. He misses, but what kind of play do you call that if not transition? Certainly it exploited some bad defense, but it did so in a way that very closely mimics a transition opportunity.

Second thing I noticed was that even though it's very frustrating that Wade is still a bad three point shooter after so many years, in some ways it is advantageous. There was one play with 8m left in the 2nd quarter involving what is by far the Heat's most successful set: post LeBron up somewhere and wait for the defense to panic. In this case LeBron posted at the top of the key with Wade in the right corner. Everyone knows Wade's not going to hit that shot, so the entire GS team ignores him, then he's cut to the rim and (more or less) dunked it. 90% of 2 beats 40% of 3. Even if he gets hammered, 75% * 2 still beats 40% of 3. This is something a similarly high-IQ low-shooting player like Kobe could be devastating at when paired with a similarly willing passer in Nash, but Wade cuts for 11.5% of his touches and Bryant only 4.3%. Such is life.

To the actual numbers, I charted a total of 51 plays. Of these, LeBron had...
12 field goal attempts
4 fouled
1 turnover
6 assists
4 assist attempts (where the receiving player missed the shot)
1 assist for the foul (where the receiving player was fouled)
9 no touches (including 1 set screen)
3 miscellaneous (1 defensive 3 seconds, 1 where Ray Allen threw the ball away trying to make an entry pass to LeBron, and one play interrupted by Golden State knocking the ball out of bounds)

Outside of the miscellaneous, that's 28 (58%) where LeBron was directly involved in the outcome, 8 (17%) where he had no involvement (I included a few desultory cuts in this figure), and the remaining 12 (25%) where he did something but not much. I'm hoping to do the same kind of measurement for Durant in the next OKC game to see if my perception of Westbrook repeatedly ignoring him is based in fact.

[Ardwen]

So totally overblown, so what he's youngest to 20k, how many years headstart did he have, how many games it took is what matters, and he took one hell of alot more then the guy at the top. Seeing ESPN hyping this milestone for 2 weeks was ridiculous.

[Drew]

How did Kareem score so many points? I know the guy played for a long time and he started when scoring was still at ridiculous heights but I don't get how he was so far ahead of everyone. Didn't he play like a full college career at UCLA?

[Latrinsorm]

Two things in Kareem's favor:

-playing until he was 41
-playing in eras of breakneck pace, and for a significant part of his career on a team of exceptional pace even for its era. All told his career averaged a 105.5 pace, Michael's averaged 93.7, LeBron's was at 90.4 entering this season.

Consider also that if we extrapolate Karl and Michael to Kareem's 38,387 points, it would have taken Karl 57,020 minutes and Michael a mere 51,416 rather than Kareem's 57,446.

.

And for the record, it took Kareem 693 games to LeBron's 726, a difference of a little under 5%. The pace difference is almost twice as significant.

[Drew]

Consider also that if we extrapolate Karl and Michael to Kareem's 38,387 points, it would have taken Karl 57,020 minutes and Michael a mere 51,416 rather than Kareem's 57,446.




Do you do this by bringing their pace up, or just adjusting minutes played?

[Latrinsorm]

That was just minutes. Adjusting for pace as well brings Michael down to 45,666. I would have to calculate out the pace for Karl Malone, and no one cares about Karl Malone.

[LimChori]

Kareem did it because he maintained his ability to be an unstoppable scorer. Even though he was 41 years old he could still score with his "Sky Hook."

The Sky Hook was/is basically the hardest shot to block in the game and since Kareem could do it with either his right or left hand it enabled him to prolong his career for a very long time.

[Latrinsorm]

So with All Star starters announced, we have 4 teams this year with 2 each: Miami, Boston, LAC, and LAL. It's pretty interesting for a number of reasons:

1. While 2 players from 1 team starting the All Star game is relatively common (12 in the past 10 years), 2 players from 4 teams is quite unusual. The previous high in the 10 year span was 3 teams, occurring last year.

2. The Lakers are very unlikely to be in the playoffs by the All Star break. They have 15 games, but a lot of them are tough: @CHI, @MEM, UTA, OKC all in a row, then a little lull, then @BRK, @BOS, @MIA, LAC; 10 on the road overall, where they are currently 5-12. They also need to climb over 3 teams to get there. They're also not very good, that's probably a key factor. Is that unprecedented? As it turns out, no: the 2006 Rockets had Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady as All Star starters on a 13th seeded team at the break. (Two others were really close: the CarmAI 2008 Nuggets and the 2007 Heat were both 8 seeds at the break, and won 0 playoff games between them.)

3. Only two teams of the 12 won the championship in the same year: the 2012 and 2006 Heat. I anticipate this number would grow if I got back to the Shaq/Kobe, MJ/Pippen, LAL/BOS 80s years.

[Atlanteax]

What about that one year when Detroit clearly should had *all 5* starters, not just 4, be placed to the East All-Stars?

[Latrinsorm]

The analysis I did was restricted to people who were voted to start on the All Star team, rather than people who were starters on their own teams and also All Stars.

[Gsgeek]

I'm starting to think that Kevin Love has brittle bone disease. He broke his damn hand again! How many injuries can a single team survive in one season?

Love, rubio, budinger, roy, lee, howard all undergoing/undergone surgeries.

Obviously I was underestimating the frailty of the classic NBA player. Add to the list their center now ,Pekovic, will miss the next seven to 10 days with a badly bruised right quadriceps.

I think they are going to soon pickup some french player Gelebale who was in semi demand lately.

[Latrinsorm]

So in total I've charted 3 games; LeBron's last two and Durant last night. All told LeBron was directly involved in the outcome of 56% of halfcourt plays (non transition or otherwise scrambling, as after some offensive rebounds), minorly involved in 24%, completely uninvolved in 20%. Ok. The numbers for Durant were 45%, 22%, and 33%. A bit higher, but the really interesting thing was that if we look only at regulation the numbers shift to 42%, 22%, 36%, and if we look only at regulation while Westbrook was on the floor they go to 38%, 20%, 42%(!). There are just a huge number of plays where Durant stands around doing absolutely nothing as Westbrook does whatever.

Another weird thing is that Durant will very frequently stand in the same spot when this happens, but the spot depends on the quarter. I missed the 1st quarter due to the previous game also going OT, in the second quarter 8 of his 12 non-touches occurred at the right wing, in the second half 8 of his 13 occurred at the left wing. Because teams switch baskets at half, this spot was always the wing closest to the bench area. If we look deeper at his shot chart, the overwhelming majority of his 3s (93.4% by my count) are away from the corners, which is not the smart way to do it. (Compare to LeBron's 78.4% non-corner 3s, or Ray Allen's 65.5%.) Even if Westbrook is going to dominate the play, it seems like Durant could be better utilized off the ball.

.

As the Thunder were playing the Mavericks, it was mentioned how O.J. Mayo went ahead of Westbrook in the 2008 draft. More interesting to me was that the Heat took Michael Beasley 2nd, ahead of both, as well as Kevin Love(!) and other bigs such as Brook Lopez, Roy Hibbert, JaVale McGee(!!!), J.J. Hickson, Serge Ibaka(!!!), Nikola Pekovic, DeAndre Jordan, Omer Asik. The first thing you realize is that NBA teams are awful at scouting big men, but the really interesting what if is if Miami takes Love instead of Beasley, even looking just at the Heat (rather than the domino effect). Starting lineup of Chalmers, Wade, Marion, Love, Haslem; Daequan Cook, James Jones, Joel Anthony and someone else off the bench. That team is interesting! Surely they never make the Jermaine O'Neal trade. Surely they have enough to beat the Hawks. Then what? Do they not bring in Bosh for 2011? Obviously they still want James. Does the addition of a premiere three point shooter defeat Dallas' zone in the 2011 Finals? Fun to think about.

[Latrinsorm]

Miami signs Chris Andersen, provisionally excited. Whose minutes is he getting? If he replaces Anthony, that seems like for like. If he replaces Miller/Lewis, what about the spacing? If he replaces Haslem, I think that would help a great deal, but I don't think he will.

Lakers now tied by the surging Mavericks for 11th. Yet another team to climb over, I'll be very impressed if they can pull out a playoff berth out of this. Over their last 10 games they are 2-8, tied with Phoenix, Orlando, and Atlanta for worst in the NBA.

Want to hear something crazy? Dwight Howard's usg% is 22.4, lowest since he was 20. The nearest centers in usage rate: JaVale McGee, Jason Smith, Spencer Hawes. It seems like he could stand to have a few more touches.

Want to hear something even crazier? Pau Gasol's usg% is 18.8, by far the lowest of his career. The two nearest bigs with as many or more minutes: J.J. Hickson, Serge Ibaka. I think Pau is a little more skilled offensively than those guys, maybe he could have a few more touches too.

Last thing: Kobe's 41 FGA game is currently 8 ahead of DeMar DeRozan's second-most 33. This would be the biggest gap between 1st and 2nd most since 2008, when Kobe's 44 was 10 ahead of Joe Johnson's 34 (and 7 ahead of Kobe's 37).

[Latrinsorm]

Two pretend trades...

Pau for Bosh, straight up.
-Pau is a 5 playing 4, Bosh is a 4 playing 5.
-LAL gets the stretch 4 they desperately need to run D'Antoni's system. Bosh isn't a 3 shooter, but he has legit long 2 ability. (58% from 16-23 feet this year to Pau's 40%)
-MIA gets the size, rebounding, and post presence they need. (It's hard to say "need" when they're the #1 seed and defending champion, but still.) Pau is also a much better passer than Bosh, and if you can believe it is playing more minutes per game. (Although that probably says more about D'Antoni.)
-The contracts match up very well, then Bosh has player options in 2015 and 2016.

Forget which team says no, which team doesn't JUMP ALL OVER that deal?

Bosh and Chalmers for Nash, Hill, Blake, and trade exceptions
-Same reasoning for LAL, then they sucker somebody into Gasol for draft picks or bench him or kneecap him or whatever.
-Chalmers is about who he is at this point. I thought last year was a sign he was putting it together, but he's leveled off this year. He still adds youth and speed to a team in sore need of it, and he's already okay with never touching the ball so we know he'll play well with Kobe.
-Hill is done for the year and Blake may as well be, the Lakers lose nothing there.
-Frees up a big spot for Andersen for Miami, then Hill will be back next year.
-Nash and LeBron pick and roll with Allen and Battier in the corners -> Miami goes undefeated for the rest of time.

This one is a bit more of a stretch, but Nash and LeBron, come on. That would be awesome.

[Atlanteax]

Nash and LeBron pick and roll with Allen and Battier in the corners -> Miami goes undefeated for the rest of time.
This one is a bit more of a stretch, but Nash and LeBron, come on. That would be awesome.

Heh, I lol'd at "undefeated for the rest of time" as if the invincible duo.

[Latrinsorm]

I mentioned earlier how one more season of 30 PER will tie LeBron with Jordan for most ever with 4 times, and he currently has that with a 30.3, so bully for him.

Another advanced metric is Win Shares, which attempts to map out a player's contributions on offense and defense from the boxscore and how those contributions turn into wins. To turn this into a rate stat like PER, basketball-reference also lists Win Shares per 48 minutes, and it so happens that .300 happens to be an elite cutoff point: 1 season for LeBron and Wilt, 3 for Kareem and Michael. I bring this up because a certain Kevin Durant is currently at .305. While this metric suffers from the same problem as PER in that measuring defense from the boxscore is iffy at best (and indeed, Durant currently has a slightly better DRtg than LeBron, which is obviously wrong), it's still something very few other people have managed. To pick a name completely at random, Carmelo has never exceeded .200 WS/48 in a season (currently at .196).

[Latrinsorm]

Rondo ACL out for the year.

What makes the story weird is that he tore it two days ago, finished the game, came to the game today expecting to play. Does that mean it's a minor tear, if that's even a thing?

What makes the story really weird is that Doris Burke initially broke the news from social media, when the Celtics PR staff was (allegedly) still waiting for the results.

.

Anyway, frustrating loss for the Heat. Heat players not named LeBron went 2 of 17 from 3, that's not going to get the job done. 11 turnovers between Bosh and Wade, that's way too much. Total no-show by Chalmers. We finally found a way to tire LeBron: have him play 52 minutes against a decent defense, including 22 straight to close the game. More good minutes from Rashard Lewis, though. Empty box score but he made a lot of good plays, especially on offense: working in the flow, not trying to do too much (as opposed to for instance Ray Allen repeatedly and disastrously trying to isolate off the dribble).

Celtics are pretty clearly done. They're only barely in the playoffs with Rondo, and they're going to wear down a lot more than Philly. It'll be pretty crazy to have neither the Celtics nor the Lakers in the playoffs for the first time in however many years.

[Ardwen]

Strange to see both the Celts and Lakers in what have to be clearly considered upset wins today, and other then Bosh in the first and James the heat played fairly terribly overall

[Atlanteax]

Considering the Lakers' game against the NO Hornets *should* be a 'gimmie' ... that'll be 3 wins in a row, and 5 under .500 vs 8 under ... 'playoff odds' went up from like 14% to 33% last I saw.

Lakers are very lucky to be (still) competing with Utah, Houston, and Portland, for the last two playoff spots in the West.

[Latrinsorm]

Don't forget Dallas, they've really turned it around since Dirk got his legs back and are tied with the Lakers at the moment. 6 wins out of 8, including a thumping of Memphis, win over Houston, only losses were very close to OKC (3 pts) and SAS (6).

Also, if we look at the 4 factors the reason the Lakers won the last two games was because they shot the lights out. It's a useful example of advanced stats, because you look at 3s and say "16 for 38? that's not that much of an outlier" which is true, but their team eFG% was 60%, which would be the best in the NBA by a wide margin and is clearly not sustainable.

It's definitely the most fascinating 19-25 team ever, though, they have that going for them.

[Atlanteax]

I watched the 4Q of Lakers vs Phoenix ... I had originally figured that they would just play out the quarter and make it 4 in a row.

Except, clank clank for the Lakers, seemed like every bounce went out ... while Phoenix on the other hand was on fire, step forward / to the side, shoot, swish ... was not an issue of Lakers not rebounding and Phoenix getting second points.

Kobe looked tired late in the 4th, and it showed on that missed layup, and at that point, everyone's else shooting confidence was shot, hence them just standing around instead of cutting to the basket when Kobe had 2-3 defenders (he had no passing lanes).

[Latrinsorm]

It might have been a quarter of misses, or it might have been playing with Kobe for years and knowing that they weren't going to get a pass anyway, so why bother cutting? Kobe triple teamed and shooting anyway to close the game is Lakers SOP.

[Atlanteax]

It might have been a quarter of misses, or it might have been playing with Kobe for years and knowing that they weren't going to get a pass anyway, so why bother cutting? Kobe triple teamed and shooting anyway to close the game is Lakers SOP.

That's just it, it wasn't 'all Kobe' until the last 2 minutes ... everyone else was taking the shots and missing for a good 7+ minutes prior (in hoop but bounce out). So in that particular game, judging by their body language, I'd say that their confidence was toast, and they just did not want the 'responsibility' of shooting and missing at the end of the game. I saw Kobe stop and look to pass out at least two times, when he was getting double/triple-teamed during those last two minutes, but no one was providing an outlet for him. He essentially had to jump and lob very awkward passes as he could not viably shoot after stopping the dribble. Hence the last two attempts by him were layup-style from outside the paint, as he knew he could not stop dribbling and would have to hope to get fouled (he twice got no call).

I've seen plenty of other games where it was 'crunch-time' where Kobe had a blatantly open teammate and did not pass, forcing the shot instead ... which is the basis of his reputation ... but that was not the situation last night.

[Latrinsorm]

Fair enough.

[Latrinsorm]

So the Rudy Gay trade inspired me to take a look at Rudy's stats, all listed are for his career.

-16.1 PER, league average is always 15. At 24 USG% this gives him about a -3 efficiency, which isn't in itself bad but isn't in itself good either.
-Shoots 34.4% from 3, league average this year is 35.8%; 38.6% vs. 38.0% from 16-23 feet - mediocre shooter.
-.265 FTA/FGA, league average this year is .277 (and it's a down year) - mediocre at drawing fouls.
-.866 AST/TOV and 7.64 FGA/AST. These are terrible facilitating numbers for a small forward, worse than Carmelo.
-9.4 TRB%, league average 9.8% - mediocre rebounder.
-Is relatively durable with three 3k MP seasons and one just missing at 2945.

All in all we have a pretty middling player who has never been an All-Star, never received an MVP vote, and whose team saw the most success when he was out for the 2011 playoffs (which is a low bar considering we're talking about the Grizzlies, but still). After some early season success, the Grizzlies haven't kept up with the big 3 out west (Spurs, Thunder, Clippers).

They add Tayshaun Prince, who might be the only forward on earth with arms as long as Kevin Durant (not that it'll matter). Ed Davis is shaping up to be a reliable and efficient double double guy; every team can use one of those, and Memphis especially had a need for a third big since trading away Speights. Throw in the enormous financial benefit and it seems like a pretty sensible trade to me.

[Latrinsorm]

Another loss to a team with size, everyone hates Chris Bosh, blah blah blah. Chris Andersen looked great! Haslem and Anthony are non-entities on offense, Lewis hasn't been permitted to stick in any regular rotation. I wondered previously whom the Birdman would be taking minutes from, and it has turned out to be Anthony so far: after playing 33 games straight, Anthony has two DNP-CDs in a row. I didn't think this would be a big change but I severely underestimated Andersen's offensive ability. He's had two effective dribble drives in the last week, which is more than Anthony has had in his entire life. He's also had some severely awkward put-back attempts, but baby steps, let's just call that rust. Defensively his feet are pretty slow, but next to Bosh or James at PF he should be okay.

Another tough game for Chalmers, don't know what's going on with him. It could be the Heat trying to squeeze out more minutes for Ray Allen now that Wade is healthier, which is just not a good idea for so many reasons: Allen can't guard 1, Wade could but shouldn't, Allen is really bad at running plays not least because he insists on doing that stupid hook pass, the offense screeches to a halt whenever they run plays for or through him.

And at the end of the day the Heat are still in 1st, when they've been to the Finals two years in a row out of the 2 seed, so I'm not too worried.

[Latrinsorm]

Two interesting LeBron stats from tonight...

4 players are leading their teams in points, assists, and steals. 2 played in this game: LeBron and Walker. (Others are Curry and Dragic.) LeBron also leads his teams in rebounds at 364 to Bosh's 309, and trails only Bosh in blocks at 55 to 37. By comparison, Kemba is 5th in rebounds and blocks, Curry is 6th and 8th (tied with David Lee! Block something, David!), Dragic is 8th and 6th. You may recall that in LeBron's 1st MVP year he led his team in all 5, joining Kevin Garnett, Scottie Pippen, and Dave Cowens as the only NBA players to ever pull it off. (Interestingly, the other men finished 1st, 7th(!), and Cowens didn't get a single MVP vote on a Celtics team that missed the playoffs, albeit in a single vote system. KG's is also interesting because he came within 3 votes of an unprecedented unanimous MVP: 2 idiots voted for Jermaine O'Neal for first place and one idiot voted for Peja off of the 4th place Kings, perhaps (idiotically) because Peja set the since-broken record for 3P made in a season.)

LeBron also scored 31 points on 14 shots. While impressive, in and of itself it isn't very historical. Throw in that he attempted 0 threes, however, and it's something that's only happened 10 times in the past 5 years: Bynum, Maggette(!), Howard, and Bosh twice; Bogut and Nowitzki once. Throw in 8 assists and it has happened 3 times since 1991: Magic, Grant Hill, Dwyane Wade. (In a cosmic coincidence, Wade's was also against the Bobcats.)

[DoctorUnne]

A unanimous MVP would indeed be unprecedented. No one's ever done that in basketball right? Has anyone ever done it in football?

[RSR]

17 in baseball. Tom Brady in the NFL. None in the NBA.

[SHAFT]

As hard as its been to be a lakers fan this year, knowing they have completely open books 2 years from now soothes the pain. They will be up there for a chance to sign some incredible players including lebron. The only person who will still be on the books will be Nash.

[SHAFT]

It gets even more painful for the Lakers, Pau Gasol out with an ankle injury. Sigh

[Latrinsorm]

Man, SHAFT inspired me to go poking around in contracts and there are some weird ones out there. Kevin Martin's big extension was for exactly $53,000,025 over 5 years. Tim Duncan's is apparently illegal under the CBA by having a player option that's a pay decrease. The Spurs can save $9m if they waive Tony Parker before June 30th, 2014. James Jones currently counts as being under two contracts. The NBA is currently paying 36.8%(???) of Antawn Jamison's salary. Mario Chalmers has a $4,000,000 salary with $10,000 performance incentives.

I don't know if 2014 FAs are that great a crop really. There are big names but I wouldn't bet on a lot of them with 2 more years on the odometer: Wade and Iguodala, for instance. There are also young up and comers but none who will actually make it to free agency: Kyrie Irving has a team option, Eric Bledsoe will be RFA. LeBron obviously, but even LeBron might not be LeBron with that many more miles. Granted there's a lot more to cap space than just signing guys, but I'm not really seeing it.

.

I've been (slowly) charting through last week's series of national TV big games, and saw something I missed the first time through the MIA-BRK game. About halfway through the third quarter Miami ran the same play 6 times in a row: James sets a screen for Chalmers pick and roll on the right wing, Bosh is at the left low post, Haslem at the high left post, Wade starts in the corner. From this set Wade cuts either around a Haslem screen for an open jumper at the foul line or cuts baseline, which can leave him open under the basket or if Bosh's man goes with him leaves Bosh open under the basket. How effective was this play? 12 points on 6 plays, that's how effective. Two things to be fair: the last run of the play was the one where Chalmers got an offensive rebound sitting on the ground, and one of the things that made it so effective was that LeBron was screening Deron Williams, who is not a good defender in the best of circumstances and definitely not when he has to try and run through a 270 pound brick wall.

I distinctly remember being startled when James set a screen in one of his first games in a Heat uniform, now it's routine, brutally effective, and another way he can impact the game without needing the ball in his hands. The play is so simple, but at its crux it relies on the two biggest stars willing to play (rather than stand around) off the ball, which they are manifestly willing to do, and with great success. It'd be really interesting to see how various stars stack up if someone kept track of how often every NBA player set a screen in the pick and roll. Alas, I can't find such data.

[SHAFT]

If the the lakers get lebron it'll be when he's 29-30ish. Ill take it.

[Atlanteax]

If the the lakers get lebron it'll be when he's 29-30ish. Ill take it.

I really doubt that will happen unless we see some drastic change in LeBron's attitude/behavior.

He is probably perfectly happy with continuing the 'super friends' thing with Wade (and Bosh) in Miami.

[DoctorUnne]

I thought this article was good

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8919214/kevin-durant-having-one-greatest-offensive-seasons-nba-history

[Latrinsorm]

LeBron makes scoring look easy. Durant makes it look effortless. This makes it all the more frustrating that Westbrook dominates so many possessions (and all the more remarkable that Wade does not, he does not get enough credit for this). Scott Brooks should seriously bench him every time he pulls the "ignore Durant calling for the ball, hoist a 22 footer with 18 left on the shot clock" routine. The "ignore Durant calling for the ball, penetrate the defense with frightening ease and get a layup" routine is tolerable. I can't think of any way to measure it and have no way of applying it anyway, but OKC has to be the most functional dysfunctional offense of all time. Miami barks and gestures at each other, then they run a play. OKC barks and gestures at each other, then they isolate and hope for the best... and it works! It's really bizarre to watch.

Someone really needs to come up with a peppy name for "at the rim and beyond the arc". I laud the "NBA Jam zones" attempt, but no.

Here's what's really astonishing. Go here (http://mysynergysports.com/) and check out Durant and LeBron side by side on offensive plays. They're both terrible isolation 3 shooters (11 of 42 and 11 of 36), they're both incredible spot-up 3 shooters (51 of 97 to 29 of 57). The really bizarre thing is that Durant is 15 of 38 on spot-up 2s (39%!), LeBron is 11 of 17 (65%!!!). Obviously LeBron is not the shooter that Durant is... I mean, right? Last weird thing is that for whatever reason Durant is atrocious at 3s off screens (7 of 34), but they obviously make it a point of running them. What if OKC had a good coach? Or at least a coach with electrodes to make Westbrook knock it off already? Look at Westbrook on the same site. He's a terrible 3 shooter anyway (32%), but he's taken 37 attempts in isolation (22%!!! TWENTY TWO!!!) and 62 as the PnR ball handler (24%!!!). STAP, RUSSELL! You're traumatizing me!

.

Here's how much of a Kobe homer this guy Kirk Goldsberry is (and I know something about being a homer): I read the "long 2s (a.k.a. "the Josh Smith shot")" crack and immediately thought "I bet this is the guy who wrote the Kobe assist piece". Yep! Fact: over the past 7 years Kobe has taken 31% of his shots from the 16-23 for 2 range, Josh Smith has taken 27%. Obviously this also means Kobe has taken more raw shots from the worst range. In conclusion: come on, man.

[Atlanteax]

LeBron makes scoring look easy. Durant makes it look effortless. This makes it all the more frustrating that Westbrook dominates so many possessions (and all the more remarkable that Wade does not, he does not get enough credit for this). Scott Brooks should seriously bench him every time he pulls the "ignore Durant calling for the ball, hoist a 22 footer with 18 left on the shot clock" routine. The "ignore Durant calling for the ball, penetrate the defense with frightening ease and get a layup" routine is tolerable. I can't think of any way to measure it and have no way of applying it anyway, but OKC has to be the most functional dysfunctional offense of all time. Miami barks and gestures at each other, then they run a play. OKC barks and gestures at each other, then they isolate and hope for the best... and it works! It's really bizarre to watch.

Which is why Oklahoma, if they had to trade anyone, it should had been Westbrook. Make Durant the centerpiece of the starter-team office, and Harden could 'lead' the reserve-team offense ... and minimize any drop-off in offensive production. Most opposing teams would not be able to handle that kind of sustained offensive pressure.

As for Wade being willing to be unselfish, it is just another reason why LeBron is likely to just stay in Miami. Where will he find another 'super-friend' that seems to genuinely not care about ball possession time?

[Latrinsorm]

We are of like mind on these issues.

Every other issue we have ever discussed, not so much. But these issues! Yes.

[DoctorUnne]

Wow if OKC is 37-12 now imagine how good they'd be if they had a good coach and a functional team.

[Latrinsorm]

53 and negative 4!!!

But seriously, this is something Durant has openly talked about in the past, that he's aware that Westbrook is submarining the team by taking possessions Durant could better utilize (and otherwise being terrible at the point), but he's willing to put up with it (and the frustration that comes with it) because of what Westbrook brings to the table. It's also something that's extremely, extremely obvious when you watch them on the court.

As for the bad coach, all I'll cite is that the first offensive play they called against the Grizzlies was a Thabo Sefolosha post up. Yeah.

[Latrinsorm]

Kobe has an incredibly efficient scoring night, 27 points on 15 shots, 9 for 9 from the line, only took 1 three. 0 assists. Lakers lose by the largest margin so far this year. Since Shaq left, Kobe has recorded 0 assists 10 times including tonight. The Lakers are 2 and 8 in those games.

Before Shaq, Kobe had 43 such games, but a lot came in mop up time and a lot came very early in his career, including 4 to start his career (33 total minutes), so they aren't very interesting.

[Latrinsorm]

So who do you figure has played the most minutes in a season since the NBA-ABA merger (1977 season)?

Hint: you're probably wrong. :D

.

Truck Robinson - 3638 - 1978
Latrell Sprewell - 3533 - 1994
Allen Iverson - 3485 - 2003
Michael Finley - 3464 - 2000
Anthony Mason - 3457 - 1996
Michael Finley - 3443 - 2001
Gary Payton - 3425 - 2000
Allen Iverson - 3424 - 2008
Adrian Dantley - 3417 - 1981
Antoine Walker - 3406 - 2002

Is it me or is the head case quotient on this list surprisingly high? Or I guess not so surprising when you consider the psychotic and self-destructive competitiveness it takes to wrack up so many minutes. Spre, AI, Mase, Antoine, even Payton. To knock off Antoine would take 41.6 minutes per game over 82 games. Currently leading the league is Luol Deng at 39.8, plus he's only played 44 of 49 games. Obviously none of the guys listed played on championship teams (or at least obvious when you're reminded that Finley was on the Mavs for those years), which is also an interesting result.

#11 on this list? None other than Kobe Bryant - 3401 - 2003. Another link: Bryant and Payton have the same number of NBA All-Defense First Team selections, which... COME ON, MAN. It's a travesty, a sham, and a mockery.

[Latrinsorm]

Massacre in Miami. If they didn't switch sides, I would give serious thought to the notion that Miami was shooting on an extra wide basket. LeBron with a frankly impossible 30 points on 11 shots, shooting 73% from the field (SEVENTY THREE) over his last 4 games and scoring 30+ in every one of them, blah blah blah.

Bill Simmons remarked before the game that Miami's supporting cast was weaker this year, which he later qualified as Ray Allen and Udonis Haslem hurting them. This is true, but Mike Miller's performance tonight demonstrated that Miami is much deeper than it's been in the previous two years of the big 3 era. Miller was a major factor in the deciding game 5 of last year's Finals, going 7 of 8 from 3. (The game was a blowout, but still.) This year he's been mostly out of the rotation, but tonight he got big minutes and played hard and well throughout. A legit player, a legit professional, a legit insurance policy if Allen goes to the DL (or just goes away, that would work too). Especially compared to that putrid first year, when the Heat were running Arroyo, Bibby, Ilgauskas out there, this Miami team has legit players all the way down the 13 man roster. We haven't been terribly unlucky with injuries, it's always good to have legit guys willing to sit.

If you have the game recorded, go back to LeBron's spot up 3 in the 3rd quarter right before the commercial. In the replay you can see Caron Butler sitting on the bench behind him clapping his hands as LeBron goes up for the shot. I don't know why but that really struck me as funny.

[Latrinsorm]

Could the Dwight Howard saga get any more bizarre? Astonishingly, yes! (http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8932268/dwight-howard-los-angeles-lakers-shrugs-father-comments)

-Dwight's dad is now getting national press, chiming in on the "we need some urgency" "he's not a doctor" mashup. That's crazy enough, but...
-He goes on to say that Stan Van Gundy wouldn't have let Kobe get away with that. That's awkward enough (and of course prompts more passive-aggressive remarks from D'Antoni), but...
-Dwight is still in touch with Van Gundy. "Despite everything that happened, or whatever, we're still good friends." BOGGLE?

I also thought this quote from Kobe was pretty revealing: "He's just got to go do his job, man. Just rebound, defend and we do our jobs and [fulfill] our roles on what we have to do to help us win. It's not rocket science." Reminds me of the alleged (and vigorously denied) recruitment phone call where Kobe told Dwight the same thing and Dwight was not enthused. The biggest question with Howard (and Nash) was who was going to adjust: Howard/Nash, Kobe, or neither? So far it looks like Howard/Nash and Howard at least is (still) not terribly enthused by it.

[Latrinsorm]

Surprisingly close LAL-MIA game, but ended how we all thought it would. My favorites:

-The Wade reverse windmill dunk (shades of JaVale McGee last year's dunk contest, and it's inexcusable that he's not there this year). I thought he was barely reaching the rim on the front side, then he switched mid-air due to a contest and still somehow hammered it home (and massively botched the landing, but still). Incredible to watch.
-Closing the first half. Wade has the ball, dribbling, 15 seconds left on the shot clock, obviously he's going to run the clock down, hey wait why is Bosh unguarded in the paint, hey wait Bosh just hit a layup... hey... no fair.
-Deciding play of the game. Wade has the ball, dribbling, looking to ice it. James comes to set a pick, gets the pass on the roll for a contested 2, pass to Bosh for a slightly less contested elbow 2, pass to Battier for a wide open 3, bang, game over. How many times have we seen Gasol pass to Kobe pass to Howard pass to Nash for the game sealing 3?
-23 seconds left, game is over, shot clock turned off, Kobe with the ball. I literally shouted at my TV "don't shoot it Kobe! Kobe! C'mon! Don't shoot it!" Kobe drains an uncontested 17 foot jumper. Kobe... c'mon. Have some self respect. (Just mentioning, the line was 7 and the o/u was 203.5.)

And James goes 12 of 18 from the floor, hurting his FG% from the past 4 games, but still ties the all time NBA record for 60+ FG% over a 5 game span of 30+ point games. All time. Everyone. Ever. And he's averaging 7 rebounds and 6 assists over that span. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? Kevin Durant, go home. MVP is over.

[Atlanteax]

Despite the loss, and with GoldenState dropping 4 in a row, and Portland dropping 3, Hollinger's playoff odds actually have the Lakers finishing in 8th and making the playoffs, despite till only 39% or so.

Tho I'd be rather more pessimistic since they are without Gasol for several weeks ... but if they can avoid imploding on the winnable games...

[Drew]

NBA perfect shot percentage games: http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pgl_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=&match=game&year_min=&year_max=&age_min=0&age_max=99&team_id=&opp_id=&is_playoffs=N&round_is_ec1=Y&round_is_ecs=Y&round_is_ecf=Y&round_is_wc1=Y&round_is_wcs=Y&round_is_wcf=Y&round_is_fin=Y&game_num_type=&game_num_min=&game_num_max=&game_month=&game_location=&game_result=&is_starter=&is_active=&is_hof=&pos_is_g=Y&pos_is_gf=Y&pos_is_f=Y&pos_is_fg=Y&pos_is_fc=Y&pos_is_c=Y&pos_is_cf=Y&c1stat=fg_pct&c1comp=gt&c1val=1&c2stat=&c2comp=gt&c2val=&c3stat=&c3comp=gt&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=pts

[Latrinsorm]

29 rebounds from Deke, Jesus.

[Drew]

29 rebounds from Deke, Jesus.

29 rebounds, 27 points on 100% shooting, 6 blocks, 3 assists. I hope they won that game.

[Latrinsorm]

So I've done a bunch more of the charting I mentioned here (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?76285-NBA-2013-Season-Thread-for-NBA-Talking&p=1491961#post1491961) and here (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?76285-NBA-2013-Season-Thread-for-NBA-Talking&p=1492522#post1492522), to recap briefly I record what the main player (LeBron and Durant) does on any given halfcourt play, which is defined somewhat arbitrarily but I'm just trying to distinguish from transition, immediately following offensive rebound, and other scramble situations.

I now have 6 games for LeBron (@GS, @LAL, @BOS, @BRK, @IND, LAC) and 3 for Durant (@DAL, @LAL, MEM):
............. LeBron Durant
Possessions.. 385 201
FGA.......... 88 56
Fouled....... 18 17
Turnover..... 16 8
Assist....... 28 6
Assist Miss.. 34 9
Assist Foul.. 6 1
Screen....... 43 16
No Touch..... 60 68
Quick note: for this list every possession gets only 1 classification in order of priority from top to bottom, so if the player sets a screen (or two) and rolls to the basket for an and-1, this is counted as 1 FGA rather than 1 or 1/3 in each of FGA, Foul, Screen. The purpose of the list is to see the most involvement the player has in the play.

The first thing that stands out just by glancing at these numbers is that in a little more than half the possessions Durant has similar number of fouls drawn and no-touches. LeBron's free throw rate inexplicably remains near a career low, especially when he has been historically unstoppable scoring and you would think that would inspire more fear and desperation. Durant is at a career high in drawing fouls and along with Harden is head and shoulders above all other perimeter players this year. Combine this with his historically magnificent shooting, and you would think he would be the unquestioned feature player of his offense, but no! On 33.8% of Thunder plays he does absolutely nothing. Full splits:
...... LeBron Durant
Full.. 49.4% 48.3%
Half.. 35.1% 17.9%
None.. 15.6% 33.8%
It's just staggering. I also started recording how many points were scored in each type of possession starting with the Boston and Laker games respectively (so 4 for LeBron and 2 for Durant), and those numbers look like this:

...... LeBron Durant
Full.. 1.076 1.250
Half.. 0.875 0.778
None.. 0.944 0.732We are talking relatively small sample sizes, but I think we still get an interesting picture.
1. Durant-based half-court offense is ridiculously, unbelievably efficient. There are teams that can't manage 1.25 points per possession on transition offense, and this is half-court only.
2. No-Durants-allowed half-court offense is ridiculously, horrendously inefficient, on the level of Zach Lowe's hated Tayshaun Prince isolation. That's just a fact. Speculation as to why: Westbrook is a poor shooter and a terrible point player, but is inclined to do both in this scenario.
3. LeBron is utilized very well. It's easy to say let him control the offense "a lot", but the specific balance between him, Wade, Chalmers, even Cole as primary playmaker leads to nearly equal efficiency in all areas.

.

I also kept track of screening: as the Pick and Roll ballhandler, as the PnR screen setter, and as a screener off the ball. (I don't really know the differences between back screens, down screens, etc., and they happen so infrequently in this context that I'm not really concerned about it, although if anyone wants to chime in feel free.) Unlike in the first list, in this case I tabulated however many occurred at any point in a possession, so the example given would be counted as PnR screen (or two). There were more interesting results from this comparison:

1. Overall James ran 119 PnRs in the 325 possessions where he did something, and 60 more as the screener (including off ball screens). Although it's a little hazy to turn these into percentages, because it's not terribly infrequent to run multiple PnRs on the same play, we have no reason to believe LeBron does this disproportionately more or less than Durant so we'll use it for now: 36.6% and 15.6% respectively. The numbers for Durant are 19.5%(!) and 16.4% respectively. (Off ball screens were only 12 and 4 total for each, so from now on I'll ignore them.)

2. That's a big difference already, but it gets even more interesting when we look at the other players involved. James has received at least 10 screens from 6 different players: Allen, Andersen, Anthony (these last two would likely be one without the roster move), Battier, Bosh (highest at 27), Haslem. Durant has received the proportional 5 from only 3: Collison, Ibaka, Perkins. It's fair to say "well, those are his team's bigs, who else would he get screens from?" but this is exactly the point. Coach Brooks is super traditionalist, and it holds his team back. Sefolosha plays the same position as Allen, is definitely more physically imposing, and is arguably as good a 3 point shooter today. Why not at least pretend to try it and keep the defense on their toes? A good answer is because Durant can just blow by everyone anyway, but it's not a great answer because a great and quick defensive team will solve it, like for instance the Miami Heat.

3. Where this traditionalism gets really astonishing is when we look at who the star sets screens for in the pick and roll: James breaks down as 22 for Chalmers, 17 for Wade, 5 for Cole, 4 for Allen - not exactly groundbreaking, but compare: Durant has 26 for Westbrook, 3 for Jackson. 26 out of 29! And one of those 3 came in the Slap the Chair game when Westbrook needed a time out. It's no wonder the Thunder's generally incendiary offense ranks a mere 10th in PnR ball handler, by far their worst of any play category. We saw this with 2011 Miami: no matter how freakish and talented your players, until you run an actual offense that a fifth grader wouldn't find predictable, teams will figure you out to some degree. Both the 2011 Heat and the 2012 Thunder made the NBA Finals, but neither reached their ceilings, and I would argue for this reason. I don't see any reason to believe the 2013 Thunder will be any different.

[SHAFT]

Jamison is having a game tonight and Kobe is looking awful.

[Latrinsorm]

Thunder outclassed by the Heat last night, so thoroughly that the Heat stopped playing defense in the 4th quarter and it didn't even matter.

The game was very, very intensely officiated. A total of 56 free throws (league average is 44), 4 technicals. The Thunder go a ridiculous 33 of 34 from the line. I expect most of it was a response to Durant's scary fall in the first quarter, but it was still pretty choppy. (LeBron made sure he was okay after. Too soft to win a title.)

A lot of confidence from the Miami big men, some good (Bosh leading the fast break!) some bad (Chris Andersen 22 footer!). I don't want to keep harping on it, but they're so much better off without Haslem. Having Battier instead means one less opposing big man near the hoop or a wide open three point shooter or both, and Haslem doesn't give them much more on the defense/rebounding side.

.

All told Miami is 4 games up for 1st in the East and closing in on the Thunder for #2 overall seed. It's all starting to come together.

[Atlanteax]

Too bad LeBron took the shot he did with 1:30 to go, and didn't go for a score on Miami's last possession.

[Latrinsorm]

It was weird. My theories are:
1. He honestly thought it was going in, having made a similar bomb earlier.
2. He thought he already had the % sewn up and made a mental math error.
3. He didn't think it was going in and intentionally sabotaged the streak because he's sick of it.
4. He just doesn't care.
My guess is #4 with a smidgen of #3. Everyone knows LeBron has the stats to be an all time great. He's so annoyed at the recent MJ comparisons that he stole Larry Johnson's initials, I could see the same motivation leading him to submarine his streak with the game in hand.

[Ardwen]

These made for TV "records" mean absolutely nothing, if ya mix up any off combo of stats odds are someone is setting a useless record every damned game

[Atlanteax]

Link provided by Bill Simmons: "You know it's getting good with Dwight and Kobe when Page Six gets involved."

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/lakers_still_in_deep_freeze_NdeeieATpo9PUCtdPsNdEO

Oh why ... why cannot they just get along??

[Latrinsorm]

Heat crush the Bulls. It's all well and good to say "we're gonna pound the Heat inside", but if your perimeter guys get their milkshakes drunken up all night you never get the chance. Also gives yet another reason not to rush Rose back - the Bulls stand 0 chance of beating the Heat with or without him.

LeBron's ridiculous lefty one handed three to close the 3rd was astonishingly close, but the best shot of the night was during a dead ball a minute into the 3rd, when he hit a Tim Duncan super bank shot... lefty... one handed... from 3. I don't know if he meant to do it or just got lucky, but it was unreal.

With Miami's recent hot streak and OKC's recent stumble, Miami is now the #2 overall seed by 1 game, trailing SA for #1 by 3.5.

Speaking of OKC, by far the most interesting trade deadline news to me is their pickup of Ronnie Brewer. Last Finals their lineup of choice against Miami was Westbrook-Sefolosha-Harden-Durant-Ibaka, which is great except only Sefolosha of that group can guard LeBron or Wade. This led Brooks to have Harden defend LeBron, which led very promptly to the Heat winning. Swapping Brewer in for Harden gives them two credible defenders. He obviously is nowhere near Harden on the offensive end, but Westbrook and Durant use 90% of their possessions anyway. This is also key because they lost Fisher, who for his many many faults was a strong defensive presence that could play larger men like Wade and even James (about as well as anyone else could).

[Latrinsorm]

So I wondered how the three pointer has played a factor in the NBA Finals, and here are some results. First, the percentage of FGAs that were 3PAs by year, starting with the introduction of the NBA three pointer in 1980:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/johnnyoldschool/NBAFinals3PAperFGA_zpsf518a521.jpg

As surprises no one it was not used very much in the early days. In the 1980 Finals (Lakers over 76ers) there was exactly 1 made three pointer (and out of 20 attempts!). We see a slow trend upward and then a sudden spike in 1994, which is a little odd because the years marked in red are when the NBA shortened the 3P distance. It's also not a case of teams getting hot, as the Rockets shot a measly .306 and the Knicks an unimpressive .343. It's also interesting to see how if we ignore that spike the trend of the 80s seems to continue linearly to the present day.

Of interest to me was that since the 1998 season, when the traditional(!) three point distance was re-established, the team to shoot better from 3 is 13 and 2 in the Finals. The two outliers are 2000 Lakers (.380 to Pacers .422) and 2010 Lakers (.280 to Celtics .308), so in the absence of those cheaters the metric is 100% correlated with victory. Although of course as it can only be directly applied after the series is over, it still suggests we could get a good guess by looking at regular season o/d against 3. For instance, last year the Heat were slightly better at making 3s and much worse at defending against them, but the Thunder ending up shooting a miserable .305 from 3, including a 3 for 22 brickfest from Westbrook. Luck? Heat coasting on defense in the regular season? More research is required, for sure.

[DoctorUnne]

Shouldn't an optimal NBA offense have every shot be either a three or near the basket? Just seems those would have the highest expected point value, since around the basket you get fouled a lot too. That's why the Celtics suck.

[Drew]

You mean taking contested 18 footers isn't the key to victory?

[SHAFT]

Lakers are damn near .500. They gotta tough game in Denver tonight though. Who knew it only took Jerry Buss dying for Dwight Howard to give a shit?

[Atlanteax]

Lakers lost by 11 ... Kobe had 9 assists to 4 turnovers ... Denver was an atrocious 27.8% from 3p (5 of 18) while the Lakers had 42.1% (8-19).

Ahh... there we go... free-throws... disregarding Denver's, the Lakers were 14-31 at the line, 45.2% (how how *how* does a team have less than 50% FT% ?!?).

Oh... Dwight Howard... 3-14 ... 21% ... *21%* ... dang.

Guess should the Lakers squeak into the playoffs ... hack-a-Shaq will be reborn as hack-a-Dwight.

Lost was not Dwight at the line, but it probably would had changed the dynamic of the game somewhat, had he been closer to 67% ... (6 more makes, lose by 5).

[SHAFT]

The Nuggets are too fast for the Lakers. All they do is run. If the Lakers make the playoffs I pray they don't see Denver.

[Latrinsorm]

Another potentially telling stat... fast break points DEN: 33, LAL: 3.
Shouldn't an optimal NBA offense have every shot be either a three or near the basket? Just seems those would have the highest expected point value, since around the basket you get fouled a lot too. That's why the Celtics suck.It seems that way. It's tough to see more than a rough correlation between % attempts in those areas and things like TS% or eFG% perhaps because some teams shoot / draw fouls better than others. Hoopdata looks at the shooting part of this under their XeFG (http://www.hoopdata.com/teamxefg.aspx?yr=2013) page, with results about what you would expect: Miami, San Antonio, OKC, GSW shoot the lights out, Indy, Milwaukee (how you doing Monta?), Charlotte are terrible. Miami is only middle of the pack in % attempts from 3 or near rim, but because they convert the attempts so well their offense is lethal. Compare to Denver who shoots only at an average rate but leverages that with the best shot selection in the league (and fine rebounding) to still end up with a top 5 offense.

[Latrinsorm]

LeBron James in the month of February:
13 games
38.1 minutes, 29.7 points (would be 1st in league), 7.8 assists (6th), 7.5 rebounds (32nd), 1.8 steals (8th) per game
64% FG (2nd), 43% 3P (9th), 81% FT (48th)
Heat go 12-1
First player since Kareem in '83 (when he was 35 years old, nbd) to shoot 64%+ for a month with a legitimate number of shots. First player since at least 1986 to put up 40 points and 16 assists in one game.

People justifiably talk about Durant's 50-40-90 season, but guess how many 60-40-anything seasons we've ever seen? That would be zero. The only other 55-40 season we've seen was Chris Mullin's 1997 season, where he went 55-41-86 for 14.4 points a game. The only players with 60+ eFG% and 25+ points per game are McHale once, Barkley twice, and LeBron this year.

.

Another interesting quirk is to look at 60+ eFG% and 15+ points, where we get...
Artis Gilmore (5)
Barkley (3)
Shaq, Dwight, Mchale (2)
Kareem, Wilt, Cedric Maxwell, LeBron, STEVE NASH (1)
...but the most unreal thing is that was also the year before Wilt decided to lead the league in assists, so he only finished a paltry 3rd while leading the league in rebounds and finishing 3rd in points. And his 76ers won the title. NO BIG DEAL. Then the next year he did lead the league in assists, still led in rebounds, still 3rd in points, took the eventual champion Celtics to 7 games, won his 3rd consecutive MVP... and then got traded, and traded for junk! Can you imagine? It would be like if LeBron won the MVP this year, lost to the Pacers, and was traded to the Clippers for Grant Hill, Willie Green, and DeAndre Jordan.

[SHAFT]

The warriors, trailblazers, and jazz all lost tonight! Good night or the lakers and they didn't even play.

[Latrinsorm]

Tonight's topic: how surprisingly useless the All-NBA Team is. Consider...

1. The player with the most All-NBA First Teams is Karl Malone with 11. Dwight Howard already has more First Teams (5) than Bill Russell (3), which brings me to my next point:

2. Bill Russell has 3 friggin' All-NBA First Teams, tied for 34th place all time. One of his All-NBA Second Team selections came in 1958 when he won the MVP and finished behind Bob Pettit.

3. The MVP has been Second Team 4 times: Russell 3 times (the other two were to Wilt), Dave Cowens once (to Kareem). The MVP has never been Third Team or worse.

4. The top 4 players for total selections are Kareem (15), Malone (14), Kobe (14), Shaq (14). Some of this is attributable to longevity, as well as players from the 1989 season onward having the opportunity to get Third Team honors, but still.

5. Since the NBA's expansion to 17 teams in 1971, 11 teams have had two First Teamers. Of these, only 3 were champions: the 2002 Lakers, the 1996 Bulls, and the 1983 76ers. The rest: 1984 Lakers (lost to Celtics), 1986 Lakers (lost to Celtics), 1987 Celtics (lost to Lakers, Kevin McHale's first and only All-NBA selection), 1994 and 1995 Jazz (1995 saw a first round exit, woof), 2003 and 2004 Lakers (lol Kobe, but at least they reached the Finals in 2004), 2007 Suns (nice job Cheap Shot Rob).

[Latrinsorm]

Who is a better player, Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant?

24.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 1.8 steals, 1.0 blocks, 37.0 minutes per game
25.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.5 blocks, 36.6 minutes per game

(Wade 1, Kobe 2)

23.4 PER, 55.5 TS%, 48.8 eFG%, 24.1 AST%, 31.8 USG%, 112 ORtg, 105 DRtg, .183 WS/48
25.6 PER, 56.7 TS%, 50.3 eFG%, 32.3 AST%, 32.2 USG%, 112 ORtg, 103 DRtg, .195 WS/48

(Kobe 1, Wade 2)

By individual statistics, Wade is clearly better in really every category. Kobe gets 0.6 more points but needs 1.6 more FGAs per game to do so, which is a horrible percentage. Kobe gets 0.2 more rebounds but 0.5 less blocks, so the "six foot four" Wade clearly outdoes the "six foot six" Kobe in playing big.

.

Hey, count to 5, 5 is more than 2, so Kobe Kobe Kobe. Sure, but how many of those 5 and 2 were either the best player? Let's run down the series:

2000 Finals, Kobe 16/5/4 p/r/a to Shaq's 38/17/3 p/r/b (and 39% FT, lolshaq). Moving on.
2001, Kobe gets 25/8/6, that's legitimate... Shaq has 33/16/3 and throws in 5 assists per game. Moving on.
2002, Kobe moves laterally to 27/6/5, Shaq still has 36/12/3. Shaq wins, fatality.
2006, Wade has 35/8(!!)/4 and 3 steals per game. Shaq has 14/10/1. Forget about it. Wade 1, Kobe 0.
2009, Kobe with 32/6/7, Pau with a measly 19/9/2. Wade 1, Kobe 1.
2010, Kobe gets 29/8/4, Pau with 19/12/3, and has 26 assists to Kobe's 27. This is a tough one. Time to go second level.

Kobe scored 200 points on 163 field goals and 60 free throw attempts, and threw in 27 turnovers. 0.924 points per use.
Pau Pau Powerful Car scored 130 points on 90, 61(!!!), and 13(!!!!!). 1.001 points per use, and again was a better facilitator per touch.

Ok, tiebreaker, let's look at game 7.
Kobe goes 23/15(!!!)/2(!!!!!), adds one (1) steal and four (4) turnovers, shoots 6 of 24 from the field (you may have heard that somewhere before), is +0 while on the floor.
Pau goes 19/18/4(!!!), adds 2 blocks and 1 turnover, shoots 6 of 16 (not great but beats tacking on an 0 for 8), is +7 while on the floor.

How about defense?
Ray Allen is +0, Garnett and Rasheeeeeed are each -4.

Are we totally sure Kobe was the MVP of the 2010 Finals? Let's do Pau's +/- - Kobe's +/- for Game 7 through Game 1:
+7 (W)
+5 (W)
-1 (L)
-1 (L)
-10 (W)
-3 (L)
+5 (W)

In every game but game 3, the Lakers went as Pau went rather than as Kobe went. What else does most valuable mean?

.

And then in 2012 LeBron is awesome (29/10/7), although Dwyane Wade (23/6/5 SIX FOOT FOUR) still led the team in blocks, because Dwyane Wade.

.

.

Net net: if we're all convinced that Kobe is one of the best (X) of all time, doesn't that necessarily mean Wade is too?

And if we're all convinced that Wade isn't, doesn't that mean Kobe isn't either?

[Latrinsorm]

To the above post, Via reputation:
numbers are everything

Hey, give me something. Give me anything. Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

Give me absolutely anything where Kobe is ahead of Wade, and I will review it. That is my solemn word.

[Ardwen]

thats easy, championship wins

[Latrinsorm]

I feel that I have addressed that already. It is hard to make the case that Kobe was the best player on more championship teams than Wade, in which case his larger number of wins is primarily due to teammates, and it makes no sense to credit a player with how good his teammates were, unless he somehow tricked a teammate into signing with his team for less money in a way that got said teammate nationally criticized but still won said player's team a championship.

So... pretty much what Wade did. Wade rules, #1.

[Latrinsorm]

So I don't know what happened in the Heat's narrow victory over the Magic, but in looking at the play by play I imagine it went something like this...

I'm LeBrooooon
I'm LeBrooooon
suck my diiiiick
I'm LeBrooooon

[Atlanteax]

Lakers 'squeak' out a win, due to a 33-9 4Q point margin, down by 25 at one point, against the 'lowly' Hornets.

This is one complexing team.

In the meantime, Lakers' playoff odds further improves with Houston losing to Dallas, Utah losing to Cleveland, and possibly Golden State also losing against Sacramento.

Lakers currently 1.5 games out of 8th, when a few weeks ago they were 4-5 games out.

[DoctorUnne]

Who is a better player, Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant?

24.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 1.8 steals, 1.0 blocks, 37.0 minutes per game
25.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.5 blocks, 36.6 minutes per game



If these are career averages, count me very surprised. Having said that, Wade needs to keep those numbers up for another 5-6 seasons for it to be an apples to apples comparison, and I don't think he will be able to do that. Longevity matters. Now, if you took Kobe's season 3-10 and Wade's season 3-10 (or 9 or whatever he's on now) averages and they still match up, then I would be more convinced.

[DoctorUnne]

Tonight's topic: how surprisingly useless the All-NBA Team is

I don't think comparing number of all-NBA teams between two players from different eras should always indicate one is better than the other. Russell played at the exact same time as another top-5 or top-10 of all time player at the same position. It stands to reason he'd have roughly half as many all-NBA first teams as he otherwise would. Meanwhile, Howard is playing during a period where there are no other dominant centers. His competition is much easier. He can win more all-NBA first teams because he's lucky, not because the award is useless.

There also may have been a case where the award was given as a backup to the person who doesn't win MVP, which also usually carries team connotations with it. They do the same thing in football with MVP vs. offensive POY. Russell is on the best team so he wins MVP, while Wilt wins first-team all-NBA as a consolation prize.

[Latrinsorm]

If these are career averages, count me very surprised.I was, too!
Having said that, Wade needs to keep those numbers up for another 5-6 seasons for it to be an apples to apples comparison, and I don't think he will be able to do that. Longevity matters. Now, if you took Kobe's season 3-10 and Wade's season 3-10 (or 9 or whatever he's on now) averages and they still match up, then I would be more convinced.Sure, we can do that. Wade is in his 10th season, so we'll do 3-10 for each:

26.0, 5.2, 6.2, 1.8, 1.1, 37.0 Wade
27.1, 5.9, 5.1, 1.7, 0.7, 39.6 Kobe

24.0, 55.2%, 48.3%, 24.5%, 31.4%, 112, 104, .193 Kobe
26.9, 57.1%, 50.8%, 33.3%, 33.2%, 113, 103, .209 Wade

Kobe's relative deficiencies in the traditional counting stats are reduced really across the board, but Wade's PER and WS/48 gaps actually increase in this sample. Why would this be? My guess is (1) some of the bump in Kobe's counting stats is due to higher MP that PER controls for and (2) Wade's increased gaps in the advanced shooting% metrics.

Also interesting is that in this sample Kobe has 3 rings to Wade's 2 (and this season would count if the Heat win the title), and Wade has 1 Finals MVP to Kobe's 0.

.

It also occurred to me to dust off my old "how did the team do with X guy out?" metric. The list I have so far +Wade looks like...

LeBron James - 26.86 (32)
Hakeem Olajuwon - 16.64 (88)
Tim Duncan - 14.57 (71)
Carmelo Anthony - 6.72 (79)
Dwyane Wade - 5.50 (64)
Kobe Bryant - 4.94 (89)

...in terms of wins added per 82 games, only counting seasons where the player had 70+ G or 2000+ MP (prorated for short seasons), and not counting this year. Also just throwing this out there, Wade never missed the playoffs in the seasons described, and although he definitely would have in 2008 even if he didn't get hurt. Even if we hold that against him, Wade and Kobe each have a really lousy team season on his record, and in a season in his nominal physical prime. Big picture, the only real difference between the two is that Kobe played with Shaq on the upside of his career trajectory, Wade played with Shaq on his downside.

[Latrinsorm]

Bill Simmons article (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9030601/the-worst-contracts-nba) today, hating on Pierre to his eternal detriment, but the jaw-dropping part:

"Multiple sources have told me that, when Oklahoma City's Sam Presti decided to shop James Harden, Golden State was his first call. He wanted Klay Thompson and a pick. The Warriors would only consider the trade if Oklahoma City took back Biedrins or Jefferson for 2013 expirings, knowing they'd get crushed by the luxury tax in 2014 with Harden's extension plus Steph Curry's extension plus David Lee plus Bogut/Jefferson/Biedrins. At that point, Presti went to Washington (offering Harden for Bradley Beal, and unbelievably getting turned down), then Houston (where the shopping heated up). Presti never ended up calling Golden State back."

Just meditate on that for a minute.

First thing, of course, just because Simmons says it doesn't make it so.
Second, okay, yes, both GS and DC had ball dominating point guards already. FIGURE IT OUT.

Anyone who paid even remote attention last year knew James Harden was a sure thing, period. Harden is ahead of LeBron in that he could demonstrably play with other people dominating the ball: he played next to Westbrook and Durant at the same time, and was wildly successful doing so. Even if we assume he has to be the guy with the ball in his hands 48 minutes, put yourself in Golden State's shoes. Steph Curry can't get out of bed in the morning without spraining his ankle. Having an incredibly effective playmaking shooting guard is a problem? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Okay, but what about long term salary implications? If they had traded Beal, Washington would have exactly $0 under any sort of contract in 2017. GS had a little more, but most due to Steph Curry, and again we have already seen Harden play alongside a psychotic point guard, let alone a mellow point guard who can actually shoot a little bit.

I cannot wrap my head around this story, and I cannot wrap my head around how this is the first I'm hearing about it. Not that I have so much know, but I think it's fair to say I pay a significant amount of attention to NBA matters. GS is at least in the playoffs, how is DC not getting crucified for this?

[Atlanteax]

Bill Simmons article (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9030601/the-worst-contracts-nba)

Wow ... had that trade for Kobe had gone thru for Detroit ... would had been 3-peat+ and the Darko draft pick would had been totally forgiven.

[SHAFT]

Anyone watch the lakers game tonight? Holy shit. They've been exciting as hell recently

[Latrinsorm]

Wow ... had that trade for Kobe had gone thru for Detroit ... would had been 3-peat+ and the Darko draft pick would had been totally forgiven.I don't know. They had already lost Ben Wallace to free agency by that point, leading them to start a very creaky Antonio McDyess for 78 games, plus they were still coached by Flip Saunders. With no Prince, who guards Pierce in the conference finals? The next wing on their depth chart was Jarvis Hayes, that would have been a sweep for Boston. Remember, this was also the year the Lakers were only 28-16 (5th place in the West) when acquiring Pau and finished 27-9, or put another way still in the time period where people weren't convinced Kobe was an all-time great due to the Lakers repeated and embarrassing playoff failings since losing Shaq. To give up two core guys and picks for him the year after LeBron had personally annihilated you and possibly after (depending on when specifically the potential trade was floated) the Celtics had created a superteam with all that in mind seems a bad idea.

[Latrinsorm]

Anyone watch the lakers game tonight? Holy shit. They've been exciting as hell recentlyThey sure look it from the box score. Kobe flirting with the ABA triple double (points assists turnovers), 5 blocks for Dwight, Kobe and Nash going a combined 9 for 16 from 3, everyone else going 5 for 23 (yowza!), the Lakers getting 20(!!!) more FTAs, all the old guy starters playing at least 40 minutes.

It might not be pretty, or conducive to long term success, or good fundamentals, but I expect it must be incredibly exciting.

[SHAFT]

If the lakers get San Antonio they might have a chance. Anyone else like okc, clippers, Denver , not a chance in hell. First they gotta get in.

Kobe was amazing last night. It'll be a sad day when he retires. If there ever was another mj it is/was him

[Latrinsorm]

I think their best shot is against the Clippers personally. The Spurs would eat a one man defense for breakfast. The only guy I trust on the Clippers is Chris Paul, but look at the 2011 series...
Kobe: 22.5 points, 3.7 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.5 steals per game
CP3: 22.0 points, 6.7 rebounds(!!!), 11.5 assists, 1.8 steals per game
...and that was with a New Orleans starting 5 of Paul, Belinelli, Ariza, Landry, Okafor, which really says it all in the best point guard "argument". The Lakers crushed them in rebounding and shotblocking, which makes sense as they were 3rd and 11th in the league to the Hornets' 25th and 20th during the regular season. This year, however, the Lakers are 4th and 14th and the Clippers are 12th and 7th, much more of a toss-up. Still, between an untested/decrepit supporting cast and Vinny Del Negro coaching, I think that's the best chance for an upset.

OKC and Denver would run them into the ground, that's for sure.
Kobe was amazing last night. It'll be a sad day when he retires.Very true.
If there ever was another mj it is/was himYou tripping.

[Latrinsorm]

I don't think comparing number of all-NBA teams between two players from different eras should always indicate one is better than the other. Russell played at the exact same time as another top-5 or top-10 of all time player at the same position. It stands to reason he'd have roughly half as many all-NBA first teams as he otherwise would. Meanwhile, Howard is playing during a period where there are no other dominant centers. His competition is much easier. He can win more all-NBA first teams because he's lucky, not because the award is useless.

There also may have been a case where the award was given as a backup to the person who doesn't win MVP, which also usually carries team connotations with it. They do the same thing in football with MVP vs. offensive POY. Russell is on the best team so he wins MVP, while Wilt wins first-team all-NBA as a consolation prize.I hit my head in the bathroom and had a flash of insight on this point: Russell and Chamberlain played in the era where players selected the MVP while writers selected the All-NBA teams (writers do everything now). This makes it less likely (though not impossible) for such consolation prizes to occur, but it also suggests a possibly interesting historical perspective on Russell. Everyone today accepts him as one of the 10 greatest of all time, is it conceivable that there was something about him that the sportswriters didn't recognize? Or something (negative) that we don't today? He was notoriously uptight about, you know, racism, which led some writers to write unkindly about him. The way that he was the only MVP repeatedly denied All-NBA First Team makes me wonder how we would remember that era if writers had been in charge of the MVP as well...

In the 3 years Russell was MVP Second Team the second place MVPs were Schayes (First Team as a forward), Pettit (ditto), Chamberlain (First Team as center). As I have mentioned before, there are currently 8 players with 3 or more MVPs: Kareem (6), Jordan and Russell (5), Chamberlain (4), Bird, LeBron, Magic, Moses (3). Subtracting 3 from Russell would remove him from this list, giving one to Schayes would make him one of 30 men to ever win an NBA MVP (although he's in the Hall of Fame anyway), giving one to Pettit would give him 3, giving one to Chamberlain would replace Russell's name with his as one of three men with 5 or more MVPs. In any event it would strengthen the narrative that Russell was on a great team first/primarily and a greatish player second/consequently; the rich man's Kobe Bryant if you will.

.

I mentioned before (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?76285-NBA-2013-Season-Thread-for-NBA-Talking&p=1495051#post1495051) how LeBron was at 30 PER which is really cool and Durant was at .300 WS/48 which is somewhat more arbitrary but still really cool. Update: now LeBron's doing both (31.1 and .310) and Durant is doing neither (28.5 and .297).

There have been 17 seasons of 30+ PER: Wilt, Michael, Robinson, Shaq, T-Mac, Wade, LeBron...
...9 seasons of .300+ WS/48: Wilt, Kareem, Michael, LeBron...
...and 5 seasons with both:
1964 Wilt (NBA Finals)
1988 Michael (2nd round)
1991 Michael (Champion)
2009 LeBron (3rd round)
2013 LeBron (?)

.

The arbitrary shooting mark race is also still very close: Durant is at 50.4 / 41.2 / 90.8 (12th or 13th time ever depending if Nash keeps it up as well, 3rd to do so with 20+ points per game), LeBron is at 56.2 / 40.4 (2nd time ever, 1st to do so with 20+ points per game). It's an exciting time to be using base 10.

[Atlanteax]

I hit my head in the bathroom

Suddenly, everything becomes so clear...

[Ardwen]

The writers in general and Boston writers in general did not get along with Russell, Boston press was if anything worse in the past then it is now, and yes Boston was a very racist city. For a superstar to be treated the way Boston treated him, would nowadays make front page news on almost weekly basis during the season. I grew up in an incredibly home team Boston house, and some of the stories I heard about the treatment he got from both the fans and local press were more then a little disgusting and disturbing. Just look at the stories of the cities treatment of Ted Williams and multiply it several fold.

[Keller]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-YyUXd3Lb0I

[Keller]

https://i.minus.com/ibfGACq50lur2k.gif

[Drew]

https://i.minus.com/ibfGACq50lur2k.gif

Is this a graphical representation of the Heat-Pacers game?

[Keller]

Is this a graphical representation of the Heat-Pacers game?

You better hope the playoff series doesn't wind up like the regular season series.

[Latrinsorm]

Maybe this season you hoosiers can injure intentionally Bosh and Wade.

...and still lose. B)

[SHAFT]

Welcome back to Orlando Dwight Howard.

[Latrinsorm]

So 82games.com provides ORtg, DRtg, and +/- for various 5-man lineups: the top 20 in MP for every team and for each player on every team. It is therefore possible to perform an analysis where you look at a given player (in our case Ray Allen) and compare the team's performance with him in a given lineup (for example Chalmers-Wade-James-Bosh) to the team's performance with another player in said lineup (for example Haslem, Battier, Lewis, or Miller in that lineup).

First note: as the above example indicates, it's not always a like for like swap. In that lineup Allen, Battier, and Miller (nominally) play small forward, while Haslem and Lewis (nominally) play power forward. I include the nominallies because it's difficult to firmly assign positions for any basketball lineup, especially when we take into account offense v. defense and especially when that lineup includes freaks like LeBron and Wade (watching LeBron switch onto Durant for Wade in a Durant-Westbrook pick and roll is high art).

Second note: as you may suspect, most of these lineups have been played for very few minutes, and certainly not all at a time. Miami's most-used lineup has played 445 minutes before tonight, which is only 14.8% of their total minutes played. The 20th most used lineup involving Ray Allen has only played 18 minutes. Let's keep this in mind.

Third note: Because we are restricted to the top 20 for any player, there may be more relevant lineups than the ones I found, but they would have played less than 14, 6, 1, or 5 minutes, so I'm not terribly worried.

.

All told, I found 19 relevant lineups.
-4 involved Wade as the other and ranged from much better (+8.5 points per 48 minutes) to stupid better (+36.5 points per 48 minutes). These are obvious and uninteresting; nobody thinks Allen is a better 2-guard than Wade.
-2 involved James as the other: one was +37.3, one was +55.3. Again: obvious and uninteresting.
-Of the remaining 13, 7 were better without Allen and 6 were better with, which sounds pretty close, and the average bears that out at +2.9 per lineup (that is, on average a lineup has +2.9 better +/- when Allen is replaced, not counting James or Wade).
-If we arbitrarily restrict ourselves to 30 minutes or more (on each side), we are reduced to 5, and our average flips to -14.3:

Chalmers-X-Battier-James-Bosh
Allen (64): 1.17 ORtg, 1.10 DRtg, +7.5
Miller (39): 1.29 O, 0.99 D, +28.31(!)

I'm not sure how such a big gap happens. I can see Miller being better offensively because he's nearly as good a shooter and doesn't make so many dumb decisions. It's really hard to see him being better defensively, but perhaps the answer lies in rebounding, something Allen is secretly terrible at and Miller is quite good at especially on the defensive end, which is obviously all that's relevant to DRtg.

Chalmers-Wade-X-James-Bosh
Allen (69): 1.35 O, 1.04 D, +38.26(!!!)
Battier (245): 1.15 O, 1.00 D, +16.07
Haslem (445): 1.14 O, 1.01 D, +12.94
Lewis (62): 1.15 O, 1.17 D, -1.55

This one also seems surprising at first. Not so much that Allen is better defensively at small forward, which is an obvious consequence for a guy who has lost quickness, but that he adds so much more on the offensive side than Battier. I can only guess that with 3 legit ball handlers instead of 2, Allen accepts being reduced to the spot-up shooter and that's it role, which he is going to be phenomenal at until the day he dies. It's very hard to explain how Battier adds almost nothing offensively over Haslem. It could be that despite all their claims to the contrary LeBron in fact plays power forward when he, Battier, and Bosh are on the floor, which saps his energy on the defensive end...? It's kind of an academic exercise, of course, because both lineups are massively successful and are #1 and #2 in MP. In the first game of the Finals OKC went super-duper small with a 4 guard lineup, having a 3 guard lineup in our back pocket this year is a smart move.

Wade-X-Battier-James-Bosh
Allen (93): 1.15 O, 0.96 D, +21.16
Chalmers (245): 1.15 O, 1.00 D, +16.07

This is a variation on the first set's frontcourt. Obviously Allen isn't guarding anyone's point guard, so the placement of positions is kind of ad hoc. Chalmers hits 3s and makes some bad decisions, ditto Allen. Wade or James is a better defender than Chalmers, but you don't want them chasing around the other team's point guard unless you really have to (because your alternative is Allen). Pretty straightforward.

.

It seems like the net is that Allen is best suited to being the 3rd guard, is serviceable at being the pseudo point guard (or more accurately letting Wade/James be such), and is miserable at being the backup shooting guard. Unfortunately, his MP breakdown of these situations are 32%, 17%, and 51%, leading his overall contribution to be pretty heavily negative (currently 151st out of 182 players qualifying by MP, though his true ranking is probably a little higher as qualifying for MP selects for perimeter players and there are plenty of lousy bigs, but still). If we remove the 30 MP restriction and look only at the team's +/- with him on the floor, Allen as 3rd guard is +10.26 over 276 minutes, Allen-Wade backcourt is +15.23 over 145 minutes, and Allen-trad.PG backcourt is -1.81 over 451 minutes. Note how even though -1.81 isn't exactly Washington Generals, because Allen plays for the Heat it's a very poor showing.

.

I hope to do the same sort of analysis later with Thunder lineups, and I hope Reggie Jackson has logged enough minutes to make it compelling.

[Keller]

Maybe this season you hoosiers can injure intentionally Bosh and Wade.

...and still lose. B)

Why would we want to injure Miami's role players?

[Methais]

I miss the Celtics from the 80s.

Bird, McHale, Parish, Johnson, Ainge...
http://i.imgur.com/WV6TqrI.gif

[Latrinsorm]

Why would we want to injure Miami's role players?Because you couldn't injure LeBron with a ball peen hammer and flanking bonus?
I miss the Celtics from the 80s.

Bird, McHale, Parish, Johnson, Ainge...One of these things is not like the others......

[thefarmer]

Thoughts on the possible first round matchups for the West and East?

Mainly because I'd like my Rockets to at least have a chance to get into the second round.

[Drew]

Because you couldn't injure LeBron with a ball peen hammer and flanking bonus?One of these things is not like the others......

Flanking was very confusing for many people, I thought Bushido was a similar mechanic that was easier to understand.

[Latrinsorm]

Thoughts on the possible first round matchups for the West and East?

Mainly because I'd like my Rockets to at least have a chance to get into the second round.My first thought is that Kobe fanboys are going to be insufferable talking about how the Lakers could have really made a lot of noise in the playoffs this year if not for this injury, and how that will drive me up the wall with its blatant falsity.

My second thought (on this tangent) is that I am not at all surprised that Dahntay Jones took a cheap shot. On a team heavily populated with fake tough guys (a set that in no way includes David West), he is perhaps the most insufferable. Yes, more than Han's bro. Yes, that should be impossible.

My third thought is that BRUCE BOWEN of all people complaining about this maneuver when he personally did the same thing to Amare (not to mention whoever else) is pretty laughable.

.

The West matchups are more interesting but much more in flux. OKC and SA as 1 and 2, but which is which? Especially with Kobe out, who ends up at 7 and 8? GS and Utah might turn it around, Denver might finally cool off, where LA ends up is anyone guess. Restricting ourselves to looking at the Rockettes makes it easier: they absolutely have to stay out of the 7-8 range. Yes Harden eviscerated the Spurs last year, but that was with Durant spacing the floor, not Chandler Parsons. The Rockets are vulnerable to the post-up, the Spurs excel at it. Throw in the Spurs shutting the door on transition and Tony Parker having his way with Lin and they've got nothing on either end. Similar story with OKC: too good in the post, shut down transition, terrible PG matchup, plus facing down the most frightening offensive player in the conference is not good times.

The Clippers, Nuggets, or Grizzlies all present their own (significant) problems, but it's at least plausible the Rockets can beard their way into a couple games. The Grizzlies should be able to post the Rockets into oblivion, but they should be able to do that to everyone and they don't so there could be hope there. Rockets-Nuggets might score 300 points per game between them, so that favors Harden, but I don't see how the Rockets have enough bodies to keep up with Denver especially in Denver. Clippers, Chris Paul drinks up your milkshake. On second thought, forget it and wait for next year. You've got the Lithuanian and Thomas Robinson developing, another year for Lin and Harden to develop chemistry, whatever sneaky FAs Morey always gets.
Flanking was very confusing for many people, I thought Bushido was a similar mechanic that was easier to understand.I don't know what that is so it must be from some weird, non-third edition and I hate it.

[thefarmer]

On second thought, forget it and wait for next year. You've got the Lithuanian and Thomas Robinson developing, another year for Lin and Harden to develop chemistry, whatever sneaky FAs Morey always gets.

This has pretty much been my take for this year. Dork Elvis, as Bill Simmons insists on calling him, has done an outstanding job with trades this year and I expect him to continue that trend*. I'll take any wins I can get this year and look at it as building for a more serious run next year. Hopefully with some new guy to stand in the paint and provide some interior/postup D.

*Caveat: AS LONG AS DORK ELVIS DOESN"T GO AFTER FUCKING WHINEYBITCH HOWARD AND HIS CRYBABY INJUJURIES!11!

edit2: Thank god we didn't get Bynum

[Latrinsorm]

From Tom Habersbroh from ESPNStats&Info: Shane Battier is the only player in NBA history to be a member of two 20-gm win streaks ('08 HOU).

[DoctorUnne]

The streak ends tonight.

[Latrinsorm]

I was poking around some stats the other day and wondered if Duncan was a legitimate second place MVP candidate considering that (1) the Spurs are very successful and (2) Tony Parker is not now and has never been that big a deal, but then I realized that his MP total is really really low: 1668 of a possible 3251 minutes (51.3%), as one would expect from someone in his 15th season without the aid of shady medical procedures. Surely someone who plays closer to 80% (such as Durant's 79.4%) is by sheer amount of contribution more valuable and therefore better suited to finish second to LeBron, right?

Well, just because I say "surely" doesn't make it so, so let's look at the % of a team's MP by every MVP. Note that I use % instead of the more obvious MP/G because most players do not play all 82 games, and I do not resort simply to MP/(82 games' worth of minutes) because of strike seasons and seasons way back in the day had less, plus that wouldn't account for OTs. Anyway, here are the results from the merger (1977) to today:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/johnnyoldschool/NBAMVPpctMP_zps0dbe6eb2.jpg

One of those points stands out a little bit. It was the year Bill Walton broke his foot for the best-in-NBA Trailblazers, but even before missing 22 games he was playing a very modest 33.3 minutes per game and had missed 2. His statistics look very good (19 points, 13 boards, 5 assists, 2.5 blocks per game, 24.8 PER), but they look better today than they were then: he wasn't in the top 20 in points, would only have finished 5th in rebounds and 4th in blocks, and while finishing 17th in assists as a center is pretty interesting, consider that Joakim Noah is currently 4th in rebounds, 6th in blocks, and his 4.1 assists while only 50th would have worked out to 4.8 at Walton's pace. The takeaway is that Walton wasn't doing anything incredible stat-wise.

Who (narrowly) finished second that year? George Gervin, who led the league in scoring after famously dueling George Thompson on the last day of the season. Additionally he averaged 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 1.7 steals, and 1.3 blocks per game for an overall 24.7 PER. Again, solid (3rd most rebounds for a guard that year, most blocks) but not incredible... but he played 72.2% of his team's minutes, almost half again what Walton managed.

It's also not like the Blazers were the 72-win Bulls: at the time of his injury they were on track for 68 wins, giving them a chance to reach the Lakers' record of 69 six years prior, but plain old regression to the mean could have kept them from that. The Spurs (who were bizarrely in the Eastern Conference at the time) finished with a 2 seed and a respectable 52 wins. Both teams sent an additional player to the All-Star game (Larry Kenon and Maurice Lucas), which for small markets like Portland and San Antonio is quite a feat.

.

Two interesting things to consider about this: what if Gervin had won an NBA MVP? Let's compare his stats with another shooting guard who won one MVP:
26.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.8 blocks - Gervin
25.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.5 blocks - Kobe
21.7 PER, .159 WS/48, 4 scoring titles - Gervin
23.4 PER, .183 WS/48, 2 scoring titles - Kobe
Kobe is pretty clearly ahead, but if we throw in that Gervin played 4 ABA years and Kobe's stats are going down, it might end up being a lot closer. The comparison to Wade is while interesting and much closer nevertheless a little inexact because Wade is more of a combo guard (like West), while Gervin seems to me to be Kobe's clearest competition for second best shooting guard ever.

Second, why the heck did people vote for Walton over Gervin? This was still in the era when players voted for MVP. Consider also that this was before Larry Bird, and that from 1960 to 1977 there was 1 white MVP (Dave Cowens). As everyone knows, the NBA is predominantly black now and was not in the 50s, but it's hard to find data on when specifically this changed from the latter to the former. A pretty big point against this theory was that from 1960 to 1977 there was 1 white MVP (still Dave Cowens), but it's such a weird result that it really begs for weird theories. Walton hooked everyone up with really sweet weed? Gervin was just a jerk?
The streak ends tonight.Everybody gotta die sometime, Red.

[SHAFT]

Anyone catch the play of the year in this Miami game?

[SHAFT]

God I hope Miami beats Boston! Fuck the celtics

[Androidpk]

God I hope Miami beats Boston! Fuck the celtics

I'll gut you like a fish.

[SHAFT]

Lebron already killed em. It's done

[Drew]

The streak ends tonight.

Oh?

[Latrinsorm]

This game is a great example of how crazy this streak really is. Jeff Green has the game of his life, Ray Allen lays a major egg, Miami's last prayer is a LeBron James "no, no, yes!!" isolation long 2, it goes on, Pierce's "I've got the balls to take that!" 3 doesn't. The odds all of that plays out exactly so that Miami gets a victory, multiplied by 23 games, it's absurd. Win or lose don't really matter for Miami at this point, but the way they keep playing quality basketball a high % of the time no matter how much pressure etc. is involved is a really, really good sign.

Other fascinating moments:
-Whatever resulted in LeBron James standing impassively in front of the Celtic Girls routine before the game.
-Avery Bradley is a fantastic on the ball defender and a horrific off the ball defender. The worst was when he scrambled back to Chalmers for 3, except Chalmers had slid from the top to the right wing, leaving Bradley closing out on... nobody. Ouch.
-UD and Birdman combining for 8 fouls in 28 minutes. 8!!!
-The resulting super super smallball, which honestly was a pleasure to watch for the most part. 5 on 5 skill players is just fun.
-And Battier burning Pierce with the "spike it off your back" routine for the millionth time. Not that it really mattered at that point, but come on Cap, pay attention.

And tonight's random stat: this is LeBron's 17th game with 12+ assists and 2+ blocks. This ties him for the most such games since the 1986 season with Magic Johnson, which kind of makes sense: Magic got 12 assists by the end of the first quarter, and at 6'8" he should have a reasonably easy time getting shot blocks here and there. What's crazy is that third place belongs to John Stockton, who only averaged a block every 4.8 games. What's super crazy is that the period 1986-present covers all 19 years of Stockton's career and 6 of Magic's. Something tells me he would probably run away with this category if we had full boxscores back to 1980.

[DoctorUnne]

Great game. Imagine what would have happened if we had two of our three best players playing.

[Drew]

Great game. Imagine what would have happened if we had two of our three best players playing.

You would have lost.

[DoctorUnne]

Oh?

"Instead, the defending NBA champions won a regular-season game in Boston for the first time in 11 tries."
"The Heat had not won in Boston since the New Big Three was formed."

And 2-3 in the playoffs in Boston.

[Latrinsorm]

Great game. Imagine what would have happened if we had two of our three best players playing.Hey speaking of that, are we sure Rondo is actually good? Certainly he is a spectacular and unique athlete with a skill set of similar parameters... but why is Boston better (W-L) without him? Consider also that according to 82games.com's simple rating, he was only the fifth most valuable player on Boston and (this is incontrovertibly true) the Celtics scored less points than the opposition while he was on the court, and were worse on offense and defense. This is very weird if he is actually good.

It is also incontrovertible that he leads the league in assists per game. Does this mean stats are dumb or dumb stats (sit venia verbo) are dumb?

[Latrinsorm]

Speaking of +/-, would you care to guess who the top and bottom 5 players are in the category of On court +/- - Off court +/- so far this season (of players playing at least 40% of their team's minutes)?

LeBron James +15.9
J. Joseph Johnson +15.8
Mike Conley +13.5
Amir Johnson +13.3
Mario MFin' Chalmers +13.3
...
Brandon Jennings -8.8
Carlos Boozer -9.0
Shawn Marion -9.1
Brandon Bass -10.9 (it's gotta be the name)
Walter Ray Allen -11.3

That's pretty weird, right? The best On court number belongs to Chalmers (which is to say the Heat when Chalmers plays are the best team in the league), the worst belongs to Byron Mullens; the best Off court is Ray Allen (which is to say the Heat when Ray Allen sits are the best team in the league), the worst is Kemba Walker. The Miami combo is obvious chicken and egg, as Ray Allen frequently comes in for Chalmers and then the excrement hits the air conditioning unit. The Charlotte is a little odd but Charlotte just sucks, who cares.

What about last season?

Chris Paul +18.2
Ryan Anderson +17.5
Stevie Nash +16.9
Mr. Garnett +15.5
Blake Griffin +15.4

Best On court... MARIO CHALMERS! Best Off... Norris Cole! Someone at espn recently had an iNsIder that I think suggested Norris Cole was Miami's weak link, but I suspect it's more that Mario Chalmers is underrated and Ray Allen sucks. He just sucks.

[Latrinsorm]

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9068903/the-toronto-raptors-sportvu-cameras-nba-analytical-revolution

Another typically brilliant piece from Zach Lowe about the SportVU cameras. Includes a 16 second youtube clip that you just have to watch even if you don't read a word of it.

Everyone knows the boxscore leaves a ton out, especially on the defensive end. Getting access to the play by play for +/- is the first big step towards really measuring defense, and this tracking of where everyone is at all times on the floor is the final step. Measuring defense is solved, period. This new technology is such a big deal that some of the teams involved don't even tell the company that provides it what they're doing with it.

Also included are portents of the 3mageddon that's coming once advanced stats really take hold, which I think is going to be absolutely great for the NBA. It pushes teams towards small ball (which as we saw in the last Heat-Celtics game is really energetic and fun) and away from foul shots, which are critical and important and boring as hell. Plus, this is already happening:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/johnnyoldschool/NBAPctFT3PA_zpsdf8207b5.jpg

The blue line is the percentage of possessions (defined as fga + .44 * fta + tov) that end in threes, the green line is those that end in free throws, from 1980 to today. It's not a coincidence that one goes up as the other goes down, as the shortened 3 point line era demonstrates. With linear regressions these lines cross in a year and a half, and then it'll get really interesting.

[SHAFT]

Holy shit. What a game! Down by 27 and they pull it off.

Poor, poor Cleveland.

[Latrinsorm]

Another LeBron boxscore that hasn't happened since 1986 if ever: 25 points, 7 o-boards, 10 assists, 3 steals, 2 blocks. The Heat play by play for the 4th quarter is also pretty crazy...

Chris Andersen 1 of 2 at line
LeBron blocked
LeBron made 3
LeBron miss
LeBron rebound
LeBron made layup
LeBron made 3
LeBron made 3 for the lead
LeBron missed 3
LeBron assists Ray Allen made 3
Mario Chalmers traveling (GODDAMN IT CHALMERS)
LeBron missed 2
LeBron assists Chalmers made 2
Wade assists Ray Allen made 3
Ray Allen missed 2
LeBron rebound
LeBron missed 2
LeBron draws the foul
LeBron draws the foul (sic)
LeBron assists Chalmers made 3
LeBron missed 2
Wade made 2
Wade missed 2
Bosh rebound
Allen missed 3
LeBron rebound
LeBron missed 2
LeBron rebound
LeBron missed 2
LeBron rebound
LeBron draws the foul
LeBron 1 for 2 from line

Then other people started doing stuff. In the span of 9 minutes the Heat go from -9 to +9 on a 27-9 run, LeBron scores or assists on 20, 6 rebounds, 2 steals, a block. In 9 minutes. God hates Cleveland.

[SHAFT]

I sure as hell can't wait until he comes to LA in a couple of years.

[Latrinsorm]

I really don't see it. You can't build a team from nothing with one signing. Miami added 3 elite guys at once, supposing you re-sign Howard and he's still at the elite level then, who's the third guy? Paul? Throw in that it took Miami arguably 3 years to get all their complementary pieces set when all three elites were in their primes as opposed to aging past them. Last year we were starting Ronny Turiaf for God's sake, 2 of our 8 man playoff rotation are routinely sitting this year (Miller and Anthony). We're giving heavy minutes to a guy who was unemployed for months: inexplicably unemployed, but still.

Wouldn't you rather have a nice Howard - Josh Smith - Ramon Sessions core? That would be uh... you know. Horrific.

[Latrinsorm]

Not 21... not 22... not 23...

[Keller]

Careful Heat fans - you don't want to become as obnoxious as Lakers fans.

[Androidpk]

Lat has been an obnoxious Heat fan ever since his bf started playing for them.

[Drew]

I heard on the radio yesterday that in the last 15 years teams have been down 26+ points past the half 2013 times. Out of those 2013 times 6 of those teams won the game. Now 7 after the Heat comeback. Very impressive.

[Latrinsorm]

Careful Heat fans - you don't want to become as obnoxious as Lakers fans.If you can't delight in the Heat brand of basketball, I don't know what to tell you. Unselfishness, movement, and brilliance on the offensive end, intense energy and camaraderie on the defensive end. What's one of the biggest complaints people have about the NBA? Teams take the regular season off, only care about the playoffs. Ok, we'll win 24+ straight games in the regular season. Stars are only in it for the money. Ok, we'll have three stars take pay cuts to play together.

In conclusion, the Heat rules, #1.
Lat has been an obnoxious Heat fan ever since his bf started playing for them.Being factually correct is not the same as being obnoxious, sir.

[Keller]

I love the Heat.

Their fans are getting a little annoying.

PS - Bobcats are ending the streak tonight.

[Latrinsorm]

I look at espn.com's aggregated twitter tweets. Haberstroh is talking about Heat practice. Someday your children, and your children's children, and your children's children's children will ask you about the incroyable Heat streak of twenty-ought-and-thirteen. Will you tell them you were worrying the third or whatever-the-hell-it-is round of the NCAA tune-a-ment? Or will you tell them you were following the play-by-play over the Internets (which will be its own story considering that so-called President Obama's socialist socialism will destroy that and all fruits of capitalism before they were ever born) and the transcendent play of LeBron R. "M." James?(!)?

It makes me crazy that people are eager to extol Kobe's historic magnificence (not to mention the Little Warrior's) but not LeBron's. Are we even watching the same thing? Come on, bros.

[Latrinsorm]

PS - Bobcats are ending the streak tonight.Obviously sooner or later you will be correct. It's not like the Heat are going 39 + fo + fo + fo + fo in a row and winning the title, unequivocally establishing them as the most dominant team of all time. (:3)

LeBron with 32 points (ON 14 GD FGAS! GIVE ME A BREAK!), 8 boards, 10 assists, 3 steals, 3 blocks. Who's done that since 1986?

-LeBron, 2009
-D-Wade, 2009 (46, 8, 10, 4, 4, bro, are we really sure Kobe is the 2nd best shooting guard? bro, are you serious?)
-No bs, Andre Miller 2001, and as you might imagine that is a career high for him in blocks
-Clyde the Walt, 1991
-Mickaël Jordan, 1988

Honorable mention to D-Robinson 1994: 34, 10, 10, 2 (he sucks, trade him), 10. 10 blocks. NBD. (And for reference that wasn't the year he combined [for the only time in history!] the Win Regular Season MVP and Get Absolutely Annihilated by Hakeem.)

As you might not imagine, LeBron ridiculously doing it in 34 minutes surpasses the previous record of 35 minutes by... Andre Miller. Has it ever made sense that he was traded (with Rudy Fernandez!!!) for Ray "I've been in shape [i]almost my entire career" Felton? He may be the worst three point shooter of all time, but he's going to win the Nugs a playoff game. His ultimate destiny has been playing an old man game changeup to a waterbug starter, which is Ty Lawson to a T(y Lawson).

[Latrinsorm]

Great Zach Lowe article as always.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9098417/how-miami-heat-went-historic-winning-streak-came-dominate-league

But it was one of his footnotes that really revved my brain up: "The 2012-13 Lakers are another testament to all of this, and to the importance of good and bad injury luck. The 2007-08 Celtics stand as one of the only examples of an insta-team that had insta-success at the absolute highest level."

Think of all the superteams we've seen in the NBA...
1. 3-time reigning MVP Wilt Chamberlain traded to 1969 Lakers, joins all-timers Jerry West and Elgin Baylor who lost in the Finals the previous year. Lose in the Finals two years in a row, then in the conference finals to the eventual champion Bucks (Kareem & Oscar), then win 33 games in a row and the title in their 4th year.

2. Mid to late 90s Rockets: Olajuwon singlehandedly wins the title in 1994. Drexler is traded to the team in February of 1995, Hakeem sends Shaq to bed with no supper and wins the title again. Barkley is added two years later, no title. Pippen shows up for a year in 1999 after Drexler, no title. (This one admittedly isn't as clear cut as the others in terms of a team suddenly coming together.)

3. 2004 Lakers: three-peat from 2000-2002, lost in the second round to the Spurs, reloaded with future Hall of Famer and champion Gary Payton and future Hall of Famer and honorary Buffalo Bill Karl Malone. Reach the Finals but get embarrassed by the Pistons, -9.00 ppg barely bests the -9.25 showing of the 2002 Nets and -9.40 of 2009 Magic for worst point margin of the 2000 decade. Kobe unleashes 22.6 points with a putrid 38 FG%, 4 of 23(!) from 3. Team is immediately blown up, no titles, enters one of the worst three year periods of Laker basketball by winning 0 playoff series (tie: 1974-1976 and 1992-1994).

4. 2008 Celtics: former MVP Kevin Garnett joins Ray Allen (who was originally drafted by the Timberwolves one year after Garnett only to be traded, hilariously, for Stephon Marbury) and Paul Pierce on a Boston lottery team. Win the title their 1st year. Garnett wins DPOY, Pierce wins Finals MVP. Team ages very gracefully, also falls apart within 3 years.

5. 2011 Heat: 2-time reigning MVP LeBron James joins all-timer Dwyane Wade and also Chris Bosh (<3) in Miami, neither of whom did much of note the previous year but did make the playoffs. Reach the Finals and lose, prompting much shrill braying and raucous, desperate laughter from critics, win the title their 2nd year. James wins MVP and Finals MVP, the 10th player to do so (Finals MVP first awarded in 1969).

6. 2013 Lakers: universally acclaimed #1 current center Dwight Howard and 2-time MVP Steve Nash join Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol on a Laker team that lost in the 2nd round. Full story TBD (same could be said for Miami), but at any rate have no chance of winning title their first year.

What stands out? Kevin Garnett is the only guy to get a title the first year, plus his team had the furthest to go to get there compared to the previous year, plus Paul Pierce is not quite and Ray Allen is not at all an all-timer. KG underrated?

[Latrinsorm]

The streak is gone. I found it strange that people were commenting that the Heat "got in bad habits" by "starting slow".

First off, sample size. Even a full game (for that matter, even a full 7 game series) is prone to statistical noise, the idea that a half (or a quarter!) is indicative of anything is silly.

Second off, everyone knows what has transformed the Heat from a very good to a lethal halfcourt offense is 3 point shooting via going small and via LeBron having the stones to admit that his game wasn't perfect just the way it was. Udonis Haslem is not a 3 point shooter, but Udonis Haslem starts. Haslem is also generally killing them as I've mentioned many times before. His simple rating of -6.4 would be the 6th worst in the NBA if he qualified by MP (needs 40%, has 37%). I rip into Ray Allen on the regular, but his problem is more being inferior to the other options on the Heat, not inferior to everyone else in the league.

Finally, nobody can go full effort 48 minutes a game 82(+16) games a year. If the Heat only go full speed for 24 minutes, a narrative is invented for whenever those 24 minutes are applied. Second half: "the Heat start slow, assume they can just flip the switch". First half: "the Heat are frontrunners, assume teams will just give in to them, don't know how to close the door". Intermittently: "the Heat have no rhythm, need more consistency". Etc.

I get that people have to say something, but still.

.

I really love the way Kirk Hinrich was willing to get in front of and wrap up LeBron. I don't know if it's confirmation bias or what, but the only guys I ever remember getting in front of LeBron are (comparatively) little point guards: Hinrich, Fisher last year. It just goes to show how many fake tough guys there are in the NBA, incredibly big and physically imposing guys who get the heck out of the way when the LeBron Express is bearing down on them.

The 5 times LeBron got smacked in the face on various cheap shots, I did not love so much. Once or twice could be an accident, five times is a plan. That LeBron got a flagrant for brushing his elbow across Boozer's chest, I mean... Van Gundy had it right. It was clearly going to be called, and LeBron should have known that, but it's still a garbage call.

I don't remember the last time LeBron devoted significant time to guarding a point guard since OKC, but it really helps illustrate what a physical freak he is. He's never had the quickness of a Jordan, but his quickness (horizontal and vertical) combined with illustrating his size by putting him next to a (nearly) normal sized human being is just astonishing. Hinrich blew by him easily, then was emphatically and repeatedly rejected even more easily. I can't help but be reminded of how Magic Johnson was a "point guard", and how (as Sir Charles mentioned) such designations are awfully useless for Magic and LeBron, and for that matter (as he did not mention) how they are similarly useless albeit only on the PF/C level for guys like Duncan and Garnett. What if LeBron insisted on being called a point guard? Would we decide that Dwyane Wade was a hall of fame SF, a la Jamaal Wilkes?

.

I think I would have smirked if I had been told the race for 8 in the West would be so interesting before the year started, but... it is!!! The Lakers are obviously in the driver's seat after getting above the bubble, but Dallas is playing very well and Utah just might be turning it around. The Warriors seem to have righted the ship and the Rockets are who we thought they were, so it seems to come down to those 3. I find the "Lakers are a dangerous 8 seed!!!" stories pretty absurd, it's interesting to me only from the angle of how catastrophic a failure the Lakers missing the playoffs would be, and the cynical enjoyment I would derive from watching many of the same people who criticized LeBron for losing in the Finals excusing Kobe for not making the playoffs.

[Atlanteax]

Lakers' game against the Bucks tonight is essentially a must-win. I would had figured them to win against Phoenix and Washington, but those were chokes. Lakers were a bit lucky that their game against Minnesota ended like it did (tho Rubio would had to make all 3 FTs had a foul been called). I had far more confidence that they would be #8 possibly #7 prior to those two losses.

[SHAFT]

...and they lose. As a Laker fan this has been a maddening season.

[thefarmer]

The Game of Thrones–to–NBA Playoffs Translator, Book 1: Westeros Conference
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/56160/the-game-of-thrones-to-nba-playoffs-translator-book-1-westeros-conference

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2013/0327/grant_g_eggs_cr_576.jpg


netw3rk: I see the Rockets as Daenerys Targaryen and the dragons. At the beginning of the first season, Daenerys's brother Viserys planned to marry her to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo in return for an army with which to take back the Iron Throne. As Westerosian power grabs go, pretty standard stuff: Use a strategic asset (Daenerys) to cement an alliance with an established military power. The Rockets were pursuing a similar strategy: Use strategic assets in the form of young players to swing a sign-and-trade for an established star in the form of Chris Bosh. Both plans fell apart in embarrassing fashion: Drogo dead, Viserys left with face full of molten gold, and Rockets GM Daryl Morey left holding an iPad with Bosh's name engraved on it. But Daenerys managed to recover in a way no one expected because she saw the true value in holding on to something that others would have simply sold: her three dragon eggs. She held firm and eventually the eggs hatched: Asik, Lin, and Harden.

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2013/0327/grant_h_daryl_cr_576.jpg


Random other bits:

"This does break down a bit, though, since I’m almost positive that Vinny Del Negro is Hodor. I really like the idea of Del Negro calling a timeout, getting the whole team circled around him, then pointing at the clipboard and saying, “Hodor.”"


"Stannis is stern and unyielding, possesses no friends, and is beholden to mysterious Eastern magic to bolster his strength. Kobe is a basketball sociopath, possesses no friends, and is beholden to experimental German procedures to maintain his body. "

[Latrinsorm]

Fun article from Goldsberry.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9109245/how-lebron-james-transformed-game-become-highly-efficient-scoring-machine

Best part for me is the video of LeBron working out with Hakeem (and I'm surprised Goldie of all people didn't mention how Kobe did the same). Not just because Hakeem is a great teacher and that's fun to watch, but LeBron is the same size as Hakeem. One of the 5 best centers of all time. LeBron is the same size. And he also decided to be, as the author puts it, the "world's most overqualified spot-up shooter" with the right corner 3.

It reminds me of a point I think Steve Kerr (and surely others) makes a lot about the draft, how it's a really bad thing for the game overall that we put the best young players in the worst situations. LeBron was capable of this approach from day 1, but his early team and coaching were so poor that it took until his 10th year to put it all together. Boogie Cousins is an enormous talent that's probably never going to pan out because he developed on the woebegone Kings. People honestly had discussions about who the best young point guard in the league was because Chris Paul was carrying around 11 bums. Especially with the new CBA, it's not like the best teams can stockpile marquee players indefinitely anyway, it's just so frustrating to see so much potential wasted, sometimes lost forever.

[DoctorUnne]

If you can't delight in the Heat brand of basketball, I don't know what to tell you. Unselfishness, movement, and brilliance on the offensive end, intense energy and camaraderie on the defensive end. What's one of the biggest complaints people have about the NBA? Teams take the regular season off, only care about the playoffs. Ok, we'll win 24+ straight games in the regular season. Stars are only in it for the money. Ok, we'll have three stars take pay cuts to play together.

In conclusion, the Heat rules, #1.Being factually correct is not the same as being obnoxious, sir.

I could pretty much make all of the same points about the Patriots and Pats fans are still obnoxious.

[DoctorUnne]

Hey speaking of that, are we sure Rondo is actually good? Certainly he is a spectacular and unique athlete with a skill set of similar parameters... but why is Boston better (W-L) without him? Consider also that according to 82games.com's simple rating, he was only the fifth most valuable player on Boston and (this is incontrovertibly true) the Celtics scored less points than the opposition while he was on the court, and were worse on offense and defense. This is very weird if he is actually good.

It is also incontrovertible that he leads the league in assists per game. Does this mean stats are dumb or dumb stats (sit venia verbo) are dumb?

I think there is certainly merit to the thesis that he's an assist hog to the point where the whole offense suffers. But the "imagine if we had two of our three best players" barb is sharper than the "imagine if we had one of our three best players and one who is statistically amazing but may actually hurt the team" barb.

[DoctorUnne]

Also since you are such a stathead maybe you can spend some time on footballoutsiders.com to gain a better appreciation of just how historically amazing Brady and the Patriots offense are. There are a lot of parallels between them and LeBron + the Heat, which I'm sure you'll love. Welcome to the club of rooting for an elite team/player. There are lots of haters.

[Latrinsorm]

I could pretty much make all of the same points about the Patriots and Pats fans are still obnoxious.The Heat have never been caught cheating...?
I think there is certainly merit to the thesis that he's an assist hog to the point where the whole offense suffers. But the "imagine if we had two of our three best players" barb is sharper than the "imagine if we had one of our three best players and one who is statistically amazing but may actually hurt the team" barb.See, now I can only think that I know for a fact the females were not consulted about a male cat's barbed penis.
Also since you are such a stathead maybe you can spend some time on footballoutsiders.com to gain a better appreciation of just how historically amazing Brady and the Patriots offense are. There are a lot of parallels between them and LeBron + the Heat, which I'm sure you'll love. Welcome to the club of rooting for an elite team/player. There are lots of haters.I believe the record will reflect that I never criticized the Patriots' on-field performance as such, but merely that I suggested that that performance would have been that much better with Peyton in the saddle as opposed to Monsieur Bradí. Anticor, can we have that read back?

[Latrinsorm]

I wondered: what are the best two-month runs in NBA history? These are the ones I found that satisfied the following conditions:

1. 2 losses or less.
2. 90% winning percentage or higher.

.

1972 Lakers: 30-0 (nov-dec) 12.3 points per game difference
1996 Bulls: 27-1 (dec-jan) 12.3
2013 Heat: 28-2 (feb-mar) 8.0
2000 Lakers: 27-2 (feb-mar) 8.5
1983 76ers: 25-2 (jan-feb) 7.7
2007 Mavs: 24-2 (jan-feb) 7.2
1970 Knicks: 23-2 (oct-nov) 9.1

The die is cast: one of the best 6 teams of all time (by a certain arbitrary metric), or as big a choke job artist as the 2007 Mavs? (I use points per game rather than per possession because per game works with how much a team wins rather than how much better a team is. It has to do with pace and variance. Just go with it.) Obviously I did not check every team of all time, but I did check the 1965 Celtics, 1967 76ers, 1971 Bucks, 1982 Celtics, 1986 Celtics, 1987 Lakers, 1989 Pistons, 1992 Bulls, 1997 Bulls, and of course the 2008 Rockets, and none fit the bill.

[Latrinsorm]

Halftime of the New York at "Miami" game, glancing over the box score...

Carmelo Anthony: 19 minutes, 27 points on 9 of 12(!!!), 4 of 6 from 3(!!!)... 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 2 fouls, -1, team down 8. His shot chart is astonishingly paint-phobic: six 3s, five 2s from 16-20 feet, one 2 from 14 feet. Yes he's unconscious shooting, but what does this do for the rest of his team? They're shooting 8 for 21 (38%! woof!), overall assisting on 7 of 17 field goals (41%! even worse than the worst season team mark in the league: 53.41% by... the New York Knicks), they're not defending, they're not rebounding: Miami, notoriously poor at rebounding and minus LeBron and Wade, have 5 rebounds of their 16 misses to New York's 2 of (by coincidence) 16 misses.

This is why advanced stats are so interesting: all of Carmelo's unquestionable shot-making brilliance ends up getting his team +5.7 points per possession on the offensive end. (Compare with LeBron's +12.2, Durant's +7.5.) Throw in that Carmelo continues to be an unwilling defender, and it's easy to see why his teams have made it out of the first round of the playoffs only once in nine years.

[Stanley Burrell]

I don't see it (edit) as much of a problem on D if we had our full roster. If we could get power forwards without this injury curse and keep it in stasis, we could keep (edit) switch benching around during the game with our three most effective players and 120 vs. 110 still wins.