40 thoughts on “John Wall, Derrick Rose, and the State of the Wizards”

1. There’s no way that lineup (as bad as we are at defending the Center position with McGee instead of Haywood) wins only 12 games. That’s absurd. Anyone who knows anything about basketball knows that’s absurd. That’s where these statistics fall short. I know they can only indicate things, and help us formulate an opinion about which players we should seek versus let go, but you’d be mad to expect the team to only get 12 wins with that lineup. I would think wins in the low 30s.

   However, they are expected to make other moves. We can’t have McGee as our starting center. He has the endurance of an old man, and he can’t defend his opposing position. We need a another big man. That’s where I think we are most deficient. I was hoping we’d get the 3rd pick so we would pick up Cousins. The guy will be a beast. But we have to take Wall.

   So be it.

2. iamse7en,

   The Nets won 12 games this year with a better roster than the potential one listed. Due to lack of diminishing returns however that lineup would indeed probably win more than 12 games. I’m thinking another 4 wins and then an error range of another +/- 4 wins. That’s a rough estimate of anywhere from 12 to 20 wins.

3. Rob,
   Nice review. My one pet peeve is that we need to stop using Chris Paul’s rookie season as a best case for one and done draft picks. Here’s the list of >.3 WP48 since 77
   Name Year Pick Team Age Minutes Played WP48
   Marques Johnson 1977 3 MIL 21 2765 0.316
   Larry Bird 1978 6 BOS 23 2955 0.311
   Magic Johnson 1979 1 LAL 20 2795 0.353
   Buck Williams 1981 3 NJN 21 2825 0.327
   Michael Jordan 1984 3 CHI 21 3144 0.355
   Nate McMillan 1986 30 SEA 22 1972 0.314
   David Robinson 1987 1 SAS 24 3002 0.394
   Shaquille O’Neal 1992 1 ORL 20 3071 0.324
   Chris Paul 2005 4 NOH 20 2809 0.305

   Note that Chris Paul’s rookie season is the best in 18 years (24 years for a guard). John Wall will not be an impact player his rookie year.

4. iamse7en,

   The Wizards won 26 games last year. They also lost their four best players. So what you’re saying is now they should win at least 4 more games next year? That literally doesn’t add up. Can you explain why you think they would win more games after losing said players?

   Also what I meant by a “basic” understanding of statistics and economics is relative to how I perceive the regular commenters on this site and obviously DBs understanding of such fields. I probably understand more than the “average person.” I wouldn’t expect most people to read Krugman, Stiglitz, Reich, Schiff, Berri, Ron Paul, etc. because they find the subject matter interesting.

5. Arturo,

   Haha actually originally I only compared Wall to Evans. DB added the bit about CP3. I think it was an appropriate addition given the first half of the post as well as many draft “guru’s” declaring Wall as a “once-in-ten-years” kind of prospect. But I understand your point.

6. How reliable is the “average rookie” score for this sort of thing? I know next to nothing about statistics, but I would imagine that rookies that play alot the first year would develop their game more and have better per minute production. Also, doesn’t this overlook the whole “addition by subtraction” aspect of the rebuilding year? I loved Caron Butler’s game back in the day, but I gotta think he actually cost the Wiz some games this year. And it doesn’t surprise me that Blatche’s production went up after Jamison was traded – the guy needs to be on the court. If you get Blatche and Josh Howard to *roughly* equal their production, then why the huge drop off in wins?

   Anyway, good read!

7. I agree with Arturo, comparing rookies to the likes of Chris Paul, Shaq, etc. seems hilarious. The older I get (I’m not even old enough to drink), the more I understand people like them really don’t come often, if ever.

   Second, O’Malley, I had wished another team not named the Clippers (or Timberwolves, or Wizards actually) drafted Blake Griffin. Such a great prospect to be ruined by playing for the Clippers, ugh, kills me.

8. I have a hard time basing a players value or skill solely on their stat line. Looking solely at Derrick Rose’s stats doesn’t give you the full picture of how he affects his team.

   Let’s look at assists for starters, as that is often the baseline for a point guards value.

   What those stats don’t factor in is that the Bulls were 23rd in the league in FG%, and that their best 3 point shooter is a 6’11 backup center named Brad Miller.

   Other than assists the only other stat line that Chris Paul really outshines Derrick is steals per game, which also correlates with his almost 4 fouls per game.

   The biggest stat for Derrick is that the Bulls have made the playoffs both of his years with the team, and he elevated his game in the playoffs as well.

   He was also named the Eastern Conference player of the month for the last month of the season this year.

   What more does he have to do to arrive?

9. Justin, you do realize that your argument for Derrick Rose being almost or about as good as Chris Paul is almost entirely stats based?

   [1] 23rd in FG% (almost meaningless BTW, pps is better)
   [2] difference in stats essentially zero based on the Justin method
   [3] 1 playoff appearance per year
   [4] ‘Justin Approved’ boxscore stats are better in playoffs
   [5] 0.02 ECPOTM rate (1/48)

   What do you mean by ‘arrived’? WP48 says he’s a good young point guard. He may develop into a top 10 point guard. Does he ‘arrive’ when he’s at his peak? Top 20, top 10, as good as CP3?

10. Rose could well be a very good player in the future. The key has to be his understanding of the game, and that he has to improve in certain areas and not just concentrate on scoring. Prime examples Rajon Rondo, and a more subtle one: Russell Westbrook who had a significantly better season by doing more of “everything else” whilst still shooting the same.

11. Wasn’t Tyreke Evans an average player in college too? Yet he had a .158 WP and produced 8.8 wins (and was second among all rookies to Stephen Curry).

    Evans: 8.0 WS/40 in college.

    Wall: 7.2 WS/40 in college.

    A slight difference, but there’s still more hope for Wall than this post indicates.

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13. I think Rose will improve “statistically” next year over and above his actual personal development if Chicago picks up a solid outside shooter/scorer in the off season.

    I understand that Ben Gordon is not highly regarded here and was overpaid by the Pistons, but what he did bring to Chicago was the ability to knock down 3s, spread the floor, and take scoring pressure off other players (especially under fire). IMO, his loss hurt both the team and Rose.

    You can certainly argue that what the team really needs is a Ben Gordon that fills out the stat sheet a little better, but IMO if the Bulls get a good outside shooter/scorer it will take some of the pressure off Rose to shoot from the outside and also give him someone to kick the ball to that can actually make a shot when he drives.

    I think that would improve both his assists and his own scoring efficiency “at the margin” over and above continued personal development.

14. I understand that Ben Gordon is not highly regarded here and was overpaid by the Pistons, but what he did bring to Chicago was the ability to knock down 3s, spread the floor, and take scoring pressure off other players (especially under fire). IMO, his loss hurt both the team and Rose.

    After watching nearly every minute Ben Gordon played this season, I have absolutely no idea how anyone depending on subjective observation could every conclude that he helps his team win games.

    After seeing Chicago do almost exactly what it did last season in terms of efficiency differentials and win/loss record (which actually included a significant improvement from Rose), I have no idea how anyone could conclude that A) Ben Gordon made a significant impact on the Bulls last season, and B) how his departure negatively impacted Rose’s performance, especially given the improvement he showed in the 2nd half of the season.

    In other words, I guess what I’m saying is that until someone can prove to me that “spacing the floor” actually helps a team win, I’m going to continue believing that Ben Gordon and player types like him are wildly overvalued in the NBA.

15. Mookie,

    Dave Berri has made the point that PAWS40 has trouble predicting NBA success. His point is that it does better than draft position. i.e. it does better than the average GM. So what he’s saying is that if a player’s college production isn’t great, then a careful evaluation needs to done as to why this was true and to make sure that you have plenty of reasons to think that the player will do better in the NBA than in college.

    Pointing out specific examples of former players who had subpar to average college production yet are good in the NBA is a poor way to evaluate current draft picks. It also doesn’t contradict what the author is saying.

16. I think my major takeaway from watching drafts over the previous few years is that the reputation a player forms in AAU ball and at the high school is very durable. Players considered the best in a recruiting class like Rose or Wall seems to get rated higher than their production warrants for quite a while.

17. So here’s a question. Are there any guys who knocked it out of the ballpark, PAWS40-wise in college, and then wildly underperformed in the pros?

18. Actually, now that I think about it, I bet there are probably plenty of guy, given the breadth of talent in the NCAA, who put up pretty good numbers playing against lesser competition.

19. There is production and there is potential. Anyone drafting John Wall is doing so based on the latter, I don’t think anyone is disputing that.

20. Many of whom probably don’t even get drafted.

    Which would make my initial question hard to answer in any meaningful way. hmm.

21. Edmond,

    Rodney Stuckey, Mike Conley Jr, Michael Beasley are examples I can think of off the top of my head.

22. thanks robbie.

    Always glad not to be a GM around draft time :).

23. Wall had almost as many turnovers per game as assists this year. In that respect I think the Rose comparison is apt. Neither of them seem like proper point guards to me.

    Anyway I think the Wiz should take Evans over Wall.

24. Have you (the collective “you”) taken a look at forecasting changes in production from year to year? I wonder because this analysis of the Wizards simply takes the numbers from last year and adds them together to create a “prediction” for next year. While player performance is relatively consistent, there are variations from year to year — especially for young players like Javale McGee. If I recall correctly, the third season (McGee’s upcoming year) is typically the year NBA players make their biggest improvement.

    In other words, is taking numbers from one season and adding them up for the next a “good” way to offer analysis, or is there a way to forecast what kind of changes in performance are LIKELY to occur?

25. kjb,
    If we were to put forward some effort, we would take the model detailed in Stumbling on Wins (the model for individual player performance used to examine coaching) and use this to forecast each player’s performance. And that would show that assuming constant performance isn’t quite right. What do we see from the above exercise, though, is that the Wizards — as currently assembled — are not going to be very good. Whether “not very good” means 12 wins or 20 wins doesn’t seem to be very important.

    I would add, the Wizards will probably make a number of changes before the 2010-11 season begins. So Robbie is going to have re-visit this team before the next season begins.

26. brgulker,

    I think it’s fairly clear that Ben Gordon was not healthy for much of this year and also does not fit well the Pistons because they already have players with a similar skill set .

    As I said, I realize he does not rate well on this model and have no disagreement with that rating.

    However, I do think there is value in reasonably efficient outside shooting. When a team doesn’t have much of it, it impacts the entire team negatively. That was a major problem for the Bulls this year.

27. brgulker,

    It seems you are assuming that because Rose improved this year that means that having a reasonably efficient outside shooter like Gordon had no impact on his play last year or that another outside shooter wouldn’t have helped this year.

    I don’t think you can make that assumption.

    I’m not sure how advanced stats advocates should go about proving that spacing matters.

    I do think you can observe a game and watch how defenders cope with a team’s dominant scorer on a game by game basis.

    Do they switch, play help defense, double team, switch to a zone, play him one on one etc…..

    Then you can ask yourself “why” they are doing what they are doing and why it is it working or failing.

    If you think about it from that perspective, I think you will often find that teams with very little outside shooting make it easier for defenders to sag, clog the middle, help each other etc…

    It also clearly makes it a little more difficult to accumulate assists if many of your teammates are poor outside shooters.

    As to Gordon specifically, clearly the Bulls can do better overall than Gordon, but IMHO they absolutely must add an efficient outside shooter for next year if they want to take another step forward.

28. IS,
    The Sixers had the same thought last year. So they added Jason Kapono, who is a great outside shooter. Somehow, though, it didn’t work out (as Eddie Jordan discovered).

29. If you think about it from that perspective, I think you will often find that teams with very little outside shooting make it easier for defenders to sag, clog the middle, help each other etc…

    I don’t disagree with that. I just don’t how to assign the ability to “space the floor” any relative value (relative to the value assigned to individual box score statistics, i.e.).

    Thanks to the work Dr. Berri has done, we know the value of rebounds, points, missed shots, assists, etc. relative to wins. And we know that teams that employ players who excel in these categories tend to produce wins (regardless of their teammates ability to shoot from deep or not).

    We don’t know the relative value of floor spacing. I suspect its value is quite small when compared to other things. I can’t prove that, and I’m not arguing it doesn’t matter at all. I think “specialists” can be important pieces in any given game. But specialists, like Ben Gordon — a jumpshooting specialist — shouldn’t be paid like franchise cornerstones. In spite of their ability to space the floor, their teams lose when they’re the centerpiece.

    As a Pistons fan, I’ve thought about this a great deal over the past few years, with Sheed eating up a major chunk of our payroll. As he declined (and continues to do so), his niche seems to be floor spacing — a PF who can shoot. There are enough good players on Boston to mask his weaknesses, but what about the 08-09 Pistons? That team stunk, and Sheed’s ability to space simply didn’t help much.

    Now I’m thinking the same thing about Gordon and Charlie V. Sure, they can shoot — but what else? Unfortunately, not much. As a direct result, the team struggles. As peripheral moves or as the final pieces added to a nearly complete puzzle, I think guys like that can have some situational value. But not much more than that, until it’s proved otherwise.

30. It would be possible to look at Offensive Adjusted +/- (or even the 4 Factor splits of that) for guys across the league who met thresholds for 3pt Attempts per minute and 3pt FG% and see what the average Offensive Adjusted +/- value (team impact) is .

    And then in some fashion compare it in sets to guys with a similar eFG% or TS% but without the strong 3 pt game by these criteria to see if it yields anything worth considering with regards to the importance of spacing.

    And really you’d probably want to look at lineups with 2 or 3 such guys on the court at the same time, as those lineups are probably more likely to stretch things and get more open 3 looks I’d think.

    Might be worth doing later.

    Other things contribute to spacing besides 3 point shooting. Inside game by post-up or drive or cut. More motion in general.

    You could look at the value of spacing from a broader perspective as well. If you have and want to take the time.

    Kapono’s multi-year Factor level Adjusted +/- from before this season suggests that his lack of drawing free throws hurt the team more than his outside shooting helped and that his lack of offensive rebounding also contributed to making him just a neutral impact player overall on Offense.

    Philly as a whole were bottom 10 on 3 pt frequency and 3 pt FG%. Their lack of success could have been affected to some degree by that but I am not going to wade thru everything to assert exactly how much here.

31. You don’t have to turn to Adjusted +/- splits to study whether spacing matters. It is a available choice with some advantages but perhaps disadvantages too in some eyes.

32. By Adjusted +/- it was estimated that Philly had 7 lineups used over 45 minutes that were positive. All 7 had at least 3 guys who shot 100+ 3 pointers. Now most of the other negative lineups did too so it is not that simple.

    But the positive lineups averaged 3.0 guys over 34% from 3 pt land while the negative lineups only averaged 2.0. This might show some spacing affect- at least for them.

33. It also didn’t help that Jordan played the 7 negative lineups with just 2 of the more accurate 3 point shooters on average one-third more than the 7 positive lineups with 3 of the more accurate 3 point shooters.

    But to see that you have study lineups.

34. I can see your point with respect to the Rose v. Wall comparison. I came to roughly the same conclusion using the Basketball-Reference comparison tool. In looking at Derrick Rose against Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Steve Nash, it’s clear that he’s not at that level. While he’s the best scorer among them, he turns the ball over more and averages only 6 assists per game (not enough for an elite point guard). I also think looking at players as individuals (i.e. Wall without Cousins) is a smart way to evaluate players.

    I disagree however with the statement that Wall was not an outstanding player in college. He was fantastic. Perhaps he wasn’t statistically efficient, but if you watched his games, he was a total game changer (like Rajon Rondo). In fact, Rondo might be a more apt comparison then Rose. I agree that he might not be as effective without such a talented cast. At worst though, I think he’s Russell Westbrook. At best, probably Rondo, with Rose somewhere in the middle.

    The other point is that since the NBA banned hand checking, the game has become much faster and favors offensive players with quickness. The new breed of NBA point guards (Rose, Westbrook, Rondo), who can get into the lane at will are at a real premium in the league right now. That alone I think will help Wall to be successful. Is he worth the number 1 pick? Who knows. But I can’t see any GM risking his job on it.

35. Dave is pretty clear on the limits of WoW (WP48, etc…) methodology. Other people who use it may not be. Like any other “truth” it risks devolving into a cult.

    WP48 is not a tool to predict how well an individual player will do in the league. It’s a statistical tool — if you take 20 college players, WoW will likely do a better job of predicting their NBA performance rank than other available tools. That is *far* from saying it is a tool to use to pick an individual player.

    In the case of Cousins, for example — he’s a no-brainer pick for me. I’d trade the #1 pick for the #3 and another asset, and then I’d pick Cousins.

    But that’s *me.* I have no risk in the situation. If I were a GM, I wouldn’t be likely to do that because of the obvious issues with deMarcus.

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