Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Hawks are still soaring thanks to some amazing wings.

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As always this season’s numbers are from the NBA Geek. I highly recommend the Player Comparison Engine!

The Hawks are playing amazingly. It is only thanks to playing in the same division as the best team in the league that they are not leading their division. The Hawks made a mistake a few seasons ago by giving Joe Johnson a ridiculous extension and essentially destroying their flexbility. This season another blow was dealt when Al Horford went down with an injury that will essentially take him out the whole season. Somehow the Hawks are still contending and the question is: how? Has Josh Smith decided to carry the load on the front court? Has Joe Johnson decided to live up to his contract? No! It turns out the Hawks are being bailed out by some surprising play from some other players on the team.

The 2011-2012 Hawks

2011-2012 Hawks through January 30th 2012
NAME POS GP MP WP48 WINS
Jeff Teague PG 21 712 0.168 2.5
Marvin Williams SF 18 437 0.268 2.4
Josh Smith PF 21 721 0.119 1.8
Joe Johnson SF 21 764 0.105 1.7
Tracy McGrady SG 17 328 0.218 1.5
Al Horford C 11 348 0.197 1.4
Zaza Pachulia C 21 445 0.128 1.2
Vladimir Radmanovic PF 20 354 0.159 1.2
Willie Green SG 21 331 0.079 0.6
Ivan Johnson PF 17 239 0.053 0.3
Jerry Stackhouse SG 8 43 0.289 0.3
Kirk Hinrich PG 3 58 0.052 0.1
Donald Sloan G 5 20 0.034 0.0
Jannero Pargo PG 20 231 -0.021 -0.1
Jason Collins C 12 135 -0.074 -0.2

Al Horford is a very good player and it’s easy to see when he was playing he was very productive. This is not surprising, in fact his WP48 is pretty close to his numbers from last year. And the same is true of Josh Smith and Joe Johnson. The players that are truly surprising are Jeff Teague, Marvin Williams, Tracy McGrady, and Vladimir Radmanovic.

Draft picks living up to the hype

Jeff Teague’s career
Season GP MP WP48 Wins
 2010 71 71 -0.001 0.0
 2011 70 960 0.106 2.1
 2012 21 712 0.168 1.5

Jeff Teague (19th pick in the 2009 draft) was terrible his first season in Atlanta, last season he was a decent player. This season he is playing very well. He’s a young player and this is what franchises hope (or expect) young players will do.

Marvin Williams career
Season GP MP WP48 Wins
 2006 79 1952 0.091 3.7
 2007 64 2177 0.043 2.0
 2008 80 2765 0.087 5.0
 2009 61 2093 0.187 8.2
 2010 81 2468 0.149 7.6
 2011 65 1863 0.138 5.4
 2012 18 437 0.268 2.4

Marvin Williams has been a decent player his whole career. For most players that would be fine. Of course Williams was picked right in front of one of the greatest rookies of all time in Chris Paul. Couple that with also being picked in front of three All-Stars (Deron Williams, Danny Granger and David Lee) and fine seems less satisfactory to the Hawks. This season — after six seasons in the league — Williams has finally decided to live up to his potential. Or at least, that’s the hope.

Old players defying age

Once Tracy McGrady was a top player in the league. Right before he left Orlando he saw his production fizzle as he began racking up injury problems. By the time he left Houston he was a shell of the player he was. Last year he showed some life in Detroit. As Detroit was so bad, I’m not sure anyone was watching. When the Hawks wisely let Crawford walk they managed to pick up McGrady for a song, and it’s paid off very well for them.

The last piece of the puzzle is Radmanovic. Most of his career Vladimir has been marginal at best. Last season he showed some spark in Golden State. The Hawks managed to add him on as a cheap replacement. This season he’s managed to play the best ball of his career.

Summing up

The Hawks are doing very well this season and I suspect it’s a surprise to everyone including themselves. Of the three areas of major improvement (Jeff Teague, Marvin Williams and the cheap contracts of McGrady and Radmanovic) only one would be truly expected. Teague is supposed to develop and get better. It’s doubtful the Hawks thought Williams would finally play at a level near Chris Paul. McGrady and Radmanovic playing the best they have in years for peanuts is a pleasant surprise. Hopefully the Hawks are learning their lesson and will avoid pitfalls like Joe Johnson in the future. Of course the season in young and we’ll have to see if at the end McGrady and Williams get credit for their surprising play or if the Hawks decide to go another direction.

-Dre

An NBA history lesson: How to lose with style starring the Denver Nuggets

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This weekend Marcus Camby had  an impressive and interesting game in Portland’s trouncing of the Suns. Camby pulled down 20 boards to go with no points. One of Denver’s most prominent twitter fans J.R. (@Smooth_Operatah) remembered the last time Camby has a 20+ rebound game to go with no points, which was back when he was in Denver.

On December 5th 2007 Allen Iverson shot an astounding 73% True Shooting Percent and scored 51 points. Couple this with a 20 rebound game for Marcus Camby’s and you have the makings of a crazy game. To me the bizarre part was that the Nuggets lost.  Using Basketball-Reference’s box score database, which includes all regular season games back to the 1985-1986 season and all playoff games back to 1991, I went in search of a game where such a feat had occurred and more importantly where the team managed to lose. The exact criteria I used was a True Shooting percentage of 55% or better for 50 points or more and another player with 20 or more rebounds.

Boston Celtics lose in OT to the Atlanta Hawks 126-123 on February 3rd 1987

It took five extra minutes of play but the Human Highlight Reel  and Willis managed to put up the impressive combo of stats I was looking for. Of course, the end result was victory against the defending champs.

New York Knicks win in OT against the Atlanta Hawks 137-128 on December 7th 1991

The first example of a team getting a 50 point scorer with good numbers and twenty rebounds to go with it to lose. Like before it took overtime and strangely enough the tandem it happened to was Willis and Wilkins!

Denver Nuggets lose to the Chicago Bulls 116-103 on March 24th 1992

His Airness joins the list with the help of the underrated Grant. The Nuggets also make their way onto the list but as the losing team. In 1992 Jordan scoring a lot, Grant rebounding  and the Nuggets losing were all pretty common.

San Antonio Spurs beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 114-89 on February 21st 1994

One of greatest and shortest lived tandems makes the list. Robinson and Rodman both did what they do best for the victory. Robinson also took down 9 more boards and had 6 blocks for good measure.

Chicago Bulls beat the Miami Heat 106-100 on November 6th 1996

Rodman and Jordan both make it back to the list. In just the fifth game of Rodman joining the Jordan-Pippen-Jackson Bulls Rodman and Jordan put up an impressive line. The end result was a win and given the closeness of the game every rebound and point was needed.

Los Angeles Lakers beat the Los Angeles Clippers 123-103 on March 6th 2000

  • Shaquille O’Neal 23 rebounds (7 offensive)
  • Shaquille O’Neal 61 points (24-35 FG 69%, 0-0 3P 0%, 13-22 FT 59%)

I was obviously looking for tandems when I started this search. Turns out Shaq was able to do it all on his own back in his MVP season. It’s also quite amuing to note that Shaq shot better from the field than from the line and brought down more defensive rebounds than free throws.

Indiana Pacers beat the Sacramento Kings in OT 93-91 on January 5th 2001 (Honorable Mention)

  • Chris Webber 26 rebounds (10 offensive)
  • Chris Webber 51 points (24-47 FG 51%, 0-1 3P 0%, 3-6 FT 50%)

Webber didn’t meet my criteria for True Shooting percentage (55%) but his stat line was still impressive enough I wanted to make sure I included him. He also joins the Nuggets and the Hawks in the loss column, which is definitely sad given an otherwise great game.

Detroit Pistons beat the Chicago Bulls 110-83 on April 3rd 2001

In 2001 Ben Wallace was the best player in the league on an otherwise abysmal Pistons roster. Jerry Stackhouse on the other hand was not a very good player but he was able to have a very good game. The result was a great game in an otherwise terrible season.

Los Angeles Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets 111-107 on December 5th 2007

Camby was no stranger to rebounding. Iverson was no stranger to scoring. However, Iverson managed to shoot efficiently and the result was an impressive game. Of course Carmelo Anthony, Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith shot terribly and the Nuggets managed to be the only team in the last 25+ years to lose with a 20+ rebounder and a 55% True Shooter with a 51 point night in a regulation game.

 Summing Up

I was quite happy I was able to find another game to match the Nuggets in losing with such an impressive line. Of course the Nuggets stand alone as the only team to do so in regulation. I also have to give some props to players that appeared multiple times:

  • Dominique Wilikins
  • Kevin Willis,
  • Michael Jordan
  • Dennis Rodman
Thanks again to @Smooth_Operatah for the great idea and if you have other interesting stat lines to look for definitely let us know.
-Dre

 

How not to compare players starring Kyrie Irving and LeBron James

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Thanks to Patrick (@NBAGeek) spotting this Tweet for Chris Palmer(@ESPNChrisPalmer)

  • Rookie numbers: Kyrie Irving 16.8 ppg, 4.9 apg, 3.2 rpg, 49% FG, 40% 3FG; LeBron 20.9/5.5/5.9, 41% FG, 29% 3FG. Pretty close.

When comparing players people like going to the numbers. The issue is that the numbers when used improperly may not be helpful. Let’s examine the issue above. Luckily a few people responded to the Tweet and I get to use them to help!

Per game is an iffy stat. Turns out players play different minutes per game

Two readers spotted this one immediately Imag Shahmiri(@djsweatydank) observed this

Irving also playing way less minutes than LeBron did his rookie year

Coach Benjamin (@Blizyy) also chimed in with:

LeBron also played about 35 mins. Kyrie only gets 25 a game.

Coach B. actually underestimated both players just a bit. So far Kyrie Irving is getting about 27.9 minutes per game. Compare this with LeBron’s rookie season where he got 39.5 minutes per game! So with 40% more playing time LeBron scored 25% more points and this is somehow similar? When comparing two players using per-game can definitely be iffy if you don’t at least acknowledge a difference in minutes per game and also…

Players play different positions in the NBA

Asad Video (@AsadVIDEO) noticed this:

Why are u comparing a PG to a F ?

This is something odd that a lot of stats don’t like to account for (the Wins Produced formula actually does account for it though by the way) In the NBA players play different positions. This means their stat responsibilities are different. Is the fact that Bron and Irving are “close” in assists per game a good thing? In fact most people notice this immediately. When we note say that Gasol has a better shooting percentage than Kobe Bryant the reason (of course) is that Kobe plays on the perimeter and takes harder shots. Now one may question why the big guy close to the hoop doesn’t shoot more. . . but it’s a valid point. Different positions cover different parts of the floor and are expected to do different things. So that brings us to…

An actual comparison

Now I’ll give you that it’s hard to do a lot in a tweet. 140 characters isn’t a lot. Here’s two things you can do though.

1. Go to the NBA Geek’s Comparion Engine. Type in the two players you want (for the same season only or career currently) get the url and paste it into twitter.

2. Go to Basketball Reference’s Player Comparison Finder. Find the players and seasons you want. Copy and paste the url into twitter.

Both of these let people see a lot of analysis quickly and prevent you from killing your Twitter message trying to cram in all the stats you can.

Both of these do per minute analysis so you’re golden. And  if you’re doing a blog post you can more in depth, which I’ll be doing thanks to the NBA Geek’s comparison engine. (Note I made the table by hand, but  the comparison engine does generate some slick ones automatically)

Rookie Bron vs. Rookie Irving comparison (per 48 minute stats unless noted)
Stat Kyrie Irving* Ave. 2012 PG* LeBron James Ave. 2004 SF
 WP48 0.101 0.099 0.080 0.099
 PTS 28.9 19.4  25.4 19.8
 DRB 4.3 3.9  5.1 5.6
 ORB 1.3 0.9  1.5 2.1
 AST 8.5 8.2  7.1 3.5
 TO 6.0 3.7  4.2 2.8
 BLK 0.9 0.3  0.9 0.8
 STL 1.2 1.9  2.0 1.7
 PF 4.4 3.3  2.3 4.0
 2FG% 52% 46.2%  43.8% 45.9%
 3FG% 40.4% 34.6%  29.0% 35.4%
 FT% 82.0% 81.2%  75.4% 77.3%
 TS% 58.2% 52.5%  48.8% 52.3%
 FGA 22.1 16.5  22.9 16.7
 3FGA 4.8 4.7  3.3 3.7
 FTA 6.2 4.4  7.1 5.1
 MPG 27.9 27.0 39.5 21.0
*Numbers through January 26th 2012

It’s a bit of work but when we break apart Irving and Bron’s rookie games there are some similarites. Basically both players took roughly the same number of shots per minute. And it turns out a 2004 SF was actually expected to shoot about as well as a 2012 PG so that comparison is apt. Except when we notice that factoring it to per-minute instead of per game shows up that Irving is an amazing shooter whereas LeBron was a terrible shooter as a rookie.

The other similar stats? Well LeBron being close in assists actually meant Bron was an amazing passer at the SF position whereas Irving is only average as a PG. Rebounds? Other way around, Irving is a good rebounder as a guard, LeBron was a bad rebounder as a forward.

Finally it’s pretty obvious that their shooting percentages were not similar in the slightest. In fact if Irving were getting the minutes LeBron did as a rookie he’d be outscoring LeBron by around four points a game. In fact the end conclusion from all of this to me is.

  • Irving needs to be more careful with the ball (less fouls and turnovers) and
  • Irving needs to play more
  • And Irving needs to shoot more, especially from 3 (see we encourage it!)

Comparing him to LeBron as a rookie is fun given the liklihood they’ll both have the Rookie of the Year hardware on their mantel and both played for Cleveland. If you’re going to do such comparisons though, please do them right.

-Dre

Which teams did best in terms of extensions

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Zach Lowe has a great piece over at the Point Forward summing up which teams extended their draft picks from the 2008 draft, exercised their options on 2009 draftees and which players’ contracts were put on the back burner. I decided to add some Wages of Wins Analysis. I’ll go over some of the good and bad decision of yesterday.

Kevin Love signs a three year max deal with a fourth year player option

  • Player rating: A+
  • Contract decision rating: D+
Kevin Love career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
Kevin Love 2009 2048 0.16 6.8 81 11.1
Kevin Love 2010 1714 0.251 9.0 60 14
Kevin Love 2011 2611 0.335 18.2 73 20.2
Kevin Love 2012 714 0.24 3.6 18 25.3

Patrick over at the NBA Geek has a great piece summing this up. Kevin Love is an amazing player and getting him re-signed is a major victory for a pretty terrible franchise. However there were some major flaws. As Patrick aptly sums it up, the Wolves had Kevin Love completely outmaneuvered negotiation wise and they messed it up. As Patrick aptly explains:

Basically, Taylor tried to play hardball with Kevin Love and got swindled in a huge way. And all for “future flexibility”. Wait, so you didn’t want to lock up a franchise player so that you could later, maybe…lock up…a…different…franchise player?

and then of course the real punch line:

The Timberwolves had Kevin Love in a bad negotiating spot…They were definitely playing hardball. And playing hardball is fine. But you should know what the hell your homerun scenario is when you are playing hardball. And your homerun scenario is most definitely not ’Our franchise player will be an unrestricted free agent just as he enters his prime years.’

So despite getting one of the best players in basketball the Timberwolves still managed to mess it up. That sounds familiar right?

The Orlando Magic do not offer an extension to Ryan Anderson

  • Player rating: A
  • Decision rating: D
Ryan Anderson career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
Ryan Anderson 2008-2009 1312 0.087 2.4 66 7.4
Ryan Anderson 2009-2010 910 0.129 2.4 63 7.7
Ryan Anderson 2010-2011 1424 0.211 6.3 64 10.6
Ryan Anderson 2011-2012 517 0.267 2.9 17 16.8

Oh wow what another terrible move by this franchise. The reasoning real boils down to the fact that until they know what is happening with Dwight they don’t want to make any major moves. The issue is that Howard is a great player and not only that he’s great via conventional wisdom. His points per game have increased every season. Guess what? In the NBA talented scoring bigs are valuable! So by not even attempting to lock him up they run the risk of another team inflating his price in the offseason. They are essentially saying instead of dealing with locking up a good player they’d rather wait until their roster is more in shambles and his price could be higher. There’s a reason this franchise is the Wages of Wins Network reigning “Worst Management of the Year” winner.

The Wizards don’t offer an extension to JaVale McGee

  • Player rating: B
  • Decision rating: B
JaVale McGee’s career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
JaVale McGee 2008-2009 113 0.050 1.2 75 6.5
JaVale McGee 2009-2010 968 0.098 2.0 60 6.4
JaVale McGee 2010-2011 2193 0.164 7.5 79 10.1
JaVale McGee 2011-2012 523 0.159 1.7 18 10.9

Alright I know I just went off on Orlando for not locking up a talented big, so why does Washington (who we’ve been less than kind to) get a pass? Well it turns out McGee isn’t a fantastic scorer. At 10 points per game his market value is not likely to be huge. When “role players” are restricted free agents in the offseason then teams are tentative about approaching them. So basically the Wizards are saying they think they can get a bargain come the offseason. At least, that’s the reasoning for their grade.

The Nuggets re-signed Danilo Gallinari to a four-year, $42 million deal.

  • Player grade: B
  • Decision rating: B
Danilo Gallinari’s career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
Danilo Gallinari 2008-2009 412 0.122 1.1 28 6.1
Danilo Gallinari 2009-2010 2747 0.066 3.8 81 15.1
Danilo Gallinari 2010-2011 2104 0.096 4.2 62 15.6
Danilo Gallinari 2011-2012 616 0.172 2.2 18 17.7

As a Nuggets fan I’m very excited about the potential of Gallinari. That said, he’s been around average for his first few seasons. To be fair, he did have some injury issues and both the Knicks and Nuggets have been playing him out of position. This move is definitely better than the alternative and if Gallinari keeps progressing then I will be happy to admit I graded too harshly.

The Bobcats picked up Gerald Henderson’s $3.1 million team option.

  • Player rating: D
  • Decision rating: C
Gerald Henderson’s career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
Gerald Henderon 2009-2010 355 0.073 0.5 43 2.6
Gerald Henderon 2010-2011 1661 0.083 2.9 68 9.6
Gerald Henderon 2011-2012 629 0.052 0.7 18 15.4

It’s not like Gerald Henderson has been a particularly bad player. The thing to remember is that Charlotte is a smaller market so players are actually more expensive. When Jordan and company chose to gut their franchise they oddly chose to get rid of all of their good players. This move is keeping a mediocre to bad player around. As a small market if you want to compete you can’t really rely on players like this to help you through. It’s not as if I’m surprised though and if we grade using the Bobcats front office as the standard then this really ranks closer to a B+.

The Hornets and Grizzlies luck out with Eric Gordon and O.J. Mayo

  • Player ratings: C
  • Decision ratings: A (via luck)
Eric Gordon’s career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
Eric Gordon 2008-2009 2677 0.098 5.5 78 16.1
Eric Gordon 2009-2010 2229 0.073 3.4 62 16.9
Eric Gordon 2010-2011 2112 0.110 4.9 56 22.3
Eric Gordon 2011-2012 78 0.035 0.1 2 21.0
O.J. Mayo’s career stats
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG
O.J. Mayo 2008-2009 3120 0.041 2.7 82 18.5
O.J. Mayo 2009-2010 3113 0.093 6 82 17.5
O.J. Mayo 2010-2011 1869 0.038 1.5 71 11.3
O.J. Mayo 2011-2012 420 0.100 0.9 17 11.8

The Grizzlies decided against extending an offer to O.J. in large part because they already have a lot of salary commited thanks mostly to Marc Gasol (worth it), Zach Randolph (worth it when healthy) and Rudy Gay (not worth it). However, O.J. hasn’t been much more than average thus far in his career. He does score points though, so his salary will probably be above his production. The Grizzlies are actually lucky they may not be able to re-sign him. In fact an identical story can pretty much be told for…

Eric Gordon declined the offer put forth by the Hornets (allegedly it was a four year high salary deal). Eric Gordon is an average player. New Orleans is a small market and thanks to Gordon’s high points per game his salary demands were apparently similar to Kevin Love’s. The Hornets may still make the mistake of signing Gordon is they chose to match in the offseason. For now though they’ve avoided a bad mistake.

And the rest!

Those were the highlights for me. I know I left some names out as I wan’t too thrilled one way or the other. However, if you want to see the stats for the rest of the players with extension statuses I’ve listed them below. Enjoy!

Players with extension/option status changes at deadline
Player Season MP WP48 WP G PPG Status
Hasheem Thabeet 2009-2010 883 0.128 2.4 68 3.1 Not extended
Hasheem Thabeet 2010-2011 373 -0.052 -0.4 47 1.1 Not extended
Hasheem Thabeet 2011-2012 11 0.444 0.1 2 3.1 Not extended
Roy Hibbert 2008-2009 1009 -0.04 -0.8 70 7.1 Not extended
Roy Hibbert 2009-2010 2035 0.028 1.2 81 11.7 Not extended
Roy Hibbert 2010-2011 2244 0.021 1.0 81 12.7 Not extended
Roy Hibbert 2011-2012 502 0.198 1.5 17 14.4 Not extended
Brook Lopez 2008-2009 2501 0.097 5.1 82 13.0 Not extended
Brook Lopez 2009-2010 3027 0.095 6.0 82 18.8 Not extended
Brook Lopez 2010-2011 2889 -0.003 -0.2 82 20.4 Not extended
Brook Lopez 2011-2012 0 0.000 0.0 0 0.0 Not extended
Jonny Flynn 2009-2010 2339 -0.021 -1.0 81 13.5 Not extended
Jonny Flynn 2010-2011 983 -0.08 -1.6 53 5.3 Not extended
Jonny Flynn 2011-2012 70 -0.028 0.0 5 3.6 Not extended
Terrence Williams 2009-2010 1764 -0.006 -0.2 78 8.4 Not extended
Terrence Williams 2010-2011 290 -0.133 -0.8 21 5.0 Not extended
Terrence Williams 2011-2012 138 0.023 0.1 7 6.4 Not extended
Courtney Lee 2008-2009 1939 0.116 4.7 77 8.4 Not extended
Courtney Lee 2009-2010 2375 0.106 5.2 71 12.5 Not extended
Courtney Lee 2010-2011 1723 0.102 3.7 81 8.3 Not extended
Courtney Lee 2011-2012 224 0.111 0.5 10 9.0 Not extended
George Hill 2008-2009 1270 0.046 1.2 77 5.7 Negotiations fell apart
George Hill 2009-2010 2276 0.113 5.3 78 12.4 Negotiations fell apart
George Hill 2010-2011 2148 0.124 5.6 76 11.6 Negotiations fell apart
George Hill 2011-2012 398 0.186 1.5 16 9.5 Negotiations fell apart
Nicolas Batum 2008-2009 1454 0.161 4.9 79 5.4 Negotiations fell apart
Nicolas Batum 2009-2010 918 0.230 4.4 37 10.1 Negotiations fell apart
Nicolas Batum 2010-2011 2522 0.111 5.9 80 12.4 Negotiations fell apart
Nicolas Batum 2011-2012 470 0.221 2.2 19 11.1 Negotiations fell apart
Toney Douglas 2009-2010 1087 0.107 2.4 56 8.6 $2.1 million option exercised
Toney Douglas 2010-2011 1971 0.116 4.8 81 10.6 $2.1 million option exercised
Toney Douglas 2011-2012 411 -0.135 -1.2 18 8.7 $2.1 million option exercised

Flip Gets the Blame…Again

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In what can only be described as an act of desperation, the Washington Wizards fired third year coach Flip Saunders after an abysmal 2-15 start. Firing coaches seems to be all the rage in big money sports these days. The reasoning behind it is simple: firing a coach is a lot easier than making good trades and free agency acquisitions, drafting well, and having patience. But while it’s relatively easy, firing coaches isn’t particularly helpful, at least in the NBA. In fact, it’s basically pointless. Indeed, in Stumbling on Wins, Dave Berri studied the impact of coaches in the NBA on player production. The study revealed that NBA coaches generally have little, if any, impact on their teams. Of course, that doesn’t mean a deck chair would do just as well as anyone as an NBA coach; rather, one NBA level coach probably isn’t going to produce results that are any different from what another NBA level coach would. However, there are a few coaches that have actually had a significant positive impact on their teams in the past. One is Phil Jackson. Another? That’s right, Flip Saunders. What makes this truly more amusing is that in defending the move Wizard’s owner Ted Leonsis made the claim that Flip was fired as the team should be doing better. If Flip is one of the few productive coaches then what has been the cause of his firings?

Flip Always Gets the Short End of the Stick

Saunders began his NBA coaching career in Minnesota the same year Kevin Garnett came into the league (I guess he started his career with luck on his side). During his tenure there, the Wolves were a generally above average team. The only problem was they couldn’t get out of the first round of the playoffs. Until they did. And suddenly expectations became sky high. After seven straight first round exits, Minnesota finally got to the conference championship, and the following season Saunders was fired after 50 games when the team was one game under .500. Of course, management failed to see the real reason for the team’s decline: Sam Cassell’s age finally caught up with him. Cassell’s WP48 dropped from 0.181 in 2003-04 to 0.061 in 2004-05, when he was 36. That and the team had a 14 million dollar (not enough to feed his family) black hole named Sprewell. Seriously, go look at his Wins Produced numbers. And you thought Carmelo was overrated…

Flip got another chance in Detroit when Larry Brown left the Pistons to coach the Knicks. Three years in Detroit, three conference championship appearances. Not to mention the best record in franchise history. But losing to the 2008 eventual champion Boston Celtics, who had the 3rd best team ever in terms of efficiency differential (after the 96 and 97 Bulls, respectively) wasn’t good enough, and Flip was fired again.

That brings us to the Washington Wizards, who were exceptionally bad during Flip’s first two years there, and look to be even worse this year, which of course is why he was fired.

The Real Problem in Washington

Let’s take a look at some team stats in order to understand where Washington struggles:

Team REB AST TO BLK STL PF eFG%
WAS 41.5 16.8 14.9 7.5 8.2 20.5 43.9%
AVG 42.3 20.4 15.1 5.0 8.0 20.3 48.0%

Washington is pretty close to average in all categories except two: assists and shooting efficiency. These two are obviously related, but there is a correlation-causation issue. It could be that players are taking bad shots instead of passing to open teammates. It could also be that shots that would go in when taken by most teams aren’t going in for the Wizards, and since no assist is credited for a missed shot, the Wiz don’t record as many assists as most teams. Both are probably true to some extent.

But since we don’t know for sure, let’s focus on Washington’s effective field goal percentage, which is the second worst in the league (somehow Sacramento’s is even worse), and over 4% below the league average. To put it mildly, Washington’s shooting is absolutely terrible. Of its six players with the most minutes, only one, JaVale McGee, has an above average effective field goal percentage. John Wall and Andray Blatche are especially bad. Both have an effective field goal percentage over 10% below average! You can look at the rest of the team at The NBA Geek.

The players don’t deserve all the blame though. They may be bad, but it’s not their fault they have to play on a team with a bunch of other bad players. It’s the management’s fault. Indeed, management has made some questionable decisions over the past year or so. First, it extended Andray Blatche’s contract. Blatche has been consistently well below average since he entered the league out of high school in 2005. In addition to shooting poorly, he is a poor rebounder, and he turns the ball over a lot. Now Washington is stuck paying him a mid level salary until 2015 unless they can dupe some sucker into trading something of value for him. Normally, I would urge the team to use its new power of amnesty on Blatche. But there’s a much more deserving player, which brings me to my next point: why didn’t Washington use the amnesty clause to waive Rashard Lewis?! Besides Kobe Bryant, Rashard Lewis makes the most money of everyone in the entire NBA! Waive him and the Wiz have twenty-two million dollars to play with. They could have had their pick from the free agent pool. In addition to Lewis, the Wizards made another big mistake in the offseason: they re-signed Nick Young, who was 6th from the bottom of my offseason free agent guide, valued at an estimated negative two million per year. So far, Young has lived up to this prediction. Luckily they only signed him for a year.

The poor management of the Wizards is particularly surprising because Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Wizards, endorsed Stumbling on Wins. Apparently he isn’t ready to apply what he learned in the book to real life.

Hope in the Capital

So You're Tellin' Me There's A Chance!

Washington can’t fix its past mistakes (like firing Flip Saunders). But it can control the future, and there is some hope. First, the team is super young, and its super young players, with the exception of John Wall and Jordan Crawford, have played well. Second, it isn’t too late to use the amnesty clause to waive Rashard Lewis.Third, Nick Young is only signed to a one year contract. With the money Lewis and Young would free up, Washington could make some big moves in free agency, and transform itself into a team that can at least compete. That is, if the new coach plays the right players.

Summing Up

The Wizards are really, really bad this year. Because of the team’s lack of success, it made a desperation move and fired its coach, Flip Saunders. But Saunders wasn’t the problem. The problem is that the team is riddled with bad players. And the team’s management has failed to remedy this problem by holding on to the bad players. Thus, Washington will continue to be bad in the absence of Saunders unless its management starts making good decisions. Unfortunately firing Flip doesn’t signal that the management understands this. Flip has been fired several times thanks to unrealistic expectations. While good moves can make a franchise good, unrealistic expectations seem to lead to bad franchises and fired coaches.

-James