Author Archives: Andres Alvarez

Scoring at will: LeBron vs. Melo

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No one will disagree that LeBron James is a better player than Carmelo Anthony. However, people certainly seem to think Carmelo Anthony is at least in the mix for top small forward in the league. In fact just two seasons ago when LeBron James took home the MVP award and was named to the All-NBA first team Carmelo Anthony finished sixth in MVP voting and was placed on the All-NBA second team.

Every time we compare Melo to LeBron, Melo pretty much comes up short on every count. The only place Melo comes out ahead is in offensive rebounds per game. While these are valuable they don’t come close to making up for the rest of the game differences between the players.

The one area that Melo seems to get a lot of credit is scoring. He’s called a “pure scorer” that can “score at will” and is “the best offensive player in the game”. It’s very odd for all of this praise to get heaped on Melo when his shooting numbers are not anywhere near LeBron’s. However, the Basketball Reference Play Index Plus gives us an ability to check out what people are talking about. Let’s look at LeBron vs. Melo in regards to shooting when we take location into account. I’ll be using 2010 as that is the season where LeBron and Melo were arguably most similar in regards to popular perception.

Shooting Comparison: LeBron vs. Melo 2009-2010
Distance from Hoop LeBron Attempts LeBron Shot % Melo Attempts Melo Shot %
 Free Throw 773 76.7% 612 83.0%
 At Rim 596 73.8% 593 59.2%
 3 to 9 feet 151 46.4% 155 32.9%
 10-15 feet 101 34.7% 213 44.6%
 16-3pt line 454 39.6% 473 40.2%
 Behind 3pt 437 34.1% 206 31.6%

When we try and see where Melo outshines LeBron as a scorer we get our answer. From 10 feet to the three point line (midrange jumpers) Melo is a much better shooter. However, from close to the hoop and beyond the arc LeBron is superior. In regards to almost all of their shots they are very close in attempts with one exception. Melo likes taking more shots in the 10 foot to the three point line range. Neither LeBron or Melo is good from this range (Ty at Courtside Analyst has a less than favorable term for these shots). LeBron’s strength comes from the fact that he is very good at easy shots and he takes a lot of them. When given the option of taking a midrange jumper or getting behind the arc, LeBron is much more likely to get behind the arc than Melo. LeBron also gets to the line more often.

All of this boils down to shot selection. LeBron James is better at easier shots and as a result he takes fewer of the hard shots. Melo is better at some of the more difficult shots and is prone to take them. The issue is that the scoreboard doesn’t care! Did LeBron get his two points for an easy jam or by a pull up jumper? Who cares? In complimenting Melo for being a pure scorer what people need to realize is that shot selection is part of being a scorer! Taking bad shots at a better rate than most players may be impressive. However, the NBA is not a game of HORSE. I will conceed that Melo is better at making worse shots than LeBron is. However, I see nothing pure or impressive about a player that chooses to take bad shots.

-Dre

CompariLins

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I’m debating trademarking that! (Kidding! But an obvious dig at this.) I’d like to say I’m sick of Jeremy Lin but I can’t. I enjoy writing about him and I have a few fun comparisons to make using some big names.

Jeremy Lin vs. Michael Jordan

The real breakthrough game for Jeremy Lin for me was his third start. Here’s a reminder of his stats:

  • 38:34 Minutes Played
  • 38 Points (66% true shooting)
  • 11-19 Two Pointers (58%)
  • 2-4 Three Pointers (50%)
  • 10-13 Free Throws (77%)
  • 7 Assists
  • 3 Steals
  • 6 Turnovers
  • 1 Offensive Rebound, 3 Defensive Rebounds

Now here is Michael Jordan’s third start (Thanks to Basketball-Reference! Sadly only offensive stats are available):

  • 37 Points (62% true shooting)
  • 13-24 Two Pointers (54%)
  • 11-13 Free Throws (85%)
  • 5 Assists

Yes I know it’s a small sample size and a silly comparison but it is still freaking cool! It’s also remarkable that in 1984-1985 Milwaukee was actually a good team! Michael Jordan’s break out performance on an otherwise mediocre Bulls was remarkable. Likewise Lin’s breakout performance against a top team in the Lakers is also remarkable.

Jeremy Lin vs. Dirk Nowitzki

Google Trends are pretty awesome (thanks to @Hoopisms for leading me down this route). They let us see how the internet responds to various events. For instance I decided to compare Dirk Nowitzki and Jeremy Lin over the last twelve months.

The red line is Dirk and the blue line is Lin. The top chart is the number of searches for each player and Google nicely shows us  what events relate to the spike. When Dirk won the finals MVP in June he got a nice spike. However, this was less than half the spike Lin got when his outstanding performance contributed to a win over the Lakers. Right now Lin winning is more interesting to internet surfers than Dirk finally winning a title.

Lin vs. Dave Berri

This last comparison is silly at best but still fun. Jeremy Lin happened to get his degree in economics. It also turns out his listed height is 6 feet 3 inches. Another amazing coincidence is that the General Manager of the Wages of Wins Network happens to have gotten his degrees in economics and is also 6 feet 3 inches tall. Both also focus on productive and economic basketball albeit in different ways. When it comes down to comparing Lin to other greats (Dirk, MJ, David Berri….ok two out of three) he is coming out very favorably, at least so far!

-Dre

Jeremy Lin helps teach us about Yay Points, Clutch and Risk

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This season New York has been front and center when it comes to a lot of our basketball posts. With Wages of Wins Favorites Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler (albeit popular by us for opposite reasons) joining forces and up-and-comer phenom Landry Fields teaming up with aging like milk Amare Stoudemire, there were simply too many interesting reasons to avoid the Knicks this season. That’s why it’s surprising that the biggest story this season from the Knicks is none of those players.

The story that has taken the NBA blogosphere by storm is Jeremy Lin. We’ve talked about the draft and how it is perfectly acceptable to say no one could have seen Lin coming. After all most young players — even future greats — don’t play well in their first starts. But what is not acceptable to say is that no team should have realized Lin was worth a look. In a league where mystery box players such as Bargnani get major minutes as young players, it is ridiculous to say the Warriors, Rockets or even Knicks were right in sitting Lin on the bench. However, with Lin now front and center, I am happy to say there are even more great lessons to be learned from this already amazing story.

Lin and Yay Points

Points drive perception in the NBA. Points get you drafted high, paid, voted to All-Star games and even sways voters for major awards. It is true that to win in the NBA you have to outscore the opponent, and this is a matter of points. Of course, missing shots gives the opponent an opportunity to score. As does turning the ball over. In Lin’s first three starts he scored 28, 23 and 38 points while shooting over 60% true shooting. That’s remarkable! In his last two games he’s kept up the 20+ points per game but he had a 33.3% true shooting percentage in the win over Minnesota and 54.3% true shooting percentage in the win over Toronto — also had Lin not scored his last second clutch shot he would have ended the night with a below average 50.3% true shooting percentage. Those marks are terrible and above average respectively. He’s also been racking up the turnovers. Of course, the focus is still on points. Lin shoots amazingly? He’s amazing! Lin shoots terribly? He’s still amazing! Lin shoots above average? Still amazing! People like winners. The Wages of Wins showed the biggest factor in ticket sales is a winning team. However the biggest thing people like to give credit to is scoring. Lin is scoring a lot of points on a currently winning team. Players like Joe Johnson show this is a good way to boost your popularity.

Lin and Clutch

Toronto has been a bad team this season. However, recently they’ve been a great opponent for some spectacular play (perhaps we should rename them the Washington Generals?) Both Kobe and Lin were able to sink last second clutch shots to will their team to a win. Of course, neither Kobe or Lin actually played that well. As I mentioned, Lin needed the clutch shot to get his scoring percentages above average and with 8 turnovers to his 11 assists, it’s not like he was being a great facilitator. Kobe’s game was even worse. He shot 9 for 23 and did little else. Yet at the end of the game, both players were lauded as heroes. The True Hoop blog actually had this to say about Kobe:

Sunday was a day in which Kobe Bryant made like Magic Johnson…

Wait…what? 9-23 shooting with two rebounds and four turnovers is like Magic? This wasn’t an article written by Henry Abbott and thank goodness Abbott did take another look at this game. That said, on the network that has been pounding the Kobe isn’t clutch drum, all it takes is one game against a bad team with a bad performance by a player that gets the game winner to draw comparisons to one of the greatest players ever? Yahoo Sports was similar in their talk of Lin and his game winner in Toronto:

Even after his amazing week, this one took Linsanity to a whole new level.

Again, a game with a below average performance against a bad team somehow takes Lin’s Michael Jordan like start (seriously compare Lin’s third start to Michael Jordan’s third start) to the next level? I enjoy clutch and excitement on Sports Center, but both of these claims are hyperbole to the Nth degree!

Lin and risk

The rise of Lin has brought out a lot of speculation and finger pointing. How could the Warriors cut Lin? (The answer by the way was so they could not sign DeAndre Jordan) How could the Rockets cut Lin? (The answer was to make room for Dalembert and to keep warm bench spots open for Jonny Flynn and Hasheem Thabeet) How could the rest of the league pass on him?

The issue in the NBA is this: playing an unknown player while your team is losing is a risky proposition for coaches. Much like going for it on fourth down in football will draw scrutiny in a loss, so will playing unknown players in front of known players. While everyone scurries to prove that Lin will be the greatest player since MJ or that they could have known he was coming (we’re somewhat guilty of that), there’s a bigger issue. Lin is proof of an inherent flaw in NBA management. Owners refuse to quit because they’ve sunk millions of dollars into players. Coaches refuse to play unknown players because of a risk to their job.

Lin is the very definition of a low-risk high-reward proposition. This season he will make less than $1 million. Compare that to even the most fringe free agent point guard signed in Earl Watson, who will make $2 million a year. Lin’s college numbers also suggested he was worth a look. On a losing team (such as Golden State), such a player should be great; you play him, and if he works out you’re better off. If he fails, then your cap is intact and you can roll the dice again in the draft. Yet the way the NBA management is structured, somehow playing a cheap, undrafted player is seemingly high risk. I say seemingly because, as Arturo has pointed out, if you are on a losing team your only hope of salvation is winning. That’s a problem that I suspect won’t be solved even after all the dust has settled and the finger pointing in regards to Lin has stopped.

Summing up

Let’s just get this out of the way: sample size. I didn’t even need to form a complete sentence around those two words. Lin has started less than ten games. All the narratives we are building stand a very good chance of looking foolish in the future. All I can say is that in all aspects (fun to watch, fun to talk about, fun to analyze the stats) Lin has been a joy for NBA fans. As the NBA is about entertainment that’s really all we can ask for. Regardless of how this plays out in regards to Lin’s career or NBA front office decisions, what we can say is that for two weeks in February Jeremy Lin was the most polarizing person in the NBA, and that in itself is pretty damned impressive.

-Dre

 

Fans vs. coaches in picking NBA talent

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I recently wrote an article about how the fans made a few mistakes picking their NBA All-Stars. Yesterday, I put up an article pointing out how the coaches made a few mistakes picking the NBA reserves. The point I took with the coaches is that the coaches are supposed to be better judges of talent. A weird thing came up while I was comparing the two articles.

Now I know the criteria for picking All-Star candidates is a bit rough. The filters I used were 20+ games played, 25+ minutes per game and looking at the top WP48 in each category (Guard, Forward, Center) (as of February 10th 2012 via the NBA Geek). How did the fans vs. the coaches do when picking talent?

Guards

I’ll get some flack here. Neither Paul or Wade made my cut for 20 games. Had I used 17 games as the cutoff point (Wade’s number of games) then Paul would be ranked #1 out of guards in the league and Wade would be ranked #13

Verdict: Fans

Despite the fans irrational love of Kobe and their desire to mess with my predetermined cutoffs they did a pretty good job picking guards. Paul and Rose were both top 10 and Wade in spite of a bad start is still top 15. The coaches apparently have no clue which players are good in the backcourt. Ray Allen, Kyle Lowry, Landry Fields and Ricky Rubio were all snubbed in the name of high points per game.

Verdict: Coaches

This was was barely in the coaches favor. They did great picking three players in the top ten. Aldridge, Deng and Bosh are all iffy picks especially given some great play out of Paul Millsap and Ryan Anderson. Johnson and Nowitzki are just plain off. Of course the fans also picked Melo. Anyway small edge to the coaches, who picked 5-8 of their players in the top 20, compared to 2-4 for the fans.

Centers

Verdict: Fans

The fans picked the second best center in terms of per minute play in both conference. Essentially they decided they’d rather see Howard than Chandler and Bynum and DeAndre Jordan. The coaches though, did much worse. Gasol was the third best center available and the fourth best in the West (Gortat would have been a better option). Out east Hibbert in front of Chandler is a travesty. In front of Noah is even more perplexing as they gave Deng a nod. Add in a revived Varejao and an amazing Greg Monroe and the coaches show they have no clue on top centers in the league.

The fans win?

There are a few things to consider. The fans got first pick. We can say “Of course the coaches would have picked LeBron and Paul!” But that’s part of the point. The fans left enough of the best and brightest in the league open for the coaches to pick and the coaches missed on way too many of them. I’m not a fan of the eye test for judging basketball. That said, it’s a bit startling that the eye test seems to be a better judge of NBA talent than the people actually paid to judge NBA talent.

-Dre