Tag Archives: Kevin Durant

What’s up with Westbrook?

Posted on by
4

Coach Nick (@bballsource) at BBallBreakdown had an astute observation recently:

Watching the playoffs, Westbrook hasn’t rubbed me the wrong way like he did in the regular season. Need to figure out why.

I happen to agree wholeheartedly with the statement. I don’t have Coach Nick’s keen eye for breaking down the game, but I am pretty good at breaking down the numbers. Let’s take a quick look at Westbrook this season and what’s changed.

Regular Season Westbrook

If we look at the top Thunder players courtesy of The NBA Geek here’s how the Thunder break down

Player Position Games Minutes Played WP48 Wins
Kevin Durant SF 66 2546 0.226 12.0
James Harden SG 62 1946 0.263 10.7
Serge Ibaka PF 66 1792 0.263 9.8
Russell Westbrook PG 66 2331 0.102 4.9

Westbrook has been an average point guard this season. Now, that’s not a bad thing. A team with three great players needs to be surrounded by at least average players (or else they end up like the Clippers) It may be surprising to think of Westbrook, who gets almost 24 points a game as average. We won’t disagree that he’s a good scorer. Let’s break down how Westbrook contributes to the Thunder using Win Score (the simplified version of Wins Produced) and Points over Par (translating stats into what point edge it gains your team) We can breakdown Westbrook:

Net Points is points minus field goal attempt and 0.44 per free throw attempt. Win Score is an approximation, so it won’t add up exactly with Wins Produced.

Stat Russell Westbrook Average PG PoP
Offensive Rebounds  2.0  0.9  1.1 
Net Points  1.7  0.9  0.8 
Steals  2.3  1.9  0.4 
Personal Fouls  3.0  3.4  0.4 
Defensive Rebounds  4.3  3.9  0.2 
Assists  7.5  8.3  -0.4 
Turnovers  4.9  3.5  -1.4 
 TOTAL  0.8

Westbrook is a good scorer. In fact when it comes to most things he’s above average. As a point guard though he’s had two major flaws this season. His assists and turnovers are really bad. If Westbrook were an average playmaker then his superb scoring and other skills would make him a star (which we’ve seen in the past) However, since his playmaking was so below average this season, his overall contribution amounted to “meh”. Now, what happened in the playoffs?

Westbrook in the playoffs

2011-2012 Top Thunder through round 2 of the Playoffs.

Player Position Games Minutes Played WP48 Wins
Kevin Durant SF 9 366.4 0.213 1.6
James Harden SG 9 273.2 0.253 1.4
Russell Westbrook PG 9 324.5 0.203 1.4
Serge Ibaka PF 9 254.0 0.229 1.2

Westbrook changed from being average to being a star. The Thunder changed from a three-headed beast to a four-headed beast and the previous two title holders fell in a mere nine games. What the heck happened to Westbrook?

Stat Russell Westbrook Average PG PoP
Net Points  2.6  0.9  1.7 
Turnovers  2.0  3.5  1.5 
Steals  2.5  1.9  0.6 
Offensive Rebounds  1.5  0.9  0.6 
Defensive Rebounds  4.7  3.9  0.4 
Personal Fouls  2.8  3.4  0.3 
Assists  5.9  8.3  -1.2 
 TOTAL  3.9

Westbrook’s already great scoring got better. Surprisingly though, his turnovers went from his biggest weakness to his second greatest strength! He didn’t improve his passing. In fact, it got worse. His improved scoring and decreased turnovers though, more than compensated. The rest of his game stayed solid and the result was a star performance.

Summing up

Westbrook’s strength has been in his scoring for several seasons now. This can be tremendously helpful to a team, provided Westbrook can manage to stay average as a playmaker. Doing this means controlling his assist to turnover ratio. His turnovers have been bad most of his career. If he can keep these in check though, he’s a great scorer on a great team. Here’s hoping he keeps it up.

-Dre

Kevin Durant profits from his teammates inability to get open.

Posted on by
2

Dave Berri has posted his most recent piece over at Freakonomics:

Kevin Durant Impersonates Russell Westbrook for Sprint

Kevin Durant is actually a very impressive scorer. He is on a team though with two players on very different ends of the spectrum. James Harden is a highly efficient shooter. Russell Westbrook like to shoot a lot. Dave recounts a story Durant uses in a Sprint commercial. In his tale Durant takes a bad shot, but it’s not his fault as nobody was open. Despite some claims in the comment section about how this is a very likely scenario, it’s a bit iffy. After all, if you are double teamed that typically means someone is open. And in the NBA even the worst scorer can score when they are wide open.

Dave has a different theory. In the NBA points are a primary driver in what gets you paid. Players know this and thus it can pay to be selfish. On the other hand, this directly competes with the idea of team ball. Thus, a perfect compromise is if you are forced to shoot because it is not possible to play team ball. Perhaps the play we observe out of some star players is not in fact them being selfish. Rather it is them trying to be a team player but unfortunately they are unable to. Or maybe that’s just a story they use to get paid. I’ll let you decide using Durant’s explanation (brought to you by Sprint)

-Dre


In other news BarnesAndNoble.com will be selling Stumbling on Wins for $1.99 as its deal of the day this upcoming Saturday (May 12th, 2012, sorry those of you in the future that missed this awesome deal.) So if you don’t have it in your collection make sure to head over and pick it up!

The Wages of Wins gives out the most important award of the season.

Posted on by
2

WINNER!

The NBA has slowly started releasing the awards of the season. I know everyone was waiting with baited breath to find out Tyson Chandler would win Defensive Player of the Year. I know Gregg Popovich shocked the world taking home coach of the year. Now it’s time for the most important award. The winner of the Wages of Wins Network Predict the Future and Win a BounceX3 T-Shirt is…..:

Matt Bailey (@Hoopisms) from Hoopism with his pick of Kenneth Faried on April 9th vs. the Golden State Warriors

Matt Bailey has been a friend of both the Wages of Wins Network and BounceX3 for a while. When Matt picked Kenneth Faried, our own Arturo Galletti (who was in first at the time) laughed and said Karl would never give Faried the minutes to let Matt win the contest. Arturo was right, Faried didn’t care and in a mere 24 minutes of play he managed to put up one of the best games of the season. For fun here’s a quick rundown of how our top guessers did (Full results here if you’re interested):

1st place: Matt Bailey with Kenneth Faried on April 9th vs. the Golden State Warriors

  • +14.7 PoP
  • Impressive Stats: 27 PTS (70.0%) 17 TRB (7 ORB) 2 STL 24 MP

If there has been a poster child of the Wages of Wins Network this season it has been Kenneth Faried. We sponsored him the second he became available on Basketball-Reference. Putting up such an insane performance on limited minutes actually wasn’t as outlandish of a guess as you would think. Of course, this pick seemed next to ludicrous a few days before the game. Matt wasn’t scared though.

2nd place: Matt A. with Chris Paul on April 22nd vs. the New Orleans Hornets

  • +15.0 PoP
  • 33 PTS (62.5% TS) 13 AST 8 STL

We gave people a chance at a second guess. Matt’s first guess was pretty strong (+9.8 from LeBron James) To win the contest with a second guess I put the impossible standard of beating the current first place winner outright by +1.0 PoP. Matt game up just short. If Chris Paul had just been able to shoot threes at his normal rate Matt would have had this. That said, Matt shows his prediction abilities are uncannily good to say the least.

3rd place: @jdguy with Kevin Durant on April 20th vs. the Sacramento Kings

  • +12.2 PoP
  • 29 PTS (74.7% TS) 14 TRB (1 ORB) 7 AST 1 STL

jdguy had been burned by his first guess with Kevin Durant, who played quite poorly on April 13th against the Kings. He rightly predicted Kevin Durant would correct this and he did with an amazing performance in a rematch. It wasn’t quite enough to win, but it was certainly an impressive guess.

Consolation: J.O. with Rajon Rondo on April 26th vs. the Milwaukee Bucks

  • +11.7 PoP
  • 15 AST 4STL 1 TOV 0 PTS

The creator of BounceX3 got the first guess in the contest and he picked the game furthest out in the future. He rightly predicted Rondo would come out swinging. What makes this guess truly amazing is that Rondo did this scoring NO POINTS! I may have to nominate this as the Wages of the Wins game of the year. Had he won J.O. said he’d likely have given the prize to 2nd place, so from the purpose of props this guess still served its purpose.

Summing up

This contest was a ton of fun and maybe I’ll try and put on another next year. If you missed out, don’t worry you can still buy BounceX3 t-shirts and just tell your friends you won!

-Dre

Playoffs recap for May 3rd 2012: Durant fires back at LeBron

Posted on by
1

Dre here. I didn’t get Arturo the data for generating his nightly update in time. I’ll take the reigns for today. I’ve decided to break this into game by game so to start let’s go over the marque matchup out west! I’ll be using Arturo’s Points over Par flavor of Wins Produced for examining game stats.

Oklahoma City Thunder at Dallas Mavericks

Oklahoma City Thunder Stats

  • PoP: +16.2
Player Pos EFG% FT% TS% FT PTS PoP/48 PoP/G
Kevin Durant 3.4 87% 71% 86% 5 31 17.6 14.6
Serge Ibaka 4.1 63% 0% 63% 0 10 14.5 8.0
Daequan Cook 2.0 64% 0% 64% 0 9 13.3 3.1
Kendrick Perkins 5.0 25% 0% 25% 0 2 0.6 0.4
Derek Fisher 1.0 56% 0% 56% 0 10 0.2 0.1
James Harden 2.5 30% 67% 40% 4 10 -0.5 -0.3
Lazar Hayward 3.0 0% 0% 0% 0 0 -5.9 -0.6
Thabo Sefolosha 2.4 25% 0% 25% 0 3 -2.3 -0.8
Russell Westbrook 1.3 47% 50% 48% 2 20 -1.5 -1.0
Nazr Mohammed 5.0 0% 0% 0% 0 0 -10.6 -1.1
Nick Collison 4.5 0% 0% 0% 0 0 -6.1 -1.7
Royal Ivey 2.0 0% 0% 0% 0 0 -22.4 -2.3
Cole Aldrich 5.0 0% 0% 0% 0 0 -23.4 -2.4
As a team the Thunder absolutely crushed the Mavericks. They played stellar defense and two of their top players in Durant and Ibaka showed no mercy. The reason the first two games were close was because Durant hadn’t been playing well. The odds that would continue were low and when Durant showed up the defending champs wilted.
Player MP ORB DRB AST PF STL TO BS
Kevin Durant 39.9 0 3 6 3 2 1 1
Russell Westbrook 31.8 0 4 4 3 3 3 0
Kendrick Perkins 28.9 2 7 0 1 0 0 1
Serge Ibaka 26.7 4 7 0 4 1 0 4
James Harden 26.4 0 4 4 4 3 1 0
Derek Fisher 25.5 0 1 0 0 1 1 0
Thabo Sefolosha 16.8 0 3 3 1 0 0 1
Nick Collison 13.3 2 1 1 3 0 1 0
Daequan Cook 11.3 0 2 0 0 1 0 0
Cole Aldrich 4.9 1 2 0 1 0 0 0
Lazar Hayward 4.9 0 1 0 0 0 1 0
Nazr Mohammed 4.9 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Royal Ivey 4.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

In regards to the non-scoring stats Ibaka and Perkins put up impressive rebounding nights. No one really excelled at anything else, but hey when Durant is going to shoot over 80% from the field, does it matter?

Dallas Mavericks stats

  • PoP: -16.1
PLAYER POS EFG% FT% TS% FT PTS POP/48 POP/G
Brandan Wright 4.0 50% 0% 50% 0 2 11.4 2.0
Brian Cardinal 3.5 75% 0% 75% 0 3 9.1 1.6
Delonte West 1.5 60% 100% 71% 3 9 2.9 1.1
Ian Mahinmi 5.0 67% 0% 67% 0 4 2.4 0.8
Kelenna Azubuike 3.0 50% 0% 50% 0 3 3.7 0.4
Yi Jianlian 5.0 33% 0% 29% 0 2 -4.7 -0.5
Rodrigue Beaubois 1.5 0% 0% 0% 0 0 -7.8 -1.1
Jason Kidd 1.0 42% 100% 47% 2 12 -2.3 -1.6
Shawn Marion 3.5 13% 100% 31% 4 6 -2.8 -2
Jason Terry 2.0 40% 75% 47% 3 11 -4.7 -3.1
Brendan Haywood 5.0 25% 50% 31% 1 3 -22.2 -3.3
Dirk Nowitzki 4.5 40% 63% 46% 5 17 -5.1 -4.1
Vince Carter 2.8 31% 100% 39% 2 7 -11.5 -6.4

If we add up all of the Dallas Mavericks that had positive contributions they’d be worth around 1/3 of Kevin Durant’s performance. Dirk has been on a decline for a while. The days of Dirk and Vince Carter being elite players seems to be gone. Sadly Kidd and Marion didn’t show either and the Mavs core of former greats didn’t contend.

Player MP ORB DRB AST PF STL TO BS
Dirk Nowitzki 38.8 1 8 0 1 0 0 0
Jason Kidd 33.9 0 5 4 2 1 2 0
Shawn Marion 33.9 3 7 2 2 1 3 2
Jason Terry 31.4 0 3 6 3 1 4 0
Vince Carter 26.6 0 2 0 4 0 2 1
Delonte West 19 0 2 1 1 0 1 0
Ian Mahinmi 15.9 2 2 0 2 0 0 0
Brandan Wright 8.5 1 1 0 0 1 0 1
Brian Cardinal 8.3 0 3 0 0 0 0 0
Brendan Haywood 7.1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0
Rodrigue Beaubois 6.9 0 1 2 0 0 1 0
Kelenna Azubuike 4.9 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
Yi Jianlian 4.9 0 2 0 0 1 0 0

Dirk did manage to actually rebound like forward. Sadly he wasn’t scoring like himself. Jason Kidd’s killer playmaking was gone. None of the other Mavs put up any stats that would give them a shot.

Summing up

Well clearly this series appears to be done. The defending champs have simply gotten old and the Thunder are a superior team. The first two games were close, in part thanks to a missing Durant and a surging Jason Terry. If Durant plays mediocre the Thunder should easily close out the Mavs. If Durant plays great, well the results speak for themselves. It should be noted that Durant put up the second best performance of the playoffs so far behind none other than King James. Are the storm clouds gathering?

-Dre

How Durant won a not so close scoring race against Kobe.

Posted on by
3

The real scoring race finish

Rank Player G Total/G
1 Kevin Durant 66 5.0
2 LeBron James 63 4.7
3 James Harden 62 4.1
4 Tyson Chandler 63 3.3
5 Kevin Love 57 3.0
6 Andrew Bynum 61 2.9
7 Chris Paul 61 2.7
8 Steve Nash 62 2.5
9 Dirk Nowitzki 62 2.4
10 Ryan Anderson 62 2.4

Coming into the last day of the season the scoring race between Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant was tight. Kobe needed 38 points to take the scoring title from Durant. I was completely prepared to hear David Robinson comparisons if Kobe blew out Sacramento.  Then Kobe sat out against Sacramento and Durant narrowly won the scoring title, which is defined by the NBA as the player that leads in points per game.

To call it a scoring race between Durant and Kobe is ridiculous. Simply comparing how many points two players score doesn’t actually tell you much. In fact, that is the very essence of the Yay Points! thesis. Scoring points matters but how you score them matters too.

A point is a valuable commodity, but it is not the only stat in basketball that matters. Using points as a form of currency can we put a value on the other stats in basketball? The answer is yes and that doing so is very good at explaining winning. When we look at the cost of a shot in basketball it actually costs the team around a point. This is because a shot gives up possession of the ball and the exchange rate for possessions to points is roughly one. It is the case that a free throw attempt is worth less than half a point and this is because around half the time the free throw doesn’t result in a change of possession.

Leaving out shot attempts and free throw attempts leaves out a very important piece of information needed when evaluating players. It turns out that in terms of the scoring race that Durant is in first place, the same story can’t be told for Kobe.

Let’s do a quick breakdown. If we take the number of points a player gets, subtract the number of field goal attempts (remember a point is worth a shot) and subtract 44% of their free throw attempts we see how many NET points (pun intended) a player earns us. As a last step if we divide by games played we get the real rundown of the scoring race.

Rank Player G PPG Cost/G Total/G
1 Kevin Durant 66 28.0 -23.0 5.0
2 LeBron James 63 26.7 -22.1 4.7
3 James Harden 62 16.8 -12.8 4.1
4 Tyson Chandler 63 11.1 -7.8 3.3
5 Kevin Love 57 25.1 -22.1 3.0
6 Andrew Bynum 61 18.4 -15.5 2.9
7 Chris Paul 61 19.5 -16.8 2.7
8 Steve Nash 62 12.5 -10.0 2.5
9 Dirk Nowitzki 62 21.6 -19.2 2.4
10 Ryan Anderson 62 15.8 -13.4 2.4
… … … … … …
… … … … … …
38 Carlos Boozer 66 15.0 -13.7 1.3
39 Kobe Bryant 61 26.5 -25.2 1.3
40 Mario Chalmers 64 9.8 -8.5 1.3
41 Tony Parker 61 18.0 -16.6 1.3
42 Rodney Stuckey 58 11.2 -9.9 1.3
43 Devin Harris 64 9.1 -7.9 1.3

On a points per game basis, sure Kobe is near the top of the heap. The trick is he takes the most shots. Combine his shots and free throws and he’s spending 25.2 points a game (while earning 26.5 points a game) This is two more shots a game than Durant and three more a game than LeBron and Love (his closest competitors). Put it all together and Kobe isn’t in the same field as Durant and Bron (the real winners in the scoring race.) No, Kobe is in the same company as Chalmers, Tony Parker, Rodney Stuckey and Devin Harris. We should note Tony Parker has also been getting a lot of credit too. He is in essence a Kobe Light.

We should point out the NBA set the rules on the scoring title. Teams pay for points per game. Kobe is doing the best strategy to maximize his value. As fans we want wins and titles. Of course for most player their ability to make a big dent on their team wins is little and for any player the odds of a title are low. I might be able to criticize Kobe for not scoring effectively but that’s much like him criticizing this blog for its lack of articles on cricket. While Kobe’s scoring may make Laker fans unhappy as it doesn’t help them win, the real villain is the NBA and its management. By putting an award based just on points per game, and hosting All-Star games for top scorers and paying ludicrous salaries to the top scorers, why wouldn’t Kobe (and others) race to score inefficiently?

-Dre