Nylon Notebook: Overheard at Summer League

Just a few quick tidbits in an LVSL Nylon Notebook. As the event moves into the “championship tournament” portion of the week[1. Even though everyone is aware of how meaningless the results of the games can be, everyone in the league is competitive enough that wins and losses still matter. Early in the weekend, Denver beat Miami by 1 on a late Ian Clark three. The Nuggets players celebrated like they just won the Bourbon Bowl, while Pat Riley became visibly angry.]:

– As I noted yesterday, interest in the Hustle Stats among media, fans and even team officials has been extremely high. Possibly much higher than the league expected. With luck, the interest level will be a plus factor in the internal calculations of how much new information, whether from SportVU, Synergy or the hustle stats themselves, on NBA.com next season.From an evaluative analytics standpoint, the hustle stats probably don’t have much use on their own. However, some applications are readily identifiable. For example, if those stats can be integrated into play-by-play logs, the effects of deflections on the outcome of possessions can be tracked, as well as a much better understanding of measuring shot defense. Still a fully functional resource wasn’t really the point, as the process of experimenting with adding a new suite of metrics was the goal.

– Speaking of experiments, in the interest of improving game flow and reducing running times there appear to be “timeout clocks” running in both gyms. Placed both under the shot clocks on either end and on the scorer’s table facing the benches, the timers start when the timeout buzzer goes off and counts down, from 1:15 to zero on full timeouts, with the first horn sounding at 30 seconds, the refs breaking up the teams’ huddles around 20 seconds remaining and the ball being inbounded with about 10 seconds of the clock reaching zero.  Along with the “advance” rule tested in the D-League last season, this almost certainly an effort to make late game situations flow faster and the overall game fit more predictably into scheduled TV window

– If you heard the podcast[3. Please, subscribe on iTunes!] I did with the pseudonymous NBA analytics and gambling expert Talking Practice last week, you’ll know I think Orlando has a real chance to be pretty good this year.  I’m not the only one. Staff from multiple NBA teams think they are a genuine contender for a playoff spot in the East, and pretty much everyone thinks Aaron Gordon is going to be a monster. No one would share numbers with me of course.

– Speaking of monsters, Emmanuel Mudiay. That is all

– After both gyms were packed to the gills and beyond for the first weekend even into Monday, by today, the place is starting to resemble a ghost town. Aside from the odd “Staples East” Lakers game, but even those aren’t filling the entire Thomas & Mack like they were the first two days. As a result the gyms, especially the larger one, have been extremely cold. Who knows how if at all that is affecting the players, especially their shooting.

– Looking to individual players, no especially strong statistical takes, as Summer League numbers don’t mean a whole heck of a lot when it comes to predicting regular season play. It never hurts to have a rookie like Mudiay, Chicago’s Bobby Portis or even Toronto’s second round selection Norman Powell both put up decent stat lines, while also looking the part during game action. For second year-guys, players who got rotation minutes are almost expected to dominate. Viewed through this prism, Jordan Clarkson’s strong first few games are a sort of necessary but not sufficient indicator for his ability to contribute next season. On the flipside, Zach LaVine has put up numbers as well, but he’s done so in a way less likely to succeed in regular season play as there are only so many pull-up jump shots one can be expected to hit over an athletically overmatched defender.Another player of note for me has been Spurs signee Jonathon Simmons, whose explosiveness has been a cut above most players here, and has done so in a more NBA-translatable way than for many of the younger [1.Simmons is 25.] ‘athletic upside’ types. He hasn’t shot it particular well from the outside, going 1-5 through three games, but he did hit just under 40% last season in the NBDL and has gone 13-16 from the foul line here. In all likelihood, he’s an end of the bench guy for San Antonio, but the Spurs have probably earned the right for us to suspect he might become something more.

Couple more days left here for me, plenty more to see and do.