Tristan Thompson and Separating Activity from Achievement

“Never mistake activity for achievement” — John Wooden

The human eye is drawn to movement. With 10 players on the court and only one area of focus, it can be far easier to notice players who are “doing something” than those that are just standing around. A common, though understandable, mistake is to assume that those ‘somethings’ being done are productive and helpful to a player’s team. Of course, we know that standing around, in the right spots, can be pretty valuable. “Spacing the floor” is the most common form of this “productive standing.”

Still, it’s difficult to accept that a player like Kyle Korver[1. Or even in a completely different way, DeAndre Jordan.] who seldom has the ball is doing that much. This is even more true on the defensive end, where being in the right spot is often less noticeable than running really hard to get to a spot (whether it is the proper location or not). This is a big part of why defense is so tough to evaluate. Certainly, flying around the court to recover, closing on shooters, hustling, is better than not doing those things. Even better is not needing to recover in the first place. Part of the genius of the Golden State system, wherein a number of similarly sized players can switch assignments at will, is that it allows defenders to “stay home.” Klay Thompson does not  need to sprint across the court to chase his man running a baseline exchange when he can simply point, yell or or otherwise communicate with Andre Iguodala to switch the play, as they are both already in position.

Not knowing exactly what the Warriors are trying to do makes grading individuals on their execution fraught with difficulty. Without a detailed understanding of assignments, who committed an error when a player springs open, and what kind of error was it? Lack of communication? Slow reaction? Simply a misdiagnosis of the offensive action? Far easier, though is to see players moving quickly. Straining, visibly efforting to get somewhere. All that effort might not accomplish much — one of the benefits of SportVU optical tracking over more subjective forms of charting is that objectivity. It’s all too easy to see a defender working hard to get a “late closeout” out a shooter and attribute the miss on what was really an “NBA open” shot to that effort. More likely, the two things were coincidental, but post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that.

This is all a roundabout way of getting to Tristan Thompson. It was reported Wednesday that he and the Cavaliers had agreed on a five year, $82 million contract. Balancing the “is he worth all that? Of course not[1. I don’t really love the air of certitude which surrounds predictions and projections based on 538’s CARMELO, but I think Nate Silver and co. are quite aware of the necessary imperfections of their models and sometimes in a short blog post it’s just not practicable to ‘but also’ the thing to death.]” with a recognition of the market dynamics in Thompson’s favor[2. The opportunity cost for Cleveland if their goal is championships is basically nil and/or the hit to owner Dan Gilbert’s wallet, as their title window ends when LeBron’s decline starts in earnest. They have no ready replacement, and don’t really want to be in the situation of relying on Anderson Varejao as their only big with any real defensive versatility. The expected $90 million salary cap next summer and dearth of other options makes allowing Thompson to reach unrestricted free agency through a one-year qualifying offer a dicey gamble. And oh yeah, that whole ‘represented by LeBron’s agent’ thing probably matters some too.] can lead one to all sorts of conclusions as to whether this a “good” or “fair deal.”

But leaving the contractual niceties aside, how good is Thompson? What does he bring to the table?

It’s almost cliche at this point to say that effort is a skill. Nor is Thompson the only player in the league for whom effort and hard work is their best attribute. Players such as Kenneth Faried, Patrick Beverley and yes Thompson’s teammate Matthew Dellavedova owe their spots largely to their ability to, in coachspeak, get after it. And there is value to be had there. Delly and to a degree Beverley have a large part of their value tied up in just being annoying to opponents[3. Beverley’s shooting and ability to play more consistent/less fouly defense is a real edge he has on Dellavedova.]. Faried is justifiably famous for his motor, but the more he tries to expand into other areas and become a more traditional “star who does fun things with the ball in his hands,” the farther he moves from his areas of expertise.

At this point, the charge of “trying to be more than he is” is not one that can be leveled at Thompson. At least with scorers like LeBron, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in the fold, he doesn’t appear to have any illusions of becoming a post up threat or a featured mid-post isolation player. His job is to set screens, crash the paint and play defense. How well he does those things is the measure of his value. Last season at least, Thompson was excellent as a finisher in the pick-and-roll, third among players with at least 100 plays finished. So that’s great! Except how much of that is due to Thompson himself, how much is the attention drawn by James and company[5. Not to mention that the way Synergy classifies plays means the dozens of doomed lobs attempted by Delly to Thompson don’t count as plays used by Thompson!] is unclear. Both Mozgov and Varejao were excellent roll men by the numbers last year as well, suggesting that efficiency might not much attributable to Thompson himself.

As discussed above, grading defense is always difficult. But Thompson is a mediocre rim protector at best. Lineups with Thompson at center allowed 110 points per 100 possessions even looking at the “post-LeBattical” portion of the season when the Cavaliers were playing well. He appears to have the ability to switch out onto guards, but sample sizes on those situations are so small, that it’s premature to say if any one player is particularly good or bad in that spot, at least with the data available publicly[5. Insert usual warning to avoid taking individual “shot defended” metrics on jumpers too much to heart. The make or miss on a jump shot is something we REALLY don’t understand all that well yet, analytically speaking.].

One area where he unquestionably excels in offensive rebounding. According to our detailed rebounding stats, Thompson was fifth in offensive rebound Chase% and seventh in offensive rebounding rate on missed field goals. Especially as the playoffs wore on and the Cavs roster wore down in terms of offensive talent, the ability to track and corral misses gained increasing value. That’s the effort side. The achievement wasn’t quite so rosy. As is perhaps hinted by the fact that his ranking in rebounding rate is lower than his Chase%, he wasn’t always the most effective at winning rebounding battles. In fact among bigs with a minimum Chase% of 10 percent, Thompson was 65th in the league, emerging with the ball in 44 percent of those scrums.

An even bigger worry is what happened if he did secure the rebound.  Among players with 80 or more “putback” possessions only Zaza Pachulia was less effective in putting the ball back in the hoop. Of course, even if .82 points per putback is well below league average[1. It is — the NBA as a whole averaged 1.07 points per putback.], it’s still worth .82 points more than a defensive rebound. That said, the point remains that for all the visual flair of the chase and battle for that rebound, in Thompson’s case, the reward isn’t quite what is expected. Which aligns with the general analytic view of Thompson — a good solid player who isn’t quite as good as one might think on first pass.

However, as those commercials might say, the missing piece in bringing a Championship to Cleveland[9. A real possibility!]? Priceless.