2015-16 NBA Preview: Washington Wizards

WASHINGTON WIZARDS

Aside from the Cavaliers, the Eastern Conference remains thoroughly working class, ranging from teams struggling to get by to solid teams like the Wizards who have little realistic chance at a title but inspire confidence anyway. For all the hand-wringing about the age of their frontcourt and all the midrange jumpers, John Wall has entrenched himself among the league’s best players solid or better defense and some of the best straight-line speed in the game, which he uses to attack the basket or zip passes to open shooters. For most mediocre teams fighting to keep their heads above the water and a 0.500 win percentage, having a primary star and playmaker is the toughest piece to acquire, and at least Washington has that in place.

2015 in review:

Washington has long been a vexing team, perceived as one incarnation but playing like another. John Wall has been their headliner for a while, and Bradley Beal, despite his performance, is usually the second guy mentioned. Thus, they’re seen as an offensive club headed by Wall, but they’ve been a defensive-first team for a long time. Even with an old Paul Pierce, they refused to play smallball lineups … until the playoffs started. For a second year in a row, the Wizards played possum for a few months before devastating an opponent in a first round upset. Coach Randy Wittman either knows a lot more or a lot less about this than we do – he’s playing a long con or he’s luckily stumbled into something that worked.

Rotation players in: Jared Dudley, Alan Anderson, Ramon Sessions.

Rotation players out: Paul Pierce, Rasual Butler, Kevin Seraphin.

The Wizards remain mainly intact with the exception of a swap of Jared Dudley for Pierce. Given Pierce’s age, it’s a smart move; but the team played well with him on the court and his all-around game will be missed. If Dudley is healthy, however, he can provide some of the same qualities, like smart defense and outside shooting. Rasual Butler had an unusually great touch for the first part of the season, hitting 43% of his 3PT shots before the all-star break and 55% in November alone. Alan Anderson is a similar role player – he’ll shoot from outside and won’t do much else. For most of John Wall’s career, his backups haven’t been exceptional outside of Andre Miller, and Ramon Sessions will continue that fine tradition. Lastly, Kevin Seraphin is probably best on another team anyway, as the Wizards will use smaller lineups more often.

2016 Projected

Washington has a similar set of players, but the pattern could be different this season: they’ll be embracing the now popular four-out lineups with a center in the middle. This means more space for Marcin Gortat and, presumably, Nene if he is used more as a backup center than at his customary power forward position. It’s tough to say how much better this will make Washington because they’ve played so well with Nene on the court historically. Despite all the articles and discussion about smallball, the league is still huge, and average listed heights and weights haven’t significantly declined, well, ever. For all the love of outside shooting, you usually lose a lot of defensive and rebounding force when you downsize.

Nevertheless, for the Wizards many iterations of their four-out lineups have worked. Per NBAWOWY, over the last two seasons when Gortat is on the floor with four wing players or a big who can shoot, like Gooden, the team scored at an excellent 111.3 offensive rating and held opponents to a 103.3 rating. Unfortunately, when Nene acted as the center the offensive rating dropped for a paltry 102.1 rating with a similar defense. Some of this is noise, but it’s a concern too. But at least the team knows its defense can hold together without two huge players in the middle. It’s just that Nene seems to be more effective when Gortat is at center: the team’s defensive rating was an elite 98.7 with both on the court, and the offense was okay too.

As Nene ages and becomes an out of place burly power forward who doesn’t block shots (i.e. “protect the rim”), people will lose sight of his talents. He’s still a valuable piece when healthy, but he doesn’t have a distinctive stat people can latch onto to recognize his talent. His teams defend well when he’s on the court, which is a pattern that’s remained consistent for years over multiple teams, and he’s definitely a good defender.

Dudley will inherit Pierce’s role on the team last season, but until he fully recovers Otto Porter Jr. has been used as the nominal power forward and he’s been killing it in preseason. As a high lottery pick in 2013, he suffered a hip injury, missed valuable seasoning, and endured a tough rookie season. People immediately labeled him a bust, saying there’s no track record of a player that bad recovering. But he was 19 years old and came off an injury, and there’s no track record partially because for most of the NBA’s history 19 years-old were virtually nonexistent. He’s probably not going to be a star, but he can provide the team with decent production and develop with their other two young perimeter guys, Wall and Beal.

Dudley, by the way, is the reason I used three seasons of data for the initial win predictions, and I should probably use more. Coach/GM Doc Rivers paid someone else to take him, even though Doc made him play through an injury and he was still in his 20’s. It’s better to have stabilized ratings and stats that go beyond one simple season[6. This can apply to Porter as well because you can blend in his college projection with his NBA stats and get a better sense of how he’ll do going forward. More information, when applied intelligently, is generally better.]

Bradley Beal, meanwhile, is behind the curve of his development because of his shot selection and slow growth on ball-handling. It’s a team-wide problem, but Beal relies on long two-pointers far too much, especially pull-up shots on plays with significant time remaining on the shot clock. There’s more to the game than efficiency, sure, but he’s not Chris Paul or Steph Curry nor is he Nowitzki-esque player who commands even at the elbow area’s. He’s giving away possessions by taking two-pointers with a conversion rate in the mid-30’s in shooting percentage. He’s an excellent three-point shooter, and in the playoffs he displayed an aggression at going to the rim more often and picking up free throws. He’s a good shooter, so he shouldn’t have a below average TS%. Pre-season promises are like New Year’s resolutions, but he’s apparently stated he’s going to take fewer long two-pointers. Funnily enough, Randy Wittman noted the problem too, but he doesn’t think the pull-up midrange shots are the issue, just the catch-and-shoot’s, and doesn’t want to cut back on those.

If one goes line-by-line through their roster, it’s strange Washington takes so few three-pointers. They were 28^th in the league last season in the percentage of their field goals taken that were from behind the arc. That reliance on pull-up two’s in pick and rolls and other plays is an issue, especially because Wall and Beal are not as effective in that respect as are Paul[1. A surprisingly apt stylistic comparison for Wall.] and J.J. Redick for the Clippers. Given Wall’s knack for kickout passes and his speed, Gortat’s ability to screen, and the collection of outside shooters they have, from Beal to Anderson to Drew Gooden to even Martell Webster should he ever be healthy enough to play, Washington could reasonably be an above average three-point shooting team, and that could transform their usually disappointing offense. It’s easy to theorize without putting it into practice, but in the playoffs 27.6% of their field goals were 3PTers, which is a huge jump over the 20.3% in the regular season. Plus they made a little over 40% of them.

Since John Wall is synonymous with the Wizards now, it’s easy to forget this isn’t exactly a young team. Gortat, arguably their second best player, is in his early 30’s, and Nene is a year older. Dudley is nearing 30. Most of their role players are older too. Beal and Porter are really the only two young pups on the team, so internal improvement just from age isn’t likely in their favor unless Gortat ages well and one of their young guys has a breakout season. Klay Thompson, for instance, had basically no progress at all for the first few years until last season – Beal could take a similar leap forward, and it’s what Washington needs if they want to advance in the playoffs again.

Quick statistic/graph

John Wall is one of the most underrated passers in the game. Due to his athleticism, people focus on other aspects of his game and don’t consider his finesse skills. He’s now a regular at the top of the assist leaderboard, and it’s tough to argue his assists are “inflated” in any way. For example, with SportVU tracking technology, there are a number of ways to analyze passing, and John Wall usually comes out looking good. He led the NBA last season in free throw assists, which is definitely a valuable assist subset. For one, it means you’re tacking on a foul on the other team, and secondly free throw assists usually occur near the basket, which is where passes are the most valuable.

Table: SportVU free throw assists (source: stats.nba.com)

Summary

The future is tough to predict in the NBA because human actions aren’t consistent. If Washington finds a way to remake their offense around three-pointers and playing to the strength of their personnel, and their defense remains stout, they could conceivably win 50 games. But you don’t want to bet on pre-season promises and exuberance. Habits are hard to break, and right now they’re taking too many long two-pointers at the expense of a shot two to four steps away that’s worth 50% more. Plus, with the age of Gortat and Nene, who’s always had injury problems, and their pledge to use smallball lineups more often, their defense could shatter even as their offense improves. Of course, this could all be trivial once the playoffs start and Wittman engineers a clever plan to chop down the giants with a few hidden lineups.

PBP-Metric[1. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 40.3

PT-PM: 43

Nick‘s[2. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 42

Nathan Walker: 46