NBA Week 3 in Review: In the Shadow of the Warriors

With the NBA in third gear, the standings are making more sense and early frontrunners are trying to establish themselves more concretely. The western conference is a death-trap with the Spurs successfully transitioning to a new era with Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge taking over from the old guard, the Thunder rediscovering their power with a rampaging Russell Westbrook, and the Warriors looking like one of the best teams ever. On the other hand, the Clippers are struggling at integrating Lance Stephenson and the Rockets malfunctioning in several ways. The east right now is more subdued, as the Cavaliers have a solid lead even without Kyrie Irving, but a couple of other teams, like the Heat and Celtics, have given the conference more depth in the middle-upper class.

Charlotte Without the Kidd

Las Vegas as a whole was pessimistic about the Hornets going into the season, even before the Michael Kidd-Gilchrist injury. In fact, many statistical models supported the notion that the team was contingent on him. You can find snippets about how the team defended at an elite level with him on the court, and that his plus/minus was such that without him the team would surely collapse. One projection states his injury would cause the team to drop from 9th to 20th in defensive rating. But no stats are perfect and rely on systems prone to the occasional large error. That’s not to say Kidd-Gilchrist is a bad player or a mediocre defender — but I doubt he’s the kind of difference maker that a 62-55 record with him and a 14-33 record disparity without him implies. On/off numbers are notoriously unreliable, and it takes a few seasons and some intelligent adjustments to get anything useful extracted.

Thus, there’s no great surprise that Charlotte has not completely imploded without Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. The additions of Nic Batum and Jeremy Lin, among others, have vastly reshaped the team’s offense, which had been sinking in the Al Jefferson era. As I have stated ad nauseam, Batum is still young and has a long track record of shooting well on a large number of three-pointer attempts while finishing well inside and dishing up a nearly star-level volume of assists. That’s a healthy addition to any offense, and putting him in the lineup instead of the Kidd translates to a staggering improvement.

Additionally, Jeremy Lin has quietly had a great start to the season. He’s having his best season (so far) since Linsanity broke, and it’s driven by a greater role as a scorer. He’s been taking 50% more three-pointers per possession than his career average, but he’s still driving and getting to the line. However, the surprising plus/minus catalyst, now that Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is injured, is Marvin Williams, as the team is an eye-opening +19.9 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court. Single year plus/minus is wacky and unreliable, much less a mere ten games, but it could be a sign that the team is doing well because of its outside shooting and spacing. As a stretch four, he’s a vital component to that style. Another surprising development is Jeremy Lamb’s resurrection; he was sent off for a sack of potatoes and a second round pick from an organization finally willing to pay the tax. Shooting percentages can’t be trusted at this point in the season, but he’s shooting more often too, which is a great sign. Charlotte’s record isn’t snazzy right now, but they won’t be a pushover and could make a strong run at the playoffs.

The Golden State’s Warriors Are Cleansing Our Mortal Realm by Destroying Everything

As former Knicks announce Leo Tolstoy said about the NBA, good teams aren’t as interesting to write about because they’re alike; poor teams fail in their own ways. The Warriors are outscoring opponents by over 16 points per game. They’re undefeated. They won a title as one of the youngest champions in a long time. No one’s really ever had a start to the season like this. They’re hitting everything, and their superstar is reaching an exalted status. However, their win streak was nearly ended by the 1-9. hopeless Brooklyn Nets. They needed a miracle three-pointer from Iguodala to tie the game to reach overtime. Remember this next time someone overreacts to a dropped game or two from a favorite in a playoff series. NBA results are highly variable.

Blocked from Above

Through Saturday’s games, Jahlil Okafor is leading the league in an ignominious stat: own shots blocked per game. In fact, during a recent game against Oklahoma City, he was blocked six times. He had a couple of weak attempts at the rim blocked by Serge Ibaka; he just doesn’t have the necessary athleticism to jump over NBA defenders. He even got a hook shot blocked even though he slung it from his arm furthest from the defender. He drives often too, but even with a full head of steam he doesn’t get off the ground far; he got blocked by Nick Collison during a drive, for example.

Having your own shot blocked doesn’t spell doom. A number of great players, from DeMarcus Cousins to Dwight Howard and guards like Damian Lillard and James Harden, are annual leaders, but it’s a symptom of the issues Jahlil Okafor is having so far in his NBA career. He’s shooting often with poor results and doesn’t get to the free throw line often for someone who posts up and scores inside so much. If you query a list of players most similar to his season so far, using Layne Vashro’s tool, turning off age and tuning down MPG, you get a list headlined by Brook Lopez and Chris Kaman with a number of Kevin Duckworth seasons[1. Elton Brand shows up too, but that’s his 2008 season with a mere 8 games played due to an Achilles injury. The tool let that season sneak by because of his high MPG average.]. What’s distressing is that the “VAL” column notes that Okafor rates lower than his comparable players. Plus the most alarming inclusion is Eddy “Worst Case Scenario” Curry, who shows up at the top if the age factor is tuned high. So far, his combination of inefficiency, lack of foul-drawing, and high usage for a center is nearly unprecedented with one season alone from Chris Kaman and Al Jefferson clearing similar filters. Sadly, he’s a terrible rebounder too, and that’s at least something Big Al and Kaman can bring to the table.

Perhaps Okafor, and definitely the entire team, will benefit from the return of three of the team’s only actual NBA-caliber players — Kendall Marshall, Tony Wroten, and Robert Covington — but he looks like Al Jefferson without the rebounding so far, and that’s fairly disappointing. He was efficient in college, but that was against inferior, smaller players. He’s young enough to expect some progress, but he’s not athletic and he’s a poor shooter, especially from the line, so one wonders how he could improve all his weaknesses.

Super Mario Hezonja: Raccoon Suit Not Included

Mario Hezonja was one of the most intriguing rookies coming into the season, and so far the results have not been as entertaining as everyone hoped but there are a few flashes here and there. As the Croatian JR Smith, he’s already shown his outside shooting skills; here’s an example of how he can run to a corner and quickly hit a three-pointer. He’s also shown the ability to post-up a smaller player and get to the line, though it’s not entirely graceful. His ball-handling skills need work and he’s turnover-prone, throwing the ball away on ugly drives like this one, but that’s common for a rookie. Defensively, he needs work too, but again, he’s a rookie. There was a lot of excitement induced with his personality and playing style, but he has to adjust to the NBA and hone his weaknesses.

Miami Heat Rising

Sites like this one were pessimistic on Miami’s chances for this season. They have a lot of familiar names, but their reputations didn’t match their ratings. Through the first three weeks, the Heat have been great, outscoring teams by a large margin and sporting a 6-4 record. Chris Bosh bounced back from a scary season and he’s combined his three-point weapon with an increased role in the offense and better rebounding. Projection systems, however, didn’t know what to do with Hassan Whiteside, who had only played 1253 minutes before this current season and is a truly unique player with a curious background. He’s rather famously had some maturity problems, causing him to bounce around from league to league, and sports one of the lowest assists rates ever — how much do you want to bet on that? Justise Winslow, however, was generally considered to be a good draft pick, and he’s played stout defense so far for a rookie with real 3/D potential.

But there are a few cracks starting to show. Goran Dragic has not played well, and he hasn’t been the type of lead ballhandler he was in Phoenix when he was third-team all-NBA. Dwyane Wade looks like the culprit here. Using NBAWOWY.com, Dragic has a terrible 47.8 TS% with a role player-esque 15.9 usage rate when Wade shares the court; without Wade, those numbers improve to 53.2% and 27.4, respectively. Miami’s offense, consequently, has been pretty mediocre; it’s their defense, rated at second in the league oddly enough, that’s been keeping them ranked high in the conference. But alas, that probably won’t last. They don’t have all the pieces for the elite defense, and opponents are shooting 29.3% from behind the three-point line, which is not sustainable. Miami could very well make the playoffs with a winning record, health permitting, but their days of contending and pushing past 50 wins left with LeBron.

Roy Hibbert in Los Angeles

Roy Hibbert was given a bizarre task: defend the interior for a team with woeful defenders and errant ambitions. He was cast as Sisyphus, and this is the ultimate test for the translation power of rim protection. However, he’s held his own, and opponents are shooting 41.7% inside when he’s near the rim. That’s remarkable given LA’s … issues on that end of the court. Here’s an example of a play where Hibbert stuffs someone at the rim. Note that, yes, D’Angelo Russell was crowding Elfrid Payton at the three-point line; this is the same Payton who doesn’t take three’s often and can’t even shoot accurately at the line. Here’s one where the Lakers lose Ilyasova, an outside shooter, in transition, which leads to him driving inside and getting stopped by Hibbert. That play even includes him snuffing out Drummond right under the rim after an offensive rebound, which is high on the difficulty chart for defense. Hibbert is not going to win Defensive Player of the Year, but he deserves some sort of medal for defending well on such a lost team.

Three Static Years: Is Progress More Likely?

As Andre Drummond bulldozes through the league, it’s natural to wonder if we should have seen this coming. He had an electric rookie season, outshining number one pick Anthony Davis in a few respects, but his progress stalled and he failed to make any substantial improvements in three years in the league. But is it more likely a player who plateaued after a decent season rapidly improves? Or is it more likely that player continues on that same path, never improving?

To test this question, I looked at every season from 1978 to 2015[2. Turnovers weren’t recorded for players until 1978, lessening the accuracy of virtually every historic metric.] and grabbed every player with at least 1500 minutes for a targeted season and at least 1500 minutes for the three previous seasons. I also collected the player’s PER and BPM for those corresponding seasons. BPM’s the highest performing metric out there publicly for stats that go back to the 70’s; PER is a bit wonky at times but due to how it values shot volume and certain stats like blocks and rebounds, it can show progress too and in different ways. Also, BPM has a team adjustment built-in, and like a rising tide when a team gets better so does the player’s ratings; thus, it may not always track well to a player’s actual development.

The next filter was for age. Since this is about how a player improves, only players 24 years-old and younger were included. For a test against “natural” improvement, an aging curve is introduced and applied[3. Since the aging curve was developed for plus/minus data, it fits well with box score plus/minus. However. with PER the fit isn’t perfect. and PER had to be transformed by the simple equation: (PER-11)/2.]. Finally, this little study is about players with no progress for three years in a row, so only players with a BPM in a range of 1.5 or a PER of 3 are selected.

Using a set of 35 players for BPM and 59 players for PER, the results are in the table below. The mean one-year row is for just using the most recent season and an age adjustment to project a specific season, while, naturally, the three-year row uses three seasons. Note that for BPM, the higher performing metric that fits better with the age curve, the players did better in reality than projected, and it’s by a significant margin. The results for PER were not as conclusive, but I also ran the numbers for the same set of players except they did not fall in the same pattern of three years in a PER range of 2, and the ratings were slightly lower. “Stalled” players improved a little bit more.

The results were positive but not completely conclusive, but there’s something obvious: players with three seasons of static play are not as likely to be stuck in the mud again and do indeed improve as much, or greater than, average players of the same age do. For reference, here’s the list of players this season who qualify, providing they can hit a substantial number of minutes (sorry MKG):

Kyrie Irving

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist

Nikola Vucevic

Kemba Walker

John Wall

Bradley Beal

Tristan Thompson

And Andre Drummond, by the way, would have qualified if he had enough minutes during his rookie season. That might partially explain why he’s been so successful. That or being bitten by a radioactive spider.