NBA Week in Review 12: Halfway Home

We have just reached the halfway mark for the NBA regular season. It’s been a season of extremes and one firmly entrenched in the “skillball” era where big men hoist up three pointers like they’re all Rasheed Wallace and wild lineups completely without a center or power forward are more than novelties. It’s been a season led by a younger generation of stars as we say goodbye to a few legends. It’s been a season of peace and positive growth, as Adam Silver reigns over sport that has been mostly unblemished since Donald Sterling was ejected via catapult from the league. But narrowing our focus a little, let’s look back at the past week and make sense of the NBA before another season ends.

Whiteside’s Wall

In a game last week, Hassan Whiteside had a preposterous triple double with 11 blocks[1. The most unbelievable part of the game was his two assists, however, as it was only the second game like that of his career and he’s had more games with double digit blocks.]. Last season was no outlier, and he’s putting together one of the most impressive shot-blocking seasons ever. Thanks to his 7′ 7″ wingspan and his quick jumping, his coverage is enormous and it’s tough for any player to shoot over him when nearby.

For a demonstration of his prowess, I’ve selected one block he had during that game where he was in the paint while a pass was thrown to an unsuspecting Nikola Jokic, who thought he had an open jumper. You can see the video here, but I’ve also grabbed the raw SportVU data and graphed the block below with data for the ball itself. What you see is a sideview: Jokic goes up with the ball, shoots toward the basket, and Whiteside swats it out of bounds. Visually, it’s easy to see exactly where the shot was blocked because the trajectory changes, and it’s the same of Jokic’s release point too[2. Newton’s first law: an object in motion stays in motion. Gravity is pulling the ball downwards, but this is predictable. Balls fly in smooth arcs. A “kink” in a ball’s motion is indicative of a deflection, block, etc.]. Whiteside blocks the jumper over two feet away and at an apex of 11 feet and roughly 3 inches or higher from the court[3. I’m given data points so I don’t have the height of the ball continuously, but one datum does appear to be right about where the block occurred.]. You can understand why he’s blocking shots at such a high rate — you can shoot when you think you have an opening but his reach is such that he can catch up to the ball quickly and knock it down high in its flight.

Additionally, I thought I’d try the same type of graphical analysis on what I thought was a borderline block at best. Early fourth quarter, Emmanuel Mudiay spun around for a tough jumper over Whiteside’s outstretched arm that fell short of the rim, and Whiteside was credited for the block. I could only find one angle of the play, but was this just a generous scorekeeper? Did he actually block it? Going through the raw data, unfortunately there is no clear answer. The ball did not noticeably change its path or velocity, but the data’s not accurate enough to detect a slight grazing or a tip. You can see the imprecision below. The ball’s path is wobbly, technically speaking, but in my experience with ball height that is not meaningful. You can detect most blocks with SportVU data like this, but the subtle actions require a human eye or better data.

Tactics Talk: Kevin Love at Center

There’s a lot of hand-wringing over Love’s defense for Cleveland against Golden State, as if one game decisively proves anything. But the NBA is all about how you control the match-ups and take advantage of your talent. Normally, Love’s problems defensively are outweighed heavily by his skills on offense and rebounding. If he’s not hitting his shots or getting to the line, his value is diminished considerably. Also, Cleveland needs to experiment with him at center for specific match-ups. Their rebounding will be fine, and their offense should be difficult to handle: an Irving-Love or LeBron-Love high pick-and-roll means there’s no defender inside and few consistent ways to cover everyone[4. Obviously, their defense will be worse in that alignment, but the whole point is the net gain and the offense should be good enough to cover those issues.]. Versus Golden State, for example, they could be the aggressor and start Kevin Love at center versus Bogut, matching-up with a guy he can keep up with and someone you can leave open up high. By the way, Draymond Green’s athletic advantage is overstated; the team as a whole needs to do a better job communicating and covering the gaps when Curry has the ball.

Ranking Players: How-To

ESPN has been feverishly ranking NBA players historically by position, and a few of their writers have used an argument that restlessly annoys me: if a player wins another title, then he can move up in the rankings. That’s it — notice there’s no distinction made of contributions to the team. I understand the league is narrative driven and there’s incentive to give extra weight to a title, but that’s a team award and we should be smart enough now, armed with enough information, that we don’t have to resort to such arguments. This doesn’t even have to be about advanced stats or anything divisive. It’s simple logic. Players shouldn’t be ranked by how good their teammates are[2. Ed note: Counterpoint: especially at the very top end, where tiny gradients separate the very best players, using some degree of team accomplishment as a sort of tie-breaker isn’t unreasonable on its face. We know the stats we are working with, especially the deeper we go into history, are imperfect in terms of measuring individual accomplishment outside of the box score. In a league where returns are so heavy to top end talent, using team success as a proxy for some of those ‘lesstangible’ effects, again, as a tie-breaker, is justifiable – SP].

76ers Destroy the Blazers and Other Signs of the Apocalypse

For Philadelphia’s fifth win of the season, they defeated Portland by an astonishing 25 points — Portland was healthy too, so there are no excuses. The 76ers have played better recently, as they’re 4-7 since Christmas. Some of the improvement is internal, and some is due to the presence of Ish “the Illusionist” Smith, Philly’s Christmas gift. He’s one of the league leaders in drives per game with a high pass rate. On a team lacking in shot creation, his penetration is quite valuable. Additionally, Nerlens Noel has seemed springier to my eyes, and he finished the game with four steals and four blocks — that’s the kind of stat-line we’d love to see from him.

The key to the Portland game, however, was probably the excellent play from Jahlil Okafor with 25 points in less than 30 minutes on 12/16 shooting. There were a few strong post moves, of course, like this spin to scoop shot. He even showed off near three-point range with this basket he made with his foot just on the line. But he also made a few crazy shots away from the rim he normally doesn’t hit reliably, like this turnaround jump shot from 17 feet — that’s the kind of shot you accidentally take in NBA 2K. I’d say that after watching video of all his field goals that his performance was definitely unsustainable. But the 76ers won’t be historically awful going forward; they’ll just be lottery-winning awful.

VORP King

Last week, LeBron James passed Michael Jordan in basketball-reference’s career VORP. For most basketball fans, this is alphabet soup poppycock. But it’s a good box score metric where it accrues some proxy of career value, and it does mean something that LeBron is now king of that particular hill. NBA legends have been built on edifices of stats before (see: Chamberlain, Wilt) and being the career leader in VORP means you have some gargantuan accumulation of a large variety of box score stats. But people are still wary of listing him high in all-time rankings. Yet we’ve already (likely) seen his best seasons and we shouldn’t need to see several inferior seasons in his 30’s to rank him among the best. He’s had four MVPs and a solid decade of being a contender[5. He’s had an MVP vote every year since 2004, he’s been in the top six since 2005 and in the top three since 2009.]. — that’s an outstanding career. Other revered players like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird have had shortened careers and people don’t mind ranking them high. LeBron’s got a strong argument as one of the best players ever and solidly top 3 or 4, and he’s had that argument for a little longer than people would care to admit.

Has DeAndre’s Defense Finally Arrived?

For years, proponents of advanced stats have been derisive at any attempt to label DeAndre Jordan a great defender. He’s huge and athletic, gobbling up rebounds and swatting shots at prodigious rates. But for years his impact on the court has been unnoticed where the Clippers have been about the same or better when he sits on the bench. Consequently, seeing Jordan near the top of the defensive RPM leaderboard as we hit the halfway point of the season — he’s behind Tim Duncan and ahead of Draymond Green, Andrew Bogut, Kawhi Lenoard, and others by a fair distance — is jarring. Jordan also missed games for the first time in years, which means we actually have better data now for rating his impact on and off the court.

Last season, Tom Haberstroh laid out a sane and thorough deconstruction of DeAndre’s Defensive Player of the Year campaign as a counter to Doc Rivers’ public declarations that his center was the second coming of Bill Russell and that if he didn’t win the award, an investigation would surely be required. That makes his ranking a bit more troubling — was Doc a year ahead in his proclamation? Were we missing something? Some accounts outline his influence on the court, but words are wisps of smoke and news articles from local publications boost players instead of digging for the truth.

Going through video and checking in on his rim protection stats, which are good but not excellent, I don’t think he’s made a substantial improvement, and one-year RAPM actually doesn’t rate him highly on defense. But ESPN’s RPM is partially reliant on box score and related countable stats, like blocks and rebounds, where Jordan looks like an all-defense ace. Armed with more data, his ranking in RPM, which only uses one season of data, is overrating his defense — and that’s nothing new, unfortunately.

All-star Votes

I’m providing my votes for the All-Star starters for a specific reason. While the exhibition may seem meaningless and since it’s “for the fans” people can just vote for whoever they want just because, historically all-star selections have been used as a barometer for NBA greatness and for important things, like Hall of Fame voting or contract negotiations. People will use Kobe’s soon-to-be 18 selections, just one less than Kareem’s record 19, as evidence in many all-time player discussions, forgetting the context of some of those selections like when he made it in 2014 after playing only six games or in 1998 as a teenager coming off the bench playing a mere 26 minutes a night. Conversely, an unwarranted selection means one player, often a fringe star having one of his best seasons, will be left home. There’s a chance it’ll keep a couple guys from their first all-star game, like DeAndre Jordan and Gordon Hayward, or it could cost someone a lot of money. Unless Anthony Davis, for example, makes an all-NBA team, not making the all-star starting lineup will cost him over 20 million dollars.

I understand that the All-Star Game, and the starting lineups themselves, don’t directly matter, but we pretend they do, and that’s all that matters. And with that, here’s my attempt at building starting lineups with the best representatives of the game at its highest level. These should look like formidable Dream Team’s that could compete with anyone.

Western Conference

G, Stephen Curry: I don’t have to explain this one, so I’ll just conclude this entry with this fact: he’s on pace to hit 373 three-pointers for a single season. What?

G, Russell Westbrook: Now that Westbrook can’t be designated inefficient anymore, his detractors have little ground to stand on. Specifically, his shooting percentage has increased dramatically in that awkward 3 foot to 10 feet range. Some of his stats are overstated, as he doesn’t help his team on the boards as much as people think and he’s often a poor defender, but he’s such a force of nature with the ball in his hands that Oklahoma City is definitely at their best when he’s on the court (we’ve had years of evidence of that too) and he’s an easy pick here.

F, Kawhi Leonard: Kawhi is the frontrunner for the Defensive Player of the Year award, again, and he’s worked hard to become a very good offensive player too. He has few weaknesses, and while his 48 3PT% is unsustainable he’s definitely a good shooter now. His superpower is his ability to collect a large number of steals without gambling, which is a huge defensive boon. Here’s an example of a game from last week where Chandler Parsons gets caught in the corner isolated against Leonard and has the audacity to dribble; he loses the ball immediately. Earlier in the game, Dwight Powell merely dribbled in the vicinity of Leonard, and Leonard swiped the ball away easily. Kawhi is the league’s premier wing defender and deserves a starting nod in the all-star game.

F, Kevin Durant: Despite a few missed games and some shot-creating duties given to Westbrook, Durant is largely back to his hyper-efficient, scoring phenom ways. Were it not for Curry hogging the spotlight, we’d be more impressed by his shooting percentages. Unless he suffers another devastating injury, it’ll look weird in the future if he doesn’t start. This guy’s a former, legitimate MVP, and he’s still young.

F, Draymond Green: It wasn’t long ago Green was buried on the bench behind David Lee and wasn’t considered a part of the team’s future or present. Now he’s someone that people are insisting should start, much less just play, in the All-Star Game. Being a key member of a team on pace to break the single season win record probably helps. I just wonder how he’d be perceived on an average team, providing his performance was the same. By the way, if you want a telling statistic on his versatile defense and how well he does at center, via NBAWOWY when he’s on the court and no other big men are, opposing teams are shooting 57.3% at the rim, which is actually lower than the percentage the team normally allows, and they’re defending well overall. He can handle playing center, which supercharges their offense and should make for an entertaining ASG.

Eastern Conference

G, Kyle Lowry: Lowry should be an obvious selection here. He checks off multiple boxes: he’s a good scorer, he’s efficient, he’s a shot creator for himself and others, and he’s a plus defender. He’s even the lead player on a good team — one that’s likely the second best in the conference.

G, Jimmy Butler: The only tough choices I had were in the east, and one was the last spot for guard. DeMar DeRozan was considered by many people, and while he’s made progress on scoring effectively and passing I don’t think he has the impact of other guards, and most advanced stats corroborate that thought. John Wall is a respectable choice here, but I think Butler’s scoring has been substantially better and it’s enough to close the gap. You can see a comparison using basic stats here. Also, I did not consider Kyrie Irving due to his long stretch of missed games.

F, LeBron James: Even in his diminished state, LeBron is a pretty easy pick for an all-star game. As I outlined in the VORP King section, his staying power has been tremendous. Kyrie Irving’s been out for a while, Mozgov has been off, and Kevin Love’s shooting has been wayward for a while, but Cleveland is still on top of the east thanks to his efforts.

F, Paul George: After heavy consideration, I chose Paul George over other players like Carmelo Anthony for his all-around play. He’s not quite the defensive force he was a couple years ago, but he’s an excellent scorer who’s been shooting well from outside at a high volume. Indiana’s been a lot better than expected this season, and it’s largely because he’s rebounded after that infamous broken leg.

F, Paul Millsap: One reason Paul Millsap is continuously under-the-radar is that he doesn’t have a defining skill. Andre Drummond has the rebounds, Whiteside has the blocks, DeMarcus Cousins has his drives to the basket, and Lord Duncan can visit other spacetime dimensions. Millsap has one of the highest steal rates for a frontcourt player, but he’s becoming more of a three-point shooter and it makes him a dangerous weapon because he’s a plus defensive player too. Referring to these attempts, you can see how he’s often a trailer during a fast break, but in the third video Jeff Teague drives while Millsap steps outside the arc: the defender is pulled away, but he still tries to help inside and it leads to an open shot. And thus, the power of the outside shooting big man. It’d be elegant if Millsap matched-up against Draymond in the all-star game.

The starters will be announced soon, and they won’t match-up with my choices here. I just hope the coach’s selections don’t have any weird choices because while we pretend the game doesn’t matter, it has a real impact and we should take it seriously.