NBA Week in Review 15: Change Places

Every season near the trade deadline there’s a flurry of activity — sometimes small and sometimes momentous — and much of this amounts to teams making trades and firing coaches because they’re struggling and they have to do something. I’m not sure how cognizant they are that these changes are often in vain; maybe they’re just going through the motions. Regardless, some teams do need adjustments or outright transformations, and trade season leads to some fun experiments for NBA diehards. We’ll get to see interesting players in new environments — that doesn’t excuse a few bizarre moves and dumb firings, but it’s a silver lining.

Derek Fisher’s Last Week in New York

Derek Fisher was recently fired as the head coach of the Knicks after only a season-and-a-half on the job. Notably, he was Phil Jackson’s own hire, and he’s being dismissed mid-season — which isn’t a good sign. Ideally, you want your players to have a real pre-season with a coach; you don’t want to learn these things and new systems on the fly. However, the Knicks weren’t actually underachieving, as Ian Levy noted — they don’t have the kind of firepower needed to make a serious run at the playoffs. The problem here is timing, really, because they started the season so well and have struggled as of late. If they had started poorly and then started winning like they did the the first third of the season, Fisher might have looked better — it’s a perception problem.

Unfortunately, there are some unseen factors here at play behind closed doors and with Derek Fisher leading the team. Phil Jackson tweeted a small essay on his coaching philosophy and why he fired Fisher. While I could imagine that was a smokescreen or a Jedi mind trick, it’s possible he was just trying to explain Fisher didn’t fit their culture and didn’t connect with the players or staff, thus negatively affecting their ability to “play in concert” together. But whatever psychologist you want to reference or framework you want to use, talent is the most important component and it seems like the Knicks struck gold with Kristaps Porzingis. They just can’t convince themselves they’re an above average team, no matter who the coach is.

Change Your Face: Rubio’s Reputation

Ricky Rubio has never been selected to an all-defense team, but he’s deserving — when healthy, at least. I don’t think that many mainstream analysts see him as a defensive presence, partly because he’s not an athletic force and partly because he still looks like a kid; that’s not imposing or intimidating. But his teams have consistently played better on that end of the court with him playing. He’s first in ESPN’s defensive real-plus minus for point guards by a comfortable distance, for instance. How is he so good? He’s truly one of the best at creating turnovers, and this season he’s creating roughly 3.5 turnovers per 36 minutes (steals + offensive fouls drawn.) That’s actually the second best rate I’ve tracked since offensive foul data has been available — he’s right behind one of his other seasons. Minnesota has little respect as a defensive team, but they fall apart without Rubio and he has a good argument for All-Defense recognition this season.

The Return of the Kidd

After Michael Kidd-Gilchrist’s shoulder surgery, he wasn’t expected to return to the court for six months, which would have been somewhere in April, but he actually returned at the end of January. He’s been pretty good too, playing a starter’s minutes and scoring 19 points in his second game. But Charlotte wanted him back for his defense, as he’s already one of the best wing defenders in the league. With Kemba Walker’s torn meniscus, they’ll need him if they want to stay in the playoff race.

For instance, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist had the tough task of covering LeBron James, and he did pretty well. Here’s a play where LeBron tries to post him up and takes a tough fadeaway jumper, which Gilchrist closely contests. Similarly, he switches onto Kevin Love here and fights to keep him far from the basket, forcing a tough miss with a hand directly in his face. He looks good on defense too, scoring here on an athletic drive to the basket. His injured shoulder was his right one, by the way, but he also finished with his right hand and looks pretty healthy.

Alas, I jumped the gun here as he has already re-injured his shoulder. Given how quickly he came back, this is not shocking, and one naturally wonders the role of the playoff chase in bringing him back so early. We don’t know yet how serious this re-injury is, but it’s a shame — he’s such a great young defender and the Hornets would look really interesting with him. Let’s hope he’s suffered no major damage.

Burn the Ashes

The Suns have won two games since December 20th, so it’s no surprise they fired Jeff Hornacek; they gotta blame someone. But it’s fascinating how much the team has fallen apart and how good they were recently. As Kevin Pelton argued, they experienced success too quickly and it distorted their long-term planning. This wasn’t really Hornacek’s fault and I don’t believe he’s a poor coach. The locker room probably became toxic, but Markieff Morris and a stretch of lost games are the likely causes there, not Hornacek’s incompetence. Maybe this is the beginning of a complete tear-down project, leaving only Eric Bledsoe, Alex Len, Devin Booker, and the mascot. But it’s just another example of a coach being used as a lightning rod for a front office’s frustration, and I really doubt that with all their issues this season another coach could have fixed the team for a shot at above 0.500 basketball.

From Pacer to Clipper

Lance Stephenson has had a terrible experience since leaving the confines of the basketball heartland, Indiana, but he’s played well lately and the Clippers need that because of Griffin’s injury. During his last six games he’s had a true-shooting percentage of 75.9% with a few assists, rebounds, and steals too — he’s not up to his level established with the Pacers, and I don’t expect that efficiency to last, but that’s a useful bench player.

Lance’s play peaked down the stretch versus Orlando, as he was instrumental in helping them win. But what stood out to me was a single play because it was high-effort and prototypical Stephenson: he runs up for a pull-up jumper, misses it, crashes the offensive glass, tips it, eventually controls it, falls to the ground, and dishes out an assist while horizontal inches from hitting the deck. He was a high-risk signing, but they might get something useful out of him this season — and they’ll need to because Austin Rivers is out for a few weeks.

No Look, No Credit

Official stats are seen as immutable and from the word-of-God, but many stats are subjective and there’s little consistency. Assists are a popular example of this because there’s no set rule on how many dribbles are allowed or how far players can go after the pass — it’s up to interpretation. Usually you see scorekeepers who are too liberal with the definition of an assist, giving credit to a pass where the receiver fakes a shot, drives inside, takes a few dribbles, and then scores. But Isaiah Thomas recently made a nifty pass and did not pick up the assist even though it directly led to a made basket from Jared Sullinger. You can see the play here. It’s a behind-the-back, nearly blind pass in between two defenders. That’s a high value pass, but it didn’t count as an assist — stats aren’t perfect, even the traditional ones.

The Future with Towns

Karl-Anthony Towns has had a sensational two-week stretch of the basketball[1. Those advanced stats are nutty. A usage rate of 25 with a Curry-esque 68 TS% is some high-caliber scoring, and his rebounding stats were far past the elite rate of 20% with a decent number of assists too. That’s a good two weeks for any NBA player … ever.], and I’m doing my best not to discuss him with every opportunity I have. But let’s not take his rookie season for granted because by any decent measure it’s one of the very best rookie seasons in the one-and-done/high school draft pick era along with Tim Duncan and Chris Paul.. Comparing rookies across eras is tricky since many rookies from decades past had three or four years of college before the NBA, and Towns is doing this as a teenager.

What’s unique about Karl-Anthony Towns is that he’s scoring well and often as a big man, which hasn’t happened recently. How this portends is an interesting question because of his skill-set, his age, and league-wide trends. But he looks like a franchise cornerstone, and I think he’s already better than Andrew Wiggins — and I wonder how common that opinion is. What’s funny, however, is that Nikola Jokic has an argument for the better player, and Kristaps Porzingis is doing well too. It wasn’t too long ago that the point guard position was near dead in the NBA, and now it’s ridiculously deep. Perhaps the center position will become stacked too; these things move in waves.

Simpson’s Paradox

There’s a mythic discussion of NBA legends and their playoff performances. In ranking and sorting players, every single digit matters — who scored the most per game? Whose rebounds skyrocketed and whose efficiency dropped? If a player’s stats drop his perceived norm in the regular season to the playoffs, does this mean said player has difficulties in pressure situations? Those questions are sticky and they’re hard to dodge if people ever want to have a serious conversation about who the best players are and how we should expect specific stars today should perform in the post-season.

There’s an issue in comparing career stats to playoff stats that some people gloss over, and it’s well documented problem: Simpson’s paradox. One well-known example concerns the batting averages of Derek Jeter and David Justice. From 1995 to 1997, Jeter had an average of 0.300, besting Justice’s 0.298. However, Justice’s average was higher in every season separately. How can that happen?

Batting averages: Simpson’s paradox

The answer is simple: it’s about when players had their at-bats. Jeter had very few at-bats when both players had low averages in 1995, while Justice did not. When multi-season averages are calculated, it’s not an average of season averages; it’s an average calculated by using the summed totals for hits and at-bats. There’s a similar problem in playoff stats. A player’s playoff averages are based on when he actually got to the playoffs and how far. Thus, if player missed the playoffs or only got to the first round in his prime, and then went deep into the playoffs at the end of his career, his playoff stats will be skewed toward his older and worse years.

For a concrete example, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a legend, but he doesn’t have a sterling playoff reputation like, say, Michael Jordan. A person may turn to some stats to validate this claim and note that Kareem’s career PER was 1.6 points lower in the post-season than the regular season. PER isn’t adjusted for playoff strength of schedule, but when you use a metric that can do that, like BPM, the negative difference is still there: an average of 5.8 to 5.4 in the playoffs[2. BPM is only available for 1974 and on, but that covers most of his career.]. Is he a poor performer?

However, when you calculate the difference season-by-season and weigh it by playoff minutes, Kareem’s BPM is actually higher in the playoffs than the regular season by 0.75 points[3. Weighing everything by minutes played for a season is the same procedure basketball-reference uses to calculate career averages for BPM and related metrics.]. During his prime, Kareem missed the playoffs twice and had a few short appearances after Oscar Robertson retired and before Magic Johnson paired with him. He played heavy minutes when he was 40 years-old, for instance, when the Lakers won a title. This skews his career playoff numbers because they’re over-represented with his older seasons.

Comparing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the other players in the top 40 playoff minutes played list, he is indeed above average and has a higher BPM difference than notable clutch performers like Dirk Nowitzki, Chauncey Billups, Larry Bird, James Worthy, and Dennis Johnson. In the table below you can see the playoff versus regular season BPM numbers for said players, as well as a PER difference — note that PER isn’t strength of schedule adjusted, but it is available for seasons going back to the 50’s.

Table: post- to regular season BPM and PER differences (positive is better in playoffs)

*Only some seasons have BPM available

**Jerry West has only one season with BPM

For some assorted observations, Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon have the highest marks for stars, but Derek Fisher and Robert Horry rate well as role players. Conventional playoff reputations mostly align with the numbers above, but a couple things stand-out. For one, Larry Bird through his box score stats looked worse in the playoffs by a non-negligible amount, and secondly Karl Malone does not rate well but his long-time teammate John Stockton does — because of how BPM is calculated using team ratings as a final adjustment, that difference is meaningful. Finally, despite what his critics state, LeBron James’ numbers actually go up in the playoffs.

Kareem has a murky clutch reputation (much as does LeBron, also largely undeservedly) but there appears to be little evidence he was worse in the playoffs. His stats are slightly better, and his six championship rings weren’t taken from a cracker-jack box.