NBA Week in Review 16: All-Star Shenanigans

As the smoke from the All-Star Game clears, everyone prepares for the trade deadline, even if nothing major happens besides luxury tax/cap avoidance tomfoolery. But the All-Star Game is a major marker for an NBA season, and for better or worse it all happened — the West beat the East with 196 points. And with that, let’s take a look at that abbreviated week.

Greg Monroe: The Moose Up North

Greg Monroe was not invited to the All-Star Game, but I imagine if the Milwaukee Bucks were having a more successful season he would have received strong arguments. To my surprise, he was heavily courted last summer — he’s a big man who’s a poor defender, he can’t guard power forwards, and he doesn’t have much shooting range. But he’s a skilled offensive player, like a stouter lite-version of Pau Gasol. He has a deft touch around the rim and can abuse some smaller players.

Contrastingly, the Bucks have been disappointing this season, mostly on defense, and Monroe was demoted to the bench. But he still comes up with performances like his 29 points in 29 minutes game versus the Celtics, which they won. He bullied his way through the Celtics, like in this post-up. But he’s most effective in the mid-post area where he can dribble past big defenders to the rim — he actually ends this play with a dunk. He can also stop on a dime while driving and go into a post move; in this one he hits a hook shot. He’s a pretty great facilitator from the mid-post too, as guys can cut to the rim and he can find them consistently. That makes him an interesting offensive piece, and he can be more effective against smaller teams like Boston, but the Bucks have been terrible on defense and it’s okay to consider his part in that failing.

Miami: Where Now?

Since December 28, when the Heat suffered an embarrassing loss to the Nets, the team has been 11-13 and they’re falling in the playoff seeding. Perhaps the critics were right — most analytical projections were down on them — and the team is playing at its real level. But Chris Bosh’s health problems are back, which is scary for him and capsizes the rest of their season. With Hassan Whiteside’s free agency looming, Dwyane Wade’s age, and a hole at power forward the team has a pretty murky future. They may or may not blow the whole thing up because this present course is filled with mediocrity — even if Bosh returns.

The Problem With All-Star Selections

The internet overflows with annoyance over all-star selections and who gets to go and who doesn’t. But one can’t ignore those protestations because power lies where we believe it lies — the All-Star Game matters because we think it does. Years from now, we’ll have arguments about the Hall of Fame for Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Manu Ginobili, and even Joe Johnson, and all-star selections will almost definitely be used. But all-star selections are skewed by conference and position, especially a few years ago, which has definitely led to a few odd snubs and some weird inclusions. Plus, all-star games only cover half the season — we’re throwing out an entire half of a player’s career.

However, there’s another danger here, and it’s subtle: the All-Star Game is trying to serve two masters, and that’s why it’s failing. There’s a push for the All-Star Game to be a playing field for the best in the game and to reward players for greatness. But there’s also the point of view that the All-Star Game is for the fans and we should see more teams represented, especially if said team is hosting — also retiring legends should be invited, which is kind of a thing Kobe invented. But the game can’t do both at once effectively. If people want the game to be fun and want the most entertaining players there, then so be it — just don’t use the selections as yard-sticks of anything more than popularity.

Rookie-Sophomore Game

Despite a loaded international roster, the Americans won with Zach LaVine taking home the MVP. It was a pretty meaningless game besides that, however, it did not resemble a real basketball game. But it’s nice seeing promising guys in new situations. D’Angelo Russell, for instance, finally had a coach who believed in him — Larry Drew — and he took control of the game when on the court. He pulled-up and drained outside shots, set up teammates, and slashed inside. He has the makings of a very good point guard, and it was one of the benefits of watching a sloppy game.

Towns Runs Away with the Skills Competition

If you missed the skills competition on Saturday, which was well before the dunk contest, you did not see an improbable victory: the big men defeated the guards in a head-to-head contest with Karl-Anthony Towns beating speedster Isaiah Thomas in a glorified obstacle course. This was a tweak I was happy to mock because I thought the frontcourt players would have no chance against the smaller guys in a contest with passing, running, and shooting. But the reverse of that expectation turned it into one of the best moments from the weekend — it’s like an 8th grade vs. teachers game, and the underdogs won.

Three-Point Contest: Lessons from Simulation

My three-point contest simulation selected J.J. Redick as the most likely winner by a hair over Stephen Curry, but Klay Thompson won in reality. Does that mean my model failed? Not really because Klay was rated third and there’s a lot of randomness in the contest. In fact, if the numbers tell you just one thing, it’s to bet the field and against the favorites. Curry is the greatest shooter ever, but nothing is guaranteed in that shootout.

A New Dunk Pantheon

The dunk contest was one of the best in NBA history and became the talk of last weekend. Each dunker submitted multiple dunks for the imaginary but illustrious Dunk Pantheon. While Aaron Gordon actually drew more attention despite not winning, Zach LaVine was no slouch himself, and finished first thanks to a flurry of foul-line dunks. Due to the multiple tie-breaking rounds, LaVine needed to makeup dunks on the spot, including the last one, a between-the-legs from just inside the foul line. Of course, many people will note that LaVine’s other free-throw line dunks included a foot just on the line, so it’s not a “true” free-throw line dunk, but that’s misleading: the vast majority of those dunks happened just like that. Michael Jordan’s foot was on the line during his legendary dunk, and the same is true of Dr. J’s. Don’t demerit LaVine’s performance because his foot was over the line because that’s typical and it was still an incredible performance.

Main Event: The Decline of the All-Star Game

The Western Conference team nearly hit 200 points in a regulation game, which is just plain ludicrous. But this doesn’t make for good basketball or even good television. There’s an obvious simile here to explain the point: it’s like only eating cake frosting instead of the actual cake. You need some substance to the game or else it’s just too sweet and you begin to hate it and your teeth start hurting — that is how I felt watching the game. There’s little fun in seeing players only taking three-pointers or dunks with little defensive resistance. I’m not sure how this issue gets solved, but it’s a nationally televised game and the NBA brings in its elders from the past — Bill Russell, George Gervin, Oscar Robertson, et al — so the product shouldn’t be embarrassing. The league needs some self-policing and some prominent veterans, maybe the coaching staffs as well, to speak up and keep the game from running amok.

Top All-Star Performances Since 1978

With the NBA All-Star Game verging far from reality, it’s tough to gauge what’s actually a great performance and what’s the result of a playground-level defense. If one wants to rank players statistically, a raw metric or summary won’t suffice; the numbers are all too skewed. Thus, one needs to adjust for the game’s environment in terms of offensive and defensive efficiency, so that essentially guys will be ranked by how much they separate themselves from their peers. This is a better method for comparing players historically because offensive ratings, and the pace, have been skyrocketing.

Using a Nylon Calculus-born stat, DRE, I have adjusted, pace-neutral[1. Pace neutral meaning everything is set in terms of per 100 possessions.] ratings — it’s adjusted such that if you took an average by minutes of the 2016 western conference team, for example, the resultant rating would match the team’s net rating, i.e. points per 100 possessions. The results are in the table below along with a rough value measure: the last column is simply a product of minutes and adjusted DRE[2. Ignore the units. They might as well be pizzas per possessions or something. It’s just minutes and adjusted BPM.]. All told, the most exciting consequence of this method was Michael Jordan reigning on top: he has the highest adjusted rating out of any player since 1978. The pace in that 1988 was actually quite high, but his lead in the raw DRE score was so large that didn’t matter. That was the game where Jordan had 40 points on 23 field goals with four blocks and four steals, respectively[3. The worst game belongs to, somewhat appropriately, Joe Johnson, who was 0 for 4 from the field and contributed except for five turnovers.].

The biggest effect here is that players from recent all-star games are further down the list because of the team and pace adjustments. Russell Westbrook won the MVP for 2016, and while his surface numbers are spectacular — 31 points with 8 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 steals in 22 minutes — his team almost broke 200 points. It was still a great game, but that one and his game from the previous season are more appropriately rated here given the environments. Others like Anthony Davis and Blake Griffin are much further down the rankings than they otherwise would be.

Most of the names in the above table are well-known stars, but there’s one surprising inclusion: Eddie Johnson, a two-time all-star who played most of his career for the Hawks. He played well in 1980, shooting superbly from the field with six steals, but sadly his basketball career and personal life fell apart. He battled a cocaine addiction for years, and then received a ban for life from the NBA in 1987. After falling into a world of crime, he’s serving a life sentence without parole. Just don’t get him confused for Eddie Johnson the small forward, who got mistakenly confused for the other Eddie and became a target of harassment.

There’s some fun in comparing players from the past with ours today, but proper adjustments are needed the game is being played differently today. And Michael Jordan is still the gold standard.