Round 2 Preview: Golden State Warriors vs. Portland Trail Blazers

Here at Nylon Calculus we track and analyze a wide  variety of stats, so here are a few hand-picked ones offered as preview of the Warriors-Blazers series.

While Golden State is missing its legendary shooter, they have a variety of wing players to defend Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. However, the aforementioned Blazers’ guards will have a much easier time defending on the other end of the court because they can be more easily hidden. The key to the series might be the smallball power of the Warriors and their ability to push the pace versus Portland’s transition defense. Dig more into the numbers, and you’ll see the Blazers still have much to fear.

HBox Leaders:

Stephen Curry is obviously Golden State’s leader at 7.47 points per 100 possessions and the league leader, but Draymond Green, interestingly, is fourth in the league. Green is known as an impact guy without gaudy stats, but with the right mix of stats he looks like a superstar. Portland’s leader, Lillard, is far down the list at 2.76. That’s still good — it’s near All-Star territory — but they’re the underdogs going against a Warriors team that’s still formidable without Curry. Portland’s second highest HBox belongs to not CJ McCollum, due to his defensive stats, but Mason Plumlee. Plumlee’s ability to dunk over smaller players could be useful in this series.

True usage: 

True usage is a more complete rubric for who’s involved in an offense, and oddly enough Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard have very similar true usage percentages. Thankfully, Golden State has a number of playmakers. Draymond Green actually leads the team in playmaking usage%. With Green, Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala, and even Andrew Bogut, the Dubs retain plenty of passing, but they’ll have fewer assists without the shooting magic of Curry. On the other side, Portland has its own pass-happy frontcourt player, and with the increased exposure of the playoffs he’s going to get more recognition for it. Mason Plumlee was fourth in the league in playmaking usage% for centers, and he’s seen a huge improvement since last season. His usage would actually be above average among shooting guards. He’s no Draymond Green, but his athleticism and passing are a rare combination.

Rim protectors:

Using our own rim protection numbers, two Warriors have good at the rim stats — Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green — but Festus Ezeli’s numbers are actually better. He contests a high number of shots with the team’s best percentage. Bogut’s numbers, however, were significantly better in 2015. Whether or not that’s a blip or a long-term trend is an important question as he ages. Portland has an inferior defense, but one guy sticks out: Ed Davis has some decent rim protection stats for a guy on a lackluster defense. Mason Plumlee does not, especially for a center, despite his athleticism. Davis is still coming off the bench and he hasn’t played heavy minutes in the playoffs, but it might behoove the Blazers to give him more of their center minutes. The Warriors won’t have Curry’s shooting, but they could still kill Portland inside.

Jumping to Conclusions: 

All NBA games start with the jump ball, but this is the only public site that tracks those events comprehensively. Mason Plumlee can jump high for a guy his size, but Bogut will likely win the opening tip. Plumlee has a losing record in opening tip jump balls while Bogut is above average. Using my own model, I estimate that Bogut would win the jump ball against Mason 68% of the time. This is another reason to start Ed Davis — he’s had few opportunities, but he has a winning record for jump balls and perhaps he’d be a better option than Plumlee. Maybe it’s not the most important component of analysis for the game, but it’s the first one we’ll see.

Prediction:

Given my inputs, I estimate the Warriors beat the Blazers 84.2% of the time. The numbers used here and seen below are a mix of team ratings with a few players factored in and projected RPM via Nathan Walker. The team rating method is also explained here, and it’s essentially what you see at basketball-reference with SRS but it’s using a more robust method, ridge regression, with a few key players as additional variables, including Stephen Curry. Even major sites like ESPN still rely on team calculations that don’t adjust for player absences, but that’s not the case here. I assumed Curry would play a very small portion of their minutes. The Warriors, however, have played quite well without him, and that shouldn’t be a surprise as they won 73 games and there were four other guys on the court at all times. The Blazers have a decent shot at pulling off the upset, but they’re lucky they made it to round 2.