Nylon Calculus: Can Isaiah Thomas be the centerpiece of a contender?

When the All-Star starters were announced last month, the backcourt for the Eastern Conference immediately jumped out because they weren’t the two best guards in the conference. With all due respect to Kyrie Irving and DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry was more deserving of starting than either of them. I looked into the numbers to make a case, and sure enough, quantitatively Lowry has been significantly more productive and significantly more impactful than either his teammate DeRozan or rival Irving.

That Lowry article was very well received, but I did receive some push back. Not from anyone arguing for Kyrie or DeRozan, but instead, from someone arguing that I didn’t go far enough. That not only was Lowry more deserving to be an All-Star starter, but that so was little big man Isaiah Thomas.

Or even further still, in Thomas’s case, should the fact that he’s flirting with leading the league in scoring on a team contending for home court advantage in the playoffs mean that Thomas should in fact be in the MVP race? Forget starting for an All-Star team…could Thomas be worthy of contending for an MVP?

Not so fast. Before the full All-Star teams were named (and well before the MVP buzz picked up), I had cooled on the idea that Thomas should have even been the All-Star starter, let alone more than that. Because I had seen something when researching the Lowry piece that gave me pause on Thomas.

Namely, that Isaiah’s defensive impact isn’t just weak…that it’s negative. That it’s, in fact, WAY negative. It’s so negative that, despite his offensive Real Plus-Minus being on the Lowry/Lebron level, his overall Real Plus-Minus is actually worse than Irving’s. It’s so negative that, according to the same Real Plus-Minus study that provided the figure above, Isaiah measures out as by FAR the most negative defensive impact in the NBA at -4.44. That ranks him 440th out of 440 players measured, and number 439 (Bojan Bogdanovic) is more than a full point better!

Yes, on offense, Thomas has been amazing and is only getting better. His +5.94 score on offense is actually third in the NBA, behind only James Harden (+7.01) and Russell Westbrook (+6.18). But as I point out above, and Kevin Ferrigan pointed out when pushing back on the notion that Thomas should be in the MVP race , at some point you have to factor in defense. Because when trying to build a championship squad around a player, that player can’t ONLY be judged on what he does on one side of the ball.

Or CAN he?

Isaiah as the centerpiece of a contender

In a lot of ways, Thomas is like the generational evolution of Allen Iverson. He has a lot of Iverson’s characteristics as an alpha scorer in a small package, but whereas Iverson was a hero for the volume-scoring mano-a-mano attitude of the post-Jordan era 90s and 2000s, Thomas is more of a fit in this analytics-era of high efficiency and taking advantage of the 3-point shot. As such, while Iverson often does not fare well in analytics studies, Thomas (at least on offense) measures out great.

This is important to our current topic, because in a way Iverson gave us the template for building a championship contender around such a player. Iverson won MVP in 2001 while leading the 76ers to the number one seed in the East, and those Sixers rode Iverson’s hot shooting to become the only team to win a playoff game that year against the juggernaut Shaq and Kobe Lakers. The 76ers never quite got to the top, but they were pretty darn close.

And their team was built in a very unique way. Iverson was THE offense of the team, taking on an absurd amount of the shot-creation and shot-taking responsibilities, with a team built around him that were all purely defensive-minded role players. In fact, on those 76ers teams, analytics have demonstrated that despite Iverson’s huge name and reputation, it was actually the defense (led by Theo Ratliff, and later Dikembe Mutombo) that was the real key to their championship aspirations.

But, overall, it was the synergy between a strong defense that was only possible because of the plethora of defensive players PLUS the offensive heroics of a single player carrying enough load to make such a defense possible that made those 76ers compelling, and brought them within three gamesof winning a titleagainst one of the greatest teams in history.

This notion of team building around synergy, redundancy and talent meshes was explored in a great article by Senthil Natarajan. He looked at two-man and later five-man team lineups across a number of different potential statistics that a good team should be good at, and came up with balance plots and coefficients to estimate how good a team should be. Not surprisingly, the key line-ups of the best teams in the league measured out best in this Balance Score, led by the Warriors (39 percent), the Cavaliers (36 percent) and the Spurs (35 percent). Fourth place in that team lineup balance approach in the article? The Boston Celtics.

This is interesting, because a team led by one of the least-balanced players in the NBA (all offense, no defense) is nevertheless measuring out as extremely balanced as a unit overall. Let’s explore this by looking more closely at the balance charts for some of the main Celtics units (charts courtesy of Senthil Natarajan):

Both of these Celtics lineups have great balance scores. As a point of reference, at time of calculation, the top primary line-up in the league is the Warriors’ Mega-Death line-up 2017 of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, and Draymond Green (38 percent). But look at the names in these line-ups with Thomas.

Avery Bradley was first team NBA All Defense last season. Jae Crowder, Al Horford, Marcus Smart and Amir Johnson are ALL plus defenders. So, much like Iverson and Thomas themselves, the defensive caliber of the 2017 Celtics supporting cast is also very similar to the supporting cast of the 2001 76ers…with two major exceptions.

These Celtics have a LOT more peripheral offensive talent than those 76ers did. Horford and Bradley have clear plus-scoring ability, mixing good shooting range and quickness for their positions with the mentality to score with some volume. Crowder is a notch down, but still a step up from a pure 3-and-D type wing. These aren’t Eric Snow’s broken jumper or Tyrone Hill’s lack of moves that we’re discussing here…the Celtics cast is both skilled and talented as far as offensive support goes.

2) The Celtics are lacking the defensive anchor. What brought those 76ers together, and as I pointed out, measured out as the most important impact on the team, was the defensive anchor that turned a group of solid defensive role players into a dominant unit. Theo Ratliff, one of the greatest shot blockers of all-time, was solid in this role. But when he was replaced with Mutombo, one of the greatest defensive players in NBA history, suddenly the 76ers were contenders. Horford and Amir Johnson are solid defenders, but neither of them have it in them to anchor an excellent defensive unit.

When these two facts are put together, it leads to an interesting conclusion for Danny Ainge and the Celtics brain trust. Ainge has been trying for years to stockpile draft picks and young talent so that he can trade for another superstar, the way that he once did with Kevin Garnett. Thomas had been brought in to be a piece of the puzzle, but not necessarily THE piece. But what this season has shown us is, Thomas actually CAN be THE piece…on offense. And as the balance charts showed, the Celtics are right on the verge of having surrounded him with the right cast to accentuate his talents and build a strong, balanced team.

But what’s missing, and what Ainge should now be looking for, isn’t the stereotypical offensive superstar. Instead, he really IS looking for the Garnett for these Celtics…the defensive anchor. But while Garnett was a former MVP who had once led the NBA in points scored for a season, to complete this puzzle Danny only needs a defensive superstar. His Mutombo. And though still fairly rare, this type of player is a little easier to find on the market than the unicorn of an MVP.

Next: Could Paul Millsap find a new home at the trade deadline?

So in the final washout, Isaiah Thomas is not an MVP, and maybe not even necessarily worthy of starting an All Star game by himself. But he IS an offensive superstar, with the skillset to have a strong team built around his skills. And with just one more good move by his front office to bring in a true defensive anchor big man, Thomas COULD very well become the centerpiece of something that even Allen Iverson never accomplished…an NBA championship squad.