Nylon Calculus Week 4 in Review: Free throw shooting giants

These week in reviews serve as a way to cover topics I may not get to because it demands only a short blurb but requires be more than a tweet or random thought elsewhere. It also forces me to track the league systematically, looking to touch on all the big stories while scrounging for the smaller ones that need reporting.

The analytic study at the end pushes me to dig into some numbers on a regular basis too — which is good in cases where I’m procrastinating on a topic that should be addressed. I’ll try to post these every Tuesday this season, covering last week from Monday to Sunday (loosely speaking, sometimes.) And with that explanation for the uninitiated out there, let’s look back at the last week in basketball.

Cactus flower: Phoenix’s star moves to the Midwest

In a trade that surprised no one after Eric Bledsoe admitted dissatisfaction with the hair salons in Phoenix, Bledsoe was shipped to the Milwaukee Bucks for Greg Monroe and a (complex) protected first round pick. At first glance, I think there are three key points to the new point guard with Milwaukee: How will he play with Giannis Antetokounmpo? Can he play off-ball effectively? And with his reduced role, will he focus more efforts on defense? Ideally, Bledsoe will shoot just well enough from outside to keep defenses honest and would be the Scottie Pippen to Giannis’ Michael Jordan. From what we’ve seen so far, there are reasons to be optimistic.

I assume many people saw this alley-oop that Bledsoe threw to Giannis, but that wasn’t a one-off play — they do appear to have synergy. Bledsoe, at least through their first games, is an aggressive slasher who attacks the basket, and is the kind of partner Giannis needs in transition or even just a half-court set. For example, you can see this fast break here where Bledsoe shovels the pass to a trailing Giannis and actually uses himself as a screener to stop LaMarcus Aldridge from advancing. With their positive chemistry already, if Bledsoe can accept this smaller role and focus more of his efforts on defense, this is a good move for the Bucks if they want to chase higher playoff seeding this year and the next.

As for the Phoenix Suns, this is a sad yet fitting end to their game of point guard musical chairs. They once had Goran Dragic, Isaiah Thomas, and Eric Bledsoe; and now they have the injured Brandon Knight, who was a major disappointment, and a rookie and sophomore to fill the time at the position. Their future, depending on how you feel about Devin Booker, is bleak. The end of this Zach Lowe article about the Suns is a bit optimistic because they have “moved on” from their past melodramas, but since the team hasn’t addressed its root causes — which mostly have to do with the front office — I would not expect a rosy future since they could just keep repeating the same type of mistakes.

A nightmare before Christmas

The Cleveland Cavaliers are in tatters right now. They’re under 0.500, and their record actually understates how bad they’ve been playing — they have a nasty point differential, as they’ve regularly been outscored by large margins even against poor teams. (The fact that they needed a monster comeback versus the Knicks, fighting red in tooth and claw, says a lot.) Their offense has been fine, thanks mainly to LeBron James, but their defense has been so wretched that it would sink any offensive season that wasn’t led by a prime Steve Nash or Stephen Curry team. Some of this is luck — it’s doubtful opponents will keep shooting 40 percent behind the arc, even with league-worst defense. But at some point accountability will need to be taken for their curious roster decisions, and as mad a LeBron James is getting at his team, from all accounts he had a hand in this mess too. He should be mad at himself, and until the team can fix its rotation, its defense, and Isaiah Thomas comes back, he, and the front office, will need to accept that.

All that Jazz

During the play where Dion Waiters was diving for the ball and (perhaps) looking for contact, Rudy Gobert injured his knee and it appears he’ll be out for weeks. For a team that was struggling to hit 0.500, this is disastrous for their playoff chances — they were already on the outside looking in. The Jazz have been horrible offensively, and without their stout defense they would be a high lottery team. If the defense falls apart without him, their Defensive Player of the Year-caliber center, things will get ugly. With Rudy Gobert’s minutes soaked up by “replacement level” production, the team would turn into one you’d expect to win about 26 minutes over the full course of the season — that kind of ugly.

However, we should not assume Gobert’s minutes will be mopped up by players with borderline-NBA production. Ekpe Udoh, for instance, has been sensational on defense, swatting everything, and he could hold down the fort for a few more minutes a game. Also, the silver lining is that Derrick Favors may be pressed into starting center duties, meaning Utah’s outdated double-traditional big man alignment could end. Those units are a train-wreck on offense, and maybe the team can find a more suitable balance of offense-and-defense with smaller lineups. They’ll still be strong defending with Favors and Udoh plus their guys like Thabo Sefolosha and Ricky Rubio. They just need to be able to score like a team that actually wants to win games.

How to succeed in basketball without really trying

There’s excitement in Madison Square Garden again, as the Knicks are playing decent basketball and could be fighting for playoff contention. And with Kristaps Porzingis operating at an MVP-level for the start of the season, the franchise has a bright future. However, this is the same front office that gave an onerous deal to Joakim Noah and decided Derrick Rose would be their ideal starting point guard. The NBA is a place where we reward failures with lottery picks, putting our best players in awkward situations.

Jekyll and Hyde: The new Domantas Sabonis

I’ll be the first to admit I derided Domatas Sabonis’ inclusion in the Paul Geroge trade as a mere throw-in. Due to him being picked 11th and his stale rookie season with Oklahoma City — as well as my memory of Rasheed Wallace calling him “Sabonis Junior Junior Junior” back when Rasheed played with his father Arvydas — I didn’t have the highest opinion of him, but he’s shown that in new role in a new environment he may indeed be a valuable piece. The catalyst here, so often suggested as Russell Westbrook and his “ballhoggery,” might be the position change. With the Thunder, he was often the second big man playing next to Steven Adams or Enes Kanter, both large, burly centers. This relegated Sabonis to a spot-up role, where he was unsuited as his range is still insufficient for the NBA 3-point line. With Indiana, he’s primarily the center, and that’s played to his strengths.

More specifically, Sabonis has been killing it on the offensive end as a center thanks to his pick-and-roll skills. You can see highlights from his debut here. He’s fantastic at catching the ball near the rim and knowing exactly how to dive in for a dunk or layup, or to twist around for a fading short jumper or hook shot. He has a great knack for slipping screens too, and he can play the pick-and-pop game as well. Freedom may have helped Victor Oladipo, but I believe the position change and focus in the pick-and-roll helped Sabonis. He won’t keep shooting nearly 80 percent at the rim or over 60 percent on jump shots between 10 and 16 feet, but he should remain an efficient scorer and a consistent threat. The bigger issue is that with Myles Turner back from an injury, Sabonis was demoted to the bench. Even though Myles has been outplayed, he has the franchise’s backing as their center of the future, and we could see a power struggle as the two big men mature. Once an after-thought in a trade, Sabonis has proven his mettle.

The sound of music: Jokic’s passing

Okay, let’s just salivate over the magic of Nikola Jokic in a recent game he had against Orlando. After a relatively slow start, Jokic and the Nuggets are excelling once again. He has the rare combination of stats you’d see from an efficient scoring point guard and that of a center — it’s quite the oddity, and few metrics know what to do with him. Paul Millsap, however, is still not playing well, and if he ever comes around — he is 33-years-old already — this Denver team could stander higher in the standings when the season ends than most would have imagined. Keep an eye on Jokic and Millsap’s stats; this is a team to watch.

Oklahoma!

Paul George closed out the week with a couple of strong games, scoring 42 and 37, respectively. It was much needed because the Thunder were in the midst of a losing streak. However, as I’ve noted before, the Thunder weren’t actually in dire straits. Their point differential, much more predictive of future wins than just win percent at this point, was quite good. They had been losing close games, and some of their guys had a few cold shooting nights. Paul George shot himself out of his own slump, and perhaps Patrick Patterson is next. They still have issues with their offense devolving into isolation-only sets, but they’ll be fine — especially if their forwards start hitting their shots.

Born yesterday: evaluating the youngest players

A few years ago, a rookie suffered one of the worst debut seasons you’d ever see with a field-goal percentage in the mid-30’s and a true shooting percentage a little over 40. He played only 319 minutes, but he deserved less — he had a BPM of -6.8, which is abysmally low. He wasn’t even hitting his free throws like a perimeter player. It was about as poorly as a young player could play, and people were just hoping that with some improvement he could become a mere average player and realizing that taking him third overall was probably a reach.

How’s that player today? Despite having the bust label thrust onto him early, fans immediately looking for other options at small forward, and owning one of the most infamous Shaqtin-a-fool moments, Otto Porter Jr. has become one of the most productive forwards in his conference. I remember conversations that people were wary of him because of the track record of guys playing like him and later succeeding was thin — but he was a teenager who barely played and was dealing with an injury.

This is all a roundabout way of saying we should not write the final line in Lonzo Ball’s biography yet.`Shooting percentages are volatile, and so is rookie production. We also haven’t seen many players his age and type before, as with most NBA history prospects stayed in college for three or four years. Plus, some of his other stats are positive indicators for someone his age, like his rate of assists, steals, blocks, and rebounds, He’s had a terrible year shooting, but his destiny is still undecided. (And after I wrote this, he had that excellent triple-double game.)

The thoroughly modern big man: Free-throw shooting and height

"People call it small ball, and that pisses me off. It’s skill ball, plain and simple. I’d start two 7-footers if they could run and shoot."

–Mike D’Antoni in 2008

With the NBA in the midst of a “skill-ball” revolution flanked by score-heavy point guards and swing-men masquerading as power forwards, we’re already seeing the pendulum swing the other way. The vast majority of promising young stars right now are big men, from the well over 7-foot Joel Embiid and Kristaps Porzingis to the 6-foot-10 “point guard” and likely Rookie of the Year Ben Simmons. People are marveling at the skill of these big men, but when you go back in history a number of the super-tall players were actually skilled. Arvydas Sabonis, standing 7-foot-3 and well over 300 pounds, would fling passes like a flashy young point guard and shoot from the (shortened) 3-point line. Ralph Sampson at 7-foot-4 had the perimeter skills of a revolutionary figure but could not apply it to the NBA and injuries destroyed what chance he had. What’s odd is that a number of these super-tall players are decent shooters and better than their mere 7-foot tall brethren. Is there anything to that trend?

For the purposes of this study, I’m focusing on free-throw percentage because it’s a rare objective measure in a world of flawed, biased stats. Something like 3-point percentage is influenced by other things, like shot types — smaller guys are more likely to shoot off the dribble. I don’t want the measure confounded by shot difficulty; I just want to see skill. I’m sorting everyone by height because height is something we have going back decades, and I need every possible decade — guys over 7-feet are rare. Accordingly, I’m looking at the stats for every season from 1955 to 2017. Some of the data was spotty in the early 1950’s, and to make things even I’ve excluded everyone who played in a season before 1954. With that fix, there was very little in the way of missing data, mostly just a couple minor players in the ABA — and yes, I did include the ABA.

You can see the fruits of the labor below. Due to the rarity of guys listed at 7-foot-3 or above, they’re all binned into one data point — and it’s the same with guys under 5-foot-11. At first glance, yes, there’s a slope downwards as height increases, except for the weird kink where Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal exist — without them guys at 7-foot-1 would have an average of 67.1 percent, more in line with the rest of the slope — but free-throw percentage does indeed shoot upwards again at the last bin. The pattern isn’t clear if you separate everyone above 7-feet, by the way, because the sample sizes are too small; it’s noisy.

The theories can begin here. These super tall players are indeed closer to the hoop, but isn’t that true of 6-foot-11 guys too to an extent? Perhaps there are several factors here, and at a certain point the easier trajectory wins out. My own personal theory is that guys around 6-foot-10 to 7-foot-1 are in the league because of their athleticism because many guys that size can’t make it, but once you’re gigantic the league is easier to slid into, which perhaps leads to guys who are less “fast-twitch” and more skill-oriented because they’re so ground-bound.

However, there are lower sample sizes at the extremes, and one player can distort the mean. For some rough sensitivity analysis, remove Yao Ming from the data set and the average for those at 7-foot-3 and over becomes a mere 71.5 percent. If the average can be swayed that much by the subtraction of just one player, then I would not be confident in the validity of that average. Instead you gotta branch out a little and use something super complicated and 21st century: the median.

In cases where the mean is distorted by a few extremes, like housing prices, the median can be more useful in describing a central tendency. When we do free throw averages, we’re actually committing an error by using it to denote a quality of a group. It’s like saying the Clippers were a terrible free-throw shooting team even when they had Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford; their averages were just warped by DeAndre Jordan. Thus, I created the graphic below using medians. I think it’s smoother and more telling of the actual skills of NBA players by height.

The slope is a lot more straightforward there, and makes more sense. As players get smaller, they’re more likely to be in the league because of their skills; thus they’re better shooters. (Yes, I considered throwing out players with few free throws, but that’s throwing a bias in the sample anyway and the median doesn’t directly use the players at the extremes. Ideally, the distribution would scatter the low volume guys around the median at the right rates.) We’re not looking at which players take the most foul shots at each height; we want to know how free throw percentages change looking at every player.

Next: Nylon Calculus -- The emergence of Clint Capela

Maybe this is a disappointing finding, but the basketball universe makes a little more sense after this exploration. And we can all marvel a bit more at the exploits of Kristaps Porzingis, Joel Embiid, and others. It’s not normal for these giants to be good shooters too — they are, unquestionably, unique beasts leashed upon our realm, and we are well within our rights to be in awe of them.