Nylon Calculus Week 6 in Review: NBA players on the bubble and the Moses rebound

With NBA week 6 in the books, we’re starting to see outliers flatten out and the real trends with holding power are becoming apparent. A handful of the Eastern Conference teams, like the Pistons and Celtics, appear to be legitimately better than expected, while the Cavaliers are regaining their past superpowers even without Isaiah Thomas.

In the West, the Warriors and Rockets are destroying everyone, while no one else stands out — the Spurs are still without Kawhi Leonard, the Thunder have lost a lot of close games, the Clippers are falling apart, and other teams have issues too. This hasn’t exactly been the most straightforward season so far, but I don’t think it’s awfully surprising either. But there’s a lot of the season left — we’ll see what kind of season this really is.

Wilting Rose

After both the Cavaliers and Derrick Rose suffered through a rough few weeks opening the season, Rose mysteriously went out with an injury. This was a team with very few healthy point guards — and now he’s out indefinitely, as he’s “evaluating his future in basketball.” That’s coinciding with Cleveland playing better basketball overall, and it’s making people wonder if he has any future in the league. He’s probably going to find a way to hang around the league for a while — he could lose a huge chunk of his Adidas deal if he retires. But we may not see him on a relevant team again.

If your roster has LeBron James, there’s no need to put the ball in the hands of someone who’s much less effective with it, and when Rose doesn’t have the ball he’s a liability given his inability to shoot or defend. That was never going to work unless Rose improbably rediscovered his pre-injury form.

If you wanted to believe in the Derrick Rose rehabilitation project, then you’d pull for a rebuilding team who doesn’t mind the risk and ideally one who can protect him defensively. Maybe the Suns, who have little help left at point guard, would take a flyer, or maybe another cellar dweller like the Mavericks. And, hey, the Bulls are currently the worst offense in the league. They could use any shot creation. Besides that, I’m afraid his best situation would be the Chinese Basketball Association or another weaker league where his athleticism would set him apart and his defense wouldn’t be a massive negative. The NBA might be too touch for him to compete in anymore, and the sooner he, and everyone else, realizes that, the less awkward this whole situation will become.

Paul Millsap is down

The Denver Nuggets were hoping to leverage an exciting, promising stretch of basketball in the 2017 season to a more successful one this year with Paul Millsap, who was supposed to cover Nikola Jokic’s weaknesses and complement his strengths. Instead they’ve suffered another setback, and while it’s unclear when he’ll be back, they’re going to be without his services for a while. They’ve fared decently so far, but two of their post-Millsap wins came against the Kings, who are quickly building a case for picking first next year, and the Grizzlies who are dealing with their own problems.

Luckily, the Nuggets do have a bit of frontcourt depth with Kenneth Faried, the human Red Bull can; Mason Plumlee, who actually played a bit next to Jokic in the past; and Juan Hernangomez, a stretch power forward who hasn’t had much time yet next to their star center. He was loved by some people last year, thanks to a combination of his unique production, his age, and his stats in Europe. He hasn’t been able to play much this year — blame Paul Millsap for that and mono. But this could be a great opportunity for the sophomore to display his value. Let’s keep an eye on him.

Kyrie Irving, a new man in the clutch?

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Kyrie Irving’s clutch play, and what it means that it’s surfacing in Boston — and some are ascribing these stats to his new vegan diet. It’s leading people to craft narratives about how he’s flourishing because of the new environment in Boston and that it’s some indictment of LeBron James or compliment of Brad Stevens. But how have so many people forgotten? Irving’s had a few clutch seasons like this before, mostly when he was younger — and, probably not by coincidence, without LeBron.

Table: Kyrie Irving’s clutch stats (<5 min, +/-5 lead) per 100 possessions

As you can see in the table above, Irving had some monstrous scoring rates without LeBron, which makes sense — you knew who was handling the ball in those situations. But most impressively, his efficiency actually went up in most of those scenarios, and in the one season he didn’t (2013) he was a lot more efficient with one minute to go. His true shooting percentage this season is quite amazing, but I imagine regression to the mean will blunt it by game 82. However, you can see why it’s a stretch to say this version of Irving, a clutch assassin, is a new beast because it’s quite similar to his rookie performance when he was a mere 20-years-old.

My own theory about what’s happening here is that since the environment of the end of a close game is that of a slower pace with more isolation basketball — teams are risk averse when it’s crunchtime and don’t want to give up turnovers — Kyrie Irving is more in his element than other scorers. So he doesn’t see a tougher context; he sees a situation ideal to his game. I think he’s at the extreme end of this range so we don’t see this to the same degree with virtually any other player. Then when LeBron joined his team, he handled the ball a lot less in close games — no surprise, he’s LeBron James — and his stats declined. Now that he’s on a different team with no offensive help due to Gordon Hayward’s injury, his role can be even more massive, I don’t expect him to be quite this efficient, but it’s something to keep in mind — perhaps this is his norm.

Oklahoma City in close games

With the middle class of the Western Conference struggling, now would have been the ideal time for the remade Thunder to claim their seed and hold out for homecourt advantage in the first round, at the very least. Instead they continue to struggle in close games. They just recently lost a one-point game to the Pistons and a three-point game to the Spurs. But this just appears to be bad luck; it’s not sustainable. They’re missing shots at bizarrely high rates, including both 3-pointers and free-throws. Their opponents are making shots are unsustainable rates too. Based on how I’ve seen them play, I doubt this will continue in the future. Sometimes you don’t make your shots, and when your opponents do the results look like a nightmare — and we’re only talking about a few minutes of the season. They haven’t even played a whole game in “clutch” time yet, according to stats.NBA.com. Let’s save our judgement.

The Jahlil Okafor situation

I hate to be negative about a player. Pointing out someone’s flaws or saying who should play over whom is one thing, but stating that the NBA has little to no need for a particular guy is rough. Like Derrick Rose this week, I have to address that concern for Jahlil Okafor. Every so often you’ll see a piece, or just a comment, about how the 76ers are making a mockery of the NBA by toying with Okafor and not letting him realize his full potential. Essentially, the team needs to “free” Okafor, who’s been restricted by his own team — apparently thrown onto the bench because of their own personnel decisions. There was another article like that recently from ESPN, which is in line with a shared sentiment from many people. But it’s an opinion that’s not entirely backed up by reality.

Okafor is still seen as a major asset because he was the third overall pick in 2015 and he was even flirting with being the first pick. He was injured for part of his rookie season though, and he had to share the court with Nerlens Noel, another lottery center. But Okafor still started for most of the season, and they eventually traded Noel. The problem is that by the time they got rid of Noel, as the two players did not mesh well together on the court, not only did Joel Embiid stamp his name onto the court, Okafor was being outperformed by second round pick Richaun Holmes. Now veteran Amir Johnson is soaking up some of those backup center minutes too.

Jahlil was supposed to be a transformative offensive player who could score in loads in the low-post and rack up some assists too. But he’s been underwhelming on offense and his defense has been a liability. Besides scoring, he does little else on the court. He’s not the type of center the modern NBA team can use anymore, and the 76ers have not performed well on the court with him. If he was a productive player who deserved more minutes, he would have earned him. They tried — he’s started nearly 80 percent of his games, and it’s not like Embiid plays heavy minutes. They haven’t moved him because no one was willing to give up an asset, even a second round pick. The team does not owe it to Okafor to find him a team, because those aren’t the rules for anyone else. The “Process” did not ruin his career; he simply has yet to earn a larger role.

Moses

One of the biggest assumptions in the NBA-stats world is that when we define a statistic, we assume it has a consistent value. An assist is an assist, and a block is a block — and we know that’s not the case, even if it makes metrics easier to build and player summaries easier to manage. Thanks to player tracking, this assumption has been broken for rebounding in a few ways. Now people have direct information about contested versus uncontested rebounds, and, most importantly, it’s gotten more people to think about how all rebounds aren’t the same and how misleading totals can be. However, there’s one narrow area where we could potentially make some key adjustments. The offensive rebound is a valuable stat for individuals, but should the typical offensive board be lumped in with a tipped shot from the player’s own miss? And which players lead in this unofficial “Moses Malone” inspired category?

For the young people out there and the newer fans, Moses Malone was a three-time MVP center who played on multiple teams and was known for being a wrecking-ball inside, scoring and rebounding everything. Also, he was infamous for his “Moses” rebounds, where he would rack up rebounds quickly by tipping the ball to the rim before putting it in. Perhaps that’s apocryphal — but it would happen a lot unintentionally where he would shoot the rim, miss, collect the board, miss again, rebound again, and finally make it.

I think I can call rebounding your own miss the “self-rebound,” but once you’re chaining together multiple self-rebounds you can call it the Moses after the legendary rebounder. Also, to better match the spirit of Moses Malone himself, the “Moses” should come two seconds or less after the previous rebound. That mostly just guarantees that only rebounds in the same play will be chained together in the code, but it’ll also throw out any weird lost rebounds that don’t really fit this type of play anyway.

You can see the results below. Most of the names make sense. You a lot of huge players who spend a lot of time near the basket. A young DeMarcus Cousins, full of youth and with a large frame, actually leads the list with the most self rebounds in a season. You either get those tall, long guys, like Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who could always tip the ball with ease over everyone else, or guys who put the “power” in power forward. However, you also got Tracy McGrady multiple times, one of the few wing players near the top of the leaderboard. He’s got few “Moses” boards too, suggesting he wasn’t just racking up tips to pad his totals. I did not expect that.

Table: Self-rebounds, 1997 to 2018

Vince Carter’s at the bottom of the table too, and I think that’s telling. A young Carmelo Anthony and Shawn Marin also show up in the low 70’s. Big, athletic scoring wings do well here. If they miss, and they know it, they can rise high enough to steal the board over other players. Tony Allen, by the way, was the shortest player who was high up on the list, likely due to his propensity to miss and his athleticism. Vince was apparently great at this though — he wasn’t ashamed to drive and miss, or get stuffed, and then rebound that miss and move on. Heck, he was even doing that near age 40. And while he wasn’t recorded with a rebound during the play, he’s also responsible for one of the most famous off-the-backboard plays in NBA history.

As for the “Moses” leaders, you can see those below. They’re relatively rare events, and crafty tip-artist Ilgauskas is at the top. Obviously, the very tall have a distinct advantage here, but I think there’s one more observation. These rebounds are being collected by some of the best players in the league — they aren’t being hoarded by guys padding stats, from what I can tell. The guys near the top of the list with the fewest total offensive rebounds are the big athletic scoring wings, who are often stars. It’s okay to collect your own miss; it’s better than letting the defense recover it. I wouldn’t say that makes it a valuable play overall, but what’s probably happening is that large and/or athletic inside scorers are getting the opportunity for these stats more than others. They’re not necessarily seeking them out.

Table: Moses leaders, 1997 to 2018

Next: Nylon Calculus -- Russell Westbrook is not the problem

This was an initial test run for the statistic, and I might tweak it in the future — should it be called the Moses rebound? If you call it a Moses, what’s the plural? But I can look more at rates and proportions of these stats to offensive rebounds. Perhaps I can even find a way to estimate its value and compare it other types of rebounds. In any case, it’s another way to look at the NBA and think about what the stats mean. Some plays have multiple subsets, and there’s a nearly endless way to arrange and sort out all of our stats. I don’t know if this is the most useless stat yet, but the exploration itself is worth it.