Nylon Calculus Week 11 in Review: NBA holidays and Santa faces

Welcome to the new year. I can finally write “the 2018 season” without being thrown for a split second because it’s not yet 2018. Now that the NBA holiday season has commenced, and we’re deep within the meat of the season, we can shift towards thinking about the All-Star game. Like holidays in a year, it’s another signpost we use to orient ourselves during the NBA season. And with that, let’s take a look at the last week in basketball action.

Chicago’s perplexing surge

This is one of the most inexplicable things I’ve seen in the modern NBA. Chicago has performed, against all odds, like one of the best teams in the league since the beginning of December. This kind of turnaround is rare but it sometimes happens. The weird part is that this happens for logical reasons, like a superstar coming back from an injury or a talented team finally putting it together. The Bulls were projected to be one of the worst teams in the league by virtually every NBA prognosticator besides a few hardcore (and possibly deluded) Chicago fans. The one roster change recently was the return of Nikola Mirotic. He’s been shooting well, but the cause is deeper than that.

The Bulls have quickly pivoted from being a catastrophe on offense short-listed for brown-field status to one of the most efficient ones in the league, while their defense has gone from porous to, again, above average. As you can see in the table below, this is mostly because of shooting percentages. More specifically, they’ve been getting to the line a lot more often while keeping their opponents off the foul stripe. And, of course, their opponent 3-point percentage has plummeted. This explains a huge chunk of their defensive improvement, and a little of their offensive improvement too — it’s easier to score off missed shots than made ones.

Table: Bulls season splits on offense

Table: Bulls season splits on defense

This drastic change in their performance isn’t a mirage though. Their free throw improvement is real, and the return of Nikola Mirotic, a Morey-ball favorite, makes sense there. Oddly enough, they’re shooting fewer outside shots even with this noted gunner — but that’s okay if they’re getting to the rim and free throw line more. They’ve been playing faster too, and they’ve changed their defense, killing a lot of their blitzes from their centers, switching from their other positions instead. Perhaps that’s why their opponent 3-point percentage has gone down — it doesn’t explain all of it, but it could explain a smidge.

For the rebuilding Bulls, this is a bittersweet change. They want a more valuable draft pick for a chance at a budding superstar. It’s nice to see guys like Kris Dunn (more on him later) and David Nwaba shine, but the eye should be on the horizon, not the immediate returns. Zach LaVine’s debut is imminent — and, hey, if he has the same effect on the Bulls that he had on the Wolves, they’ll be right back in that tanking race. He could disrupt a rotation that’s finally working. But I think that’ll mostly cease anyway. Poor teams sometimes see this false break in the storm, and they can commit too hard to a flawed roster before they realize who they really are. There’s just simply not enough talent yet. It’s promising they’re doing so well now, but they need to realize they still have a long ways to go.

Boston over Houston, Dec. 28

I always have to note a great game that’s decided by the offensive foul, one of my pet stats I’ve written pages about, like the time Manu Ginobili had a game-winning near “buzzer beater” charge. This one, however, featured two different offensive fouls drawn by Marcus Smart, one of the masters of this skill. And technically, yes, these were not charges; you can read the play-by-play. The distinction is important because according to my research those fouls are more valuable than charges, broadly speaking. And this one happened because Marcus Smart was draped over James Harden, MVP candidate. This wasn’t a guy standing under a superior athlete who was driving to the rim ; he was guarding him well and with physicality. Those are the kind of things you see great defenders do. Smart’s been a big part of their elite defense, and I hope he receives the credit he deserves by the end of the season.

The spacing era and centers

People sometimes forget that the entire point of spacing is to open up the floor in the middle and create more clean shots at the rim. It’s not just about taking more outside shots — trading mid-range shots for 3-pointers is useful, yes, but spacing is actually for improving your 2-point shots. One interesting consequence, then, of all these four-out lineups (i.e. with a stretch power forward) is that centers now have free reign around the paint. And with all the downsized centers teams are playing they’re even getting smaller defenders, although that trend is greatly exaggerated.

Ergo, it’s not mere coincidence that we’re seeing a proliferation of high-usage centers. We’re not seeing a record number of these big men, but scoring centers aren’t dying out either, contrary to countless previous predictions. In fact, it’s a buyer’s market for centers now because many talented power forwards without perimeter skills are being pushed inside. It’s hard for guys like Derrick Favors to play power forward anymore; his future lies further inside. The spacing era isn’t eliminating centers; it’s making them more powerful.

Giannis Antetokounmpo: beyond the position

Thanks to a Peter Nygaard tweet, I dove into an interesting question: has anyone ever been listed for a full season for every position, according to Basketball-Reference’s categorization? Giannis Antetokounmpo was the inspiration here, as the site says he started out as a SF, moved to SG, then PG, then back down to SF, and currently for this season he’s a PF. That all makes sense for him too, and it’s conceivable due to his size he could check off center as well. But has anyone done that before? Using my own database Basketball-Reference, the answer is no; no one’s even hit four positions before, much less all five.

One caveat is that my data is older and they’ve changed their position algorithm a little. But I don’t think I missed anyone. Strangely, they list Boris Diaw with only two positions. He famously began his career as a shooting guard, and then reinvented himself as a frontcourt player — he should have been listed as both as power forward and center for his later seasons. He’s actually the best answer, as their play-by-play data suggests he was nearly evenly split between SG and SF his first two seasons, and with his frontcourt play the rest of his career that’s nearly four-position bingo. LeBron James has only hit three positions so far; he’s never been listed as the point guard. Magic Johnson was mostly listed as a PG and SG, while his one post-HIV season he was actually listed as a PF — and he only played center for a game in the Finals. Kevin Garnett is the only other player I could conceivably label as any position on the court, but the site only lists three for him. There are a huge number of player who have played three positions — nearly 100 according to my data — including guys like Tony Allen and even Kyle Korver; it’s that extra position that’s so hard to fill. Centers who can be shooting guards, or point guards who can be power forwards are nearly nonexistent. Ben Simmons is one candidate certainly, and it’s not too impossible to see Kevin Durant play center when he’s older. But right now Giannis is the one.

PS: this is the first full season you can consider LeBron James a power forward. In Miami, Shane Battier was their power forward, guarding the bigger players and playing the stretch 4 role on offense.

Nikola Jokic for the all-star game, Nikola Jokic for the all-star game, Nikola Jokic for the all-star game…

Let save this space here to argue for the merits of Nikola Jokic’s All-Star case for the next few weeks. I fear that because of all the candidates in the Western Conference combined with how low Denver is on everyone’s radar and how they’ve had a mediocre season he may not be picked this season, even though he definitely deserve it. Going blindly by the advanced metrics he should be a lock. By our best assembled box-score stats he looks like a superstar, and the same is true when you consider plus-minus data — and this is no one year blip. He killed it in RPM last year too. What would the eye test say? That he’s a League Pass favorite who wows crowds with his passing. He’s a 7-foot center who brings the ball up the court, shoots from outside, has an exceptional touch inside, and is clearly the centerpiece of his team.

Kris Dunn

In a surprise to many, those kooky trades over the summer are paying off, or they’re at least losing their battiness. One of these — Jimmy Butler for Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine — can’t be properly evaluated until we see a few months of Zach into his long contract, but Kris Dunn is providing some returns already. Dunn had a rough rookie season, and his college stats did not suggest anything significant. What were we all missing?

Let’s get one elephant out of the room first. Dunn’s age was, and still is, important, like it usually is with every prospect. But he did suffer a major injury, causing him to miss an entire year of college basketball and it may have interrupted his development there. Should that be quantified? Being delayed by a year, arguably a little more because he wasn’t healthy, could tweak your projection numbers a bit. But it doesn’t explain everything.

Scouts drooled over Dunn because of his defensive potential: he has great size for a point guard, he’s athletic, and he was a Defensive Player of the Year for the Big East twice. So far, that’s translated to the NBA well, even though rookies are by and large awful defenders. He’s had one of the highest steal rates over the past two seasons, and he’s one of the best defensive rebounders at his position. Plus-minus metrics see him as above average too. His has quick hands, great anticipation, and his length is a hassle for other teams.

The issue that stats-based models saw — since those numbers value steals highly and he’s been elite in that category at every level — was his efficiency. And, lo and behold, that’s been his weakness in the NBA too. He’s been a horrendously inefficient scorer in both Minnesota and Chicago. It’s not noise either because that’s consistent with his college stats and his free-throw percentage is south of 70 percent (both in the NBA and college), which is rare for a guard in the modern NBA. You can see a list here — it’s full of Rajon Rondo seasons, iffy players, and defensive specialists. Dunn needs to transcend that list, and I wouldn’t take his 32.9 percent from behind the arc as anything too meaningful yet: that’s still low, and the sample size isn’t meaningful for 3-pointers. He’s still a work in progress, but his defensive prowess definitely marks him as intriguing and a worthy find in a trade.

Santa faces: A redux

When viewed from another angle, rituals are utterly bizarre and illogical. Every December, a large swath of the western world places a tree, sometimes plastic, in their living room, while they pretend for the benefit of little kids that a large fat man in a red suit will deliver gifts under said tree if they’ve been good, like a twisted morality test you’d see in Alice in Wonderland. We put out cookies and stockings for him, and we decorate our houses with multi-colored lighting displays. Of course, this is all to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a religious figure from 2000 years ago who probably wasn’t even born in December anyway and does not don red suits and has no opinion on sugary cookies. But we’re all used to it, and we accept all the eccentricities and celebrate them.

On that Christmas day, we’ve all grown accustomed to another tradition too: featured NBA games, some of which are saved for the holiday because of their specialness, like rematches between NBA finalists. Football has Thanksgiving, and the NBA has Christmas. It has nothing to do with the holiday or religion — rather the vast majority of the viewing demographic has the day off and can watch the games live. That was the creative force, and it’s morphed into a ritual of sorts for die-hard fans.

Some of the best games of the season are saved for that game last week, and it turned out to be a pretty good slate of games. The only blowout was Minnesota-Los Angeles, and it was competitive deep into the fourth quarter — too bad they weren’t playing for the Lakers name. The Cleveland-Golden State rematch was excellent, and the frenzied and personal Houston-Oklahoma City game came down to the wire.

Many players had exquisite games, but who performed the best? Let’s turn to our old friend in plotting the Chernoff faces R, and use the professional and entirely reasonable “Santa Claus” set of faces. In case you aren’t familiar, or maybe you’re just sane, you can read up on the plotting technique at the end of the post here. To quickly summarize the method, humans are great at reading faces, so let’s turn data into faces. It’s only bizarre in practice, which is all that really matters, so that’s just great. Facial features denote different basic statistical categories; once you get a couple of the basic stats down you can quickly peruse the faces and hopefully think, Okay these guys are the scorers, and these are the rebounders.

For the results, refer to the plot below. It’s ordered by game score, the rough estimate you can find on Basketball-Reference for how great an individual game was. James Harden ruled the day, and from his face you can tell it was due to his scoring (wide face), defensive rebounding (wide eyes), assists (tall nose), and free throw attempts (look at that wild hair.) You can see the bug-eyed Enes Kanter denoting his rebounding dominance that day, and J.J. Redick’s huge mouth suggests an efficient scoring night, naturally. Color, by the way, is just a combination of the first two stats (points and game score), so don’t focus too much on it; it was more useful with team stats anyway.

There are some quick patterns you can build here. A large face with small facial features? That’s a scorer, like Kyle Kuzma, who doesn’t do much else. Guys with wide slits for eyes and large mouths are probably shooting specialists who hang around outside, as they never collect offensive boards but do well in 3-point percentage. Some faces are twisted, contorted freakshows — those games that jump off the page because they’re like no others, like Kevin Love scoring well, shooting terribly from inside the arc, great from outside it, perfect from the stripe, and rebounding the heck out of the ball, while recording zero assists.

This is all for fun, of course. No serious piece of analysis should include a Santa hat with some hair styles you could describe by saying, What if you shaped your hair to mimic a surprised dog with large ears? This is an odd digression, but it’s the sort of fun you see during the holidays where every family has their own quirk while people eat foods they don’t regularly consume in artificial Christmas settings, adorned with bright, colorful lights and even fake snow. From an external point of view, this is crazy.

Next: Nylon Calculus -- Deflections and NBA Star Wars

As strange as our rituals are, there’s a reason they persist. The myth of Santa Claus and how it’s comingled with religion is peculiar, but it’s about a shared experience with humanity. We all look forward to the same day together, and we can take that special time to visit family and trade gifts, going out of our way to treat others with extraordinary kindness. We revel in how we all have small twists on the holiday, and people can even have pride in how they simply like to waste the day away with napping and television. And this isn’t just about Christmas either, although it’s become a near-universal holiday nearly independent from its religious and pagan origins. You find similar patterns in other holidays, and in smaller groups too. The shared experience is what matters, and that’s how sports fit so well with these celebrated days. It’s about a communal mass looking forward to and discussing and consuming basketball games as events.

This is our tradition, and it doesn’t matter how it happened. What matters is that it’s happening in the present, and that we continue to discuss these games and value them — that’s how the tradition, and all traditions, survive and persist into the distant horizon of the future.