Nylon Calculus Week 18 in Review: All-Star Weekend 2018

There’s going to be a bit of change to this week in review series for the foreseeable future. I want to focus on longer, more comprehensive pieces, so this will be scaled back. I won’t always go in-depth on a statistical treasure at the end in this series. If there’s something small I know I can do and it’s not something that deserves its own space, I’ll do that here; otherwise, I’ll have something lighter. These articles should generally be shorter now, and I’ll try to do more summaries of interesting articles other people posted that I find throughout the week — a lot of things fall through the cracks. But All-star week does deserve a lot of ink, so with that’s, let’s look back at the last week in the NBA.

All-Star celebrity game

I believe many people skipped the celebrity game because of its, well, dubious basketball value. And I’m not knowledgeable enough of pop culture to even recognize half the people on the court. But the game happened, and there’s video proof and statistics and everything. There’s even a box score of the game, which wasn’t officially released. Sadly, it looks like a pre-1974 box score because it lacks turnovers, steals, and blocks, so I can’t provide the full metric stats for everyone. But I would like to point out that MVP Quavo was indeed the most valuable scorer with a 70 true shooting percentage on 19 points; Rachel DeMita, on the losing side, did really well too thanks to a 62 true shooting percentage she had the rare legitimate celebrity jump shot.) In a game where the teams shot about 18 percent from behind the arc and in the mid-50’s from the line, those are worthy numbers. Also credit to Win Butler’s savvy game; he’s now 4-0 in these games.

Rookie-sophomore world game

This was one of the better rookie-sophomore games in memory. There were lots of dunks and wild jump shots, sure, but not as much as certain years, they actually competed and played defense sometimes. There were actually contested shots with guys like John Collins and Frank Ntilikina competing on defense. The end of the game devolved into a dunk contest, but that’s normal for this affair; least the preceding portions were competitive basketball.

The MVP was Bogdan Bogdanovic, a Serbian outside shooting ace — shooters often pick up these awards because they get a green light and when they’re hot, they can rack up the points quickly. He definitely had a good game, and he was one of a small handful of players who took the game seriously, stopping a fast break with a foul.

Skills competition

For the first time in the contest’s short history, one of the little guys won when pitted against a big man: Spencer Dinwiddie took the crown versus Lauri Markkanen. Both guys have been pleasant surprises this year and deserve a lot more attention — take a note of them if you haven’t already, even if they’re on cellar-dwelling teams. Also, Joel Embiid rather delightfully used a loophole in the rules when trying to make the pass. He missed a couple passes, and then quickly threw the third ball on the rack with no aim whatsover — and then he moved on to the next obstacle. That wasn’t actually cheating; if you use three balls you’re allowed to move on per the rules. Smart move there, Embiid.

Dunk contest

As an ardent fan of the NBA dunk contest, I do reserve the right to comment on how it went and rate the proceedings. First of all, people have to realize that many contests are lame-ducks and most of the dunks in the history of the contest are forgettable. That’s the benefit of hindsight; we get to remember the good stuff. And don’t worry about the “lack of stars” complaints. These events are usually unknown young guys or promising players whose names will only look notable years later after they’ve developed.

This dunk contest wasn’t like 2016 — but how many things in life can live up to that Aaron Gordon-Zach LaVine duel? — yet there still a few keeper dunks. Dennis Smith Jr., who didn’t make it out of the first round, had arguably the dunk of the night; it was a technical marvel of a dunk that looks harder the more you know about dunking. Larry Nance Jr., the runner-up, had a series of nifty dunks with power and height, but the last one was a doozy: dude bounced the ball off the glass while in the air and then dunked it, reminiscent of Dwight Howard. But Donovan Mitchell, a candidate for Rookie of the Year, won. I wouldn’t say he had the most memorable dunks, but he was the most consistent.

3-point contest

Once again, I wrote a prediction of the contest using a custom-built simulator, and once again, it was completely wrong. But that’s sorta the point: my big finding was the randomness of the contest. It’s not entirely predictable, and the best shooter doesn’t always win. This year, Klay Thompson lost to Devin Booker, who didn’t score 70 but his 28 in the final round was enough to break the record. Of course, because of the rule changes, it’s not directly comparable to the years where there was no moneyball rack. Prorated, Booker would have a score of 24.7, or 25 if you want to be generous and round up — and the old record was indeed 25 from immortal contest legend Craig Hodges and sharp-shooter Jason Kapono, who’s one of only four players to eclipse 50 percent from behind the arc in a non-lockout season.

All-Star game

Congrats, NBA: we didn’t have to collectively suffer through an awful all-star game where no one tries to play real basketball and the scores approach 200 points. My favorite theory this is that when the players are chosen personally by an MVP-caliber guy, they have more motivation to play well and more camaraderie. There was actual defense, and both teams looked truly competitive down the stretch. It ended well too — we should be thankful.

Curiously, Jimmy Butler didn’t even play due to fatigue and LaMarcus Aldridge was in there for only four minutes. If guys aren’t even going to play, it would have been nice to have a real replacement. I’ll go to my deathbed chanting Nikola Jokic should have been an All-Star, but the other selections weren’t perfect either. I’ve heard this adage with respect to Ben Simmons that young guys gotta wait their turn to be selected and properly “earn” an All-Star selection. But rookies were actually once extremely common. It’s only in the underclassmen/high school era that they’ve been rare: only Tim Duncan and Blake Griffin have been selected as rookies.

But both weren’t one-and-done players, and Griffin had a year off due to an injury. Ben Simmons had a year off too, so he wasn’t a true freshman prospect either. But the real point is, would a team this season truly value Goran Dragic over Ben Simmons? Yes, we should be happy for Dragic for getting to experience the event, and he was All-Star worthy a few years ago, but making up for a past mistake only kicks the can further down the road. Simmons has been outstanding and deserved serious consideration at the very least, and the 76ers’ core unit has looked legitimately great.

The Rockets continue to ascend

In non-all-star game news, the Houston Rockets continue to be sensational, and the partnership of James Harden and Chris Paul seems to be working ideally. Before the season, there were concerns about how they’d share the ball and responsibilities, but I noted both were shooters and great passers — those skills meld well together. Ben Taylor of Nylon Calculus explained this well; they are two very scalable players on a team perfectly suited for them. It’s near impossible to challenge this Golden State super-uber-team, but the Rockets are seriously attempting it.

The Utah Jazz win streak

Coming into the season, I was also keen on the Jazz, thinking they’d do better than expected because the loss of Gordon Hayward wouldn’t be debilitating and they’d still be able to deliver a top-tier defense. An injury to Rudy Gobert and the swift decline of Ricky Rubio derailed that notion for a while, but they’ve finally hit a groove with Gobert back and the team gelling together: they’ve won ten straight, and according to Jacob Goldstein they’ve got an 11 percent chance of breaking the franchise record with 16 wins.

How good are they in reality? They don’t have a league-leading defense or close to it, which is what I thought they’d need if they wanted to be good this season, but their offense has been unexpectedly average. Donovan MItchell has been a godsend as a rare rookie who burdens a huge percentage of his team’s plays without terrible efficiency. With some steady offense from Joe Ingles, Rodney Hood, and hopefully Jae Crowder who replaced Hood, along with Rudy Gobert’s screening and high-percentage finishes, it’s more than enough to survive the post-Gordon Hayward world.

Next: Nylon Calculus -- Diminishing returns on the step back jumper

The Bucks in a post-Kidd world

Much has been made of the Milwaukee Bucks having significantly higher performing defense since ditching their old head coach, but a lot of that is due to some noisy stats. However, I think one topic needs to be broached, especially with a (slightly) new environment. Has Eric Bledsoe been the sidekick that Giannis Antetokounmpo needs? As you can see in the table below, Bledsoe has indeed eased the burden on Giannis, who has the typical trade-off when his usage rate gets lowered. What’s useful to note is that he finished more at the rim with Bledsoe on the court; that’s truly showing he’s getting better shots. Bledsoe still hasn’t been the talent infusion they needed to rise more in the standings, but he’s not holding back Giannis either.

Table: Giannis’ stats with and without Bledsoe (pbpstats.com)