Nylon Calculus Week 23 in Review: Spurs, Raptors, and reader questions

The NBA season is almost done — rejoice! I may get a week to sleep soon. But as soon as we recover from this chaotic regular season, we have the peaks and drama of the playoffs to deal with. Let’s enjoy these few quiet moments as a few teams play for mid-lottery placement.

Some teams and their fanbases are drowning in fire, sure, like the Wolves and Nuggets, but things will get more intense once we start eliminating great teams in the playoffs. And with that, let’s look back at the last week in basketball.

The fall of San Antonio

The management in San Antonio has long been the gold standard for front offices, but all things end — even Rome. More recently, they’ve had a few curious personnel decisions. They signed Rudy Gay, long the bane of the analytics community. We all assumed, Well, I don’t understand it, but the Spurs are the Spurs so it has to work out. Rudy Gay hasn’t been terrible this season, but he hasn’t been a plus either. He’s been the same scoring forward with lukewarm efficiency and not much else besides the shot attempts he’s been for his career. Yet the real cost is that Jonathon Simmons and Dewayne Dedmon, two athletic late-bloomers three years younger, left for other team. Dedmon in particular was an intriguing player, and he’s added 3-point range to his shot-blocking, rebounding, efficient scoring game.

The Spurs didn’t think their future needed to involve Dewayne Dedmon, who signed for a paltry $6 million a year for a lottery team; instead they thought Pau Gasol was worth the investment for $16 million dollars a year until 2020. He’s now 37 years-old. The Spurs have already given away his starting job, and he’s been playing fewer and fewer minutes. He’s been getting injured, sure, but his demotion also coincided with a big win streak San Antonio needed for the playoffs, and I don’t think the injuries will abate as he gets closer to 40 years-old. The Spurs stayed afloat this season partly due to the positive play of Dejounte Murray and Kyle Anderson, but they weren’t strictly recent additions, as Dejounte was drafted in 2016 and Kyle in 2013. I’m concerned with the front office after 2016 anyhow.

Why did San Antonio need solid play from those youngsters? Kawhi Leonard has played nine games this season, and the public (and probably most of the team) still has no idea when he’ll be back. Then we got the now infamous Woj-bomb about a “tense” players only meeting persuading Kawhi Leonard to return. Then a number of Spurs players mocked the story on twitter, saying the meeting wasn’t as drama-filled as the media would want. Yet Leonard is still not on the court despite various doctors clearing him for play at various points during the season. It’s unclear exactly what’s going on, and how severe the injury really is, but this situation cannot be seen as anything but a negative for the Spurs management.

You can also see how this induces chatter about how Leonard wants to leave San Antonio — a rift was created, before or after the injury, and he’s holding out because he no longer desires to play for the team. Unfortunately, it may be a wise move for him anyway. The Spurs even with him are not a contender, and it’s tough to see a path to contention for the franchise again. They’ve been striking out in free agency for a while. LaMarcus Aldridge has been by far their biggest “get,” but he’s older too and he is not the answer for the Rockets or Warriors. They still have their cache of unheralded draft picks and undrafted finds, but they, again, are not enough on their own. Danny Green could leave this summer too, as he has a player option and seemingly is not highly valued/respected by the staff. I don’t know what’s going on in San Antonio, or what their future holds. But this could be the beginning of a stark decline in the NBA’s 21st dynasty.

Leaders in offensive fouls

One of my favorite stats is the non-charge offensive foul drawn — or what I’ve come to term the “take” because the former is such an unwieldy name.  Who’s leading right now? Super Mario Chalmers, of course. After an Achilles injury at the end of 2016, he was unsigned for the entire 2017 season. Now, in his 30’s, he’s playing major minutes as the substitute for Mike Conley. He’s actually always had a high take rate — an offensive foul drawn that’s not a charge — and even his steal rate is holding up as he ages.

You can see the rest of the leaders below. It’s a weird mix of players, and there are definitely defenders in there without a great reputation. However, perhaps we can take something away from this. Damian Lillard, for example, is notorious for his inability to navigate screens, but that can also draw a ton of offensive fouls. Many small defenders create these “takes” because they have to chase other small players, and if they’re great at selling or creating contact it’s a big plus for their team. Mario Chalmers isn’t a great defender because of this one stat, but it does give him some unique value.

Table: leaders in “takes” per 36 minutes, 2018, min. 1000 MP

News from the wire

More bad injury news: Kyrie Irving will be out for a few weeks, and based on the time-table that could include the entire first round. The surgery needed is to replace a tension wire placed there years ago from a previous injury — just don’t try picturing it. This is awful timing for the Celtics, who somehow keep winning but even they can’t imagine that’ll continue with Marcus Smart out for a while too. They’ll snag the second seed, but the East has some close races right now and they could face the monster that is Giannis Antetokounmpo or the Wizards with a healthy John Wall. Those are not playoff series you want to tackle without Kyrie Irving. This is the chance you take with Irving as your lead scorer, who’s had seasons with injuries since he was in college, but we don’t need this right now — get healthy, please.

The 30th team

The Rockets just broke their own record for wins in a season and they hit 60 for the first time too, and it appears Toronto will join them in that camp by the season’s end as well. Five of their six best seasons by wins and adjusted point differential have come in the past five seasons — and that sixth one was only a hair under fifth. They’ve had steady improvement for a while, and they’re deep with a mix of veterans and young players. But the respect isn’t there, from the teams, other fans, or the league itself.

For a team that’ll probably hit 60 wins, they are under-the-radar. In fact, when the NBA TV schedule was released, they had fewer nationally televised games than the rebuilding Dallas Mavericks and one more than the Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings. I don’t think this is a boring team either, and if you want to argue that it’s because of a lack of marketable stars that’s a cause-and-effect problem: the more you get put on national television, the more exposure and star power you gain.

And indeed, we’re all waiting on them to perform well in the playoffs or else most of the league is going to write them off as regular season champions who turn into post-season pumpkins once the 82nd game is in the books. That’s not the healthiest way to analyze the team, nor is it fair to them. I don’t think we should partition them from the rest of the league just because they’re in a different country when they’re this successful. There are logistical issues involved because of broadcast rights and other problems, but the NBA is a product and the product does better when the higher quality version is presented, not just one that directly satisfies local fans. Solutions should be found.

Grizzlies lose by 61 points, enter existentialist void

Tanking as an art form. The Grizzlies give up an offensive rating of 144 to the Hornets. It was one of the largest losses in NBA history and one blog gave everyone an F minus for the performance — except the bench, who got the dreaded F minus minus. Also, what a way to inflate Charlotte’s already suspiciously decent plus-minus; future basketball researchers will be scratching their heads at how the Hornets fared so poorly despite a decent point differential and the play of Kemba Walker with solid coaching.

All-NBA guard spots

From the discussion I’ve seen, choosing the six guards for the all-NBA teams will be tough and they’ll be some cold omissions. Kyrie Irving has probably bumped himself off the candidate list with his injury, but Stephen Curry was so fantastic I could see people voting for him even if he barely plays the rest of the season. Then there’s Chris Paul, who missed 14 games in the season early on but has been fantastic since then. James Harden and Russell Westbrook have to be included, so then you have to deal with Damian Lillard, Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Victor Oladipo, and others.

The question is, how do you deal with missed games? It appears a lot of people just have a hard cut-off where if you miss this many guys, then you can’t have an X amount of value or represent the All-NBA team. But if you want to go for pure value, a guy with even just 50 games can absolutely be a legitimate candidate over every non-superstar. For example, you can see a list of players ranked by BPM’s quantity measure, which uses replacement level. The point isn’t to agree with BPM’s ranking; it’s to see how minutes translate into some value measure. Plus, this is using a low floor of replacement level, and from my research with how people vote for MVP candidates it’s more about a high level of play rather than just a huge amount of minutes. It’s always tough voting for the all-NBA players; just make sure you’re dealing with missed games appropriately

The real answer to this is locked away in proprietary data. We absolutely have the information for this somewhere — it’s just not public knowledge. I still wanted to answer this though because I’m sure someone at a major site could get access to this data and use it willy-nilly. The issue is, the data cited will most likely not be adjusted for the strength of the competition, the other teammate(s) involved, or other factors. I would also think you’d need a lot of data before the numbers stabilize. So yes, it is possible to get the raw stats to hedging versus switching, and to even do a plus-minus of the two, but be careful interpreting the results.

This is not a direct question, but I feel as though it should be addressed. Sometimes people look at how well a team has fared against the best or worst offenses or defenses — and then draw conclusions from there. In this example, Toronto is being critiqued for not being able to perform against elite teams, essentially, but how a team does versus the top teams is actually just noise. You can read more here. Teams do not have the ability to play up or down to their competition, and it is not an indicator of how a team will do in the playoffs.

This is a pretty fun question considering what’s going on in the NBA right now. First of all, intent is a tricky thing to prove. There’s not much in the way of hard evidence when you’re worried a team is being coached to “lose” or that the rotations are built to tank. Sometimes coaches make mistakes, or maybe they’re just trotting out experimental lineups or young guys because the season has been lost anyhow — may as well get something out of it. But there is one methodology I’d attempt: tanking teams will “rest” their most valuable players at significantly higher rates than otherwise. In other words, once the playoffs are out of reach, look for teams who play their best guys less often without an obvious and verifiable injury to explain it.

Let’s start with the Knicks. Besides Porzingis, there are four key contributors I think we should focus on: Kyle O’Quinn, Enes Kanter, Courtney Lee, and Tim Hardaway Jr. If you want to tank, you’d play those guys less often. While I’ll ignore Frank Ntilikina’s poor advanced stats because I do not believe they pick up his defense well, he’s a rookie who should be playing more even when tanking and the situation with Emmanuel Mudiay makes it murkier. As you can see in the table below, there’s nothing anomalous with three of those players, and they didn’t miss a ton of games either. But Courtney Lee is exactly the kind of player you’d keep out of competitive games as a veteran defender. Then there’s Mudiay, who’s a great stealth tanking project because people lauded them for taking a chance at an experiment with a young guy with potential who also happens to kill his own teams when he’s on the court.

Table: Knicks tanking targets, 2018

The Kings are a funny case. It’s hard to find any plus players. In fact, if Kosta Kofous sees his BPM go south, they’ll have the rare distinction of having no players with a BPM above zero. But Kofous and Buddy Hield have actually played more since the All-Star break, my demarcation point. Rookie Bogdan Bogdanovic has seen his minutes barely change, but again it’s tough to say who’s even a valuable contributor on the team. The Suns have been sidetracked by injuries, and Booker has continued to play a high minutes load. I doubt they’re tanking.

The Grizzlies have a strong tanking case. Tyreke Evans has been the most effective player for them this season because Marc Gasol stopped caring. And coincidentally after the trade deadline Evans has missed a huge chunk of games due to a rib injury with which they’re taking extreme caution. Dallas has nothing too egregrious. Wesley Matthews hasn’t missed a game until quite recently where he’s missed four a counting — put a pin in that. The Magic have had legitimate injuries. Atlanta has had so little talent his season it’s tough to tank like that, and they haven’t.

Next: Nylon Calculus -- Joel Embiid has your sample size right here

Who else? Ah, the Bulls of course. After being a starter with at 28 minutes per game, Robin Lopez has missed several games and has bizarrely played exactly 12 minutes in four other games since the all-star break. Justin Holiday has gone from 34 minutes to 21, and it’s not just the return of Zach LaVine: he’s missed games too. The Bulls actually received an official warning against resting Lopez and Justin Holiday from the NBA. My method won’t find every tanking case — like the infamous Mark Madsen game where he fired up ridiculous 3-pointers — but you can see how this can be quantified or used to find red flags. Chasing injuries is promising. When players miss more time than expected for an injury time, you can ask questions. The siren song of drafting a superstar is strong, and this’ll continue even with the slightly tweaked draft odds.