Nylon Calculus Week 5 in Review: Exciting rookies and fun stats

As a late review of the last week in basketball, let’s take a moment to be thankful for the NBA season in a media world that can be prone to being overly critical. You can view games on a plethora of devices at almost any time you want now. Gone are the days when even the conference finals were tape delayed or entire chunks of a season were not available outside of a local network. You can now rewatch specific games days later or watch it live. There are some issues with cable providers, sure, and black-outs for local games, but accessibility is at a high point. Let’s be thankful.

Carmelo Anthony out in Houston

Count me as someone who’s been very confused by the Carmelo Anthony takes this season: he’s been lamented as the star who’s fallen. While it’s true few players have taken such a steep four-year fall, he was awful last season and I would say he hasn’t played at a star level in years. Yes, he made the All-Star team in 2017, but his BPM was negative — as much as you can critique that metric, going negative is not a great sign for an All-Star. He’s in his mid-30’s and has been sliding for a while. As a scorer who isn’t great at making plays for others and doesn’t defend, it’s hard to have a lot of value when your shooting efficiency hasn’t been above average since 2014.

In fact, go back to that table in the FiveThirtyEight article. What do you notice? There are a lot of players who relied on their athleticism who lost their game in their 30’s. I know that Anthony isn’t the paragon of an elite athlete, but he’s not a finesse player who can rely on his skills aging well either. His value comes (or came, unfortunately) from isolation possessions where he can square up and use his quickness to get a shot. He wasn’t an all-star because of his passing, size, or shooting accuracy — skills that age well.

Compounded by the age decline is Houston’s roster. You’d rather have the ball in Chris Paul’s or James Harden’s hands, and since Carmelo derives his value from scoring, his value dissipates quickly. There’s merit in having a scorer for when those two are available, especially given minutes and load concerns, but I don’t think that’s what Anthony or Houston had in mind. As a scoring forward whose game was predicated on his deceptive quickness, we should have all seen this coming for the 34-year-old Carmelo Anthony, especially after a similar experiment failed last year with the Thunder. This is nothing against him as a person; it’s just reality as the years rage on — and he’ll always be one of the most prominent scorers of his era with a scoring title and memorable runs in the Olympic and FIBA tournament games. We can’t take that away from him.

60 is the new 50

Against a team known for its defensive stars, the 76ers, Kemba Walker dropped a career-high 60-points. Sadly, it was the rare modern 60-point game that came in a losing effort, justifying his continued usage and minutes total. It happened to Devin Booker a couple years ago when he hit 70-points, and before that, it was Michael Jordan. This just reinforces a common trade scenario: get Walker out of Charlotte and onto a better team. They’re doing okay for now, but last season they missed the playoffs with a losing record and no one would be surprised if that happened again. The Hornets should be thinking about the future and what their five-year plan is. If they don’t think they can produce a winning team with their current core, they need to evaluate other options. It’s only fair.

2019 RPM rankings

It’s that time of the year again: let’s all argue about what RPM means and how we’re all misusing it. You can see the updated list here. Marc Gasol, surprisingly, is dominating the league there, but Memphis has had some pretty extreme on/off splits, which I’ll actually revisit again. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Gasol benefits from some opponent 3-point percentage luck. He hasn’t often done well in plus-minus stats, so let’s see if that one sticks.

Speaking of centers, Joel Embiid has a nice showing again, and what I find most fascinating is that he is again a plus on offense. I know that sounds trivial, but sort by offensive RPM for past seasons. It’s dominated by smaller players, and only a few big men (Karl-Anthony Towns and Nikola Jokic, for instance) are anywhere near the top. Ball dominant centers who don’t rack up a lot of assists rarely do well in offensive plus-minus stats, but Embiid has been clearly positive. One would be tempted to think that Embiid, who has a higher career usage rate than everyone include Michael Jordan and a history of turnovers, could be considered a black hole, but he has a healthy rate of nearly 5 assists per 100 possessions and his turnovers are down this season. He’ll shoot as much as anyone ever, but he’s not a drag on the offense; he’s a boon.

If you sort by wins, depending on when you try this, LeBron James may rise to the top. Does that mean he’s the MVP? This all depends on your interpretation of the stats. Being first in RPM means you are first in RPM, and nothing more. Is it an indication that the player has had a great season? Yes. Treat it as evidence, not proof. RPM was designed by predicting out-of-sample wins, meaning it’s trying to be the link between the player and the win. That is still just a link, but the stat shouldn’t be dismissed either. It’s usually hinting at something significant.

Is LeBron James the MVP because of the stats? I don’t exactly believe his defensive stats — I’ve gone into the reasons why before — and I don’t like award an MVP this early. Stephen Curry, for instance, has been electric when he’s been on the court, and if he can stay healthy the rest of the season he’d have my completely nonexistent vote. Let’s not give anyone the award yet. And when it comes to RPM, it won’t tell you who’s best, but it will be a starting point where you can dig further and make more comprehensive conclusions.

Crumpled Jumper is at it again

I thought I’d promote this fantastic tool since it does need more promotion. It’ll show you every 50-point game out there in a graphic format. I’ve actually done similar things with 40-point games, and what I found interesting were the frontier lines that’d form because of the relationship of efficiency and scoring attempts. The more attempts you have, the more you regress to the mean, so this triangular pattern emerges. Also, you’re less likely to score more points when you’re inefficient, so most high-scoring games are indeed quite efficient, and it cuts off inefficient games

Jaren Jackson Jr.

As a rare example of an NBA son who’s taller than his father, Jaren Jackson Jr. has not only been a promising center for the Grizzlies but he’s been legitimately effective, even though he’s a teenager. Only a handful of players have a higher block rate right now — he’s blocking more shots than luminaries like Anthony Davis and Rudy Gobert — and he’s been scoring at a surprisingly high rate even though his jump shot has yet to translate to the league. On a decent team, has Jackson become a stealth Rookie of the Year candidate or at least a first-team rookie option?

Jaren is an unorthodox scorer. There was a lot of excitement coming into the league over his ability to hit outside shots, but his 3-point percentage has been in the mid-20’s and he’s been ignoring mid-range jumpers. How is he scoring? You can see these shots he made against the Kings last week where he hit a career-high of 27 points. He’s a slashing center. Not only does he roll to the rim, but he can take the ball off the dribble and drive to the rim — and he does it really well. In fact, he even has a signature move where he goes left and then spins and finishes to the right.

Defensively, Jaren Jackson is likely already a plus, even as a rookie. Ignore his on-off numbers for now since it’s early in the season and there are some extreme on-off splits between the starters and the bench defensively. I do have some concerns with his rebounding; his lithe frame is not helping him there, and the team is rebounding better without him. But with his quickness and length, he can absolutely swallow defenders. You can see him here stuffing Klay Thompson at the rim, and Jonas Jerebko had no chance at all trying to drive on him. It happens to quicker players too. Jeff Teague squared him up at the 3-point line and still got stuffed inside, and even Andrew Wiggins got rejected.

Going forward, Jaren Jackson Jr. will remain a dark horse in the Rookie of the Year race simply because of volume: he’s not playing heavy minutes and Luka Doncic, for instance, has the right situation to showcase his skills. Marc Gasol will, of course, remain their main option in the middle, but now Jaren has to compete with JaMychal Green for minutes. However, keep track of this guy for the future; a few draft prognosticators called this out. He has the agility and skills of a smaller player but can legitimately be a rim protector too — we’ve heard that song before with talks of unicorns, but he can truly put the ball on the floor with ease and his shot-blocking numbers are elite. As one of the key pieces for a surprising team, he deserves more attention.

Caris LeVert and Wolff’s Law

Last week, Caris LeVert suffered a scary injury where people warned not to even view a single repay. Thankfully, a recovery is possible — it was a dislocation, not a break. There’s no timetable, but this could have been worse. Basketball has seen a lot of frightening injuries, but is this actually inherent in the sport?

Let’s zoom out for a moment. Football is experiencing backlash right now because of CTE’s and other serious injuries. When there are legitimate risks to a sport, you can understand why people will have reservations about the activity. You could see how someone would want to extend that to basketball if we keep seeing severe injuries. It’s a sport about quickness with lots of jumping and high-impact landings. However, that does not necessarily make it dangerous.

While there may be fear right now about a high-impact sport, that is in fact actually healthy for a human body. There’s a mechanism known as Wolff’s law, which states that bones react to loading by strengthening against that load. Conversely, the lack of a load (or force) translates into weaker bones. This is the phenomenon that happens with astronauts; it’s not just muscular atrophy.

Essentially, this means that many actions on the basketball court strength the bones and prevent certain injuries, not cause it. Actually, one common treatment of osteoporosis, which causes weak and brittle bones, is a high-impact exercise like basketball. Bones are not static components; they’re organic and living, constantly changing in response to their environment.

This is not to say that Wolff’s law doesn’t have potentially negative consequences because of how the bone responds and grows to the loading. Or that, as some people have mistakenly thought, having a broken bone means it will come back stronger than before. But the actions on the basketball court do not necessarily lead to weaker bones. It’s more complicated than that.

Of course, Caris LeVert did not break a bone; he dislocated his foot. Gordon Hayward actually did both last year, and he’s now competing at the NBA level again (Boston’s issues notwithstanding, as that’s a topic of his own.) But I do want to address the concerns of the sport and its effects on the body.

I know that when someone like Caris has a gruesome injury the natural inclination is to believe they can’t come back as strong. But there are other mechanisms like Davis’ law where soft tissue can strengthen itself too — Caris will go through physical therapy using that principle. One big concern coming back from a major injury is the rust; it’s a long time to go without playing basketball.

Caris LeVert was enjoying a breakout season for the Nets, coming into his own as a scorer and playmaker. His injury won’t stop his career. He’s still young and pliable; he has the ability to recover and come back as strong as ever. Playing basketball didn’t make him weaker or more susceptible. It’s just that there’s an increased exposure where he’s in more high-risk situations where limbs can be loaded in severe, unnatural ways.

But he will come back.