NBA 2018 Hot Takes (115 views)

[eric]

16 pts 4 reb 4 ast 2 tov per 36, 49%/88%/38%, .10 ws/48, .10 wp/48
20 pts 4 reb 5 ast 3 tov per 36, 46%/78%/32%, .10 ws/48, .10 wp/48

player B gives you a little more production but a lot worse efficiency, in composite stats they're neck and neck.
player B makes $15m next year.
player A makes $1.5m.

I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

.

"But Malcolm Brogdon is hurt!" you may cry. "If the Milwaukee Bucks hadn't acquired Eric Bledsoe they'd have fallen out of the playoffs!"

First of all, nobody asked you.

Second of all, they're only in the playoffs by luck now: sixth in seed but eighth in SRS, and they only fractionally lead Charlotte.

Third of all, who cares if they miss the playoffs this year? Giannis is 23 and under contract for many years. Winning 0 playoff games or winning 2 playoff games this year is irrelevant in the long run. You know what's relevant in the long run? Failing to retain young players because you don't have any cap space because you chased after a has been veteran who never was that has had surgeries on both knee meniscuses.

Good luck with that.

[eric]

Quick update on the season as it stands as we get under way tonight.

1 60 Toronto Raptors
2 54 Boston Celtics
3 47 Cleveland Cavaliers
4 47 Washington Wizards
5 46 Indiana Pacers
6 45 Philadelphia 76ers
7 45 Milwaukee Bucks
8 41 Miami Heat
--- ---
9 40 Detroit Pistons
10 36 Charlotte Hornets 
11 33 New York Knicks 
12 28 Chicago Bulls 
13 27 Brooklyn Nets 
14 27 Orlando Magic 
15 26 Atlanta Hawks 


1 63 Houston Rockets
2 62 Golden State Warriors
3 49 San Antonio Spurs
4 48 Minnesota Timberwolves
5 47 Oklahoma City Thunder
6 45 Portland Trail Blazers
7 45 Denver Nuggets
8 44 Los Angeles Clippers
--- ---
9 44 New Orleans Pelicans
10 43 Utah Jazz 
11 33 Los Angeles Lakers 
12 28 Dallas Mavericks 
13 28 Memphis Grizzlies 
14 24 Sacramento Kings 
15 24 Phoenix Suns 
best stats:

2.73 James Harden
2.60 Karl-Anthony Towns
2.48 Jimmy Butler
2.43 Giannis Antetokounmpo
2.33 LeBron James
2.29 Anthony Davis
2.20 Russell Westbrook
2.07 Damian Lillard
1.95 Stephen Curry
1.93 Chris Paul
1.92 Kyle Lowry
1.87 Nikola Jokic
resulting mvp ballot: Harden - Curry - Lowry - Horford - KAT(!)

LeBron (or frankly anyone whose facial hair isn't described by a sim league GM's handle) for MVP is pretty well dead. Harden's on the best team, has the best stats, and he's due after getting flagrantly robbed last year. With that said, if the Cavs do somehow get to a top two seed it'll probably be in part because LeBron's stats surge back to where he was earlier in the league, and voters love a legacy candidate.

But it's Harden. Don't overthink it. Best player, best team. It's not hard. What we all think the Warriors will do in the postseason is great and irrelevant - it's not the postseason MVP. It's the regular season MVP. It's Harden.

[eric]

So the Cavs rotation so far has been caught on a dilemma: close with Tristan Thompson or Larry Nance at center? They're both close range only guys on offense and undersized on defense, which is good because they have enough foot speed to (briefly) hang with perimeter players but bad because they don't defend at the rim well. The first two games the Cavs went with Nance, last night they went with... neither.



Lue dabbled with LeBron James at center lineups in the first half, putting JR and Hood on the wings and trying Clarkson-Korver, Hill-Korver, and Hill-Green at the 1-4. Green's big flaw is that he can't shoot, which is in a sense minimized if you play him with four other shooters, but in another more sensible sense why are you running a no big lineup if you're still going to put a guy out there who can't shoot. Tristan Thompson isn't Rudy Gobert out there but he'll give you more shot deterrence than Jeff friggin' Green.

Closing the fourth quarter Lue went exclusively with Hill-Korver which is the best answer a priori. It forced a Washington adjustment and looked like it was working, but the main thing with lineups is that you'll try them at all - the Warriors only found the Lineup of Death because small forward Draymond Green turned out to be able to play center. One wrinkle was that Tristan got in a pretty heated exchange with someone on the Cavs bench as he got yanked with 4 minutes left in the fourth. He only became a full time starter last year; in 2015 and 2016 he was still splitting starts with Varejao and Mozgov. Coming back from injury and losing starts is one thing, but losing closing time might be a bridge too far, and it's only going to get worse when Kevin Love comes back. You know how those fiery Canadians are.

.

The Cedi Osman - Rodney Hood situation continues to be odd. There are lots of teams that play a sixth man more than a starter, but what stands out to me here is how en bloc the minutes are. As in previous games Osman started the first and third quarters and sat for almost the rest of the game except for a 12 second stint to close the first half. This in turn meant that Hood played the last four minutes of the first and then the entire second quarter - 16 minutes in a row seems like suboptimal minute management! The pattern repeated in the second half except for a 90 second period where Lue trotted out a jumbo lineup of Clarkson - Korver - Green - LeBron - Nance. Korver is underrated defensively but there's nobody on that lineup you want guarding a fast wing player, and everybody's got a fast wing player. Again you like to see him experimenting but this one probably should go back on the shelf.

[eric]

Going into tonight's action, who do you suppose has the most Win Shares in the last three and a half seasons?

Obviously Steph Curry, right?

WRONG

James Harden has 55.9 to Curry's second place 54.3. We all know he was clearly the MVP in 2017, but he led the league in Win Shares for the 2 seed Rockets in 2015 too and was rewarded with a second place MVP finish. If he somehow doesn't win this year he's guaranteed to take the lead in most career MVP shares ever without winning one. Current leader is Jerry West with 2.021, then Chris Paul 1.640, Elgin Baylor 1.624, James Harden 1.568.

Speaking of Chris Paul, he's third in Win Shares since 2015. Ahead of LeBron, ahead of best player in the world Kevin Durant, ahead of MVP Russell Westbrook.

Harden has also dipped below the 30/.30 mark, sitting at 30.5 PER and .299 WS/48 going into tonight's game. It always takes luck to reach the mark, and it's no different for Harden. I'm rooting for him though, it would be great to have an MVP with actual historically great stats for a change.

[eric]

More fun lineups from the Cavs.

Rodney Hood has come in the game every time Cedi Osman went out in the first three games: seven for seven. Against the Grizzlies Lue instead brought him in for JR Smith. Now JR did have some foul trouble in the game, but when he was subbed out after seven minutes in the first quarter he had zero (0) personal fouls, so it seems like that was going to be the strategy anyway. My guess is it was due to being the road half of a back to back and even though JR was drafted out of high school a year after LeBron he is not an indefatigable basketball cyborg so his human body needs his rest.

Even taking that into account, other lineup permutations appeared unforced. At multiple times in the game Lue ran out two point guard looks for the first time since the trades, putting George Hill and Jordan Clarkson alongside Nance and forward combos of Hood-LeBron, Hood-Green, and Korver-LeBron. Sometimes a team is looking to exploit matchups but the Grizzlies are terrible so I think what was going on was Lue made it a point of emphasis to experiment with lineups. This is made most apparent when we look at five consecutive lineups going from the end of the 1st into the 2nd quarter:

Hill - Clarkson - Hood - Green - Nance
Clarkson - Hood - Korver - Green - Nance
Hood - Korver - Green - LeBron - Nance
Hill - Hood - Korver - Green - LeBron
Hill - JR - Hood - Korver - Green

From two to one to zero point guards right in a row, then back to one but with LeBron at center, then f*** it let's try Jeff Green at center!

:ohshit:

Lue went with one traditional big throughout the second half but still, this is a wild sequence of lineups, and again I want to stress that the Grizzlies are terrible, so why not experiment? One reason is you can lose the locker room by jerking the rotation around like this. With that said, everyone in the ten man rotation is getting at least 15 minutes a game so it shouldn't be too bad. He hasn't tried it yet but JR - Hood - Korver - Green - LeBron gives you all wings, if that's what you're into.

The last odd wrinkle is that Cedi Osman is still getting garbage time minutes even though he's starting. I kind of remember Mario Chalmers getting them in Miami but my feeling is it doesn't augur well for his minutes after Love comes back. They don't play the same position but LeBron will have to slide down more, and those minutes have to come from someone.

[eric]

The Problem with the 76ers

Embiid can't defend on the perimeter.
Saric can't defend on the perimeter.
Simmons can't defend on the perimeter.

I don't care to argue what position Simmons plays. Call him whatever you want, just Watch The Games. Tonight they had him defending Otto Porter, and then Oubre when he came in. I don't care how good you pass (and he passes very, very well), you can't pass your way around your center of gravity, or the length of your legs. Kevin Durant was a middling defender at small forward, then Golden State let him play as a big and suddenly he's a DPOY candidate. Why? He's seven feet tall! Let him stand around near the rim with his nine foot long arms, and he'll do great! Duh!

I got a little off track there.

The NBA is moving towards three point shooting and playmaking at every position, but the main way it's moving that way is by playing physically smaller humans. Everyone dumps on Kevin Love because he can't defend the Warriors (except for that time when he successfully won a championship against the Warriors), Ben Simmons is the same size as Kevin Love: same height, same wing span. How do you think he's d-ing up against Golden State, or any other perimeter player?

He's not.

In the regular season teams will let you hide that guy on a non threat. In the playoffs good teams will put him in the pick and roll every single time down the floor, if they don't intentionally foul him off the floor on offense.

.

All three guys are getting maxes (Embiid already has one).

Embiid is the generational superstar. You have to keep him.

If you move Simmons, Embiid becomes Minnesota Love who can play defense, Saric is a classic stretch/playmaking four. That's an easy road to 50 wins, maybe Covington blows up and gets you to true title contention, or maybe one of the prospects you get back for Simmons hits. It's the high floor play.

If you move Saric, you've got Minnesota Rubio who can't shoot as well(!!!) and can't guard the point, but he's 6'10". If he learns to shoot even at league average, you have LeBron and Olajuwon and all the rings. It's the high ceiling play... but here's the thing. There's no player in NBA history who's gone from shooting as bad as Simmons to making even half a three a game, which literally every perimeter starter in the NBA made last year except for Michael Kidd Gilchrist. We're not talking about LeBron coming in at 29% and grinding his way to 35%. He's at 0%, AND he can't shoot free throws. It's not going to happen, it's just not.

[eric]

Before the trades the Cavs were a good on offense (+3 from league average 108.5) and bad on defense (ditto) and so about league average overall. In the six games since they've had their post-trade players they've recorded 115.1 ORtg and 109.0 DRtg, and against teams that average 107.6 ORtg and 107.1 DRtg.

Put another way, they've put up a very good scoring margin against a slightly above average strength of schedule, and overall are a bit behind the big three of Golden State / Houston / Toronto yeah that's right I said Toronto you wanna fight about it? but well ahead of everyone else.

Since their opponents have been below average offensively the defense probably isn't as good as it looks, which given that it was still below average probably means their defensive true talent level is still well below average, but we're probably looking at something like 20th in the league rather than 30th.

Since their opponents have been above average defensively their offense is probably even better than it looks, which given that it's putting up near-best in the league numbers is a lot more encouraging.

Kevin Love is not known for his defense but in the past seven years (i.e. since he entered his prime) his career on/off is +6.3 ORtg and -0.4 DRtg. The question as always will be how the rotation works with yet another big man. Thompson, Nance, Love, and LeBron are all going to get minutes, which means LeBron will play more small forward, which means one of the Korver/Green/Osman/Hood crew is going to get squeezed out of the rotation. Love is better than all those guys but that doesn't mean he fits (in) better. We'll see how it goes.

[eric]

Why The Ringer Is Missing the Point Re: Ben Simmons

see what i did there
point
ben simmons

Okay moving on.

It's bad enough that we're going along with the farce of calling a guy who primarily defends forwards a point guard, but we need to stop the Magic Johnson comps immediately, if not sooner. Tall ball handler, no threes, playing with a HoF center, I get it. But Magic Johnson came into the league shooting 81% from the line after shooting 82% over two college years. Simmons shot 67% in college and has somehow gotten worse in the pros with 57%, which with an 8% confidence interval is worse to a statistically significant degree. We don't have any granular data from back then so it's hard to say whether Magic's very good free throw shooting translated to two point jump shooting, but we do now and Simmons isn't even taking them.

Which brings me to my next point. Of course having no jumper can be overcome when you have the ball in your hands: set the pick at the foul line, play five out, etc. The problem comes when you don't have the ball in your hands, and it's a problem Magic even if he was a non shooter never had to face because you weren't allowed to zone up back then. This is the source of all the "well actually the Thunder offense works better when Westbrook shoots, he should never pass to Durant!" bad takes, and you can substitute Kobe/Gasol or Carmelo/everyone, literally everyone. Of course the offense works better when you don't have a poor shooter the defense can casually help 10 feet off of. That's evidence against the hog, not for.

It's also not like the 76ers are the 2013 Heat out there (five players shot 40% from three) (never been done since) (probably the greatest team of all time). Covington, Saric, and Embiid all shoot with confidence but for their careers they're 36%, 34%, and 34% respectively from three, and it doesn't get any rosier on the bench with 35% McConnell, 32% Luwawu-Cabarrot, 34% Amir. Belly at 38% is their only legitimately good shooter beyond Reddick, when Simmons doesn't have the ball there's just too many guys that defense will cheat off of because unlike in 1984 it's legal for them to do so.

[eric]

Why Tony Parker Isn't a Good Sign for Ben Simmons

Hey, Tony Parker learned how to shoot! Give Ben some time!

Tony Parker rookie year
51 of 122 on long twos (41.8%)
61 of 189 on threes (32.3%)

Tony Parker career
41.3% on long twos
32.6% on threes (aka 3-PT FGS)

So actually rookie Tony Parker could shoot the lights out relative to rookie Ben Simmons, and actually he didn't ever improve his jump shooting, not even a little bit, not even at all.

I'm going to keep harping on this. Ben Simmons is not merely a "bad" jump shooter, he's a Shaquille O'Neal level jump shooter. He makes Lonzo Ball look like Steph Curry. He makes Andrew Wiggins look like Kyle Korver. His shooting is so gross its nickname should be school lunch. His shooting is so bad Michael Jackson wrote a song about it. His two point jumper has about as much chance of going in as the Hornets have of making the playoffs. His shooting is so crappy we should rename :dumpbucks: :bensimmonsjumpshot: except D is too high a grade.

Which is fine! NBA annals are littered with elite big men who couldn't hit a jump shot. But stop comparing him to guards who were slightly below average as though their growth was in any way indicative of how he'll improve. He's a) not a guard and b) nowhere near the league of Ricky Rubio, Tony Parker, Jason Kidd et al when it comes to jump shooting anyway.

[TimPig]

He’s the next LeBron

[mj]

Hot take: The Orlando Magic are bad