Mo fouled out in 14 minutes.
Poole drags his fg% lower than the prior 27%.
JP still not overly interested on the defensive sideā¦
Coaches in the NBAā¦
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Yeah, he really doesnāt look like an NBA player right nowā¦heās just not really on an NBA team.
I choose to believe he is jumping in before Nimari commits, and that is my choice. OK?
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Thatās a really good piece. Reccād to all.
Dylan mentioned that Rockets players must have had a good night in Miami:
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Data looks sound on the basketball front. But we probably need a volunteer to go out and check his strip club data. I have not idea what Toronto has to offer, but have no idea of the criteria, either.
Not volunteering.
Yeah his criteria to rank the best strip clubs was not good. He used Google reviews, which are relative to the city most likely. Thatās how you end up with Salt Lake City as #3 on his list of cities with the best strip clubs.
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low quality measurements add noise, they donāt create false signals
the correlation would be much stronger if we use Hardenās own ranking.
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Tough night for the fellas in the league. 8 players saw the floor with a combinedā¦
21-65 from the floor
7-31 from three
52 total points
Wagner continues to score pretty much at will, but commit a foul about every 2.5 minutes.
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Mo is having an interesting year so far
To the good:
Heās been an excellent scorer - full stop. 11 points in 18 minutes a game, and is doing so efficiently - 59% from the floor including 41% on threes (2.5 attempts a game). Given he was not known as a post operator, itās worth noting he takes half his shots within 3 feet and makes 77%. Aside from threes, the rest of who shots are 3-10 feet (āfloater rangeā), and makes 58% - he takes virtually none of the dreaded ālong twoā. Heās also getting 1.5 offensive boards in his 18 minutes - which is also great. He doesnāt seem to pass but heās done great ending possessions and picking up slop off the glass. His true shooting is 70% (league average is 55%), and since he shoots ALOT when heās on the floor, thatās astronomical.
Advanced stats actually has him as a league average defender, and heās somehow blocking a shot a game in his 18 minutes. The Wizards are WAY better on defense when he plays than when he doesnāt but I suspect thatās partly because the second unit has two defense-first guards so itās just a better environment for D. I also suspect that the NBA may be easier for his lack of foot speed because the shorter faster PFs playing up to Center that he had to play in college (think Jordan Murphy or Caleb Swanigan) donāt exist.
Thatās all great! So why does he only get 18 minutes a game, given that on a per-minute basis heās better in every facet than the starting center?
One, he turns the ball over ALOT, but heās been better about that over the past few games. That said, 2.5 turnovers a game in 18 minutes is still way too high.
Most prominently, he is committing four fouls in his 18 minutes - ie, he isnāt allowing Scottie Brooks the opportunity to play him more. Last night he had 4 in 9 minutes. We know that one of the challenges he had at Michigan was often just staying on the floor.
Overall heās shown more than I expected, and his biggest flaw, the one time I saw him (and this will be familiar) is his puppy-dog enthusiastic aggressiveness (charges, over the back on the boards, chasing blocks). He still picks up blocks because he canāt move his feet laterally, but he mostly needs to stop chasing the tennis ball.
Wagner is to me the most interesting alum right now because lots of scouts questioned if his offense was good enough and his defense serviceable enough to play
I donāt think anyone expected heād be able to score inside the arc, but he is.
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Appreciate this analysis! Would really love to see him succeed.
One more Michigan guy in the NBA - John Beilein. Itās early, and I sense it canāt last, but theyāre a respectable 4-5, and have really only gotten whipped twice (by the Bucks and Mavericks). Their wins are over some weaker teams, but the East has a ton of those, and if the Cavs are, like, the 10th best team in the conference and not the 15, that would be a big improvement.
Lots of things about how they play are familiar - theyāre slow (23rd in pace, still a bit faster than Iād have thought) and their best offensive trait in 4 factors is that they have the 5th lowest turnover rate. They also donāt foul - theyāre first in FTA/FGA defensively.
Two oddities so far is that theyāre dead league average in three point attempts - 15th, and other than not giving the ball away, their best trait is getting to the line - driven by Kevin Love getting a foul shot basically every 2 shot attemptsā¦which is great. Obviously having Love and a revitalized Tristan Thompson (in a contract year after stealing money for 4 seasons) helps, but theyāve gotten a phenomenal offensive start from Colin Sexton (using 27% of possessions at above average shooting efficiency. Perhaps most notably, Sextonās turnover rate so far is 8%, which is unsustainably low, and a 25% improvement from last year. This could be an area where Johnās proclivities are working?
Theyāve gotten some good shooting starts from Sexton and Cedi Osman (over 40% each from 3) and even oddly Larry Nance Jr (over 38% on 3 attempts a game, in his first time ever really shooting them). The team performance is getting submarined by Darius Garland and Jordan Clarkson (who really needs to stop playing) canning 27% on a combined 9 attempts a game.
Overall itās a good start, and you can see his fingerprints on the team already. Iām really interested in his interaction with Sexton who at least has started off at all-star levels of performance.
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It looks like John could be really instrumental in Sexton having a good career in the league. He came out of college looking like the kind of talent that needed to be polished, and from what I remember he had a pretty rough rookie year.
Yeah, Sexton was probably the worst starter in the NBA through the All-Star break, then had a fantastic March - so their is a trendline that pre-dated Beilein. That said, March NBA basketball isnāt always realā¦he was on a tanking team, and generally the trade deadline and post-deadline buyouts tend to REALLY hollow out the bottom half of the league, so you run into a decent amount of teams that are basically the walking dead. I also think Sexton has been helped by the fact that most of his minutes this year have been off-ball (last year he as 100% point guard, now he spends 75% of his time at the 2 next to Garland), and so he gets to catch & shoot more.
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I heard him say several times that he was a point guard and he was going to continue playing point guard with Beilein but he always seemed to be more of a finisher than a creator when I would watch him play. Whatās been the largest hole in Garlandās game? Is he just shooting really poorly, or is it turnovers?
Overall probably the shooting - his turnover rate is a little high, but not too bad.
Itās hard to say that much about him, heās 19 and basically didnāt play a college season in addition ot missing a whole year, so heās undergoing a pretty big adjustment.
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