More on Dantley. A big red flag is Dantley's
WOWY scores, which are quite unflattering. In the case of Detroit, it is even suggested that his presence could have had a negative impact on his teams. I'm very interested in Elgee's WOWY metric, and it raises a legitimate concern about Dantley's offensive brilliance translating to team benefit.
I'll talk about the 1988 Piston team later, but for now I want to focus on the 1982-83 Jazz.
Here is a spreadsheet I've put together of that season.
On a macro level, Utah finished 30-52, with an offensive rating of 101.2 (good for 20th in the league) and a defensive rating of 105.1 (good for 12th in the league). The offense was notably worse than in 1982 (and 1984), while the defense took a big step forward (up from 20th).
Dantley missed 60 games that season after suffering a career-threatening wrist injury on December 17th against San Antonio. Dantley was having a brilliant season before he went down, with a TS north of 66% on 34.1 PP100 (good for the second highest Score+ of all-time, adding 6.7 points per 100 possessions over league average!), as well as a career high of 5.3 assists per 100 against 4.1 turnovers. And yet looking at raw SRS numbers, the Jazz with Dantley were -5.38 in SRS, while they were -3.80 without him!
So what gives? Looking at the spreadsheet, with Dantley, the Jazz enjoyed a TS of 0.5450 while it fell to 0.5260 without him. On the other hand, Utah's opponents had a TS of 0.5332 with Dantley but only 0.5133 without him, so the efficiency differential was virtually identical. Dantley was not the kind of player there to elevate the play of his teammates per se, as can be seen with a slight dip in teammate eFG% from 0.4792 without Dantley to 0.4718 with him, although the drop in teammate TS is more notable, from 0.5260 without Dantley to 0.5105 with him. The cause of this seems to be that Dantley was perhaps cannibalizing free throw attempts, as the free throw rates for his teammates fell from 0.3322 without Dantley to 0.2592 with him. Overall, however, team free throw rate was virtually identical with and without Dantley, and Dantley taking the lion's share of free throws was not a bad thing for the team, as he made nearly 85% of them. There is no noticeable change in assist rate with or without Dantley.
What jumps off the page is the rebound rate with Dantley was only 0.4403, such that the Jazz were being outrebounded by nearly 11 per game, while the rate improved to 0.4759 without Dantley to the tune of a rebounding deficit of less than 5 per game. That massive rebounding disparity meant that Utah had many fewer possessions than their opponents, so Utah's efficiency advantage was not enough to overcome having fewer possessions. So was Dantley part of a rebounding problem? It's hard to say - Utah was uniformly terrible with rebounding throughout his time in Utah (though it bottomed out in 1982-83), and continued to be very poor for two seasons following his departure. It might be worth looking into other seasons where he missed significant time (1980 and 1985) to get a better sense of things. We don't have turnover data for each game, but as a team, Utah took care of the ball better in 1982 and 1984, both of which were high-minute seasons for Dantley.
Another notable feature is the change in opponent TS. During the first 2 sets of 12 games, opponents had their highest efficiency. So does the decline after Dantley was out indicate that he was defensively porous? I think a lurking factor is Mark Eaton's role, and this would go unnoticed by the general WOWY concept (though Elgee's score seems to exclude games after the Schayes trade). Utah had relative success defensively, and I feel it's very largely due to Eaton. He would become DPOY a few seasons later, and while he only averaged 18.9 MPG as a rookie, it's pretty clear that his role increased as the season progressed. BBR has box score images, and I took a look at where Eaton was listed for Utah. I'm pretty sure that the starters are all listed first, as Eaton is listed as having started 32 games on BBR, and lo and behold, the last 32 games of the season (after the Schayes trade) have Eaton among the first 5. In the 12-game splits, you can see that Eaton's average true shot attempts increased quite a bit after Dantley went down. His average box score position also decreased, suggesting he was in the game earlier (and probably for more minutes on the whole). Judging by his TSA, Eaton was barely cracking the rotation when Dantley was playing, with 1.61 and 2.68 TSA. He then jumped to 4.6 TSA immediately after Dantley was injured. As a center, I don't think he was filling much of the Dantley minute vaccuum, but rather cannibalizing minutes from Utah's big men. Interestingly, his box score position (and TSA) reversed in the 4th 12-game set, and we see a bump in opponent TS as well. After the Schayes trade, it's clear that Eaton was getting a lot of minutes, and Utah's defense became downright stingy. Once John Drew came back from rehab for cocaine addiction (which further harpooned Utah's TS during his first 9 games), Utah's own TS took a notable jump, and they were more respectable over the last 34 games.
So what does this tell us? Well, Dantley's offense certainly seemed to be a big boon for Utah. Their TS was clearly higher with him on the court, despite backup John Drew's very rough first 9 games. Dantley's play didn't particularly elevate the play of his teammates, but it didn't look like it markedly hurt it, either. There is a curious rebounding hole that led to a notable possession deficit for which it's worth further exploration concerning Dantley's role. Utah's defense improved after Dantley went down, but I'm pretty sure that has much more to do with Eaton's emerging role on the team, and once Drew became a positive factor, Utah became an averagish team. In the following season, Dantley would return and Utah's offense took a large step forward, while the defense remained largely the same. So while on the surface, Dantley's raw WOWY does not look good for 1982-83, I think there are plenty of factors that could explain it aside from his absence.
