dougthonus wrote:You start out with saying this is a bad faith argument, while again, your point, appears to be, that every single thing about Boylen is god awful, there is nothing redeeming about anything he does, he's a complete imbecile.
I didn't actually say this. I took issue with a particular thing and explained why. All that other baggage is stuff you're bringing. I'm sure Boylen and he has his good qualities, and I want him to be free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment. But none of that is really germane to the specific points I raised.
Just trying to clarify what point you're making, and if you are making that point, is this backed up by something, or are you using the results of the offensive overall to assume your answer?
That is the point, and it's backed up by detailed study of the stats (shot type, openness, etc), observation, and maybe most importantly, fitting it all into a coherent logical model of how basketball is played. To put that last part in simple terms, one has to make apples to apples statistical comparisons. When we say "Lauri took more open 3s", it needs to be in context of how many and what other kinds of shots does he get. This, turn, flows into a way to understand what we're actually seeing in game time.
To give an example, Lauri went from shooting 23.6% of his shots as "wide open 3s" last year to 29.9% this year. His shooting percentage fell from 43.2% to 37.9% on those shots. This seems to be the sort of evidence you're pointing to that "the offense" was doing good things and the player's just weren't following through with good shooting.
But let's think about these numbers a bit, before we even move on to anything else.
1. The shooting percentage fall really isn't a huge one. Falling from 43% to 38% is basically within a margin of error. You see similar variances over player's careers. Likewise, if you look at his FG% on "open" 3s, it was 27.1% last year and 29.5% this year. He actually shot better in that situation than last year. And... he shot more. Last year that was 15% of his shots, and this year it was 20.6% of his shots.
2. The increase in % of shots taken is actually not that huge either. Altogether, he went from shooting about 38.6% of his shots were open or wide open 3s to shooting about 50.5% of his shots in that category. It's a change, but not a dramatic improvement just judging by the base numbers.
And that is why, when you couple it with his 3 point shooting % not actually falling that much, these numbers don't really tell the story about Lauri.
The real story is about opportunity cost. What opportunities, on the basketball court, we given up in order to raise Lauri's percentage of open 3s from about 40% to about 50% of his shots?
To tell that, you have to look at the rest of his numbers, and also fit that into how he was asked to play. That starts to point out some obvious issues that call the numbers into question.
1. It becomes obvious that "more open 3s" is actually kind of misleading. While it's true that a higher percentage of Lauri's shots were open 3s, this came at a cost of having him take fewer overall shots. The percentage increased because the denominator decreased! He went from taking nearly 23 shots per 100 possessions to taking 19.
2. Further, the 2 point looks fell, and the quality of those looks also fell because This is pretty easy to link to actually watching the games, because his positioning and movement on the court was often not anywhere close to the basket. Asking Lauri to "make a play" and score from the elbow is a reasonable opportunity. Asking him to start at the 3 point line and beat a defense just isn't.
As a result, while Lauri saw a moderate increase his productivity as a 3 point shooter, this came at the cost of a lot of productivity as an all around scorer. If you walk through his 2 point shooting percentages, this is actually born out. His shooting percentages actually went up in the 2-4, 4-6 and 6+ categories... he just shot less of these shots, because he was ordered to not take them unless they were blatantly good looks. Again this is basically just changing the denominator. He changed his shot selection because the coach demanded it, but the coach demanded that he go away from shots he was effective in taking.
The bottom line is that Lauri's shooting ability didn't change that much. What changed is that he was taken out of positions that were relatively good shots for him and put into positions that were relatively lower percentage shots. And, at the margin, this wasn't just a one for one replacement, some of the good shots were replaced with someone else taking the shot. So a reasonable Lauri mid-range shot in 18-19 became a hopeless Sato foray into the paint or yet another Zach hero-ball heave in 19-20.
My position is that the Bulls actually had reasonable shot quality based on what I can tell, but they did not finish those shots at the expected rate which is primarily a problem with talent not offensive scheme. Granted, as you point out, it's not always easy to measure shot quality. A shot at the rim that's a dunk is a lot different than one where you are diving to the side and shooting a high floater off the glass against a 7 foot rim defender with a guard on your back, and I'm not sure we really have access to all the data we need to make a determination around that while openness of jumpers is pretty black/white available.
I mean... just watch Sato play. He's a guy that doesn't have much in the way of hops. This is why he's judicious (being polite) with his shooting. Last year with the Wizards, he shot 11.2% of his shots with tight (0-2 ft) defense and made 51.7% of them. With the Bulls, his number of tight defense shots fell to 7.2% of his total, but he shot only 28.2% on this shots.
The superficial story is "Hey, Sato got more open looks. The offense works!". What I'm pointing out is that when you add in the other stats, like the fact that his shooting in these situations fell apart, the more likely story in the stats is that the quality of opportunity fell dramatically. In that 11.2% number, it's very likely (since the % was high) that there were some good looks mixed in with the bad ones. That's a functional offense for you.
In that 7.2% number, with the trash 28.2% eFG, that's more likely a sign of a non-functional offense where, following your example, the guy is shooting that shot because he's got no other choice.
If you comb through the Bulls numbers, the shot charts are littered with these kinds of examples. As I said, look at Sato's and look at Young's. Even Lauri's is consistent with this story. The tell a clear story of a team playing to the numbers instead of actually generating good looks.
This is consistent with observations (that have come from countless folks) of the Bulls passing up open shots because they weren't the type of open shots Boylen wanted, of him criticizing guys, and of him placing guys on the court in positions where they had limited options (especially based on their talents).
Which is the source of the disconnect. Boylen, and you, are pointing to these numbers as a source of success without understanding how they're also one of the sources of the team's failure.
This was a hallmark of Tom Thibodeau's coaching style as an example
This is a terrible example and equating the "coaching style" of these guys seems to be pretty silly. A mouse and and elephant both have four legs and hair. This doesn't mean you should use a mouse as an example of an elephant.
I'm not trying to make everything so contentious. I agree that Boylen should be let go for sure. I just think you significantly overstate your case (like when you say things like Boylen is a complete moron with nothing to offer, which so clearly isn't true given he's coached in the league on some elite staffs for 20 years and obviously know a heck of a lot about basketball even if he isn't head coaching material) that you actually detract from the merit of your valid points.
To you. I would say in response, if you want to stop making everything so contentious, stop being so contentious. Look at the forest instead of the trees. If you acknowledge that the forest sucks, arguing about one particular tree being a nice, shining example of a tree seems kind of pointless.
To put it another way there's really no point in talking about whether Boylen "knows a heck of a lot about basketball" because it's a given that anyone who's going to be an NBA coach (or even a college coach) is going to fit that description. And yet, no other NBA coach in recent memory (and few if any college coaches, if you want to go back to Boylen's time at Utah, which I do) has done and said so many buffoonish things.