GT #1, Cavaliers @ Grizzlies, 20 October 2021, 8:00 PM ET

[JonFromVA]

Ja is -13 or somethign, is Ja bad?

Also SExotn should be higher but teh team hasn't converted on his great passing. Also what about Garlands bad drive into 4 trees that lead to a 3 on the other end?

+/- tells a story ... in this case, it looks to me like our intended starting lineup was pretty good together, and maybe (just maybe) JBB shouldn't have moved so quickly in to his rotations. Of course it wasn't his idea that Garland twist his ankle.

Still, if Garland didn't lead the team to a 21-5 run in the 4th quarter that brought the Cavs back in the game, well, he's -16.

It looks like the Cavs are committed to making sure DG puts up his 3's, the Memphis announcers kept mentioning that his goal was to shoot 8 of them. If he can get in to his shooting rhythm faster, we won't far so far behind to start, but by the end of the game we were so far behind there was just no other way to get back in to the game than to start firing up shots.

I thought Evan was impressive and if you look at the first games for some of the other lottery picks, his 17-9-6 was really good. I'm expecting a lot better, but he's just at the start of his career. Facing off against Jaren Jackson Jr was interesting for Evan and I thought nerfed a lot of his ability to help in the paint. JJJ won the +/- battle, but not the stat battle.

Jarret Allen had an amazing game, and showed a lot of flexibility that will make our triple tower lineup a lot easier to run.

Lauri at SF is an experiment. We'll need to give it some time to see if it has any hope, especially when we face SF's who are actually good.

+/- is heavily influenced by what else is on the floor and game situation. I mean a player could have a negative +/- from being on the floor when the opposing team goes on a run when neither him or the man they're responsible were even close to being involved in on either end because one side goes down and drains 3s immediately while the other misses them. Then when a timeout is called to stop the momentum if the person on the other team that scored all the points for the other team goes to the bench to rest for a little and the person that had no chance to effect the game was benched but then his team goes on a run, then even if the person that replaced the person that had no chance to effect the game during the opponents run had no chance to actually contribute to his teams run, the person that was unlucky enough to be on the court during the opponents run will look at lot worse in the +/- because of it.

Which is why I always look at the game flows when analyzing +/-, specifically:

http://popcornmachine.net/gf?date=20211020&game=CLEMEM

When two guys who start the game together have very different +/-'s figures you can look at the game flows, and start to figure out why.

I was surprised that Morant finished -6 and yeah, that doesn't match what my eyes were telling me; but I don't dismiss the stat because it's literally what happened when Morant was on the floor. What it comes down to, is that the Memphis bench rotation trounced ours. Morant closed out the game brilliantly, but pretty much missed everything until we got down to 2 minutes left in the game, Memphis brought back in their full starting unit, and realized they'd have to work a little bit for the win.

[jbk1234]

We were outrebounded last night 36-54. That's pretty brutal for a team that's starting 3 seven footers and has Love coming in off the bench.

[JonFromVA]

+/- tells a story ... in this case, it looks to me like our intended starting lineup was pretty good together, and maybe (just maybe) JBB shouldn't have moved so quickly in to his rotations. Of course it wasn't his idea that Garland twist his ankle.

Still, if Garland didn't lead the team to a 21-5 run in the 4th quarter that brought the Cavs back in the game, well, he's -16.

It looks like the Cavs are committed to making sure DG puts up his 3's, the Memphis announcers kept mentioning that his goal was to shoot 8 of them. If he can get in to his shooting rhythm faster, we won't far so far behind to start, but by the end of the game we were so far behind there was just no other way to get back in to the game than to start firing up shots.

I thought Evan was impressive and if you look at the first games for some of the other lottery picks, his 17-9-6 was really good. I'm expecting a lot better, but he's just at the start of his career. Facing off against Jaren Jackson Jr was interesting for Evan and I thought nerfed a lot of his ability to help in the paint. JJJ won the +/- battle, but not the stat battle.

Jarret Allen had an amazing game, and showed a lot of flexibility that will make our triple tower lineup a lot easier to run.

Lauri at SF is an experiment. We'll need to give it some time to see if it has any hope, especially when we face SF's who are actually good.

+/- is heavily influenced by what else is on the floor and game situation. I mean a player could have a negative +/- from being on the floor when the opposing team goes on a run when neither him or the man they're responsible were even close to being involved in on either end because one side goes down and drains 3s immediately while the other misses them. Then when a timeout is called to stop the momentum if the person on the other team that scored all the points for the other team goes to the bench to rest for a little and the person that had no chance to effect the game was benched but then his team goes on a run, then even if the person that replaced the person that had no chance to effect the game during the opponents run had no chance to actually contribute to his teams run, the person that was unlucky enough to be on the court during the opponents run will look at lot worse in the +/- because of it.

Neither +/-, nor BPM, nor most advanced numbers are intended to be used off of single game performances. There are too many variables. Larger sample sizes can help control for the variables and that's when they're informative. But you need at least 20 games.

Plus-Minus is not an advanced stat, it's an observable/physical stat. It's not variable and has no inherent noise.

But it is not an individual statistic ... it's a statistic about the lineups a player was part of and the lineups they faced.

That Garland playing on a twisted ankle ended up at +0 in this game is telling us something, but it's up to us to figure out what.

btw, nba.com has a neat feature where you can click on a statistic in their box scores and see a video of how the plays that contributed to the stat. Pretty cool! ... Doing that for Garland's 10 assists, and the thing I noticed is how many of them came in transition .vs. half-court.

We actually ended up with 38 assists!!! If that's actually any sort of trend for this team, I'll gladly eat the L.

[JonFromVA]

Lauri at SF is an experiment. We'll need to give it some time to see if it has any hope, especially when we face SF's who are actually good.

it is an experiment but hes not really better at pf or center which were all countlessly experimented before.
i admit he played awful but part of reason is he needs to play with rubio i would prefer off the bench while dnping useless love.
i guess start okoro hope he has a outside shot and play lauri 6th man 30mpg.

The point is we shouldn't expect everything to click after one game. Give him a couple week run at SF, see how it goes, and sure if he can't defend the position or make up for it with his shooting let him play against second units who won't exploit him so badly.

Love has many of the same defensive problems, but I wouldn't write him off quite yet as useless.

[toooskies]

We were outrebounded last night 36-54. That's pretty brutal for a team that's starting 3 seven footers and has Love coming in off the bench.

The seven footers aren't the problem, though, our frontcourt kept up with theirs more or less. It's Garland/Sexton/Rubio/Okoro/Osman totaling 11 rebounds in 124 minutes that's the issue. Less than a rebound every ten minutes for the entire backcourt.

[Revenged25]

We were outrebounded last night 36-54. That's pretty brutal for a team that's starting 3 seven footers and has Love coming in off the bench.

The seven footers aren't the problem, though, our frontcourt kept up with theirs more or less. It's Garland/Sexton/Rubio/Okoro/Osman totaling 11 rebounds in 124 minutes that's the issue. Less than a rebound every ten minutes for the entire backcourt.

I think that's more of a statement on our system. It doesn't seem like our guards are told/expected to crash onto the boards. I saw Sexton go in and try to get a little cheeky a few times but typically it seems like our guards just stay out at the perimeter mostly and try to prevent fast breaks after a missed shot.

[jbk1234]

We were outrebounded last night 36-54. That's pretty brutal for a team that's starting 3 seven footers and has Love coming in off the bench.

The seven footers aren't the problem, though, our frontcourt kept up with theirs more or less. It's Garland/Sexton/Rubio/Okoro/Osman totaling 11 rebounds in 124 minutes that's the issue. Less than a rebound every ten minutes for the entire backcourt.

We only had seven offensive rebounds as a team last night (versus 13 for the Grizzlies). It wasn't because we were shooting lights out either. Mobley had zero, Allen had one, Lauri had two, and Love had one. That's not good, especially against a team that's off to the races as soon as they secure the ball. You're going to lose games against small ball lineups unless you can at least match the number of second chance opportunities they get.

[toooskies]

We were outrebounded last night 36-54. That's pretty brutal for a team that's starting 3 seven footers and has Love coming in off the bench.

The seven footers aren't the problem, though, our frontcourt kept up with theirs more or less. It's Garland/Sexton/Rubio/Okoro/Osman totaling 11 rebounds in 124 minutes that's the issue. Less than a rebound every ten minutes for the entire backcourt.

I think that's more of a statement on our system. It doesn't seem like our guards are told/expected to crash onto the boards. I saw Sexton go in and try to get a little cheeky a few times but typically it seems like our guards just stay out at the perimeter mostly and try to prevent fast breaks after a missed shot.

Sure, but if you're only trying to rebound with 1-2 guys on offense and only 2-3 on defense, you're going to lose the rebounding battle more often than not. Particularly since while we've got guys that are tall, none of them are heavy guys like Adams.

[Revenged25]

The seven footers aren't the problem, though, our frontcourt kept up with theirs more or less. It's Garland/Sexton/Rubio/Okoro/Osman totaling 11 rebounds in 124 minutes that's the issue. Less than a rebound every ten minutes for the entire backcourt.

I think that's more of a statement on our system. It doesn't seem like our guards are told/expected to crash onto the boards. I saw Sexton go in and try to get a little cheeky a few times but typically it seems like our guards just stay out at the perimeter mostly and try to prevent fast breaks after a missed shot.

Sure, but if you're only trying to rebound with 1-2 guys on offense and only 2-3 on defense, you're going to lose the rebounding battle more often than not. Particularly since while we've got guys that are tall, none of them are heavy guys like Adams.

Oh, I agree, just stating why I thought the rebounding stats came out the way they did.

[JonFromVA]

I think that's more of a statement on our system. It doesn't seem like our guards are told/expected to crash onto the boards. I saw Sexton go in and try to get a little cheeky a few times but typically it seems like our guards just stay out at the perimeter mostly and try to prevent fast breaks after a missed shot.

Sure, but if you're only trying to rebound with 1-2 guys on offense and only 2-3 on defense, you're going to lose the rebounding battle more often than not. Particularly since while we've got guys that are tall, none of them are heavy guys like Adams.

Oh, I agree, just stating why I thought the rebounding stats came out the way they did.

Besides Adams just being much bigger than our bigs (as in wider), Memphis was really scrapping hard for those boards trying to pull everything out of our guy's hands.

Anyway, we knew Lauri didn't really play big ... that's why he's over at SF, Allen has a light/tall/skinny build, and Evan ... well ... at least he's not getting pushed around as much as I feared.

Rebounding is just one of many things the team needs to work on and figure out and having a guy who wants to get his hands on the ball more than everybody else is pretty helpful.

Offensive rebounds aren't considered to be very important, especially if comes at the cost of not getting back in transition. What we need to sort out is the defensive rebounding, but sometimes the ball doesn't bounce your way. So like everything else after one game, something to watch - not panic over.

[FranchisePlayer]

Lauri at SF is an experiment. We'll need to give it some time to see if it has any hope, especially when we face SF's who are actually good.

it is an experiment but hes not really better at pf or center which were all countlessly experimented before.
i admit he played awful but part of reason is he needs to play with rubio i would prefer off the bench while dnping useless love.
i guess start okoro hope he has a outside shot and play lauri 6th man 30mpg.

Just about everybody needs to be playing with Rubio.

Does Garland and Sexton want to?

[FranchisePlayer]

One thing I noticed was that they were playing Mobley at 4 even when Allen was out. So I guess Mobley is not going to be playing 5 even against the smaller line ups. I wonder if that means they are developing Mobley to be 4 in the future rather than 5.

Kind of a bold statement based on such a small sample size?

I think they're purposely trying many different things. Let's see what sticks.

[FranchisePlayer]

It's hard to have any sort of feel for this team. My only hope is the Cavs make the game interesting enough I don't fall asleep on it or end up fast forwarding huge chunks.

I mean if the pre-season meant anything, I'd have to predict the Cavs losing 135 to 95.

Wow... I think they did better than ok.

I'll go out on a limb and say a win is not out of the question. At worst I could see them lose by 20 points. I guess I'm what you call a homer.

I'm primarily going off what our starting backcourt did together in pre-season.

In the 3 games they both played, they were 25 for 68 (37%) with 18 assists and 25 turnovers.

Were there positive signs from other players and other lineups?

Sure, but we're not winning anything if Sexland is playing like hot garbage.

Fair enough. Plus count me in the camp who wants to see Rubio getting big minutes.

They lost by 11 points, I think the result was ok. Performance wise maybe not.

[JonFromVA]

Wow... I think they did better than ok.

I'll go out on a limb and say a win is not out of the question. At worst I could see them lose by 20 points. I guess I'm what you call a homer.

I'm primarily going off what our starting backcourt did together in pre-season.

In the 3 games they both played, they were 25 for 68 (37%) with 18 assists and 25 turnovers.

Were there positive signs from other players and other lineups?

Sure, but we're not winning anything if Sexland is playing like hot garbage.

Fair enough. Plus count me in the camp who wants to see Rubio getting big minutes.

They lost by 11 points, I think the result was ok. Performance wise maybe not.

Garland and Sexton aren't yet where they should be, but their numbers were much better than pre-season. My point is really just that I try to draw logical and supportable conclusions and the pre-season was not particularly helpful in that respect unless you want to focus on the bright spots and ignore the dull ones.

[JonFromVA]

One thing I noticed was that they were playing Mobley at 4 even when Allen was out. So I guess Mobley is not going to be playing 5 even against the smaller line ups. I wonder if that means they are developing Mobley to be 4 in the future rather than 5.

Kind of a bold statement based on such a small sample size?

I think they're purposely trying many different things. Let's see what sticks.

I don't even understand the point ... it's not like we brought Tacko in when Allen sat. If this is about who Love/Lauri defended .vs. who Evan defended, who cares? Do what makes sense. Evan is more mobile and a better defender but smaller of frame, of course they should play him to his strengths.