Bucks News, Trade Ideas, Transactions - No Politics

[FrieAaron]

I think Donte's RPM might have something to do with the fact that he plays with one of the best players on the planet for 23 of his 26 minutes per game. Jrue is 6th in RPM and Khris is 8th for their positions. Giannis is 6th in the entire league, although that's below Paul George so maybe we should pull the trigger on a trade of those two.

[coolhandluke121]

I think Donte's RPM might have something to do with the fact that he plays with one of the best players on the planet for 23 of his 26 minutes per game. Jrue is 6th in RPM and Khris is 8th for their positions. Giannis is 6th in the entire league, although that's below Paul George so maybe we should pull the trigger on a trade of those two.

That's not how RPM works at all. The whole point of RPM is to make adjustments for the lineups you're in, and DDV has two seasons worth of data playing with and without Giannis on the court at the same time to make reasonably accurate adjustments. He was a bench player last year and still #8 in SG RPM.

I mean how on earth is Brook's RPM negative if RPM worked the way you seem to think it does?

Also Khris has an extensive documented history of still having great ratings even when he's on the court without Giannis, and Jrue has been doing this for years with or without Giannis or AD. There are nuances to be aware of in RPM but it's a far more useful stat than you're giving it credit for. And Giannis's RPM is still kind of low by his standards because he frankly played like a 6'11" Monta for the better part of 6 weeks before finally coming to his senses. PG13's is almost always really high because he's a great player on both ends of the court, at least in the regular season, combining better than DDV defense/intangibles with better than KM22 offense.

[FrieAaron]

I think Donte's RPM might have something to do with the fact that he plays with one of the best players on the planet for 23 of his 26 minutes per game. Jrue is 6th in RPM and Khris is 8th for their positions. Giannis is 6th in the entire league, although that's below Paul George so maybe we should pull the trigger on a trade of those two.

That's not how RPM works at all. The whole point of RPM is to make adjustments for the lineups you're in, and DDV has two seasons worth of data playing with and without Giannis on the court at the same time to make reasonably accurate adjustments. He was a bench player last year and still #8 in SG RPM.

I mean how on earth is Brook's RPM negative if RPM worked the way you seem to think it does?

I can't really find anything about how RPM works aside from "it takes into accounts teammates." I'm sure there's lots of machine learning taking place here, but still how do you separate Giannis' impact from Donte's unless you're looking at a very small sample size. Obviously Brook has been a negative for us this year, but maybe he's still being pulled up by Giannis and that's why RPM rates him a better player than Ayton? Although maybe I don't realize how bad Ayton has been this year.

[engelmartin]

wasn't sure where to put this and should have done it sooner, but happy all-star break everyone!

[coolhandluke121]

I think Donte's RPM might have something to do with the fact that he plays with one of the best players on the planet for 23 of his 26 minutes per game. Jrue is 6th in RPM and Khris is 8th for their positions. Giannis is 6th in the entire league, although that's below Paul George so maybe we should pull the trigger on a trade of those two.

That's not how RPM works at all. The whole point of RPM is to make adjustments for the lineups you're in, and DDV has two seasons worth of data playing with and without Giannis on the court at the same time to make reasonably accurate adjustments. He was a bench player last year and still #8 in SG RPM.

I mean how on earth is Brook's RPM negative if RPM worked the way you seem to think it does?

I can't really find anything about how RPM works aside from "it takes into accounts teammates." I'm sure there's lots of machine learning taking place here, but still how do you separate Giannis' impact from Donte's unless you're looking at a very small sample size. Obviously Brook has been a negative for us this year, but maybe he's still being pulled up by Giannis and that's why RPM rates him a better player than Ayton? Although maybe I don't realize how bad Ayton has been this year.

It's proprietary so they don't reveal all their methods, but they do use prior years (although not weighted as heavily as current data if my understanding is correct) and DDV had quite a bit of non-Giannis data last year. Also you have to remember that Giannis has tons of prior data and if more of the credit for the starting lineups success should be going to him, the model would almost surely have noticed by now because he has tons of minutes without DDV over the last 3 years. Giannis played very poorly by his standards early on this year and the model was able to capture that by making his RPM lower than usual. He's still recovering but should be close to his normal standards by the end of the year.

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be. Adding roughly 10 points to the net rating and roughly 15 wins is absolutely elite and if their lineups are even better than that, the other guys definitely deserve a fair share of the credit too. Jrue, Khris, and DVV are damn good players and it's a strength of the model that it gives them credit too. Khris has been playing poorly and his RPM has gone down, showing that it knows he's playing poorly just by the fact that the team is no longer winning his minutes by as much. RPM is not the be-all, end-all but it never ceases to amaze me how accurate it is at giving credit to guys without impressive box scores and exposing phonies with more impressive stats. All it does is ask if you play better than the other team when a player is on the court and use actual production and historical lineup data for all of the players on the court to figure out who gets the credit.

The downside generally has to do with being in the right roles and stuff like that. For example, if you absolutely insist on playing a strict drop defense 100% of the time and Brook is the only center on the team who can do it, that will probably buttress his DRPM in a way that's not an accurate reflection of his value (hint hint, lol). There are short-term biases in the data like when Kidd used to always play Giannis to carry bench units, doing it so consistently that the model couldn't figure out how to blame the other 4 guys for the mediocrity of those lineups because they didn't have prior years to go on like DDV last year playing more minutes without Giannis. It also seems to favor bench guys who dominate other bench guys, but that could be my imagination. It's important to note that RPM reportedly still does favor the guys with the stats in some ways (for example, in good offensive lineups, it assumes the guy with the points deserves more of the credit, even if the great screener or the master of the hockey assist deserves more credit), so in a way it's arguably even harder to have a great RPM like DDV when you're not putting up numbers. In other words, it may even be underestimating his value.

[paulpressey25]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

[Licensed to Il]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

Yeah, basketball is the only team sport where you can force the action to your best player every play. It would be like your best baseball player batting nine times in a row, or getting a 1on1 situation to your best guy in football.. every play.

This is why stars have more impact in basketball than any other team sport.

[Prez]

I'm torn, I think Blake and Tucker are kinda washed and suck ass now, but I also really want both on the Bucks lol

[coolhandluke121]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

That's not the point at all. The point is you can't give them as much credit as some people want to. The rest of the team matters a lot too. That's why RPM doesn't give Giannis all the credit when his lineups dominate. The Bucks' starting lineup wouldn't be nearly as good with Giannis and 4 average players. That's why DDV, Jrue, and Khris have good RPM's too, and they deserve it.

Nobody ever said you can win without stars, but the other guys make a huge difference too. Otherwise every star would have roughly the same record every year regardless of who else is on the team. You have to realize I was just responding to someone who said DDV's RPM is due to him playing with Giannis. It has nothing to do with saying stars shouldn't get more credit than the other guys, but RPM does a really good job of giving them their due without pretending they do it alone, which a lot of people seem to do for some reason. Do you remember how before the bubble the Bucks had a top-5 rating in the entire NBA last year in the minutes Giannis didn't play, which by the way was a lot of them? And yet some people still constantly claimed Giannis was willing a mediocre team to a ~65 win pace. It was ludicrous. Adding ~25 wins is an absurd amount of credit to give one superstar. It's just not realistic at all. Sometimes a team adds a superstar and a few good role players come along for the ride to add 25 wins, but that's not all because of the star's on-court contributions. There are always other factors in improvement of that magnitude.

[coolhandluke121]

ETA: To understand my point about how one typical superstar doesn't account for 20+ wins and how a +10 rating impact is more than adequate for all but the greatest of players, consider how the Bulls added Jordan AND Rodman, the greatest rebounder and defensive forward of all time (who was also what they needed most), and added exactly 25 wins (but only 16 expected wins by margin) and +8 to their differential. They did lose BJ Armstrong that year FWIW, and MJ had played some in '95, but not enough and not well enough to dramatically skew the difference between 94-95 and 95-96.

[jschligs]

I'm torn, I think Blake and Tucker are kinda washed and suck ass now, but I also really want both on the Bucks lol

Many don’t agree, but I’d take Tucker at least 15-20min per game.

[MiltownHawkeye]

Lopez, Wilson, Pat, and DJA for Lowry works in the trade checker

I don't want to do this trade and neither should you, I had just never used the trade checker before and wanted to try it out

[DrWood]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

The 3 Pistons championship teams were all role-players, imo.

[DrWood]

Starting to talk myself into Richaun Holmes being that next 2017-19 Dewayne Dedmon guy. Get him on the roster and start having him practice shooting 3's. DJW plus their pick of Merrill or Nwora works. Opens up a roster spot for us to pursue a buy-out guy.

I like Holmes, but I think the chance of the bucks signing someone who can't shoot 3s is close to zero (unless they've been bought-out).

[paulpressey25]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

The 3 Pistons championship teams were all role-players, imo.

Ben Wallace four all star appearances, five times All NBA, four time DPOY
Chauncey Billups five all star appearance, three times All NBA
Rasheed, four time all star
Rip, three time all star

and that’s just the 2004 team. The 1990 team had Isiah, Dumars and Rodman

They were stacked with guys better than Middleton and Redd. And they had many of them.

[skones]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

The 3 Pistons championship teams were all role-players, imo.

The 13-14 Spurs. With Parker, Manu, and Duncan aging out of true superstar or stardom, that's probably the most recent example. I don't think how many times any of these guys were all-stars really matters. Their level of play during that campaign is more important.

Though I think CHL is wrong in his premise.

[coolhandluke121]

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

The 3 Pistons championship teams were all role-players, imo.

The 13-14 Spurs. With Parker, Manu, and Duncan aging out of true superstar or stardom, that's probably the most recent example. I don't think how many times any of these guys were all-stars really matters. Their level of play during that campaign is more important.

Though I think CHL is wrong in his premise.

I mean my premise is that other good players on the team should get some of the credit when a team is a contender instead of just saying only the stars matter. Not sure how anyone can disagree with that to be honest. And definitely not sure how others in this thread have been allowed to define my premise considering I basically just said that Giannis shouldn't get the credit for DDV's consistently good advanced stats, which are clearly well-deserved for anyone who sees beyond the almighty PPGZ. Giannis gets enough credit from his own advanced stats and for the team's success. Acting like Khris and DDV are average players being carried by Giannis is basically taking superstar nut-hugging to comically absurd levels.

[giannis and 1]

Lopez, Wilson, Pat, and DJA for Lowry works in the trade checker

I don't want to do this trade and neither should you, I had just never used the trade checker before and wanted to try it out

Speak for yourself, I would love to make this trade. Too bad the Raptors wouldn't.

Portis/Boogie(sign)/Diakete
Giannis/Craig/Thanasis
Middleton/Nwora
Jrue/DDV/Merrill
Lowry/Powell/Forbes/Adams

[chonestown]

The reality is that many people want to give the star(s) of certain teams almost all the credit, but their empirical contributions to ratings and wins aren't as great as many people make them out to be.

Name for me a great NBA team without a superstar or star.

We lived in the starless desert for years here in Milwaukee. You need a star to win.

The 3 Pistons championship teams were all role-players, imo.

This is Zeke erasure and will not stand. Can't believe the mods allow such inflammatory content to find purchase on real gm dot com slash bucks.

[HKPackFan]

Dude, we get it. You **** hate Jabari, he tore his ACL twice before he turned 22, and he sucks now. Let it go.

I didn't even hate him, just pointed out that he wasn't good. The only emotional bias was coming from all his fanboys. And there are important lessons to be learned from that, namely that there's so much more to the game than goddamn PPGZ, so it's still relevant because so many people still can't get that through their heads when you hear them talk about DDV. DDV is the antithesis of Jabari and thinking Jabari was going to be good reveals that same myopic ideas about basketball as thinking DDV is not.

I don't think it needs to be the same people.


I was one of the last on Jabari Island, I thought Jabari would be an incredible elite scorer and would be eventually figure the rest of his game out, or be an average defender at least. It wasn't until I heard his fateful comments that I started to take off my Jabari glasses.


DDV I've been in love with since day one. I love his game, I love his D, I love all the scrappy boards, the steals, the cuts for layups. I love his deamener. He's my second favorite buck. I love his ability to read passing lanes, I love how he can be a dog on D and just harass people. He's not afraid of anyone or anything. His charge the other night was incredible. That's a DDV type of play he's going to keep making.

His shot is the only thing that needs to be a little more consistent, but otherwise he's got so much to love in his game.

Doesn't mean I fell for a lotto pick thinking his going to be gunning for number one scorer in the league for the next decade, means I only care about PPG. Many people thought wrongly Jabari was going to some elite other worldly scorer. But doesn't mean anyone who thought that think PPG is all that matters in basketball.


A person can be wrong about Jabari and still completely appreciate and love Donte's game.