ATLTimekeeper wrote:kj_ wrote:
It’s not just about getting isolated on and beat. Teams can cover for that even if it’s not ideal. Send the double to help when Fred is backed down by a bigger player. Or send the double when the Durant type wing puts the ball on the floor.
The real issue is perimeter close outs. When the scrambles and rotations occur it all to often ends with Fred running out (or Kyle in the past too) and a wing 6’6” or taller shooting like it’s an open shot even when the six footer is “close”.
Swap that close out from 6’ to 6’10” and that shot doesn’t even get attempted and more likely than not turns into a much worse late clock shot with a considerably worse percentage and PPP outcome.
Athletic, switchable length has tremendous value to team defence.
I make the Fred and parts for Simmons trade without a second thought.
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I don't know, 2 of the last 3 years opponent 3PA tends to be lower with Fred on the court relative to the rest of the team. fwiw, last year the team had the highest frequency of late shot clock possessions and 4th highest frequency of opponent very late shot possessions. That's with both Fred and Kyle. Sure, theoretically Simmons physical abilities could improve that, but it wouldn't be significant or lead to much impact difference.
You're not wrong in theory, but you're the results speak for themselves.
This is going to be a bit of a jokey response ATL, but it's meant to be lite examples so hopefully you don't take offense.
Fred played a good amount of minutes off the bench in the regular season during our chip run, and had some solid stats with some poor percentages inside the arc, but not too bad. Against the Sixers, he did not play a lot of minutes, and his stats cratered across the board. In theory, this should not have happened when you look at the regular season.
However, that is not the only anomaly of that series. Jimmy Butler was pretty good all season in his combo guard role. And that was also the case during the series...but, that changed during 4th quarters as the series went along. Again, our regular season analytics says that this shouldn't be happening.
The only thing that changed between quarters was the defender: Danny Green to Kawhi. Kawhi hasn't been on our team in a while so for reference sake he's a bit like Barnes in stature (or Simmons) if that jogs your memory. Now I don't know why we would do that because Green is a very good defender (just look at the analytics). And Kawhi was always an injury risk so I don't know why we would move him there when we had our secret weapon, FVV, on the bench. You'd get the analytical bonus of 3pt percentages going down across the board on top of shutdown Jimmy defense (which should also be happening with Danny though; another mystery).
4 to 7 game sample sizes are too small for analytical purposes, so we may never know why these analytical anomalies took place. Maybe variance. Maybe Jimmy caught a cold on the bench every third quarter.
But I have a theory that I will share.... For the low price of 200$ on my Patreon as to why the playoffs tend to be different.
(Again, tongue in cheek stuff here).
