Player of the Day: Andre Roberson

[hardenASG13]

And KCP isn't that good. Not close to Roberson.

Sure he is. Better at alot of things, worse at some too.

[bondom34]

And KCP isn't that good. Not close to Roberson.

Sure he is. Better at alot of things, worse at some too.

Better at shooting. Worse at most other things. And horribly inconsistent. Hes worth half of Roberson.

[Pillendreher]

it's actually worse than this article states. if you incorporate the games andre roberson missed prior to the rupture, the thunder defense is dead last.

offensively, there's a thing not mentioned here: opponent turnovers. a reduction of opponent turnovers = a reduction in easy points or favorable cross matchups.

with andre roberson playing with the starters, the thunder opponent tov% is 16.4. that wouldn't only be first place among all teams this year by a mile, but also #1 for any 5-man lineup that has played 200 minutes in the last three seasons.

the same group without roberson has an opponent tov% of 11.5, which would be 29th in the league this season. that's a lot of lost opportunities for the offense.

Not to mention higher opponent TOV allows you to get out in transition, mitigating a below-average halfcourt offense.

the tov% differential is just bizarre. if you take all this at face value at the moment, andre roberson comes out looking like one of the best defensive non-big men of the last 20 years. it's probably skewed a bit by our particular roster construction and house of cards defensive philosophy but still. is there another non-big man you take away from a team like this and drop off so severely?

[The rank is for teams league wide; Pts off TO, 2nd Pts, FBPS, PTIP, opp Pts off TO, opp 2nd Pts, opp FBPS, opp PTIP are per 100 poss.]

Let's take George+Adams as a baseline; they are our best defenders after Roberson, after all.



The difference is just staggering. I think this basically confirms what we've been seeing: Our scheme completely collapses and everybody is out of position constantly trying to cover for Russ, Melo and possibly even a 3rd guy. We're not forcing the turnovers like we're used to, our defensive rebounding falls off a cliff, we can't stop fouling and can't stop the opposing team's transition offense.

These are our rebounding numbers per nbawowy (George-Adams as a baseline):

Midrange FGA: 84.0 % with Roberson | 75.6 % without Roberson
3PA: 82.2 % with Roberson | 82.4 % without Roberson
Layup FGA: 73.2 % with Roberson | 59.5 % without Roberson

Looking at individual splits, I can't really point to any big difference among our "Big 4". Maybe it's the other guys being out there instead of Roberson, but what I'm seeing tells me that it's mostly because the rotations don't work anymore and people are out of position way too often. When Adams is dancing on the perimeter and Russ roams just somewhere along the 3pt line, you're basically asking Anthony to box out, rotate and provide help defense.

Let's look at Anthony being a defensive factor:



Our defensive rebounding still sucks. But now our ORB% decreases as well, which makes no sense since Melo is not exactly battling for offensive rebounds under the rim. We start forcing turnovers again and actually defend. With Patterson in there, we even stop fouling people.

This is a comparison based on Four Factors defensively between George-Adams-Robes and George-Adams-Patterson (no Melo or Robes):

opp eFG%: 50.4 (5th)| 51.2 % (8th)
opp FTAr: 20.0 (1st) | 20.5 (1st)
opp TO Ratio: 19.5 (1st) | 21.3 (1st)
opp OREB%: 17.9 (1st) | 27.0 (30th)

So apart from the defensive rebounding, we're basically 'right there'.

The problem with all of this tho is that because of Donovan's idiotic decision to build his rotations around Melo always playing >30 minutes a night and always playing them next to Russ, we don't really have all that much lineup data to go on with Melo on the bench and Russ-George-Adams out there. Russ-George-Adams without Robes and Melo have been on the floor together for only 108 minutes this season...

This is since Donovan switched to George+bench:



The rotations need to be adjusted. But that was obvious three weeks ago and yet Donovan is riding Anthony+starters even more since then. Madness.

[Pillendreher]

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[slick_watts]

our guy is going to hit #1 in DRPM if we blow up the warriors and knock david west down a peg or two. that will be the screen shot to end all screen shots in andre roberson debates.

if that happened this year would be a success for me.

[HoopsMalone]

Honestly, i don't know if OKC is a playoff team without Roberson. Such a disappointing injury, yall were going to be a tough out.

You were already the thinnest team but now it's just ridiculous how little talent is on that team outside of Westbrook/George/Adams/Melo