Post#533 » by Sluggerface » Fri Aug 28, 2015 10:01 pm
I spent this morning taking a more in depth look at NBA.com's player tracking, and more and more i'm feeling sullied about Wittman's choices. I'm finding a hard time blaming the offense on roster construction (even though I do realize a more balanced roster would have helped.)
Washington was 21st in the league in points per possession on dribble hand-offs. The team ran hand-offs on 280 possessions, which was also 21st. The primary culprit was Beal, who ate up 104 possessions and scored .78 ppp
In isolation, Washington was an elite team. Third in the league in PPP, but only 7th in total transition attempts, with both Houston and Golden State putting up 200-300 more transition attempts.
Nearly dead last in the league in isolation attempts (27th) but an average isolation team in PPP (14th). John lead the team by a sizeable margin with 200 attempts with a respectable .86 PPP. But surprisingly, Beal, in 38 attempts, scored at an elite level with .97 PPP
The pick and roll scoring from the ball-handlers was **** tier, ranking 26th in the league in PPP. Wall and Beal dominated these possessions, at 646 and 270 possessions a piece, with both being below average in PPP. The primary reason? Incredibly low FT rates (7.6% for Wall, 3.75 for Beal) and insanely high turnover rates for both players, nearing at 18%. The dreaded "mid-range" comes to mind.
In terms of the roll-man, they were below league average in both attempts and scoring, despite having a high level roll man in Gortat. Gortat was only 13th in the league in roll attempts, 159 attempts behind the league leader in Anthony Davis, and below David West (!). The rest of the team accounted for 354 of the remaining roll attempts, but they were well below Gortat in terms of effectiveness (Except Pierce, who scored 1.26 PPP, which is in the 92nd percentile)
Post-ups are probably the biggest reason why Washington's offense floundered. The team was 8th in attempts, but only 23rd in scoring. The team had 3 players go over 200 attempts. No other team in the entire league had three different players operating in the post like this. Gortat, Seraphin, and Nene combined to average .81 PPP on post-ups. I can't stress this enough, these are terrible post numbers. Playing from the post comes with a ton of benefits. As a whole, it's far easier to draw fouls while limiting turnovers compared to your typical isolation play, but none of Washington's bigs took advantage of this. Both Gortat and Seraphin were pathetic at drawing fouls from the post, and Seraphin was equally bad at turning the ball over. I think this directly tied into why Washington was 28th in the league in spot-up attempts despite being an above average spot-up team.
They were 5th in the league in cut attempts, but below average in scoring. The top three players in cutting attempts were again Gortat, Seraphin, Nene. Bigs leading this category is pretty normal, but Nene and Seraphin, unsurprisingly were below average cutters. Beal was pretty effective as a cutter, scoring 1.27 ppp on cuts, but it's a wonder the team could only manage to produce Beal cuts on 33 possessions, as this was by far Beal's most effective play type.
Finally, Washington was top 5 in screen offense, but again below average in scoring. This is mostly due to Beal. Lead the team in attempts off screens at 178 possessions. Scored approximately 0.78 PPP (28th percentile). Demar Derozan scored more efficiently off screens than Beal did.
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Now, stop me if you've heard the pigeonhole analogy before, but I really can't think of a more apt way to describe this hot mess. Wittman built an offense revolving around the post, but none of Washington's bigs were good post players. Nene was the only big on the roster that had vision to play in the post, but his horrid FT shooting and high turnover rates nullified any strengths he brought to that area. And Seraphin..... I'm still completely blown that Seraphin was involved in the offense as much as he was. He's a complete net negative player, and it would have been massively beneficial to shrink the big rotation to Nene/Gortat/Gooden/Humphries. Pierce was by far the most efficient player on the team from most areas, and I'd say he was highly under-utilized, and I don't mean in just the typical sense of him playing as a stretch 4. He could have been used more in the pick and roll game and off cuts, but instead was largely relegated to being a spot up shooter.
We all know that Wittman had the opportunity to attempt to play small ball during the regular season, but regardless of that and with the way the roster was constructed. He didn't need small ball to make noticeable improvements to the offense. Some of this is just simply avoiding plays that are only netting you like .7 points a possession
*Tin Foil Hat time*
Honestly, when the team started playing faster when Humphries went down, and went small in the playoffs. I don't think this was some kind of coincidence, or Randy "seeing the light", or even some genius plan that they were saving all season. I think ownership came down around the time when things were at their worst and basically told Randy to get ready to change things or he would be gone next year. We know that the FO isn't all that enthused about analytics, but ownership and the specific guys that ted himself has brought in sure as hell is. Randy most likely only got extended because of cost efficiency. Dude wins a playoff series for the franchise for the first time in almost a decade and he only gets extended for 2 years with a TO for the 3rd? Ted has zero faith in this dude. He probably has like 6 different guys whispering in his ear "You know when we lost game 5 to the Hawks, Why was Paul Pierce guarding Paul Millsap on a game ending possession when he's been getting wrecked off the ball all series?". He's more concerned with finishing off his amnesty checks to Andray Blatche. He can make the coach play any style he wants. It's completely irrelevant who's under center.
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