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Ed Wood wrote: A Postmorten Basketballosis on the 04/05 Seattle Supersonics
or The Legend of Kevin Pittsnoggle

Recently (yesterday I think, the days do at times blend together) the Sports Reporters radio program ran a segment posing the question “what mid major success over the past decade, George Mason, VCU or Butler, is the best story?” Not a bad question, I’d probably say Butler because the argument for George Mason is dumb (they did it first, they showed everybody it was possible, like Butler wouldn’t have known it could win games otherwise) and the argument for VCU has some merit, having had the hardest and least likely path to the final four in a single season but that single season can’t trump comparable success in two consecutive seasons.

On the other hand it wasn’t really a question that interested me too terribly. Yes, I’m sure media types are enjoying Mid Major Mania but while I like seeing small schools win I’d rather talk about why they win than about how scrappy they are while they do. And that I did think about a little, and when I did it occurred to me that George Mason wasn’t really the first mid major to make a big splash in the tournament. Yeah there was Gonzaga and any number of teams from way back but never mind them, even this decade Mason wasn’t the first. The first was West Virginia. Okay, sure, West Virginia is a major conference team, but every other ingredient was there. That team had:

A zillion white players, like really white. Like five different goofy white guy names, and the haircuts.

So many threes, I jump in it.

Not a soul on the team with any chance to be an NBA player, not even close.

A coach who hates the media, hates dealing with the AAU generation of players, hates his mother.

A system that was a lethal combination of confusing, effective and stupefying boring.

It’s all there, West Virginia was the paragon of a mid major success story, John Beilein just happened to do it at an ostensibly big conference school. But seriously **** all of that, if I wanted to talk about scrappy teams I’d be making a long rambling post about race code words in sports and that’s not what this is. This is about how a bunch of chucker and stiffs in the middle of nowhere managed to be a damn good basketball team, and how they did it with efficiency and specialization, and how most of the qualities that made that West Virginia team successful have been present in the Cinderellas since, particularly in Butler.

And that’s no accident; Butler has been built by Brad Stevens to take advantage of what you might call market inefficiencies in college basketball, if that term is appropriate. Stevens knows he isn’t going to have more talent than many of the teams Butler will have to beat in the tournament every year so he doesn’t win with talent. He wins by attempting to understand why winning happens at all, based upon the sensible notion that the better understood a process is the more likely it is to be successfully replicated.

Butler has it’s own Kevin Pittsnoggle, sort of, in Matt Howard. Five players on the team have taken over 80 threes on the year, and those players who play significant minutes and don’t take threes basically don’t take jumpers (Andrew Smith, Khyle Marshall) or don’t shoot at all (Ronald Nored). Everybody who does shoot basically shoots threes or takes shots right at the rim, with very little in-between and guys who do the later draw plenty of fouls (Both Howard and Smith shoot fewer than two field goals per free throw attempted).

The point of all this is that Butler succeeds because the entire program is designed around a very statistically efficient style of play, a style that was born in a computer as much as it was in a gym, and the precepts that have made Butler and West Virginia before it successful programs despite limited resources. It just so happens that the same ideas were being applied at the same time in the NBA by the Seattle Supersonics, with similarly surprising success.

Part two of this rambling piece of crap will cover the 2005 Sonics team and attempt to perform a postmortem on the team in order to understand the methods that led to its success, and look to the current NBA for franchises operating using the same ideas.

Part three will attempt to put together a plan based around these ideas for the Wizards going forward. You are a huge loser for reading all this. Neeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrddddddddddddddd.

Zonkerbl wrote:The three pointer because basketball coaches are idiots who can't do math -- shooting 40% from the three is like shooting 60% from the field. 60%!!!!! Are you kidding me?

Zonkerbl wrote:meh, that's the college three though.

But you know what I mean, when evaluating NBA talent, if you place relatively more weight on three point shooting and defense you will get more NBA talent per dollar than other teams. Doesn't necessarily mean you should draft Shawn Respert #6.

zaRdsAndZeRos wrote:mike lee just tweeted
"John Wall needs 103 assists in last 9 games to become 4th rookie in NBA history to average 9 per game. Is it possible?"

thats about 11.4 per game...

nate33 wrote:

Zonkerbl wrote:meh, that's the college three though.

But you know what I mean, when evaluating NBA talent, if you place relatively more weight on three point shooting and defense you will get more NBA talent per dollar than other teams. Doesn't necessarily mean you should draft Shawn Respert #6.

Sorry my post came out as condescending. I didn't mean it to be. What I'm saying is that maybe the Wizards should honestly consider drafting a guy like Diebler in the 2nd round. He unquestionably has pro 3-point range (though presumably not at 50%). He is one of the best 3-point shooters in the history of college basketball, and he's 6-7 so he can hopefully get away with guarding other "3&D" SF's (where his defensive responsibilities would be more limited). If he can shoot, say, 44% from 3-point range, that's like having a guy shooting 66% from 2.

He's a terrible defender though. He could only play in certain matchups - like if we're going up against somebody like Shane Battier or Aaron Afflalo who basically stand at the 3-point line and don't do anything.

Zonkerbl wrote:

nate33 wrote:

Zonkerbl wrote:meh, that's the college three though.

But you know what I mean, when evaluating NBA talent, if you place relatively more weight on three point shooting and defense you will get more NBA talent per dollar than other teams. Doesn't necessarily mean you should draft Shawn Respert #6.

Sorry my post came out as condescending. I didn't mean it to be. What I'm saying is that maybe the Wizards should honestly consider drafting a guy like Diebler in the 2nd round. He unquestionably has pro 3-point range (though presumably not at 50%). He is one of the best 3-point shooters in the history of college basketball, and he's 6-7 so he can hopefully get away with guarding other "3&D" SF's (where his defensive responsibilities would be more limited). If he can shoot, say, 44% from 3-point range, that's like having a guy shooting 66% from 2.

He's a terrible defender though. He could only play in certain matchups - like if we're going up against somebody like Shane Battier or Aaron Afflalo who basically stand at the 3-point line and don't do anything.

I Oh, I thought you were kidding. Yeah, I'm done drafting project bigs with second round picks. Why not take a flyer on a three point shooter instead?

zaRdsAndZeRos wrote:tontoz, add a healthy shart and a resigned ny thats some pretty good spacing. from the 2 and 3 spots, thats a rough career average of 39% and 40% from 3, respectively. not to many teams have that kinda shooting in their starting lineups. if ny is resigned i think we need to focus on getting a reliable presence in the post rather than another shooter.

dobrojim wrote:How heavily should we weight DWilliams shooting 60% in college?

low sample size but not that low.

But I'm guessing we take him if given the opportunity
unless something dramatic happens btw now and draft day.

tontoz wrote:

zaRdsAndZeRos wrote:tontoz, add a healthy shart and a resigned ny thats some pretty good spacing. from the 2 and 3 spots, thats a rough career average of 39% and 40% from 3, respectively. not to many teams have that kinda shooting in their starting lineups. if ny is resigned i think we need to focus on getting a reliable presence in the post rather than another shooter.

Shard is just a rental. I think resigning Nick is a must. Some people here seem content to let him walk which i find hard to believe.

If Kanter is available i would certainly take him. But with the Atlanta pick and the 2nd rounder i would be looking at shooters. I doubt there will be many quality post players late in a weak draft.