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The tank stops tonight. For now.

25-29.





Tally of POTGs
Kuzma x9
Beal x4
Harrell x4
Dinwiddie x2
Gafford x2
KCP x1
Avdija x1
Kispert x1

Tough one between the Wolfman and Kuz.

Gotta go with Kuz cuz of his outstanding rebounding

"Boat Anchor" for his 10th assist and 10th player of the game nod.

Kuzma was 6/15 with 6 turnovers. That's too much inefficiency to deserve POTG. It was a Westbrookian triple double.

I think it's either Neto or Avdija. Neto had the best stats, but Avdija had to guard Kyrie most of the night.

I'm going with Neto.

Little guy Neto gets it. He put up a good game. Kuz gets a gold star, but not the PotG.

Amazing posts here... don't know what you're thinking of.

POTG was obviously Bryant, with Rui right behind him.

Bryant had one of the most effective 20 minute outings I've ever seen.

Neto did play well too. Shot exceptionally well, obviously.

Thought my pick might be controversial given Kuzma's play in the second half yet here we are, Neto in the lead.

Just a tough performance and I wish Wes had been quicker with the challenge on that terrible charge call against Neto late in the game.

Probably would have put the game out of reach sooner.

Kuz triple double, Neto redemption’s game and Deni’s D (and great first half) are candidates, but I’d go with Rui. Efficient game from him offensively (5/8 FGs, 2/2 from 3) solid on D (2 blocks, 1 steal) and great at moving the ball (4 assists). Rui had the best plus/minus of the team at +11.

When you win by a single point, every positive thing anyone did was the game-winning play, but I'm amazed to see no mention of Bryant by anyone but me.

As good as Rui was, & he had a terrific game, Bryant was just that much better. Yes, it took him 1 more shot to score 1 more point, but the zero turnovers, 3 offensive boards, 2 blocks & no fouls provide enough of a difference to make for a jaw-dropping line.

He's never been a favorite on this board, but it's pretty clear that Thomas Bryant has now been consigned to exile here!

Shoutout to Gill, dude balled out. I'm happy for him

I decided to watch the game again (with some foreshortening to quicken it) with the idea in mind of "player of the game," something that I'm certainly not thinking of when winning the game is what's at stake.

It was easy to see why you'd think of Neto. Above all, he stood out in a way he usually doesn't. Because he started & above all b/c he had to deal with Kyrie so much.

Gill too -- the guy went 6-7...! When do you ever see him play this many minutes? When do you see him make everything he puts up?

After a while, I realized that what I was seeing was a bunch of guys playing really hard! It's a cliched phrase, but the Wizards really gave it their all yesterday, & it was fantastic to watch it.

I'll say the same for Cassius Winston -- he looked good!

Very fun to watch. & in a sense, in this case, maybe it makes sense to talk about playerS of the game -- & give it to all 3 of those guys for stepping up the way they did.

...not to take anything from Rui, Bryant or anyone....

Close, but I'll go with Neto.

Good to see Bryant play well for first good game since he came back.

That Net team is really bad.

payitforward wrote:I decided to watch the game again (with some foreshortening to quicken it) with the idea in mind of "player of the game," something that I'm certainly not thinking of when winning the game is what's at stake.

It was easy to see why you'd think of Neto. Above all, he stood out in a way he usually doesn't. Because he started & above all b/c he had to deal with Kyrie so much.

Gill too -- the guy went 6-7...! When do you ever see him play this many minutes? When do you see him make everything he puts up?

After a while, I realized that what I was seeing was a bunch of guys playing really hard! It's a cliched phrase, but the Wizards really gave it their all yesterday, & it was fantastic to watch it.

I'll say the same for Cassius Winston -- he looked good!

Very fun to watch. & in a sense, in this case, maybe it makes sense to talk about playerS of the game -- & give it to all 3 of those guys for stepping up the way they did.

...not to take anything from Rui, Bryant or anyone....

Good observations. In particular I though Winston was solid. I sure hope he gets minutes over Ish. We spent a pick on him, we might as well see what we have.

Tommy

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51 games

This season

Still possible

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Easy

KUZMA

The CAPTAIN OF THIS ITERATION of Wizards

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Damned perfect

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payitforward wrote:When you win by a single point, every positive thing anyone did was the game-winning play, but I'm amazed to see no mention of Bryant by anyone but me.

As good as Rui was, & he had a terrific game, Bryant was just that much better. Yes, it took him 1 more shot to score 1 more point, but the zero turnovers, 3 offensive boards, 2 blocks & no fouls provide enough of a difference to make for a jaw-dropping line.

He's never been a favorite on this board, but it's pretty clear that Thomas Bryant has now been consigned to exile here!

Bryant had some good moments. I can see how one can consider him. He certainly didn’t hurt the team with his play, but there were instances where, I think, we were left wanting. Sometimes he didn’t close out when necessary. Sometimes he didn’t protect the paint when necessary. These blown assignments, if you will, are not being captured as a metric that we can easily digest, I don’t think. I wish they were for all players. Additionally, it would be good to see how many times a player had to help or be helped on D. I digress. One can count on Bryant to shoot efficiently. Against less than average and weaker C’s, he does well.

It was a team win going by box but Kuz.

WallToWall wrote:

payitforward wrote:When you win by a single point, every positive thing anyone did was the game-winning play, but I'm amazed to see no mention of Bryant by anyone but me.

As good as Rui was, & he had a terrific game, Bryant was just that much better. Yes, it took him 1 more shot to score 1 more point, but the zero turnovers, 3 offensive boards, 2 blocks & no fouls provide enough of a difference to make for a jaw-dropping line.

He's never been a favorite on this board, but it's pretty clear that Thomas Bryant has now been consigned to exile here!

Bryant had some good moments. I can see how one can consider him. He certainly didn’t hurt the team with his play, but there were instances where, I think, we were left wanting. Sometimes he didn’t close out when necessary. Sometimes he didn’t protect the paint when necessary. These blown assignments, if you will, are not being captured as a metric that we can easily digest, I don’t think. I wish they were for all players. Additionally, it would be good to see how many times a player had to help or be helped on D....

The below might be of interest mostly to WallToWall.

These are some very sensible observations.

Of course, you can say of every player that "sometimes he didn't..." do something he should have done. Or didn't do it well enough. Just as every player who makes shots also misses shots. Still... the more regularly you can say it about a player the more those facts detract from his overall positive influence on the floor. Obviously.

Problem is... they are extremely difficult to quantify. I.e., it's relatively easy to run regressions on things like FG% or number of rebounds & work out quite well their effect on wins vs. losses. It's much much harder, maybe to the point of being impossible, to do that with those missed assignments or other "non-events" (things that should have happened but didn't -- & their "non-happening" overall must have negative effects).

The guys with the mystery meat formulas -- RAPTOR, etc. -- are trying to do that, & they deserve praise for the effort. But, it's not clear whether they've actually achieved anything significant. For a lot of reasons, above all because they don't publish their methodologies, so no one can check them.

Plus, the thing is, simply running regressions against box score statistics allows one to establish about a 93% correlation between those numbers & win-loss record. So, at the team level they're pretty good. They get you very close to a 100% explanation of wins/losses. &, since every one of them is created by an individual & assigned to that individual, they give us a pretty good idea of what makes a player good.

What they don't & can't account for is interdependencies. & they don't account for defense anywhere near fully either. Above all, that's because defense is much more a team metric & an effort metric than a counting metric of things that can be assigned unambiguously to individuals.

Still, you are making valid points. Where it seems like you might be going wrong is in the relationship between your last 2 sentences:

WallToWall wrote:...One can count on Bryant to shoot efficiently. Against less than average and weaker C’s, he does well.

The first sentence is clearly correct.

But, it's unrelated to the 2d sentence. He came off the bench in 2018-19, but he started the following year. There was little change in his numbers. He did well both years.