2023-24 NBA Season Discussion

[AEnigma]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

Of course it is.

It makes constructing a title team significantly easier, since you can acquire a large array of players.

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

[parsnips33]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

Of course it is.

It makes constructing a title team significantly easier, since you can acquire a large array of players.

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

Well I think there's also a question of maximizing skillsets. If you have say Draymond Green on your team, I think you might actually want to ask him to do more offensively, compared to just spotting up or attacking closeouts.

[ShotCreator]

For Posterity, here was the assist breakdown from a post I think the website glitched out for some reason. Fortunately,

Going through Jokic’s assists really make his playmaking far less impressive


Game 7:

Fantastic weakside pass to KCP off a double (Missed rotation by the wolves)

DHO

Pass out to murray, who hit a stepback 3 against a high double + Bump

Pass out to murray against high help, ANT makes a late rotation
DHO for a contested midrange pullup for KCP

DHO for a off balance floater by murray

Good pass to murray in the corner off ANT ball watching where he attacked the closeout well (A minute left of game 7)



Game 6:

Aaron Gordon DHO

A pass to Braun off a pop when both the BH and screener defender committed to Jamal


Game 5:

Zoom action DHO

Throwing it to KCP early transition at the start of the shot clock who pulls up early

P&R pass to reggie

Throws it to reggie in transition, who beats NAW in front of him

Good transition pass to braun

Good pass to Aaron Gordan cutting after getting inside position on Jaden Mcdaniels in early mismatched transition

Good pass to Braun in transition (3 on 2)

Jamal Murray DHO

Kickout to MPJ with ANT ball watching a tad (Trademark contested 3 here)

Good transition pass to cutting AG after a mismatch causes KAT to help

Good pass to KCP before the double comes

Kevin Love esque transition pass

Throws it to an Open Braun in transition with the wolves not matching up


Game 4: (Soft doubles)

Box and elbows, good pass to MPJ with Mcdaniels ball watching
Great pass in the post to a cutting AG

Great skip pass to KCP in the post (Soft double)

Transition pass to an open MPJ who beat everyone up the floor

DHO for murray heavily contested pullup midrange over towns

DHO for murray hitting a contested three over the arms of Jaden Mcdaniels

Great pass to AG off the double


Game 3:

Good pass to AG at the dunker on a Murray Jokic DHO

Pass to KCP for the contested midrange C&S over Jaden mcdaniels

Good pass to braun at the dunker on a Murray Jokic DHO

Good pass to MPJ on a Horns Chin set (so like, a designed easy one)

Kickout Pass to Murray who takes a contested pullup low shot clock middy over Naz

KCP causes his defender to fall, passes to an open jokic who passes it to the open man after the scramble (Jamal for three)

Passes it to Aaron Gordan at the wing who Gobert was sagging off of on an off ball screen with Murray

DHO for an Aaron Gordan three

Good lob for the AG cut


Game 2:

Pass to a cutting AG, KAT kind of gets a hand on it so AG just has to post up KAT and makes a good hook

Pass to AG open from the wing from three (since theyre sagging)

Pass to a cutting AG who hits the midrange shot over KAT

Good pass to Justin Holiday in the WS corner who hits a crazy contested 3 over ANT

Murray DHO who gets by everyone despite stepping back first

Good Lob to AG, Anderson caught sleeping

Good WS pass to justin Holiday

Transiiton pass to MPJ


Game 1:

Contested DHO pullup 3 for MPJ

Contesed DHO stepback pullup 3 for Reggie Jackson

Pass to a cutting braun in transition

Great weakside pass to KCP in the post (caught sleeping)

Pass to cutting Aaron Gordan on the short roll JokicXMurray

Great Lob to AG inverted P&R

Good pass to an open justin holiday

DHO to Jamal Murray

Contested DHO to MPJ pullup 3


14/55 assists were DHOs

8 were pretty basic transition passes, and thats being somewhat generous

4 or so were other players collapsing the D and him making the right second pass off the scramble rotations

What exactly are the "Rondo assists" that Jokic is supposedly racking up? Are people talking about his DHOs? Because while statkeepers may be a bit liberal in what counts as an assist, to compare those to Rondo getting assists from Allen coming off screens is absurd. Jokic getting his ball handlers open off his own screens has great value.

Great value is an empty term without some sort of comparative frame. DHO's require your teammates to do more, and take out less defenders than the average lead playmaker assist, and that is not considering what those playmakers can be doing to the defenses before they make the final pass.

If you compare Jokic's playmaking to someone like say, Luka, he is taking out less defenders and is requiring his teammates to successfully do more things for his passes to turn into scores.


Consequently, relative to someone like Luka, his assist average significantly overstates what he's actually creating.

I'm curious then, for the people that seem to hold the opinion of Jokic having a great peak, but clearly a level or two below the greatest peaks, where would you rank him as far as all time peaks? I'm curious how long the list is and which players you'd rank ahead.

Heej, OhayoKD, mainly directed at you guys, but anyone is welcome to answer, but I know both of you have generally been a little more critical (in a fair way) than most other posters re: Jokic.

To make things simple I'll keep this era-relative(.

Tier 0

1. Bill Russell

Tier 1

2. Lebron
3. Kareem

(Mikan goes somewhere here)

Tier 2

4. Duncan
5. Hakeem
6. Jordan
7/8. Wilt/Magic
9/10. KG/Shaq

Tier 3
11/12/13. Giannis/Steph/Jokic
14/15. Oscar/West


Tier 4
14/15/16. Kobe/Bird/Wade
17/18. James Harden/Steve Nash
20/21/22. David Robinson/Kevin Durant/Cp3

Yeah but Luka pounds the air out of the ball, has never played on a team with the versatility and ball movement of any Nuggets team in the past 7 years, and in general has a history of stunting his sidekicks full games(Brunson, Porzingis). Both of which are having absolute peak seasons without Luka.


Luka should be creating opportunities for people more than Jokic, because his game naturally takes more opportunities away. That goes for any ball dominant guy in comparison to Nikola.

Jokic is not just a high assist rate guy, he's also a high assisted rate guy. People think about making guys better purely in terms of setting up shots, but not about setting up advantages, and making guys better overall offensive players.

Also, there's no way you can capture even a fraction of what is happening on the court purely using play-by-play. On any given Jokic horns set the defense is reacting to the fact that he can hit the cutter and shooter simultaneously while being able to take it to score himself if nothing opens up. This causes chaos for the defense that you won't pick up by reading a sentence.

[Heej]

Boston winning would be interesting because the debate about tatum would intensify even more, but a ring would still get him serious respect he doesnt really get right now

Tatum would get a boost but the important impact of Boston crushing their way to the title would negate the theory that a GOAT team needs to be built around a guy who clearly best in the league.

The way I think of it, it’s less that an all-time great team needs to be built around a very-top-tier superstar, and more that that’s the *easiest* route to building a great team.

I think in the past we’ve seen title teams that were incredible but didn’t have one of the very top superstars. Instead, their model was to have a large number of all-star level guys on one team and good depth. I’m thinking of teams like the Bad Boys Pistons, 2004 Pistons, and 2014 Spurs.

Those teams were *really* good. So I think it’s not really that that model doesn’t work. It’s probably more that that model is harder to achieve. I think a big reason for this is how salaries are structured in the NBA. With a max contract, the top-tier guys are actually underpaid compared to what they’re worth. So when you have them, you’re really getting more than you’re paying for. The flip side is that if you don’t have one of those guys and instead have a bunch of all-star level guys, you need to pay all of them like all-star level players, and all-star level players typically command at or near the max contracts, which makes it almost impossible to stack up a bunch of them on the same team (and even harder to do so while retaining depth).

In the past, I think these sorts of teams got around this by having one or two really good contracts. For instance, for the 2014 Spurs, they had Kawhi on a very cheap contract, and Manu on a pretty good contract too. So they weren’t really paying for as many all-star level guys as they had. The same was true of the Bad Boys Pistons, I believe. And no one on the 2004 Pistons was paid a ton. These teams just managed to get a bunch of all-stars on a bargain. And that’s not really a model that teams can actually rely on getting. So the more reliable way to build a great team is to get a couple major superstars who are worth more than they’re paid.

But I wonder if this multiple-all-star model is as difficult to achieve right now. The Celtics don’t really have anyone on the cheap. The salary cap is just high and non-strict enough that they are able to pay for all these guys, even without having them on incredible deals. At the same time, the existence of super maxes maybe makes major superstars actually be less of a bargain than they have been at times in the past. I’m not sure this will be possible moving forwards, with the way stuff will be changing in this regard, but given all this stuff, this year it may just be that the multiple-all-star model is actually genuinely the best model.

Of course, we’ll see. The actual basketball explanation for needing a major superstar is that you need such a person to generate offense against the best playoff defenses. That may ultimately prove to be true if the Celtics face the Timberwolves, but in general I think things are slanted enough offensively that generating an advantage against great playoff defenses may not be the exclusive realm of the top few guys, and might extend a bit downwards to guys like Tatum, with the real concern being whether the team has people who can convert on that advantage before the defense stabilizes (which is something the Celtics are very well built to do).

This is a good post that got lost in the sauce. What I would add to this is that teams seem to be oscillating back towards the way they were constructed in the 60s with quality players at each position vs the era of specialists necessitated by expansion diluting talent. Ultimately I think the point of a superstar is that they're a low effort option to trigger "2 on the ball" scenarios that generate advantages which can either be widened by connectors or completed by finishers.

The Celtics seem to be leaning towards having more strength on the connector/finisher side of the equation vs having someone who's an automatic advantage generator. I think they're a future portent of what's to come in the new era GOAT-level teams we'll be seeing this decade and I'm interested in seeing what the souped up version of this concept looks like. OKC with an upgrade at the Josh Giddey slot seems like a good candidate for what a more fleshed out attempt at this sort of build will look like.

The Spurs might give us the best look at this if they play their cards right building next to Wemby.

[Colbinii]

Of course it is.

It makes constructing a title team significantly easier, since you can acquire a large array of players.

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

Well I think there's also a question of maximizing skillsets. If you have say Draymond Green on your team, I think you might actually want to ask him to do more offensively, compared to just spotting up or attacking closeouts.

Yeah, but who would he play with where Draymond literally couldn't be Draymond? Like 4 centers?

[AEnigma]

Of course it is.

It makes constructing a title team significantly easier, since you can acquire a large array of players.

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

Well I think there's also a question of maximizing skillsets. If you have say Draymond Green on your team, I think you might actually want to ask him to do more offensively, compared to just spotting up or attacking closeouts.

Sure but that is not specific to difficulty of assists.

And if Draymond were on the team then I would want Jokic to take more scoring lessons from Dirk.

[Heej]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

I would rephrase this as "generating wider advantages that teammates can more easily take advantage of". Over the course of 7 100-possession games that is more valuable imo

[Colbinii]

For Posterity, here was the assist breakdown from a post I think the website glitched out for some reason. Fortunately,

Going through Jokic’s assists really make his playmaking far less impressive


Game 7:

Fantastic weakside pass to KCP off a double (Missed rotation by the wolves)

DHO

Pass out to murray, who hit a stepback 3 against a high double + Bump

Pass out to murray against high help, ANT makes a late rotation
DHO for a contested midrange pullup for KCP

DHO for a off balance floater by murray

Good pass to murray in the corner off ANT ball watching where he attacked the closeout well (A minute left of game 7)



Game 6:

Aaron Gordon DHO

A pass to Braun off a pop when both the BH and screener defender committed to Jamal


Game 5:

Zoom action DHO

Throwing it to KCP early transition at the start of the shot clock who pulls up early

P&R pass to reggie

Throws it to reggie in transition, who beats NAW in front of him

Good transition pass to braun

Good pass to Aaron Gordan cutting after getting inside position on Jaden Mcdaniels in early mismatched transition

Good pass to Braun in transition (3 on 2)

Jamal Murray DHO

Kickout to MPJ with ANT ball watching a tad (Trademark contested 3 here)

Good transition pass to cutting AG after a mismatch causes KAT to help

Good pass to KCP before the double comes

Kevin Love esque transition pass

Throws it to an Open Braun in transition with the wolves not matching up


Game 4: (Soft doubles)

Box and elbows, good pass to MPJ with Mcdaniels ball watching
Great pass in the post to a cutting AG

Great skip pass to KCP in the post (Soft double)

Transition pass to an open MPJ who beat everyone up the floor

DHO for murray heavily contested pullup midrange over towns

DHO for murray hitting a contested three over the arms of Jaden Mcdaniels

Great pass to AG off the double


Game 3:

Good pass to AG at the dunker on a Murray Jokic DHO

Pass to KCP for the contested midrange C&S over Jaden mcdaniels

Good pass to braun at the dunker on a Murray Jokic DHO

Good pass to MPJ on a Horns Chin set (so like, a designed easy one)

Kickout Pass to Murray who takes a contested pullup low shot clock middy over Naz

KCP causes his defender to fall, passes to an open jokic who passes it to the open man after the scramble (Jamal for three)

Passes it to Aaron Gordan at the wing who Gobert was sagging off of on an off ball screen with Murray

DHO for an Aaron Gordan three

Good lob for the AG cut


Game 2:

Pass to a cutting AG, KAT kind of gets a hand on it so AG just has to post up KAT and makes a good hook

Pass to AG open from the wing from three (since theyre sagging)

Pass to a cutting AG who hits the midrange shot over KAT

Good pass to Justin Holiday in the WS corner who hits a crazy contested 3 over ANT

Murray DHO who gets by everyone despite stepping back first

Good Lob to AG, Anderson caught sleeping

Good WS pass to justin Holiday

Transiiton pass to MPJ


Game 1:

Contested DHO pullup 3 for MPJ

Contesed DHO stepback pullup 3 for Reggie Jackson

Pass to a cutting braun in transition

Great weakside pass to KCP in the post (caught sleeping)

Pass to cutting Aaron Gordan on the short roll JokicXMurray

Great Lob to AG inverted P&R

Good pass to an open justin holiday

DHO to Jamal Murray

Contested DHO to MPJ pullup 3


14/55 assists were DHOs

8 were pretty basic transition passes, and thats being somewhat generous

4 or so were other players collapsing the D and him making the right second pass off the scramble rotations

What exactly are the "Rondo assists" that Jokic is supposedly racking up? Are people talking about his DHOs? Because while statkeepers may be a bit liberal in what counts as an assist, to compare those to Rondo getting assists from Allen coming off screens is absurd. Jokic getting his ball handlers open off his own screens has great value.

Great value is an empty term without some sort of comparative frame. DHO's require your teammates to do more, and take out less defenders than the average lead playmaker assist, and that is not considering what those playmakers can be doing to the defenses before they make the final pass.

If you compare Jokic's playmaking to someone like say, Luka, he is taking out less defenders and is requiring his teammates to successfully do more things for his passes to turn into scores.


Consequently, relative to someone like Luka, his assist average significantly overstates what he's actually creating.

I'm curious then, for the people that seem to hold the opinion of Jokic having a great peak, but clearly a level or two below the greatest peaks, where would you rank him as far as all time peaks? I'm curious how long the list is and which players you'd rank ahead.

Heej, OhayoKD, mainly directed at you guys, but anyone is welcome to answer, but I know both of you have generally been a little more critical (in a fair way) than most other posters re: Jokic.

To make things simple I'll keep this era-relative(.

Tier 0

1. Bill Russell

Tier 1

2. Lebron
3. Kareem

(Mikan goes somewhere here)

Tier 2

4. Duncan
5. Hakeem
6. Jordan
7/8. Wilt/Magic
9/10. KG/Shaq

Tier 3
11/12/13. Giannis/Steph/Jokic
14/15. Oscar/West


Tier 4
14/15/16. Kobe/Bird/Wade
17/18. James Harden/Steve Nash
20/21/22. David Robinson/Kevin Durant/Cp3

Can you elaborate on the Jordan placement? I have a hard time placing his 3-4 year peak outside the top 4

Considering 4 of the 5 players ahead of him are elite rim protectors [ATG at that] and the other is LeBron James, something about defensive impact must be high on the list, especially with Russell in Tier 0 and KG/Wilt/Giannis all in the Top 13.

[parsnips33]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

I would rephrase this as "generating wider advantages that teammates can more easily take advantage of". Over the course of 7 100-possession games that is more valuable imo

Not sure if you mean "wider" purely metaphorically or in terms of actual spacing on the floor, but I like it either way.

[Heej]

For Posterity, here was the assist breakdown from a post I think the website glitched out for some reason. Fortunately,

Going through Jokic’s assists really make his playmaking far less impressive


Game 7:

Fantastic weakside pass to KCP off a double (Missed rotation by the wolves)

DHO

Pass out to murray, who hit a stepback 3 against a high double + Bump

Pass out to murray against high help, ANT makes a late rotation
DHO for a contested midrange pullup for KCP

DHO for a off balance floater by murray

Good pass to murray in the corner off ANT ball watching where he attacked the closeout well (A minute left of game 7)



Game 6:

Aaron Gordon DHO

A pass to Braun off a pop when both the BH and screener defender committed to Jamal


Game 5:

Zoom action DHO

Throwing it to KCP early transition at the start of the shot clock who pulls up early

P&R pass to reggie

Throws it to reggie in transition, who beats NAW in front of him

Good transition pass to braun

Good pass to Aaron Gordan cutting after getting inside position on Jaden Mcdaniels in early mismatched transition

Good pass to Braun in transition (3 on 2)

Jamal Murray DHO

Kickout to MPJ with ANT ball watching a tad (Trademark contested 3 here)

Good transition pass to cutting AG after a mismatch causes KAT to help

Good pass to KCP before the double comes

Kevin Love esque transition pass

Throws it to an Open Braun in transition with the wolves not matching up


Game 4: (Soft doubles)

Box and elbows, good pass to MPJ with Mcdaniels ball watching
Great pass in the post to a cutting AG

Great skip pass to KCP in the post (Soft double)

Transition pass to an open MPJ who beat everyone up the floor

DHO for murray heavily contested pullup midrange over towns

DHO for murray hitting a contested three over the arms of Jaden Mcdaniels

Great pass to AG off the double


Game 3:

Good pass to AG at the dunker on a Murray Jokic DHO

Pass to KCP for the contested midrange C&S over Jaden mcdaniels

Good pass to braun at the dunker on a Murray Jokic DHO

Good pass to MPJ on a Horns Chin set (so like, a designed easy one)

Kickout Pass to Murray who takes a contested pullup low shot clock middy over Naz

KCP causes his defender to fall, passes to an open jokic who passes it to the open man after the scramble (Jamal for three)

Passes it to Aaron Gordan at the wing who Gobert was sagging off of on an off ball screen with Murray

DHO for an Aaron Gordan three

Good lob for the AG cut


Game 2:

Pass to a cutting AG, KAT kind of gets a hand on it so AG just has to post up KAT and makes a good hook

Pass to AG open from the wing from three (since theyre sagging)

Pass to a cutting AG who hits the midrange shot over KAT

Good pass to Justin Holiday in the WS corner who hits a crazy contested 3 over ANT

Murray DHO who gets by everyone despite stepping back first

Good Lob to AG, Anderson caught sleeping

Good WS pass to justin Holiday

Transiiton pass to MPJ


Game 1:

Contested DHO pullup 3 for MPJ

Contesed DHO stepback pullup 3 for Reggie Jackson

Pass to a cutting braun in transition

Great weakside pass to KCP in the post (caught sleeping)

Pass to cutting Aaron Gordan on the short roll JokicXMurray

Great Lob to AG inverted P&R

Good pass to an open justin holiday

DHO to Jamal Murray

Contested DHO to MPJ pullup 3


14/55 assists were DHOs

8 were pretty basic transition passes, and thats being somewhat generous

4 or so were other players collapsing the D and him making the right second pass off the scramble rotations

What exactly are the "Rondo assists" that Jokic is supposedly racking up? Are people talking about his DHOs? Because while statkeepers may be a bit liberal in what counts as an assist, to compare those to Rondo getting assists from Allen coming off screens is absurd. Jokic getting his ball handlers open off his own screens has great value.

Great value is an empty term without some sort of comparative frame. DHO's require your teammates to do more, and take out less defenders than the average lead playmaker assist, and that is not considering what those playmakers can be doing to the defenses before they make the final pass.

If you compare Jokic's playmaking to someone like say, Luka, he is taking out less defenders and is requiring his teammates to successfully do more things for his passes to turn into scores.


Consequently, relative to someone like Luka, his assist average significantly overstates what he's actually creating.

I'm curious then, for the people that seem to hold the opinion of Jokic having a great peak, but clearly a level or two below the greatest peaks, where would you rank him as far as all time peaks? I'm curious how long the list is and which players you'd rank ahead.

Heej, OhayoKD, mainly directed at you guys, but anyone is welcome to answer, but I know both of you have generally been a little more critical (in a fair way) than most other posters re: Jokic.

To make things simple I'll keep this era-relative(.

Tier 0

1. Bill Russell

Tier 1

2. Lebron
3. Kareem

(Mikan goes somewhere here)

Tier 2

4. Duncan
5. Hakeem
6. Jordan
7/8. Wilt/Magic
9/10. KG/Shaq

Tier 3
11/12/13. Giannis/Steph/Jokic
14/15. Oscar/West


Tier 4
14/15/16. Kobe/Bird/Wade
17/18. James Harden/Steve Nash
20/21/22. David Robinson/Kevin Durant/Cp3

Yeah but Luka pounds the air out of the ball, has never played on a team with the versatility and ball movement of any Nuggets team in the past 7 years, and in general has a history of stunting his sidekicks full games(Brunson, Porzingis). Both of which are having absolute peak seasons without Luka.


Luka should be creating opportunities for people more than Jokic, because his game naturally takes more opportunities away. That goes for any ball dominant guy in comparison to Nikola.

Jokic is not just a high assist rate guy, he's also a high assisted rate guy. People think about making guys better purely in terms of setting up shots, but not about setting up advantages, and making guys better overall offensive players.

Also, there's no way you can capture even a fraction of what is happening on the court purely using play-by-play. On any given Jokic horns set the defense is reacting to the fact that he can hit the cutter and shooter simultaneously while being able to take it to score himself if nothing opens up. This causes chaos for the defense that you won't pick up by reading a sentence.

To be fair, Brunson left right after his breakout postseason. Luka adjusted perfectly fine playing next to Kyrie. And Porzingis was not playing well in Dallas regardless of Luka. He had a lot of trouble posting up switches that season which he seems to have resolved a bit this season.

Jokic being a high-assisted guy is a double edged sword because in the playoffs vs contender level defenses the threshold for playmaking competency is raised significantly so the same connectors who can widen advantages for Jokic to finish are suddenly reduced to record scratches. When that happens, a superstar is expected to increase their playmaking load to get back to generating 2 on the ball situations.

I'm not fully convinced Jokic clears that threshold once teams throw the Ham defense at him in the post and require him to create from outside or sling laser beam skip passes like Bron, Harden, and Luka do.

[Heej]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

I would rephrase this as "generating wider advantages that teammates can more easily take advantage of". Over the course of 7 100-possession games that is more valuable imo

Not sure if you mean "wider" purely metaphorically or in terms of actual spacing on the floor, but I like it either way.

Damn I didn't even think of it like that but I like it even more now that you mention it . Cheers to that mate

[parsnips33]

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

Well I think there's also a question of maximizing skillsets. If you have say Draymond Green on your team, I think you might actually want to ask him to do more offensively, compared to just spotting up or attacking closeouts.

Yeah, but who would he play with where Draymond literally couldn't be Draymond? Like 4 centers?

I think I've confused things - but I think the relative value of a DHO is tied to the skillsets on your team. With guys like Bam or Sabonis, I see the merit in pushing more of the offense through them, even if Butler or Fox might be more dangerous with the ball on any given possession. And of course, that's even more effective when you have Duncan Robinsons or Malik Monks who thrive working off of that

[Colbinii]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

I would rephrase this as "generating wider advantages that teammates can more easily take advantage of". Over the course of 7 100-possession games that is more valuable imo

Not sure if you mean "wider" purely metaphorically or in terms of actual spacing on the floor, but I like it either way.

I think he means "wider" as in more and in different ways. If you can shoot off the catch, cut, drive and kick and post-up, you can literally fit with any players. When you are running an offensive set [tieing this back to the algorithms], you run an array of different movements [plays]. Let's say you initate with a P&R and the defense defends it well but the ball-handler ends up somewhere in the paint while the ball is kicked back out, now you can instantly get into another action of a post-up with the original ball-handler who is now in the paint, and maybe now the team defended the P&R well but in the action(s) ended up with a smaller player on the now player in the paint about to post-up.

If the ball-handler wasn't capable of posting up, that would take that action [The post-up following the P&R] off the table, but since the player could be a P&R ball handler AND post-up player, he provides a wider advantage for the team and thus teammates.

Chauncey Billups was excellent at this action, where he would often find himself in a post-position against a smaller guard after the original action in a play. Billups being both an elite shooter and post-player made him challenging to guard as he could either flare out or cut-in and position inside.

[OhayoKD]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

Is it self-evident to you Draymond provides less scoring value than Steph in a game where he has 15 and Steph has 50? Doing more things yourself means less things need to be done by teammates...

Of course it is.

It makes constructing a title team significantly easier, since you can acquire a large array of players.

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

Well I think there's also a question of maximizing skillsets. If you have say Draymond Green on your team, I think you might actually want to ask him to do more offensively, compared to just spotting up or attacking closeouts.

So is a superstar attacking closeouts now worthless because Draymond could conceivably do it?

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

Requiring? I'm not even sure what that means in this context. But enabling them to do less on one end or the other so you can get a better player at the other end? Feels super valuable. Dirk's ability to drive great offense allowed Dallas to start a very limited offensive team in the playoffs in their title year getting really good defenders on the court. Gobert allowed Utah to play offense only perimeter guys leading to good records and elite offenses(though it wasn't playoff resiliiant).

But is Dirk's scoring or rebounding, which allows his teammates to not do as much scoring or rebounding, actually inherently valuable though?

[Heej]

I would rephrase this as "generating wider advantages that teammates can more easily take advantage of". Over the course of 7 100-possession games that is more valuable imo

Not sure if you mean "wider" purely metaphorically or in terms of actual spacing on the floor, but I like it either way.

I think he means "wider" as in more and in different ways. If you can shoot off the catch, cut, drive and kick and post-up, you can literally fit with any players. When you are running an offensive set [tieing this back to the algorithms], you run an array of different movements [plays]. Let's say you initate with a P&R and the defense defends it well but the ball-handler ends up somewhere in the paint while the ball is kicked back out, now you can instantly get into another action of a post-up with the original ball-handler who is now in the paint, and maybe now the team defended the P&R well but in the action(s) ended up with a smaller player on the now player in the paint about to post-up.

If the ball-handler wasn't capable of posting up, that would take that action [The post-up following the P&R] off the table, but since the player could be a P&R ball handler AND post-up player, he provides a wider advantage for the team and thus teammates.

Chauncey Billups was excellent at this action, where he would often find himself in a post-position against a smaller guard after the original action in a play. Billups being both an elite shooter and post-player made him challenging to guard as he could either flare out or cut-in and position inside.

Well what I had actually meant was the magnitude of the advantage. A half step advantage generated vs a full step advantage generated on a kickout can be the difference between a record scratch/contested shot or a wide open shot/blow-by vs a closeout.

[Colbinii]

Not sure if you mean "wider" purely metaphorically or in terms of actual spacing on the floor, but I like it either way.

I think he means "wider" as in more and in different ways. If you can shoot off the catch, cut, drive and kick and post-up, you can literally fit with any players. When you are running an offensive set [tieing this back to the algorithms], you run an array of different movements [plays]. Let's say you initate with a P&R and the defense defends it well but the ball-handler ends up somewhere in the paint while the ball is kicked back out, now you can instantly get into another action of a post-up with the original ball-handler who is now in the paint, and maybe now the team defended the P&R well but in the action(s) ended up with a smaller player on the now player in the paint about to post-up.

If the ball-handler wasn't capable of posting up, that would take that action [The post-up following the P&R] off the table, but since the player could be a P&R ball handler AND post-up player, he provides a wider advantage for the team and thus teammates.

Chauncey Billups was excellent at this action, where he would often find himself in a post-position against a smaller guard after the original action in a play. Billups being both an elite shooter and post-player made him challenging to guard as he could either flare out or cut-in and position inside.

Well what I had actually meant was the magnitude of the advantage. A half step advantage generated vs a full step advantage generated on a kickout can be the difference between a record scratch/contested shot or a wide open shot/blow-by vs a closeout.

Oops

[lessthanjake]

I think it’s more just a question of what the expected value of the chance that’s created is. Like, if I inbounds pass to a guy and he immediately throws up a full court shot and actually makes it, I didn’t really create anything because the chance of scoring from the situation when I passed it is very low. But if I get it to a guy for an open dunk, then the expected value of the created chance is very high. I think that’s essentially what OhayoKD means by requiring more or less of your teammates (i.e. a higher or lower expected value at the point at which the pass is received).

But, I’d add an extra wrinkle, because we should think about what the situation was before that. For instance, if we’re on a fast break with no one in front of us, and I dump the ball off to the guy next to me and he dunks, the expected value of the FGA after the pass is super high, but the expected value of the play prior to the pass was super high too, so I didn’t *add* much expected value.

Ultimately, I think the value of creation should probably be conceptually measured by comparing the expected value at the point at which a guy received the ball, and compare it to the expected value at the point at which his teammate gets the ball. To the extent anyone is familiar with this, I’d say this is equivalent to the “Expected Assists” stat in soccer (which, for purposes of clarity, is distinct from “Expected Assisted Goals”). The expected value added (or lost) between when a player gets the ball and when a teammate receives his pass is conceptually what creation is. Of course, that’s not totally teammate independent, since players can have teammates with smarter movement off the ball, etc., and it’s unclear whether or not we should measure expected value as a general objective thing or specific expected value for the teammate who receives it (i.e. is it higher expected value to create the same shot but for a better shooter?). But, in general, I think this framework gets to the value of what is being created.

When it comes to DHOs, I think one could argue that the value of what is being created isn’t all that high. It’s not creating some open dunk. But Jokic is a great screener and often takes the teammate’s defender out of the play really well in those plays. Meanwhile, he still exerts gravity on his own defender, who really has to fear Jokic getting the ball into his floater or fear Jokic faking the DHO and driving. Of course, Jokic’s man is also usually a guy who is slow and not at all well suited to defending a guy who has speed coming off a DHO. So, overall, a guy getting the ball off a DHO from Jokic is actually pretty good expected value IMO. And it typically comes from a very neutral situation that definitely doesn’t have high expected value to begin with. So I wouldn’t really say it doesn’t create much expected value. Just for reference, over the sample size of the last two regular seasons, Murray has like a 1.07 PPP off handoffs. Obviously there are even higher PPP plays than that, but that’s good stuff to generate from a neutral situation in half-court offense! Granted, one could say that that PPP is so high because Murray is good at making something from those plays, and there’d definitely be truth to that. But Jokic is objectively creating something in these plays and he brings a unique skill set that makes it create a particularly advantageous situation for his teammates. Which is all to say that a Jokic DHO assist is definitely not the most valuable assist IMO, but I don’t think it should be downplayed as being particularly less valuable than other assists.

Of course, in the context of this last series, it didn’t work very well, since the guys who might get those DHOs were really cold. And Gobert roaming and not on Jokic doesn’t help, since the DHO allowing the recipient to come at the play with speed and get by Jokic’s man doesn’t take Gobert out of the play. So Minnesota was well built to make spamming this play not super effective, and Jokic’s teammates being cold further limited its usefulness. On aggregate though, I think it’s usually a good play, where Jokic is creating significant expected value.

[Heej]

I think he means "wider" as in more and in different ways. If you can shoot off the catch, cut, drive and kick and post-up, you can literally fit with any players. When you are running an offensive set [tieing this back to the algorithms], you run an array of different movements [plays]. Let's say you initate with a P&R and the defense defends it well but the ball-handler ends up somewhere in the paint while the ball is kicked back out, now you can instantly get into another action of a post-up with the original ball-handler who is now in the paint, and maybe now the team defended the P&R well but in the action(s) ended up with a smaller player on the now player in the paint about to post-up.

If the ball-handler wasn't capable of posting up, that would take that action [The post-up following the P&R] off the table, but since the player could be a P&R ball handler AND post-up player, he provides a wider advantage for the team and thus teammates.

Chauncey Billups was excellent at this action, where he would often find himself in a post-position against a smaller guard after the original action in a play. Billups being both an elite shooter and post-player made him challenging to guard as he could either flare out or cut-in and position inside.

Well what I had actually meant was the magnitude of the advantage. A half step advantage generated vs a full step advantage generated on a kickout can be the difference between a record scratch/contested shot or a wide open shot/blow-by vs a closeout.

Oops

Haha this must be how Kendrick Lamar feels when he sees people come up with better theories on his lyrics than what he actually meant

[Heej]

I think it’s more just a question of what the expected value of the chance that’s created is. Like, if I inbounds pass to a guy and he immediately throws up a full court shot and actually makes it, I didn’t really create anything because the chance of scoring from the situation when I passed it is very low. But if I get it to a guy for an open dunk, then the expected value of the created chance is very high. I think that’s essentially what OhayoKD means by requiring more or less of your teammates (i.e. a higher or lower expected value at the point at which the pass occurs).

But, I’d add an extra wrinkle, because we should think about what the situation was before that. For instance, if we’re on a fast break with no one in front of us, and I dump the ball off to the guy next to me and he dunks, the expected value of the FGA after the pass is super high, but the expected value of the play prior to the pass was super high too, so I didn’t *add* much expected value.

Ultimately, I think the value of creation should probably be conceptually measured by comparing the expected value at the point at which a guy received the ball, and compare it to the expected value at the point at which his teammate gets the ball. To the extent anyone is familiar with this, I’d say this is equivalent to the “Expected Assists” stat in soccer (which, for purposes of clarity, is distinct from “Expected Assisted Goals”). The expected value added (or lost) between when a player gets the ball and when a teammate receives his pass is conceptually what creation is. Of course, that’s not totally teammate independent, since players can have teammates with smarter movement off the ball, etc., and it’s unclear whether or not we should measure expected value as a general objective thing or specific expected value for the teammate who receives it (i.e. is it higher expected value to create the same shot but for a better shooter?). But, in general, I think this framework gets to the value of what is being created.

When it comes to DHOs, I think one could argue that the value of what is being created isn’t all that high. It’s not creating some open dunk. But Jokic is a great screener and often takes the teammate’s defender out of the play really well in those plays. Meanwhile, he still exerts gravity on his own defender, who really has to fear Jokic getting the ball into his floater or fear Jokic faking the DHO and driving. Of course, Jokic’s man is also usually a guy who is slow and not at all well suited to defending a guy who has speed coming off a DHO. So, overall, a guy getting the ball off a DHO from Jokic is actually pretty good expected value IMO. And it typically comes from a very neutral situation that definitely doesn’t have high expected value to begin with. So I wouldn’t really say it doesn’t create much expected value. Just for reference, over the sample size of the last two regular seasons, Murray has like a 1.07 PPP off handoffs. Obviously there are even higher PPP plays than that, but that’s good stuff to generate from a neutral situation in half-court offense! Granted, one could say that that PPP is so high because Murray is good at making something from those plays, and there’d definitely be truth to that. But Jokic is objectively creating something in these plays and he brings a unique skill set that makes it create a particularly advantageous situation for his teammates. Which is all to say that a Jokic DHO assist is definitely not the most valuable assist IMO, but I don’t think it should be downplayed as being particularly less valuable than other assists.

Of course, in the context of this last series, it didn’t work very well, since the guys who might get those DHOs were really cold. And Gobert roaming and not on Jokic doesn’t help, since the DHO allowing the recipient to come at the play with speed and get by Jokic’s man doesn’t take Gobert out of the play. So Minnesota was well built to make spamming this play not super effective, and Jokic’s teammates being cold further limited its usefulness. On aggregate though, I think it’s usually a good play, where Jokic is creating significant expected value.

The last part is precisely what I get at when I say the threshold for creation is significantly raised vs contender level defenses. The same DHO vs a poor screen navigating POA defender on the Lakers with Rui as the Jokic defender suddenly gets flummoxed when it's Ant or NAW slithering through the pick and someone like Reid or KAT with the size and footspeed to delay Murray by a half step and negate the generated advantage without giving up a step to Jokic on the reset.

[parsnips33]

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

Is it self-evident to you Draymond provides less scoring value than Steph in a game where he has 15 and Steph has 50? Doing more things yourself means less things need to be done by teammates...

The contrasting angle would be a sort of “player empowerment” one, which is almost always applied in silly ways but conceivably could have merit, but in this specific context I am skeptical that Jokic’s teammates are “better” because of how empowered they feel by DHOs. I can see players preferring DHOs, but I would want to see a fair bit of data as to whether DHOs produce better results by rule.

Well I think there's also a question of maximizing skillsets. If you have say Draymond Green on your team, I think you might actually want to ask him to do more offensively, compared to just spotting up or attacking closeouts.

So is a superstar attacking closeouts now worthless because Draymond could conceivably do it?

Is requiring your teammates to do less inherently more valuable? That doesn't seem self-evident to me

Requiring? I'm not even sure what that means in this context. But enabling them to do less on one end or the other so you can get a better player at the other end? Feels super valuable. Dirk's ability to drive great offense allowed Dallas to start a very limited offensive team in the playoffs in their title year getting really good defenders on the court. Gobert allowed Utah to play offense only perimeter guys leading to good records and elite offenses(though it wasn't playoff resiliiant).

But is Dirk's scoring or rebounding, which allows his teammates to not do as much scoring or rebounding, actually inherently valuable though?

I think I'm confused. When you say that a DHO requires a teammate to do more, what do you mean by that?