Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off

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Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#1 » by Smoothbutta » Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:19 pm

Chart here
Spoiler:
Image


This is based purely on BBR On/Off data, I'd be really curious to see what this looks like from RAPM/EPM/DPM data though.

It is based on players' On/Off data in seasons between their age 23-36, excluding seasons where they played less than 1000 minutes or 30 games generally.


Biggest surprises IMO:

- Vince Carter and Manu Ginobili had amazing impact metrics

- Duncan's offensive impact very low, possibly due to Manu having a lot of minutes on the court without Duncan? Not sure exactly. Steph also shares a lot of minutes with Draymond so his defense and Draymond's offense both will look better than otherwise.
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#2 » by Djoker » Mon Feb 10, 2025 6:38 pm

Nice chart!

Weird to see Kobe looking so bad defensively while Nash looks almost neutral!
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#3 » by eminence » Mon Feb 10, 2025 7:14 pm

Thoughts on some guys on the chart:
-Vince has always impressed more in the impact metrics than common perception would expect - I think his shooting gets forgotten when we think of him, but he was quite good there.
-I'm in general agreement with indicators like these that Kobe was an average to below average defender through his career. His all-d selections are mostly ridiculous.

Thought on the chart:
-I don't like the idea of mixing raw on-off for guys from different teams. They aren't really measuring the same thing. Players on a good team having neutralish on/off is very different than players on a bad team having the same #. (none of the top 10 minutes guys on the '11 Bulls even cross +3 on/off, are we to conclude that the team with the best record in the league somehow had no reasonably high impact players?). On rating is the goal of the game, not on/off, an 'impact' metric that doesn't consider on rating is only useful for very specific situations.
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#4 » by Smoothbutta » Mon Feb 10, 2025 7:32 pm

eminence wrote:-I don't like the idea of mixing raw on-off for guys from different teams. They aren't really measuring the same thing. Players on a good team having neutralish on/off is very different than players on a bad team having the same #. (none of the top 10 minutes guys on the '11 Bulls even cross +3 on/off, are we to conclude that the team with the best record in the league somehow had no reasonably high impact players?). On rating is the goal of the game, not on/off, an 'impact' metric that doesn't consider on rating is only useful for very specific situations.

I agree you can't take on-off in a vacuum to judge players, of course. But I disagree with the sentiment that you can't compare across teams (when looking at several seasons). Within a team in a single season is often worse, with some examples later below.

I disagree that it is harder to have good On-Off on a good team, I think it is more about specifics of replacement players. For example, Mutombo's replacement during some of his best On-Off years was Christian Laettner who was horrid on defense and therefore makes Mutombo look even more amazing on defense while Hakeem's was Kevin Willis who was good on defense too, making Hakeem seem like a smaller impact player defensively than he really is. For the 2016 warriors, Steph and Dray have insane On-Off even though it's a good team because their replacements were guys like Livingston/Speights/Barbosa.

In the case of the 2011 Bulls, Derrick Rose's replacement was CJ Watson who was not an amazing player as seen also from his On-Off on other teams, so it is concerning Derrick Rose's On-Off couldn't be really high in an MVP season. I am sure the other factors like Coaches rotations impacts this a lot too. I would probably conclude that Derrick Rose's on court impact was not reaching the heights of the peak years of someone like Steph/Lebron/Nash etc. and that no one player on that Bulls team had insane impact based on the On-Off data. But of course Drose is Drose and with context from advanced stats like BPM you can see he did a ton for the team.

Overall, usually when you look at several years a lot of this data evens out and becomes generally pretty representative IMO but there is a ton of nuance
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#5 » by eminence » Mon Feb 10, 2025 9:01 pm

An aside first - I'm assuming we're talking about players playing starter level minutes through this discussion - being successful/useful in a smaller role and how to measure that is a different discussion.

Smoothbutta wrote:I agree you can't take on-off in a vacuum to judge players, of course. But I disagree with the sentiment that you can't compare across teams (when looking at several seasons). Within a team in a single season is often worse, with some examples later below.

I'm not going quite as far as saying one 'can't', but I do feel it's of very limited use/clarity (I'm sure we could all agree that a +15 is more impressive than a 0, but the difference between a +10 and a +7, hard to tell), even at career level lengths. I don't think any of your examples really get into any within a team situations - which ones were you thinking there? I do agree that we tend to see improved/more stable measurements at larger sample sizes.

Smoothbutta wrote:You are saying it is harder to have high On-Off on a good team? I disagree with this, I think it is more about specifics of replacement players. For example, Mutombo's replacement during some of his best On-Off years was Christian Laettner who was horrid on defense and therefore makes Mutombo look even more amazing on defense while Hakeem's was Kevin Willis who was good on defense too, making Hakeem seem like a smaller impact player defensively than he really is. For the 2016 warriors, Steph and Dray have insane On-Off even though it's a good team because their replacements were guys like Livingston/Speights/Barbosa.

Not trying to say that, I wouldn't use 'hard' at all, it's just more or less likely - and I'd actually go with the reverse. A high on/off is the product of having a good on rating and your team having a relatively poor rating when you're off (some balance thereof). Being on a good team makes having a good on rating (as a starter) almost a given.

It is harder to be on a good team in the first place, but given the team is already good or bad it's more likely to find a high on-off on a good team.

Smoothbutta wrote:In the case of the 2011 Bulls, Derrick Rose's replacement was CJ Watson who was not an amazing player as seen also from his On-Off on other teams, so it is concerning Derrick Rose's On-Off couldn't be really high in an MVP season. I am sure the other factors like Coaches rotations impacts this a lot too. I would probably conclude that Derrick Rose's on court impact was not reaching the heights of the peak years of someone like Steph/Lebron/Nash etc. and that no one player on that Bulls team had insane impact based on the On-Off data. But of course Drose is Drose and with context from advanced stats like BPM you can see he did a ton for the team.

A) It's difficult to differentiate between Rose/Deng with impact measures for that season. B) I agree with a baseline that they should be seen below those guys listed and that neither were 'true' MVP level. C) I find the on rating for the duo, +9.6 in 2752 minutes, meaningfully more informative than how either did in their few minutes alone or how the team did in the bench minutes without either playing. On/off gives that off portion a lot of weight, past the point of usefulness (for comparing players across teams) imo.
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#6 » by OldSchoolNoBull » Mon Feb 10, 2025 10:34 pm

eminence wrote:
Smoothbutta wrote:In the case of the 2011 Bulls, Derrick Rose's replacement was CJ Watson who was not an amazing player as seen also from his On-Off on other teams, so it is concerning Derrick Rose's On-Off couldn't be really high in an MVP season. I am sure the other factors like Coaches rotations impacts this a lot too. I would probably conclude that Derrick Rose's on court impact was not reaching the heights of the peak years of someone like Steph/Lebron/Nash etc. and that no one player on that Bulls team had insane impact based on the On-Off data. But of course Drose is Drose and with context from advanced stats like BPM you can see he did a ton for the team.

A) It's difficult to differentiate between Rose/Deng with impact measures for that season. B) I agree with a baseline that they should be seen below those guys listed and that neither were 'true' MVP level. C) I find the on rating for the duo, +9.6 in 2752 minutes, meaningfully more informative than how either did in their few minutes alone or how the team did in the bench minutes without either playing. On/off gives that off portion a lot of weight, past the point of usefulness (for comparing players across teams) imo.


As someone who watched every Bulls game that season, I think what was happening was that Rose's offensive impact with the starters was being counteracted by the defensive impact of what we called the "Bench Mob". Rose was 100% the engine of the offense, but when he and three other starters sat, we would bring in Omer Asik, Taj Gibson, Ronnie Brewer, and CJ Watson to play with Luol Deng in a tortoiseshell lineup, absolutely elite defensively. So very often, we would build leads with the starters, and then the bench unit+Deng would take over, and they wouldn't score much, but they would lock down the opposition such that leads wouldn't diminish much. I believe this might explain why Rose's on/off looks as neutral as it does.
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#7 » by Djoker » Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:51 am

eminence wrote:-I'm in general agreement with indicators like these that Kobe was an average to below average defender through his career. His all-d selections are mostly ridiculous.


He has a couple of undeserved selections later in his career but there is a big gap between not always being All-Defensive caliber and being an average to below average defender for his prime. The latter take is unreasonable IMO. The data in the OP has Kobe 2 points below replacement on D and 1.5 points below Nash. Pure comedy! :lol:
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Re: Offensive and Defensive Impact Comparison from On-Off 

Post#8 » by giberish » Tue Feb 11, 2025 9:23 am

Djoker wrote:
eminence wrote:-I'm in general agreement with indicators like these that Kobe was an average to below average defender through his career. His all-d selections are mostly ridiculous.


He has a couple of undeserved selections later in his career but there is a big gap between not always being All-Defensive caliber and being an average to below average defender for his prime. The latter take is unreasonable IMO. The data in the OP has Kobe 2 points below replacement on D and 1.5 points below Nash. Pure comedy! :lol:


Kobe was notorious for being much better on defense when people were paying more attention. This both meant that he was much better as an on-ball defender than as a team/help defender but also that he was much more effective on defense in the playoffs than the regular season - where aside from a few notable 1 on 1 matchups his defensive effort was half-assed at best even when he was younger and presumably had the energy to play hard both ways. In terms of regular season performance he was never close to an All-D level defender. A big reason for the Lakers regular season underachievement/ playoff success during his time was the difference in Kobe's defensive effort/effectiveness between the regular season and playoffs.

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