All-Season Player of the Year Discussion thread

[RSCD3_]

Amazing that Kawhi has been arguably the best player in a series with Griffin and Paul

Edit: I just posted a lot of stats but my computer disconnected and reset...not going through that again

[Dr Spaceman]

Amazing that Kawhi has been arguably the best player in a series with Griffin and Paul

Edit: I just posted a lot of stats but my computer disconnected and reset...not going through that again

Planning to do a writeup of last night's game later, but Kawhi switched onto Paul for the last 5 minutes of the 2nd and it was obscene. Paul actually just passed the ball off and let Griffin work because he couldn't deal. There was one possession where he defended a Paul/Griffin pick and roll by cutting off Paul and then switching onto Griffin as the pass arrived. Forced an air ball on the poss. I'm seriously freaking out about his defense, it's more incredible than even the most effusive praise can describe.

You're absolutely right, he's been the best player this series.

[HeartBreakKid]

I can't say I agree. I think Paul is the best player in the series. Earlier on I thought kawhi may have been better but looking at the big picture when ever Paul is in the Clippers offense looks pretty damn hard to stop.

[bondom34]

Yeah, Kawhi's been great but Paul is still playing the best in the series to me as well.

[Dr Spaceman]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwAnianLLH0&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

This is downright nightmarish.

[MO12msu]

Not that I don't think Kawhi is a beast but from what I've seen, Timmy has looked like the defensive anchor in this series, and Kawhi really hasn't done all that much to slow Paul. Green shut cp3 down in game 3 for the most part, Kawhi has done a good job harassing Redick though and as we see in the above clip, it can force the Clippers to take an extra couple seconds to get in their stuff. But even at the end of that play, that's not really Kawhi shutting down Blake. He sides Blake to the baseline, and Timmy comes over for the quick double. If you pause it at about 17 seconds we can see how the rest of the Spurs defense rotates perfectly to take away all passing lanes away from a great passer in Griffin. That whole possession is more of an example of elite Spurs team defense to me, not really an example of Leonard himself destroying a possession.

Offensively I'm not really surprised(and actually expected) that Kawhi is scoring at will, the clippers have the worst defensive wing rotation in the playoffs(possibly the league). This isn't me trying to take away from Leonard, but context is always important when comparing players and I've been much more impressed by the performances of Paul and Griffin offensively given the attention that they get and the matches they've faced. It's why I'm always a little wary of overweighing playoff performance, as matchups really need to be accounted for so we can have proper context.

[bondom34]

I know small sample and all, Leonard's on off not fantastic.

[RSCD3_]

I know small sample and all, Leonard's on off not fantastic.

Spurs on/off is weird as a whole right now

Parker +9.5 despite having
a AST/TOV ratio less than 1.5
shooting 37.1 TS%
and having 82/109 per 100 splits

[bondom34]

I know small sample and all, Leonard's on off not fantastic.

Spurs on/off is weird as a whole right now

Parker +9.5 despite having
a AST/TOV ratio less than 1.5
shooting 37.1 TS%
and having 82/109 per 100 splits

BG is like a net rating of plus 40 too.

[PaulieWal]

I know small sample and all, Leonard's on off not fantastic.

Spurs on/off is weird as a whole right now

Parker +9.5 despite having
a AST/TOV ratio less than 1.5
shooting 37.1 TS%
and having 82/109 per 100 splits

BG is like a net rating of plus 40 too.

I think the entire data is wonky because of how bad the Clips bench is and depends who the Spurs have on the floor during that time.

[Dr Positivity]

Not that I don't think Kawhi is a beast but from what I've seen, Timmy has looked like the defensive anchor in this series, and Kawhi really hasn't done all that much to slow Paul. Green shut cp3 down in game 3 for the most part, Kawhi has done a good job harassing Redick though and as we see in the above clip, it can force the Clippers to take an extra couple seconds to get in their stuff. But even at the end of that play, that's not really Kawhi shutting down Blake. He sides Blake to the baseline, and Timmy comes over for the quick double. If you pause it at about 17 seconds we can see how the rest of the Spurs defense rotates perfectly to take away all passing lanes away from a great passer in Griffin. That whole possession is more of an example of elite Spurs team defense to me, not really an example of Leonard himself destroying a possession.

Offensively I'm not really surprised(and actually expected) that Kawhi is scoring at will, the clippers have the worst defensive wing rotation in the playoffs(possibly the league). This isn't me trying to take away from Leonard, but context is always important when comparing players and I've been much more impressed by the performances of Paul and Griffin offensively given the attention that they get and the matches they've faced. It's why I'm always a little wary of overweighing playoff performance, as matchups really need to be accounted for so we can have proper context.

Pop making Kawhi's responsibility to nullify Redick is pretty sharp, the Clippers are already at enough of a depth disadvantage with the bench that if you take away their 3rd scorer in the starting lineup too, it's just so much for 2 guys to do by themselves. Plus it saves Kawhi's legs for the offensive end compared to killing himself chasing after CP

[QRich3]

How do I know this applies to DeAndre? Truthfully, even with the Westbrooks of the world, I didn't feel comfortable saying this stuff about individuals until I had the data for it. I had suspicions, but that's all.

But when the first Four Factor APM came out (I believe it was Evan Z who did it) I started seeing confirmation of suspicions and then some. Correlation between box score tallies and regression-based impact correlated much higher on offensive rebounding than on defensive rebounding, and some mysteries were solved: Why was it that Nene consistently rated so well by defensive RAPM when he's not a shot blocker or a world class man defender? Because in no small part he was phenomenal at helping his team get defensive rebounds even though he himself didn't rack up big box score tallies.

Now the best data for this is on Got Buckets, and so all one has to do is look it up there:

http://www.gotbuckets.com/statistics/ffapm/

Here's Deandre's numbers for rebounding on the two sides of the ball, keep in mind there's a percentile (or percentile-like) scheme here, so think of 50 as average, 100 as best in the game, 0 as worst in the game.

Offense - 92
Defense - 42

A rather extreme example of how a young & not-so-shrewd big guy can see his impact on defense neutralized or worse.

I'm a bit late to this, and I already asked this on another thread, but if you have a moment, could you explain a little bit for someone like me, not familiar with how regression works, how can Jordan be in the 42 percentile of defensive rebounders when the Clippers get 1.3% more of defensive rebounds than league average with him on the court, and 1.5% more with him on than out of the court? What is it exactly that regression does, that makes him look so different than with simple defensive rebounding numbers? ELI5 please

Thank you

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
I'm not Doc but if you're looking for a non technical answer: the regression attempts to adjust for the defensive rebounding impact of the other dudes on the court (both DJ's teammates and the dudes he's playing against). So essentially the regression in this case is telling you that DJ isn't the one causing the team's uptick in defensive rebounding when he's on the court, he just happens to be on the court when better rebounding occurs. Now should one blindly accept this because that's what the regression says? That's a separate question (as you can deduce from my use of the prejudicial adjective "blindly", I don't put much stock in this particular regression model). But that's the distinction between regression analysis and on/off.

[MO12msu]

Pop making Kawhi's responsibility to nullify Redick is pretty sharp, the Clippers are already at enough of a depth disadvantage with the bench that if you take away their 3rd scorer in the starting lineup too, it's just so much for 2 guys to do by themselves. Plus it saves Kawhi's legs for the offensive end compared to killing himself chasing after CP

No, I completely agree with you. Wasn't necessarily trying to downplay Kawhi's role, I just believe that the Spur's defensive effort is more of a testament to the entire team. I actually think Duncan has been the best defensive player in this series. So I couldn't really agree with the notion that Kawhi has been the best player in this series.

[Dr Spaceman]

That whole possession is more of an example of elite Spurs team defense to me, not really an example of Leonard himself destroying a possession.

I don't see why it has to be one or the other. I realize that that possession doesn't happen if Green doesn't show hard on Redick when Paul picks up his dribble and if Duncan doesn't step to meet Griffin on the spin, but realize what you're essentially saying here is, "That possession isn't that impressive because the other Spurs did what they were supposed to". I chose that clip not because I thought it was going to be some extreme example of Kawhi doing everything by himself, but how the team flows around his individual defensive brilliance to take whole teams out of their games. Because when you add up everything Kawhi does on this possession:

Forces Paul to pick up dribble
Chases Paul through screen and has a hand on his body on the catch
Switches onto Griffin, denies the pass to the top of the key, and harasses him into an airball

If you're not impressed by that sequence, then it sort of just feels like you're finding reasons not to be impressed.

Now to your general point: Leonard has been on Redick the whole series, which means his impact is somewhat limited to chasing Redick around, which he's done a good job of. Green and Parker/Mills have guarded Paul for the most part, and in recent games they've been trapping pick and roll (a very un-Spurs thing to do), but the reality is nobody thinks Kawhi is capable of shutting down a superstar for 48 minutes, so I don't know why you're holding it against him. kWh is incredibly valuable because he gets switched onto such players strategically and takes them out for a stretch of a few minutes, which is exactly what he did at the end of the 2nd in the clip I posted above. No, he's not chasing Paul around the whole series and slamming into every pick, but nobody does that.

You're absolutely right to credit Duncan, as he's incredible, but Duncan has been more effective offensively than defensively in this series. The Blake-> DeAndre lob has been incredibly effective with Splitter off the floor (shame he's hurt), and there's not really anything Duncan can do about it. He's overmatched athletically by the frontline, and while he makes enough plays to tilt the balance I'm not seeing any kind of virtuoso performance out there. He's getting torched by Griffin any time he faces up (which the Spurs have done a brilliant job of avoiding).

And even if he were having a virtuoso performance: why would Duncan having a great defensive series take away from what Leonard is doing? Is Paul's series less impressive because Griffin is having an incredible series? It doesn't follow to me.

[MO12msu]

I hate the long quote by quote thing, but you're fun to discuss things with so I'll try it out:

I don't see why it has to be one or the other. I realize that that possession doesn't happen if Green doesn't show hard on Redick when Paul picks up his dribble and if Duncan doesn't step to meet Griffin on the spin, but realize what you're essentially saying here is, "That possession isn't that impressive because the other Spurs did what they were supposed to". I chose that clip not because I thought it was going to be some extreme example of Kawhi doing everything by himself, but how the team flows around his individual defensive brilliance to take whole teams out of their games.

Nope, actually I'm saying, "That possession is impressive because all the Spurs did exactly what they were supposed to do to a T." I don't think that was "flowing around Kawhi's individual defensive brilliance" as you say, I think everybody, including Kawhi, did their job perfectly so I wouldn't singular out Kawhi when it wasn't really his defensive brilliance that made that play. I've enjoyed your push for Kawhi as an elite player(you've convinced me) but sometimes I feel as though you can be a bit hyperbolic in your praise of him.

Because when you add up everything Kawhi does on this possession:
Forces Paul to pick up dribble
Chases Paul through screen and has a hand on his body on the catch
Switches onto Griffin, denies the pass to the top of the key, and harasses him into an airball

If you're not impressed by that sequence, then it sort of just feels like you're finding reasons not to be impressed.

Maybe I am finding reasons not to be impressed, but again I think you're really magnifying some stuff Kawhi does on this possession to be so impressed yourself.
1. Is that really "forcing" Paul to pick up his dribble? Or is it Paul deciding in between his pass, that Green is a little too much up on Redick and he'd rather decide to go to option two?
2. There's not much here. The "screen" he went through was a screen by Duncan essentially. Leonard does a good job doing what he and any other competent wing defender should do.
3. This is all Spurs scheme and adjustments to me. Previous games the Paul Griffin side pick and roll was torching the Spurs, looks here like Pop has decided that they're switching automatically so Paul can't pocket pass to Griffin between two defenders in no mans land. After that it's Griffin in the post, okay let's send a double team and as long as we cut off all his passing lanes he can't torch us with his superior vision. That's probably more so a credit to the rest of the Spurs for cutting off those lanes at the perfect time and on a string. "Harass him into an airball"...okay the Spurs have successfully executed their plan to double and close out any outlets. The SPURS harassed Blake into a falling fadeaway shot.

Now to your general point: Leonard has been on Redick the whole series, which means his impact is somewhat limited to chasing Redick around, which he's done a good job of. Green and Parker/Mills have guarded Paul for the most part, and in recent games they've been trapping pick and roll (a very un-Spurs thing to do), but the reality is nobody thinks Kawhi is capable of shutting down a superstar for 48 minutes, so I don't know why you're holding it against him. kWh is incredibly valuable because he gets switched onto such players strategically and takes them out for a stretch of a few minutes, which is exactly what he did at the end of the 2nd in the clip I posted above. No, he's not chasing Paul around the whole series and slamming into every pick, but nobody does that.

Not asking him to guard Paul all series and not holding it against him at all. I think Pop is a genius for putting Kawhi on Redick for multiple reasons. But, you said it yourself, that can limit his impact defensively. So is it wrong for me to disagree with the notion that he's been the best player in this series, if his primary means of impact has been limited to an extent? Also I disagree that he's taken out Paul or Griffin for really an stretch of games. I can't think of any instances where he's shut down Griffin, I actually thought Griffin did well offensively when Kawhi switched onto him, and that's why in your clip we see a forced double. If you have any other examples I'd love to see them. Similarly with Paul, I haven't seen all that much. I do recall a great contest on a midrange fadeaway, but besides that, really the Clips are torching the Spurs with high pick and rolls at half court with one or both of their bigs. I don't think the Spurs have found a way to stop that one yet.

You're absolutely right to credit Duncan, as he's incredible, but Duncan has been more effective offensively than defensively in this series. The Blake-> DeAndre lob has been incredibly effective with Splitter off the floor (shame he's hurt), and there's not really anything Duncan can do about it. He's overmatched athletically by the frontline, and while he makes enough plays to tilt the balance I'm not seeing any kind of virtuoso performance out there. He's getting torched by Griffin any time he faces up (which the Spurs have done a brilliant job of avoiding).

Completely disagree with regards to Duncan's defense. The Blake lob is effective with Splitter off the floor because its Aron Baynes and Boris Diaw who are the replacements used to guard Griffin. So Griffin easily beats those guys then its Duncan stuck with a 2 on 1. I don't view that really as an indictment of Duncan's defense. I view Duncan as a center anyways and he has done a magnificent job on Deandre and manning the paint, especially down the stretch.

And even if he were having a virtuoso performance: why would Duncan having a great defensive series take away from what Leonard is doing? Is Paul's series less impressive because Griffin is having an incredible series? It doesn't follow to me.

Well I do think Duncan is having a great defensive performance and when it seems that your saying Kawhi's performance is what the rest of the Spurs defense is piggybacking off of, I can't agree based on what I've seen. To me it's a disproportionate amount of credit to Kawhi, when I don't think he's been a defensive anchor like presence in this series.

[Dr Spaceman]

Spoiler:

I hate the long quote by quote thing, but you're fun to discuss things with so I'll try it out:

I don't see why it has to be one or the other. I realize that that possession doesn't happen if Green doesn't show hard on Redick when Paul picks up his dribble and if Duncan doesn't step to meet Griffin on the spin, but realize what you're essentially saying here is, "That possession isn't that impressive because the other Spurs did what they were supposed to". I chose that clip not because I thought it was going to be some extreme example of Kawhi doing everything by himself, but how the team flows around his individual defensive brilliance to take whole teams out of their games.

Nope, actually I'm saying, "That possession is impressive because all the Spurs did exactly what they were supposed to do to a T." I don't think that was "flowing around Kawhi's individual defensive brilliance" as you say, I think everybody, including Kawhi, did their job perfectly so I wouldn't singular out Kawhi when it wasn't really his defensive brilliance that made that play. I've enjoyed your push for Kawhi as an elite player(you've convinced me) but sometimes I feel as though you can be a bit hyperbolic in your praise of him.

Because when you add up everything Kawhi does on this possession:
Forces Paul to pick up dribble
Chases Paul through screen and has a hand on his body on the catch
Switches onto Griffin, denies the pass to the top of the key, and harasses him into an airball

If you're not impressed by that sequence, then it sort of just feels like you're finding reasons not to be impressed.

Maybe I am finding reasons not to be impressed, but again I think you're really magnifying some stuff Kawhi does on this possession to be so impressed yourself.
1. Is that really "forcing" Paul to pick up his dribble? Or is it Paul deciding in between his pass, that Green is a little too much up on Redick and he'd rather decide to go to option two?
2. There's not much here. The "screen" he went through was a screen by Duncan essentially. Leonard does a good job doing what he and any other competent wing defender should do.
3. This is all Spurs scheme and adjustments to me. Previous games the Paul Griffin side pick and roll was torching the Spurs, looks here like Pop has decided that they're switching automatically so Paul can't pocket pass to Griffin between two defenders in no mans land. After that it's Griffin in the post, okay let's send a double team and as long as we cut off all his passing lanes he can't torch us with his superior vision. That's probably more so a credit to the rest of the Spurs for cutting off those lanes at the perfect time and on a string. "Harass him into an airball"...okay the Spurs have successfully executed their plan to double and close out any outlets. The SPURS harassed Blake into a falling fadeaway shot.

Now to your general point: Leonard has been on Redick the whole series, which means his impact is somewhat limited to chasing Redick around, which he's done a good job of. Green and Parker/Mills have guarded Paul for the most part, and in recent games they've been trapping pick and roll (a very un-Spurs thing to do), but the reality is nobody thinks Kawhi is capable of shutting down a superstar for 48 minutes, so I don't know why you're holding it against him. kWh is incredibly valuable because he gets switched onto such players strategically and takes them out for a stretch of a few minutes, which is exactly what he did at the end of the 2nd in the clip I posted above. No, he's not chasing Paul around the whole series and slamming into every pick, but nobody does that.

Not asking him to guard Paul all series and not holding it against him at all. I think Pop is a genius for putting Kawhi on Redick for multiple reasons. But, you said it yourself, that can limit his impact defensively. So is it wrong for me to disagree with the notion that he's been the best player in this series, if his primary means of impact has been limited to an extent? Also I disagree that he's taken out Paul or Griffin for really an stretch of games. I can't think of any instances where he's shut down Griffin, I actually thought Griffin did well offensively when Kawhi switched onto him, and that's why in your clip we see a forced double. If you have any other examples I'd love to see them. Similarly with Paul, I haven't seen all that much. I do recall a great contest on a midrange fadeaway, but besides that, really the Clips are torching the Spurs with high pick and rolls at half court with one or both of their bigs. I don't think the Spurs have found a way to stop that one yet.

You're absolutely right to credit Duncan, as he's incredible, but Duncan has been more effective offensively than defensively in this series. The Blake-> DeAndre lob has been incredibly effective with Splitter off the floor (shame he's hurt), and there's not really anything Duncan can do about it. He's overmatched athletically by the frontline, and while he makes enough plays to tilt the balance I'm not seeing any kind of virtuoso performance out there. He's getting torched by Griffin any time he faces up (which the Spurs have done a brilliant job of avoiding).

Completely disagree with regards to Duncan's defense. The Blake lob is effective with Splitter off the floor because its Aron Baynes and Boris Diaw who are the replacements used to guard Griffin. So Griffin easily beats those guys then its Duncan stuck with a 2 on 1. I don't view that really as an indictment of Duncan's defense. I view Duncan as a center anyways and he has done a magnificent job on Deandre and manning the paint, especially down the stretch.

And even if he were having a virtuoso performance: why would Duncan having a great defensive series take away from what Leonard is doing? Is Paul's series less impressive because Griffin is having an incredible series? It doesn't follow to me.

Well I do think Duncan is having a great defensive performance and when it seems that your saying Kawhi's performance is what the rest of the Spurs defense is piggybacking off of, I can't agree based on what I've seen. To me it's a disproportionate amount of credit to Kawhi, when I don't think he's been a defensive anchor like presence in this series.

Fair enough. Appreciate the well thought out response.

I've enjoyed your push for Kawhi as an elite player(you've convinced me) but sometimes I feel as though you can be a bit hyperbolic in your praise of him.

Watching all these Clipper games has turned me into Doc Rivers . Next thing you know I'll be screaming my head off at refs.

On a more serious note, you're not the first person to tell me lately that I've been hyperbolizing too much, so I appreciate the constructive criticism.

[MO12msu]

Watching all these Clipper games has turned me into Doc Rivers . Next thing you know I'll be screaming my head off at refs.

On a more serious note, you're not the first person to tell me lately that I've been hyperbolizing too much, so I appreciate the constructive criticism.

I would question anybody's love of the game if they haven't gotten hyped up from this series

[Doctor MJ]

How do I know this applies to DeAndre? Truthfully, even with the Westbrooks of the world, I didn't feel comfortable saying this stuff about individuals until I had the data for it. I had suspicions, but that's all.

But when the first Four Factor APM came out (I believe it was Evan Z who did it) I started seeing confirmation of suspicions and then some. Correlation between box score tallies and regression-based impact correlated much higher on offensive rebounding than on defensive rebounding, and some mysteries were solved: Why was it that Nene consistently rated so well by defensive RAPM when he's not a shot blocker or a world class man defender? Because in no small part he was phenomenal at helping his team get defensive rebounds even though he himself didn't rack up big box score tallies.

Now the best data for this is on Got Buckets, and so all one has to do is look it up there:

http://www.gotbuckets.com/statistics/ffapm/

Here's Deandre's numbers for rebounding on the two sides of the ball, keep in mind there's a percentile (or percentile-like) scheme here, so think of 50 as average, 100 as best in the game, 0 as worst in the game.

Offense - 92
Defense - 42

A rather extreme example of how a young & not-so-shrewd big guy can see his impact on defense neutralized or worse.

I'm a bit late to this, and I already asked this on another thread, but if you have a moment, could you explain a little bit for someone like me, not familiar with how regression works, how can Jordan be in the 42 percentile of defensive rebounders when the Clippers get 1.3% more of defensive rebounds than league average with him on the court, and 1.5% more with him on than out of the court? What is it exactly that regression does, that makes him look so different than with simple defensive rebounding numbers? ELI5 please

Thank you

To elaborate on what fuzzy said:

What you're doing when you compare the basic defensive rebounding numbers on vs off, is the same thing as using raw +/- on-off along the lines of what you can get at 82games.com. It's useful stuff, but y'know, if you're a role player who gets to play basically along with LeBron in the same units, then the team will probably do great when you're on the floor, doesn't mean you're responsible for it.

What does regression actually do?

Basically think back to linear equations in algebra:

2x + 3y = ...
9x -4y = ...

What values must x & y be for both equations to be true?

Now in basketball there aren't 2 equations, there is basically 1 equation for every instantiation of every lineup, which is a hell of a lot, and why we need computers to do the calculations for us.

More importantly from the perspective of the reliability of the metric: By turning each player into a variable that will end up with a number associated to it, we're not simply ignoring normal variance, health, etc, we're treating each player like he is simply X good, and having X effect all the time.

Obviously that's not the whole truth, and as such what happens is that we don't actually solve for the absolutely correct values, we simply end up finding the values that best explain the results. The ones that go best with what actually happened.

Last note: While I bring up Jordan's numbers as a criticism, it should be noted that with a rating of 42, he's basically right in the middle. As such the truly damning critique here is not that Jordan's a clear negative but simply that despite racking up huge defensive rebounds, the data shows no major positive correlation for him on team defensive rebounds. It's thus quite possible he isn't actually hurting his team's rebounds, just that his rebounding totals on defense are very much inflated and have nowhere near the effect on defense implied by Doc Rivers.

[SideshowBob]

So what the hell happened? How are the Bucks about to lose by 50?