'15-16 RealGM Player of the Year Discussion Thread

[bondom34]

I don't really see what Kerr did to get COY, I'm leaning Stotts and Casey/Clifford for my top 3. Pop was good as well, but Kerr didn't really do much to show why he should win. Walton was better win percentage wise with the same team.

[Texas Chuck]

If others want to give their COY vote to a guy who surprisingly got his guys to win 40 games that's cool, but I'm wary.

I think this is fine, but your earlier post about Carlisle specifically are confusing in the light of your most recent post. He has a track record of coaching at a high level at 3 different spots, was a significant factor in his coaching decisions fora champion, but also a couple years ago nearly coaching the 8th seeded Mavs past a team with lots of GOAT talk in the 2014 Spurs. And if fact had Dirk not had maybe his worst ever playoff series, he almost certainly does coach them to an upset that year.

So I don't see what makes him irrelevant as a coach now. His team is very irrelevant and has been since the title, but his relevance as a coach shouldn't have ended there. He's not the flash in the pan that Kidd might have been or Stotts might be(tho I think Stotts learned from his first failings and is probably an improved coach). Now I see no reason to give Rick Carlisle serious COY consideration this year with other good candidates, but realistically if all coaches were made available in a draft with the same order as the actual player draft, I'd be stunned if he got by Boston and probably he doesn't get past the Lakers.

Like I said, I agree with you that too often credit gets assigned to a coach for an improvement that often has its roots elsewhere. But other times if we examine some of those 40 win teams, we can find some tremendous coaching jobs.

[mikejames23]

COTY is difficult because I feel there's so much happening behind the scenes that we don't get to see at all.

- I liked Donovan, but I feel he should've done something or the other to fix the offensive issues they had in the 4th Q, as I felt he had the personnel across the RS and playoffs.

- Kerr. So many missed games, where Walton filled in and did fine executing the show. This is my only issue w/him, as I feel he's pretty much maximized his roster otherwise.

- Stotts. Good coach, and I feel he's going in the direction of imitating GS, with McCollum/Lillard and Plumlee trying to play the Draymond facilitator role. I'll be interested to see how this works out for them. A lot of credit to Lillard obviously but I don't think people realize how bad he is defensively when asked to up his offensive responsibilities. IIRC, one of the worst defensive guards in the league by real +/-.

- Clifford? I don't know. I thought he performed up to potential. Were the Hornets supposed to win less games?

- Casey? Any love?

No clear cut winner. I don't think 90% of NBA coaches are impacting their teams in a significant enough manner where the W/L total will seem visibly different.

-

[Doctor MJ]

I don't really see what Kerr did to get COY, I'm leaning Stotts and Casey/Clifford for my top 3. Pop was good as well, but Kerr didn't really do much to show why he should win. Walton was better win percentage wise with the same team.

Perhaps you're making an argument based on not counting the prior year's stuff. If so, that makes sense.

The 3 guys you mention before Pop, to me those are all guys going nowhere with their teams. There's a very nice positive vibe around Portland right now, I don't think you're winning a title with an offense so based on Lillard handling the ball more than anyone else in the entire league and with a defense without identity. Casey is clearly a great motivator, but he doesn't seem like a great strategiest, and we all know that the Lowry core is going nowhere. Clifford's the most interesting of the bunch. Charlotte's still going nowhere, but if he had better talent he might be able to do some great things.

One other note because I realize I haven't said it: I'm wary in general giving too much credit to guys on mediocre teams, whether they are a player or a coach. It's not that I deny that they could be truly great, rather, I just feel like elevating a team to top tier greatness is something that's just very different from achieving decency.

To me the best way to make a team decent is to get them to actually try their best. You don't need brilliance, you just need professionalism.

To be the best in the game as a coach, you've got to come up with schemes others aren't using and respond to the schemes of others, all in addition to having all the good fundamentals going. I think, for example, D'Antoni is an example of a guy who fails in the unique way of being "great" but not "good". I don't think many of those guys exist though. Seems to me that most coaches aren't basketball scientist/philosophers, but rather big charisma guys or big discipline guys. Kerr impresses me because I see all of these traits from him.

That said, you also mention Pop, and I'm certainly not looking to knock Pop below Kerr.

Re: Walton's better record. I don't think you can make a comparison based on that. I'm certainly hoping that Walton does great things in LA, but right now I wouldn't feel comfortable putting him anywhere near a best coaches list.

[Pillendreher]

- I liked Donovan, but I feel he should've done something or the other to fix the offensive issues they had in the 4th Q, as I felt he had the personnel across the RS and playoffs.

Way too bad over the course of the regular season to even get consideration in my opinion. He had me missing Brooks and I don't even think Brooks is that good a coach.

[Doctor MJ]

If others want to give their COY vote to a guy who surprisingly got his guys to win 40 games that's cool, but I'm wary.

I think this is fine, but your earlier post about Carlisle specifically are confusing in the light of your most recent post. He has a track record of coaching at a high level at 3 different spots, was a significant factor in his coaching decisions fora champion, but also a couple years ago nearly coaching the 8th seeded Mavs past a team with lots of GOAT talk in the 2014 Spurs. And if fact had Dirk not had maybe his worst ever playoff series, he almost certainly does coach them to an upset that year.

So I don't see what makes him irrelevant as a coach now. His team is very irrelevant and has been since the title, but his relevance as a coach shouldn't have ended there. He's not the flash in the pan that Kidd might have been or Stotts might be(tho I think Stotts learned from his first failings and is probably an improved coach). Now I see no reason to give Rick Carlisle serious COY consideration this year with other good candidates, but realistically if all coaches were made available in a draft with the same order as the actual player draft, I'd be stunned if he got by Boston and probably he doesn't get past the Lakers.

Like I said, I agree with you that too often credit gets assigned to a coach for an improvement that often has its roots elsewhere. But other times if we examine some of those 40 win teams, we can find some tremendous coaching jobs.

What makes him irrelevant as coach now is that if he'd sat on his hands doing nothing, nothing would change except Dallas having a higher draft pick.

But hey, that's a snide answer. If people vote for Carlisle for COY here, I really have no problem with that. I mean no disrespect to him as a coach, I just have a real hard time getting excited over Carlisle using his energy to guide the Mavs to another 1st round exit.

[bondom34]

I don't really see what Kerr did to get COY, I'm leaning Stotts and Casey/Clifford for my top 3. Pop was good as well, but Kerr didn't really do much to show why he should win. Walton was better win percentage wise with the same team.

Perhaps you're making an argument based on not counting the prior year's stuff. If so, that makes sense.

The 3 guys you mention before Pop, to me those are all guys going nowhere with their teams. There's a very nice positive vibe around Portland right now, I don't think you're winning a title with an offense so based on Lillard handling the ball more than anyone else in the entire league and with a defense without identity. Casey is clearly a great motivator, but he doesn't seem like a great strategiest, and we all know that the Lowry core is going nowhere. Clifford's the most interesting of the bunch. Charlotte's still going nowhere, but if he had better talent he might be able to do some great things.

One other note because I realize I haven't said it: I'm wary in general giving too much credit to guys on mediocre teams, whether they are a player or a coach. It's not that I deny that they could be truly great, rather, I just feel like elevating a team to top tier greatness is something that's just very different from achieving decency.

To me the best way to make a team decent is to get them to actually try their best. You don't need brilliance, you just need professionalism.

To be the best in the game as a coach, you've got to come up with schemes others aren't using and respond to the schemes of others, all in addition to having all the good fundamentals going. I think, for example, D'Antoni is an example of a guy who fails in the unique way of being "great" but not "good". I don't think many of those guys exist though. Seems to me that most coaches aren't basketball scientist/philosophers, but rather big charisma guys or big discipline guys. Kerr impresses me because I see all of these traits from him.

That said, you also mention Pop, and I'm certainly not looking to knock Pop below Kerr.

Re: Walton's better record. I don't think you can make a comparison based on that. I'm certainly hoping that Walton does great things in LA, but right now I wouldn't feel comfortable putting him anywhere near a best coaches list.

I would generally disagree on the first point. Casey took a team to 50 wins, and a team that really doesn't have any A list stars at all. Stotts took a team that had no business winning that many games and you could argue effort, but there was certainly scheme involved. And Clifford had Al Jefferson, Cody Zeller, and Frank Kaminsky as his primary bigs, one plus defender who played significant minutes in Batum, and no MKG and managed a team with the 8th ranked defense.

As for Kerr, I don't see anything he did to say he was clearly better than anyone. His team suffered zero drop off when he was gone, and when he came back played no different. He made some poor post season choices and was out done at times by Lue and Donovan, neither of who I'd put in my top list. He was beaten by average coaches while having incredible talent on the roster, the other coaches lost simply by lack of talent, I can't fault them.
Edit: As for considering only this year, the award is "Coach of the Year", which would seem to involve the year, not multiple years.

[Doctor MJ]

I would generally disagree on the first point. Casey took a team to 50 wins, and a team that really doesn't have any A list stars at all. Stotts took a team that had no business winning that many games and you could argue effort, but there was certainly scheme involved. And Clifford had Al Jefferson, Cody Zeller, and Frank Kaminsky as his primary bigs, one plus defender who played significant minutes in Batum, and no MKG and managed a team with the 8th ranked defense.

What is it exactly that Casey did that impresses you other than the win count?

Re: Stotts. Scheme involved. Perhaps, but is there reason to believe that scheme scales toward team greatness?

Re: Clifford. I definitely think higher of him than the other two this year.

As for Kerr, I don't see anything he did to say he was clearly better than anyone. His team suffered zero drop off when he was gone, and when he came back played no different. He made some poor post season choices and was out done at times by Lue and Donovan, neither of who I'd put in my top list. He was beaten by average coaches while having incredible talent on the roster, the other coaches lost simply by lack of talent, I can't fault them.
Edit: As for considering only this year, the award is "Coach of the Year", which would seem to involve the year, not multiple years.

Re: zero drop off gone/come back. Otherwise known as how coaching works on a team that always knows how to play at championship levels. I'll grant that Walton put a floor on how bad he could possibly be by having the team play so well for him, but in general the impact of a coach isn't something you see game to game nearly as much as you see it over the longer term.

Re: COY. Yup, it's just this year, and yeah, like I was trying to say, that seems like a good avenue to attack Kerr's candidacy to me.

On me at least, it will work a lot better than talking about a guy whose team surprisingly rose out of the lottery.

[Texas Chuck]

Re: Stotts. Scheme involved. Perhaps, but is there reason to believe that scheme scales toward team greatness?

.

Doc,

Maybe I'm missing some nuance in your posts, but again this suggests to me that you only see relevance in coaches fortunate enough to have great teams. Because whatever areas you think Kerr is great in---it doesn't scale to greatness either without Curry, Green, Klay, Iggy, etc....

Every coach needs great talent. That's a given. I guess I fundamentally disagree that we should only look at a handful of teams when talking about coaching relevance. Especially when the two teams that ended up in the Finals used 2 coaches this year and the team that came the closest to joining them had a rookie college coach who appeared in over his head much of the year.

[SideshowBob]

@SideshowBob

Do you have the Postseason numbers for the Thunder like the ones you posted for the Cavs?

2016 Oklahoma City Thunder Postseason (18 G)

+12.74 SRS, +9.3 Offense, -4.1 Defense

[SideshowBob]

So this is roughly what I'm thinking for the top-tier teams:

GSW +12-13 SRS
SAS +10-11 SRS
OKC +7 SRS
LAC +7 SRS
CLE +6.5 SRS
GSW w/o Steph +5-6 SRS

Steph taking GS from +5-6 -> +12-13 is GOAT-ish level lift

San Antonio is more consistent, but their top end isn't GS level

OKC/LAC are Finals caliber teams but cannot compete against two historic teams in the same year/conference. LAC was +7ish last year as well

GS w/o Steph is the kind of team that could top the EC in the regular season but isn't a serious contender, low 50 wins in the WC, maybe mid-to-high 50 wins in the East.

Cleveland in Lebron's 76 games alone were a +6.5 team. If he reverts to peak or near-peak form (say he coasted in the RS, or he finds his jumper) they might jump to a +9ish team. Get clearly outclassed in the Finals by either SAS/GSW, but not straight-up embarrassed

I will develop my thoughts more as we're able to hone-in on teams in the later rounds a bit more.

Well they looked much better than a +9 team vs. the East and then took down GS (and looked dominant in the last 5 G).

Dunno what to make of this yet fully but I definitely disagree with my own rough assessments.

[SideshowBob]

2016 In/Out Links

2016 San Antonio Spurs In/Out Splits (Pg. 9)
2016 Golden State Warriors In/Out Splits (Pg. 9)
2016 Cleveland Cavaliers In/Out Splits (Pg. 9)
2016 Los Angeles Clippers In/Out Splits (Pg. 10)
2016 Oklahoma City Thunder In/Out Splits (Pg. 11)

Will be useful in the future for Googling purposes. I speak from experience.

Bump for reference

[SideshowBob]

I'm gonna to be going through the older pages from the end of the RS and bump stuff I think is notable/relevant.

Maybe I'm not 100% clear on the math here, but does Green having the lead in RAPM mean, unequivocally, that Green w/o Curry lineups perform better than Curry w/o Green lineups? As I understand it that is the case.

Not quite. Here:

[1] "ALL Green w/o Curry lineups perform better than ALL Curry w/o Green lineups"

[2] "ALL else equal, Green w/o Curry lineups perform better than the same Curry w/o Green lineups"

[3] "Green improves "Curry w/o Green" lineups better than Curry improves "Green w/o Curry lineups"

via NBAwowy

Curry + Green ON Court (2459 MP, 5154 Poss)

120.2 ORTG, 100.7 DRTG, +19.5 Net

Curry ON Court | Green OFF Court (240 MP, 518 Poss)

112.9 ORTG, 110.6 DRTG, +2.3 Net

Curry OFF Court | Green ON Court (345 MP, 711 Poss)

110.4 ORTG, 102.1 DRTG, +8.3 Net

This is all the data we need for [1] to hold true, and we can also say:

Adding Green to ALL "Curry w/o Green" lineups results in a +17.2 per100 improvement
Adding Curry to ALL "Green w/o Curry" lineups results in a +11.2 per100 improvement

The problem is of course, that in theory Curry was playing with more sub-optimal lineups w/o Green, whereas Green was playing with more optimal lineups without Curry. The above data does nothing to account for this.

RAPM is trying to account for this. What RAPM is continually suggesting is that the bolded above is untrue, and it is providing data that instead support claims [2] & [3]. It does not technically make a direct statement about claim [1].

[bondom34]

I would generally disagree on the first point. Casey took a team to 50 wins, and a team that really doesn't have any A list stars at all. Stotts took a team that had no business winning that many games and you could argue effort, but there was certainly scheme involved. And Clifford had Al Jefferson, Cody Zeller, and Frank Kaminsky as his primary bigs, one plus defender who played significant minutes in Batum, and no MKG and managed a team with the 8th ranked defense.

What is it exactly that Casey did that impresses you other than the win count?

Re: Stotts. Scheme involved. Perhaps, but is there reason to believe that scheme scales toward team greatness?

Re: Clifford. I definitely think higher of him than the other two this year.

As for Kerr, I don't see anything he did to say he was clearly better than anyone. His team suffered zero drop off when he was gone, and when he came back played no different. He made some poor post season choices and was out done at times by Lue and Donovan, neither of who I'd put in my top list. He was beaten by average coaches while having incredible talent on the roster, the other coaches lost simply by lack of talent, I can't fault them.
Edit: As for considering only this year, the award is "Coach of the Year", which would seem to involve the year, not multiple years.

Re: zero drop off gone/come back. Otherwise known as how coaching works on a team that always knows how to play at championship levels. I'll grant that Walton put a floor on how bad he could possibly be by having the team play so well for him, but in general the impact of a coach isn't something you see game to game nearly as much as you see it over the longer term.

Re: COY. Yup, it's just this year, and yeah, like I was trying to say, that seems like a good avenue to attack Kerr's candidacy to me.

On me at least, it will work a lot better than talking about a guy whose team surprisingly rose out of the lottery.

On Casey, similar to Cliff. His team isn't stocked full of great defenders, yet managed to be a tea that competed with anyone and a fifty win season is remarkable, especially given that roster (though I rank him lowest of these 3). On Stotts, again, overachievement. I do think it something remarkable.


But again, the team should see some drop in in game rotatinos and level of play. I do put stock in motivation and in game adjustments, 2 things which though I admit I'm no coach, Kerr didn't have better results with than his assistant.


To me, it is more impressive to take a truly bad or below par roster and win a good amount of games than to slightly increase the ceiling of a fantastic roster. Kerr was given the best roster in the league, I'm failing to see a great accomplishment.

[PearGreatness]

I'd like the ability to vote if possible. I don't think I've posted enough to have the ability PM you DoctorMJ. If my post count should exclude me from voting, then that's fine - I'm more interested in the discussion anyway.

[Dr Positivity]

Like Popovich for COY. Having a top 10 all time caliber regular season is pretty amazing for a roster that doesn't blow my mind, best defensive team in the league is a coach friendly accomplishment.

Casey isn't anything special schematically but is a good emotional leader and knows when to not overthink it (For example I think people would be surprised by how the Raptors are an elite out of timeout team and the Celtics with supposed playcall god Stevens are one of the worst - probably because while the Celtics are turning it over when one of his plays doesn't work, the Raptors just gave the ball to Lowry and ran a normal set). Still, when it comes to COY, there has to be more complete resumes of both leadership and Xs and Os.

[mikejames23]

Like Popovich for COY. Having a top 10 all time caliber regular season is pretty amazing for a roster that doesn't blow my mind, best defensive team in the league is a coach friendly accomplishment.

I don't know. He could win 2012-2016 COY if this were the case. I don't think it's best overall coach in the league award. Maybe it's just me... but I expected a 60 W season out of Pop. He's a master in the RS but since Duncan's decline, the playoff teams underperform and he doesn't seem to have figured out anything special for a counter to the way OKC is built in the past few seasons.

Edit: Albeit 2014 was a masterstroke.

[SideshowBob]

Or is GS just that hampered by injury across the board?

I'm not sure. What did you (and others) think about Iggy in game 7? I'm not 100% positive, but I think he looked pretty spry and active. Though, there were a lot of possessions where he wasn't covering LeBron, not sure if that was intentional because of his health, a conscious decision based on matchups from Kerr, or if LeBron was just more successful getting switches more often.

I thought Iggy looked normal in G7 - back should have made him stiff but nothing stood out to me.

Bogut is interesting. Wasn't a factor last year in the second half of the series, but games 5 and 6 were weird. Game 5, Green suspended, Bogut knocked out. Game 6, Iggy hurts his back and was limited. Meaning, for the bulk of those three games, these perimeter-interior combos vs Bron were not possible:

Iggy-Green
Iggy-Bogut
Green-Bogut

I think that's a big deal, since in the absence of one of those combos, LeBron can get to the rim at will. But, I do think Iguodala was healthy enough in game 7, that the result wouldn't have changed a ton, even if Bogut had Varejao's minutes. Still though, early in the game, the Iggy-Green combo made things difficult for LeBron driving, enough that had the lane been taken away in games 5 and 6 by enabling one of those three combos, we wouldn't have gotten to game 7. Then again, even given perfect health, LeBron was hitting his jumpers those two games, so that defense can't really shut him down. Definitely an interesting question

Agree pretty much here. While it didn't seem like he was a game changer it just reduced GS's toolbox going up against Lebron turning up the intensity. Just an on-court resource lost.

Curry, I don't know what to make of his injury. It played a part for sure (for a pretty basic litmus test, look at how much more effective TT was switched onto him this year as opposed to the Finals last season), but there were some aspects of his game that weren't a product of the injury (seemingly missing open shots more often than usual, maybe someone has some data on this; some careless mistakes/poor decision making when handling the ball/passing).

(BTW saw your post on APBRmetrics after mine. We are indeed shameless lol.)

I definitely thought he looked slightly weaker post-injury but moreso I think OKC/CLE just played him well + weak execution by him.

Had he looked like this physically all season, I'd still be really high on him I think, but as you said there were problems extending beyond issues that would stem from injury. I think I can buy into him getting worn down from being the focal point of attack on defense possession after possession (there were times where it was silly how desperately Cavs tried to get him to switch to their ball-handler) and that could lead to greater than normal fatigue which would lend itself to lazy/careless plays. Couple that with Cavs' defensive scheme + injury and it could all come together to make for an ugly series.

[Pillendreher]

@SideshowBob

Do you have the Postseason numbers for the Thunder like the ones you posted for the Cavs?

2016 Oklahoma City Thunder Postseason (18 G)

+12.74 SRS, +9.3 Offense, -4.1 Defense

Thanks! So would you agree with me that the Thunder had the potential this season to win 65 games? They underperformed their expected W-L by four wins and did lose so many games by just sloppy basketball and lack of focus.

[RebelWithACause]

On Curry:

I am one of those that still believe Curry was seriously hampered.

Really disappointed though, those turnovers were just incredibly bad and have nothing to do with anything.

Curious to see how he bounces back and if he really was that hampered by those injuries or the bad play was actually caused by the way he was defended.

Next season will be ultimately exciting for that exact reason. Was Curry's offensive GOATness due to defenses that haven't figured him out during the RS or was it the injuries that slowed him in the PS.

Until then I am going to restrain myself evaluating this season of Curry in detail.



On LeBron:

Was amazed by his performances in the Finals. He elevated his defense to a level that I absolutely didn't expect. Great showing. Offensively really great when that shot was hitting.
Only negative: That shot is so inconsistent, you can never bank on it. Had some mediocre scoring performances because of it.



On Kerr:

Kerr disappointed me a lot. I think the highest of him generally, but his rotations were really poor (Ezeli, Varejao) and I didn't like the defensive game plan all the way. Offense really got showed up as well. Felt he didn't adjust well enough.