dougthonus wrote:PaKii94 wrote:I applaud the effort but Niko is actually a bad example and doesn't fit the description. Also you're clustering it by volume and not by time. Injuries affect by time not volume. Niko was just naturally a volatile player. He had his ups and downs also but they were period swings not sustained bad play followed by sustained good play. The closest Lauri has come to him is his rookie season (where I said he was a volatile player lol). It's pretty easy to see once you look at the graphs. I'll share those later when I am back at my computer.
I look forward to seeing the graphs, because based on the monthly aggregates, he is literally in the exact same pattern. He is on for 3 months in a row then off for 3 months in a row for three straight years.
Okay as promised, here are the graphs. I added the trend lines by hand so they are kind of rough but putting it through some fancier python coding would result in the same (but neater) results:
Year 1 Niko:
Niko, his rookie season, did have a hot period earlier on but then gradually trended down. You can see his volatility throughout the season with spikes and drops. His overall average of 31.6% doesn’t really show what he’s capable of. This shows a trend of a usual good rookie player. They show out but then the league figures them out and a long 82 game schedule develops fatigue.
Year 2 Niko:
Second year niko was a bit more prepped for the grind but you can still see the volatility in his game. Everyone has volatility with the ups and downs of a season but Niko is a good example of a volatile player. After coming back from injury he was a bit more consistent (his ‘bad’ points weren’t as low as before). This portion was the first sighting of “march/April” niko
Year 3 Niko:
Year 3 niko is actually the closest to year 3 lauri… Interesting enough, that was the year he missed 4 chunks of time due to injury. I boxed them in black above. Niko’s volatility was the lowest so far this season besides the ups and downs due to injury. Then obviously we saw spring Niko again.
Year 4 Niko:
Niko when he was with the Bulls this year was a model for CONSISTENCY. That’s what we want from Lauri lol. Seems like he was pretty motivated by the Bobby punch. I didn’t follow him after he got traded but you can see he did dip down to ~30% and also again showed his volatility. I guess you can make an argument that this represents Lauri this season but in reverse… but I don’t think this was a normal up and down of the season for Niko. He obviously went to a new system/team and needed time to adjust. He ended up doing really well in the playoffs for NOP.
Now let’s look at year 3 Lauri:
(all these graphs are on the same scale btw so you can compare Niko to Lauri directly)
Year 3 Lauri doesn’t really match up with Niko year 1/2/4. It does match up a bit with year 3 (ie. Niko’s injury year) in that when Lauri is injured his percentages are consistently low and when not they are consistently high. The difference is Lauri imo has less volatility compared to Niko this year. He’s had his ups and downs also, but they are much tighter and are isolated in his own subsets. You don’t really see the big spikes or dips that you see with Niko.
The December shooting we saw, we haven’t seen from Lauri ever when considering the consistency. He’s had spikes for a few games but no sustained effort.
For a comparison sake, here is Year 1 Lauri:
Lauri starts off strong, dips down as all rookies do. The boxes represent when he took time off: back, baby, back. Coming back from the back injury time off, he starts heating up again. Then he has the baby, his percentages dip. The percentages start to rise again but then dip (back injury). Coming back from rest, he ends the year as a flame thrower.
Year 2 Lauri:
Year 2 Lauri was actually the closest to Niko’s volatility. He started off pretty volatile but was normalizing as the season went on. Then the fatigue stuff happened (which is a completely different subset). An excuse, but volatility does happen when you have a serious injury to your shooting elbow. Regardless, this is the best example in Lauri’s career for “ups and downs” during a season as far as shooting goes.
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To bring it back to the original discussion, I still think Lauri’s career 3p% don’t show what type of shooter he is. The only times he has been “bad” at shooting without an injury excuse has been right at the beginning of the rookie season (which most rookies go through) and when he had his baby. Outside of that he’s been a good to great shooter.
Adding to that, I do think Lauri HAS improved as a shooter. This you can’t see with the overall numbers. December Lauri was the most consistent shooting he has ever accomplished in his career (which wasn’t a hot spike) and that was on the highest 3 point rate so far.
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As a bonus, here is similar graphs but looking at TS%. I think it also tells a story that overall TS% won’t show (Sorry it’s labeled 3p% but it is TS%):
Year 2 Lauri:
Year two Lauri while volatile, had a clear trend upward which accumulated in a very consistent 60% TS around February. Then the fatigue issue happened and it dropped like a rock. This wasn’t a typical seasonal dip.
Year 3 Lauri:
Lauri started off the season poorly. No injury excuse there. But, he was still getting fts thus his TS% was hovering right under his career average even with putrid shooting percentages. A few games after that, oblique injury happened. Lauri became passive/soft/only perimeter shots Lauri. Unfortunately, Lauri when injured can’t hit his shots and his TS% tanked.
You can see it was rebounding relatively fast until December came along and now Lauri jumped to another subset. This is where I was clamoring for more usage. His efficiency was much too high for his limited usage.
As he got a few more shots and defenses started to game plan for him again, his high efficiency DID start to drop (hot streak peak), but it didn’t plummet or swing down (indicating not just a very hot streak). The volatility started shrinking and normalizing around 58-60%. Then the ankle injury happened, and you see it dips down again.
Year 1 Lauri:
Just to finish the set, here is year 1 TS%. This is much closer to showing the ups and downs of a season on a rookie player. He goes up and down with cold and hot spurts and never really consistently playing at a level. This is where you can say he was a volatile 55% TS player
I don't care enough about Niko to breakdown his TS% graphs but they pretty much show the up and down spikes of a high volatility player.
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I guess the final point is the injuries that Lauri's faced have masked what he's capable of but It's still there. A flaw with Lauri is his game drops substantially with injury (which other players have smaller dips) so we need to hope for health for Lauri. Unfortunately, he is leaning towards injury prone in which case, it doesn't really matter what he can accomplish when healthy if he's always injured.