What no one ever coherently explained to me about Lavine

[chefo]

First, let's get the obvious out of the way--Zach has insane physical gifts. He has a beautiful stroke, especially when he's on. He's fast, if not very agile. He should kick butt stats-wise.

But he has always struggled winning, and he's been a key piece with big minutes on each team he's ever been on. Why is that?

Here's what I remember saying before the 18/19 season began. The context was that fellow board members were giddily saying he'd be at 25ppg... and they were right. I wanted him at 18-19 ppg and opined that the Bulls are not going to break 30 or so wins if his usage is so high because he's the primary ball-handler. I still stand by that. Why?

It wastes his talents, is why. The Zach we've currently got plays ball on a street-ball level of sophistication, even after 6 years in the NBA. When he's insanely hot, it may work. But in the NBA where teams can prep and adjust, that's just not good enough on most nights.

The one thing that he struggles with the most is making good decisions. It's not new---that's been a problem ever since he became a Bull. In fairness to him, ever since Fred got canned, he's moved from 'utterly hopeless' in that department to 'below average'. I got so pissed off at how stupid the Bulls had been playing at one point during Freddie's tenure that for several games the I actually started couniting the poor decisions by Zach over the course of the game and it was a staggering number. He was like the anti-Stockton--he often couldn't make simple reads on O, if his life depended on it, and after a third of the season, every team had a playbook on him that read like the following--'crowd him, and double him and make him make decisions. He'll chuck even when crowded. He can't figure out when to pass or shoot. He has blinders when he drives. He sucks at making good reads. He's a poor passer. Win.'

Why is that important?

Winning over a season is ultimately about math over a long stretch of time. If you look at a season, an average very low playoff seed has about a net 0 rating. A bottom dweller has -10, a bad team is a -5, a good playoff team is at +5 and everything above that gets into contender status. That's why an average team can beat a good team and lose to a poor team, especially on the road. And that's why a poor team has a very hard time against a quality playoff team. But for a middling to poor team like the Bulls it's close thing--a couple of possession per game on average make the difference from having a busted season to making the playoffs.

That is why when I hear that a guy like Jimbo does not hurt you, I have to laugh. Of course he does. He was screwing up something almost on a daily basis. Same with Lavine. He gives, but he takes away as well. When the guy that uses up over a third of all possessions stats-wise (but actually more of them in game situations), is a poor decision-maker that can only make a pass to the nearest player on a P&R, and that's on a good day, you're not going anywhere unless that guy is a Harden or Durant level scorer. Zach for a all of his talents is not on that level and that is no knock on him. Very few people in the history of the NBA have been.

He just can't be the guy with the ball in his hands all the time or your team will be a bottom feeder on O. The Bulls for example, don't move off ball. Part of that is scheme, part of it is knowing you're not getting the rock once it touches Zach's hands unless he is doubled and actually decided to pass out of it as opposed to attack the double. How many times does it take for him to understand that if he's driving into 3 or 4 guys, there's somebody open, and usually in a high quality shot spot like the corner?

Some of his best games as a Bull came when he didn't dribble much, but was used more as a finisher. If he can learn to play that way, he can a Klay+ kind of player. People who've never played organized ball will not get that part (which is the reason young players don't usually get time on good EU teams), but having a player that can scramble the weak-side D of the opponent is insanely team-positive. Why? Because a team can then smartly wreck the strong-side D with only simple stuff as well. Having a couple makes it almost unguardable, if the team knows how to play. In the pre-Durant Dubs, both Klay and Steph were absolutely masterful at moving off ball and if you let them out of your sight for a second, you got punished. Zach has the pure stroke to be a player like that.

Instead, the Bulls use Zach the way Moustache uses Harden, but Zach is not Harden. When the D overloads Zach, which is how people play him, especially when it matters, it actually diminishes his talent AND hard work. I don't care who you are, if your game relies on beating 2-4 guys inside for a layup or pulling up with a guy in your face, you're not winning much by yourself.

You can teach a player how to move off ball. The smart ones get it instinctively, but it can also be drilled with a lot of reps. Given that Zach can jump out of the gym, he should be a coach's dream to design plays for. I've said that same about Lauri. Both of them should be walking mismatches and that is without either of them having to dribble once in a possession. The Bulls system actually fails Zach, despite his usage, as strange as that may sound.

Anyhow, that is just on O. On D, the entire team is just not smart and relies on 'work hard, not smart' and unless you have Dunn's energizer bunny energy, you're due for disappointment. The one thing I've noticed is that Zach is very unaware of whom he's guarding on the weak side. Any smart or prepped player cares about that. The way you play help D is ALWAYS dependent on what kind of player you're guarding--if he's a good shooter, or not; good driver or not, or just a dummy taking space on the court. Again, poor scheme.

Here's how I've seen smart teams exploit that: Zach is usually the wing defender that should help stop penetration on the P&R. A good team should have the C/second big rotate from the strong-side corner (it's a difficult across the body pass in a player's peripheral vision unless the player is already in the dunker spot), the guard at the wing should have a foot at the elbow and the weak-side corner should stay pretty glued to his guy. That's in theory how you close the paint because the wing can more easily recover to contest a shot than the weak-side corner help, who'd be too late and probably get dunked on. Zach was often glued to his guy and/or ball watching. If his position on D does not rotate well, the whole Bulls D is off. It doesn't help that Lauri was often the big that had to help and he often had the exact same issue--he did not rotate on time, if at all.

By the way, this can and should be fixed with reps and prep. Thibs did it with a bunch of outcasts. There is no reason the Bulls can't get it done with two physical specimens like Lauri and Zach. It will just take a lot of reps.

But to sum up--even though Zach is probably top 10 talent in the NBA from a purely physical talent perspective, he plays, both on O and on D, on a level more like in the local Y or LA Fitness. Against good NBA teams, more often than not, that's just not good enough for a primary ball handler, no matter what the stats say.

I believe some of it can be taught--vision on O cannot; but that's why you need to run plays for Zach off ball. Reggie MIller/Klay plays; back screens; elbow screens; double screens; whatever--catch and 'effin shoot. Catch and dunk. Catch, one dribble and shoot. But for the love of god, don't just let him go 1 on 5, especially in the 4th when most NBA teams start caring.

You're wasting his talents.

[bullsnewdynasty]

That's not how you evaluate things. Jimmy is a high impact positive force and has been on four different teams now.

Jimmy joined a team that narrowly missed the playoffs last year who have a legitimate coach and the MIP of the league, to go with a deep roster of young, talented role players.

Jimmy as the "star" led the Bulls to .500 records, yet all people want to do is pine over the guy like he won championships.

Lavine doesn't make his team's any better overall. In fact, as horrible as the crappy Bulls are/were this season, they were actually still better when Lavine was off the floor. That is freaking hard to do. His defensive impact and his his affect on others playing with him is so absolutely terrible that he cannot even make one of the worst team's in the league just slightly better on the scoreboard. That is a FACT. numbers don't lie. For 6 years he's been that type of impact player. He's also the leagues worst closer. And how many times do we have to watch the guy just throw a game away at the end to realize how bad it is? I hope our new management is smart enough and perceptive enough to make a trade ASAP. We need intelligent leaders and two way players. Zach is the opposite of this.

Those stats are meaningless when LaVine is playing most of the game. The sample sizes you're using are tiny and misrepresent what's actually going on.

What the Bulls need are players who can actually play and stay healthy: aka not Lauri, not WCJ, not Dunn, and not OPJ. LaVine is a scapegoat for the fact that these guys can't get through a season without getting hurt and regressed when they were on the court. You're missing the forest for the trees.

[bullsnewdynasty]

Well, Lavine was useless when it came to winning both in advanced stats and eye test. When he was out, the Bulls never lost more than he was playing and most of the games it was a lot closer than I imagined. It was when Lauri and Porter was out, they starting to pile up losses.

There's not a single team in the league that can win having 3 starters miss half the season or more. I know it's really tempting to trash the guy who's actually playing for the losses, but having players constantly out of the lineup is always going to sink your season.

Without LaVine, the Bulls went 2-5. For some reason people want to hang their hat on the one home game against the KP-less Mavs where the Bulls looked reasonably competitive and LaVine wasn't playing.

I don't even know why I'm bothering typing this out when I'm talking to people with Lauri and Jimmy Butler avatars. Does anything more really need to be said?

[dice]

Without LaVine, the Bulls went 2-5. For some reason people want to hang their hat on the one home game against the KP-less Mavs where the Bulls looked reasonably competitive and LaVine wasn't playing.

first of all, it was 2-3 this season. 8-16 over the past 2 seasons (.333). 36-87 with him playing (.293). that's a very small sample size, but hey, you brought it up

secondly, in your previous post YOU complained about someone using a small sample size, then went and used a MUCH smaller (and inaccurate) one. so you obviously have zero interest in intellectual consistency when it comes to discussions about zach lavine

2019-2020

on court: bulls -5.0 per 100 possessions (team scores 108.1/oppt. 113.1/2098 minutes)
off court: bulls break even (104.1/104.1/1039)

offense bad w/ lavine in, significantly worse w/ him out, terrible defense improves a lot w/ him on bench

2018-2019

on court: -7.4 (106.8/114.2/2172)
off court: -10.1 (104.0/114.1/1812)

offense bad w/ lavine in, worse w/ him out, defense terrible whether lavine in or out of the game

2016-2017 (last season in minny)

on court: -3.6 (109.5/113.1/1744)
off court: +0.9 (112.1/111.2/2203)

offense ok w/ lavine, very good w/o him, defense very bad w/ him, a bit better w/o him

now, raw +/- is very lineup dependent, so that's where RAPM attempts to control for teammates/opponents. lavine's yearly ORAPM/DRAPM:

-1.80 -2.93 (rookie)
-0.22 -1.56
-1.09 -0.76
injury
0.54 -0.60
-0.08 -1.51 (this season)

zero is a borderline starter. all evidence suggests that lavine is best suited for a 6th man role. now, let's compare to other guys he was "competing" with for all-star spots the last 2 seasons:

trae young:

0.56 -3.41
2.01 -1.95

break even this season. hardly worthy of all-star consideration but for the entertainment value

devin booker:

1.92 -1.76
2.23 -1.53

same story as trae

donovan mitchell 3 yr average (since he's roughly the same guy he was when he entered the league):

1.36 0.57

legit all-star contender

bradley beal 3 yr avg.:

2.79 -1.78

kyle lowry 3 yr avg.:

2.22 1.62

obvious all-star

ben simmons 3 yr avg.:

0.47 1.19

[PaKii94]

https://hoopshype.com/2020/04/28/nba-zach-lavine-chicago-bulls-michael-jordan-the-last-dance-season-workout-staying-shape-paul-seattle-arturas-karnisovas-marc-eversley/


Zach continues to say the right things. Hopefully he takes another step next season

[bullsnewdynasty]

first of all, it was 2-3 this season. 8-16 over the past 2 seasons (.333). 36-87 with him playing (.293). that's a very small sample size, but hey, you brought it up

secondly, in your previous post YOU complained about someone using a small sample size, then went and used a MUCH smaller (and inaccurate) one. so you obviously have zero interest in intellectual consistency when it comes to discussions about zach lavine

That's fine, I messed up the record while taking a quick look at it.

Funny though how you talk about intellectual dishonesty when you deleted half my post about missing 3 starters for almost the entire season.

2019-2020

on court: bulls -5.0 per 100 possessions (team scores 108.1/oppt. 113.1/2098 minutes)
off court: bulls break even (104.1/104.1/1039)

offense bad w/ lavine in, significantly worse w/ him out, terrible defense improves a lot w/ him on bench

Those on/off stats are trash and you know it.

When LaVine is off the court, the Bulls have their bench players on the court playing against the opponent's bench players. All that's telling you is that the Bulls' bench is playing the opponent even. Tells you nothing about LaVine's impact.

Not going to respond to the rest of your post because you're just using garbage stats with terrible analysis.

[dice]

first of all, it was 2-3 this season. 8-16 over the past 2 seasons (.333). 36-87 with him playing (.293). that's a very small sample size, but hey, you brought it up

secondly, in your previous post YOU complained about someone using a small sample size, then went and used a MUCH smaller (and inaccurate) one. so you obviously have zero interest in intellectual consistency when it comes to discussions about zach lavine

That's fine, I messed up the record while taking a quick look at it.

Funny though how you talk about intellectual dishonesty when you deleted half my post about missing 3 starters for almost the entire season.

had absolutely nothing to do with what i was responding to, now did it? don't try to distract from your terrible argument. and once again, since it apparently didn't sink in, RAPM ADJUSTS FOR TEAMMATES AND OPPONENTS. if a player has bad players alongside him, an adjustment is made

2019-2020

on court: bulls -5.0 per 100 possessions (team scores 108.1/oppt. 113.1/2098 minutes)
off court: bulls break even (104.1/104.1/1039)

offense bad w/ lavine in, significantly worse w/ him out, terrible defense improves a lot w/ him on bench

Those on/off stats are trash and you know it.

which i NOTED, and which is why i provided you RAPM stats, which you summarily ignored

Not going to respond to the rest of your post because you're just using garbage stats with terrible analysis.

just because you don't understand a stat doesn't make it garbage. pure RAPM has no biases. it is well-respected, but requires a multi-season sample. which just goes to show that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and have no interest in learning. you probably didn't even read what i wrote. so go right back to your "zach score many points and jump really high, so zach must be good player" way of thinking. you will continue to be wrong, just as the bulls will continue to be mediocre at best w/ lavine in a prominent role

why you are so hell-bent on defending a clearly mediocre basketball player is beyond comprehension

a team could have 12 zach lavines and they would be no better than average (because it would be a team full of 6th man caliber players). and no team can afford half that. because lavine is overpaid. DESPITE the improvements he has made since the bulls matched vlade's inexplicable offer

[johnnyvann840]

...........

Without LaVine, the Bulls went 2-5.....

No, not exactly. They went 2-3 and got their only quality win of the season against the Mavs. The team also just looked so much more cohesive, IMO, and the ball and the players moved off the ball a lot more, too.

Suffice it to say, the Bulls need a closer, badly..

Spoiler:

Also, you are talking about clutch stats (from 82games) being a small sample but it's really not that small. He played 98% of the teams "clutch minutes" this season and 83% last season. Defined as 5 minutes or less and neither team leading by more than 5. The numbers are jaw dropping bad. I mean, wow. Offensive rating of 93.1 and a def rating of 114.2 last season and this season was offense- 102.0 and defensively 129.8. You simply are not going to win very much when the ball is in his hands at the end of games. Sure, about once every 5 times it happens, he will get hot and seemingly carry the team to a win... but the other 4 out of 5 times the results are not pretty.

This season...

http://www.82games.com/1920/19CHI6.HTM#clutch

Last season..

http://www.82games.com/1819/18CHI9.HTM#clutch

[bullsnewdynasty]

had absolutely nothing to do with what i was responding to, now did it? don't try to distract from your terrible argument. and once again, since it apparently didn't sink in, RAPM ADJUSTS FOR TEAMMATES AND OPPONENTS. if a player has bad players alongside him, an adjustment is made

So then why do people keep posting about team win/loss records?

which i NOTED, and which is why i provided you RAPM stats, which you summarily ignored

So if the numbers are trash, why did you post them?

just because you don't understand a stat doesn't make it garbage. pure RAPM has no biases. it is well-respected, but requires a multi-season sample. which just goes to show that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and have no interest in learning. you probably didn't even read what i wrote. so go right back to your "zach score many points and jump really high, so zach must be good player" way of thinking. you will continue to be wrong, just as the bulls will continue to be mediocre at best w/ lavine in a prominent role

why you are so hell-bent on defending a clearly mediocre basketball player is beyond comprehension

a team could have 12 zach lavines and they would be no better than average (because it would be a team full of 6th man caliber players). and no team can afford half that. because lavine is overpaid. DESPITE the improvements he has made since the bulls matched vlade's inexplicable offer

LaVine is 28th in the NBA in RPM.

Source: http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm

RPM: Player's estimated on-court impact on team performance, measured in net point differential per 100 offensive and defensive possessions. RPM takes into account teammates, opponents and additional factors

Not sure where your numbers are coming from. Unless you just wanted to find a random stat that makes LaVine look bad, like you did with +/-.

Take out a couple outliers and there is a reasonable argument to be made that LaVine is a top 25 player in the league, borderline all-star worthy as I have argued time and again.

[bullsnewdynasty]

...........

Without LaVine, the Bulls went 2-5.....

No, not exactly. They went 2-3 and got their only quality win of the season against the Mavs. The team also just looked so much more cohesive, IMO, and the ball and the players moved off the ball a lot more, too.

Suffice it to say, the Bulls need a closer, badly..

Spoiler:

Also, you are talking about clutch stats (from 82games) being a small sample but it's really not that small. He played 98% of the teams "clutch minutes" this season and 83% last season. Defined as 5 minutes or less and neither team leading by more than 5. The numbers are jaw dropping bad. I mean, wow. Offensive rating of 93.1 and a def rating of 114.2 last season and this season was offense- 102.0 and defensively 129.8. You simply are not going to win very much when the ball is in his hands at the end of games. Sure, about once every 5 times it happens, he will get hot and seemingly carry the team to a win... but the other 4 out of 5 times the results are not pretty.

This season...

http://www.82games.com/1920/19CHI6.HTM#clutch

Last season..

http://www.82games.com/1819/18CHI9.HTM#clutch

You guys are really hanging your hat on one game? That's really sad desperation.

Especially when the win coincided with WCJ and Otto actually playing and no Porzingis.

[dice]

had absolutely nothing to do with what i was responding to, now did it? don't try to distract from your terrible argument. and once again, since it apparently didn't sink in, RAPM ADJUSTS FOR TEAMMATES AND OPPONENTS. if a player has bad players alongside him, an adjustment is made

So then why do people keep posting about team win/loss records?

if that's their only argument, it shouldn't be

which i NOTED, and which is why i provided you RAPM stats, which you summarily ignored

So if the numbers are trash, why did you post them?

as a jumping off point to get to better data. over the course of the season, a strong regular old +/- is generally going to match up pretty well in general with good players. but there are instances where it clearly doesn't. same with garbage stats like PER

just because you don't understand a stat doesn't make it garbage. pure RAPM has no biases. it is well-respected, but requires a multi-season sample. which just goes to show that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and have no interest in learning. you probably didn't even read what i wrote. so go right back to your "zach score many points and jump really high, so zach must be good player" way of thinking. you will continue to be wrong, just as the bulls will continue to be mediocre at best w/ lavine in a prominent role

why you are so hell-bent on defending a clearly mediocre basketball player is beyond comprehension

a team could have 12 zach lavines and they would be no better than average (because it would be a team full of 6th man caliber players). and no team can afford half that. because lavine is overpaid. DESPITE the improvements he has made since the bulls matched vlade's inexplicable offer

LaVine is 28th in the NBA in RPM.

Source: http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm

RPM: Player's estimated on-court impact on team performance, measured in net point differential per 100 offensive and defensive possessions. RPM takes into account teammates, opponents and additional factors

Not sure where your numbers are coming from. Unless you just wanted to find a random stat that makes LaVine look bad, like you did with +/-.

Take out a couple outliers and there is a reasonable argument to be made that LaVine is a top 25 player in the league, borderline all-star worthy as I have argued time and again.

RPM recently changed their formula to de-value defense, so lavine jumped way up the rankings. RPM is heavily weighted toward box scores now. the creators basically admitted that they were not able to sufficiently judge defense using a single season sample. which is exactly why i said that you need to use multiple season of RAPM data. single seasons can produce weird outliers due to insufficient sample size

here's the only place that i know of where pure RAPM (no box score) data exists:

http://nbashotcharts.com/rapm?id=1109440799

single season, 3 year and 5 year data available in the upper right of screen. unfortunately, only goes back to 2009-2010 season

PIPM might be better given that it attempts to adjust for luck, but i think you have to pay for previous year data. they do have multi-year data, but i'm not sure how many seasons they're using:

https://www.bball-index.com/current-pipm/

[Jcool0]

Read on Twitter

[johnnyvann840]

https://hoopshype.com/2020/04/28/nba-zach-lavine-chicago-bulls-michael-jordan-the-last-dance-season-workout-staying-shape-paul-seattle-arturas-karnisovas-marc-eversley/


Zach continues to say the right things.

.

He always says the right thing. He's well coached from a PR perspective as almost everything he says is the perfect canned sports cliche. He really does seem like a really nice kid, though. The type of kid father's want their daughters to marry.

Hopefully he takes another step next season

yes....on his new team.

[drosereturn]

But to sum up--even though Zach is probably top 10 talent in the NBA from a purely physical talent perspective, he plays, both on O and on D, on a level more like in the local Y or LA Fitness. Against good NBA teams, more often than not, that's just not good enough for a primary ball handler, no matter what the stats say.

I believe some of it can be taught--vision on O cannot; but that's why you need to run plays for Zach off ball. Reggie MIller/Klay plays; back screens; elbow screens; double screens; whatever--catch and 'effin shoot. Catch and dunk. Catch, one dribble and shoot. But for the love of god, don't just let him go 1 on 5, especially in the 4th when most NBA teams start caring.

You're wasting his talents.

Summed it up well but one encouraging thing from Boylen is that he tried to play Lavine at the 3 which is the right call considering he is a great shooter but a terrible playmaker and ballhandler. His only viable archetype is a Klay Thompson/Buddy hield mode.
I understand the lack of talent forced him to go 1 on 5 but assuming AK gets more help, is he completely willing to yield his 33% usage rate and play for the team? My assumption is this guy thinks he is so talented he deserved all of this opportunity and took it for granted and will perhaps demand a bigger role which will cripple the team. If I am greedy Lavine, I monopolize every possession to generate empty box stats to wow 12 yr old kids, make the all-star to make up for the shameful 2020, and earn a max contract to feed generations of my family.

With a combination of his big ego, immaturity, and bad bbiq, its really hard for anyone to approach him and give it all up.
After all, its tough for anyone to give up the status quo and hand over your privilege to someone else.
Lavine has pretty much a year left to choose his own destiny if AK is kind enough to allow so. Will he choose the path of greatness and willing to sacrifice everything like Rose, Butler, MJ did to become an all time great or will his selfishness take over and ruin his career?

[Dez]

But to sum up--even though Zach is probably top 10 talent in the NBA from a purely physical talent perspective, he plays, both on O and on D, on a level more like in the local Y or LA Fitness. Against good NBA teams, more often than not, that's just not good enough for a primary ball handler, no matter what the stats say.

I believe some of it can be taught--vision on O cannot; but that's why you need to run plays for Zach off ball. Reggie MIller/Klay plays; back screens; elbow screens; double screens; whatever--catch and 'effin shoot. Catch and dunk. Catch, one dribble and shoot. But for the love of god, don't just let him go 1 on 5, especially in the 4th when most NBA teams start caring.

You're wasting his talents.

Summed it up well but one encouraging thing from Boylen is that he tried to play Lavine at the 3 which is the right call considering he is a great shooter but a terrible playmaker and ballhandler. His only viable archetype is a Klay Thompson/Buddy hield mode.
I understand the lack of talent forced him to go 1 on 5 but assuming AK gets more help, is he completely willing to yield his 33% usage rate and play for the team? My assumption is this guy thinks he is so talented he deserved all of this opportunity and took it for granted and will perhaps demand a bigger role which will cripple the team. If I am greedy Lavine, I monopolize every possession to generate empty box stats to wow 12 yr old kids, make the all-star to make up for the shameful 2020, and earn a max contract to feed generations of my family.

With a combination of his big ego, immaturity, and bad bbiq, its really hard for anyone to approach him and give it all up.
After all, its tough for anyone to give up the status quo and hand over your privilege to someone else.
Lavine has pretty much a year left to choose his own destiny if AK is kind enough to allow so. Will he choose the path of greatness and willing to sacrifice everything like Rose, Butler, MJ did to become an all time great or will his selfishness take over and ruin his career?

Even though I know you won't respond because you have no argument or evidence regarding this myth you keep peddling about LaVine being selfish.

Why do you keep pushing the myth despite this?

[Stratmaster]

Its been hard for Zach to make his teammates better when all the good ones are always injured. Zach has had to take on the entire load himself

This.

The answer to the question posed is "we don't know". The same question was asked about MJ when he was playing next to scrubs. Before anyone says it...of course. Lavine is no MJ, which is exactly the point. If a player like MJ could be misread like that, it tells you that no one really knows the answer to this question at this point.

I simply don't believe the narrative that if you put another great scorer next to Lavine that somehow Zach isn't going to change the way he plays the game at all. Hell, he was a different player in the limited time he played nest to Otto Porter.

[Stratmaster]

had absolutely nothing to do with what i was responding to, now did it? don't try to distract from your terrible argument. and once again, since it apparently didn't sink in, RAPM ADJUSTS FOR TEAMMATES AND OPPONENTS. if a player has bad players alongside him, an adjustment is made

So then why do people keep posting about team win/loss records?

if that's their only argument, it shouldn't be

which i NOTED, and which is why i provided you RAPM stats, which you summarily ignored

So if the numbers are trash, why did you post them?

as a jumping off point to get to better data. over the course of the season, a strong regular old +/- is generally going to match up pretty well in general with good players. but there are instances where it clearly doesn't. same with garbage stats like PER

just because you don't understand a stat doesn't make it garbage. pure RAPM has no biases. it is well-respected, but requires a multi-season sample. which just goes to show that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and have no interest in learning. you probably didn't even read what i wrote. so go right back to your "zach score many points and jump really high, so zach must be good player" way of thinking. you will continue to be wrong, just as the bulls will continue to be mediocre at best w/ lavine in a prominent role

why you are so hell-bent on defending a clearly mediocre basketball player is beyond comprehension

a team could have 12 zach lavines and they would be no better than average (because it would be a team full of 6th man caliber players). and no team can afford half that. because lavine is overpaid. DESPITE the improvements he has made since the bulls matched vlade's inexplicable offer

LaVine is 28th in the NBA in RPM.

Source: http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm

RPM: Player's estimated on-court impact on team performance, measured in net point differential per 100 offensive and defensive possessions. RPM takes into account teammates, opponents and additional factors

Not sure where your numbers are coming from. Unless you just wanted to find a random stat that makes LaVine look bad, like you did with +/-.

Take out a couple outliers and there is a reasonable argument to be made that LaVine is a top 25 player in the league, borderline all-star worthy as I have argued time and again.

RPM recently changed their formula to de-value defense, so lavine jumped way up the rankings. RPM is heavily weighted toward box scores now. the creators basically admitted that they were not able to sufficiently judge defense using a single season sample. which is exactly why i said that you need to use multiple season of RAPM data. single seasons can produce weird outliers due to insufficient sample size

here's the only place that i know of where pure RAPM (no box score) data exists:

http://nbashotcharts.com/rapm?id=1109440799

single season, 3 year and 5 year data available in the upper right of screen. unfortunately, only goes back to 2009-2010 season

PIPM might be better given that it attempts to adjust for luck, but i think you have to pay for previous year data. they do have multi-year data, but i'm not sure how many seasons they're using:

https://www.bball-index.com/current-pipm/

RAPM is multi-season. Inconsistent multiple season contexts results in inaccurate data. What was inconsistent that is unaccounted for by RAPM? How about a year of not playing due to injury. A half season of a player obviously playing at less than 100% as he came back from injury. A season playing with 3 starters out most of the season on a team that already wasn't very good. A season of playing with trash around you. Playing with 2 different teams, 4 different head coaches in 4.5 years of actual playing time. 3 of those coaches looked on as "jokes" in the head coaching role. The 4th one having a tumultuous and controversial season the year that you played for him. Roles changing from bench player to role player to starter to go-to guy to team leader. Position moving back and forth from point to scorer to both throughout those years.

I know you and others love the stat, and if you have to pick a stat I get it. But the idea that because it is multi-season, that makes it better, is silly. Most players in the league context changes from season to season. Considering multiple seasons often negatively affects assessing current situations or predicting future performance.

[dice]

So then why do people keep posting about team win/loss records?

if that's their only argument, it shouldn't be

So if the numbers are trash, why did you post them?

as a jumping off point to get to better data. over the course of the season, a strong regular old +/- is generally going to match up pretty well in general with good players. but there are instances where it clearly doesn't. same with garbage stats like PER

LaVine is 28th in the NBA in RPM.

Source: http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm



Not sure where your numbers are coming from. Unless you just wanted to find a random stat that makes LaVine look bad, like you did with +/-.

Take out a couple outliers and there is a reasonable argument to be made that LaVine is a top 25 player in the league, borderline all-star worthy as I have argued time and again.

RPM recently changed their formula to de-value defense, so lavine jumped way up the rankings. RPM is heavily weighted toward box scores now. the creators basically admitted that they were not able to sufficiently judge defense using a single season sample. which is exactly why i said that you need to use multiple season of RAPM data. single seasons can produce weird outliers due to insufficient sample size

here's the only place that i know of where pure RAPM (no box score) data exists:

http://nbashotcharts.com/rapm?id=1109440799

single season, 3 year and 5 year data available in the upper right of screen. unfortunately, only goes back to 2009-2010 season

PIPM might be better given that it attempts to adjust for luck, but i think you have to pay for previous year data. they do have multi-year data, but i'm not sure how many seasons they're using:

https://www.bball-index.com/current-pipm/

RAPM is multi-season. Inconsistent multiple season contexts results in inaccurate data. What was inconsistent that is unaccounted for by RAPM? How about a year of not playing due to injury. A half season of a player obviously playing at less than 100% as he came back from injury. A season playing with 3 starters out most of the season on a team that already wasn't very good. A season of playing with trash around you. Playing with 2 different teams, 4 different head coaches in 4.5 years of actual playing time. 3 of those coaches looked on as "jokes" in the head coaching role. The 4th one having a tumultuous and controversial season the year that you played for him. Roles changing from bench player to role player to starter to go-to guy to team leader. Position moving back and forth from point to scorer to both throughout those years.

I know you and others love the stat, and if you have to pick a stat I get it. But the idea that because it is multi-season, that makes it better, is silly. Most players in the league context changes from season to season. Considering multiple seasons often negatively affects assessing current situations or predicting future performance.

the point is that it's unreliable as a single season stat. and it's much better as a long-term indicator than other stats are

[transplant]

synergy [ˈsinərjē] NOUN
the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

LaVine's an extraordinarily athletic and skilled player. He has a very high "Wow Factor." To this point in his career, he hasn't shown the ability to provide a positive synergistic effect to the teams he has played with. This could be because he hasn't been paired with the right group of players or it could be that the way he plays doesn't lead to positive synergy. The fact that he's been in the league for 5 years, doesn't help him.

I suspect/fear that LaVine is viewed by GMs around the league as having little positive synergistic potential. If the Bulls were to offer him up for trade, what sort of offers do you think they'd receive? I suspect/fear that they'd be kind of underwhelming.

[drosestruts]

I don't think the Bulls have a Zach LaVine problem.

Honest question - who's the best player Zach has every played with? If you can keep it to the season he played with that player, so think of it as if it's in a vacuum (aka don't answer Kevin Garnett, KG wasn't KG when he played with Zach). Like really look at the top 5 players he's played with, that will answer your question on why Zach hasn't been on a winning team or been in the playoffs.

2016 Ricky Rubio
2016 Karl Anthony Towns
2018 Otto Porter Jr for 15 games
2014 Kevin Martin

If you look at his best teammates by win share it's:

2016-17 KAT
2015-16 KAT
2016-17 Ricky Rubio
2016-17 Gorgui Dieng
2015-16 Gorgui Dieng
2015-16 Ricky Rubio

His highest rated Bulls teammate by win share is Ryan Arcidiancano. That's your problem.