Official Trade Thread -- Part XXXIX

[payitforward]

Agreed with pcb. It's the DeAndre Jordan factor - Yes, he scores efficiently, but he doesn't score more because he's a very limited offensive player. If he shot more, it would dramatically lower his scoring efficiency. That's why he is only used in a very limited role on offense.

1. What would make you think I would disagree with this?
2. If you ask any player in the league to shoot more than he does now, his scoring efficiency will decline. It's obvious why.
3. As the great poet Charles Olson once said: "Limits are what we are all inside of."

If Jordan shot the same number of times & was less efficient, made fewer of them, would he be better than he is? The same? No. He would be worse.

This is more or less like pcbothwei asking "is Javale McGee really a better player, or has he just stopped taking bad shots?"

Answer is, "yes."

edit -- btw, you will note that I also "Agreed with pcb."

[Ruzious]

Agreed with pcb. It's the DeAndre Jordan factor - Yes, he scores efficiently, but he doesn't score more because he's a very limited offensive player. If he shot more, it would dramatically lower his scoring efficiency. That's why he is only used in a very limited role on offense.

1. What would make you think I would disagree with this?
2. If you ask any player in the league to shoot more than he does now, his scoring efficiency will decline. It's obvious why.
3. As the great poet Charles Olson once said: "Limits are what we are all inside of."

If Jordan shot the same number of times & was less efficient, made fewer of them, would he be better than he is? The same? No. He would be worse.

This is more or less like pcbothwei asking "is Javale McGee really a better player, or has he just stopped taking bad shots?"

Answer is, "yes."

edit -- btw, you will note that I also "Agreed with pcb."

Why are you making this about you? I said I agree with pcb, and you just said you agreed with him, so what's the problem?

[payitforward]

Good question. I don't know -- how about you?

[Ruzious]

Exactly, so from now on - threads should be about me - except for the ones that I was wrong on - which should leave about 2 or 3 for me.

[payitforward]

Taking up your other points, as I said I would...

...when you simply boil everything down to how many possessions a player used and his efficiency in using those, it gives you a quick overview of their ability....

...their ability to score, that is. Usage/TS% certainly aren't enough to give you an overview of the player's overall impact on team wins-- which is the only way I'm interested in looking at the question of "how good a player is overall."

...but does not answer the question about how a player would do if asked to do something different....

Nothing about what a person does answers the question about how that person would do something different -- & the more "different" the less help we get from what he's doing now.

Yet -- apart from the usual arc of development > peak years > decline -- players are usually pretty consistent in how they play the game. They're people not machines, so of course they vary some from year to year. &, sure, some players change things about their game with experience.

[payitforward]

Remember the point of this discussion. It IS NOT, "What player was better based on what we saw"... the point was what player will be better given the same roles... And I believe Thomas Bryant is/will be better than Allen given the same set of circumstances.

& vice versa in a different set of circumstances. But, this has nothing to do with an analysis of what factors help win games & to what degree. That's still there to analyze via statistical analysis in order to find correlations.

In any case, you begin with players not roles. Get better players, & your team gets better. If you need to make a trade, a better player gets a better player back.

Now, of course, the more a guy gets to do what he is best at the better he will be -- if the 3-point shot were eliminated from basketball, Davis Bertans would be looking for work! So, of course you would play to the strengths of your personnel. But, that's another matter.

[payitforward]

Its like a few years ago when Win Shares & WS/48 become some go-to stat for some reason, and then people used it to compare players on different teams...

If you can't compare players on different teams, then you can't decide what trades makes sense. Moreover, players move from team to team. By and large (again leaving out that career "arc" I mentioned) their numbers tend to be pretty consistent. This has been looked at, & it's true.

The problem with win shares is that it just doesn't correlate all that well statistically with wins.

[payitforward]

Exactly, so from now on - threads should be about me - except for the ones that I was wrong on - which should leave about 2 or 3 for me.

I think we should only discuss those where we were both wrong. Otherwise... just meditate.

...or, we should only discuss those where people think I am incorrect (i.e. wrong), in which case, no problem, we can keep all the balls in the air!

[80sballboy]

A lot of Twitter, ok a few dozen Wiz fans on Twitter, are trying to push a deal to get KAT. Great offensive talent, but just what we need, another poor post defender.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

[pcbothwel]

A lot of Twitter, ok a few dozen Wiz fans on Twitter, are trying to push a deal to get KAT. Great offensive talent, but just what we need, another poor post defender.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

No interest. He is the bigman version of Prime IT. However, IT was able to be hid with the right coaching. For how freakishly good he is offensively, he is the worst big man defender I've seen in a while.
Im talking toughness, instincts, strength, quickness... he lacks all of them. You add in his general whiney attitude and lazy, entitled disposition and you have a recipe for disaster.

[Ruzious]

A lot of Twitter, ok a few dozen Wiz fans on Twitter, are trying to push a deal to get KAT. Great offensive talent, but just what we need, another poor post defender.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

No interest. He is the bigman version of Prime IT. However, IT was able to be hid with the right coaching. For how freakishly good he is offensively, he is the worst big man defender I've seen in a while.
Im talking toughness, instincts, strength, quickness... he lacks all of them. You add in his general whiney attitude and lazy, entitled disposition and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't think he lacks at all in strength and quickness, but the others - yeah. He's just shown no interest in defense. It's a shame, because he's a brilliant talent, imo.

[nate33]

I'd be willing to gamble that KAT figures out defense as he matures. He's about at the age where lots of players realize that offense alone doesn't get it done. The problem is that we don't have the assets to trade for him without ending up as a team with the same problems as Minnesota - having one mercurial talent and no supporting cast.

[pcbothwel]

A lot of Twitter, ok a few dozen Wiz fans on Twitter, are trying to push a deal to get KAT. Great offensive talent, but just what we need, another poor post defender.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

No interest. He is the bigman version of Prime IT. However, IT was able to be hid with the right coaching. For how freakishly good he is offensively, he is the worst big man defender I've seen in a while.
Im talking toughness, instincts, strength, quickness... he lacks all of them. You add in his general whiney attitude and lazy, entitled disposition and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't think he lacks at all in strength and quickness, but the others - yeah. He's just shown no interest in defense. It's a shame, because he's a brilliant talent, imo.

Yeah... You cant pick a worse archetype than Minny has.
Guards that dont play defense and require the ball in their hands are awful. The latter because, like Westbrook, the moment you go from Superstar production/efficiency like Lebron or Giannis down to average, you no longer have a real place in the rotation. Its one of my hesitations with Killian Hayes and Anthony Edwards as drafts prospect and issues we've seen with Wall.

Bigs that get pushed around on defense and cant defend the perimeter/switches kill your ceiling.

The Twolves have really tied their hands with giving up their 2021 1st for DLo... Who cares who KAT's friends are. He is signed for 5 years and has accomplished NOTHING.

[Ruzious]

No interest. He is the bigman version of Prime IT. However, IT was able to be hid with the right coaching. For how freakishly good he is offensively, he is the worst big man defender I've seen in a while.
Im talking toughness, instincts, strength, quickness... he lacks all of them. You add in his general whiney attitude and lazy, entitled disposition and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't think he lacks at all in strength and quickness, but the others - yeah. He's just shown no interest in defense. It's a shame, because he's a brilliant talent, imo.

Yeah... You cant pick a worse archetype than Minny has.
Guards that dont play defense and require the ball in their hands are awful. The latter because, like Westbrook, the moment you go from Superstar production/efficiency like Lebron or Giannis down to average, you no longer have a real place in the rotation. Its one of my hesitations with Killian Hayes and Anthony Edwards as drafts prospect and issues we've seen with Wall.

Bigs that get pushed around on defense and cant defend the perimeter/switches kill your ceiling.

The Twolves have really tied their hands with giving up their 2021 1st for DLo... Who cares who KAT's friends are. He is signed for 5 years and has accomplished NOTHING.

The Butler situation there was weird. If they could have handled him better, I think they might have gone somewhere. They were 47-35 in the 17-18 season, but Butler had his implosion and went to Philly, and Minny fell apart. They also should have kept Bjelica.

[payitforward]

Ruz is right: one constant fact in life -- things fall apart faster & more easily than they come together.

[Ruzious]

Ruz is right: one constant fact in life -- things fall apart faster & more easily than they come together.

You lost me with those first 3 words, but yeah - I've had that problem at work recently - so true. You have something good going for a while, and then boom... just gotta keep trying and hope that's eventually successful and appreciated.

[payitforward]

Keep at it. & always keep in mind this, my favorite Samuel Beckett quote:

"If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing."

(from Molloy)

[montestewart]

Its like a few years ago when Win Shares & WS/48 become some go-to stat for some reason, and then people used it to compare players on different teams...

If you can't compare players on different teams, then you can't decide what trades makes sense. Moreover, players move from team to team. By and large (again leaving out that career "arc" I mentioned) their numbers tend to be pretty consistent. This has been looked at, & it's true.

The problem with win shares is that it just doesn't correlate all that well statistically with wins.

A few years ago I did a spot check, and the total of a team's win shares was fairly consistently comparable to team wins. I can't speak to the win share division among individual players, but that aspect seemed pretty sound, and it's hard to see a system being that accurate on the team level while being gretaly inaccurate for individual players. I just checked two teams from this year (Raptors and Celtics), and again found a pretty good correlation between total win shares and team wins.

Not saying it's the best measure, but it doesn't seem bad. Has anyone done a more formal tracking of the above comparison?

[Ruzious]

Keep at it. & always keep in mind this, my favorite Samuel Beckett quote:

"If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing."

(from Molloy)

Thank you - I like that a lot.

[nate33]

Just spitballin' here, but if we end up drafting Halliburton, we might want to make a trade to free up some minutes in the backcourt. How about:

WAS trades: Ish + Robinson
ORL trades: Aminu

Aminu is under contract through 2022, which doesn't really hurt us because we're not players in 2021 free agency anyway. It clears up a log jam for us in the backcourt, and it clears up some of their log jam at forward, while providing them a capable veteran PG to replace D.J. Augustin, and cap relief in 2021.

A lot would depend on Aminu's health. He had complications with his meniscus surgery this season and I have no idea if he has fully recovered. But if regained his form as the solid, defensive-minded power forward from Portland a year ago, that would be a good fit on this team since we have no natural PF besides Rui. It also frees up a roster spot, even after signing Nerlens Noel.

PG Wall, Haliburton
SG Beal, Brown
SF Bonga, Bertans
PF Hachimura, Aminu
C Bryant, Noel
End of bench: Mathews, Schofield, Wagner, 2nd pick

Our crunch time lineup of Wall, Beal, Bertans, Aminu, Noel would be pretty good.