phx#7 wrote:SuperSunsFan wrote:has ayton regressed? I don't see him does this often anymore.
Regressed? Beyond the eye test where he continues to look much better on defense and still having opponents collapse their D on him while on offense, his advanced stats and efficiency are up pretty much across the board.
He has the best Drtg on the team, behind only Galloway and Bridges for Ortg. Given the snails pace the Suns play at and the improved supporting cast he may not have as many 30+pt games but I'm happy with this current progression.
DRTG is an interesting one. BRef will tell you that our points allowed per 100 possessions is MUCH better with him on the floor.
Often times people cite the nba.com DRTG, which generally, if nba.com included all games, it is superior than using bref.
However, nba.com has a disclaimer that says that not all games are used to compile their numbers, and I have noticed that not only is it not all games, but it is far less than half.
After maybe 14 games I was looking at passes per player on the Suns, and Paul's total passes were like 50, when I new is total assists were well over 100. Now you figure he passes at least 2-3 more times (probably more like 5 times more) than he has assists, then this was a small fraction of is passes.
So this extreme small sample size they use isn't really relevant.
A lot of context is needed with those on/off, DRTG, +/- (even if adjusted) because our starting lineup was routinely outscored in most of our games, yet our bench would thrive and keep us in the games, particularly in our first stretch of wins.
So in this context, all starters would have bad defensive advanced numbers because they were giving up a lot of points in the first quarter, getting down before our bench came in.
However, the ONE starter who never benefits from playing with the bench that outscores other benches, is Ayton. Booker plays the entire first quarter, including4 4-5 minutes with bench guys. Bridges often stays in for a longer time as the bench gradually comes in too.
Then Cam was part of the bench unit for a long time, before coming in as a starter where we played better, but it hurt our bench, so he benefited both ways.
And then Paul plays the 2nd quarter at the beginning with the bench.
Crowder was the other guy besides Ayton with not so great advanced defensive #s due to playing more with starters, but has started to play a little more with the bench.
For awhile, it showed our two worst defenders as Ayton and Crowder in some advanced metrics, but this obviously doesn't match the eye test, where they are likely our 2nd and 3rd best defenders behind Bridges, or maybe throw Paul in there as the top 4.
Obviously our D is far better with Ayton based on the eye test than with Kaminsky, or even Saric, but it didn't show in some metrics due to context.
If Ayton played all his minutes strictly with the bench, particularly when Cam Payne was thriving, he would look like our best defender BY FAR based on ALL metrics, but instead, other players benefit from this and not Ayton.
So some of the people posting on twitter, even some of the media guys, etc, post these things and don't seem to understand the context.
So I'd caution others here (not you obviously) in reading into every advanced defensive stat you see.
