General NBA Links

Knowledge is power.

quote:

---

I like the age minimum thread/discussion and thought I would start a new one with links to general NBA topics.

First, Beckley Mason on the lack of sleep due to NBA travel and it's impact on the product.

---

While it's difficult to feel sorry for a bunch of young millionaires playing basketball for a living, I can understand what Doc Rivers is saying. On back to back road games, these guys will usually leave straight from the Arena after the game, to the next city, arriving at their hotel anytime in the middle of the night, depending on how far they had to travel. Next morning wake up early enough to do film study, game plan, eat, shoot around, and then do it all over again.

Also, they're finishing games and leaving the locker room after 10 most nights, and then meeting the families and people with player passes after that. Then they board the bus to the plane and fly to play the next night.

Segababas have to blow, especially if you're traveling a long way.

quote:

---

I know someone who has traveled with a team on a road trip. It was hard on him and he wasn't playing. Midnight flights, early morning hotel check ins, 3 cities in 3 days, etc. NBA schedule is easily the most brutal.

---

just think about what the pelicans had to do on this most recent road trip. back to back games on road trips should not be allowed. i wonder what the record is for away teams on that. i'll try to find it.

quote:

---

I still have no idea why Demps didnt go after Jordan Hamilton at the trade deadline. Unless I'm missing something, it was just Aaron Brooks for Hamilton straight up. Brooks is not better than Roberts. Connelly wouldn't have sent his old boss spare part for spare part?

---

McNamara said (speculated I assume, Bruins can clear it up for us) that we didn't offer Roberts. If that's true that says 1 of 3 things.

1) Seats are hot and the FO thinks Roberts will help us win more than adding Hamilton to the mix.
2) They plan, or at least want the option of bringing back Roberts. If you trade a player you can't get him back for a year now. Why give up Roberts for a guy you can just sign in FA?
3) They have no interest in Hamilton. Maybe Demps is targeting another SF, or a big with his MLE money.

I'm leaning towards 1. Gordon, Tyreke and Rivers are not real PGs. Not that Roberts' TO rate is any better than those 3, but I know I don't want Gordon being the primary ball handler.

quote:

---

they must have had hope Holiday was coming back

---

They squashed those rumors pretty quickly and Jim Eichenhofer even tweeted about "irresponsible reporting" when people asked him if Jrue was coming back. I think the team knew he wasn't close.

quote:

---

run to respectability

---

The goal may not be running to respectability but running to 30, 32, 35 or some set number of wins Loomis/Benson have established as the firing line. Costing yourself a game or 2 while establishing a new starting PG may have seemed like a big risk.

Fascinating article from Hickory High looking at SportVU numbers.

LINK

On Davis as a rim protector

quote:

---

Anthony Davis, despite leading the league in blocks, is not actually an especially effective rim protector. Though he does hold opponents to around 45 percent shooting at the rim, he only contests around 28 percent of opponents’ rim attempts, on par with noted help stalwarts Carlos Boozer, Andrea Bargnani and Boris Diaw. Therefore, despite his lofty block totals and good ability to force misses when he’s present, his relative inability to contest shots renders him below average in this metric, costing New Orleans about .5 pts/gm

---

More reason to match Davis up on centers? Though he does add this

quote:

---

Of course, rim protection is not the sum total of a player’s (even a big man’s) defensive contributions. How much of Davis’ relative dearth of contests are as a result of New Orleans’ schemes which often have him aggressively trapping the pick-and-roll, and how much is it simply Davis having just turned 21 and not yet able to rotate quite as quickly as the NBA game demands? Unfortunately, the public data can’t tell us that, yet

---

Also on Evans

quote:

---

Well, a combination of SportVU generated stats and traditional box score numbers allow’s an estimation of a player’s total offensive role. I’ve named the metric “True Usage” as it is intended to be an addition to or replacement for traditional usage rate. Essentially True Usage combines a player’s shots, turnovers and assist chances into one number to estimate the percentage of his team’s possessions with which the player is directly involved

---

quote:

---

Of the players with the top 24 TrueUsage rates, 20 are pure point guards, two (Brandon Knight and Tyreke Evans) are combo guards with significant ball-handling and playmaking responsibilities and two are LeBron and Kevin Durant.

---

Interesting stuff as the debate on Evans as SF rages on here. He may be listed as SF, but he that isn't the role he plays on the court.

quote:

---

Despite his recent good numbers (YAY POINTS), his defensive rating is pretty terrible

---

I saw that.

I don't know how much we can attribute to Evans starting or just general malaise. He's got some holes on defense, but he isn't a one man wrecking ball on defense. And allowing Milwaukee and LAL to torch you is not just on one guy.

quote:

---

He probably would benefit from turning Gordon into a 3 and D SF to let him play more SG.

---

Yep. Really, just more size in the backcourt and on the wing would help. The flexibility means you can hide Evans on the weakest guy.

Here's another one I saw from Mike Prada this week on less hard hedging we've seen for a while. He uses some images from recent games to describe this.

LINK

quote:

---

It's always more difficult than it appears to nail down a team's pick-and-roll scheme. We like to think there's one default plan, but in reality, every team has different coverages that depend on the players involved and location on the floor.

That said, it seems like the Pelicans are shifting strategies. Previously, Monty Williams' club would ask its big men to jump out high on pick-and-rolls

But things may be changing a bit, due perhaps to the presence of slower-footed big men like Alexis Ajinca and Greg Stiemsma. Notice Ajinca's positioning in this pick-and-roll

They'll still use Davis to hard hedge at times, most notably in Friday's loss to the Suns, but it's happening less often with everyone else. And even Davis occasionally is laying back a bit instead of coming all the way out:

It's too early to say if this is a long-term shift, and even the most rigid defensive systems must be adjusted to account for unique matchups like Stephen Curry and Channing Frye.

But with their season lost, now's as good a time as any for Williams to experiment with different looks.

---

Also some great stuff sampling younger players (via Thompson and Beal) in that link

Maybe it's because the Monty Haters have very little faith in the out of bounds plays this team runs, but I think the primary complaint about Monty and timeouts is not doing a good job of stopping momentum when the other team starts making a run.

quote:

---

Battier would prefer to “take it in, rush it up and get it to your best attacker going to the hoop,” he says. "I'm surprised at how many times coaches call a timeout to draw up an ISO. It's like, ‘Really? You took a timeout to draw up an ISO?’ That's my pet peeve as a player watching the game."

---

Yeah, it seems like the primary reason to call the time out is to switch personnel and advance the ball. Especially later in the season you should have some go to plays and players if you're not a revolving door lineup like the oft injured Pelicans.