Tag Archives: Analysis

The Chicago Bulls’ New Offense: Reasons for Optimism Despite a Rough Start

This offseason it came out that the Chicago Bulls were installing a new offensive system, which was to be based off of “read and react” principles. The goal is, according to Coach Tom Thibodeau:

If [the opponent’s defense] get[s] set we want to move them side to side. But we want the ball in to the paint. When you have a player like Derrick [Rose] who can force the defense to collapse, now you’re going to get some high scoring or very efficient shooting out of that. Everyone has the responsibility to hit the open man, keep the ball moving.

Via: Nick Friedell, ESPNChicago.com

Getting the ball into the paint for shots close to the basket remains the most efficient way to score in the NBA, with the exception of getting to the foul line, so it’s no surprise that Thibodeau wants to emphasize getting those shots for his team.

The Bulls so far have done fantastically well at getting shots in the paint. They are second in the league, behind only the Houston Rockets, in percentage of shots taken within 5 feet of the basket, with 111 of their 250 field goal attempts coming in close. The Bulls are converting those shots at an above average rate, too, coming in 8th in the league in FG% on shots in that range, at 62.2%. As a result, the Bulls are third in the league in Points in the Paint per pace adjusted 36 minutes at 38.0, behind only the Sixers and the Pistons. All of this seems great, so why are the Bulls 24th in offensive efficiency at an abysmal 95.6 points per 100 possessions?

Turnovers

The Bulls are tied for 6th highest in the league in Team Turnover Percentage (TmTOV%) at 19.1%. A lot of that comes back to Derrick Rose playing out of control and forcing things, a topic which was well covered by Ricky O’Donnell over at BlogaBull. Rose has 17 turnovers in just 3 games for an average of nearly 6 a game. That’s obviously too many, but the Bulls have been averaging roughly 13 turnovers per game from non-Rose players, too. That’s a tremendously high number. So what’s driving all these turnovers? I went back and watched every turnover the Bulls committed over the first 3 games and what stood out was just how many of the Bulls turnovers were a product of lazy passes or miscommunications between a passing Bull and the teammate to whom his pass was directed. There were so many times when guys attempted to throw an entry pass just to initiate the Bulls base offensive set and instead just threw the ball away. It seemed like a total lack of focus, for three games running, on valuing possession of the ball. I mean just watch this montage I made of bad Bulls entry passes from the first three games:

Chicago is clearly making getting the ball into the paint a point of emphasis and trying to get it in to Carlos Boozer for paint catches. The problem has been that they seem to be struggling with the touch on those entry passes, as you can see from all of these needless turnovers. There have been a lot of other turnovers that derive from a lack of focus, like this turnover from Kirk Hinrich as he bounces a lazy pass to Mike Dunleavy Jr., which Carmelo Anthony easily sniffs out and steals:

Or this one against the Knicks, which was a team wide failure, starting with Derrick Rose’s not initiating the offense until 14 seconds remained on the shot clock, and then, the rest of the team seeming quite confused about what they were each supposed to do, resulting in a Jimmy Butler long 2 point jumper which was blocked by Tyson Chandler, forcing Jimmy to scramble to get the ball and then chuck up an air ball at the buzzer.

These kinds of mental errors and miscommunications are somewhat surprising from a Tom Thibodeau coached team, but when you consider: (1) they’ve installed a new offensive system, (2) their core guys all missed time during the preseason to deal with injuries, and (3) their starting unit had never played a minute together as a whole prior to opening night against the Heat, the miscues become much more understandable. I’d expect Tom Thibodeau will hammer out the kinks in short order, especially given that he’s had a lot of time between the Sixer game and tonight’s tilt with the Pacers to get in practice time.

Despite all the bad passes and dumb turnovers, though, the Bulls have still been getting the ball inside well and converting well on the shots they have gotten inside. So what else, besides the turnovers and resulting empty possessions, is causing the Bulls to be so bad on offense? Well, there’s this:

Jumpshots

The Bulls are shooting an absolutely abysmal 24.8% on all jumpshot attempts and an even worse 23.2% as a team from behind the three point arc. As a result of this terrible shooting from anywhere outside the immediate basket area (5 feet and in), the Bulls are 25th in the league in effective field goal percentage, which is just astonishing given how high a percentage of their overall shot attempts have been near the basket and the fact that they are converting those high percentage looks at a top 10 rate. This kind of jump shooting futility is certainly very unlikely to sustain. The Bulls might not have a lot of great shooters, but they do have guys who are better shooters than this awfulness. For reference, the Bulls, as a team, shot 31.5% on all jumpshots last year and 34.3% on three point shots, and all of that was without Derrick Rose creating open shots by drawing the defense’s attention. Going forward, we should expect the Bulls to shoot better on jump shots than their current terrible mark, which, if they continue their effectiveness at getting paint shots and converting them at a high level, should buoy their effective field goal percentage and their overall offensive efficiency to much more respectable levels. The turnovers and bad shooting still don’t tell the whole picture though. There’s one more piece of the puzzle that has held the Bulls back.

No Whistles

As I alluded to above, there is no more efficient way to score in the NBA than to get to the foul line. For a team that’s been getting a lot of shots in the paint, the Bulls have an absurdly low free throw attempt rate (free throws attempted per shot attempt), clocking in at 26th in the league. Derrick Rose, in particular, seems to have reverted back to his rookie days of getting loads of contact, but getting no calls. A team getting the ball inside at such a prolific rate and still getting so few FTAs per shot attempt seems like a circumstance that is simply very unlikely to continue. The Bulls were also unlucky in that they played their first three games against teams that were all pretty good at avoiding fouls last year. Miami ranked 22nd in fouls called against, New York was 15th, and Philadelphia was 25th. As a group, these three clubs seem to have done a great job at either not fouling or not being called for fouls, depending on your level of cynicism about NBA refereeing. Either way, the larger point is that the Bulls played a tough stretch in terms of getting calls on the offensive end, so like the other numbers, expect this one to improve going forward.

The Bulls have been below average to bad in these key areas of scoring efficiently as a team. They’ve still rebounded the ball well, which helped prevent them from being the worst offense in the league thus far. They’ve gotten good shots, for the most part. Looking at things from a process based perspective, rather than a results based one, there’s much to be excited about. The Bulls will shoot better. As they get more familiar with their new offense and their responsibilities within it, they will almost certainly clean up the unfocussed, lazy passes and miscommunication issues which have caused the turnovers which have been a big part of their early season struggles. Finally, they will probably (hopefully?) start getting more of the benefit of the doubt from the referees, especially if they continue living in the painted area.

Statistical support for this post provided by NBA.com/Stats.

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Projecting the NBA using xWARP: Los Angeles Lakers

I’m not going to tip-toe around this: the Lakers are going to be awful this season. Kobe will not be ready to start the season and may not be the same great player he has been. Even if he is, the rest of the roster the Lakers have assembled following the departure of Dwight Howard is so, so poor. Steve Nash is a husk of the player he was when he won the MVP trophy twice. Pau Gasol is still pretty great, but when you’ve got such luminaries as Wes Johnson, Nick Young, and Chris Kaman expected to play a major part in your team’s hoped for success, well you just shouldn’t expect very much success, even with a fully healthy Kobe Bryant- which the Lakers just are not even likely to have, at least not until at least sometime in December.

The Lakers struggled badly to eke into the playoffs last year with one of the two best centers in the league on their roster. Yes, Dwight Howard was still that impactful, even with the injuries and the frustration and the disjointedness he seemed to suffer from in his lone year in Forum Blue and Gold. The Lakers replaced him with Chris Kaman, who is just not very good. He’s a below average player replacing one of the very best at his position. That’s, obviously, a huge deal. Wesley Johnson and Nick Young are also just not good at NBA level basketball. They have talent, to be sure. Young, in particular, has no problem creating shots for himself, especially off the dribble, which is a useful skill, but he has no interest in playing anything that might vaguely resemble defense and his propensity for difficult, off-the-dribble, contested jump shots- while entertaining- is just not winning basketball. Just how bad can we expect, by the numbers, for the Lakers to be?

After adjusting for the wider league context, the Lakers Net Rating is -5.6, which translates to a roughly 26 win team. That’s pretty awful, but it’s about right for what Lakers fans should expect from this season. If Kobe is able to return early and play more than 2200 minutes this year, they might scrape up to 30–32 wins, but honestly, what would be the point?

The incoming draft class of 2014 is being hailed as the best since the LeBron-lead class of 2003 and if the Lakers aren’t going to make the playoffs- and they aren’t, Laker fans- why should Kobe rush back early or play extended minutes when he does return? Of course, this is Kobe Bean Bryant we’re talking about, so I would not be at all shocked to see him return to the floor and push himself to play 36–38 minutes a night as he tries, in vain, to drag this awful roster in the playoffs. The guy lives for a challenge and will absolutely want to try to prove all the naysayers like yours truly wrong.

It’ll be fascinating and cringe-inducing to watch him try, but I hardly think I’ll be able to look away- and it’s not like I’ll have much choice, as the Lakers are still going to be playing a staggering twenty-nine nationally televised games, despite their frankly pretty awful roster and irrelevance to the NBA’s big picture this season.

Projecting the NBA using xWARP: Philadelphia 76ers

Projecting the 2013–14 Sixers is a nightmare. The Philadelphia squad looks, quite clearly, to be tanking the season. Nearly all of the players on their roster are being thrown into roles for which they are terribly ill-suited. Thaddeus Young: Best player on an NBA team? James Anderson: anything more than on an off-the-bench guard? Michael Carter-Williams: starting point-guard in the NBA? These are not questions that any of these players should be asked to answer, but the Sixers aren’t trying to win and here we are.

The trouble is, when projecting future performance in xRAPM, most players tend to occupy similar roles from year to year and thus it’s much more likely that their rating by xRAPM- or any flavor of adjusted-plus minus, for that matter- will look pretty close to the prior year, but when you ask players to do radically more than they have traditionally been asked to do, then their overall impact is very likely to suffer. As a result of this, I would take the win projection that Nathan Walker’s numbers with my minutes estimates produce (shown below) with a giant helping- like a dried up ocean’s worth- of salt. Additionally, the Sixers weird roster construction inevitably throws off what would be more accurate wins projections for the rest of the league. As a result, at the end of all my projections, I will probably write a post with my own subjective- but informed by the stats — guesses as to where teams will come out in terms of records next year. In any event, what do the (probably very wrong) numbers look like?

After adjusting for the wider league context, the Sixers’ projected Net Rating is -3.22, rather than the -2.11 shown above. A -3.22 Net Rating results in a projected 32 win team. Frankly, I would be shocked if the Sixers were able to win even half that many games. It seems that Vegas agrees with my subjective assessment, as the Over/Under for this year’s Philly squad is set at 16.5 wins.

The reason the Sixers rate out so well in this analysis is that they have a team full of guys that in their prior, less demanding roles were fully capable of being replacement level or above. These Sixers have very few players who would have projected as sub-replacement level, had they stayed in their prior roles, and their rookies, Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel- both of whom will likely be expected to play heavy minutes — actually project to be near average level players. Oh, and Thad Young, as it turns out, is pretty darn good, though certainly not someone you’d want as your best player. It’s worth watching whether xRAPM’s relative love for this Sixers team is as off as Vegas, the rest of the basketball-watching world, and I, subjectively, think it is. I’ll also be watching to see if the Sixers trade Thaddeus Young, in order to go with the full-on, totally unabashed tank.

Projected Wins Adjusted to Match the NBA’s Zero Sum Reality

I mentioned before that my initial run through of the projected wins for each team overestimated wins, due to the xRAPM projections combined with my minutes projections projecting league average xRAPM to be +1.11 per game, which is impossible. The average total xRAPM per team across the league must, by definition, equal zero. Any team’s positive xRAPM- because it is a plus-minus statistic- comes at the expense of its opponents’ xRAPM, so across the 30 teams, things must sum to 0. In order to account for this, I adjusted the net rating of each team to reflect the +1.11 initial average and reset the league average to 0. This also results in team wins summing properly to the 1230 available in any given year. Below is a chart with the adjusted net ratings and win totals. After that, those win totals are placed into the context of each conference, so you can see which teams project to be in the playoffs.

Projected Eastern Conference Standings

1. Miami — 57–25

2. Brooklyn — 55–27

3. Chicago — 53–29

4. Indiana — 49–33

5. New York — 44–38

6. Atlanta — 43–39

7. Toronto — 39–43

8. Detroit — 39–43

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

9. Cleveland — 38–44

10. Washington — 36–46

11. Milwaukee — 33–49

12. Philadelphia — 32–50

13. Charlotte — 32–50

14. Boston — 27–55

15. Orlando — 25–57

__________________________________

Projected Western Conference Standings

1. Oklahoma City — 57–25

2. Houston — 56–26

3. Los Angeles Clippers — 53–29

4. Memphis — 51–31

5. Spurs — 50–32

6. Golden State — 47–35

7. Minnesota — 42–40

8. Dallas — 42–40

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

9. New Orleans — 39–43

10. Denver — 38–44

11. Portland — 37–45

12. Utah — 33–49

13. Sacramento — 32–50

14. Los Angeles Lakers — 28–54

15. Phoenix — 26–56

__________________________________

I think these results pass the smell test, with the notable exception of Philadelphia inexplicably projecting to win 32 games. Let me know what you think. I’ll be continuing to post team breakdowns, with the unadjusted numbers (all of my graphics showing the numbers are already done and it would be a pain to redo them all), though I’ll be sure to make note of the need to adjust the numbers to account for the +1.11 average in those future posts.

Image from Keith Allison via Flickr.

An Exhaustive Probabilistic Look at Every Team’s NBA schedule

Following up on my last post, I decided to leap ahead a bit and use the projected season level team point differentials and home court advantage numbers from Evan Zamir — which show that not all home court advantages are made equal — in order to predict the probabilities of a team winning each game on its schedule, based on the strength of the opponent and whether the game was home or away. The above spreadsheet is the result of all that work. The column marked “Log5 W%” represents the probability a team will win a given game, using the log5 method. The column marked “Pyth W%” is the same, only using the projected point differential-marked “Game MOV” in the spreadsheet- in order to use the Pythagorean formula to determine the probability of a win in that game.

Caveats, of course, abound. The minutes projections that I made could be wrong, skewing the projected strength of each team. The xRAPM projections from Nathan Walker and the rookie projections from Hickory High will be imperfect- they are just projections, afterall. In addition, teams may play better or worse for a stretch than their season level strength might indicate- for example, the Lakers will likely be much worse in the early part of their schedule when they are likely to be without Kobe, despite all of his tireless work to get back in time for the start of the season. Kobe is Kobe, but Kobe is also human and a torn achilles is one of the toughest injuries from which to return that exists. So take these numbers with the large dose of salt that they deserve. But, you know, have fun with them.

Sidenote: the Sixers will almost certainly not win 33 games or anywhere close to that many- I’m not sure what to do about that. The issue, I think, is that xRAPM basically measures impact on the court- but within the role that the player played- and can’t really account for changing roles. A lot of players on Philadelphia’s roster are going to be thrust into roles for which they are simply ill-equipped, whether due to inexperience or lack of talent, and therefore, I’d be shocked if you saw them perform at the level they are projected to perform by the numbers. This includes their new rookies, Nerlens Noel and Michael Carter Williams, who both project to be solid rookies, according to the Hickory High regression. Those projections are based on a regression of past performers and I think it’s pretty fair to say that the average rookie in the time frame during which the regression covered simply did not have anywhere near the level of free reign- and therefore on-court responsibility — that Noel and MCW will have this coming season.

Image from aidanmorgan via Flickr.

The Cavs make a smart bet on Andrew Bynum

The Cavs have reportedly signed Andrew Bynum, the much maligned center formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers… sort of. Bynum never actually played a minute for the Sixers, spending much of the year alternating between being injured and angering the good people of Philadelphia by bowling, despite his fragile knees, suffering a setback in his knee rehab in the process.

via gotemcoach.com

Going into the offseason, there was a lot of curiosity over what would be the market for Bynum’s services. The Sixers quickly took themselves out of that market, through their draft day acquisition of Nerlens Noel and a top-3 protected 2014 first round pick in exchange for All-Star point guard, Jrue Holiday. With that maneuver, Sixers’ GM Sam Hinkie signaled that he was committing to a rebuilding season and that Nerlens Noel would be his center of the future.

It quickly became clear that only three teams were really pursuing Bynum- the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Atlanta Hawks, and the Dallas Mavericks. As it turned out, the market for Bynum was pretty dry. The Cavaliers made the best offer, and from Bynum’s perspective, it’s not even that great an offer. Bynum’s deal will potentially pay him $12 million per season for 2 seasons, but he has to reach performance incentives, including a minimum numbers of games played in the first season. The second season is a team option. All told, Bynum is only guaranteed $6 million in this deal. This is basically a no brainer for the Cavaliers. The contract incentives Bynum must reach to get his money provide him a reason to care, to show up, and to not spend his time bowling instead of rehabbing. An engaged Andrew Bynum is a very, very good player. He’s arguably the second best center in the league, behind only Dwight Howard, when he’s on it. The trouble is his health and his attitude. This deal protects the Cavaliers from both of those potential downsides.

As far as things on the court go, the Cavs have built a neat team around star point guard, Kyrie Irving. They have a floor stretching power forward in the recently drafted Anthony Bennett. They have two very good big men, when healthy, in Anderson Varejao and now Bynum. They have backcourt scoring in bunches in Irving and promising shooting guard, Dion Waiters. Additionally, they added veteran guard and third place finisher for this year’s Sixth Man of the Year, Jarrett Jack. On the wing, they signed Earl Clark, who could intrigue if he builds off of a solid season of improvement last year. Head coach Mike Brown will get this group to defend better than last year, and now with Bynum, Brown has a very good rim protector to pair with Varejao’s active all-around defensive efforts. This is a team that should compete for a playoff spot, if things go right. Bynum will have a lot to say about that. Here’s hoping he takes advantage of this opportunity and reminds everyone of how good he can be when he’s right mentally and physically.

Feature image from Keith Allison via Flickr

For some reason, the Detroit Pistons have signed Josh Smith

Get used to this, Detroit fans

Josh Smith agreed to a 4 year, $56 million deal with the Detroit Pistons yesterday. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Detroit would make this move. Smith is a pretty good, sometimes really good player but he doesn’t really fit with the Pistons current roster, at all.

Detroit’s best two players last year were young big men, Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe.  The reports of the deal suggest that Smith will likely start alongside those two players, with guards Brandon Knight and the recently drafted Kentavious-Caldwell Pope rounding out the Pistons’ starting unit. Drummond and Greg Monroe are both players who want to operate close to the basket, and Josh Smith, when he’s at his best, is a player who operates near the basket. Josh’s problem, and the biggest problem with this signing, is that Josh Smith does not love to operate near the basket. What Josh Smith really loves are jump shots. But sadly for Josh, jump shots do not love him back. Josh fancies himself more of a swing man than his size and skill-set would suggest is wise.

Unfortunately for the Pistons, and fans who would like to see J-Smoove reach his peak effectiveness, playing Smith alongside Monroe and Drummond will do nothing to dissuade him from floating more and more around the perimeter, likely tempting him to take more and more of the jumpers that, try as he might, Josh just can’t make. In a vacuum, Smith is worth right around what the Pistons have committed to him over the next 4 years. But Smith will not be playing in a vacuum, he will be playing with Monroe and Drummond and barring a, likely unwise, trade of one of their young, promising, cheap (!) big men, the Pistons figure to have serious spacing issues for their foreseeable future. Piston’s President of Basketball Operations, Joe Dumars has created a mess for himself when there were likely much more prudent options available. He’s improved the overall talent of his club, there’s no doubting that, but it’s hard to see how that translates to winning more games when the talent now fits together so poorly. It could be that Dumars just believes in grabbing talent when it’s available for a team that was so bad last season, but I can’t help but thinking patience should have won the day here. Ah well. As a Bulls loyalist I say, you take those jumpers, Josh Smith. You take them as much as your heart desires.

The Houston Rockets have won the Dwight Howard Sweepstakes

This about sums it up, really.

Kudos to Houston Rockets General Manager, Daryl Morey. He got his second superstar to pair with James Harden. After years of hovering around Western Conference mediocrity, the Rockets now have two of the best players in the league 27 years old or under. Dwight Howard is, unquestionably, the best center in the NBA and James Harden is, probably, the best shooting guard currently operating in the league (apologies to Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant, whose respective runs at the top of the position have passed). In addition to simply being two incredible talents at their respective positions, Harden and Howard have synergistic skillsets. Howard is one of the league’s absolute best and most dangerous fingers as the roll-man in the pick and roll and James Harden is one of the best guards in the league at running the pick and roll. There’s a potential for so, so many Harden to Dwight lobs for easy dunks, you guys. It’s going to be so fun.

There’s still loads of work to be done filling out the remainder of the roster. Current center Omer Asik has requested a trade, as he’s too good to be a backup, even for Dwight Howard, and the Rockets need to move his salary to have the space to pay Dwight what they’ve offered him. They will also likely move Jeremy Lin, as Patrick Beverly has proven to be his better at the point guard position for a small fraction of Lin’s salary. There are rumors that the Rockets may try to sign and trade for Josh Smith, using one or both of the Lin and Asik contracts, or possibly trade Asik for stretch power forward Ryan Anderson, a former teammate of Howard’s from Orlando. It will be interesting to watch how Morey is able to round out this roster to maximize its chances at winning it all, but the heaviest lifting is done. Dwight Howard is a Rocket. Daryl Morey’s long chase for a true top 5 player is over.

Kudos, also, to Dwight for choosing the best fit for his talents and his best chance at winning a title, all while sacrificing $30 million in guaranteed money, which is HUGE given his back surgeries. As Dwight reportedly said, he’s betting $30 million that the Rockets will be better positioned than the Lakers going forward to win a ring. Now that Dwight’s wearing the Rocket uniform and not the Purple and Gold, it’s probably a pretty safe bet.

James never has to worry about this again

Andre Iguodala is a Warrior, at a future cost

Dre doing what Dre does

Andre Iguodala, unofficially, became a Golden State Warrior today, when he agreed to a 4 year, $48 million deal with the Bay Area club. In order to sign Iguodala, the Warriors had to dump the sizable contracts of Richard Jefferson and Andris Biedrins, as well as Brandon Rush on the Utah Jazz.

In exchange for accepting those bloated contracts attached to relatively useless players, the Jazz extracted the price of a 2014 first rounder, a 2017 first rounder and multiple second round picks. The 2014 pick should be relatively late in the first round, as it is almost a certainty that the Warriors will be improved from the 6 seed they were this year with Iguodala in the fold. The location of the 2017 pick is much less certain as the only players on the Warriors’ books for that season are Stephen Curry and now Iguodala. This is the move of a team very much taking its chances at a Finals run this season. Iguodala is 29 years old and a player who relies heavily on his athletic gifts as the keys to his effectiveness. He’s not a terribly skilled player in the sense that he has tremendous offensive footwork or a reliable jump shot. He’s explosive and gets to the basket and can handle the ball fairly well. He’s also a very smart defensive player and knows what to do against just about anyone he’s matched against. He does, however, use his athleticism on the defensive side of the court quite a bit, as well.

As I’ve mentioned before, wing players (particularly the ones who are explosive athletes like Iguodala) tend to decline rather quickly after they hit 30 years old.  It’s worth considering that they have just committed $12 million a season for 4 years to a wing player who turns 30 next season. The salary is quite a bit and worth worrying over by itself but when combined with the picks surrendered to clear the cap space to sign Iguodala, this has the potential to be a bad overall transaction for the Warriors should they fail to win big in the next few years. More optimistically, the Warriors should be much improved for next season, which is really what this move is all about. With Iguodala and Klay Thompson manning the starting wing positions, Stephen Curry should be much more easily protected on defense so that he can go absolutely NOVA more often, like he did so often in the playoffs.  You remember, like this:

If the Dubs are able to improve on their second round ouster from last year and maybe even make a run all the way to the NBA Finals, this move will seem much more worth it. With the Clippers and Rockets also improving markedly it will be interesting to see if the Warriors can pull it off. At the very least, they have struck a significant blow to the Denver Nuggets, taking their best player for nothing at all in return. That has to be a bitter pill for Nuggets fans, especially after already watching these same Warriors defeat them in the first round of the playoffs.

Tyreke Evans got paid but will he be overpaid?

Tyreke is really good at this

The New Orleans Hornets Pelicans got their man on Thursday by completing a three team trade with the Sacramento Kings and Portland Trailblazers. The Pelicans agreed to pay Tyreke Evans $44 million over 4 years, the Kings received combo guard Greivis Vasquez from the Pelicans to help facilitate the sign and trade plus a second round pick from the Blazers, and the Blazers got center Robin Lopez in exchange for the newly drafted, Jeff Withey.

Evans is a player who showed enormous promise in his first year, winning the rookie of the year award, dropping a very good (for a rookie) 18+ Player Efficiency Rating. The problem for Evans, and now for the Pelicans, is that Evans hasn’t gotten any better, really, since that rookie season. He got worse for two years following his rookie year before bouncing back this year where he was marginally better than his rookie year. Players this young and this talented shouldn’t stagnate for 3 full years but that is just what Evans has done. This deal feels like it could be a pretty big overpay, but Tyreke Evans has consistently shown the rare ability to get wherever he pleases on the basketball court, along with solid passing and rebounding for a wing player. He’s still a below average shooter and his defense is poor. If his shooting continues to improve, as it did this year, and if he can figure things out defensively, this will seem like a good, maybe even great deal. Looking at it without the benefit of knowing the future, it feels like a reach. The Pelicans are betting on Evans’s talent and their own coaching staff’s ability to get the most out of him, and it’s hard to totally blame them. After his first year in the league, Evans looked like a sure bet to be a candidate for a maximum contract extension. If he lives up to that promise in New Orleans, this deal will go from looking like a reach to an absolute steal. That’s the way these things go sometimes. Just ask people who bashed Mike Conley’s extension or questioned the Warriors for locking up Stephen Curry when concerns about his weak ankles were rampant. Conley now seems appropriately paid and Curry is, rightly, perceived to be an absolutely incredible value as a borderline superstar level player working on a contract several million a year below the maximum he could be paid. Evans will be just 24 next season and if you’re going to risk overpaying a player based on projected growth, betting on a player who will be just 24 in the first year of a 4 year deal is one of the best bets you can make, especially when it is already clear, as is the case with Tyreke, that the talent is there.

The Kings, under newer, much more competent management, have done well for themselves here. Once it became clear that New Orleans was going to pay much more for Evans than his production the last few years would suggest is wise, and the Kings knew they were uncomfortable making the bet that Evans lives up to his potential, getting assets in return for losing him became paramount. That’s just what the Kings have managed. Greivis Vasquez is a solid offensive player, who doesn’t really have the physical tools to be a plus defender. Vasquez has improved every year he’s been in the league and stands to make just a bit over $2 million next year. He’s a nice value to go with the second round pick the Kings picked up in the deal from the Blazers.

The Blazers got Robin Lopez as a defensively focused center to pair with their star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge. Lopez is also an efficient scorer on an average usage level, so he is not a negative on the offensive end by any means. He should be a very good fit with Aldridge, and the Blazers must hope his presence will help convince LMA to stop demanding trades to my beloved Bulls.