Tag Archives: Hoops

Projecting the NBA using xWARP: Houston Rockets

That bit I wrote yesterday about the Los Angeles Clippers and Brooklyn Nets having the best offseasons of the summer? Yeah, scratch that one. That was a glaring oversight on my part, because clearly no team in the league had a better offseason than the Houston Rockets, who, after years of tireless searching, finally landed President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey’s version of Ahab’s White Whale: a top 5 player in the league. That player, Dwight Howard, can be nauseating at times with his desire to play the crack-up, the clown, the immature teen who’s actually a late 20’s man, but the talent and production have never been a question. Howard had jokes all through his time in Orlando, and yet, he was always worthy of consideration as an MVP candidate as he came into his own.

In 2010–11, Howard reached the peak of his powers, leading the league in xRAPM (yes, even ahead of LeBron James); this just two years after Howard dragged this rather rag-tag bunch to the NBA Finals, going through James’ Cavs to do it. That season, which saw Howard working as a top 5 player by xRAPM (and most other metrics you might want to look at), was just the beginning of Howard’s dominance in Orlando, as he finished in the top 2 every year from then on, even including his injured and distracted final run in 2011–12 with the Magic. That last season in Florida, disappointing as it was, paled in comparison to the depths of disappointment Howard’s turn as a Los Angeles Laker inspired. Howard came back from his back surgery too quickly. He became frustrated over trying to fit in with Mike D’Antoni’s offense. He fell off, and to the eyes of many, he stopped trying as hard. For my own part, I believe he was limited mostly by injury and the lack of floor spacing the Lakers supporting cast had on offer to open up lanes for him to roll to the basket off of pick and rolls. He also, stubbornly, insisted on getting touches in the post, despite his dominance as a rolling finisher and his relatively pedestrian skills on the block. He was also clearly unhappy, as he bristled beneath Kobe Bryant’s unflinching iron fist and joyless assassin’s mentality. Even with all of those issues facing him, Dwight was in the league’s top 6 players by xRAPM, coming in with a still very impressive +5.54.

And now? Dwight gets to have fun again. He’ll have his new buddy Chandler Parsons with whom to goof and clown. Morey has made sure that the floor with remain spaced for Howard with bargain priced shooters filling out the wings. Oh, and Dwight will also get to play with James Harden: the league’s best shooting guard, even at his tender age of just 23, and one of the very best pick and roll triggermen in the game. This was the formula for Dwight’s dominance in Orlando, only Harden is so much better than anyone Howard was tasked with playing with in Orlando that it’s scary to wonder just how good these Rockets can be.

So what do the numbers say? The first projection I ran used Dwight’s performance last year as the baseline. By that measure, the Rockets appear to be a 55 win team.

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A playoff team, probably worthy of a round of homecourt advantage, even in the stacked Western Conference and a team that could contend for a title, even with a less-than-what-he-once-was Dwight. But what if Superman returns? What if Dwight is really, really back (as I suspect he will be: I think he just needed to get healthy)? Well, then the Rockets start to look a bit like world-beaters.

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62 wins, with a healthy, Orlando-level Dwight. This is the stuff of Rockets fans’ dreams. It’s not inconceivable, and it might not even be all that unlikely. Fans were right to criticize Howard’s relative lack of effort last year, but moving forward, there’s a lot of reason to believe the effort will return (as will, unfortunately, the terrible jokes), the fit is better, and Howard should be a year healthier. Add it all up, and I think that Superman returns for Houston this year. Maybe Dwight will even get his wish to “be epic.”

Image via flickr user Keith Allison

Update: This post from Brett Koremenos over at Grantland makes the point that the Rockets could potentially play Asik alongside Howard for extended minutes. I only projected Asik to play 15 minutes a night as a result of Dwight’s arrival, but if you bump Asik’s projected minutes up to 25 minutes a game, the Rockets become a 59 win team with last year’s version of Dwight and a 65 (!) win team with the Orlando version of Dwight. I doubt they reach quite that high, if only because Dwight and Asik together on offense would put them in less than optimal roles (spacing issues being the primary problem) which would have a negative effect on their respective offensive xRAPMs. On the other hand, the two of them on defense together would be seemingly almost impossible to score on in the paint.

Projecting the NBA using xWARP: San Antonio Spurs

The San Antonio Spurs will not be going away next year. They will be towards the top of the heap in the Western Conference. Tony Parker’s excellence, Kawhi Leonard’s emergence, and Tim Duncan’s seeming lack of senescence ensure that. For the rest of the league that just saw the Spurs come within a miracle Ray Allen corner three of winning the title, this should be quite scary indeed. But just how good will the Spurs be next year?

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In 2013–14, by xRAPM, combined with my interpretation of Jeremias Engelmann’s adjusted-plus minus aging curve and minutes projections courtesy of the Kupfer method, the Spurs project as a 55 win team. That’s a drop off of 3 games and that’s significant, but there’s reason to doubt its accuracy. This projection expects Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili to both decline quite a bit. The Big Fundamental, though, looked basically like the same guy he’s always been this year all the way through the playoffs. The mind reels at his ability to continue to slug it out with Father Time to a draw. Duncan’s the exception and not the rule, though, and if Manu’s playoff run is any indication, he may decline even more than this projection suggests, which may counteract Timmy’s refusal to surrender to age. The regular season’s not the end game for the Spurs, though, just as it wasn’t this year. They will rest their core guys (as these minutes projections suggest) and they will be fresher than just about any other team come playoff time- and have no doubt, the Spurs will be back in the postseason this year. Once they get there, I expect Tony Parker to keep the ball humming to the right spots, Duncan to continue locking down the paint, and Kawhi Leonard to grab seemingly every rebound within 15 feet of him. The Spurs will contend, again. It’s over when they say it’s over.

Heisenberg

Featured image via flickr user Keith Allison

Projecting the NBA using xWARP: Oklahoma City Thunder

The Oklahoma City Thunder were, arguably, the league’s best team last year in the regular season. They did not have the best record, as Miami finished the year with 66 wins to OKC’s 60, but the Thunder played a much tougher strength of schedule and actually underachieved relative to their margin of victory (MOV) by about 4 games. As I mentioned in my post projecting Miami for next year, the Heat actually significantly overachieved relative to their expected wins based on their MOV and also faced the league’s easiest schedule. Unfortunately for the Thunder, in their first round series against the Rockets, they lost Russell Westbrook for the rest of the season with a torn meniscus suffered on this (dangerous) play by Patrick Beverly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYevpkhZYc

The Thunder managed to win that series without Westbrook, their second best player and a top 10 player in the league. They were stopped in the second round by the Grit & Grind Memphis Grizzlies. Kevin Durant simply had to do too much against one of the league’s very best defenses and, despite a heroic effort, he came up just a bit short.

This offseason, the Thunder lost Kevin Martin (+.33 xRAPM) to free agency and really did not replace him. They signed Ryan Gomes, who was not in the league last year and was hurt a lot and just not very good in 2011–12 the last time he played. They also drafted Steven Adams and Andre Roberson. RAPM projections really do not like Adams and I don’t have any sense of how good Roberson will be, but given his status as a second rounder, betting on him to help or play many minutes on a team contending for a title is a very iffy proposition. In fact, in my minutes projections, the two new Thunder rookies are not set to play at all.

One young player I do expect to play quite a few minutes, if only out of necessity, is Jeremy Lamb. The ostensible centerpiece of the James Harden trade, Lamb will need to take on some of the minutes covered by the departing Martin. He projects to improve over his very poor performance by xRAPM next year. He’s still sub-replacement level by these projections, but he needs to be developed and he shouldn’t be so bad that he can’t be out on the court. It’s likely returning guard Reggie Jackson will also see an increase in minutes as he backs up Russell Westbrook and plays alongside him in spots, again to mitigate some of the loss of Martin. Neither Lamb nor Jackson projects to be near the overall contributor that Martin was last year and as a result the Thunder will take a step back in overall quality. Last year the Thunder played like a 64 win team against a more difficult than league average schedule. Next year, they project like this:

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The Thunder figure not to fall off too much, as they project here as a 60–61 win team*, assuming a league average schedule. Why won’t they fall off? Well, Serge Ibaka, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Durant are just 24, 25, and 25 years old respectively. They all project to improve. Those improvements alone help a great deal with the loss of Martin. But the Thunder, in all likelihood, probably won’t be quite as good as they were last year. They may win just as many games, or more, than they did last year, depending on their strength of schedule, but again, they underachieved last year and played a tougher than average schedule. They will be, in all likelihood, from an objective perspective, a lesser club next year. But they will still absolutely be one of the very best teams in the league and one of the top contenders to win the title. Having two top 10 players in the league, each at just 25 years old, does wonders for your ability to weather the loss of role players.

*I projected Ryan Gomes as a replacement level player at -2.5 xRAPM. In 2011–12, he was a -4.4 in xRAPM for the Clippers, but he was hurt quite often and I believe it damaged his effectiveness quite a bit. The previous year, where he was much healthier, Gomes was a much more useful -1.7 xRAPM. I think Gomes will probably be closer to -2.5 than the -4.4 that he was in his last year in the league. However, if you project Gomes to be that terrible again, the Thunder still project as a 59 win team against a league average schedule.

Projecting the NBA using xWARP: Indiana Pacers

Continuing my series projecting the 2013–14 NBA regular season using xRAPM and minutes projections, today I’ll be discussing the Indiana Pacers.

The Pacers had a very strong starting group last year. According to Basketball-Reference, the Pacers starting five-man unit was fourth in the entire league in Net Points per 100 possessions among lineups that played at least 300 minutes together, clocking in at a sterling +12.1 points per 100 possessions. Over the course of an 82 game season, a +12.1 MOV translates to a roughly 72-win team. The Pacers’ five of George Hill, Lance Stephenson, Paul George, David West, and Roy Hibbert played over 1200 minutes together, ranking them as the second most played 5 man unit in the entire league, trailing only the Oklahoma City Thunder’s starting five of Russell Westbrook, Thabo Sefolosha, Kevin Durant, Serge Ibaka, and Kendrick Perkins. The Thunder’s starting five only managed a (still incredible) +10.7 Net Points per 100 possessions. Basically, the Pacers’ starting five players was arguably the best in the entire league, given the relatively large sample of minutes they played together and their excellence when they were on the floor.

The Pacers’ problem was that their bench was pretty terrible. They gave pretty significant minutes to sub-replacement level players like D.J. Augustin, (-3.68 xRAPM), Gerald Green (-3.21), Orlando Johnson (-3.36), Sam Young (-4.94) and Dominic McGuire (-2.93). Well, this coming year that will no longer be the case. With the exception of Orlando Johnson, all of those guys will not be on the team next year. Instead, they’ve been replaced by C.J. Watson, Chris Copeland, Luis Scola, a returning Danny Granger, Donald Sloan (another below replacement player, but hey, you can’t win them all), and rookie Solomon Hill (who projects to be just above replacement level at -2.3). In addition, Orlando Johnson projects to be better this year, as he progresses upward in his career trajectory, though he’ll still likely be below replacement level. The Pacers starting five has gotten significant reinforcements. How much better will this make the Pacers?

Well, there’s one more thing to worry about and that’s just how good will Danny Granger be when he returns to the floor. I have no way of knowing what Granger will look like in xRAPM should he return healthy. I don’t know if he will be the roughly +1 xRAPM player he was in just 5 games this year or if he will look more like the +2.5–3.0 player he has been over the two years prior. Tendinosis is a scary injury. So, I ran the projections using Granger’s bad numbers from last year and then again with a possession-weighted average of Granger’s last few seasons adjusted for his 30 year old age. Up first, what the Pacers look like with a significantly reduced (like last year) Granger playing about 63 games.

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Next year, the Pacers with a less-than-peak-effectiveness Granger look like a 55 win team. Given that they won 49 games last year, this might seem like a disappointing improvement considering how much better their bench has gotten this offseason. But a six-win improvement is very significant. That’s a 12% increase in wins. In addition, Paul George’s minutes projection is lower than his actual minutes from this past year by a shade under 400 minutes. So if George is able to play as many minutes as he did last year, the Pacers could be even better. Speaking of the Pacers being better, what would they look like if Granger comes back and plays like he did at his peak effectiveness?

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The Pacers now look like a 57 win team. This may be understating things for the Pacers, too. If Granger is playing like he did 2–3 years ago, chances are that means he’s basically healthy, so he’d likely play more than the 63 games he’s projected to play here. That would push the Pacers win total even closer to the very top of the Eastern Conference. The Pacers, with their revamped bench and the return of Danny Granger to the rotation, look to be a team firmly entrenched in the top 4 of the Eastern Conference. It looks more or less like a four way toss up for which team will be the East’s best in the regular season. For Pacers fans, the more encouraging part of this exercise is looking at how much better their bench now is, to complement their returning starting five, which was the league’s best last year. In the playoffs, the Pacers’ ability to shorten their rotations and play their best five players for longer periods of time is the reason, along with their superior interior play, that the Pacers were able to take the Miami Heat to the brink of elimination. The Pacers now have a bench with competent players to play minutes in the playoffs and not be totally overwhelmed. That change could be the difference between their falling short this postseason and an NBA Championship in the 2013–14 season.

Image from ONE/MILLION via Flickr