Requiem for a Contender: Westbrook Injury Sealed Thunder's Fate
In the wake of the Memphis Grizzlies' victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals, many theories and explanations have been offered for--depending on how you look at it--why Memphis won/why Oklahoma City lost. It has been suggested that Oklahoma City made a mistake choosing to keep Serge Ibaka while trading James Harden for Kevin Martin. The Thunder had a .712 winning percentage in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, finishing with the second best record in the Western Conference (47-19); in the 2012-13 season, the Thunder had a .732 winning percentage, finishing with the best record in the Western Conference (60-22). The Thunder did not miss a beat without Harden and, in fact, proved to be a better team without him over the course of the grueling 82 game NBA season. Ibaka has led the NBA in blocked shots per game the past two seasons and in
total blocked shots the past three seasons. He finished second in the
2012 Defensive Player of the Year voting and third in the 2013 Defensive
Player of the Year voting. Ibaka
is a very valuable player but he should not be expected to replace Harden's scoring; that is Kevin
Martin's job and Martin filled that role very well, averaging 14.0
ppg on .450 field goal shooting in 2012-13.
The Thunder took a 2-0 lead over Harden's Houston Rockets in the first round but Russell Westbrook--one of the top five players in the NBA--suffered what proved to be a season-ending knee injury in the first half of game two, though he limped his way through the second half of that contest. Without Westbrook, the Thunder struggled to finish off the Rockets--going 2-2 the rest of the series--and then lost 4-1 to the Grizzlies; that adds up to a 3-6 record sans Westbrook in 2012-13 after going 62-22 with him. It should be obvious that the Thunder's problem is not the Harden trade but rather the Westbrook injury. Harden performed markedly worse in the playoffs than the regular season in both 2012 and 2013, so the idea that he could have filled Westbrook's role in the 2013 playoffs is speculation not supported by facts--and if the Thunder had elected to keep Harden then, for financial reasons, they likely would have been without the services of Ibaka, one of the league's top defensive players. Under those circumstances, the Thunder would have been worse off than they are now; without Ibaka they would not have posted the West's best record and they would have been even less equipped to deal with Westbrook's freak injury.
Westbrook has been one of the NBA's most durable players. He will return to action fully healthy next season and the Thunder will most likely once again be the best team in the Western Conference. Barring a major move, Harden's Rockets will again struggle to make the playoffs before losing in the first round.
From the Memphis perspective, it has become popular to suggest that the Grizzlies have benefited from the
Rudy Gay trade but that assertion is a major exercise in denial. Gay is an 18 ppg scorer who is also one of the top rebounders at the small forward position; the Grizzlies traded him for Tayshaun Prince,
Austin Daye and Ed Davis. Daye and Davis rarely play at all, while Prince--who has taken over Gay's starting role for Memphis--averaged 8.8 ppg while shooting .429 from the field
during 37 regular season season games wtih the Grizzlies and he has been even less productive during
the playoffs: 7.5 ppg, .354 field goal shooting. Yes, Prince is a better defender than Gay but you would have to believe
that Prince is by far the best wing defender in the league in order to
suggest that he is not having an overall negative impact in light of his total lack of offensive production. Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol have dominated in the paint but replacing Gay with Prince has made their job tougher, because opposing teams can leave Prince to trap in the paint--something that opponents would be reluctant to do with Gay on the floor. The Grizzlies beat the overrated L.A. Clippers in the first round and then had to work very hard to defeat the Westbrook-less Thunder in the second round; the Thunder won the first game of the series before the Grizzlies took the next four games, but the Grizzlies achieved three of their victories by just six points each (including one overtime contest) and they won the other game by four points. The offensively challenged Grizzlies averaged 93.6 ppg versus the Thunder but, without Westbrook, the Thunder only averaged 89.6 ppg versus the Grizzlies after ranking third in the league with a 105.7 ppg scoring average during the regular season. In the game five series clincher versus Oklahoma City, Memphis scored 88 points on .370 field goal shooting; Prince contributed eight points on 3-13 field goal shooting and he had a
plus/minus number of -21, which is hard to do when you play 31 minutes
in a game that your team won by four points! Yet Bill Simmons is
gloating that he was right to support trading Gay.
The
reality is that if Russell Westbrook had been healthy then the Thunder
would have defeated the Grizzlies; he would have changed the result of most if not all of the games that the Grizzlies barely won. The Grizzlies would not have been able to survive while posting low scoring totals with poor shooting percentages--and those scoring totals/shooting percentages would likely have been even worse if Westbrook had been on the court, because the Thunder not only missed Westbrook's scoring and playmaking but also his defense: Westbrook would have slowed down Memphis point guard Mike Conley. This series debunked the theory that Westbrook shoots too much and that he negatively impacts Kevin Durant's game; it should be obvious that without Westbrook on the court it is much more difficult for Durant to post his typically efficient numbers. A good analogy for this is how Kobe Bryant improves the Lakers' overall offensive efficiency even though his field goal percentage is usually "only" in the .450 range. What "stat gurus" fail to understand is that Bryant and Westbrook distort opposing defenses to such an extent that they create many scoring opportunities for their teammates; shot creation is something that the "stat gurus" are not able to quantify, so they don't believe that it matters or even exists (which also may partly explain why the Grizzlies traded Gay).
The best thing that can be said about the
Gay trade is that even though it left the Grizzlies offensively
challenged it did not damage their team more than the absence of
Westbrook hindered the Thunder. It will be interesting
to hear what Simmons says when the Grizzlies struggle to score 40 points
in a half in the Western Conference Finals--and they are trailing instead of leading because in that round
they will be playing a full strength contender.
Labels: James Harden, Kevin Durant, Kevin Martin, Marc Gasol, Memphis Grizzlies, Oklahoma City Thunder, Rudy Gay, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, Zach Randolph
posted by David Friedman @ 4:49 PM
Defense Rules as the Second Round Begins
Only one of the four teams featured in Sunday's second round doubleheader scored at least 100 points; defense rules in the playoffs--but that also means that a player who can efficiently create shots for himself and for his teammates is even more valuable in the postseason than he is in the regular season. Here are some bullet point observations about the first two conference semifinal games.
Oklahoma City 93, Memphis 91
1) Both teams are down one man offensively--Memphis by choice (the
Rudy Gay trade) and Oklahoma City due to Russell Westbrook's season-ending injury. Memphis shot just .427 from the field and the Grizzlies' three perimeter starters combined to shoot 10-30 (.333). Memphis jumped out to a 7-0 lead and stayed on top for most of the game but the Grizzlies' inability to generate enough scoring enabled the Thunder to hang around until Kevin Durant took over in the fourth quarter; the Grizzlies led 73-64 heading into the final stanza but Durant poured in 12 points as the Thunder outscored the Grizzlies 29-18 to steal the game.
2) Durant finished with 35 points, 15 rebounds, six assists and two blocked shots--exactly the kind of Jerry West 1965 numbers
that I said the Thunder would need from him in order to have a chance to win this series. The problem for the Thunder is that they barely won even though Durant had a performance for the ages.
3) People should stop talking about how much the Thunder supposedly miss James Harden. We have already seen over the course of an 82 game season that Kevin Martin is a more than adequate replacement for Harden; Martin ably filled the Harden sixth man role as the Thunder increased their winning percentage and claimed the top seed in the West after finishing second in 2011-12. Martin has been up and down so far in the playoffs--but so was Harden last year (and this year, for that matter).
4) The player who the Thunder miss is Westbrook; without him they went 2-2 in the first round versus the eighth seeded Houston Rockets and they barely held off the fifth seeded Grizzlies in game one at home. It should be obvious even to casual observers that the Thunder have many players who either cannot shoot and/or are reluctant to shoot. Maybe Westbrook's critics will now understand why Westbrook shot the ball so much; Westbrook's scoring not only covered up his teammates' offensive deficiencies but his dribble penetration and deft passing created scoring opportunities that those players are not getting now.
5) This is a game that Memphis should have won and, in what will probably be a close series, letting one game slip away could be decisive--but the Grizzlies fell behind the L.A. Clippers 2-0 in the first round before reeling off four straight wins and I still expect that in the long run Westbrook's absence will prove to be the decisive factor in this series, enabling the Grizzlies to make up for the Gay trade.
Indiana 102, New York 95
1) Whoever gave a first place vote to Carmelo Anthony in the MVP balloting--
robbing LeBron James of his deserved opportunity to be the first unanimous MVP selection--should have his voting privileges permanently revoked. Not only is James clearly the best player in the league by far but Anthony does not even belong in the discussion for second place--and during this year's playoffs he is once again revealing all of the shortcomings in his mindset and in his game. Anthony is averaging 28.9 ppg in the postseason but he is shooting just .378 from the field. That is not an aberration; his career playoff field goal percentage is .413 and this is the fifth time in his 10 playoff appearances that he has shot worse than .380 from the field. Anthony pouts, he gives sporadic effort defensively, he passes the ball only when he has no other choice and he is averaging a playoff career-high 4.3 turnovers per game.
2) Anthony is the small forward (or, now, power forward) version of Gilbert Arenas,
who I correctly pegged as overrated and incapable of leading a team to a championship long before he pulled his Yosemite Sam routine in the Wizards' locker room and became a national joke. A player's value cannot be determined just by looking only at his statistics; his numbers and his skill set have to be evaluated in the context of how he plays and the impact he has both on his teammates and on the opposing team's game plan. The Denver Nuggets shipped out Anthony, did not receive an All-Star in return and are--at the very least--no worse off without Anthony than they were with him. Similarly, the Wizards
performed better without Arenas than they performed with Arenas.
3) ABC's Jeff Van Gundy made a very important point during the telecast; the Knicks had poor body language/demeanor and they complained about every foul call (including calls that were obviously correct) while "The Pacers are playing with tremendous poise." The Knicks lack maturity and focus; they showed some improvement in both areas early in the season when Jason Kidd had a more prominent role on the team but as the postseason pressure mounts the Knicks are returning to their old, bad habits. The Knicks had a very good regular season but they breathed life into the comatose Boston Celtics in the first round before finally advancing and they have their hands full now with the Pacers.
4) I still question the Knicks' front office strategy over the past few years and I echo
Phil Jackson's sentiment that New York's roster is "clumsy." At one point the Knicks were supposedly building around Amare Stoudemire but now the new story is that they are allegedly better off without him playing; Anthony and Stoudemire do not seem to be complementary players, which means that the franchise's salary cap is out of whack unless/until the team can trade one of the All-Star forwards (most likely Stoudemire).
5) Van Gundy suggested that New York's best offensive set is to run screen/roll actions with Raymond Felton and Van Gundy said that the value of offensive diversity can be overrated; instead of repeatedly running isolation sets for Anthony, the Knicks should feed the Pacers a steady diet of screen/roll action until the Pacers prove that they can stop it--but that would require someone to forcibly pry the ball out of the hands of Anthony, who sometimes seems to think that he gets paid by the dribble and/or by the degree of difficulty of his shots.
Labels: Carmelo Anthony, Indiana Pacers, Kevin Durant, Kevin Martin, Memphis Grizzlies, New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Rudy Gay
posted by David Friedman @ 6:47 AM
James Harden Regresses to the Mean
After the first two games of the season, many members of the mainstream media seemed ready to award the scoring title, the MVP and possibly induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame to James Harden, who scored 37 points on 14-25 field goal shooting in his season debut with the Houston Rockets and then poured in a career-high 45 points on 14-19 field goal shooting in his second game--but in his next five games Harden has averaged 19.8 ppg while shooting 29-88 (.330) from the field. Neither sample size is large enough to form the basis for drawing definitive conclusions about Harden but the way that the mainstream media swooned about Harden's first two games while largely ignoring how poorly he has played in his next five games reveals a lot about the nature of mainstream media coverage not just of sports but in general: the mainstream media selects a narrative and then highlights anything that follows that narrative while ignoring anything that deviates from that narrative. This is true in politics, economics, sports and any other subject that receives extensive mainstream media coverage.
The preferred Harden narrative is that Harden is a superstar, that he is a better team player/playmaker than Russell Westbrook and that "stat guru" Daryl Morey used "advanced basketball statistics" to make a brilliant trade that substantially improved his Houston Rockets while weakening the Oklahoma City Thunder. I have a decidedly non-mainstream
perspective about the James Harden deal: I do not consider Harden to be a superstar, I do not think that he is a better player than Russell Westbrook and--even though Morey does, in some ways, seem to be more reasonable and objective than the typical "stat guru"--I am not impressed by Morey's tenure as Houston's General Manager, nor do I agree with his contention that Harden is a "foundational player."
A basic tenet believed by many "stat gurus" is that per minute production is much more meaningful than per game production, with the corollary that a player's per minute production in one setting is completely transferable to a different setting. In other words, if a player averages 25 points per 36 minutes as a reserve playing 18 minutes a game for Team A then he is perfectly capable of maintaining that production--without any loss of efficiency--while playing 36 minutes a game as the number one option for Team B. Harden earned the Sixth Man of the Year Award last season but he benefited from playing alongside Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; Harden also spent most of his time either playing against other reserves or else facing starters who were already fatigued from being on the court while Harden rested. Harden is a very good player--and he is young enough that he could possibly continue to improve--but it is more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that he is a "foundational player" or that he he is worth the five year max contract that Morey gave him. I do not project that Harden's career path will approximate the career paths of John Havlicek and Paul Westphal, reserve players for excellent teams who later became All-NBA players; Harden's skill set is much more similar to Manu Ginobili's and thus Harden is best suited to being the third option on a championship contender. The added demands of playing more minutes against starters coupled with facing more double teams will take a toll on Harden's productivity and efficiency over the long haul, even though Harden is--like any good player--capable of producing great games on occasion.
It is amusing that "stat gurus" and their media sycophants simultaneously claim to be more objective than other talent evaluators yet do not seem to understand basic concepts like regression to the mean. Whether Harden scored 45 points in the first game of the season or in the 45th game of the season, that is clearly an aberrant performance--it will almost certainly be his season-high and it could even end up as his career-high. One great game does not justify the decision to build an entire franchise around Harden--and a closer look at Harden's overall production for Houston suggests that his per minute production is not translating very well from Oklahoma City to his new team. While Harden's per minute scoring has increased--mainly because his field goal attempts are up by more than 50%--his rebounding and assists are down slightly, his turnovers have skyrocketed and his shooting percentages have plummeted. Contrary to what "stat gurus" believe, there is a big difference between being the third option on a championship caliber team and being the first option on a mediocre team. Harden shot .491 from the field, .390 from three point range and .846 from the free throw line last season; this season--even including his aberrant first two games--he is shooting .432 from the field, .256 from three point range and .824 from the free throw line. He has shot better than .353 from the field once in the past five games and he has shot 5-29 (.172) from three point range in those five contests. Harden's much praised playmaking resulted in 14 assists and nine turnovers in the first two games--not a great ratio--and he has 32 turnovers against 32 assists overall.
Meanwhile, Kevin Martin--the key player who the Thunder received in exchange for Harden--is quietly having the most efficient season of his career (though the only reason this is "quiet" is that the mainstream media is ignoring Martin's production because it does not fit the preferred narrative). Remember all of the overheated rhetoric about how Martin could not replace Harden? Martin is averaging 17.1 ppg while posting career-high shooting percentages from the field (.481), the three point line (.500) and the free throw line (.938). Martin is not a great playmaker but he is averaging 2.0 apg, very solid for a backup shooting guard playing 29.4 mpg. Harden averaged 16.8 ppg and 3.7 apg in 31.4 mpg for the Thunder last season. It should be obvious that the shift from third option to first option has hurt Harden's efficiency while the shift from first option to third option has helped Martin's efficiency. Both trends will likely continue.
Some critics have decried a "system" that "prevents" teams like the Thunder from keeping their nucleus together but that is not an accurate description of what happened; the Thunder offered Harden a very generous contract--much like the Spurs offered market value, non-max deals to Manu Ginobili in the past--and Harden elected to turn down that deal with the full knowledge that this would result in him being traded. Harden chose money over a potential championship. He certainly has every right to do so, just as the Thunder have every right to not overpay their third best player. It is not possible to overstate how ironic it is that Morey has likely vastly overpaid Harden, because for years the "stat gurus" and their mainstream media sycophants have criticized traditional-minded GMs for overpaying players, something that "stat gurus" supposedly would not do when given the chance to run NBA franchises. If Harden averages 18-20 ppg while shooting .430 from the field this season for a Houston team that once again misses the playoffs will Henry Abbott, Bill Simmons and other "stat guru" media sycophants eagerly expound at length on this subject the way that they ludicrously dissect Kobe Bryant's facial expressions and shot selection? It is more likely that Harden will morph into LeBron James than that Abbott, Simmons and others of their ilk will objectively cover the
strengths and limitations of "advanced basketball statistics." If Harden continues to struggle and it is no longer feasible to write Harden for MVP articles then you can expect that Abbott, Simmons and other like-minded propagandists will once again become very intensely interested in "analyzing" a subset consisting of less than 100 of the more than 22,000 field goals that Bryant has attempted during his career (i.e., last second shots in one possession games); those shots are no more statistically significant than James Harden's first two games of this season but "stat gurus" much prefer sticking to the "Kobe Bryant is overrated" narrative than admitting that the narrative about the alleged value of "advanced basketball statistics" for talent evaluation in the NBA has more than a few holes in the plot.
Labels: Bill Simmons, Daryl Morey, Henry Abbott, Houston Rockets, James Harden, Kevin Martin, Oklahoma City Thunder, stat gurus
posted by David Friedman @ 3:49 PM
Quick Thoughts on the James Harden Trade
When 2012 Sixth Man of the Year James Harden balked at receiving anything less than a max contract from the Oklahoma City Thunder, Thunder General Manager Sam Presti shipped Harden to the Houston Rockets in exchange for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, a second round draft pick and two first round draft picks, one of which originally belonged to Toronto and is thus virtually certain to be a Lottery pick. Houston General Manager Daryl Morey apparently thinks that he has made off like a thief in the night, convinced that Jeremy Lin (who Morey's Rockets first cut before later signing him to a huge contract after Lin's brief celebrated run with the Knicks) and Harden are superstars in the making--but if there is a thief here, it is Presti, who preserved salary cap flexibility while converting the third best player on his team into an excellent rotation player (Martin), a 2012 Lottery pick (Lamb) and two more first round picks that (considering Presti's past record) will likely be turned into rotation players either directly through the Draft or indirectly by being packaged in a later trade. Here are some thumbnail points to consider about the Harden saga:
1) Harden was the Thunder's third best player. It makes no sense to pay the third best player max money; Harden is not worth max money and the extra cost would not just be a financial burden for Thunder ownership but also greatly restrict Presti's ability to improve the roster in the next few years.
2) If Harden had accepted the Thunder's very generous offer, he could have become this decade's Manu Ginobili--a respected member of a championship team who likely would have made the All-Star team more than once while never having to fully carry the load. He would have still received a ton of money and--like Ginobili and Lamar Odom--he would have been called one of the league's most underrated and unselfish players.
3) Harden is a very good player but all of his weaknesses will be exposed in Houston if the Rockets expect him to be a franchise player. Harden is not an All-NBA First or Second Team caliber player. He is not someone who can draw double teams over the course of an 82 game season and then carry a team deep into the playoffs as the number one option. He is not Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant or LeBron James.
4) Harden, like Pau Gasol and Manu Ginobili, is precisely the kind of player who many "stat gurus" overrate. Players who are second or third options can be very "efficient" because of the context in which they accumulate their statistics. Harden and Ginobili benefit from playing limited minutes, from often facing second team players and from facing first team players who have logged heavy minutes against other first teamers; they also benefit from not having the nightly responsibility to shoot 20 times while dealing with double teams. Gasol was a solid first option in Memphis for several years but he could not lead the Grizzlies to a single playoff win, never mind winning a series. Being the first option wore Gasol down mentally and physically but when he arrived in L.A. he proved to be a great second option to Kobe Bryant on two championship teams. Gasol's field goal percentage and offensive rebounding immediately improved when he became a Laker because the defensive attention that Bryant attracted gave Gasol a free run at the hoop for easy baskets and second chance opportunities. The problem with many "stat gurus" is that they just crunch numbers without considering such contextual details and this leads to ridiculous assertions about Gasol being more valuable than Bryant and Harden being more valuable than Russell Westbrook.
5) It is not a coincidence that "stat guru" Daryl Morey desperately tried to bring Gasol--a declining player who was never a franchise player even at his peak--to Houston to be the team's centerpiece and that, failing to accomplish this, he shifted his sights to Harden. Morey undoubtedly believes that his numbers show that Gasol and Harden are franchise players.
6) There is a big difference between building a real life NBA championship team versus impressing gullible media members and some NBA fans who fancy themselves as experts based on the data they import into their homemade spreadsheets.
7) Here are some statistics that likely will not be mentioned at the much ballyhooed annual "stat guru" conference: three and 9-10, the Rockets' Lottery appearances and playoff record respectively during Morey's five years in Houston.
Labels: Daryl Morey, Houston Rockets, James Harden, Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin, Oklahoma City Thunder, Sam Presti
posted by David Friedman @ 11:23 PM
