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John Hollinger Thinks Conley May Opt Out

For anyone who cares, at this point:

I ran another scatterplot, this time with Conley's final 23 games, to match the number of games he missed, and to see if things went better for the team once he "settled in."

Congrats anti-Conleyites. This trend line crossed 0 at about a .550 winning percentage (rather than the .590 or .595 point on the earlier graphs), meaning that the Jazz were playing worse during those games than during the other parts of the season. Whether attributable to Conley (or to the DM/RG frostiness, among other possibilities) is for you to decide.
 
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idiot said:
For anyone who cares, at this point:

I ran another scatterplot, this time with Conley's final 23 games, to match the number of games he missed, and to see if things went better for the team once he "settled in."

Congrats anti-Conleyites. This trend line crossed 0 at about a .550 winning percentage (rather than the .590 or .595 point on the earlier graphs), meaning that the Jazz were playing worse during those games than during the other parts of the season. Whether attributable to Conley (or to the DM/RG frostiness, among other possibilities) is for you to decide.
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Thanks. Are you including the last bubble games? Because we were obviously tanking toward the end of the season, which could skew your results a little bit (especialy if your sample is only 23 games). Conley (and the rest of the starters) would "play" at the start of those games but then we would lose on purpose by playing our deep bench for most of the game.

Is there a way to incorporate "tanking" into your model? Maybe you adjust it if the starters play less than 50% of expected playing time, or some metric like that. If one team is tanking, one of your variables (opp winning percentage) becomes a bit irrelevant to predict any outcome.
 
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latin jazz said:
Not really. You can't foresee what's gonna happen in 4 years, let alone 10. Title windows last much less in today's NBA. Long gone are the days of slowly bulding your team around a superstar like Duncan, Dirk, Wade, Kobe, etc. If you are a small market team, it's more likely a superstar will stay until the end of his second contract (or force his way out before it).

If you have a small window, you must take a crack at it (see Toronto). Even the freaking Lakers. They 've done everything wrong the last few years but they get AD and suddenly the go from non-playoff team to winning the title. That's how quickly the landscape changes.

On the other hand, see Boston & Philly. Both hoarding assets for the next big move: they fail to pull the trigger (Kawhi) or made horrendous moves and suddenly their chances are not as obvious.

My take is that our title window with this group is the next 2 years (maybe 3). We have an All-NBA Center in his prime, a young superstar, a great third option (Bogie), good role players around them (Joe, Royce, Mike). Great scorer from the bench (JC if he stays). We are on par with Denver, Clippers and perhaps a bit ahead of Dallas and OKC. With a healthy Bogey (or even without him but at least one decent defender), we could have reached the Conf Finals: then you are one AD twisted ankle away from reaching the Finals.

Our top 6-7 players are very good. The FO just screwed up the bench. If we hit home runs with the MLE and the draft, we are right back a it. The margin of error is thinner due to our lack of assets, but I say, go for it now and if it doesn't work, hit a rebuild while Rudy is still in his prime. Don't plan for the next 10 years because Rudy, DM, the coaching staff or even the FO might not be here that long (remember, 10 years ago we had DWill, Haywood, Kirilenko , Okur, Raja Bell, etc on the roster and Jerry was still our coach)
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No doubt. If we’re talking superstars. Which Conley isn’t and never was.
 
Wes Mantooth said:
No doubt. If we’re talking superstars. Which Conley isn’t and never was.
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What are you talking about? Are you even talking about my post?

I'm addresing your point about building the team for the next 6-10 years, which is not realistic. Nowadays, no franchise is building their roster with that timeline in mind. But yeah, talk about Conley (who I said is a good role player btw). Don't know where you are getting that "superstar" thing, you are pulling a Jazzyfresh right there.
 
latin jazz said:
What are you talking about? Are you even talking about my post?

I'm addresing your point about building the team for the next 6-10 years, which is not realistic. Nowadays, no franchise is building their roster with that timeline in mind. But yeah, talk about Conley (who I said is a good role player btw). Don't know where you are getting that "superstar" thing, you are pulling a Jazzyfresh right there.
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My apologies. I read about three words in your post and just assumed the rest.
 
latin jazz said:
Thanks. Are you including the last bubble games? Because we were obviously tanking toward the end of the season, which could skew your results a little bit (especialy if your sample is only 23 games). Conley (and the rest of the starters) would "play" at the start of those games but then we would lose on purpose by playing our deep bench for most of the game.

Is there a way to incorporate "tanking" into your model? Maybe you adjust it if the starters play less than 50% of expected playing time, or some metric like that. If one team is tanking, one of your variables (opp winning percentage) becomes a bit irrelevant to predict any outcome.
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No, I omitted Bubble games altogether. I think it ended up being the games he played from something like Nov. 29 - Rudy's positive test.
 
This year "Dragic role" is where i see Conley best value for future seasons.

I'd rather not give a 75/4 on him for that, and risk lose him next year, if that doesn't means we being able to add a positive guy like Wood (that would be really good for our needs and could outplay a hypothetical 14m contract).

In the end, i just wish we can find an okay-ish wing and good big backup on our exceptions and that Clarkson resigns for a reasonable price (one where he keeps his trade value), as that's pretty much what our FO may look at
 
Seeing that the NBA is looking at basically using next season as a placeholder to get back to normal in the 2021-22 season... I'm not sure what the best way to manage the cap and the Conley situation... they are now:

Looking at starting on Christmas.
Looking at a 72 game season (less games means less revenue and less cap room potentially).
They are likely to increase the escrow which will limit the cap falling off a cliff, but I think it is safe to assume the cap and tax won't jump over $109M.

What really sucks is we decided to push in during this two year period and gave up assets that could have benefited the franchise for years. Timing really really sucks. Not sure I want to extend Mike in this weird environment. Probably not doing anything wild... Might not even be able to use the MLE without going into the tax... so we go bargain shopping like everyone else.
 
The Conley situation is really interesting. When you give up assets for the rights to pay a guy 2/67M you need him to be a star. And Conley certainly wasn't. But he did make himself into an effective role player, which has value. But clearly not 1/34.5M of value so he's a negative value in a vacuum. Do you use Conley's negative contract to help some other team get off of a longer-term bad contract? Does exchanging effective role player Mike Conley for effective role player Al Horford help? I doubt it. But standing pat shouldn't be an option as the Jazz were not close this year and weren't fun to watch.

Conley is already 33 and clearly declined. Extending him for 4 years is unthinkable imo.
 
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