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Some (more or less) consequential tidbits from B-ref & NBA.com/stats

I

idiot

Well-Known Member
Somehow this year, we have seemingly official listings for:
DM: 6-0 tall, shorter now than Conley's 6-1
Azubuike: 6-8, 280
Shaq: (still) 6-7

Plus minus leaders/100 possessions (on court & net) (B-ref) (I'm highlighting the players much of this board was ready to throw off the island quite recently because, yeah, that's who I am):
Niang: +21.2, +20.3
Clarkson: +11.0, +12.0
Conley: +11.5, +9.0
Gobert: +8.8, +9.5
Favors: +8.5, +4.8
Oni: +9.4, +4.7
Mitchell: +5.0, -1.3
O'Neale: +4.5, -2.4
Ingles: +.02, -8.7
Bogdanovich: +1.9, -9.0

Top 2-man lineups (/100posessions, 8-game minimum) (NBA.com/stats):
Favors/Gobert +36.0
Favors/Niang +35.8
Niang/Mitchell +28.9
Clarkson/Niang +23.4
Conley/Niang +22.4
Gobert/Niang +19.5
Conley/Favors +19.3
Favors/Clarkson +19.1
Conley/Clarkson +18.6
Ingles/Niang +15.0
(Something good is clearly going on when Niang plays; btw--the only four negative 2-man lineups that meet these criteria all have Ingles as one of the members)

It's only 12-game sample (1/6 of the season) of course, but (not surprisingly) a lot of the plus/minus data is vastly different from last year, as these are often not very stable from year to year.
 
Since you've been into that, i'd ask more about Niang numbers/ratings on defense (and If those could be the non garbage minutes i'd like too).

As far as he's been singled out, his defense looked decent so far this season to me
 
rjfan said:
Since you've been into that, i'd ask more about Niang numbers/ratings on defense (and If those could be the non garbage minutes i'd like too).

As far as he's been singled out, his defense looked decent so far this season to me
Click to expand...
I trust defensive numbers/ratings even less than plus-minus numbers, so I don't know where I'd suggest anyone should look for reliable numbers that way.

But I will say that it's highly likely that Niang's overall positive numbers aren't resulting from garbage time. Our garbage time players (Shaq, Udoka, Hughes, et.al) have terrible plus-minus numbers -- in the -30s to -40s/100.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think the breakdown into non-garbage time minutes are available on a non-subscription website. I think they are available from Cleaning the Glass, a subscription I don't have.
 
Ahh the benefits of being the "best" scorer playing during garbage time.
 
idiot said:
Ahh the benefits of not understanding what you read.

What makes you think this is garbage time stuff?
Click to expand...
What makes you think it isn't? Or that it has zero impact on it?

Ahh the benefits of being too dumb to understand nuance.
 
LogGrad98 said:
What makes you think it isn't? Or that it has zero impact on it?

Ahh the benefits of being too dumb to understand nuance.
Click to expand...
Do you know what plus minus is? It has nothing to do with being the "best" scorer.

Do any of the two-man lineups listed look like typical garbage-time pairings?

Did you read the other post I had that mentioned that the Jazz are overall terrible in garbage time? How does that help Niang have good plus-minus stats?
 
LogGrad98 said:
What makes you think it isn't? Or that it has zero impact on it?

Ahh the benefits of being too dumb to understand nuance.
Click to expand...

It’s pretty obvious that it isn’t. The actual garbage time players have gotten smacked.

The lineups that Niang plays in have dominated. It doesn’t mean he dominated, but that second rotation with Conley+Gobert against bench players has really worked. Niang plays almost exclusively in that rotation.

Any nuance or brainpower would lead you to this conclusion but sure....garbage time.
 
Due to the small sample size of total minutes and relatively large amount of garbage time in those minutes, these numbers are actually heavily skewed. The kiddos have gotten destroyed when they're on the court. Here are the the non-garbage time numbers from CTG:

On Court / NET

Gobert: +7.5 / +0.4
Bogey: +2.1 / -14.8
O'Neale: +5.0 / -7.6
Mitchell: +4.5 / -9.8
Conley: +10.6 / +10.0

Favors: +10.0 / +4.1
Niang: +23.1 / +20.1
Ingles: +0.0 / -13.0
Clarkson: +11.5 / +9.3

Some quick takeaways, which are not worth much more than descriptions of what's happened so far:

- Starting lineup is not doing as well as last year (+3.7), but it's been a night and day difference in the last 4 games as Mitchell began to play well. As long as Mitchell and Bogey aren't both playing terrible, I'm still confident this is one of the better starting lineups in the league.

- The in between lineups are working well for the most part, especially w/o Ingles. You can roughly break up the rotation int 5 segments. Gobert has three stints. Favors has two shorter ones in between. The first sub with a healthy squad is typically Ingles/Favors for Conley Gobert. That lineup has gotten rocked (-10.2). But the second Favors stint has fared really well. The main difference in this second stint is Clarkson in place of Ingles. This lineup has been terrific (+24.6). Obviously there's some wonkiness here, but that's what can happen in small sample sizes. Ingles was available when we were struggling and missed a few of the recent blowout wins. Don't think this is his fault. Overall, Favors is +9.1 without Gobert, that's what we paid for.

- The "bench" unit has mostly been led by Clarkson, Conley, and Gobert. You can roughly capture these minutes with Conley+Gobert on the court and Mitchell off the court. These minutes have been dominant (+11.9) and particularly dominant with Niang (+15.6). With Oni+Niang, the numbers are absurd. +41.0 in 53 minutes. These "bench" minutes have been dominant on the defensive end, not the offensive end. In fact, the offense hasn't been good at all. It's really just Gobert dominant second units who don't have the talent to get around him.



As far as what we can expect going forward, here are my guesses for what might be different or the same going forward:

- The starting lineup will get back to form. It's already started to happen and the catalyst has been Mitchell not being awful. As long as Mitchell plays like Mitchell, we have a great lineup.

- The Favors, no Rudy minutes will continue to be good. Both groups he plays in are due for some regression. The lineup with Clarkson is over performing, but the group with Ingles should be better going forward. These are very strong lineups to catch opposing teams and build leads. We have 5 starter caliber players on against units with 2+ subs on the court.

- The Rudy + Conley "bench" units will get worse defensively. The defense is playing unrealistically well, but I still expect Rudy to be a one man force against bench groups. You have to have a lot of talent on the floor to challenge Rudy and there simply aren't many bench units that can do so. A 93.9 defensive rating is unsustainable, however.

- On the other hand, the offense will get much better. The offense is at just a 105.7 ORTG. This is mostly due to Gobert and Niang being trash on offense this season. They are much better offensive players than they've been thus far, and with regression back to the mean I could see this ORTG jump to 115+. I think this will be the most dominant part of the game for us.
 
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