Official 2015 Offseason Thread

[CTMagicUK 1,491]

This...Also, the guys that are posting the Tobias quotes about how great his relationship is with Skiles now makes me lol...what's he supposed to say after he just re-upped that Skiles sucks and I still don't wanna play for him, ha ha.

 

Why would he re up voluntarily if that wasn't true?

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

http://stats.nba.com...FEND_RIM&dir=-1

 

lol you guys really wouldn't trade gordon for someone who defends the rim like this, and averages 18/10/2 per 36?

 

gordon will be fortunate to ever be this good

 

This is a classic example of how unrealistic some of these guys are with their expectations. If Rob was offered Favors for AG and turned it down he would deserve to be fired the instant he hung up the phone. You make that trade one million out of one million times.

 

Ok, I'm feeling nice here, so I'm going to explain this. There are four things the two of you clearly don't understand, or are unwilling to understand, that you need to:

 

1. No one, and I sincerely mean no one I've ever seen, spoken to, or heard of, believes that Aaron Gordon was better than Derrick Favors last season. Literally, no one thinks that. Pretending that they do is idiotic, and really just makes YOU look like a moron, since we all are forced to assume that the two of you are arguing with your imaginary friends.

 

2. Contracts matter: any "Would you trade player X for player Y, straight up?" has to include what those two players are getting paid, since any player's value is going to be determined by two things, what they do and how much it costs for them to do it, and salary is literally one of those two things. And while Favors is not on a bad contract by any stretch, there's really nothing wrong with saying you'd rather not pay Favors 34 million over the next 3 years when you can pay Gordon 14 for the same time period, AND still retain player-control of Gordon at the end of his deal.

 

3. I'm not really sure why anyone would feel a need to make an apples to apples comparison between Gordon and Favors anyway, when one was a 19 year old rookie who was injured and the other was a 23 year old 5th year player who wasn't. If anything, Favors is a good primer as to why we SHOULDN'T give up on Gordon immediately, since the stats Favors put up as a 19 year old rookie are intensely mediocre, he wasn't(and still isn't) as good a defensive player as Gordon was last year, and he fouled just all the goddamned time.

 

4. Opponents' FG% at the rim is a nonsense stat, and rim protection has become a massively overrated concept, purely on the basis that one company started tracking it and that people find it hard to do math.

 

The entire NBA averaged less than 29% of their shots within 3' of the rim last season. So right away, individual "Rim protection" is useless on AT LEAST 71% of all FGAs, depending on where you choose to start counting things as being "at the rim". So right away, you're talking about a stat that only matters on roughly 24 FGAs per game for the average team at most(24.23268292682927, to be more precise).

 

But then you have to address the issues of "rim protectors don't play 48mpg" and "proper defensive rotations mean that any given rim protector won't be in position to challenge even 2/3 of the shots they're in the game for, let alone all of them". And even Nylon Calculus, the company that insists that this stat is valuable(since it's what they sell), agrees. Last year, Andrew Bogut lead the entire NBA in "percentage of shots challenged at the rim while he was in the game" at 61%. So math says that last year, the guy who challenged a greater percentage of shots than ANYONE ELSE IN THE NBA, assuming he'd kept pace throughout the game and played 48 minutes a game, would have challenged 14.78 shots per game.

 

Of course, Bogut DIDN'T play 48mpg; he played 23.6mpg. So if we THEN assume that shots-at-the-rim are distributed evenly throughout the game(and this is something that Nylon doesn't even track), you're left having to multiply 14.78 by 23.6/48, which equals 7.27 shots per game.

 

So lets be generous, and take that 7.27 and inexplicably round it up to 8. Would you like to know the difference between a FG% of 41.4%(Bogut's rate, 3rd in the NBA) versus a rate widely considered to be horrific of 51.9%(Channing Frye) on 8 FGAs per game is? It's the difference between 6.624ppg and 8.304ppg.

 

So when you actually do the math, the difference between a "great" rim protector and a terrible one, assuming comparable minutes and comparable opportunities to challenge shots(which, as an aside, has a lot more to do with defensive scheme and teammates than it does individual defensive prowess in most cases) is almost 1 FG per game.

 

Even Nylon Calculus's own numbers, which seemed to have been arrived at by magic in some cases, agree: they have a calculation called "points saved per game", and while their calculations don't seem to jive with any possible math I can think of, even they only list a total of a whopping 12 players in the NBA whose "rim protection" was worth more than a point a game last season.

 

And that ultimately gets back to a point I've been making since Marcus Camby stole a DPOY award from Tim Duncan: stop talking about rim protection like it matters; talk about "defense" instead. No one would ever say someone was a good shooter just because they shot well within 3 feet of the rim, and ignore everything else on the court. Why do the same on defense?

 

I don't get it.

[LaVar 108]

Harris got a hayward deal

Hayward got 63 over 4

Harris got 64 over 4

 

 

I would front load the deal so it will not hurt as much near the end.

[jjgator 164]

Harris got a hayward deal

Hayward got 63 over 4

Harris got 64 over 4

 

 

I would front load the deal so it will not hurt as much near the end.

 

Shouldn't it be the opposite since the cap should be quite a bit higher towards the end of his contract?

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

Harris got a hayward deal

Hayward got 63 over 4

Harris got 64 over 4

 

 

I would front load the deal so it will not hurt as much near the end.

 

Nonononono

 

You don't front load deals now.

 

He's going to be paid 14.3 in a 67 or 69 million cap. He's going to be paid 15.4 in a 90 million cap. He's going to be paid 16.5 in a 100 million cap. He's going to be paid 17.7 in a 108 million cap.

 

The deal already looks smaller as time goes on.

[LaVar 108]

The way I see our team shaping up is:

 

Payton / Watson / Harvey

Oladipo / Fournier / Marble

Harris / Hezonja / Harkless

Gordon / Nicholoson / Free Agent

Vucevic / Dedmon / Frye

[nCoolness 79]

I like CJ Watson when he was playing with the Bulls. Solid veteran pg.

[LaVar 108]

Nonononono

 

You don't front load deals now.

 

He's going to be paid 14.3 in a 67 or 69 million cap. He's going to be paid 15.4 in a 90 million cap. He's going to be paid 16.5 in a 100 million cap. He's going to be paid 17.7 in a 108 million cap.

 

The deal already looks smaller as time goes on.

 

My thinking is that we have cap space now and dont need to resign our other young players yet. So if we front load, we have more money to pay evan, vic, payton, and gordon

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Yeah there's no reason whatsoever to front load a deal right now.

 

No one's going to read that thing I wrote earlier, are they?

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

My thinking is that we have cap space now and dont need to resign our other young players yet. So if we front load, we have more money to pay evan, vic, payton, and gordon

 

We have those players' Bird Rights; we won't need CAP space to resign them.

[CTMagicUK 1,491]

 

Ok, I'm feeling nice here, so I'm going to explain this. There are four things the two of you clearly don't understand, or are unwilling to understand, that you need to:

 

1. No one, and I sincerely mean no one I've ever seen, spoken to, or heard of, believes that Aaron Gordon was better than Derrick Favors last season. Literally, no one thinks that. Pretending that they do is idiotic, and really just makes YOU look like a moron, since we all are forced to assume that the two of you are arguing with your imaginary friends.

 

2. Contracts matter: any "Would you trade player X for player Y, straight up?" has to include what those two players are getting paid, since any player's value is going to be determined by two things, what they do and how much it costs for them to do it, and salary is literally one of those two things. And while Favors is not on a bad contract by any stretch, there's really nothing wrong with saying you'd rather not pay Favors 34 million over the next 3 years when you can pay Gordon 14 for the same time period, AND still retain player-control of Gordon at the end of his deal.

 

3. I'm not really sure why anyone would feel a need to make an apples to apples comparison between Gordon and Favors anyway, when one was a 19 year old rookie who was injured and the other was a 23 year old 5th year player who wasn't. If anything, Favors is a good primer as to why we SHOULDN'T give up on Gordon immediately, since the stats Favors put up as a 19 year old rookie are intensely mediocre, he wasn't(and still isn't) as good a defensive player as Gordon was last year, and he fouled just all the goddamned time.

 

4. Opponents' FG% at the rim is a nonsense stat, and rim protection has become a massively overrated concept, purely on the basis that one company started tracking it and that people find it hard to do math.

 

The entire NBA averaged less than 29% of their shots within 3' of the rim last season. So right away, individual "Rim protection" is useless on AT LEAST 71% of all FGAs, depending on where you choose to start counting things as being "at the rim". So right away, you're talking about a stat that only matters on roughly 24 FGAs per game for the average team at most(24.23268292682927, to be more precise).

 

But then you have to address the issues of "rim protectors don't play 48mpg" and "proper defensive rotations mean that any given rim protector won't be in position to challenge even 2/3 of the shots they're in the game for, let alone all of them". And even Nylon Calculus, the company that insists that this stat is valuable(since it's what they sell), agrees. Last year, Andrew Bogut lead the entire NBA in "percentage of shots challenged at the rim while he was in the game" at 61%. So math says that last year, the guy who challenged a greater percentage of shots than ANYONE ELSE IN THE NBA, assuming he'd kept pace throughout the game and played 48 minutes a game, would have challenged 14.78 shots per game.

 

Of course, Bogut DIDN'T play 48mpg; he played 23.6mpg. So if we THEN assume that shots-at-the-rim are distributed evenly throughout the game(and this is something that Nylon doesn't even track), you're left having to multiply 14.78 by 23.6/48, which equals 7.27 shots per game.

 

So lets be generous, and take that 7.27 and inexplicably round it up to 8. Would you like to know the difference between a FG% of 41.4%(Bogut's rate, 3rd in the NBA) versus a rate widely considered to be horrific of 51.9%(Channing Frye) on 8 FGAs per game is? It's the difference between 6.624ppg and 8.304ppg.

 

So when you actually do the math, the difference between a "great" rim protector and a terrible one, assuming comparable minutes and comparable opportunities to challenge shots(which, as an aside, has a lot more to do with defensive scheme and teammates than it does individual defensive prowess in most cases) is almost 1 FG per game.

 

Even Nylon Calculus's own numbers, which seemed to have been arrived at by magic in some cases, agree: they have a calculation called "points saved per game", and while their calculations don't seem to jive with any possible math I can think of, even they only list a total of a whopping 12 players in the NBA whose "rim protection" was worth more than a point a game last season.

 

And that ultimately gets back to a point I've been making since Marcus Camby stole a DPOY award from Tim Duncan: stop talking about rim protection like it matters; talk about "defense" instead. No one would ever say someone was a good shooter just because they shot well within 3 feet of the rim, and ignore everything else on the court. Why do the same on defense?

 

I don't get it.

 

Great post.

[Catalina Maria 64]

so instead of someone offering him the max we just did basically?

 

regardless what's done is done... lets move on.

 

I like our young core.. Proper coaching and system.. Lets go!

 

There's a difference. If the guy busts, you have an out in 4 years, not 7 years. Locking up $64 mil is vastly different than locking up $120 mil for instance. I like your perspective, though, we got the guy, got a good core. Let's go!