Official 2015 Offseason Thread

[HeHateMe 697]

‏@WojYahooNBA Spurs are aggressively pursuing free agent David West with a veteran minimum offer now, sources tell Yahoo Sports.

 

I know West is old but if they land West they have to favorites in the West.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

‏@WojYahooNBA Spurs are aggressively pursuing free agent David West with a veteran minimum offer now, sources tell Yahoo Sports.

 

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!

[Mauro Pedrosa 1,032]

The chat room is broken

[Catman 380]

http://stats.nba.com/tracking/#!/player/defense/?CF=MIN*G*25%7CGP*G*50&Season=2014-15&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&sort=FGP_DEFEND_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

 

Space Jesus just silenced you and your minions' flawed logic.

 

 

It is hilariously simple to separate the whiners from the people who believe in the team - Just ask their opinion on Gordon.

[~O~ 565]

I'm starting to believe the Magic's trade of Dwight to the Lakers may be a permanent Hex. Then the fact that Dwight left immediately in their first year and the Lakers didn't receive the instant gratification of a championship, it lead to a new national perspective of their organization. Now they have to beg players to stay on their team or attract players with endorsements. Not winning.

 

This brings me to the suspicion that Hennigan is using a fictitious but actual juju Magic. If this is the case, pour it on their open wounds and the newly spinal gash, cervical to sacrum . ***** the Lakers.

 

 

[HeHateMe 697]

Space Jesus just silenced you and your minions' flawed logic.

 

 

It is hilariously simple to separate the whiners from the people who believe in the team - Just ask their opinion on Gordon.

 

I don't really think that's fair. So if I think Favors is and will be better than AG, I don't believe in the team? This is one of your worst posts actually.

 

I like AG, but I do think Favors would be better for us. Kill me.

 

Edit: AG on fire

[Jay Magic 1,248]

@WojYahooNBA

Free agent center Bismack Biyombo has agreed to a two-year, $6 million deal with the Toronto Raptors, league sources tell Yahoo Sports.

[HeHateMe 697]

@WojYahooNBA

Free agent center Bismack Biyombo has agreed to a two-year, $6 million deal with the Toronto Raptors, league sources tell Yahoo Sports.

 

Toronto needed a PF. Not a Biyombo fan but beats nothing I guess.

[ball junkie 277]

Thank goodness we signed Watson for when Payton has shooting games like he's doing right now.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

Just stop

[~O~ 565]

Thank goodness we signed Watson for when Payton has shooting games like he's doing right now.

 

Rofl....that's ball junkie.

[God Hates Otis Smith 153]

 

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.

what a ridiculous homer post

obviously you know better than NBA front offices, who covet rim protectors, i'm surprised you haven't been hired to show them your innovation.