2017 Official Offseason Thread

[Catalina Maria 64]

Vucevic was our 8th most efficient scorer last year...

 

How do you calculate this? He can't be that bad, really???

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

I would hope that you understand that a teams best scorer is rarely their most efficient. That is not a viable indicator. All that tells you is that he doesn't score enough off three pointers and that there are lower usage players with smaller samples.

 

sure, in the sense that usually there's a low volume player that has crazy high efficiency because he can pick his spots. But lets do a bit of a comparison.

 

Vucevic was 8th on the magic (removing non-rotational guys like Anthony brown) in eFG% and 326th overall

 

Isaiah Thomas was 4th on boston and 99th overall

Lebron was 3rd on Cleveland and 33rd overall

Lowry was 3rd on Toronto and 66th overall

Wall was 9th on washington and 319th overall though beal is 5th and 68th

Millsap was 9th on Atlanta and 324th overall

Giannis was 4th on MIL and 112th overall

George was 5th on Indy and 128th overall

Butler was 8th on Chicago and 274th overall

Harris? was 1st on Detroit and 141st overall

Kemba was 3rd on charlotte and 165th overall

Carmelo was 8th on the knicks and 296th overall

 

(I just limited it to the east teams better than us because this started taking too much time).

 

 

But you end up in a situation where you either need to have a overwhelming other skill (like harden passing, freethrow rate, iso scoring. butler defense and iso scoring. wall defense and passing. and so on) or you need to be efficient.

 

So why is Vucevic our best offensive player and not Fournier who outscored vucevic last year, has a much higher eFG%, some ability to draw fouls, and some ability to create his own shot?

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

also I should add Fournier outscored vucevic with a lower usage rate and slightly fewer fga per game (and I mean SLIGHTLY. comes out to 0.07 per game)

[Catalina Maria 64]

sure, in the sense that usually there's a low volume player that has crazy high efficiency because he can pick his spots. But lets do a bit of a comparison.

 

Vucevic was 8th on the magic (removing non-rotational guys like Anthony brown) in eFG% and 326th overall

 

Isaiah Thomas was 4th on boston and 99th overall

Lebron was 3rd on Cleveland and 33rd overall

Lowry was 3rd on Toronto and 66th overall

Wall was 9th on washington and 319th overall though beal is 5th and 68th

Millsap was 9th on Atlanta and 324th overall

Giannis was 4th on MIL and 112th overall

George was 5th on Indy and 128th overall

Butler was 8th on Chicago and 274th overall

Harris? was 1st on Detroit and 141st overall

Kemba was 3rd on charlotte and 165th overall

Carmelo was 8th on the knicks and 296th overall

 

(I just limited it to the east teams better than us because this started taking too much time).

 

 

But you end up in a situation where you either need to have a overwhelming other skill (like harden passing, freethrow rate, iso scoring. butler defense and iso scoring. wall defense and passing. and so on) or you need to be efficient.

 

So why is Vucevic our best offensive player and not Fournier who outscored vucevic last year, has a much higher eFG%, some ability to draw fouls, and some ability to create his own shot?

 

THIS shows how losing Harris was very bad for us. We certainly missed him after he was traded away. Henny's original core may have done wonders for us by now. Only if they were aware of this stat!!!

 

THIS also shows how players like Lebron, Wall, Carmelo and George are not that good. Lebron is 3rd in his own team!!! They'd be better if he tried less on the offense that's for sure. Teams can certainly utilize this. The key to defeating Cleveland would be to get Lebron to try to do more on offense. I wonder which player is 1 and 2 for them?

[Murphy13 185]

It doesn't stand at all and your point fails completely.

 

Would you care to substantiate this at all, or is this another instance of you shutting down the moment you don't comprehend something?

[Murphy13 185]

sure, in the sense that usually there's a low volume player that has crazy high efficiency because he can pick his spots. But lets do a bit of a comparison.

 

Vucevic was 8th on the magic (removing non-rotational guys like Anthony brown) in eFG% and 326th overall

 

Isaiah Thomas was 4th on boston and 99th overall

Lebron was 3rd on Cleveland and 33rd overall

Lowry was 3rd on Toronto and 66th overall

Wall was 9th on washington and 319th overall though beal is 5th and 68th

Millsap was 9th on Atlanta and 324th overall

Giannis was 4th on MIL and 112th overall

George was 5th on Indy and 128th overall

Butler was 8th on Chicago and 274th overall

Harris? was 1st on Detroit and 141st overall

Kemba was 3rd on charlotte and 165th overall

Carmelo was 8th on the knicks and 296th overall

 

(I just limited it to the east teams better than us because this started taking too much time).

 

 

But you end up in a situation where you either need to have a overwhelming other skill (like harden passing, freethrow rate, iso scoring. butler defense and iso scoring. wall defense and passing. and so on) or you need to be efficient.

 

So why is Vucevic our best offensive player and not Fournier who outscored vucevic last year, has a much higher eFG%, some ability to draw fouls, and some ability to create his own shot?

 

It's fine that you listed a bunch of people to provide further backing to my statement on efficiency vs scoring, I'm not sure where you were going with that other than to agree. You answered your own question in your list and subsequent discussion in the proceeding paragraph. All those people are their go to most consistent scorers, ie best chance at getting a bucket, ie best scorers. Nik was the guy we went to if we needed a basket, not Fournier (at least as primary option). Fournier scores points etc, but at his position he is not unique in any way (frankly not very good at drawing fouls nor creating his own shot at the NBA level) and more often than not disappears when extra attention is put on him. Nik on the other hand is one of the best rebounders in the league and creates more second chance opportunities than most go-to scorers (credit your statement earlier about other skills) and offers above average proficiency in an area of the court that not only is the least guarded, but would also tend to be guarded by the least mobile defender on average-since he plays center. He also has been the primary focus of the other teams defense for the past 3 years, he's used to the attention. I'm not saying it's what either of us would pick if we had our own team we built, I'm not arguing that Nik is some sort of phenom or anything because he isn't. He just comes through in a way no one else has yet to do on our team.

 

I see your rationale and it has backing to an extent, at times Fournier could be relied on for a basket, but I would be willing to make a gentlemans bet that a lot more of his points/'efficiency' came in garbage time relative to Nik and other go to scorers you mentioned.

[Murphy13 185]

THIS shows how losing Harris was very bad for us. We certainly missed him after he was traded away. Henny's original core may have done wonders for us by now. Only if they were aware of this stat!!!

 

Harris is not a very good team basketball player, I'd have to disagree with this

THIS also shows how players like Lebron, Wall, Carmelo and George are not that good. Lebron is 3rd in his own team!!! They'd be better if he tried less on the offense that's for sure. Teams can certainly utilize this. The key to defeating Cleveland would be to get Lebron to try to do more on offense. I wonder which player is 1 and 2 for them?

That's not how this works. The lesson you should have taken from the exchange is that the eFG% being discussed isn't as meaningful as you might have thought. It's a relatively small part of the puzzle.

[Murphy13 185]

by the way Lebron was 6th on his team in eFG%. Edy Tavares was #1, Korver 2, James Jones 3, D WIlliams 4, Tristan Thompson 5.

As I said earlier eFG% is useful for pointing out who the good 3pt shooters are and the low usage players are. That's really it. Are you paying attention Catalina and GordonMVP?

 

https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CLE/2017.html

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

 

I see your rationale and it has backing to an extent, at times Fournier could be relied on for a basket, but I would be willing to make a gentlemans bet that a lot more of his points/'efficiency' came in garbage time relative to Nik and other go to scorers you mentioned.

 

 

I don't know how to measure this but here's what I got http://on.nba.com/2uO0CfD

 

It's not a really great measurement for your criteria and I really didn't want to post it but I decided it was at least a little informative so why not.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

by the way Lebron was 6th on his team in eFG%. Edy Tavares was #1, Korver 2, James Jones 3, D WIlliams 4, Tristan Thompson 5.

As I said earlier eFG% is useful for pointing out who the good 3pt shooters are and the low usage players are. That's really it. Are you paying attention Catalina and GordonMVP?

 

https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CLE/2017.html

 

yes. I removed non-rotational players because I felt it was dumb to say Vucevic was 10th because brown and onuaku felt like hitting a few buckets in their inconsequential minutes.

[Murphy13 185]

I'm not sure how helpful that is for determining anything useful since absolute non-contributors were able to skew the stats so much. It does seem to lend credence to the thought that Fournier was serviceable, but the circumstances that these were compiled under aren't listed so I'm hazy on the validity of anything there. On the other hand if players like Zimmerman were able to have such an effect on those crunch time stats in obvious garbage time, it wouldn't be unreasonable to presume that the other players 'high' on that list accrued theirs in garbage time too. On that same chart, of the heavy minute guys, Nik was the only player that wasn't net negative in crunch time apparently.

 

All that chart showed me was stuff we already knew, our team sucked and wasn't clutch at all. And apparently had few opportunities to compile crunch time stats.

[Odin 137]

I don't know how to measure this but here's what I got http://on.nba.com/2uO0CfD

 

It's not a really great measurement for your criteria and I really didn't want to post it but I decided it was at least a little informative so why not.

 

I mean they are on the same team and both were starters. I am pretty sure they both had fairly equivalent time spent playing in "garbage time" and "meaningful minutes".

 

Anyway, I prefer TS% as it takes into account free throw shooting, awarding good free throw shooters who can get contact- thus a better indicator of how efficiently players can get points. Under TS%, Vuch is almost in the bottom percentile and only Zach Randolph had a higher usage rate (of players who played meaningful minutes) and was below him.

 

I think a greater problem, and the reason Vuch gets more shots than he probably should, is that we don't have any really efficient players on the team to go to, so, even though he is low on the list, the other players aren't much higher.