The League Average Matters

LOL! That’s awesome!

Interesting write up…but I’m confused.
You don’t really speculate on the cause here.

I mean, it does look to me like our defense has improved, and we supposedly have better defensive players (kwame instead of gadzuric, Rush instead of Reggie) – so what’s the problem? How come we aren’t significantly better?

I know someone (maybe Nate) mentioned that the synergy numbers were showing our awesome close out on jump shooters was kinda ineffective – do you have any guesses or insight on this? Because it DOES look to me like our D is in fact better

I think this is a case where defensive numbers don’t necessarily tell the full story.

First, the Warriors were playing outstanding defense in the first three games – if I recall, their DRtg was in the top third in the league. So it’s not entirely fiction that they’re playing better D – for almost half their games (and the first half last night) they really were playing good defense. The last four games have just been disastrous.

But second, yes the Warriors D-Rtg (and as it happens, their opp EFG% & tov rate) is about the same as last season. But the effort and attention on defense is there like it really hasn’t been in years – rotations are better, their ability to deny to the post was good for the first half of last night, and the turnovers are coming not just as a result of their offensive pace, but from good defensive awareness.

Of course, that hasn’t changed the bottom line in the last four games. And I did say early on that people would figure out what they were doing in those first three games (trapping aggressively, leaving players like DLee to rotate) and make them pay for it. I also don’t think this team has strong defensive personnel. But might they be moving in the right direction in terms of a developing a defensive mindset? Watching this team compared to the last couple of decades…I’m going to go out on a limb – against the numbers – and say maybe…

until we get better talent, I don’t see things changing significantly

They were rated 30th last season in DRTG, and 20th this season. That’s “clearly better”. We are not. Sorry, but that’s just how it is.

I hate that BS that the front office spat out when we hired MJ, because I believed it. The draft comes and there’s the best two wing defenders in Singleton and Leonard and a great rebounding effort guy in Faried on the board, but who do we pick? A shooting 3, who has average or below-average defense.

Monta is so much improved on D this year and I’ve been critical of him the past 2 years, I’m impressed with his progress. The same can’t be said about Lee or Curry. Lee pisses me off so bad, he never leaves his feet to contest a shot, he never tries to draw a charge, he can no longer guard the pick and roll well, he watches his defender take easy mid-range shots, he leaves his defender to try to get the rebound and pad his stats, and he doesn’t position himself well. For Lee, it only takes effort and dedication to D, he can be an average defender if he puts in work or effort during practice or in game, he doesn’t and he’s a big reason why our team defense still sucks.

/End Rant

Small Sample size.

So far we’ve played the Clippers, Knicks, Bulls, Sixers, Lakers, Suns, and the Spurs.

Save the Suns, those are all teams that should easily make the playoffs and feature elite scorers. Griffen, Paul, Melo, Amare, Rose, Kobe… playing these teams thus far and having improved at all is huge.

End of story. Go Warriors and their great losses.

the team still has terrible transition d. Do the stats support the notion that the opponents’ points per possession go up after a missed perimeter shot ? Isn’t that part of Ellis’ negative effect on team d, his gunning from the perimeter ? Suppose two aspects of offense improved — offensive boards and getting to the foul line (another chronic team weakness of course ; LA’s winning margin last night was pretty much the same as its free throw advantage). Would we not expect to see the defense also do better in conjunction with those improvements ?

Otherwise you have to try and win despite your talent deficiencies, something the TK’s and Lauridsen’s really don’t understand. + why watch a boring mediocre team?

There’s a good chance that the league skews gradually back towards where it was last season as a whole, and it remains to be seen whether the warriors then stay as they are and look to have improved or if they skew back with the pack.

However what this all really shows is the futility of thinking that events that happen early in the season are likely to be excellent predictors of what is going to come!

But the point you make is excellent and should clearly be applied as a way of looking at more things.

This is just a really basic example to highlight how comparing players effectiveness using field goal percentages can show very little.

So last year statistically Kobe Bryant and Monta Ellis had quite similar seasons offensively.
They both had the same FG%, Ellis had a slightly higher eFG% and Kobe a similarly higher TS%. On an efficiency bases this would lead many to conclude that they were roughly as efficient as each other.

However this says nothing for how efficient/effective their offence was relative to their own team

So last year the Lakers had the sixth best offensive rating in the league whereas the Warriors had the twelfth. Thus the Lakers overall were getting better shots and scoring more efficiently than the Warriors and thus you could just as well praise Monta for scoring as efficiently as Kobe whilst playing in an offence that in general creates worse shots.

This way of viewing players effectiveness is further shown as useful by looking at the effectiveness of the next three best players on the roster after Kobe.

Kobe Bryant FG%: 45.1 eFG%:48.7 TS%: 54.8
Andrew Bynum FG%: 57.4 eFG%: 57.4 TS%: 60.6
Pau Gasol FG%: 52.9 eFG%: 53 TS%: 58.9
Lamar Odom FG%: 45.1 eFG%: 56.8 TS%: 58.9

Essentially Kobe was dominating the ball and shooting a lot of shots within an offence with players that could score much more efficiently than him.

On the Warriors no-one is really above Monta Ellis efficiency-wise who also contributes significantly except Curry (an issue I have written extensively on). Thus he could be said to be performing offensively better than Kobe because he scores at an almost identical efficiency within an offence that is significantly worse with a lot less players that perform better than him

This is not meant to be saying that Monta is better than Kobe or anything like that. Just to highlight that when comparing the offence of different players for example, production should be viewed relative to the team that it is achieved within. Most arguments about offensive efficiency shouldn’t carry much weight because they either punish or praise people for playing in bad or good offences without acknowledging it’s effect.