It's been a weird couple of days. Weird because I spent the entirety of it locked up with a calendar and an old nursery rhyme? Nah, that's par for the course. Weird because these new stat things crop up at the weirdest times. Kevin Durant has been the topic du jour, and I'm having a hard time understanding why. Scratch that. I know why. It just feels a little inexplicable, a little without a sense of time. See, it came up because ESPN's Henry Abbott conducted a series of interviews with (newly) former Mavs stats guy Wayne Winston. Interviews, by nature, are sporadic. You interview a guy when he's free. Vacating the Mavs job meant Winston was more free to speak his mind than he has been. It meant he was able to discuss his opinion of Kevin Durant. In a nutshell, it's not very high.
The whole furor is caused by adjusted +/-, which shows Durant having a less than positive effect on his team when he's on the court. I'm not going to get into it, not least because I spent a few minutes checking out the adjusted +/- central station for the moment BasketballValue.com and my head started just a little bit to explode. If you want to bone up on the stuff, hit the major players. Peep the Truehoop post that kicked this into high gear (linked above), or check out Ziller. Here's the new scoops, though. Responding mostly to the Abbott piece, Durant expressed frustration at the un-veiled criticism. Abbott, it should be noted, made sure to note his uncertain stance on Winston's position. Still, here are Durant's tweeted responses.
Everybody that is doubtin me as a player and my team as a whole..all i can say is that we all are tryin and workin our hardest!
What more do u want? let me be the player i am...i come to practice everyday..and push myself to my limit, God has put me n a gr8 position!!
I love all the REAL basketball fans who appreciate hardwork, passion and love for the game..and not jus "plus and minuses"...wateva dat is!
Here's my thing. "Wateva dat is"? Twitter grammar aside, I find that ending a bit problematic. Sure, it's a stab at humor in the face of new found self doubt. How would you feel if someone whose career it is to know this stuff just told you that you're actually hurting your team? Good for Durant. He's trying to keep it light! Here's what I don't like about that. It gives the idea that Durant has no idea what the +/- stat is. Now, it's fine if he doesn't understand the nuances. It's not like I expect NBA players to...all have Daryl Morey (or their team's equivalent) on speed dial (what up, Battier). But of all the advanced stats out there, it's not the most complicated one. Sure, the adjustment Basketball Value does is a little complex, but +/- is a stat that even shows up in boxscores. At its most basic level, it shows how much your team outscored the other team or got outscored by the other team while you were on the floor.
Abbott posted a second entry regarding this after Durant's twitters. In it, among other things, he attempts to explain the +/- stat. The post was dubbed a "Memo to a Young Baller." It's not the first correspondence of this type to occur in the last month, as Ron Artest has had some words internet-ly exchanged with a Lakers fan. In the post, Abbott is a bit condescending in explaining +/-. Now, my concern isn't with Abbott's tone, and maybe it's more didactic than condescending, but the tone comes with good reason. Durant ends a twitter message exclaiming ignorance of the stat. Abbott breaks it down in case Durant really is reading the 'memo.' I don't need the break down, I get it, but I know there are people out there who don't. Whenever advanced stats come up, apparently there are legions of protesters. I've never come across them, but that's what I hear. Maybe people are just bored with it. I don't know.
However, people who make a living doing this: writing about basketball or advising general managers, coaches, and owners? Yeah, I'd expect them to care about advanced stats a whole lot. Now, there are several teams out there who are a little ahead of the curve when it comes to advanced stats. The Rockets and Daryl Morey are the flagship of this fleet. Other teams noted for their advanced stats savvy? You guessed it. The Mavs and the Thunder. Here's my question. If the Thunder one of the leaders in understanding advanced stats, what does that mean for the players? It's one thing to know, through advanced stats, that this guy, this guy, and this guy are more effective than these other guys who inexplicably are more highly lauded, or to know which combination of players works best on your team. It's quite another thing to take that knowledge and use it.
We all know, thanks to the Michael Lewis piece, that Shane Battier takes full advantage of all the info he can get on his opponents to be the best defender he can be. Kobe has a very similar strategy when preparing for opponents, though he's more reliant on watching tape. With the advent of increasingly more nuanced statistics and ways of looking at basketball, you would think that NBA players would be using that information to get ahead. It's kind of like steroids for the mind, except it's all fair game. (Of course, steroids makes this a whole different discussion. Do players feel like their cheating by using info like advanced stats? Really, that just sounds like an excuse.)
The bottom line is, if the Thunder are one of the most stastically knowledgable organizations in the league, or even if Sam Presti is just more knowledgeable, shouldn't that translate to their players being more knowledgeable? In his 'memo,' Abbott takes a look at a bunch of tape to get to the underlying meaning of his first post. He notices one of the things Durant struggles with is effectively using the pick-and-role. Isn't this something Durant should know already? Shouldn't the Thunder stat heads and coaching staff know this stuff and be on top of it? I don't know. I'm just one fan who doesn't know much but reads a lot. I know what +/- is. Does your favorite player? Wouldn't you like him to?
OtB is counting down the days 'til the NBA 2009-10 season tips off by ranking the top 50 players in the league. On Sunday there are/were 16 days left.
So I had this idea. For day 16 on our countdown 'til the NBA season, the day claimed by Carmelo Anthony, I would write about how said 'Melo has been a bit of a forgotten child since he got to the league. Such a thought reminded me of a David Bowie song, which then took me to the following nursery rhyme.
I love, by the by, that Wikipedia (copy and past does wonders nowadays) feels the need to Wiktionary-link to 'woe' for us, as if we've forgotten what the word means in this new and glittering age! The Bowie song entitled Thursday's Child takes the nursery rhyme to mean that a child born of a Thursday will forever be behind the ball, perhaps in relative obscurity, that such a child will have a harder time of it than say one born on Monday or Tuesday or, heaven bless them, on Sunday. I thought, maybe Carmelo falls under that umbrella, and I proceeded to investigate the matter. Whilst examining other NBA star's birth dates, I became engrossed. Thus, a day passed, rain fell, and no NBA Top 50 post went up for Sunday.
Now I know all of you are now wallowing in disarray due to your lack of countdown-y goodness. You may even be wandering in a land where the undead rule the day. Have no fear, however, for your Monday will be fair of face, and two f's in a descriptor can only be described as second to none but the storied 'double tap.'
In other words, ye heathens, you're gettin' two today because I got caught up in looking up these guys's birth-days and trying to come up with some significant conclusions. Obviously, the sample size isn't big enough for reliable statistical results, but the determining factors are qualitative in nature anyway. The real hump to get over for this study was the temptation to go astrological. That's been done and dead; it's the grounds for newspapers, not edgy blogs on the crepuscular outskirts. That's a good thing, Holmes. Anyway, we get some of that because it's inevitable that some guys born under the same sign (read: month) are similar. But we'll get to that. To begin.
The first and most salient point to this study is 'Melo. Dude's not a Thursday. He's a Tuesday. What does this mean? The rhyme says Tuesday's children are "full of grace." Sounds great, but how does it translate? Other Tuesday guys: Deron Williams, Amare Stoudemire, Ron Artest, and Lamar Odom. In my searches, I started with top players, meaning all-nba teams, overwhelming personalities, and the guys who have recently come or will soon be coming on this list. Of these initial players, these four joined Carmelo on the list of Tuesday children. Deron is the apt comparison. Williams and Anthony share a common thread of being looked over. Williams will seemingly never live down the comparisons to Chris Paul--though in head to head match-ups he generally comes out on top--and 'Melo has the LeBron comparisons to deal with. Tuesday's children have pretty steady careers, when all is said and done, but their "grace" is actually a euphemism for silently taking second shrift. These guys can't seem to shake off the shadows.
'Melo and Deron play nice with the rep, as they're fairly normal, well-adjusted NBA stars. See, most NBA players are born either in the December to January and sometimes February period or else in the May to July months. It's actually kind of striking, how regular this is. All the stars I looked at, unless otherwise stated, are born in these months. You have the stray Duncan in April (Taurus, fittingly) or Shaq in March (hello, Pisces)--if, by the way, you don't know your astrology, it's not hard to look up--for the most part, though, NBA stars tend towards those two periods of the year. Stoudemire, Artest, and Odom, however, are the odd November babies, and they're Tuesday boys too. Anyway, it explains the obvious difference between the Scorpios and Williams and Anthony. Still, the five of them share the shadow of more prominent personalities/talents, whether it's a rival on another team or Steve Nash.
So what about those over-shadowers? Being born on Sunday, of course, is the big prize. The rhyme even devotes two lines and four adjectives to the day. So what kind of players does Sunday produce? Try this list on for size: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Tim Duncan, Pau Gasol, and the burgeoning Devin Harris. Oh, a certain recent Hall of Fame inductee not named David or John is a Sunday baby too. Bonny, blithe, good, and gay? I'd say so.
Monday is just about as good a day to be born on as Sunday. Fair of face? These guys are the stars who are a little more under the radar. They don't exactly get overshadowed, but they don't stick out and accumulate the accolades like the bonny Sabbath boys. Monday births amongst NBA stars include Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Paul, Brandon Roy, Tony Parker, Joe Johnson, and, incidentally, John Stockton. Shaq is also a Monday, but guys just don't fit any molds. The Pisces thing might be right on. Ah, I don't want to get into it.
Wednesday is supposed to be filled with woe. The incredible research tool of Wikipedia states that older interpretations have Wednesday and Friday switched. The wives' tales that these kinds of rhymes stem from were very concerned with the seasons, the way the world turned and how the stars aligned. If the days were switched, it must've been for good reason, because using NBA stars as our barometer sure makes a convincing case for Wednesday births leading to lives, if not exactly woe-filled, that are not bereft of hardship. And the Wednesday ballers bear the marks of this burden. They are: Kobe Bryant (Denver), Kevin Garnett (the first round), Gilbert Arenas (knee problems...zaniness...), Vince Carter (Dickensian expectations), Danny Granger (the Pacers...Granger's another quiet April man). Another Wednesday's child of note? Carter's landmark victim Frédéric Weis. Talk about woe.
Thursday's children, the kids who started all this for me, don't fare much better than Wednesday's. Remember, a Thursday birth supposedly means bad news bears. The star representatives make this case a pointed one. Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill, and Paul Pierce all have faced major challenges to their careers. It's not to say they haven't done well for themselves, but it hasn't been exactly easy. Steve Nash, despite not missing a whole lot of games, has had a history of back problems, and he was perpetually slept on until he went the 'far way to go' and signed with Phoenix. Let's hope the rhyme can be taken literally for Kevin Durant, as he's just getting started. Hopefully his 'far way to go' is always a measure of potential, and we continue to see the possibility for growth for years and years to come. Durant is a September dude, which we'll talk about when we get to Saturday. Darko Milicic is another Thursday's child. Y'know, the guy Detroit took second in '03 over Carmelo? Six years in, he's still got a ways to go.
Friday presented an interesting wrinkle to my examination of birth days for NBA players. There were no active NBA stars born on a Friday. I looked at over thirty of them, and none of them fell on a Friday. It's not to say that my investigation is by any means comprehensive, but you'd think there'd be at least one in thirty. Therefore, I decided to go back and see if the same held true for different eras. Thus, we came to the MJ is a Sunday and Stockton's a Monday factoids. I also found that fellow recent inductee David Robinson, along with legends Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Does that mean that the present-day NBA is less loving and giving? In an age where players are increasingly image consciousness, we might conclude as much. However, because I'm biased (and this study is so objective), let's keep caution out of the wind. Since there are so few Friday-born NBA stars, it makes more sense that superlative talents and personalities like Bird and Magic would provide the exception to the rule. Robinson works for this explanation as well. I will say that it must be hard being as loving or giving when your fame puts you under public scrutiny so often.
People born on Saturdays are supposed to be hard workers. Saturday held a bit of a different meaning when Sunday was your sole day of rest/prayer, and Saturday had to be that much busier in preparation. We see Saturday's prediction borne out in the NBA stars revealed to have been born on this day: Shane Battier and Chauncey Billups, both of whom were also born in September. An odd month for NBA players, and odder still that two of the three I came across would also fall under the Saturday category. If anything, it means the hard workers don't stand out as much. Remember, the thirty or so players I chose from at first were players who made all-nba teams, or who were in the higher reaches of my own ranking. It's not like it's at random. Still, perhaps I and those who vote for such accolades don't notice the guys who tend to be born on Saturday.
With this in mind, I set about looking for NBA players who weren't as heralded. I looked for teams that were strictly middle of the pack. It wasn't an easy distinction to seek out; you want to have guys you can talk about, y'know? I settled on looking at a role player on the 15th and 16th best teams in the league, according to standing. These ended up being east coast teams, so I also looked at similar west coast teams. The records were a bit disparate, but consider it an adjustment. In this manner, I chose to look at Kirk Hinrich of the Bulls, Donyell Marshall of the Sixers, Carl Landry of the Rockets, and Erick Dampier of the Mavs. I thought it was a nice cross section of talents/skills/dispositions. Turns out, according to the rhyme, not so much. Landry and Dampier were Mondays. Hinrich and Marshall were Fridays. Turns out Fridays aren't so rare. There's a problem, though. Whereas the stars seemed to fit the rhymes descriptors, these role players don't seem to. Marshall and Hinrich both seem like generous and lovable guys, but wouldn't Hinrich be better suited as a hard-working Saturday? Marshall seems more like a Tuesday, while we're at it: never the hero, though he's saved quite a few days for his teams. Landry looks like a Tuesday too, and it occured to me that all role players might seem to be overshadowed from the distance of fan-hood. Still, I couldn't let it go. Dampier, a fair face? Something just didn't add up.
So I looked up Tim Thomas birth day of the week. Saturday. And that does it. There's no way this rhyme can be an accurate predictor if Tim Thomas is supposdly a hard worker. Still, a lot of the stars seemed uncannily suited to their birth days. Of course it doesn't determine your fate, but perhaps it does determine to what pitch whatever fate you eke out will be played. Perhaps Tim Thomas works hard at scamming teams out of millions of dollars. I looked into the rhyme's portents further, but none of it makes sense after Tim Thomas. If you care: Brian Cook is a Thursday's child; Devean George is a Monday; Cedric Simmons is a Friday; and Kareem Rush is a Thursday.
But wasn't I supposed to be talking about something else? Oh yeah! 'Melo's number 16, and I wonder if I'm discounting him at all with that ranking. Am I letting him be Tuesday's child, despite the game that says he's fair of face, or even bonny and gay? Not sure. What I do know is that he's still the most important player on a very, very good Denver team. His numbers may be down, but they bely his greater commitment to rebounding and defense. Last season, he didn't rebound quite as much per game as he did in 07-08, but his rate was a bit better. In other words, he's not taking backward steps. Furthermore, he missed a bunch of games this past season. If he can keep consistent this season, he'll probably be even more dangerous. He gets it for ineffably having no questions heading into the offseason of 2010. Maybe it feels a bit like even Chris Bosh leapfrogged him in terms of importance for that reason, but it's a safe bet that impending free agency will be at least a small distraction for Bosh, Wade, and King James. Anthony has no such distraction, and therefore boosts his stock for 09-10. I think I've said enough.
OtB is counting down the days 'til the NBA 2009-10 season tips off by ranking the top 50 players in the league. On Thursday there are/were 26 days left.
Last offseason, I had Shane Battier ranked as 32nd most awesomest player in the league. I'm much smarter this year. Qualifying statements: 32 ain't nothing to sniff at; a 6 spot jump isn't exactly monumental; and...Shane Battier cannot be your star. Period. Or maybe all that is, as the kind would say it, bunk. Look, for all our refutations and wild gesticulations over the minutes and hours and weeks and months that make up a year, we're generally a bit smarter with the passing of time, when all is said and done. That said, and hopefully done, Michael Lewis' mammoth of a piece for the NY Times The No-Stats All-Star was one of the things that helped move us in that direction basketball-wise last season/this year.
Haven't read it? That's what links are for. The important knowledge goes: Lewis is the author of several books including The New New Thing about Silicon Valley and the game changer Moneyball about the way baseball teams are funded; The No-Stats All-Star is, of course, about Shane Battier and his contributions ahem! outside the boxscore; the article dropped in the midst of the February furor that always transpires around the NBA trade deadline; it targeted Kobe as Battier's ahem! ahem! hapless victim; and his Mamba-ness as not pleased, quietly.
All that is the soap opera stuff that often surrounds real games being played, which we're not quite ready to focus on yet. Two baker's dozens left, y'all. And, let me just join the ranks of those in the blogosphere expressing enthusiasm and boy-child anticipatory energy for the season to c'mon! c'mon! start already. What we care about for now is how it made us look at Battier differently, all of course as a lens for looking at the game differently, looking at how we look at the game differently, i.e. hello advanced stats.
Battier's long made his reputation as a defensive hound, but he's no immovable object as are the guy's who generally win the DPoY award. Neither does Battier hail from the same dojo of defensive prowess as Bruce Bowen or newly-former team mate Artest. Artest is a bulldog, but let's not linger too Luc Longley on the idea of Ron Ron and dogs. Too unsavory. Bowen, on the other hand, has been considered by many a dirty player. I don't necessarily subscribe to that thought-discipline. To me, Bowen is like a rock in a river. He's always there, where the stream of play seems to take you, and he's frustratingly planted in that spot you're supposed to move through long before you. Chris Paul is, I think, the next appostle of this kung-fu. Battier, however, cannot be regarded on "the other hand." There are no hands for describing his play. He's like the river itself. He's everywhere at once, swirling about you, tossing you in ways you don't even know. Or, failing that, he's more like a net than a rock. You think you can still float confidently down court/stream towards your goal, but all your flailing and palming violations unpenalized don't get you any nearer to scoring. You're effectively immobilized. Trust me. I skimmed the Lewis article. And I played for the Grizz in those Battier-Gasol post-season bound "golden" years.
These are actually the guys Ben's hanging out with right now
Okay, facetiousness reigns the day, but someone had to segue to talking about Battier's sucess as part of near-contending teams. Is the jump from 32 to 26 significant? As I discussed a few days back, the top 30 players in the league seems like it should signify the top 30 guys you want leading a team. Not exactly so. I think that conclusion is pretty obvious, but let's think about it. The ideal league business-wise (I think...I'm an English major for crying out loud, though. What do I know about business?) would be composed of probably 6-8 contenders and probably 6-8 bottom feeders who are rebuilding (though generally they just suck). This leaves a solid 16-ish teams vying for 8-10 playoff spots not occupied by the set-in-stone perennials. Decent competition across the board, in terms of standings. So, when talking about the top 30 guys in the league, how might they be distributed? Well, with exceptions, the worst teams in the league barely have one such athlete. The best teams in the league generally have at least two. Thus, when we get to the top 15-ish players on this list, we're looking at the top top-dogs. In other words, shelf this thought for 11 more days.
Back to Battier. Is he the top guy on a top team? Probably not. But one of the nicely salient points Lewis makes about Battier which doesn't involve delving deeply into advanced stats (sometimes being smarter doesn't mean being more willing and able to put in the brain power) is the results his presence has on the win column for his teams. It took him awhile to impact the Grizz, but by his third season they were doing what no other Grizz ensemble has done before or since: make the playoffs. They didn't win any games, but still it was the best 3 years in team history. In 2006, Battier was sent to Houston for Stromile Swift and the draft pick that would be Rudy Gay. That season, the Grizz went from 49 and 33 with the No-Stat All-Star to 22 and 60. The Rockets returned to 50 win form in 06-07 when they picked up Battier. Sure they'd suffered injuries to both Yao Ming and T-Mac in 05-06, but when has that not been the case? Look at the last three years of basketball in Houston and you'll see Battier is the unifying factor on those 50 plus win teams.
He might not be the star of your favorite team or even the charismatic kook you love to hate on your favorite rival team, and he may not win any Defensive Player of the Year awards (but let's hope so, and consquently realize that we're hoping for a revolution in how these awards are given out, a smartening of the award recipient selection process, lord knows it's time), but he is the tech editor for NBA sponsored HOOP magazine. Sweet.
The Lakers and Rockets skipped the pleasantries Monday night and went right for the jugular of playoff intensity tropes. Though the Rockets won, the Lakers drew first blood. Above is a video of Shane Battier getting a Machine elbow to the noggin. Hey Shane, the way to take a charge ain't with your face. Those nuts n' bolts ain't so glorious when they're attached to a greasy Slovenian, are they Shiz-ane? Nor does being a glue guy keep your dome together, huh? Puns intended, but I do feel some remorse. It's quite incredible that the refs didn't see the blood and Battier had to wave it in their faces. It did look strikingly similar to the color of the Rockets' jerseys.
Your second vid for tonight is of Kobe taking out the knee of a big man not on his team. All kidding aside, it's a relief to see Yao didn't sustain any serious damage. All kidding back at center stage, these "Where Amazing Happens" videos are getting a bit out of hand. It's kind of like that Dwayne Wade commercial. The point is he gets back up, but you can't keep from noticing how gratuitous the getting down for this business is. And seriously? A Willis Reed moment already? It's the first game of the second round. C'mon, people.
