Expectations / advice for the Bucks

[Mike G]

Giannis just 73rd on assists per 100 possessions.

Well, you're including players with 3 or 5 total minutes; and that's still in the top 20-25% of all players.
Of players going at least 30 mpg -- there are 91 -- he's 22nd in Ast/100 and 16th in Reb/100. Only Westbrook is higher in both.
He's also 1st in Pts/100 (RW is 29th), 20th in Stl, 33rd in Blk. He's well above median in everything.

[Crow]

Except team plus minus on the court, which is still negative for season. But a plus 25 (or so) with Henson over Maker last night helped. Enough? Time will tell.

18th place for Bucks on SRS. Classic nowhereville.

[Crow]

If Maker's team plus minus doesn't become tolerable in few weeks, next step may be to confine him to garbage time or take him completely out of rotation when Monroe gets back. That or not worry about making playoffs and make development the main priority and consider trades to go younger, cheaper, less locked in for future.

This season the other players doing well are low usage shooters. If you need the ball or play inside the Giannis show appears to be either not helping or hurting you.

[Mike G]

Except team plus minus on the court, which is still negative for season.

According to this page --
https://www.basketball-reference.com/pl ... n-off/2018
-- the Bucks are +4.3/100 when Giannis is on the court. Versus -11 when he's off, that's 15.3 pts/100 better when on court.
Last year, it reads 2.9 pts/100 better, on vs. off. And in playoffs, 10.4 better.

Is "team plus minus" something else?

[Crow]

I was using this http://www.dougstats.com/17-18/MilwaukeeBucks.html

I was just looking at on court, raw per game, not efficiencies.

Something is off. Not sure what.

Use Doug's when other sites won't load properly or or too busy to read easily.

[Crow]

This BRef page agrees with Doug & me.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/pl ... melog/2018
Data on far right adds to -3 for season.

BRef notified of discrepancy.

I tried to check NBA.com, nbawowy, pbpstats.com but none would load properly on my phone. Maybe someone can check them.

The BRef table for last season you cited disagrees with 82games.com.

[Crow]

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2126 ... etokounmpo

We overdid the Giannis show and MIGHT now try to optimize team at least a little more over just 1 guy...

[Mike G]

So there is this page:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/te ... 8/lineups/
And 5 lineups show up in the 4-man group without Giannis.
They are also among the Bucks' top six 5-man lineups. So we can subtract, multiply, and divide, and generate what these 4 guys do without Giannis in the lineup.
Scoring rates are team +/- per 100 possessions.

Code: Select all

Mil 9 Gms    all min.   w Giannis  wo Giannis
. lineup     Min  Sco   Min  Sco    Min  Sco   dif
Br Ma Mi Sn   83   -9    75    0     8   -90   +90
Br He Mi Sn   57   21    50   26     8   -12   +38
De Ma Mi Sn   27  -10    20   -8     7   -14   + 6
De He Te Va   21   46    10   78    11    18   +60
De He Mi Sn   21   20    12   60     9   -35   +95

Brogdon, Maker, Middleton, Snell, Henson, Dellavedova, Teletovic
Just 43 minutes represent the without-Giannis samples. But about half of Giannis' season minutes are contained here.
Just one of the top 3 lineups with him are positive. And one is positive in his absence. But the differences are striking.
These 167 minutes by Giannis account for +52 points for the Bucks. If Doug's numbers are right, this is all offset by 164 minutes of dink lineups?

[Crow]

I'll look at this sometime in next few days.

[Crow]

Without Giannis the Bucks this season are a lot worse on offense and defense, moreso defense. Last season they were virtually unchanged with /without on both sides of court. There have been some changes in Bucks roster but I don't think is a sudden without Giannis talent issue now as much as it is small sample randomness and / or mismanagement of lineups and /or not enough focus on how to behave without the super dominant player.

This is 5th straight year Bucks have lower assisted FG % with Giannis on than off.

This season the Bucks are also fouling like crazy as a team with him on the court.


P.S. 82 game data is available for this season.

[Crow]

The Maker with starters lineup has improved significantly recently. With Henson still better. But early trends can see runs in different directions. Larger samples are better when they arrive and until even larger arrive.

[Crow]

Bucks have very good offense and very bad defense on average. W-L profile says they can come out on top of good defenses at an acceptable rate but good offenses defeat them at a high rate. Borderline playoff team, likely to lose first round.

8 of top 9 most used lineups are positive but 58% of total minutes go to smaller dink lineups where they perform average or a little below. Could probably improve with more lineup concentration.

[Crow]

My comments about Bucks from July 2016 on first page of this thread held up pretty well. Down on Parker, trading Monroe, factor issues. They fixed the getting to line issue, tamped down the turnover issue but added new issues with offensive rebounding and fouling.

Didn't criticize Delly immediately but he sure flamed out on those who promoted / signed him. Was there a RPM case for Delly? Compared to MCW yeah. As a value play? Kinda but not strong.

Team assisted fg% with Giannis on vs. off? A single point better on now. Not enough. Issue identified 2 years ago here but not fixed enough.

[Crow]

[quote="Crow"]... This team is far from being fixed. Years and multiple trades away. And probably a new coach before they get to second round, someday. (quote]
July 2016

[Crow]

I missed on the size of the rise of Giannis especially on RPM... but kinda got right the concern about his impact on team winning, at least from a winning significantly, meaningfully more standpoint. The two things seem contradictory but how much of the rise of Giannis was taking box score stats AND RPM value from teammates? A lot. Building a star up is easier than building up a team.