APBRmetrics

Otis Smith made some moves in a bunch early that turned out good and had some good years because of it but he has made a number of bad moves recently. Reminds me of Dumars' cycle, which may or may not be the typical cycle. How much was luck early and late vs managerial talent; and how much was late hubris vs confronting a different challenge (maintaining a good team with more limited tools available instead of building one with more degrees of freedom)?

For GMs with at least 5 or perhaps 8+ years experience it might be interesting to compare how they did on wins in year x+1, 2, 3... when wins in year x was 30, 40, 50+ compared to the industry averages.

Crow wrote:Yi was second best on 1 year traditional APM for the 2009-10 Nets.

4th best on team for that metric for 2010-11 APM for the Wizards and maybe 6th (at most) on Jerry's RAPM.

Yi was awful for Washington. I know for a stat guy I'm about to blaspheme, but I don't care what any numbers say. The guy wasn't anything resembling a good NBA player. Superficially, he looks like he might be able to play -- he's tall and mobile and reasonably athletic. He has a nice looking stroke on his jumper. But he's awful. No toughness. Little strength. Disappears for loooooooooooong stretches of the game. He has very little inside game so he's a jump-shooter. Except, that his pet shot is the long two -- he doesn't have 3pt range. Plus, he's not much on the boards, he's not a good defender, and he's not a creative passer. The only reason to play him is the "lucky shirt" theory.

Yi is an example of a first round pick (a high one at that) who has played at about the level of a replacement player his entire career. He showed very little improvement in boxscore stats. His year to year RAPM improvement was probably worth at least considering... but since it was still bad even in 2009-10 and nothing else was good including the visual record, I agree that it was not an adequate basis to like him much.

I will say that Yi might be more valuable in international ball. I'd have to rewatch some tape on him or something, but the long NBA 2pt attempt might be a 3pt attempt in international ball. Shooting 39-40% on threes is good. On a 2pt attempt, it hurts.

Anyone want to add any updates? I might later.

Thunder significantly improved their 3 point game from last season, the Lakers' got significantly worse. Lakers second lowest at shots at the rim. Doesn't seem likely that they get that far with the 15th best offense and that shot distribution. Lakers 3rd highest on shots from 3-9 feet but only hitting 43.5% so those are terrible shots. Bynum, Gasol and Bryant are all in the top 15 from these deceiving but bad distance. Lakers only 11th on FTAs so it is not like the short mid-range emphasis is really paying off big that way either.

Of the 4 lineups that seemed worth emphasizing in Washington (given what they had to worth with)

Wall-Young-Lewis-Blatche-McGee was terrible after being decent the year before.

Wall-Young-Lewis-Booker-Blatche never got used at all (unless I missed it)

Wall-Young-Singleton-Blatche-McGee was terrible (like most of their big minute lineups)

Mack-Crawford-Lewis-Booker-McGee never got used at all.

I don't know how the 2 not used would have faired but it shows that despite using hundreds of lineups coaches can miss trying some, some that might make sense.


So far Hilario lineups seem to be generally working.

Elton Brand of the Sixers has gone 7 games, some 220 minutes, without getting a FTA.
He's had 1 FTA in 9 games, over 280 min. In that time, he's attempted 96 FG.

His FGA/36 have dropped slowly from a high of 16.7 in 2006, to 12.4 this year.
His FTA/36 in the same interval are down from 6.6 to 2.1

How can a guy who works near the basket and is generally about the 3rd offensive option never get fouled?
At least part of it may be due to Philly's offensive philosophy. Hawes gets even fewer FTA, Vucevic half as many (1.0/36)

Their team .159 FT/FGA ratio is the lowest in the 3-point era, beating out 2006 Phx, another good team.
2012 Atl, SAS, and GSW also place among the 11 lowest since 1989.
The median W% of the 100 lowest FT/FGA is .439
The NBA avg of 22.7 FTA per game is lowest ever, next being 23.8 in 2001-02.

Through Jan., Philly averaged 19+ FTA/G, and since then its 16.2
Record in those intervals: 15-6 vs 13-17

At home it's 17.3 FTA/G, on the road 18.0 . I think this is quite rare to get fewer FT at home.
Brand got 2 FT last night.

We will see if an average defense and win a title this year. If not, the title will shift to the east.