The race for the 2020 NBA title

[fpliii]

I ran 2016-17 RAPM for the entire season with off/def splits

Sorry to bother you, would you be willing to share a doc with said set?

[Crow]

Celtics' draft pick trade suggests increasing chance of sticking with Isaiah. Sign hin for the mega-deal and they probably don't get a title during his time, imo.

[Crow]

If the Celtics' do win a title, they might send a ring to Billy King, Ryan McDonough and others who helped. McHale and Presti should have gotten 2010 rings.

[jgoldstein34]

If the Celtics stick with IT, they have no chance of winning a title. That contract will kill them.

The Nuggets design is Jokic at the high post with lots of off-ball cuts. Similar to the Kevin Love T-Wolves. Nuggets have some decent perimeter defenders to help funnel players to Jokic. Jokic is a big dude so if he's in the right place, he can be a good deterrent, just hard for him to move.

[Nathan]

Design has the layers above but I guess the basic design now is run it thru Jokic and get either an inside bucket / foul, an open outside shot or a pass to a cutter. They are better on offensive efficiency than I realized, far better than Milwaukee or New Orleans.

Malone got positive results on 34% of his 588 lineups. Not terrible. But only 3 lineups used over 1 minute per game for season and none over 3 minutes? And no lineup uses over 20 games? That drives me nuts. Too much coaching intervention, not enough results to justify it. Maybe you could do that this season but that is not a lineup management design I would support going forward.

Worth noting in particular is their improvement on offense after Jokic moved into the starting lineup on Dec 15. Through Dec 14, they had just the 18th best offense at 102.7 pts/100. From Dec 15 on, they had the best offense in the league at 113.3 pts/100 (Warriors were second at 112.9).

[shadow]

Here's the 2016-17 NPI RAPM with off/def splits for regular season & playoffs. This includes adjustments for HCA and the 'up by X' affect. When I compared my 2015-16 NPI RAPM to the one J.E. posted to twitter last year I got an R^2 of 0.96, so I think the matchup files I'm using are pretty solid.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 6k/pubhtml

I made a correction to the possession estimate used in the statsnba package which generates the matchup files. This had a slight affect on the ratings, which is why you see Jokic 4th overall now instead of 6th as I mentioned earlier. The original possession estimate formula was not properly accounting for team rebounds and was overestimating the number of possessions. I changed it to use the basketball reference formula for possession estimates which is more accurate per NylonCalc.

[fpliii]

Very cool, thank you shadow

[Crow]

If Galinari leaves, and I've recently read some Nuggets stuff that expects it, 8 of their 10 biggest minute lineups evaporate. If Nelson leaves 6 of the 10 are done. Chandler, 4. From a lineup perspective the Nuggets are going to be pretty brand new, due to few even tiny minute lineups and low survivability of them.

[Crow]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/n ... 103022394/

"There was a process that we went through. It may seem like a surprising outcome. I've been asked that question by other people," co-owner Wes Edens said as Horst smiled next to him. "At the end of it all, it was never really a surprise for us."

Re: an employee with same job title for 9 years.

[Crow]

Lowry to Denver? Just a thought, not a rumor (that I know of).

[jgoldstein34]

Rumor that Lowry is done with the Raptors. Denver is one of the only destinations I can think of.

[JoshEngleman]

I still think he could work for Philly. It could probably help lengthen his career, as he could dial back the MPG a bit, but the Fultz deal probably takes him off of the table. The Knicks would work, but there's no way he'd want to go there. Same goes for the Kings. If I'm Denver, I think I prefer Millsap to Lowry, but that depends on what you do with the excess guards. What a weird situation, though. Lowry is a top-20 player (I'd personally narrow that range but I think that would land in the consensus) and its really hard to find a logical landing spot for him.

[Nathan]

Millsap could actually be an excellent mentor to Jokic, I think. Surround those two with long, lanky 3-and-D type perimeter players and you have a very interesting team going forward.

[Crow]

I like Millsap a lot but I don't think I'd pay him what he is likely to get at his age and at Denver's development stage. He is a peak now move. They aren't ready for that.

Lowry is too but I might take him if he'd come. He is probably going elsewhere but I'd see if it is a real option.

[jgoldstein34]

I don't want to be paying either at the end of their next deals, but I do agree that I'd rather pay Lowry than Millsap. Just think he'll age a bit better, better suited to become a 6th man one day.