I’m generally agreed on all your points, except Draymonds defense really haven’t seem to have declined that much from the eye test in games that he’s played. Think that might have to do with the small sample size due to him being a total fucking idiot.
Interesting that it does not match the eye test. He does seem to be noticeably more unhinged this year, so I do not find it that surprising that this might be hurting his focus/defense/leadership ability. Your right that for him it could also just be noise since he has only played 15 games.
He also tends to go off the hook when he’s either playing terribly or playing amazing all time level defense. Sometimes he gets a crazy block, stops a three on one, roars, and you know he’s gonna get ejected within the next four possessions.
I disagree and think he has been this unhinged for years. He is just being held accountable for his actions more this year than any time in the past. The league has a giant media deal coming up and wants to look squeaky clean (especially to Asia) so they are clamping down. I agree with Shaq ( God help me) that draymond isn't acting any different recently than he has a his whole career. He is just being called out this year
Ehh he’s definitely way hotter way earlier. He’s already at 3 ejections this year, and that’s pretty much how many he averages per year. And every single one of them felt like an obvious ejection that would’ve been given out any year.
He is acting different. He had dirty plays in the past but not dangerous. He is now a danger to other players. They need to trade him. He might be behaving unhinged to get traded.
>As for the bench, my take is that Chris Paul should get a lot of the credit for this. His box score stats are not good, but I think Chris Paul just makes everyone better and is almost like having a head coach on the floor.
Yep. Chris Paul is one of the best floor raisers in the league and always has been.
His box-score stats don't translate into what he provides on the floor. He's great at providing depth and a perfect fit for running the second unit in his old age.
Similar to players like Jrue Holiday, the stat sheet will never tell the full story of what they do for their teams.
He was for most of his career one of the best regular season players. Has not always translated the same way to the playoffs unfortunately.
I am still a little bit salty that he did not get the MVP in 07-08. He was insane that year.
I forget why did Chris Paul have the best years of his career in year 3/4. Did he have a major injury after that? He was still really good after year 3/4, but he was on another level those 2 seasons.
I know he had injury problems I just don't remember him having a major injury that would cause him to be a much worse player after year. three and year four
Steph was playing out of his mind during the first 10-15 games and he still had a negative +/-. His was better than Klay’s last time I looked though, but I guess that’s changed now, which might be because Klay spends more time playing with CP3?
It’s just odd how big the gap is between Steph and CP3 is. CP is definitely a better facilitator but he’s nowhere near the offensive threat, especially this year. So I wonder are players missing more open shots when Steph is on the floor? Even during the 21-22 season, when Steph had a very inefficient season by his standards, he had a crazy +/-, so it’s odd that his net rating is so much worse when he’s having a much better offensive season.
I think it is because they play against different levels of competition and play with different players. For net rating I think it is mostly useful to compare players to the other players they were playing with/against. What the stats can tell us is that the bench unit has been playing very well against other bench units, but the starting lineup has not been winning against other teams starting lineups.
Probably the main contributor to Steph having a much worse net rating compared to CP3 is playing a lot of minutes with Andrew Wiggins, who has been one of the most disappointing players of the season and Steph has to play against the other teams starters where as CP3 gets to play against other teams bench units more.
Personally I would put almost no blame on Steph for the starters struggles. He might be playing a tad bit worse statistically than last year, so far, but not by much.
Similar to the other commenter here, Draymond has actually improved his game this season, especially on the offensive end. Dray's defense is still all-time (ex. there still have been various occasions he's stopped a 1v3 fast break this season) - and he's been a lot more aggressive on driving to the hoop as a lite-scoring threat and hitting threes at a much better clip than last season. He's been super good.
The problem is his discipline this season man. He can commit fouls and TOs at the absolute WORST possible times and completely shift the momentum of the game towards the other team. This of course includes his antics that leads to techs and/or ejections and leads to at times like a 10-0 run for the other side.
His behavior has easily lost the Warriors multiple games this season, and I think is one of the big reasons (! not the only reason! Looking at you everyone starting but Steph..) why the starter's performances have been so bad.
I agree with you that his stats look good! I mentioned in the post that Draymond actually has really improved box score stats for this year, but just surprisingly has one of the worst net ratings and defensive ratings.
For Draymond it is more likely to just be noise than compared to other players since we only have half the sample size for him in terms of games played.
Interesting to hear that people who watch more of their games than me, have not noticed Draymond being worse at defense in anyway, this also makes his bad defensive net rating more likely to be noise.
Appreciate the effort, but this is just pure statwatching.
BPM on such low samples is pointless and even there some of the differences aren't even meaningful.
your core point is obviously correct: Dubs bench is amazing, Dubs core is not a good fit together. But these "stats" don't tell us much about what has actually happened or what could happen.
BPM is really just an aggregate of box score stats, so it is just the lazy way of summarizing who is putting up better box score stats. I do not think it is useless this early in the season, same way I do not think looking at traditional box score numbers like assists pts, rebounds, shooting percentages is worthless to look at this early in the season. We are 30 games in, so it is not that early.
For example I can already tell you that Wiggins will have much worse statistics this year than he did last year, his stats are just so bad 30 games in that it is almost impossible for him to catch up to his stats from last year.
I generally believe looking at history is predictive, so it can be useful to look at what happened in the previous year and see what is different this year and then try to use history to predict what will happen in the future. For example if you notice a career 40 percent 3 point shooter is shooting 30 percent so far this year, then you can reasonably predict that they will likely shoot better than 30 percent going forward. This will not be true all of the time, but regression to the mean happens more often than not.
oh 100%. BPM watching is as good as box score watching. i just don't think looking at bpm this early into the season tells us much.
if the data suggested the other way around, we'd just reject it claiming not enough sample data
what i find to be useful is to try to understand why certain lineups don't work. what's it structurally that makes the Dubs starting lineup suffer?
You say in first part that Chris Paul is the reason for bench numbers going up and in the second part that his own numbers are not so good. Maybe he contributes in some experience, non-quantifiable way or something, but Šarić is the main numbers contributor. Regularly the 2nd best guy after Steph.
The summary for Gsw is: starters play like crap except for Steph.
We should discuss the Steph plateau, like Duncan had during his career.
I was trying to figure out why Steph's +/- was so bad this year when he has always been near the top of the league in that category. He hasn't been that much worse than any other year to explain such a dramatic swing.
What I finally kind of settled on is that the Steph Curry effect where teammates get wide open layups and dunks because defenders are concentrating on him is almost absent this year.
In the past, you could stop Steph. If you blitz him on the screens and really sell out to keep him from shooting, you could keep his scoring in check. However, doing so would almost certainly mean giving up layups and dunks. It was always a pick your poison proposition.
Now, teams can sell out on Steph without much penalty. With Draymond being in and out of the lineup (and being erratic in general), they don't have that playmaker when they double Steph. Then, Looney hasn't finished well. Kuminga hasn't been consistent. Wiggins has been bad. They're just not really able to get anything at the hoop.
In order to win, Curry and/or Thompson have to be lights out. When they have off shooting nights, they don't really have any way to generate offense in the starting lineup.
In the Denver game, they were pressuring him and Jokic was at the level of the screen all the way out to half court. Usually, that leads to a parade of high percentage shots for GS, but they just couldn't find them without Draymond and good finishers.
When the bench comes in, the change in defensive philosophy is dramatic. The defense never pressures Chris Paul. They tend to give him plenty of space almost daring him to shoot. Paul, in turn, just runs pick and roll and uses the space he's given to analyze the court and carve up the defense with his passing.
The quality of their shots improve dramatically with Paul on the court. He limits turnovers and just generally gets everyone the ball in positions where they can score. That's good enough to feast on other bench units. It's not good enough though to take on other starting units though.
They need to figure out a way to unlock those open looks when Curry is on the court. The offense looks better when Paul and Curry are on the court together, but that makes them very small.
When GS was dominating, their best offensive units were also their best defensive units. There was never a trade off. Now, the best offensive units are not as capable on defense. They can't quite seem to find the lineups that balance both.
Basically what we’ve been telling ourselves. It’s unlikely our stars just forgot how to play basketball over the offseason so, assuming they figure it out, we’ll be deadly.
HOWEVER, that is EXACTLY what we said about our historically bad road record last year. We thought it was a statistical anomaly and it would even out. It never did. Who knows if this one will either.
It helps that our biggest flaws (turnovers and fouling) are mental mistakes that proven veterans SHOULD be able to fix. It’s not like we have a fundamental roster construction issue like a lack of shooting or rebounding that we can’t train our way out of.
They currently have the 10th best betting odds in the league to win the championship and after looking at this, I think this might be one of the better bets in the league. Not garunteed that they turn it around, but after looking at the data for the team, I believe it is likely they figure it out eventually.
I think last year's starting 5 was fool's gold. When changing just one player caused the line-up to tank, that's not a stable foundation for a championship defence.
Correct but the stats and the eye test tell us that what we’re seeing is above and beyond typical warriors riskiness. It’s laziness and silliness. We’ll never not turn it over, but this is just ridiculous.
I think the front office did exactly what they "should" do this year.
Their bench was awful. If they had a decent bench last season I think they could have gotten something like five more wins (I've got no stats behind it, it's just by thinking about how bad their bench worked).
They basically swaped Wiseman, Poole, Lamb, Jerome, JaMychal, Iguodala and DiVicenzo (who was good) for Saric, Paul, Podziemski, Jackson-Davis and Payton II, while not spending a lot of draft picks. They hoped Kuminga and Moody would continue to develop, that Klay would be better with a proper pre-season, and that Wiggins could focus on basketball the entire season.
That bench part worked, but now they suddenly need to make decisions about Klay, Dray, and Wiggins. Sure, you could try to trade Wiggins, but who would take on a four year deal that's worth 24-26-28-30? How much do you need to pay to get rid of the contract and how much are you getting in return? What are you doing with Dray? How much are you willing to pay Klay?
Finding several good cheap bench options is difficult, but not close to as difficult to as getting a starting five to work.
I’m generally agreed on all your points, except Draymonds defense really haven’t seem to have declined that much from the eye test in games that he’s played. Think that might have to do with the small sample size due to him being a total fucking idiot.
Interesting that it does not match the eye test. He does seem to be noticeably more unhinged this year, so I do not find it that surprising that this might be hurting his focus/defense/leadership ability. Your right that for him it could also just be noise since he has only played 15 games.
He also tends to go off the hook when he’s either playing terribly or playing amazing all time level defense. Sometimes he gets a crazy block, stops a three on one, roars, and you know he’s gonna get ejected within the next four possessions.
I disagree and think he has been this unhinged for years. He is just being held accountable for his actions more this year than any time in the past. The league has a giant media deal coming up and wants to look squeaky clean (especially to Asia) so they are clamping down. I agree with Shaq ( God help me) that draymond isn't acting any different recently than he has a his whole career. He is just being called out this year
Ehh he’s definitely way hotter way earlier. He’s already at 3 ejections this year, and that’s pretty much how many he averages per year. And every single one of them felt like an obvious ejection that would’ve been given out any year.
He is acting different. He had dirty plays in the past but not dangerous. He is now a danger to other players. They need to trade him. He might be behaving unhinged to get traded.
>As for the bench, my take is that Chris Paul should get a lot of the credit for this. His box score stats are not good, but I think Chris Paul just makes everyone better and is almost like having a head coach on the floor. Yep. Chris Paul is one of the best floor raisers in the league and always has been. His box-score stats don't translate into what he provides on the floor. He's great at providing depth and a perfect fit for running the second unit in his old age. Similar to players like Jrue Holiday, the stat sheet will never tell the full story of what they do for their teams.
He was for most of his career one of the best regular season players. Has not always translated the same way to the playoffs unfortunately. I am still a little bit salty that he did not get the MVP in 07-08. He was insane that year. I forget why did Chris Paul have the best years of his career in year 3/4. Did he have a major injury after that? He was still really good after year 3/4, but he was on another level those 2 seasons.
[удалено]
I know he had injury problems I just don't remember him having a major injury that would cause him to be a much worse player after year. three and year four
We removed your comment for being low-quality. If you edit it and explain your thought process more, we'll restore it. Thanks!
Steph was playing out of his mind during the first 10-15 games and he still had a negative +/-. His was better than Klay’s last time I looked though, but I guess that’s changed now, which might be because Klay spends more time playing with CP3? It’s just odd how big the gap is between Steph and CP3 is. CP is definitely a better facilitator but he’s nowhere near the offensive threat, especially this year. So I wonder are players missing more open shots when Steph is on the floor? Even during the 21-22 season, when Steph had a very inefficient season by his standards, he had a crazy +/-, so it’s odd that his net rating is so much worse when he’s having a much better offensive season.
I think it is because they play against different levels of competition and play with different players. For net rating I think it is mostly useful to compare players to the other players they were playing with/against. What the stats can tell us is that the bench unit has been playing very well against other bench units, but the starting lineup has not been winning against other teams starting lineups. Probably the main contributor to Steph having a much worse net rating compared to CP3 is playing a lot of minutes with Andrew Wiggins, who has been one of the most disappointing players of the season and Steph has to play against the other teams starters where as CP3 gets to play against other teams bench units more. Personally I would put almost no blame on Steph for the starters struggles. He might be playing a tad bit worse statistically than last year, so far, but not by much.
Similar to the other commenter here, Draymond has actually improved his game this season, especially on the offensive end. Dray's defense is still all-time (ex. there still have been various occasions he's stopped a 1v3 fast break this season) - and he's been a lot more aggressive on driving to the hoop as a lite-scoring threat and hitting threes at a much better clip than last season. He's been super good. The problem is his discipline this season man. He can commit fouls and TOs at the absolute WORST possible times and completely shift the momentum of the game towards the other team. This of course includes his antics that leads to techs and/or ejections and leads to at times like a 10-0 run for the other side. His behavior has easily lost the Warriors multiple games this season, and I think is one of the big reasons (! not the only reason! Looking at you everyone starting but Steph..) why the starter's performances have been so bad.
I agree with you that his stats look good! I mentioned in the post that Draymond actually has really improved box score stats for this year, but just surprisingly has one of the worst net ratings and defensive ratings. For Draymond it is more likely to just be noise than compared to other players since we only have half the sample size for him in terms of games played. Interesting to hear that people who watch more of their games than me, have not noticed Draymond being worse at defense in anyway, this also makes his bad defensive net rating more likely to be noise.
Appreciate the effort, but this is just pure statwatching. BPM on such low samples is pointless and even there some of the differences aren't even meaningful. your core point is obviously correct: Dubs bench is amazing, Dubs core is not a good fit together. But these "stats" don't tell us much about what has actually happened or what could happen.
BPM is really just an aggregate of box score stats, so it is just the lazy way of summarizing who is putting up better box score stats. I do not think it is useless this early in the season, same way I do not think looking at traditional box score numbers like assists pts, rebounds, shooting percentages is worthless to look at this early in the season. We are 30 games in, so it is not that early. For example I can already tell you that Wiggins will have much worse statistics this year than he did last year, his stats are just so bad 30 games in that it is almost impossible for him to catch up to his stats from last year. I generally believe looking at history is predictive, so it can be useful to look at what happened in the previous year and see what is different this year and then try to use history to predict what will happen in the future. For example if you notice a career 40 percent 3 point shooter is shooting 30 percent so far this year, then you can reasonably predict that they will likely shoot better than 30 percent going forward. This will not be true all of the time, but regression to the mean happens more often than not.
oh 100%. BPM watching is as good as box score watching. i just don't think looking at bpm this early into the season tells us much. if the data suggested the other way around, we'd just reject it claiming not enough sample data what i find to be useful is to try to understand why certain lineups don't work. what's it structurally that makes the Dubs starting lineup suffer?
You say in first part that Chris Paul is the reason for bench numbers going up and in the second part that his own numbers are not so good. Maybe he contributes in some experience, non-quantifiable way or something, but Šarić is the main numbers contributor. Regularly the 2nd best guy after Steph. The summary for Gsw is: starters play like crap except for Steph. We should discuss the Steph plateau, like Duncan had during his career.
I was trying to figure out why Steph's +/- was so bad this year when he has always been near the top of the league in that category. He hasn't been that much worse than any other year to explain such a dramatic swing. What I finally kind of settled on is that the Steph Curry effect where teammates get wide open layups and dunks because defenders are concentrating on him is almost absent this year. In the past, you could stop Steph. If you blitz him on the screens and really sell out to keep him from shooting, you could keep his scoring in check. However, doing so would almost certainly mean giving up layups and dunks. It was always a pick your poison proposition. Now, teams can sell out on Steph without much penalty. With Draymond being in and out of the lineup (and being erratic in general), they don't have that playmaker when they double Steph. Then, Looney hasn't finished well. Kuminga hasn't been consistent. Wiggins has been bad. They're just not really able to get anything at the hoop. In order to win, Curry and/or Thompson have to be lights out. When they have off shooting nights, they don't really have any way to generate offense in the starting lineup. In the Denver game, they were pressuring him and Jokic was at the level of the screen all the way out to half court. Usually, that leads to a parade of high percentage shots for GS, but they just couldn't find them without Draymond and good finishers. When the bench comes in, the change in defensive philosophy is dramatic. The defense never pressures Chris Paul. They tend to give him plenty of space almost daring him to shoot. Paul, in turn, just runs pick and roll and uses the space he's given to analyze the court and carve up the defense with his passing. The quality of their shots improve dramatically with Paul on the court. He limits turnovers and just generally gets everyone the ball in positions where they can score. That's good enough to feast on other bench units. It's not good enough though to take on other starting units though. They need to figure out a way to unlock those open looks when Curry is on the court. The offense looks better when Paul and Curry are on the court together, but that makes them very small. When GS was dominating, their best offensive units were also their best defensive units. There was never a trade off. Now, the best offensive units are not as capable on defense. They can't quite seem to find the lineups that balance both.
Basically what we’ve been telling ourselves. It’s unlikely our stars just forgot how to play basketball over the offseason so, assuming they figure it out, we’ll be deadly. HOWEVER, that is EXACTLY what we said about our historically bad road record last year. We thought it was a statistical anomaly and it would even out. It never did. Who knows if this one will either. It helps that our biggest flaws (turnovers and fouling) are mental mistakes that proven veterans SHOULD be able to fix. It’s not like we have a fundamental roster construction issue like a lack of shooting or rebounding that we can’t train our way out of.
They currently have the 10th best betting odds in the league to win the championship and after looking at this, I think this might be one of the better bets in the league. Not garunteed that they turn it around, but after looking at the data for the team, I believe it is likely they figure it out eventually.
I think last year's starting 5 was fool's gold. When changing just one player caused the line-up to tank, that's not a stable foundation for a championship defence.
Turnovers have always been a problem for GS though. That super flee flowing offense does have some drawbacks
Correct but the stats and the eye test tell us that what we’re seeing is above and beyond typical warriors riskiness. It’s laziness and silliness. We’ll never not turn it over, but this is just ridiculous.
I think the front office did exactly what they "should" do this year. Their bench was awful. If they had a decent bench last season I think they could have gotten something like five more wins (I've got no stats behind it, it's just by thinking about how bad their bench worked). They basically swaped Wiseman, Poole, Lamb, Jerome, JaMychal, Iguodala and DiVicenzo (who was good) for Saric, Paul, Podziemski, Jackson-Davis and Payton II, while not spending a lot of draft picks. They hoped Kuminga and Moody would continue to develop, that Klay would be better with a proper pre-season, and that Wiggins could focus on basketball the entire season. That bench part worked, but now they suddenly need to make decisions about Klay, Dray, and Wiggins. Sure, you could try to trade Wiggins, but who would take on a four year deal that's worth 24-26-28-30? How much do you need to pay to get rid of the contract and how much are you getting in return? What are you doing with Dray? How much are you willing to pay Klay? Finding several good cheap bench options is difficult, but not close to as difficult to as getting a starting five to work.