Posted by Rob Mahoney on October 28, 2011 under Commentary | 
From the mouths of lockout negotiators themselves, today is a big’un. There are no arbitrary deadlines to be concerned with just yet. There are no threats or ultimatums. But for perhaps the first time in the joint discussions over the new collective bargaining agreement, there is reason for legitimate optimism. Hope has made today, Friday, October 28th, the biggest day in the lockout negotiations to date.
Hope. Pray. Hold hands, conduct rituals, and seek congress with the basketball gods. There’s still plenty of room for things to fall apart, and plenty of reason to keep our optimism cautious. Here’s to some good news this evening or this weekend, and the slight possibility that we may see some basketball in the near future after all.
Posted by Rob Mahoney on October 25, 2011 under Commentary |
Tyson Chandler made a radio appearance yesterday with Mason & Ireland of ESPN Radio in Los Angeles, and gave his own respectable, respectful take on the lockout and its proceedings. It’s exactly the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from a thoughtful player like Chandler, and his lockout comments are worth a listen (or a read, via Sports Radio Interviews).
Yet what interested me about Chandler’s radio spot was his tackling of a fairly routine question posed to him by the show’s co-hosts, regarding his determination of the league’s best player. Here was Chandler’s response:
“I would go with Dirk. It’s funny, I tweeted about it and I’ve been catching the same flack about it. But I feel it’s proven by what he did last year, what he did to the Lakers, what he did to Oklahoma City, what he did in the Finals, throughout the whole playoffs Dirk just became a man possessed. He went to a whole other level offensively. People talk about what he did defensively, but he actually stepped it up better during the playoffs last year and became a better team defender. And my whole thing is if you outscore the guy defending you by 10 to 15 points, then you’re playing pretty good D.”
Is Dirk Nowitzki the best player in the NBA? Not quite. LeBron James — even after a disappointing series in the Finals — should still rank as the NBA’s top contributor, and Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Paul all have legitimate claims over Nowitzki. Generally, the #ESPNRank project was right on the money in its assessment of the top five NBA players; Nowitzki still showed incredibly well at No. 5, but he’s still a bit removed from status as the league’s absolute best.
That said, Nowitzki is dominant enough that Chandler’s opinion isn’t considered absolutely absurd. One would expect Chandler to get his teammate’s back here; I doubt I need to remind anyone that Dallas recently won the NBA title, largely due to Nowitzki’s ability to anchor the offense and contribute on defense. Considering Dirk’s playoffs performance — the most recent NBA basketball we’ve seen, mind you — Chandler’s perspective is completely understandable. The logic isn’t flawless, mind you, but Nowitzki is in an elite class that can be noted as the NBA’s best without being met with incredulity. Dirk is that good, and with trophy in hand — a foolish reason to finally acknowledge Nowitzki’s success, but alas — the entire basketball-loving world has finally recognized it.
But my question in light of Chandler’s response is this: at what point is a great player’s teammate not “obligated,” (in some sense of the word) to throw out their colleague’s name in these discussions? I’m sure plenty of Mavs would cite Dirk as the league’s best considering the postseason he just had, just as I’m sure that many Magic players would name Howard, many Hornets players would glorify Paul, or virtually every Bulls player would cite Derrick Rose. The same would undoubtedly be true for Kobe Bryant or Kevin Durant. But would a Clipper really introduce Blake Griffin into this discussion? Would a knick put Carmelo Anthony toe-to-toe with the best in the business? Who exactly can be included in this group worthy of coworker endorsement, and where is the brightline for teammate stumping? Or, to put it another way: which players are worthy of being in the “best NBA player” discussion, even if only as a function of reasonability?
Posted by Rob Mahoney on October 24, 2011 under News |
From Michael Lee of the Washington Post:
While explaining his decision to participate in Chris Paul’s charity game in his home town of Winston-Salem, N.C., earlier this month, Wizards free agent forward Josh Howard joked that “people still want to see me play.” But being around that thrilling, high-flying environment convinced Howard that he should organize his own event in Dallas, the city he still considers home since being traded to the Wizards in the deal that shipped Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson to the Mavericks at the trade deadline in 2010.
With the lockout wiping out the first two weeks of the regular season and more cancellations expected to follow after failed negotiations last week, Howard is taking advantage of the opening to host a charity game on Nov. 12. Players expected to participate include Howard’s Wizards teammates John Wall, Andray Blatche and Nick Young; his former Mavericks teammates Jason Terry, Marquis Daniels, DeSagana Diop and Quinton Ross; Portland Trail Blazers forward and Dallas native LaMarcus Aldridge; New Orleans Hornets guard Jarrett Jack; Mavericks guard Corey Brewer; Minnesota forward Anthony Randolph; Toronto forward Reggie Evans; Sacramento Kings draft pick Isaiah Thomas; and former NBA player Damon Jones.
Marquis Daniels, ‘Gana Diop, Quinton Ross, and Damon Jones are semi-headlining a charity game hosted by Josh Howard in Dallas. Ain’t life grand?
Posted by Ian Levy on October 20, 2011 under Commentary |
Ian Levy is the author of Hickory High, a contributor to Indy Cornrows, and a part of The Two Man Game family. You can follow Ian on Twitter at @HickoryHigh.
For several Maverick veterans, last year’s championship run was the final component in cementing a legacy. It verified Dirk Nowitzki as a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate and a top-five NBA player (I’m looking at you #NBARank). It was the capstone on Jason Kidd’s claim as one of the best point guards in NBA history. It helped shift the focus from Tyson Chandler’s injury history to his status as an every-night warrior and his strong defensive foundation. It validated the years of specialized and all-around production provided by Peja Stojakovic and Shawn Marion respectively. And, although it hasn’t been mentioned nearly as often, I believe it also established Rick Carlisle as one of the game’s elite coaches.
After his ninth season as a head coach, Carlisle has won a total of 443 games with a 0.600 win percentage. He’s led his team to the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons and has posted a playoff win percentage of 0.535. He’s achieved a great deal, but has also had the benefit of coaching some great players. In evaluating the worth of a coach, how do you examine team success and separate the contributions of coach from player?
During one his NBA Finals recaps, John Hollinger mentioned that one of the reasons the Mavericks pursued Carlisle was that their statistical studies showed he had a tendency to give the most minutes to the most effective lineups. This idea struck a chord with me. The biggest stumbling block in using statistics to analyze the performance of coaches is simply finding numbers which can be directly attributed to the coach. The idea Hollinger mentions seems to me to be the one domain where just such a set of statistics exist. Coaches decide which players are on the floor and in what combination at any given moment. The effectiveness of those choices provides us with one quantitative measure of a coach’s effectiveness.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve used two different techniques at Hickory-High to try and examine this issue, both of which relied heavily on the statistics BasketballValue provides for five-man units. Their data only covers the last four seasons, which means that my analysis is restricted to that time frame. In my first piece, I ran a series of correlations between the effectiveness of each five-man unit, using their Net Rating weighted by minutes played, and the number of minutes they were played by their coach. This technique was an attempt to directly represent the statistical studies Hollinger mentioned, with the idea being that the higher the correlation is, the better job a coach has done of judging the effectiveness of each of his units and allocating minutes accordingly.
With this first technique, Carlisle came out looking very good, but not necessarily great. His individual season correlations ranged from 0.488 in 2009 to 0.645 this past season, none of which ranked in the top 25 of the seasons I looked at. Carlisle did stand out somewhat for his consistency. Many coaches showed volatility in their numbers from season to season, possibly a result of injuries, roster changes or even an irrational infatuation with a particular player or configuration. Carlisle’s cumulative correlation over the last three seasons was 0.585. Of coaches who worked multiple seasons over the last four years, that number ranked 8th, trailing only Doc Rivers, Phil Jackson, Stan Van Gundy, Flip Saunders, Alvin Gentry, Byron Scott and Gregg Popovich.
In my second piece, I started with the same set of data but used a slightly different technique. This time I calculated the percentage of the team’s lineups that finished the season with a positive Net Rating, and then compared that percentage to the number of minutes those positive lineups were allotted as a whole. For the purposes of the study the difference between those percentages — positive or negative — is what we’re considering the coach’s ability to manipulate their lineups. This second technique may be a more blunt measure than the first, but I think it helps solve some of the inflation from stacked rosters that occur with the first technique.
With this second technique, Carlisle again stands out: not for his superior performance, but for his consistency. None of his individual seasons made the top 25. Over the past three seasons, 50.4% of the Mavericks lineups which played at least five minutes together have had a positive Net Rating. Those positive lineups have played 65.5% of the possible minutes, an increase of 15.1% over a random distribution of minutes. That number ranks fifth among coaches who worked multiple seasons over the last four, trailing only Jackson, Van Gundy, Rivers and Gentry.
The two techniques I’ve put together are not exact and not comprehensive. However, I think they do give us some quantitative information, general though it may be, about a coach’s ability to optimize their lineups. As with any question of basketball analysis, if we are left with questions after an initial look, the task is to find more data and narrow the focus. The numbers I’ve put together show that Carlisle has been among the league’s best at managing his rotations. For the skeptics out there, I was able to find some more specifics on how those rotations shake out.
I started by combining all of the lineups Carlisle has used during his three-year tenure in Dallas, trying to find some natural groupings for them based on the number of minutes played. I settled on these categories and general (subjective) classifications:
- Over 145 MP - This group represents the primary starting lineups for each season and the go-to bench rotations.
- Between 82 and 145 MP - This group represents the deeper bench rotations, and situational lineups.
- Between 40 and 82 MP - This group represents deep, deep bench rotations, extreme situational lineups, and some accommodations for injuries.
- Less than 40 MP - This group represents garbage time lineups, minutes scraped together for rookies, and strange experiments.
For each of those categories I counted the total number of lineups Carlisle has used in Dallas. I also calculated the cumulative Net Rating for all the lineups which fit into each category.
| Category | Number of Lineups | Net Rating |
| >145 MP | 12 | +10.4 |
| 145-82 MP | 12 | +10.1 |
| 82-40 MP | 38 | +1.7 |
| <40 MP | 329 | +1.4 |
The way his numbers worked out are unique on several fronts. The first is how many lineups were found in each of the first two categories. With 12 lineups in each category over 3 seasons, we find the Mavericks under Carlisle using an average of 8 lineups a season which play more than 82 minutes. There is absolutely no pretense of riding a formidable starting lineup into the ground. The Mavericks’ most played lineup last season, Barea-Terry-Marion-Nowitzki-Haywood, logged just 350.45 minutes. That mark was eclipsed by 25 lineups from 21 different teams. Instead of relying on one dominant lineup, Carlisle is able to spread the minutes around in many combinations. But the most important factor is how effective those combinations are. With cumulative Net Ratings over +10.0 for both lineup categories above 82 minutes played, Carlisle is able to maintain a first tier level of performance among several lineups.
As the advanced statistics movement trudges forward, there will continue to be a vocal segment searching for a one-size, fits all, comprehensive measure, a number which says definitively that one player is better than another. To be honest, I find that search to be counter-productive. A visual observation can usually tell us who the best players are. For me, the benefit of advanced statistics is the increased ability to delve into details. I don’t want one number to explain everything. I want all the numbers. When it comes to looking evaluating coaches with statistics, I see similarities everywhere. A single numeric representation of a coach’s ability is certainly out of reach at this point, and to be honest, I’m not sure it’s needed. The fun is in the thin slices, in digging into the specifics and unique situations to try and find some answers. These techniques I’ve put together aren’t meant to be a step toward that single unifying theory of evaluation, they are meant to be another thin slice. They are meant to answer a few questions, and hopefully raise just as many.
Tags: Alvin Gentry, Byron Scott, Dirk Nowitzki, Doc Rivers, Flip Saunders, Gregg Popovich, Jason Kidd, Peja Stojakovic, Phil Jackson, Rick Carlisle, Shawn Marion, Stan Van Gundy, Tyson Chandler
Posted by Rob Mahoney on October 19, 2011 under Interviews |
Donnie Nelson may not have snagged the salesman he had intended to replace Nancy Lieberman as the head coach of the Mavericks’ D-League affiliate in Frisco, but in the process, he landed one hell of a coach.
Bruce Pearl, the Legends’ initial candidate in their coaching search, and Del Harris, who worked as the Legends’ GM last season and will take over the coaching reins, are cut from fundamentally different stylistic cloths. Each is successful in their own way, but the latter brings an unprecedented résumé to the D-League coaching ranks. Harris is an incredibly accomplished coach at virtually every level of competition, and though he’ll still be selling the Legends as a product, his primary function will be in bringing that vast experience to his dual role as head coach and general manager.
Even with that kind of pedigree, Harris will have his work cut out for him. The Legends were stacked with borderline NBA talent last season, but have lost a handful of noteworthy contributors to foreign leagues. With just 15 days remaining until the D-League draft and a bit more than a month left before the Texas Legends’ season opener, Harris took some time to talk with me about how the D-League might be impacted by the NBA lockout, his statistical approach to coaching, and the future of the Legends.
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MAHONEY: You’ve been with the Legends in a managerial role before and you’re going to continue in that role next season. Did anything about managing in the D-League surprise you?
HARRIS: No, not really. Everything is a little different in the development league compared to, say, college or the NBA’s principal league itself, but it’s still basically the same work. You try to work together with everybody — the owner, the coaches, and all the various front office entities — try to put together the best team you can. It all kind of comes under the heading of teamwork.”
MAHONEY: It seems like D-League management is pretty unique in that there’s so much roster turnover from year to year. How do you grapple with the fact that in the off-season any number of your players could find jobs overseas or in other leagues? How do you game plan from year to year and maintain any kind of consistency?
HARRIS: Everybody is in the same situation, so it’s not like anybody’s unique in the league itself. It’s not that unlike college or high school — and I have coached at every level that there is to coach — where you’re going to have turnover every year in high school and in college. So this is very akin to that process. Even now in the NBA it’s not uncommon for teams to turn over as many as seven spots, and the Mavericks themselves turned over nine spots one year recently. So with the advent of such ease of free agency in the NBA, that’s not that uncommon these days for a general manager and coach to anticipate having loss.
Just look at the Mavericks right now. I can’t mention any NBA players’ names because I work for the NBA, but there are a number of key free agents for the Mavericks for example this year, and once they can get back into business they have a very similar situation to what we have. In our case we have to replace three of our most key players. Our point guard went to the NBA so I can’t mention his name. Joe Alexander and Sean Williams were two of the top five players in the league and were two of the maybe three best big men in the league. Joe is in Russia and Sean is in Europe — Spain, I think — playing, so we have to replace those three key spots the best way that we can.
MAHONEY: You made Matt Rogers the team’s first ever draft pick last year and recently announced that he’ll be back with the team next year. Walk me through Rogers’ game and your impressions of his first season in the D-League.
HARRIS: Well, Rogers had an up-and-down year, partly because he blew out his ACL at the end of his college career — at which he was nonetheless voted the number one player in Division II basketball. He was a bit hampered, as last year was a rehabilitation year for him, and yet he did alright. We had one of the best teams in the league. We had five guys at one time or another who were first round draft picks when they came out of college on our team. So Matt held up pretty well for a rookie in what is actually a pretty tough league. We’re looking forward to this year for Matt because of his health continuing to get better and [him having] more confidence in his knee. He’s gotten bigger and stronger, and the year of experience will help him.
MAHONEY: The only other official player announcement thus far has been Justin Dentmon, who also had a pretty good rookie year. What kind of role do you see for Dentmon this season, and what improvements do you want to see in his game?
HARRIS: Dentmon had a strong year and again: he’s a key player. We may have to depend on him to play a little bit more point guard than he did last year and that’s something he would have to make some improvements upon, which he should be capable of doing. He is a key guy.
MAHONEY: I’ve heard and read opinions from both sides as to have the NBA lockout might affect the D-League. What impact do you think the ongoing lockout will have on the D-League and the Legends?
HARRIS: Well, the positive thing is that we’re playing, and that people can come and watch high level basketball. That’s part of it, so any negatives after that are relatively inconsequential to the whole process. But from a coaching standpoint, it’s not as good of a situation in terms of getting talent because the best way for us to do that is after the the NBA has had their final cuts. Those players that don’t make it [onto an NBA roster] can choose to go into the D-League draft and that’s where we end up getting some outstanding players. We would have evaluated them during the preseason, so we know who the guys are that are on the bubble and we have a good list of guys in a pecking order that we’d like to take. Well, we don’t have that this year.
The other thing is that there are guys that are going over to Europe — into lesser leagues, even — because they don’t know if the NBA is going to play this year, and the main purpose of playing in the D-League for less money is that this is where you have the best opportunity to get into the NBA this year if you didn’t make it in training camp. So we don’t have that element going for us now because they don’t even know if there’s going to be a league or a schedule — they don’t know one way or another. Second, they don’t know what the process would be as far as training camp if there is an NBA league to go on this year.
So from my standpoint as a coach, I’d say it’s a negative, but as a general manager from a franchise standpoint, it’s actually kind of a good thing.
MAHONEY: The lockout negotiations really aren’t good for anyone involved in the NBA world, but some good things could potentially come out of it. There were some rumors that maybe the NBA would be revisiting the way players are assigned to the D-League, maybe extend the age to which they can be assigned, or allow for injured players to rehabilitate there. What’s your take on the current assignment system, and if there are any improvements that can be made on it?
HARRIS: Well, those things would have been discussed in any event. They are things that were brought up before we knew there would be a lockout, and even though it’s a contract year, these are things that would have been brought up anyway. Obviously we think that it would benefit the NBA itself if there were some expanded opportunities for players to play in the Development League. We think it would help at the top and we think it would help us here at the D-League level, with the caveat that it does increase that volatility of your roster. You could be planning how you’re going to play the next game and then find out that morning that you’ve got two guys coming down from the affiliate team and that kind of changes your program. But all and all, I think it would be a good thing.
MAHONEY: I saw you speak at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference back in March, and you talked about integrating advanced stats into your coaching style. Do you think there’s room for detailed statistical analysis in the D-League, and does it make sense economically and infrastructurally for teams to pursue that information even on a minor league level?
HARRIS: Well, obviously there are a lot of considerations at any level, but particularly so at the Developmental League level. But you don’t have to be overly concerned about costs with most of the metrics that matter most to a coach in the NBA. I’ve been doing metric analyses since the 60s and was the first in a lot of areas in the 80s to implement electronic data systems and things when I was coach and Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Bucks. Then that continued on with the Mavericks in a more elaborate system of metrics. But the basic metrics that I use for coaching a game really only involve basic chart-keeping, so we will be utilizing things that I’ve done for over 40 years to evaluate our points per possession, our pace of the game, our momentum. I can train a guy to do that in 10 minutes.
MAHONEY: We’ve seen — and you have a longstanding relationship with Donnie — Donnie Nelson as a manger, but what kind owner is he, and what is his involvement like with the Legends?
HARRIS: Donnie Nelson is a jack of all trades and a master of most of them. He’s a dynamo and he’s a terrific owner, and just a great public relations guy — he sells the program really well. He’s very supportive of his people, and he lets them operate. He has a good front office here, headed up by Bill Boyce, who also has some excellent people working with him. We have a young fella who has a good future named Malcolm Farmer that does a lot of the heavy lifting. He and the other owners — particularly evan Wyly — are really terrific to work with. He’s great all across the board.
MAHONEY: I saw in another interview you did with Zach Lowe over at Sports Illustrated that you mentioned you were teaching a class at a local college. What are you teaching and at what school?
HARRIS: The class is entitled “Team Building” and it’s based on a book I have written but not published that’s basically Team Building: Developing the Point Guard Within You. I teach at Dallas Christian College and it involves basically four elements in team building, starting with purpose (or mission) and then developing leadership skills, and third, enhancing communication, and ultimately ending in relationship building. We use my book as a text and I start with the sports idiom and then translate that down to the secular world as to how there might be applications in corporate america, or in institutions such as education for those who are going into teaching, or church work for those who are going into that area, and families which most of them will be going into. Then I take it down to the spiritual application.
So we use those basic principles and how they all interrelate from the sports to the secular to the spiritual. It’s exciting. I thought we’d have 15 in the class and we have 35, so it’s a little bit more people than I had anticipated, but it’s been very interesting for me.
Posted by Rob Mahoney on October 12, 2011 under Video |
These are truly dark times for all basketball fans, but at least Tyson Chandler and (blonde) Shawn Marion are having a bit of fun: