I am by no means a statistician and as much time as I love spending on here and watching the Lakers, my time still has limits. I've only had time to analyze the first half of the 2nd game but I found some good stuff.
After it became apparent the stat keepers at the Summer League are either drunk or not paying attention, I decided to try to keep stats myself. Instead of going for just traditional stats though, I tried to keep track of a few others. The one that I really wanted to look into was Effective Screen Setting. For some reason we run the Princeton offense which is predicated on ball-movement, man-movement, and off-ball screens. I wanted to see just how effective those screens are because we never seem to be open off of them. An "Effective Screen" in my opinion is one that makes contact with the player and creates space for the ball handler.
I also looked at Close Outs on Shooters, Caught Ball Watching, Hedging/Rotating, and Changed Shots (instead of blocked shots). The...
Clarkson has been amazing in his upward performance progression since he got his chance to start after the All Star break. Like / 45 degrees. Did not expect what I am seeing now from where he was at the end of this season. Objectively incredible. Looking at Klay now 3 years in (?) .... I think there's a case to be made for Clarkson to be a better player than him potentially. What if in a year or 2 Clarkson is better than Thompson? Because it's not hard to imagine D'Angelo Russell with 15-20 more lbs of muscle...... starting to just approach his prime years.
With the whole DJ saga about handshake deal and then DJ doing about face, I came across an interesting article about the Kevin Garnett trade that came close but never happened with the Lakers. Apparently, Buss and Taylor had a handshake agreement for KG. Read the Phil Jackson stuff about his conversation with Jerry Buss. Interesting stuff ....
When the Timberwolves traded Kevin Garnett to the C Bags in 2007, it changed the balance of power in the Eastern Conference. The C Bags won the 2008 title immediately after acquiring Garnett and Ray Allen, and made the Finals again two years later. The Big Three of Garnett, Allen and Paul Pierce was the NBA’s defining superteam until LeBron James,Dwyane Wade...
