D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

He's a perfect fit next to LeBron/AD offensively.

Defensively, yes he's not good. But maybe having AD/Bamba/Vanderbilt type of guys around him, they can make up for his deficiencies?

 

Oh thank God, using number 1 again making my DAR jersey still semi ok

 

With load management and nagging

Typical contract year numbers

 

Let's hope he doesn't fall off a cliff as every player who comes here does in terms of his shooting percentages.

Huge pick up for us. Can't wait to see him play with AD/Bron

 

I just read elsewhere this morning he IS good though off ball, so there's that .... where Westbrook sucked the proverbial gargantuan one.

 

I thought this ringer article was kind of funny: I think Russell had every right to get mad that he didn't get the ball - he was wide open for a layup

 

he's a high iq player, so it wouldn't surprise me that he's pretty decent off ball. again, his issue is that his attention wanders on both ends.

when he was here, i always thought he had a substance issue. and the fact that he gets passed around despite generally producing pretty well sort of feels like it's an open secret. anyway, that's just my armchair speculation. i hope for his and our sake that i'm off base. and i might very well be.

in any case, he's a large improvement over russ in terms of current talent and fit.

 

lol, i'm on sabbatical and may actually take the time to read that thesis.

edit: couldn't help but skim, and some methodological issues popped out quickly. one of the biggest issues has to do with case selection, imo. what is a "contract year"? to me, it's when a guy who's been on a longer contract is up for another longer contract. as such, the analysis can only be performed years after the new contract. relatedly, this person is comparing the contract year to those that came before, when the real concern is the relation between the contract year and the years that come after, right?

i have some statistical concerns, too, based on some quick reading.

but it is fun that someone attempted this!

 

I refuse to believe any analysis that says guys like Tim Thomas didn't play better in his contract years lol

 

there needs to be a filter for that name like there is for C Bags

 

No but if you take a glance at the dissertation the person takes a look at 230 players and uses linear regression across different data points. This is why analytics hasn't completely solved sports as guys like Lebron/AD would wash out the impact of a guy like Tim Thomas. They don't really have answer for the example they give of Erick Dampier who had a monster season his contract year and then immediately became a journeyman. They try to find subsets but the data for that personality are hard to quantify analytically.

it would be much more interesting to see who GMs think are contract-year wonders and track those players individually. I think I looked at Ariza once for example and he had clear bumps across efficiency/shooting, etc

 

For real? Damn. I knew percentages were up, but that's impressive.

Rooting for him, this is a full circle kinda thing. We may just get the best of him with his free agency coming up. It's not like he's at the top of anyone's list. If he sparks us back to a mid seed come playoff time, that could definitely change.

 

yeah, until you get your hands dirty with data, you don't realize how many assumptions go into any analysis. in this case, even the dependent variables are semi-arbitrary constructions. as a psychologist, i deal with exactly this kind of thing a lot. you have to really account for definitions, assumptions, reliability/validity/precision of measurement. this is why the analytics movement hasn't really taken off in basketball especially. our baseline measures are dubious (better than box score, but still on very shaky ground). then you have fundamental differences about what a contract year even is.

if i get an extra couple hours, i really might try to read that whole thesis. but as i said above, i skipped to the methods and found some very serious issues. that doesn't mean they're wrong. it just means with those particular data, we can't know.

 

he did look pretty trashy to start the season but seems to brought everything back to norm n then some....still slow n lack def but at least some long term foundational piece....Rob i will never say anything bad bout you again if you get BI back someday lol