WMC 24-25: Seasonal Highs And Lows!

Throwing away the ball for no good reason

 

in that pretty much all of his lineups are the bad ones?

 

Then we'd be winless since he plays a lot.

 

thankfully, we've been kicking a** when he doesn't play. and we've also played an incredibly weak schedule.

 

Right..so basically we win because the team plays so great when he's off the floor. That's your take and well the schedule is weak. Check duly noted.

 

Negatives:

- worst defense against the worst team in the league.
-Bron and AD are playing with fire relying on "the switch" and relying on playing maybe 11-12 minutes of meaningful basketball for that to get us a win. If Russ doesn't drive that 3rd Q for us, that tactic fails miserably. They could've rested on the bench rather than on the court if they took their opponent seriously.
- Our 3 ball was awful outside of Melo and surprisingly Bron. We need Ellington out there.
- rebounding is a joke, playing small hurt us there.
- the refs suck and our players aren't handling it well. I like what they're doing league wide. FTAs are down league wide. They're not bailing outthe Hardens and Traes of the world, but those aren't the type of calls they're missing against us.

 

well, it's my take and...the...actual facts of the situation?

 

You have to actually watch the games. Stats can be misleading.

 

i've seen some. so what's happening that coincides with russ being on the floor that makes us worse and doesn't involve russ?

 

It's depends on who's on the court with him. It depends on what those guys are doing too, he's not playing 1 on 5. Some of these lineups he's in, aren't very good without Lebron or AD, definitely when both are off the court.

 

Big 3 clicked but we barely won. Refs had some BS late in the fourth but the defense has to get better. Top 10 at the least if we want to win it all.

 

The whole taking the 2 points away thing was a weird head scratching moment.

 

One could argue that the problem is the Lakers have too many players hurt particularly Dwight, Ariza, and THT who provide some semblance of a boost both offensively and defensively, but of the players here, Russ has been the problem





I mean no matter how you slice it using +/-, adjusted +/- (admittedly dogdgy due to small sample size), player tracking is that's he's just not been good or best neutral.
If you take a look just his opponents: the opposing PG has outplayed in 4 out of the 5 matchups before the Rockets who don't really even start a PG.
You can break this down where Lebron essentially turns into typical MVP caliber Lebron in terms of depending on the 3 vs driving to the rim as the ringer article shows.

 

Plus/minus is one the most useless stats in basketball. It's definitely one of the most overrated. It's totally dependent on who is on the floor with a particular player when he played. For instance last night, Bradley got cooked all game on D, didn't provide much on offense but somehow ended up Plus 2. Useless stat.

On the other I hand, I totally agree that the 4 guys out right, will make everything look better.

 

It's a very useful stat but as any stat it has it's strength and weaknesses. Mainly small sample sizes that make it difficult to tease out lineup issues as you note..
however with the growth of player tracking and +/- it really up it's value with metrics like Raptor +/-.

Bradley is a good example: as it wasn't a great game for him but he also does not do negative things that are hard to see. he doesn't turn the ball over, he's in the right spots on offense and defense. OTOH you get to see the broad picture with Westbrook's defense where he gambles too much for steals or is out of position on defense at the 3 pt line because he's rebound hunting

 

Or Bradley just happened to be on the court with other guys that were playing better at the time. If you watched that game, there is no way you would conclude that Westbrook played poorly or Bradley, ,Reaves or Jordan played well. AD was in the negative. That stat is ambiguous at best.

 

The Lakers are 5-1 after an 0-2 start, should be 6-0. Considering the almost total turnover of the roster, and missing some key players for the season thus far. I can't really complain about all that much. We haven't even played 20 games yet. If the big 3 stay injury free, I suspect that we'll be around the top 3 in the Conference, after this homestand and quick trip to Portland.

 

There are drastic differences between +/- stats. RAPM etc depend on increased sample size

With just one game states, +/- can be more quirky and sure lineups are part of it. But there are reason guys like Reaves and before him Caruso shot up constantly as positive +/- despite box score which don't show much. I would actually conclude from the +/- from last nights game is that basically only Lebron stands out. Bradley/Westbrook/Reaves etc are just barely above or below 0.

As someone who did watch the game, the fact Lebron stands make total sense. Pretty consistent with what the eye test would tell you that Lebron taking over in the 4th was the difference between the Rockets vs Lakers winning

 

But I didn't need any stats to recognize that about Bron. I thought that basically the trio played pretty well, Bron closed the show, and some of the role players had some issues with the Rockets young talent. It's not going to be your night every night as a role player.

If stats and analytics are some folks thing, that's cool. I don't really look at them much until after 20-30 games. I do get more interested heading into the playoffs.