Basketball Free For All

After week twelve, we’ve officially reached the half-way point of the regular season, which means it is mid-season adjustment time. Now is a perfect time to evaluate your team’s cumulative performance and assess your strengths and weaknesses. For head-to-head leagues, check your punting strategy and consider whether it makes sense to adjust your strategy going forward. For roto leagues, now might be time to consider big trades to shore up any weaknesses. Any team can be improved with the right moves; just don’t make the classic mistake of making a move for the sake of, well, making a move.

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It is truly rare to be able to sense a catastrophic event before it happens. However, for those carefully attuned to the recent offseason developments in the NBA, Detroit seems poised on the brink of the abyss.

Talk about piling on. It’s no secret that Detroit is in trouble in these oh-so-tough economic times (median sale price for a house in Detroit these days is $8,000; and no, that number is not missing any zeroes).

But taking a step back and examining the moves the Pistons have made to assemble the 2009-10 Pistons, it is clear that the old Pistons are truly gone. With Rasheed Wallace and Chauncey Billups gone, the perennial Eastern Conference Finalists have been forever changed, and most certainly for the worse.

It is understandable that Joe Dumars and the Pistons wanted change. After so much disappointment and so many letdowns following their 2004 NBA Championship, it was inevitable that they would overhaul their roster. But change for the sake of change is not improvement and that is exactly what the Pistons’ roster moves have felt.

The point of any change is to make the team better. Any roster move (applies to both fantasy and real life) that does not make the team better, either in the present or future, was a bad move.

So let’s break down the Pistons’ offseason moves to see if there is reason to believe this team has improved during the 2009 offseason.

Coaching Change

After a disappointing 2008-09 season, rookie head coach Michael Curry was canned in favor of another rookie head coach, John Kuester. But what do we know about John Kuester and can we expect his tenure to be different from Curry’s rookie season as a coach?

Kuester has a long track record as an assistant coach in the NBA, including working for Hall of Fame Head Coach Larry Brown on the Pistons’ 2004 championship squad and for Brown’s entire tenure as head coach in Philadelphia. More recently, Kuester worked with the Pistons’ Eastern Conference rival the Cleveland Cavaliers under head coach Mike Brown.

Kuester’s most recent, and most famous role was of Mike Brown’s offensive coordinator with the Cavaliers last season, a season that saw the team jump from 19th (and a very ugly 19th, at that) in offensive efficiency to fourth last season with Kuester joining Cleveland’s ranks.

Yes, the Cavaliers enjoyed a solid season from new addition Mo Williams, Lebron James improves, and the club also got a full year’s run out of Delonte West; but the shape of the Cleveland offense was markedly different with Kuester on board, something you couldn’t completely pin on personnel changes and internal development. Kuester had these guys in the right places.

Source: Yahoo!

No doubt about it, the 2008-09 Cavaliers were much better offensively than the 2007-08 version. That is a statistical fact. What is up for debate is how much of that is due to the continued development of Lebron James, how much is due to the addition of Mo Williams and first full season of Delonte West and how much is due to Kuester’s X’s and O’s.

Watching Cleveland’s offensive sets last season, basically every play revolved around putting the ball in Lebron’s hands and clearing out the lane. Lebron was the primary playmaker and rarely played off the ball, where his athleticism allows him to be deadly. Don’t underestimate the impact of the addition of Mo to the Cavalier’ success. With Williams on board, James had another guy he could trust to take big shots and initiate the offense instead of relying solely on himself.

One word is notably absent from discussions of Kuester’s assistant coaching gigs: defense. With all of his experience assisting Coach Larry Brown, you hope that Brown’s defensive philosophy has rubbed off on Kuester. For defense more so than any other factor is going to be the key to the fate of the Pistons’ 2009-10 season. And that is mainly due to the roster changes that were made over the last few months in Detroit.

Roster Changes

The current Detroit roster marks the start of the new era (i.e. end of the Rasheed Wallace era in Detroit).

Out: Rasheed Wallace; Allen Iverson; Antonio McDyess; Amir Johnson; Arron Afflalo; and Walter Herrmann.

In: Charlie Villanueva; Ben Gordon; Chris Wilcox; and Ben Wallace.
Rookies: Austin Daye; Deron Washington.

With all the changes, the depth chart looks fairly different from last season. (Not seeing Sheed on the Pistons roster just seems strange; beware).

PG: Rodney Stuckey, Will Bynum
SG: Richard Hamilton, Ben Gordon, Deron Washington
SF: Tayshaun Prince, Austin Daye
PF: Charlie Villanueva, Jason Maxiell
C: Chris Wilcox, Kwame Brown, Ben Wallace

The main problem with the Pistons new makeup is that most of the players they lost were known to be decent defenders, especially Wallace and McDyess. And the players they took on, Villanueva,  Gordon and Wilcox, are not known for being great defenders (to be politically correct). But that is all opinion.

What do the numbers say?

In trying to compare the outgoing players, offensive and defensive efficiencies are useful for comparing players on different teams that play at different paces, which can skew raw statistics. Comparing the net difference between a player’s offensive efficiency (O-Rating) and defensive efficiency (D-Rating) to show their net impact on the court.

Looking at the minutes is very important when consulting statistics such as these because in general a small sample is much less reliable than a larger sample.  It’s probably wise to take any advanced statistics with a grain of salt for any player who logged less than a thousand minutes. Like most statistics, the bigger the sample size the better.

First take a look at the players the Pistons have added to the roster.

*Table is sortable. Click on column headers to sort data.

And compare them to the outgoing players.

*Table is sortable. Click on column headers to sort data.

On the face of it, the exchange of players seems like it would be a negligible difference (excluding players who played less than 1000 minutes last season). The incoming players are a combined +8 and the outgoing players are a combined +8 as well. Everything seems to be in perfect harmony, right?

Wrong.

There are two main reasons why: Ben Wallace and Chauncey Billups.

First, let’s deal with Big Ben. Wallace’s career is clearly on its last legs and thus he can be expected to play a rapidly diminishing role on the team as time progresses. As the single biggest positive on the incoming side, this means that the incoming +8 is actually skewed and is only positive solely because of Wallace.

The more bearish you are on Wallace’s future performance, the worse this exchange of players looks. To put it in perspective, the exchange made the Pistons defensively worse off in the medium and long term (-4 excluding Big Ben).

Continuing with the long term perspective, let’s revisit the franchise altering trade of Billups for Iverson. Yes, I know McDyess was a part of that trade but he ended up back with the Pistons after negotiating a buyout and returning to D-Town. So this trade was Billups for Iverson, straight up.

Using mathematical properties, we can substitute Billups for Iverson in the outgoing chart.

*Table is sortable. Click on column headers to sort data.

With the Billups effect accounted for as well, suddenly the outgoing players are a +20 (again excluding players with less than 1000 minutes) and the incoming players are either a +8 or -4 depending upon how you view the impact of Ben Wallace for both next season and the future. This gives the entire transaction a net impact of either a -12 overall or a shocking -24.

The Verdict

On paper, it appears that the Pistons’ recent makeover has actually made them worse off overall. The big x-factor will be rookie head coach John Kuester. Teams can overcome having poor defensive players on them through superb coaching. In some cases, however, the defensive liabilities are just too great to overcome. This might be one of those cases. But make no mistake, Kuester has a chance to be a truly great coach one day.

Regardless, it is clear that the 2009-10 Pistons have huge potential. Train wreck potential (see also Memphis Grizzlies, 2009-10). For the Pistons faithful, let’s just hope that Joe Dumars hasn’t taken the D out of Detroit once and for all.

Mock drafts often seem like such pointless endeavors. The minute a team trades up or down, the sanctity of the entire mock has been violated. And this year, it is almost a guarantee that there will be movement on Thursday with many teams more focused on shedding salary instead of trying to improve. So instead of trying to predict that which cannot be predicted, let’s take a look at last year’s draft.

How will the class of 2008 be remembered when compared against the greatest classes of all time? 2003? 1996? 1984? One year later and the draft class of 2008 is looking very strong but definitely has a long ways to go before being mentioned in the same sentence as the aforementioned draft classes.

2008 NBA Draft

1. Derrick Rose
2. Michael Beasley
3. O.J. Mayo
4. Russell Westbrook
5. Kevin Love
6. Danilo Gallinari
7. Eric Gordon
8. Joe Alexander
9. D.J. Augustin
10. Brook Lopes
11. Jerryd Bayless
12. Jason Thompson
13. Brandon Rush
14. Anthony Randolph
15. Robin Lopez
16. Marreese Speights
17. Roy Hibbert
18. JaVale McGee
19. J.J. Hickson
20. Alexis Ajinca
21. Ryan Anderson
22. Courtney Lee
23. Kosta Koufas
24. Serge Ibaka
25. Nicolas Batum
26. George Hill
27. Darrell Arthur
28. Donte Greene
29. DJ White
30. JR Giddens

Second round notables: Mario Chalmers (#34), DeAndre Jordan (#35), Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (#37), Chris Douglas-Roberts (#40), Sean Singletary (#42), Goran Dragic (#45), Bill Walker (#47), Mike Taylor (#55).

Besides a few head turners, the first round is stacked from top to bottom with guys who made an immediate impact in the NBA. That is a rare phenomenon in draft history. Looking back one year later we start to see which players might end up being busts and which players might end up being steals.

Potential Busts

As far as biggest busts (so far) of the 2008 NBA Draft, both Danilo Gallinari or Joe Alexander are making strong cases to be considered 2008’s top bottom dog. While it is clearly too early to be writing their professional basketball obituaries, both players are hindered by their high draft position (6th and 8th overall, respectively). Gallinari should probably be considered the second biggest bust after Alexander for two reasons.

First, Gallinari had legitimate medical reasons for not performing well in his rookie season (reoccurring back injury). With the back injury almost totally behind him, Gallinari now has to prove that he should not be considered a bust and that he belongs in the league. He has to take those flashes of brilliance he has shown on the court and turn them into consistent production. And second, Gallinari has an amazing nickname: The Rooster. If that doesn’t convince you that Joe Alexander should be considered a bigger bust, I don’t know what will.

Joe Alexander, on the other hand, does not have such convenient excuses. If you look at Alexander’s stats by position, he was clearly outplayed by his his opponent on the other team. Regardless of whether he played the three or four, Alexander ended up being a negative for the Bucks. He was less bad playing the four than the three but he was thoroughly outplayed (The Rooster’s stats by position for comparison’s sake).

In an interesting development, the Buck’s just traded Richard Jefferson to the Spurs for the carcasses (and expiring contracts) of Bruce Bowen, Fabricio Oberto and Kurt Thomas. In addition, Milwaukee moved Oberto to the Pistons for Amir Johnson. That just cleared up about 35 minutes per game at the small forward position and brought in more competition at the four. Obviously salary relief was one major concern for the Bucks, but they are also trying to free up some playing time for Alexander in order to try and prove that he wasn’t a total bust.

Steals of the Draft

One of the biggest steals of the draft came when New Jersey selected Brook Lopez with the tenth pick overall. Playing for a New Jersey Nets team in total transition, Lopez has been better than advertised and may end up being one of the top players in the 2008 Class. Before getting into it, let’s just get the obligitory Brook and Robin Lopez comparison out of the way. Now we can move on.

In looking at Brook stats from his rookie year, there are a couple of things that jump out. First, and most importantly, is his efficieny for a big man. Anytime you have a legit seven footer that shoots 53 percent from the field and 79 from the line it is a very good thing. Second, his block totals are very nice (1.9 per game) for a rookie center in the NBA and contain great promise. If you drafted Brook Lopez in your fantasy leagues last season, congratulations; you probably have a nice (fantasy) trophy to show for it.

The second biggest steal of the draft (22nd overall) may have actually come from the late second round: Orlando’s Courtney Lee. Lee played a pivotal role in the Magic’s NBA Finals appearance this season despite being remembered more for his missed shots. Lee will probably end up being a very solid player in the league and has already shown his all-around game. He can shoot, defend, pass the ball and take it to the rack and played very confident basketball during most of the regular season.

Second Round Studs

As in every draft, there are a handful of guys taken in the second round that turn out to have solid careers. Rashard Lewis and Gilbert Arenas are probably the two most commonly cited examples. The first player who might fit that bill is Mario Chalmers. Chalmers (selected34th  overall) did an admirable job as a rookie point guard for the Heat and helped get them into the Playoffs after a very disappointing season in 2007-08. That shooting guard of theirs might have had something to do with their playoff appearance as well…

The final potential second round stud is little-known Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. Despite being offensively challenged, Mbah a Moute (drafted 37th overall) has found a way to stay on the court: through solid defense. On a team coached by Scott Skiles, that is pretty much all you need to earn a steady spot in the rotation. As Luc develops, he has the potential to develop into a valuable player in the league. For where he was taken in the draft, Luc should definitely outperform expectations.

There is an overall lesson that can be taken from looking back at past drafts. It doesn’t matter where your draft pick is; value can be found throughout the draft. What really matters is who is doing the picking. Isn’t it strange that certain teams seem to always kill the draft no matter where their picks are? What is really important is to have good management that does their due diligence. The scouting, the workouts, and the numbers are what really separates a team that sees the diamond in the rough from the team that goes for the flavor of the week.