Basketball Free For All

With yet another NBA trade deadline coming and going, a lot of excitement and hope was generated among the fans and media.  Some teams were looking for that final piece that makes them championship material.  Others simply were looking for a player that helps them get into the postseason.  Lastly, there were a few who look at this time of the year as the highlight of the season as their team struggles to even be competitive on a nightly basis so might as well position themselves for the upcoming lottery.  Whatever the reasons, all fans hoped their team would have made a trade or two that improved future prospects.  Question is, how often can these deadline deals really be coined successful?

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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.

To cap off what has been mildly summarized as an active offseason, the Charlotte Bobcats and New Orleans Hornets switched centers today. Emeka Okafor: consider yourself the luckiest man in the world. Meet Chris Paul, the best point guard on the planet. He’ll be feeding you alley-oops and padding your stats for the next five years.

Tyson Chandler, wow, it’s really been a tough run. After being traded for spare parts (well Joe Smith and Chris Wilcox to be exact) and returned as damaged goods. Ouch. The reason for the return? Turf toe and lingering ankle injuries. Like, things that big men suffer from in the later stages of their career. That reminds me of someone…

Now, to be fair, Okafor is no stranger to injury himself. He has played in all 82 games during both of the last two seasons. What would drive a team like the Bobcats to trade their finally healthy franchise player for a player with established and recurring injuries? These days, it could only be cash money.

In case you haven’t heard yet, it is tough economic times out there.

From New Orleans’ perspective, the Hornets have made a trade primarily for basketball purposes instead of financial reasons. Think about it for a moment how radical of a shift that is. New Orleans is applauded for making one trade that is not simply a salary dump. The other motivating factor is clear: placate CP3 now or he forces or trade out of Nawlins’ or bolts via free agency at the first possible moment.

Charlotte provides the perfect example of everything that is wrong in the NBA. The move can only be described as fiscally motivated and should offend the sentiments of all basketball purists.

But maybe, in fact, this could end up being a blessing in disguise for Charlotte and their poor, self-loathing fans. After all, you would have to be a masochist to be a Charlotte Bobcats fan. But if this ends up being the deal that frees enough cap space to sell the Bobcats to new ownership, it could certainly be looked on as a good move in the end. Tyson’s contract expires next season versus Okafor’s which runs through 2014.

Charlotte: it is time for some new management. What you’ve been doing for the past eight years has not been working.

But, what about the player comparisons?

On a talent basis, the Hornets got the better end of the deal. Looking at how the two players played against each other, check out a career head-to-head comparison between Chandler and Okafor. Okafor appears to have the upper hand here. Another perspective is to compare their career per-36 minute averages, which are remarkably similar and Okafor having a scoring edge and Chandler having a field goal percentage edge.

Looking even more closely, at Okafor’s and Chandler’s on/off court statistics from last season, the talent advantage is even more skewed in favor of Okafor. Usually, you have to account for who is the backup when comparing on/off court statistics, but both Chandler and Okafor have equally sucky players coming off the bench behind them. Hilton Armstrong versus Nazr Mohammed is pretty much a draw in my book.

However, you must remember that Chandler was hobbled by injuries last season and was attempting to play through very serious injury and probably worsening them for himself in the long term in the process. Now, that reminds me of someone too. Looking at Chandler’s on/off statistics from 2007-08, the statistics fall closer in line with Okafor’s statistics from 2008-09. So the talent discrepancy isn’t huge.

What is huge is the discrepancy between Okafor’s and Chandler’s chances of injury and re-injury at this point in their careers. It is just too much of a gamble to bet the farm on Chandler and his turf toe. That is an unacceptable risk for the Robcats Bobcats and they risk alienating the (remaining) fanbase.

So, a couple of parting words for Emeka Okafor and Tyson Chandler.

EO: Enjoy the ride and keep your eyes open and hands up while playing with CP3.

TC, What else can you say but: Tyson, welcome to Charlotte, the new Memphis.

Welcome to basketball hell.