Young Spurs

[Crow]

Pop gushes about Leonard and Mills.

Last year's RAPM estimates them at -1.5 and -1.8, mostly giving up points on the defensive side.

Sounds like the Spurs' recent emphasis on offense and relative defensive mediocrity will continue.

[Crow]

Leonard with the second lowest raw team win% of the top 14 Spurs on minutes played. Mills middle of the pack.

In very modest minutes Leonard did great on personal boxscore at PF but team barely broke even.

[huevonkiller]

Honestly, I got a 2009-Cleveland Cavalier feel about them last year. They were a really deep team, not necessarily built for the playoffs.

Their playing style seems a tad too enamored with offense for my taste.

[wilq]

Pop gushes about Leonard
Last year's RAPM estimates them at -1.5 and -1.8 [...]
Leonard with the second lowest raw team win% of the top 14 Spurs on minutes played.

Isn't it some kind of issue with the RAPM?
Isn't there too much emphasis on the lack of previous data or simply regression to the mean?
Because according to RAPM basically all rookies are below average in their first season! The best I could quickly find recently was Rubio at +0.9 and Harden at +0.3... so in that perspective Kawhi had a very promising rookie season.

[J.E.]

RAPM starts all rookies at -2, because that gave the best prediction results when forecasting entire seasons. So, being rated at -1.5/-1.8 after one year isn't too great but above average for a rookie, I guess. It could also mean that the player just didn't play very much

[Crow]

Good reminder wilQ. i should have looked at non-prior informed for rookies.

I now see Leonard and Mills at about neutral on non-prior informed RAPM for last season. Still does not seem like enough to me to rave about those players though. By comparison Rubio pulled almost a +2 here because of his defensive impact only. Leonard still a -1.3 defensive impact here (despite his reputation), Mills -0.5. So on this even playing field, they still come out estimated as weak on defense, just not as much. Will want to look at this season's ratings. i do not think Leonard will show as a star or future star on this, but we will see.

[dtjmcauliffe]

This might be Spurs Homerism, but belief in Leonard seems reasonable. He was a really good player by box score statistics(although his game/role probably fits those metrics well), and he seemed to get more comfortable as the year went on, and played really good defense on occasion. A little over rated in that area, but he was OK.

The real reason I think you can be positive about him is that he showed huge progress in measurable skills that he was needed to do. Coming in, the knock on him was that he couldn't shoot, then he shot 37% from 3(Probably the most important skill for a SF in SA's offense). Expecting him to develop more given that already happening seems reasonable.

Mills seems to me like just being positive in general. You're not going to say that he's terrible.

[wilq]

RAPM starts all rookies at -2, because that gave the best prediction results when forecasting entire seasons.

Thanks for the information - so it's a feature not a bug.
BTW, is there a list or page somewhere with only rookies?

So, being rated at -1.5/-1.8 after one year isn't too great but above average for a rookie, I guess

He also did it without a training camp and in a packed schedule which probably didn't help.

I now see Leonard and Mills at about neutral on non-prior informed RAPM for last season. Still does not seem like enough to me to rave about those players though. By comparison Rubio pulled almost a +2 here because of his defensive impact only.

Which may have been the best recent rookie season in this regard so it's not a fair comparison.
I think the most impressive thing about Leonard's first season was his 3-pt shooting - he went from 29% in the NCAA to 37% in the NBA! What the hell happened there? All those threes in college were buzzer-beaters from the midcourt or what?