Trade Paul George

[Crow]

His RPM is only a bit over plus 1, good for 66th place. His WS/48 and BPM are modest and at or near career lows. He is about to want to get paid the new max. If you can get the conventional wisdom "haul" for him, I'd trade him. Fast. I'd take best offer even if it wasn't "great". I don't want that level of production for the max. Not even close. Even if he was at his best, not good enough. Worst and near worst defensive player ratings of his career. Age, injuries, perceived self-sense that he is great enough... Not getting them where they want to go. Trade. Trade, if you really want title contention and think middling "good" isn't good enough. Don't trade him and you're either stuck in that high grade mud or you trade him later.

Only reason not to trade him now would be if you could get more more later. Can you trade $30 plus mil / yr players for "more" than on old CBA deals? I guess we'll find out eventually. I am leary about it. But maybe it becomes possible, reasonable, normal. I wouldn't want to receive though for the quality of the $30 plus mil guys who will get offered and I doubt I'd end up that happy with the salary match package for a new max guy compared to trading now and using residual space how I wanted vs. what filler I'd likely have to take with a new max deal. But it comes down to what you think some other GM would give you at each time. If you think there are some other clowns who will give Billy King type deals maybe you hold on. Maybe it is more about the clowns than Paul George. But you better be sure about the level of those clowns and how long they last in ability and willingness to be great clowns than now and how far they'll go.

I'd think you'd have a better (last) chance to get significant old CBA assets now versus a year, 2 or 3 years from now. It may already be too late though. Best time to trade may have been 5 months ago.

[Mike G]

He missed some games through Nov., but he seems to be full strength now. While he's shooting and passing less than last year, his TS% is up and his TO way down in the last 9 games.

Code: Select all

time    TS%  TRb%  Ast%   TO%  Usg%  ORt  DRt  GmSc
15-16  .557  10.9  20.3  13.6  30.4  106  101  16.3

Oc-Nov .558  10.5  16.2  14.6  27.5  101  104  14.7
Dec    .586  11.0  13.2  11.4  28.2  108  106  16.5

His Stl and Blk rates are unchanged.
Just looking at this month vs last season, his ORtg is better, but not as much as the DRtg is worse. Pacers DRtg is 4.0 worse than last season, from 3rd best to 15th.

EDIT: His team has also changed since last year, with a real PG (Teague) now distributing and a real PF (Th Young) reducing George's minutes there from 40% to 10% this season.
He's getting fewer shots at the rim and taking more mid-range; also fewer 3's and a Lot less FT. And better TS% in spite of all that.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... l_shooting

With the ball in his hands, last year 29% of his 3's were unassisted. This year, a more avg 12.5% have been.

[Mike G]

This may be just a tangent, but I looked up last year's top 20 3FG makers and their assisted 3FG.
Ranked by unassisted 3FG, incl. playoffs

Code: Select all

shooter   3fg  ast'd  unA%  unA
Curry     482   260   .46   222
Lillard   271   124   .54   147
Harden    249   128   .49   121
Lowry     254   163   .36    91
Kemba     196   115   .41    81
Durant    217   142   .35    75
George    228   163   .29    65
I Thomas  180   116   .36    64
McCollum  217   156   .28    61
Canaan    176   131   .26    45
Hood      161   121   .25    40
Thompson  374   342   .09    32
Matthews  199   177   .11    22
JR Smith  269   250   .07    19
Ariza     189   173   .08    16
Redick    211   199   .06    12
Teletovic 181   172   .05     9
Covington 170   161   .05     9
Korver    182   178   .02     4
Love      204   200   .02     4

The unweighted average unassisted% is .23. Only George and Durant among forwards and >.08 ?

[Crow]

George is 74th on RPM, very pricey and probably headed to super pricey to keep, with age and injury considerations... and they are refusing all calls? Ha.

[Crow]

"Not getting them where they want to go. Trade."

What you going to do Larry?

[Mike G]

"We" collectively picked the Pacers to win 40.2 games; they won 42, made the playoffs and were a consistent 4 Pts/G short of the defending champions.
Get rid of your best player! Panic!

[Crow]

let's continue down the same path that hasn't yielded much until he leaves for nothing!

[bondom343]

Trading your best player almost never works out for the team trading. And even if there's a minor chance he stays you keep him, especially if he qualifies for the DVPE.

[shadow]

Pacers are essentially in purgatory. If they resign George long term it will handicap them enough financially that their ceiling will be the 6th seed. If they trade him or he leaves after next season, they enter rebuilding mode, but probably aren't bad enough to secure great lottery odds.

[Crow]

Winshares per 48 lower than it has been since rookie year (minus the season with just a few games) and only modestly above average. BPM lowest since rookie year. RPM estimate fell almost 50% from last season.

You don't give away but assess the value return. $30 million will buy a good amount, this summer and / or later. If you keep him you appear to be keeping the design that saw you barely break .500 in regular season and get swept in the first round. Ainge and McHale eventually traded their stars but Bird, presumably the most driven and ruthless of them, is going to roll the same thing out again and lock into George for 5 more years?

[Mike G]

Bird doesn't seem like the type that would deliberately (or likely) make the team worse, on the vague hope that they'd get better randomly. Neither are Indiana fans interested in such a scenario.
Last time they went without Paul George, they slipped 18 wins, from 56 to 38. Nobody wants that again.

The Pacers and Warriors are the only teams to come within 5 ppg of Cleveland in the playoffs, since LeBron went back. Unlike the Dubs, Indiana did not get blown out in any game.

Winshares per 48 lower than it has been since rookie year (minus the season with just a few games) and only modestly above average. BPM lowest since rookie year. RPM estimate fell almost 50% from last season.

That's very strange. His 2FG%, 3FG%, eFG%, FT%, and TS% were all career highs, and by a good bit. TO% at career low, and other rates near career avg.

He's 26! and only 9 players have logged more minutes in the last 2 years. Only LeBron, Harden, and Westbrook have more points, rebounds, and assists in that time.

[shadow]

Ainge and McHale eventually traded their stars

I feel like this is apples and oranges. Paul George is only 26. Garnett was 32 when he was traded to Boston. Pierce and Garnett were 35 and 37 respectively when they were traded to the Nets. Garnett is probably the exception to the rule, but he still had four seasons after the trade to Boston in NPI RAPM in which he finished in the top 4 in the entire league. I feel like it's too early to give up on Paul George unless you were to get an extremely generous offer from a clueless GM like Billy King.

[Crow]

Yes, the ages are different; but, the metric declines in a fully healthy year and in a system designed around him are troubling. It is not age itself that we worry about, it is decline due to age (or whatever). Keep George past next April and you probably have him until 2023 or you dump him for less value than you could get this summer. But go ahead and keep him and watch him do similar, probably not notably greater. Eventually he will go from second tier #1 to extremely highly paid #2 or #3.

[Crow]

FT rate, assists, offensive rebounds, steal and blocks were all below career averages.

RPM estimates suggest George went from providing all his positive impact on defense in season before his major injury to developing a positive offensive impact but then losing the positive defensive impact entirely this season. What do eye test reviews say?

I'll note that Pacers had their worst team 3pt fg% allowed in 5 years. Haven't checked NBA.com for George's direct 3pt fg% allowed but everybody shares the team result to some extent. This affects his metrics especially for Winshares and BPM which know nothing of his personal shot defense and just use team info regardless whether he is on court. ( Simple linear metrics wouldn't know or care anything about shot defense, so that offers no help on that important aspect of his performance.) The DRPM decline is probably exaggerated but there may indeed be a decline. Haven't heard it identified by any other means (yet).

[shadow]

PG wasn't alone in the decline in DRPM. Which makes sense given their team defensive rank dropped from 3rd to 16th in just one year. They did lose Mahinmi who was 5th overall in the entire league in DRPM, so obviously a pretty significant loss on that end. He likely plugged a lot of holes in their pick and roll defense, which was ranked 26th this season according to a recent Ringer article.

It's also possible there was a bit of a culture shift from Vogel to McMillan in terms of the emphasis placed on defense and/or McMillan's schemes were not as sound as Vogel's (switching every Kyrie-LeBron PnR in game 1 with Teague switching on to LeBron comes to mind)

From http://8points9seconds.com/2016/05/16/n ... ogel-bird/ :

"In McMillan’s 10 full seasons as an NBA head coach, his squads ranks in defensive rating: 17th, 17th, 27th, 27th, 28th, 26th, 17th, 13th, 15th, 14th"

So McMillan didn't exactly have the defensive pedigree that Vogel had established in his time in Indiana. Of course Vogel also had Roy Hibbert (before he fell off a cliff) and Mahinmi.

Jeff Teague at PG was a slight downgrade this year in DRPM (-0.24) compared to George Hill the prior year (0.34)
Monta Ellis went from a +0.44 DRPM to -1.68 this year and played pretty significant minutes (27 MPG in 73 games). Not really a shocker though given his history.
Al Jefferson was used in a backup center role and went from a +1.78 DRPM to -0.53
Lavoy Allen used in a similar role to Jefferson and went from a +1.15 DRPM to -0.95
Kevin Seraphin fell from a +1.56 DRPM (with the Knicks!) to a -0.95 in limited minutes.

It seems Turner and Young prevented the Pacers defense from falling into total disarray. Turner improved his DRPM from +0.25 to +2.43 and Young had a similar impact as the prior year, going from +1.24 to +1.69. So they still managed to hover around league average in defensive rating.