2018-19 season commentary

[Crow]

Oh, Bucks and Raptors have gotten heightened attention from me. Some of the lesser teams with major changes.

[bondom343]

The Kings are really really fun. OKC more fun without Melo. Utah, Denver, NOLA, and Philly I enjoy too.

[pattymills]

Chris Paul having by far his worst season of career... at this point. Shooting / scoring efficiency way off. I dunno about his personal defense. Almost 4 long years ahead.

He's playing through an elbow injury. This guy, and D'antoni, never learn.

[Crow]

Butler to Sixers. One great playoffs by box score metrics, the rest (beyond the very brief first one) ok to good. I'll have to dig for the playoff only RAPM later, unless someone has it handy.

Not sure the full deal Layden / Thibs were asking for or if it made sense for Heat. I am pretty sure though that Heat aren't headed to great heights as is.

Rockets probably weren't getting him from in-conference rival. The Anderson deal didn't help anything, at least yet.

[Crow]

Anthony to Pistons? I can see simple or big trade possibilities. No intel, just guessing.

[Crow]

Ball having a rough game. Rondo & Hart having good minutes.

[eminence]

Continue to be impressed by this years rookie class. A surprising number of non-lotto picks contributing immediately it seems to me (DD, Huerter, Okogie, Hutchison, Shamet, Spellman, Okobo, Brunson, Robinson, Diallo, Clark, Trier).

Anybody else rooting for Lowry for MVP?

[Crow]

By BPM, the top 5 performing rookies are all centers. https://www.basketball-reference.com/dr ... _2018.html

Doncic 9th.

I am not "rooting" for anybody for any award but hope Lowry gets a fair shake. Way better rank on winshares than BPM, not that most of the voter would care. Let's see RPM.

[eminence]

Haven't bothered calculating it myself, but I imagine his rapm component is absolutely spectacular right now. +16.1 on court, +28.1 on/off, nobody else above +20.

[shadow]

Lowry is first in RAPM through games played on 11/8, which is the last time I ran it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ingle=true

Edit: Lowry was first through 11/8, but now Durant is first after the latest update though games played on 11/10. In case you were wondering why the results at the link look different.

[Crow]

On this RAPM, Chris Paul was slightly negative. Doncic -0.8. Bottom 50-60. Is there a minute threshold? Jimmy Butler slightly worse. Trae Young 4th worst estimate.

[eminence]

Just compiling rookies from Shadows 11/8 RAPM. The 25 rookies with 100+ minutes (unless there's an undrafted guy other than Trier/Clark I'm missing). In minutes order.

Doncic -0.80
Young -2.18
Ayton -1.01
Carter -1.17
Trier -0.91
Shai 0.79 (a positive!)
Sexton -1.63
Shamet -0.71
Bagley -1.44
Okogie -0.43
Jackson -1.10
Bamba -1.76
Miles 0.39
DD 1.51
Spellman -0.73
Hutchison 0.31
Robinson 0.10
Mikal 0.41
Huerter 1.09
Clark -0.46
Brunson 0.34
Okobo -0.97
Diallo -0.20
Knox -0.51
Brown 0.73

Overall, bad, not too surprising. Obviously not much to take this early, but will be interesting to follow.

[shadow]

No minutes threshold. Anyone who appeared in a game through 11/8 is included, but low minute players will hover around 0 since this is vanilla RAPM with no prior.

[Crow]

The Bridges both estimated to be doing relatively well by RAPM. Miles has better individual box score stats.

[Crow]

Magic, tiny improvement in defensive efficiency. Offensive efficiency declined slightly when league as whole makes a big move up. SRS slightly better but still bad.

Well below league average on shot selection from a Moreyball perspective. Don't need a shot CHART to tell that story. The more important thing here is noticing the trend and noticing who isn't having helpful affect on the shot selection.

Team efg% down yr to yr in raw terms and rank.

Organization must not have effectively mastered one or more of shot trend & effect identification or communication or amelioration.

On lineup management, top choice is way worse than next 3 most used. Still dinking way too much and way too poorly on average.