2019-2020 season commentary

[Crow]

Spurs poor against good teams and not good against average and poor teams either.

[Crow]

Rockets weakest against teams who have high assists, rebound well, play slow and are good at shooting and/ or shot defense. Nothing special against good in general teams.

Nuggets are operating pretty well to challenge the Rockets (except for own shooting) and won the 1st game of the season against them.

Lakers are also generally good against them too, though they play a middling pace and might be tempted to run with them. No matchups yet.

Clippers have some issues; playing fast, defensive rebounding, assists. Still 2-1 against them though.

Will Rockets make it out of second round? I'd lean no, but the matchup will obviously be an important factor.

[Crow]

I talked previously about how the Sixers were well-designed to give Bucks trouble with their weakness. The opposite is also true. Sixers have more trouble against strong offense that are efficiency with passing. The Bucks are that.

Pacers are quite weak (in the small sample of games to date)against strong offenses. Raptors have more trouble with good offense than defenses and teams who play fast. Heat more trouble with good defenses.

Mavs, more trouble against good defenses. Blazers, trouble against all types of good teams.

[Crow]

Brandon Goodwin smashes to a far higher career to date night tonight. 21 pts, 6 assists, 2 steals. Hawks win.

I noted the lack of testing of him 4 days ago.

[Crow]

Aaron Gordon. pretty much doing this season what he did as a rookie. RPM estimate down to neutral. 3 pt shooting back to weak, Development? Nah.

[Crow]

Clippers a mix of great and average.

Doc has a good starting lineup and uses it just 5 minutes per game. Got to play with 281 other lineups. Just 2 lineups used over 1.5 minutes per game. Ridiculous chaos. 84% of lineups used less than 10 minutes each total for the season. What have they credibly learned about lineups? Almost nothing specific. 18 of 20 most used player pairs are positive, so most things work. But what is best? Can't say with confidence.

[Crow]

Cavs rebound and don't foul (for good and probably more not). Most other stuff sucks. Prospects? More years at the bottom. 3, 5, more...

[Crow]

So Carmelo is hitting 3s but is well below average on scoring efficiency, no longer passing and a meh rebounder.

Chris's doesn't hit 3s but is slightly above league average on ts%, a strong rebounder and passing more than ever. Turnovers still high but not outrageous.

ORPM is about neutral for both. DRPM favors Anthony. DBPM Chriss. nbashotcharts.com RAPM also estimates Anthony.

I am not really focused on a comparison. I just happened to be interested in checking both about at the same time.

Chris's just 22.5 years old. Best he has played. I'd think someone picks him up off waiver wire.

[Crow]

How does league strength so far this year look relative to other years, especially recent years?

[Crow]

Hawks featuring the Trae Show- worst offensive efficiency in the league. 4th worst defense.

[Crow]

Harden's fta / gm still down from earlier but not as dramatically as in mid-December. About 15% lower to last 10 games than all games previous to that.

[eminence]

@Crow

I remember you talking about plus/minus type stuff against certain competition once (say playoff teams or +2 teams or whatever). Did that ever wind up going anywhere?

[Crow]

knarsu3 computed efficiencies against the top 11 contenders. Check here. https://twitter.com/knarsu3/status/1209 ... 32544?s=20


For a quick check of strength against good teams I here http://sagarin.com/sports/nbasend.htm and here example http://www.82games.com/1920/1920OKC4.HTM

[Crow]

Bucks - Lakers finals that goes 6-7 games seems to be most likely matchup. Bucks with home court. Each well suited to challenge the other where it is most likely to work. Bucks need to keep Davis off free throw line. Lakers need to limit effectiveness of Giannis A. Bucks favored.

[Crow]

Jazz are perfect so far this month at 6-0.

Lineup data for season looks really good now- except for the perennial complaint that performing lineups are not milked hard enough.

I don't follow them closely but the split data for January suggests that they got a lot less Moreyball but increased assists.

Fouling less and lots less month to month. A changing in strategy or fortune? The change is so huge, I'd think is probably a change in strategy. But now I see they have had a super easy January schedule so far. That could be a lot of it.

How much of the improvement is directly related to Conley's absence? I assume much of it. Will probably look further later.