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The only playoff team clearly worse than Thunder against lottery ranked teams is the Jazz (at barely over .500). TWolves are only other worse at one game worse. Thunder aren't terrible looking on this on surface but are by comparison to playoff peers.

How much does this matter? It matters for playoff seeding, which could be very important.

If you put a lot of stock into how teams perform against the best teams in the league, and not how well they run up the score against weak opponents, then Toronto might be more of a pretender than a contender. They only have 6 wins against the Sagarin top 10. 19 teams have more such wins.

Yeah I usually focus on performance against top teams. Heat are around bottom 5 against top 10 teams (by Sagarin ratings).

Suns, hoping "to turn corner this summer". I doubt it. Even with new coach and multiple trades. And new GM. 2 years from now? Still unlikely.

"The process" is typically called a success these days. But of the 7 first rounders Hinkie & Co. had and got to use directly, they had 2 obvious picks that worked out eventually, 4 bad ones and Elfrid Payton. The tank worked just enough but arguably should have yielded more. Payton turned into Saric thanks to the foolish Magic overpay. Not much was garnered from all the second rounders including high ones. 1/3rd success from the super hard tank. And in year 5 they are in a first for a lower seed and a first playoff appearance. Lots of excitement for the future but for accomplishment to date it is pretty modest.

Tom Gores: You have a below average record mainly because you have a below average core & bench. Sure the Jackson injury is a factor and SVG is probably hurting things too, but beyond 2 front court players who are not creating edge as much as you'd like, you have little else of note. Unlikely to change anytime soon. Stuck in nowhereville.

Griffin was a desperation move, isn't working and isn't likely to.

Becky Hammon for NBA Head Coach? Sure, consider her.

Could also consider the 44 WNBA players with a better career efficiency by Winshares / 48. Or the ones that won titles (Becky's teams 0-4 in finals appearances and 2 games below .500 in her regular seasons
with Stars for second half of career. I.e. when she had most influence). None of the others have gotten a similar break. Not sure how many pursued it or would.

4th year with Spurs and Pop. That is valuable. But how valuable was the assistant coaching? Presumably her biggest responsibility would be with the PGs? If so, in her 4 years the PG position was always the weakest on team by counterpart data and lottery level vs. the league in 3 of 4 years and barely above average in the other one. Now that is mainly on players, front office and Pop but nothing special on the surface specifically there to get a big credit share of.

Consider whoever you want. She might be better than some or many. We'll probably eventually find out.
The above is only part of ledger to consider. She probably has a good fit personality for the job. Personality and / or acting is a part of the coaching hire / job. College head coaching might be appropriate next step as rumored but some skip steps if given that chance.

Teams could look other places as well. Analytic experts. Proven corporate team leaders. Entrepreneurs.

Most glaring weakness of 76ers has probably been own turnovers. Was as much as 3 above league average. Has improved since turn of year, cutting gap to average about in half. Has been worst on road and against playoff ranked eastern teams. So the playoffs will be big test of the improvement.

Otherwise, they look pretty good.

Zach Levine surprised he isn't on some top 25 under 25 list? Understandable for him to be surprised, the way a lot of players think... but very weak overall metric scores this season led to it. Below replacement level on RPM estimate.

At stat level he is ok from 3, weak on rim and mostly terrible from mid-range. Wake up dude. Ok defensive rebounder, passer and on steals & turnovers but the very weak overall shooting / scoring on absurd usage is way too much to offset. You aren't a good point guard or shooting guard. Just an athlete who is very inefficient and doesn't defend. Change in cap situation and injury already cost you tens of millions on next deal. This season has probably cost you tens of millions more. Unless Bulls are super believers in your future and / or too embarrassed to admit their mistake. Will some GM be a bigger fool and chase him? Maybe. And the analytics department will either be too polite and subservient or not strong enough or fail anyways as is often the case.

Spurs should be willing to consider trading anyone on team this offseason. Probably should replace several to many to nearly everyone.

Shot selection by distance is atrocious as is efficiency. Inexcusable. Can't be allowed to stay the same.

Crow wrote:Shot selection by distance is atrocious as is efficiency. Inexcusable. Can't be allowed to stay the same.

Yeah. Watching some of their games made me curious why no one brought this up, and if Popovich may be getting a bit too much of a pass here. I realize they're missing a very important player, and that this roster probably wouldn't even sniff the playoffs with most other coaches, but they often seemed to be actively trying to take those shots that almost anyone in the "modern" NBA is trying to avoid

From a roster perspective, I'd have liked them to keep Dedmon instead of signing Lauvergne, who's been a mild +/- disaster wherever he played

I guess B Simmons wasn't actually picked by Hinkie. I gave him credit for it.

Embid is down in most stat categories over last 10 games. So is team performance.

Players probably should get a degree of slack about knowing some things, close or exact. Don't know who you play next or exact team record? Hmm, ok, slack. Own or team stats? I'd rather they did. Preferably at or near reputed Battier level. Or beyond.

Sabonis in last 10 games: About 15% cut in minutes, 15% decline in performance by a simple box score metric. Shooting slump. Big decline in raw team plus minus on the court appears to be biggest recent negative change on team, while others have moved up sharply. RPM is about -1 for season. Slight negatives on both sides of court. Not bad for 2nd year player but nothing special either. Probably has moved down recently. 2.5 times as negative as Al Jefferson's estimate, fwiw. Not sensitive enough to make much of this; though if it was the reverse, it might be mentioned.

Thanks for noting a point of agreement J.E.

I liked / like Dedmon too, though the Gasol deal made a re-sign impossible. Better than LaVervne by about 2.5 pts on RPM this season. Have only half of last season but it still has a modest impact.

Gasol this season, not quite elite or that good a value but at 1.7 quite a bit better than Dedmon this season. Last season, almost identical estimates. "Maybe" right choice by these season numbers but we don't know what Dedmon would have done this season. A really good play level simulator might have a guess. Like a machine learning model utilizing analysis of individual and team performance in situations similar to this season's play data???

If I had the ability to produce this and showed it completed (even roughly) to a certain GM maybe they would have been more impressed than with just the idea (that came to me 5-7 years ago in a less sophisticated but somewhat similar way and again just now).

Teams say they really need new ideas to get edge on the supposedly ever more equally informed competition but ALL the job descriptions seem driven by, hyped focused on implementation skills. There should be both on a team. Both, even if in different staffers (not all one kind), though did say it was interesting and talk to me for a bit.

One of Luke Bornn's recent papers talks about a model that surely could be adapted from team shot hypothesis testing to substitute individuals, at least for shots. The rest could probably be built in similar fashion, though how interactive to make it at factor level would be a significant design choice, as it could affect how a possession plays out and possibly the rest of the game for that matter if you let it. Perhaps you could try to return to original intentions as revealed by the next actual plays soon as possible so as to not stray quite as much. Choices but first comes an idea, then the development and implementation.