ESPN rankings by position (Using Doolittle)

Pelton acknowledged WARP is not accurate for players like LaMarcus who can space the floor without shooting 3's. WARP puts a premium on players who have a good 3pt% as it is highly correlated with teams that have efficient offense. Having him as the 7th best PF is a joke.

 

Who the hell is the 6 before LMA? At minumum he should be top 3.

 

So, WARP measures how much a player exceeds preseason expectations.

 

Pelton is an absolute balloon. Throw numbers into a computer and get some dumb results. I'm sure the money is at least acceptable, but is it worth looking like an idiot nationally when one had to continually change their statistical formula?

What are his current adjusted preseason predictions for Portland?

 

FIFY

Worse, he talks about WARP and his other crap models that are wrong a super-duper majority (it's a technical term) of the time, in the 3rd person. Like it's not his fault the models are wrong. lol He spends so much time making excuses and exception, only choosing to talk about where the poop actually stuck, that I can't for the life of me understand the appeal.

With all that data, it’s not hard to find a few bits of info that seems to factor out correctly. So, then he writes a diatribe about those few instances for ESPiN insider, and dismisses the crap with excuses. Then fans seeking validation for what they believe go to feed their insatiable appetite for proof that their team or player is the best. Or, maybe they check out the hacked version from the scrub “contributors” on Homer’s Edge who repeat the same “analysis” ad nauseam like it gives them credibility to speak so definitively about their basketball acumen. It was entertaining for a while, but now it's just a waiting game for them to eat their crow and hopefully move on to writing Game of Thrones trivia books.

 

Best insult since someone called Canzano a bowling shoe.

 

No, I meant balloon. It's full of air and what appears to be mass, but put pressure on it, it pops into nothing.

 

That was me who called Canzano a bowling shoe.

 

There it is!

 

The league is flush with PF talent, but barren when it comes to SG talent. What surprises me is Lillar_ (to use a MM-ism) being ranked so high.

 

Who would be your current (meaning healthy as of today) top 5?

 

Haven't really given it any thought, and haven't really watched other teams except when we play them. I've just been underwhelmed with Lillard this season - he's an average starting PG. I like his outside shooting and competitive fire, but aside from those two aspects he doesn't really do anything better than the next guy.

 

Taking 7 threes/game and hitting them at a 44% clip is pretty extraordinary. Even Steph Curry isn't shooting that well this year. I know you mentioned it, but it's a pretty impressive feat IMO.

 

I specified that his outside shooting (along with competitiveness) sets him apart. It's the rest of his game that is rather pedestrian.

 

I hope we are wrong on this some day! But currently we aren't.
Because he possesses that competitive fire I do think he will eventually become much better than he is now. But it's going to be a longer road than his rookie season would have suggested.

 

Here is the list of guards who average 5.6+ Assists with a 19.5+ PER: http://bkref.com/tiny/FA4J5

This is a list designed to put Lillard near the bottom of in assists and PER. But looking at all the stats, something interesting comes up. Among these 11 guards, Lillard is:

1st in 3PT made
2nd in 3PT %
4th in FT made
1st in FT %
5th in Rebounds
3rd in Blocks
3rd in Turnovers (nearly half of Curry's numbers)
4th in Points

He does a couple of things poorly among this group: 2PT shooting, Offensive Rebounding, Steals (I give him a bit of a pass on Assists because he's not the only playmaker on the team). But among this top 1/3 of guards, he's in the top half of them quite a bit. And he's Top 3 in 5 of those stats. That's not really average.