Nate McMillan may be the secret to the Pritchslap

Portland was not a great offensive rebounding team until this year.

To be fair, he was a rookie the year before Roy got here.

To be fair, this was also his first year out of MF inactivity...

Once would assume that playing next to a ball-hog like Timmy Duncan is not good, eh?

Actually, Lewis had just one year with a slightly higher PER - the year after Nate left - but of course the rest of the team did much worse - When Lewis moved to Orlando and again got to play for a winning basketball team - his PER dropped. I would argue that Nate (who got his 2nd best PER out of him on a 52 wins team) again maximized his talent... you will see that while his PER under Nate was 20 and it was 20.7 the next year - under Nate his win-score was actually higher...

 

Very interesting post. And it may also explain why so many Blazers fans radically overvalue some of the marginal players on the team (I am not talking about Roy, LMA, Oden, Aldridge). We heard, from numerous posters, that Khryapa and Monia would be stars in Chicago, that Bassy would be the starting point guard on a playoff team, that Patterson would be a star, even Qyntel Wood, god help us, would be a star elsewhere. None of that happened. The only ex Blazer in recent years to have a significant impact on a new team was Sheed, and he was pre-Nate/KP. Jack was OK but nothing special last year. Damn near everyone else the Blazers let go ran from mediocre to sucks. We'll see about Sergio.

 

Nah, we're just kidding.

Andalusian covered some points I was going to make (and came up with a few I hadn't thought of. Always nice when somebody comes along and makes your argument for you better than you could've.)

If it's true for Roy, it should be true for other great playmakers.

Let's test this theory out on another player who unarguably makes his teammates better: LeBron James. Do teammates of his tend to see career highs in PER?
I'll pick a few guys at random who have longer careers on his current team and see:

Ilgauskas: His PER highs prior to LeBron were 19.4 and 19.7. He was 19.7 the year before LeBron was drafted. Since LeBron, he's had PER's of 20.2, 19.5, 21.9, 18, 18.7, 18. Maybe LeBron boosted his PER a little. (Of course, he was finally healthy too.)

Mo Williams: His career high (to that point) was 17.0. After moving to Cleveland, it's 17.2.

Wally Sczerbiak: Career high: 17.2. LeBron high: 12.1. But yeah, he's pretty broken down. So let's just look at the four seasons before he went to Cleveland: 17.1, 17.7, 14.8, 13.9. If there was a "LeBron Bump" in his PER, I don't see it.

Ben Wallace: It's not fair to really compare him in his prime. But the full year before in Chicago his PER was 14.8. The half year in Chicago he was 11.8. He's sat at 12 ever since joining Cleveland.

From this small sample, it's pretty hard to argue that guys playing next to LeBron saw much of a PER bump. Feel free to make your own case, though.

But if you choose not to, it's pretty hard to make the case that Roy artificially raised the PER of so many players when it doesn't seem LeBron was able to.

I think everybody knows that Magloire was once worth a damn. I'm not trying to argue Nate somehow made Magloire suddenly want to play like he did in 2001. Magloire clearly didn't give a fuck about anything by the time he came here. I wasn't cherry picking, I just didn't think it was fair to compare a Magloire-who-cared to the utter piece of shit we happened to get.

However, you're wrong about one thing. In the season before he came to Portland his PER was 11.1. He stopped caring then. He continued to not care when he got here. When he left, he again continued to not care and put up those dreadful PER's for two more teams.

Mine do:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/p/patteru01.html
His best was under Nate in Seattle.
I'll grant you, though, that he did have one good PER season in Milwaukee before getting garbage minutes on the Clippers and then being out of the league. That seems more to me like Ruben Patterson smelling his own demise and trying one last stab at relevance. But you can argue it's a blemish on Nate's career if you want.

Anyway, I'm interested in how you explain away Khryapa and Telfair. I notice you don't seem to address them. Surprising, given that those are probably the most stark examples (IMO) of McMillan somehow making something out of garbage.

 

I didn't argue any of those chumps would be stars, but I certainly didn't think they'd be chumps. I was pretty guilty of overvaluing our players myself, in retrospect.

The thing is that an example like Jermaine O'Neal is so striking, so painful, that us fans tend to live in constant dread of it ever happening again. What we don't think about very often is how badly so many of the guys we dump do after we dump them. Mediocre players who turn out bad don't make headlines. Bad players who turn out to be All-Stars do.

The result is we tend to overvalue what we've got. When you've got a pretty good coach, it's even easier.

 

I explained Viktor. While Nate certainly could have had something to do with it, it was also the year he played the most consistant minutes.

Telfair played his best year under Nate. He was still almost two full points under the league average for a player. However, if you look at his stats, did Nate really make him better?

2005-2006 (13.02 PER) vs 2007-2008 (10.58 PER)
FG% .394 vs .401
asst/TO 2.1 vs 3.2

To me those are big numbers for a PG that is not a 3pt shooter. Telfair shot better, had a better assist to TO ratio and his usage was higher under Nate. So did he really play better under Nate?


Was Mike Brown the coach for those years in Cleveland?


I guess my problem with the original post is the "Nate is "excellent at turning crappy players into somewhat mediocre players". Nate might turn them into players with a little better efficiency, but that is because of our slow pace. Players Nate has had haven't been marginally worse or better in other places. Some have done poorly and well under Nate. I don't think it's a stretch to say Mike Brown is a bad coach. I mean Cleveland was talking about replacing him, and he had just won coach of the year. Lebron however has a really high PER. So to me, it's on the player more than the coach.

Players playing for Nate should always have a slightly larger PER because of the slow pace period.


Also, I wonder what the difference is between Hollinger's PER and basketball ref's PER? They have been different in the past when I have looked for things.

 

13.51 in Portland and a 13.22 in Phoenix

 

So just to play devil's advoacte:

The year Pritchard "pritchslapped" for Roy . . . Roy wasn't considered all that great and the overall draft was considered a weak draft. Maybe the deal happened not so much because of Telfair's PER as much as other organizations not thinking highly of Roy.

I think the jury is still out on the Pritchslap of Jack and the #13 pick for Bayless

I'm not sure a Zach for Frye trade can be labeled a pritchslap. The fact Blazer later picked up Rudy late in the draft as part of the trade might be considered a pritchslap, but that had little to do with Zach and his PERS.

So I see only one pritchslap where KP used the talent on the team (Roy for Telfair)

Overall, I would be shocked if scouts relied so heavly on PERS v. what they know about the player on and off the court . . . and more so, I have heard many times that trades are often made more because of the contracts than the talent involved.

That's it . . . enjoyed the original post and think it has some intersting ideas . . . but thought I would throw out some thoughts.

 

What about Viktor and Tyrus Thomas for LMA?

 

Dude, you lost me as soon as you were talking about how Telfair wasn't that bad. We could have had Al Jefferson. I still rue that day. One of the most idiotic draft picks I've ever witnessed.

 

That's true . . . that could be considered a trade of talent that would classify as a pritchslap.

The way I see though, that trade wasn't about Viktor and that Bulls wanting ViKtor (because Nate made him look good). To me that was a trade of evaluating talent and the Bulls wanted Thomas and the Blazers wanted Aldridge. They swapped postions and threw in Vicktor . . . but if Aldrdige was the Bulls top guy, they don't make the trade.

I guess what I am saying is I attribute the pritchslapping more due to KP (and staff) ability to scout talent than Nate's ability to increase the players trade value.

But mook has me thinking about it . . .

 

Meh. You have a good idea, but a study like this will always be flawed, since you can't do it complete justice with control variables and such. Just because two things correlate doesn't automatically mean they are linked. I'd say the fact that we sucked as a team, giving these players tons of minutes, would be somewhat relevant. NBA teams are ridiculously situational...that's why GMs and scouts get paid...

 

Yeah, I'm probably coming across as more stalwart than I actually am. It's impossible to prove almost any theory conclusively in a team sport. (Hell, just ask who the greatest NBA player of all time is. It seems obvious to everyone, but the answer isn't the same for everyone.)

But you have to admit there's a heck of a correlation between players doing as well or better than typical under Nate.

Most coaches are evaluated by their teams' records. That to me seems like a far, far more correlative evaluation than mine. There are a million different reasons why a team may suck, and most of the time it has little or nothing to do with the coach. It's just that the coach is always easy to fire, and the GM would rather fire the coach than himself, so he gets canned.

And then you've got the issue of coaches like Phil Jackson and Popovich. Those guys happen to have the best records and the most rings. But they've also coached the greatest superstars.

It'd be interesting to see how coaches like Phil and Pop do on my test. Clearly Nate did better at least with Udoka.

 

Yeah, if I had to rename this thread, it'd probably be something like, "PER shows Nate is a damned good coach." That's really more my point. The "Pritchslap" thing is secondary, and admittedly kind of sensational.

Still, though, even if the "Pritchslap" unarguably only happened once due to Nate's work as a coach, the results were Brandon Roy. It may be only one instance, but it's a pretty fucking big instance.

 

I was thinking something along those lines for possibly explaining Udoka. We played him in a big role and he played through a lot of knee pain, perhaps damaging his future. It's entirely possible that we got out of him pretty much everything he had to give. There was a lot of pride on his part, being the hometown kid getting his first real shot and wanting to make the most of it.

 

Exactly.

Also, people should remember that PER doesn't magically go up when minutes go up. It's a measure of efficiency, which doesn't care about pace or minutes. It's a measure of how good you do in the time you're given. The argument of "Ime Udoka got more minutes on a bad team" doesn't really fly too too much.

 

Maybe. But if that's true about our team, it should also be true about other bad teams.
Look at Sacramento--
Mikki Moore has been more dreadful than ever. PER in Sactown of 8.3.
Bobby Jackson has a career low of 12.4.
Beno Udrih, who has a 15.3 PER in San Antonio, has PER's of 13.3 and 12.3.

Or the Wizards:
Caron Butler: Ok, he definitely took off. That to me is just a case of a star player finally getting the space to play. But that's sort of your point.
Jamison: His highest was in Dallas (21.2) but he's had a couple of 20 PER seasons there too.
Darius Songalia: Highest PER's were on pretty good Kings teams (14.9). Highest in Washington was 13.9

Timberwolves:
Ryan Gomes: Boston high - 14.0, Minnesota high - 15.7. Of course, this year he dropped to 12.5, but it's valid.
Mike Miller: 13.8, the lowest since his rookie year. Last year he had a 16.1

Again, I'm not cherry picking guys. Just going for middle-aged guys who've had the opportunity to play on multiple teams and aren't broken down completely yet. Just from my quick random sampling, I don't think there's a definitive "bad team bump" in PER, unless you are a guy like Caron Butler and you just needed the opportunity to become a star.

 

Don't you think players tend to play better knowing they are going to get minutes? I know that's not entirely relevant to PER, but it's something to consider.

EDIT:

I'm not saying it has anything to do with good or bad team, just the player's particular role.

 

Possibly, but there's guys like Bonzi and Zach who played great in limited minutes and earned their starting roles because of making the most of their time. Then there's players like Channing Frye, who need minutes just to get loose and warm on the court.

So it does take all types, but I think you'll see that the self-starters are the ones who eventually prove their value in the league.