For the tl;dr crowd: 25% through the season, stats show that losing LMA and replacing him with Leonard/Davis/Plumlee/Vonleh has increased offensive efficiency among the bigs and kept the Blazers as a top-10 offense (currently #8), even with a poor shooting start to the season from Dame/CJ/Aminu, most probably because the distribution of the shots away from mid-range to more paint-and-3's. One of the many things that was brought up this summer was that the loss of LMA may be mitigated somewhat by the fact that the bigs that were brought in to take the place of his (and, to a lesser extent, RoLo's) offense were going to be useful in large part because they don't take bad shots--defined as those 10-23' or those that are contested. I disregarded LMA's stats this year--he's in a different offense, different usage, etc. I placed them on the graph just for reference. But I compared the 4 primary bigs (Davis/Plumlee/Leonard/Vonleh) against LMA's production last year. At first, I was going to use RoLo and Kaman with LMA to do a frontcourt v. frontcourt comparison (and maybe I will later), but it's lined up so far that the 4 Bigs are making as many shots and scoring slightly more ppg than LMA last year, so it makes for an interesting comparison. The frontcourt this year (even with the horrible, terrible, no-good, very-bad shooting by Leonard and Vonleh at the start of the year and only marginally getting better) is more efficient and is replicating LMA's ppg. The bigs average 9.3/18.3 per game (a 51% FG%) and add 60% shooting on 8FTA/g for a total of 24.1 ppg. (By the way, on the Forensic Fan efficiency meter, that's 1.31 points per shot) LMA last year gave us 9.8/21.5 per game (45.5% FG%) with 85% FT on 5 FTA/g, for a total of 23.4 ppg and 1.09 points every time he hoisted a shot. In other words, the Big 4 score about as efficiently as having DeMarcus Cousins on the court for 48 minutes, while last year LMA was less efficient with every shot than Carmelo and CJ McCollum are this year. It's even more stark when you look at how the shots have gone up. Of those 18 shots per game that the 4 Bigs put up, 13 of them are in the paint and 3 are from 3pt. Only 2.7 shots per game come between 10 and 23 feet, (most of them from Leonard) and they shoot 48% on them. Conversely, LMA last year shot 8 shots per game in the paint, 1.6 per game from 3 and 12.1 shots per game between 10 and 23 feet. (He averaged 40% on them) Even in a down start to the year for Lillard/McCollum/Aminu (in terms of percentages and efficiency), moving those 10 of those 12 mid-range shots per game to 5 more from the bigs in the paint and 5 more 3s has increased efficiency from the bigs and kept the Blazers as a top-1o offensive team.
8-12 But to be constructive rather than just point that out... What was your reasoning behind including all 4 bigs? Aldridge spent the majority of the time at power forward to put up the stats he did for the Blazers. Shouldn't you include only the players that spend the majority of the time at the same position?
8-12, but (as shown) decidedly not because we're missing LMA's offense. I pointed out that I started out that way (frontcourt v. frontcourt), but when it became clear that all of LMA's offense/shots/usage was replicated (more efficiently) by the 4-bigs on almost a shot-for-shot basis, I just stuck with that. Another iteration of this is to do frontcourt v. frontcourt to show how we're not forcing shots down to the bigs this year, and even though shooting %'s are down for the team, TS% is not. For instance, Plumlee almost directly cancels out RoLo (though at a higher FG% and efficiency) and Davis/Vonleh almost make it up to what Kaman was shooting last year Here's one that includes Kaman and RoLo as well. It's not as stark, but you can still see the trends: 2014-15 Blazers Frontcourt (LMA, Kaman, Lopez, Leonard: 81% of PF/C minutes) v. 2015-16 Blazers Frontcourt (Davis/Plumlee/Leonard/Vonleh: 84% of PF/C minutes) at rim: 12.3 FGA/g (67% FG%) vs. 8.5 FGA/g (63% FG%) in paint: 8.4 FGA/g (43%) vs. 4.2 FGA/g (46%) 10-16': 6.9 FGA/g (40%) vs. 1.2 FGA/g (52%) 16-23': 10.0 FGA/g (42%) vs. 1.5 FGA/g (45%) 3pt: 3.9 FGA/g (41%) vs. 3.1 FGA/g (25%) FT: 9.2 FTA/g (81%) vs. 8.0 FTA/g (60%) Total: 41.5 FGA/g vs. 18.5 FGA/g. 3192 points on 2802 shots (1.13 points/shot) vs. 481 points on 365 shots (1.32 points/shot) 2802 shots in 3936 minutes of game time (or 1 shot every 1.4 minutes) vs. 365 shots in 960 minutes of game time (1 shot every 2.6 minutes) 1 foul shot per 4 FGA vs. 1 foul shot per 2.2 FGA. You could make the argument one of two (if not more) ways: 1) Since the 4 Bigs replicate LMA's usage, all of the shots that went to Kaman/Leonard/RoLo last year are now distributed to guards and wings. 2) Since the frontcourt shot way more last year (at a way lower efficiency), distributing the extra 15 midrange shots elsewhere is covering the loss of LMA, even when the other shooters aren't necessarily setting the world on fire. As postulated for the last 4 years or so, they don't need to to make up for it.
I upload images to http://imgur.com/ , right click on picture to "view image" and that's the link I post here.
If using chrome, you can drag and drop an image from another browser window right to the editor and it appears inline. You can do this multiple times to add multiple images. If you are editing a post, you have to be in "more options..." mode to be able to drag/drop. Instead of drag and drop, you can also use a snipping tool (Windows) or screen shot tool (Mac) to grab an area of the screen (e.g. selected part of a spreadsheet, image, whatever) and copy then paste into the editor. imgur is the hard way. Anyhow, who's better: guy who scores 20 PPG in 36 minutes, or 4 guys who score 20 PPG in 60 minutes (combined)?
African or European? I'd say that it's better to give those mid-range shots you're making at 40% over to 3pt shooters who are shooting 37%. BTW, K*be's scoring 17 ppg in only 31 minutes. Maybe we should grab him.
My point is your comparison isn't really that valid. If the team took 85 shots last season with LMA, they're likely to take about 85 shots this season without him. The guys that seem to be getting the bulk of LMA's share of the shots are Dame (16.6 -> 20.1, +3.5) and CJ (5.9 -> 17.3, +11.4). Ya know?
Well done BfWA! Remember when people said we wouldn't be able to score the ball without LMA drawing double-teams? LOL! We averaging a whopping 1 point decrease as a team, with a 0.5% decrease in FG%, and a 0.01% decrease in AFG%. LMA doesn't make teams better.
If we had heathly Wes and Nic, and just replaced LMA and Rolo? Yeah, we'd be a much better team. We're missing Wes/Nic and that's why we're losing. Also, I seem to recall you being one of the biggest proponents of the idea that we wouldn't score the ball because we don't have LMA "drawing doubles".
I appreciate the effort Brian. With that said...I always find it humorous to watch people mine through and put together data that "support" their bias as opposed to thinking about what the stats really mean and suggest.
Yes! Great stuff Brian!! Been wanting to see stats like this regarding the P&R/P&P, and these stats back up my theory perfectly. Would be real interesting to see where this team is if we still had LA. A player like him who can hit outside and score in the post would do wonders for this team. I don't think it's so much about the points or how efficient LA was, it's about how he did it. That kind of floor spacing and ability to score in the post would really open things up for everyone else. In fact Meyers #s at the rim are better than I expected. I never doubted it, but I think be really could be our future at the 4. We certainly have some nice options in all positions. If we want to upgrade the 2 we still have a decent 1/3/4/5. Upgrade the 4 and we still have a decent 1/2/3/5 etc...
Is MyLe actually shooting as well from midrange as he is at the rim? Whoa. 64%?!! And his shit 3pt % is skewed by his early season misery from out there, but the dude is coming up strong. How about some more pick and pops as a variant option to the offense?
There's an opportunity cost. If one guy can do what the 4 guys do, but in fewer minutes, there's minutes left over for more production overall.
I think you're looking at the opportunity cost wrong. Every shot LMA took from 10-23 feet last year stopped Dame, or Wes, or Nic, or Leonard, or Lopez, or....from taking a better one. This summer I postulated that you'd see that there wasn't much of a drop in the offensive efficiency (and that it'd be from the 2/3, rather than the 4, that you'd see it), and that we'd be ok at the 4/5 on offense, in large part due to the fact that Davis/Plumlee/Leonard don't take bad shots. And the stats seem to bear that out.
I don't think this is opportunity cost at the same positions as much as it is Aldridge's impact on the other 4 guys' efficiency. He drew double teams and quite a bit of defensive attention, leaving Dame/Wes/Nic/Rolo with more open opportunities. The big 4 now does not draw any attention away from Dame/CJ. Would be interesting to see +/- or efficiency stats based on lineups to elucidate this.
