Game Thread GAME# 63: WIZARDS @ BLAZERS - MARCH 4, 2020 - WEDNESDAY, 7:00, NBCSNW

and how many times did Beal pass up a shot driving towards the hoop because of Whiteside lurking nearby. He gets plenty of blocks, but he doesn't get any credit for the shots that are turned down because of his presence. I saw the same thing in the laker game with LeBron passing up some shots due to Whiteside.

 

Having a lot of assist that tells me everyone in involved in the offense and that actually helps this team play better defense too. Last two games our defense in 2 half have been pretty good and pull away both games.

 

There were also 2-3 instances where Beal decided to take it straight to Whiteside's body and Whiteside didn't get the block, but he maintained verticality with arms straight up causing Beal to miss.

 

Perfect!

Last year with those same parameters (more than 21 assists), the Blazers were 40-13!!! That's almost a 62 win pace.

Last year in games with 21 assists or less they were 13-16. That's on pace for just under 37 wins. Guess what the Blazers are on pace for to win this year? That's right, just under 37 wins. On the season the Blazers are averaging less than 21 assists per game.

Look at that, there IS actually a correlation no matter how hard you try to disprove it. You also continually ignore other parts of ball movement besides just assists.

 

Curious how do you expain the Suns, Grizzlies and Pelicans being at the top of the board in assists and yet one is .500 (likely to finish below .500) and the other 2 are below .500? Assists are a nice stat to follow but it shows that you can be high on the assist chart and still not be a playoff team or have a good record.

 

he's going to be UFA this summer

I'd much rather have Bertans as the backup PF than Melo, and Portland can have their full-MLE this summer if they choose. He's not good defensively, but he sure would add that floor spacing Olshey was talking about last summer; the spacing they lost with Curry

I'd think the Blazers would be looking at stretch-4's and PF's this summer in the free agent market. It's not a great free agent class, but if we're talking MLE level players, there are some interesting names:

Danilo Gallinari
Davis Bertans
Jae Crowder
Carmelo Anthony
Derrick Jones Jr.
Paul Millsap
Serge Ibaka
Marcus Morris
Montrezl Harrell
Patrick Patterson
Christian Wood

I imagine Harrell and Gallo will probably command more than the MLE.....but it is going to be a buyer's market. Bertans is definitely the best shooter in that group

 

Washington has his Full Bird Rights so I'm guessing they'd offer him more than the MLE to keep him otherwise they could've gotten something valuable for him at the trade deadline. Of course, Bertans could be willing to take less to go to a contender but I'm guessing he'd have a long line of teams interested in giving him the MLE.

 

I don't know... Maybe Defense, Rebounding, shooting %, etc.

There are LOTS of factors that go into winning. Quality ball movement is only 1 piece of the equation.

Assists are also only a measure of quality ball movement. It's far from perfect, but it's the only one we have to use. In short, not all assists are created equal.

 

That link shows no shot attempts (maybe because it says preseason).

 

I also believe that every team is different. It is undeniable that in recent years Portland usually plays better when they move the ball versus games where the flow is stagnant on offense. Of course Dame and CJ have the ability to score a ton of points without passing too, so you can win games that way and there are always going to be outlier games no matter what the stat is.

 

Link should be working now.

 

What parts am I ignoring?

I've provided data sets that consist of a minimum of 2400 games provided by a third party where they concluded based of the correlation coeffient that there was no a strong relationship between wins and assists. This wasn't my opinion, this wasn't a one team data set, this was league wide.

I MUCH prefer watching basketball where the ball is being moved around freely, so this isn't about what I like.

If you can provide a league wide data set and the math to back up that there is a strong correlation between assists and winning, I'm 100% open to it.

 

This, this, this.

I believe Phoenix leads the league in assists per game. I don't think Vegas has them as favorites to win the NBA Championship. In fact, Vegas all the bottom 3 teams in assist ahead of Phoenix, including the team with the 2nd fewest assists as the 4th most likely team to win it all.

 

Assists are really a measure of the receiving player being able to make a shot. In all my years I have seen some fantastic passes only for the shooter to brick it and also a very vanilla pass that the shooter makes which leads to an assist.

 

Best pass Ive ever thrown in my life, dude bricked the layup... Apparently it really bothered me because it was like 13 years ago and I still cant believe it...

 

I provided data with how that applies to the Blazers and it proves that the Blazers do play better over the last two seasons with more assists. This is not really disputable. Other teams might perform differently with level assists but there is a direct correlation between the Blazers having more than 21 assists in a game and winning at a high percentage.

The fact that you continue to ask for data sets shows what you are failing to account for. There isn't really a stat for if you touch the ball more on offense you play better defense or are more likely to hit a shot if you touched the ball the last 3 possessions versus taking a shot when you haven't touched the ball in like 4 minutes or whatever. You said you've coached for 13 years. You should be able to see that the more involved a player is in a system the more engaged and focused they usually are. If every time you come down the court you're thinking "great CJ has the ball, no way am I getting passed to" it's different than "wow, I get a chance with the ball almost every time down the court."

 

Yeah, @BonesJones is constantly bringing up his pass to @HailBlazers and how he wasn't paying attention and almost fumbled it away.

There are however stats that are kept for potential assists versus actual assists and even number of passes per game and all that stuff so there are ways to factor out players that miss assist opportunities, just not in your mind with that play!

 

Here is a current chart plotting assists and wins.

 

I don't believe I ever said anything about ball movement not correlating to wins because I haven't seen data on that. I said assists and wins do not have a strong correlation. I did not come up with some random number of assists and then create a narrative based off that, I took all the data from all the teams, and let the coefficient determine if it had a strong correlation.

 

In the last thirty or more years ,there hasn’t been a player who’s lead the league in assist who’s won Cship, same year.