Monthly Archives: July 2014

Exploring The Inefficiencies of the NBA Free Agent Market

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in NBA

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It’s now NBA free agent season, which means that we get to now discuss how badly teams overpay for every single player that signs other than LeBron. Nate Duncan recently made a good post about the remaining FA’s: once the stars land, there is a lot of money to be allocated to not many good players. This is how it always is, and it’s why everybody always seems so overpaid. Teams are basically filling their roster gaps by dumping whatever money they have on whoever is available, and the bang per buck is often uninspiring.

My feelings are that it is exceptionally difficult to find a worthwhile deal in the $3M-$10M AAV range. There are some situations where it makes sense, as I agree with the consensus that the Warriors signing Shaun Livingston was a good idea since they are so close to contention, and the move is especially good if it’s a prelude to a Klay Thompson for Kevin Love deal. They need somebody to fill out the backcourt minutes, and having it be Livingston instead of Steve Blake or Jordan Crawford is worth the $5.3M AAV for a team in their position.

Take the other signings: Ben Gordon 2/9 (lol), Jodie Meeks 3/19, CJ Miles 4/18, Avery Bradley 4/32, Marcin Gortat 5/60. Even forgetting the baffling Gordon signing, Meeks, Miles, Bradley, and Gortat would fill up half of a single team’s cap space without providing a world of talent. Suffice it to say that if the other half was filled with similar players, that team would lose many games the following season.

On average if you fill up a high % of your cap with mid-tier FA’s, it’s not going to result in a strong team. The Hawks seemed to somehow be incredible value hunters last offseason, as their starting playoff lineup of Teague/Korver/Carroll/Millsap/Antic nearly knocked off the Pacers in a 7 game series after costing a total of $27M of cap space on the open market. But Millsap, Korver, and Carroll were arguably the three best value signings of the offeseason, so the Hawks are an anomaly and they were still < .500 relying entirely on non-elite free agents.

I believe Danny Ainge is a good drafter, good trader, and makes good coaching hires. These are the qualities that make him an overall good GM, but he doesn’t do that well in free agency because he targets too many mid-tier players. In 2012 he spent $25M/year on 3-4 year commitments for Jason Terry, Courtney Lee, Jeff Green, and Brandon Bass. They didn’t provide a world of help, as the Celtics finished 41-40 with aging Pierce and Garnett as comfortably their top two players and the pricey signings providing limited assistance. Collectively those players wouldn’t have even formed a great 2nd unit, and they were even selected by a comfortably above average GM.

Thus far my favorite move of this offseason has been Masai Ujiri trading John Salmon’s partially guaranteed contract for Lou Williams’s expiring deal and Bebe Nogueira. Atlanta gained just $4.3M of cap space, and Toronto got an expiring who isn’t much worse than the multi-year MLE signings and a free prospect on the side. Bebe has good tools for a center and has good stats in the ACB, the toughest European league. He seemed like great value at 16th overall and he is the type of player I would love to add for a small slice of cap space. The crazy thing is that Salmons had a $1M buyout, so any team with $5.3M+ of cap space could have one upped the Raptors and taken on the same package for air. Think about this: a single season of Jodie Meeks cost $2M more than a single season of Lou Williams…and a free mid-1st rounder on the side! Further you are required to commit to Meeks for two years beyond this one, which I perceive as a clear negative. And people don’t even hate the Meeks move that much!

Unfortunately opportunities to scoop up Bebe on the cheap are few and far between, and teams have to spend their money on something. If I was a GM, I’d diligently avoid mid-tier signings unless I felt the value was stellar along the lines of the deals the Hawks found last offseason. I would try to commit as few years and as little money as possible to fill out my rotation. If I was going to commit multiple years to a player, I would strongly prefer that I be committing to his 24-28 age span rather than his 30-34 age span. And if I was going to overpay, I’d do it on the best players I could attract rather than the middling players who fit the best. The best example of that this offseason is Gordon Hayward. While he’s a RFA and the Jazz can match any offer he receives, there is some doubt as to whether he’s good enough to merit a max.

Hayward is 24 years old and in my estimation a good player. He can handle, he can pass, he can shoot, and he works well as a secondary ball handler who can space the floor and create offense for himself and others. As far as I am aware he’s a decent defensive player (I am not a serial Jazz watcher), which means that there isn’t a significant cost to getting his offense on the floor. His 13-14 stats may not be stellar, but he was asked to carry the offense for a horribly coached, tanking team. Further his 3p% fell far below his career norm in which almost assuredly is due to poor variance and/or poor offensive environment. I expect his stats to take a clear step forward next year, especially if he lands with a good coach such as Jeff Hornacek or Brad Stevens. He is already a top 50 or so player and with minor improvements for season to season he could easily be top 30 by the end of the contract. Taking up 25% of the cap at the cost of no assets is not an expensive price to pay in a league where the 5 starters and the coach are what drive almost all of each team’s success.

This becomes especially true for a team like Philadelphia. Their roster is filled with cheap rookie contracts and they need to unload a huge chunk on something. Imagine if they maxed Hayward and outbid the Pacers’ 5/44 offer for Lance Stephenson (say 4/50). Their starting 5 would be MCW/Lance/Hayward/Thad/Nerlens. If Brett Brown can coach, that team is making the playoffs in the East. Granted, they could use a genuine center to fill out the rotation, they do have this Joel Embiid guy to eventually fill that role. And because Hayward and Stephenson are so young, they should get better in lockstep with the other young players. Philly doesn’t need to tank again, they don’t need to sell off Thad. They have a million 2nd round fliers to eventually become solid bench players, and rounding out the rotation with mini-MLE and vet’s min players isn’t the worst thing in the world. If just one of Embiid or Nerlens stays healthy and becomes good, that team may become unbeatable down the line. Their defensive potential would be absolutely stellar and that’s without any of their starters having an Avery Bradley level of limited box score stats.

The same goes for a team like Boston, who is loaded with rookie contracts and future Nets’ picks as cheap value and trade currency.Hayward is great for any team transitioning from tank to respectability.

When you are micro-analyzing bench players, the difference between the 200th and 250th best player in the league may seem immense. But in reality, it negligibly impacts the bottom line. Talent is valued on an exponential curve, so the value is all packed into the top end guys. Even though Gordon Hayward at $15.8M/year seems insane compared to LeBron at $20M/year, that’s because maxes are silly and broken for the super studs. Once you constrain to what is accessible for most, what is truly insane is Jodie Meeks at $6.3M/year compared to Hayward at $15.8M.

The optimal way to fill out your bench isn’t to pay a premium for your first choice of role player, it’s to get better at identifying the best players available for cheap. Sam Hinkie has tried to build his bench by overloading on 2nd round picks. The Spurs are constantly pulling players such as Danny Green, Patty Mills, and Boris Diaw off the scrap heap and turning them into legitimately good role players. It’s fairly amazing that the team that destroyed the Heat in the finals had that many players who were available for free once upon a time on top of not having a true superstar. Today they signed undrafted free agent Bryce Cotton to a partially guaranteed 2 year deal, and I like that move much better than jumping into the MLE donation party.

The bottom line is that the NBA salary curve is broken and teams could gain an edge if they pay attention to the inefficiencies. Thus far most of the early signings have failed to do so. Even if the overpays are the standard, they remain suboptimal and I take little issue with annual declarations of fringe players being overpaid as they always are.

Blinders: The Hidden Prospect Death Knell

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in NCAA

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I mentioned yesterday that blinders needs to become a widespread scouting term. Having “blinders” means that a player will miss open teammates in favor of creating their own low quality shot. I have repeatedly accused Jabari Parker of being a selfish player, and I believe it may be his undoing as an NBA player. But Kobe Bryant is also considered a selfish player and is one of the all-time NBA greats. Personally I believe he is vastly overrated and am not his biggest fan, but he has been a top 2 player for 5 championship teams so it is not a hopeless cause to build around him. With that in mind, I’d like to analyze the possible impact of Jabari Parker’s selfishness on his NBA career.

Derrick Williams is the best recent example of blinders. As a sophomore for Arizona he posted a whopping 69% TS on 28.9 usage to earn the #2 overall draft slot, as his offensive upside seemed immense. But in the NBA he has failed to score efficiently, and since he doesn’t bring any other strengths to the table he is not a useful player and almost certainly will never become one.

His failure may have been unpredictable to some, but there was a strong sign forecasting NBA struggles in his college stats: he had a paltry 43 assists vs. 100 turnovers in college. This did not badly hurt his efficiency because he was big, strong, and athletic enough to overpower most college defenders. But in the NBA he was just an undersized PF, which meant that most defenses carried two players bigger than him whereas many college defenses carried zero.

To me his failure was exemplified with a single play. Earlier this season the Kings were playing the Pacers in a tightly contested game in overtime (if anybody knows how to find clips from random NBA games this past season, please let me know so I can share the moment). Derrick Williams stole the ball and in transition he had teammate Isaiah Thomas wide open in the corner and opponents Roy Hibbert and Paul George standing underneath the hoop. His options were to kick it out for a wide open, catch and shoot corner 3 that Thomas likely nails about 50% of the time, or to attack two of the top defensive players in the NBA. Naturally Williams didn’t see Thomas, tried to attack, turned it over, and the Kings lost. Let’s take a moment to consider the expected value of either option.

1) The expected value of a 50% 3 pointer is 1.5 points plus the re-draw for the offensive rebound in the 50% that the shot missed. But the Pacers were in a better position to rebound and Williams had a small chance of throwing the pass away, so I can round down and stick with 1.5 points for the decision to pass.

2) Roy Hibbert is a 7’2″ mountain who is a stellar rim protector and Paul George was there too. I can’t fathom that it ends well for Williams to attack them 1 on 2 often. I imagine that if he tried it 100 times, he’d get lucky and draw a handful of fouls, maybe convert 2 or 3 miracle finishes, but mostly get stuffed or turn it over. If I’m being excessively generous I’d say that possession is worth 0.5 points, but in reality it’s probably more like 0.25.

So that single poor decision cost the Kings somewhere in the range of 1 to 1.25 points, which is quite the EV punt for a single play. If each player on the floor makes one decision this poor per game, that is enough to render an average team to a Lakers/Celtics/Magic level of tanking as each team had an SRS in the range of -5 to -6 this past season. Incidentally, this also likely explains Williams’s big drop off in efficiency from NCAA to NBA, as he rarely had players nearly the size of Roy Hibbert awaiting him at the hoop in college.

Kobe may err on the side of shooting when the pass is healthier for the team from time to time, but he doesn’t attempt kamikaze missions like Williams does. He has always had a good assist rate, which explains why he was able to succeed in spite of being a somewhat selfish player. If he sometimes declines a pass that would yield a 0.9 point possession for a shot that is worth 0.8, that’s not a huge deal since he needs to make 10-12 errors of that magnitude to match the EV punt in my Williams example.

Note that some players can suffer from blinders and succeed anyway. Dwight Howard has always had poor vision and a poor assist to turnover ratio, but he has such stellar physical tools that he enable him to make his mark with defense, rebounding, and as a garbage man offensively. He loses value by demanding post touches in spite of his limited skill level and vision, but because he brings so much baseline value with his strengths he is nevertheless able to be a highly valuable player.

On the other hand, Jabari Parker has at best average physical tools, and it will be a happy outcome for the Bucks if he is average defensively. I do think he’s more talented than Williams with superior vision and feel, but he posted a putrid NCAA assist:turnover ratio and seemed determined to score every big bucket in big games. This was exemplified by him shooting 4/14 with 0 assists and 4 turnovers in Duke’s tournament exit vs. underdog Mercer, as he insisted on forcing the issue inside vs. their zone while his team shot 15/37 from 3 off of consistently wide open attempts.

To provide a happy return on the #2 overall slot, Jabari Parker needs to become a highly positive offensive player. At his current rate, he could become a Glenn Robinson or slightly better who posts empty bulk stats and doesn’t help his team win. But I do not believe it’s possible that he becomes an positively impactful player without changing his nature and becoming a more willing passer. If he refuses to pass in obvious passing situations in the NBA as he did in college, he’s going to make too many costly decisions in same vein as Derrick Williams. This will offset the good things he does on offense enough to preclude him from making a great impact on that end. In other words: he needs to become Kobe’s brand of selfish instead of that of Williams. I do believe this is possible as he showed solid vision in feel in blowouts early in the season and reportedly was unselfish in high school. I would be nervous about the prospect of gambling on somebody necessarily changing their nature to succeed at #2 overall, but that’s a different argument for a different day.

There are more condemning brands of blinders, as Andrew Harrison is the gold standard for incorrigible tunnel vision that precludes him from ever becoming a useful NBA player. Julius Randle is a less severe example, as he is a willing passer but seems incapable of changing his decision to pass vs. shoot once he puts the ball on the floor.

Blinders do come in varying degrees and flavors, and I’m not certain that it always spells certain death. But I do believe poor vision is a flaw that is not fixable, and my hypothesis is that this is an unseen wart that is severely harmful for translating to higher levels. It gets underplayed by popular draft sites, so this is my primer as it is a concept that I will cite regularly going forward. For any player who is projected to make a big time offensive impact, I believe blinders is the worst red flag that can appear on his scouting report.