Tag Archives: Marcus Smart

Making Sense Of Statistical Models And The Celtics

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in NBA

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The Boston Celtics’ 2015-2016 season expectations has been a point of contention between qualitative and quantitative fans. Many subjective fans are estimating that they will hover around .500 and battle for the 8 seed in the East. On the other hand, quant models are projecting the Celtics to flirt with the 2 seed in the East. Let’s explore both sides of the argument.

Why the Celtics Might Be Stuck In Neutral:

The Celtics won 40 games last year, but they so handily overachieved that perhaps their success was in part due to luck. Amir Johnson is a nice role player, and Marcus Smart should be better, but the team still lacks the star to take them to the next level. Amir does not have the athleticism that he did in his prime, and Smart does not have the burst or handle to become a stud scorer. While the roster is generally young, it lacks standout athletes and it is fair to expect whatever slight progressions made to simply overcome the regression to the mean. After all, it is commonly doubted that the Celtics have a single above average starter.

Vegas’s Westgate tends to agree with this narrative, as they set the Celtics’ regular season win total o/u at 42.5.

Why the Celtics Might Be Poised For a Leap

First, let’s look at the key returning pieces and their bb-ref ages from last season:

Player Minutes Age
Avery Bradley 2428 24
Evan Turner 2260 26
Marcus Smart 1808 20
Tyler Zeller 1731 25
Jared Sullinger 1566 22
Kelly Olynyk 1423 23
Jae Crowder 1382 24
Isaiah Thomas 545 25
Jonas Jerebko 527 27

The average minute weighted age of this group is 23.8. Suffice it to say that all key returning pieces are more likely to improve than they are to regress. This also applies to their 38 year old coach, as Stevens is likely still improving as he enters his 3rd NBA season.

The piece with most growth potential is Smart. He does not appear on track to become an offensive star, and I do not anticipate that he will suddenly be able to run an efficient NBA offense at age 21. But he did have an outlier good defensive season for a rookie (as predicted by yours truly), and a healthy leap forward on defense complemented by mild to medium offensive improvements is plausible. RPM rated him as the top rookie last season, and a moderate sophomore leap will make him a solidly good player.

Key departed players:

Player Minutes
Brandon Bass 1929
Jeff Green 1093
Rajon Rondo 699

Rondo and Green were widely presumed to be the Celtics’ best players among casual fans entering last season, until Boston became better after dealing them and their respective new teams got worse. Their level of harmfulness to the Celtics can be disputed, but at worst the Celtics shed almost 1800 slightly bad minutes that will be comfortably upgraded this season.

That leaves Brandon Bass as the only noteworthy loss. Bass is a perfectly decent rotation player, but he is slightly undersized as a PF and is neither a rim protector nor floor spacer. There is no argument subjective or quantitative that he will be missed, as consensus is that his replacement Amir Johnson will be a clear upgrade.

Johnson has long been a darling of advanced stats. His bad ankles have caused his athleticism to wane, but at age 28 he still has enough left to contend for most valuable player on the Celtics. Here are his early blurbs from training camp (as per Rotoworld)

9/27:
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens said that Amir Johnson looked “terrific” during his first practice with Boston.

9/28:
Amir Johnson has shined on defense in practice so far.

9/30:
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens praised Amir Johnson for his defense again on Tuesday:

“First of all, he’s 6-9, he’s long, he’s athletic,” Stevens said. “But then I think there’s not a lot of people like that generally, but there’s a lot of people like that in this league. But his mind is excellent for defense and he really prioritizes it. And then his motor is extremely high. So I think that all that factored in is why he’s separated himself as helping your team win when he’s on the defensive end of the floor.”

Stevens’s instant adoration for Amir is a solid checkmark in favor of the verity of advanced stats painting him in a favorable light. He is in decline due to his ankles, but he gets a boost by transitioning from an average coach to an elite one and should seamlessly fit into any Celtics lineup.

The Celtics also get a full season of availability from two of their more important players in Jae Crowder and especially Isaiah Thomas. Crowder has impressed at least one basketball expert:

Mavs also gave up a really good player in Crowder. Great defender and has developed into a decent offensive player.

Haralabos is one of the few NBA fans who works to precisely discern the value of players, and he has become a millionaire by succeeding at this. Like Smart and Johnson, Crowder is piece underrated by the masses as his value stems from defense and intelligence to avoid mistakes offensively. Having him for a full season where he possibly starts and displaces lost Jeff Green minutes will certainly be healthy for Boston.

Isaiah Thomas can nearly be treated as a new acquisition, as he only played in 21 games for the Celtics and averaged 26 minutes per game coming off the bench. He gave the roster of one way perimeter defense studs a sorely needed ball handler, and led the team in a myriad of advanced stats as he played a huge role on offense and did so efficiently. Here’s the split from Isaiah Thomas’s first appearance in a Celtics uniform. Note that PD = point differential:

Sample W L PD
Pre-Zeke 20 32 -1.6
Zeke 20 10 3.2

The +3.2 PD during the Thomas era puts them right at a 50 win expectancy over a full season. And he only played 37.5% of possible minutes over this stretch as he missed 9 games.

The +3.2 was likely unsustainable over 82 games, as Thomas is not LeBron James and the prior 52 games cannot be entirely neglected. But given that Thomas and Crowder are better than Rondo and Green (small sample support: units with IT and Jae were +7.4 per 48 in 440 mins, Rondo and JG were -2.2 in 568 mins together), it intuitively makes sense to give less weight toward the earlier sample. It follows that the end year Celtics were likely better than their 40 win bottom line (41.4 wins derived from PD).

This is all one sided arguing in favor of the Celtics being better, so let’s discuss why they might be worse. It is not clear that any of their young guards among James Young, Terry Rozier, or RJ Hunter will be above replacement level, so the Celtics may be unable to stomach serious backcourt injury issues without trading for a guard.

The other risk is that new acquisition David Lee is a clear downgrade from the other 5 bigs on the roster. If he carves out a significant rotation role, this could harm the Celtics’ team output. But other than that, the Celtics are clearly trending in the positive direction.

Conclusion

People are not hardwired to intuitively assess the precise impact of each player and coach, let alone the summation of these over a full 82 game season riddled with variance. Most fans tend to overrate scoring, underrate defense, and have a skewed perception of what constitutes a valuable player. Thus it is easy to describe the Celtics as a team with “no above average starters” and resonate with casual fans, but there is no substantial evidence to support this claim. Even if the claim is humored and the Celtics only have 5 average starters and a good bench, why is it difficult to believe that Brad Stevens can elevate such a roster to 48-50 wins in the East?

Stat models like the Celtics because the team is loaded with subtle edges in their favor. Every key data point suggests improvement, and there is little to no clear force pushing the Celtics in the negative direction. While basketball stats have their limitations, they have the advantage of objectivity and freedom from cognitive biases.

On the other hand, the subjective arguments against the Celtics are entirely founded on cognitive biases since they center around lack of perceived star power. It would be compelling to make a case that last year’s playoff appearance was heavily fueled by luck, that the Celtics’ advanced stat stars have holes in their game that stats fail to capture, or that the pieces on the roster will fail to mesh. But a central argument that the roster looks underwhelming to your unscientific eye is the level of approach that caused the masses to initially believe the Celtics lost the Rajon Rondo trade with Dallas.

I am on #teamstats. In this instance, they present a reasonable approximation of the truth, and people who enjoy money can freely bet Boston o42.5 wins.

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Summer League Observations: Orlando

17 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Scouting Reports

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While it’s not wise to read heavily into 5 game samples of play vs. sub-NBA competition, summer league is an interesting scouting experience. All of the rookies who dominated NCAA opposition are now thrown onto rosters full of big, long athletes, and we get to see who can still do things on the court against more physically fit competition. It becomes harder to get to the rim in the half-court, easy transition buckets start to wane, and there aren’t any 6’8″ centers to be bullied. Consequently, most rookies look like rookies as their flaws are on full display.

The clearest trend I have noticed is that many rookies become jump shot taking machines. It naturally follows that summer league most heavily favors shooters, especially when they get hot. Josh Selby won summer league MVP by hitting 27/42 from 3, and then went on to post a 2.7 PER in 296 NBA minutes before washing out. Thus far among rookies, the biggest single game point totals have all come from shooters who heated up from distance: Gary Harris (33 pts), Doug McDermott (31), and Rodney Hood (29). While it’s nice when these guys get off and make a bunch of shots rather than not doing anything, they were also posted against horrible perimeter defense (at least McDermott and Hood were, I missed the Harris game).

This perception is reinforced by the list of all time worst PER’s tweeted out by Jonathan Givony. The players who performed poorly during summer that became something in the NBA: Serge Ibaka, Nicolas Batum, Eric Bledsoe, Larry Sanders, George Hill, Greivis Vasquez, Josh McRoberts. Vasquez is the only player who thrives on neither defense nor athleticism that became something, and he only became a quality bench player. This is likely in part due to the fact that athletic types tend to enter the draft sooner than non-athletes, and rawer athletes have a longer window to improve their skill level. Players who are some combination of old, unathletic, and poor defensively all face extra pressure to produce in summer league.

Note that I believe rookies and only rookies are worth scouting in summer league. The 2nd and 3rd year players with NBA experience no longer suffer from the shock factor of the upgraded physicality compared to NCAA, so their performances can safely be ignored.

Since Las Vegas games are not yet complete, I will start by sharing my thoughts from the Orlando games. I’m not writing about Nerlens Noel or Nick Johnson since I didn’t watch enough to generate any unique perspective, but from what I have seen I agree with the consensus that they both look good and Noel should have gone #1 in 2013.

Marcus Smart
Smart started off summer league playing off the ball with Phil Pressey running the offense, and he spent most of his time bricking jump shots. When he did get the ball, it was a work in progress trying to get off shots at the rim as his first few attempts off the dribble were blocked. Eventually he was able to find daylight and have a few nice drive and finishes, but it’s clear that he’s going to struggle as a scorer early in his career. His handle, quicks, and athleticism are all solid but not great, and it’s going to be a work in progress for him to get to the rim with any sort of frequency. Until he solves that, he will likely be relying on his not so great jump shot so don’t expect a good rookie year eFG%. His summer league eFG% was a paltry 36.0%. The silver lining is that he correctly favors 3 pointers over long 2’s, which limits the damage that will be caused by his bricklaying ways.

But his summer league wasn’t all bad. As expected he provided good defense and solid rebounding. And the good news is that his TS% shouldn’t be as bad as his eFG% since he has the strength to draw FT’s and is able to knock them down at a solid rate. Most importantly Smart showed surprisingly good ability to both distribute and protect the ball. Whenever he did get the chance to run the offense, he did a good job of making the simple pass to set his teammates up for quality shots. Occasionally he showed off impressive vision and made a great pass. He is so good at reading the opposition on defense to play the passing lanes, it’s worth wondering if that translates to the offensive end for his ability to see the floor and find open teammates. One of the knocks on him was that he isn’t a true PG, but he didn’t play PG in high school and is still developing his floor general skills. Based on his summer league performance, his upside as a distributor seems better than advertised.

Also encouraging was his ability to protect the ball. Smart’s strength is a major advantage for his ability to operate in traffic. Even though he couldn’t quite get where he wanted on offense, he wasn’t at much risk of having the ball ripped away in the process since he’s so strong. He finished summer league with 21 assists and 9 turnovers, which is especially impressive considering his high volume of shot attempts.

Overall Smart played roughly as well as I expected. The development of his shot and ability to get to the rim should determine whether he becomes an all-star or plateaus as a PG version of Tony Allen. But that’s still the range of outcomes I expect from him, and I deem it to be a happy range for a #6 overall pick.

Aaron Gordon
Gordon’s summer league was a slight disappointment, but not a meaningful one. Given the importance of shooting, it stands to reason that the player with the most broken shot in the class would struggle the most. And while he has a good handle for an 18 year old SF, he can’t yet create much off the dribble to shine in spite of this.

I was a bit disappointed to see him not accrue a single steal in Orlando, but that could easily be a sample size fluke. Steals have a much lower correlation (.29) with regular season success than assists (.77), blocks (.80),  and rebounds (.63 off, .70 def). Given how good he was defensively in college and FIBA, it’s probably not worth fretting over.

I didn’t watch a ton of Orlando, so I didn’t generate any new observations on Gordon. He just isn’t ready to do much offensively and probably won’t have a great rookie year statistically. He is a strong candidate to eventually join the list of players who became great in spite of poor summer leagues, as he has youth, athleticism, and defense all on his side as well as the excuse of poor shooting. It would have been nice if he surprised with more polish than expected, but I’m not significantly docking Gordon for his performance.

Elfrid Payton
Payton is a player for whom summer league counts a bit extra since much of his college production entailed dominating weak competition in transition. I don’t think he could have looked much better. After a shaky initial outing, Payton turned on the good stuff and started aggressively flirting with triple doubles. He was able to penetrate through the defense, finish at the rim, create for his teammates, and rack up rebounds. He didn’t score a ton since he didn’t settle for many jumpers, but he is also a rare rookie with a high 2p% as he shot 15/25 (60%) inside the arc. This is indicative of the fact that he’s also a rare rookie with the ability to create high quality shots at the rim.

He also posted fantastic rebound and assist rates, which are two of the categories that correlate best with rookie regular season statistics. It’s possible that he has much more passing ability than he was able to show at Louisiana Lafayette with Shawn Long as his only teammate that could score at a competent level.

I regret ranking him behind Tyler Ennis, as I probably over-thought that one. The bottom line is that Payton can defend, he can pass, he can rebound, and he can get to the rim, and that adds up to pretty nice upside. I was concerned how much being a skinny, non-elite athlete would hurt him but it if nothing else it doesn’t seem like it will impede his ability to get where he wants to go on the floor since he has a good blend of quicks and handles. It may make it difficult to finish at the rim and protect the ball in traffic in the NBA, but I don’t believe that these are fatal flaws. The bottom line is that he has a good combination of strengths (quickness, length, ball handling, passing, rebounding, defense) and his weaknesses are all improvable (poor shooting, turnover prone, lacks strength).

My current perception is that this draft has a clear top 5 (the top 6 picks minus Jabari) and then Elfrid has as good of an argument as anybody for 6th best prospect in the draft. Hennigan overpaid to move up 2 slots, but it may not look all that bad through the results oriented lens once we get to see what Elfrid can do at the next level.

Mitch McGary
McGary was hurt early in the season before Michigan played their tougher competition, so he was somebody who I didn’t scout as much as I would have hoped. Now that I actually was able to watch him in summer league, he looks awesome. He is a center with poor height (6’10.5″) and length (7’0″) for the position, but he atones with strength, quickness, and athleticism. The athleticism is what surprised me, I was expecting a below the rim player but he showed a bit of explosiveness. This contributed to his 7 blocks in 4 games averaged 26 minutes. He’s not exactly an above the rim athlete, but he can get up enough to sometimes make athletic plays at the rim.

The other quality that I wasn’t expecting is that McGary has a fantastic handle for a big man. He looks completely comfortably pulling down a defensive rebound and then taking it all the way to the rim on the other end in transition. He is also impressed with his handling ability as he overdribbled a bit at times, but he didn’t get himself into too much trouble and finished with a solid 5 assists vs 8 turnovers while scoring with good volume and efficiency.

He is a health risk as he has back problems and ankle problems on his record, but he looked 100% healthy in Orlando. If he can stay that way, he should combine with Steven Adams to form a significant upgrade over Kendrick Perkins. He looks like great value at 21st overall. I am not sure precisely how much to weigh injuries, but if I could re-rank but I would place McGary in the back end of the lottery.

Jordan Adams and Jarnell Stokes
From my Grizzlies watching experience, I still have no idea what to think of Jordan Adams. He doesn’t look natural when attacking off the dribble, and occasionally his defense is lazy and bad. But he still has quick hands to be disruptive in the passing lanes, he doesn’t make a ton of mistakes, and when you add up all of the garbage buckets he gets the bottom line doesn’t look too bad. I feel like he will be an OK but not great role player, but I need to see him at the NBA level to feel comfortable with any assessment. He is a slippery one.

Stokes looks like a solid NBA role player with some sneaky upside to be a bit more than that. He beasted the glass and showed enough skill level and smarts to fit in offensively. He roughly performed as well as I expected and is probably going to be a good 2nd round value.

My perception of both prospects is largely unchanged by summer league.

Shabazz Napier
Napier was the sole first round draft pick in Orlando who looks like a complete bust. His physical tools have been as bad as expected, and he just doesn’t fit in athletically. He is not be quite as bad as his stats indicate, as he seems to be suffering from poor variance on his outside shot. But his shooting struggles may be in part due to his poor size and length combined with his low release. He is struggling to get to the rim, he is struggling to finish, and he struggles protecting the ball with more turnovers than assists. The one positive is that he has shown quick hands and good anticipation skills to rack up steals, but his poor tools will likely cause him to be a liability defensively anyway. For a point guard who also isn’t a great passer and is already 23, I’m not sure what his calling card is in the NBA. Given that he fits the intersection of old, unathletic, and suspect defensively his summer league is highly worrisome. He may still have an NBA career, but I doubt it will be a particularly good one. In spite of being one of the most intelligent players in the NBA, LeBron James is not a good GM.

Tyler Johnson
The Heat might have atoned for their former star’s poor scouting ability by uncovering this gem of an undrafted free agent. At a glance, it’s obvious why he didn’t get drafted: he’s 6’4″ with a 6’6″ wingspan and weighs 177 pounds. That’s really poor size for a SG, as he’s Gary Harris sized minus half an inch of length and 28 pounds in spite of being 2 years and change older. So maybe he’s just a summer league hero who can’t do anything in the NBA because he’s too small. And as a 22 year old player, he should look better than most of the younger guys.

But I can’t stress enough how awesome he has looked. He makes the plays you’d hope that 1st round picks would make, and he makes them over and over again. He has been getting to the rim, finishing, making plays on defense, and avoiding mistakes. Thus far he has played 172 minutes in 8 games, and here are his per 30 stats: 16.7 pts, 4.4 rebs, 1.7 asts, 1.4 steals, 0.9 blocks, 0.7 TOV’s. The turnover number is astounding considering is shooting 30/42 (71.4%) inside the arc and has 31 FTA to boot– he’s doing almost all of his damage by getting to the rim and finishing athletically. The only thing he’s not doing well is making 3’s, as he is only shooting 4/15 behind the arc. But as a college senior he shot 43.2% from 3 and as a junior he shot 40.2%. While he may still be adjusting to NBA range, it’s not like outside shooting is a weakness.

If Johnson was a 2nd or 3rd year player, it would be easy to shrug off his performance. But he’s a rookie who spent this past season playing mid-major NCAA basketball. When the Heat played the Wizards, it felt like he never went longer than a minute without making an athletic, NBA caliber play. It seemed that he could get to the rim and get his shot off whenever he wanted whereas Napier had no prayer of slashing through the defense. Against the Clippers, he cut off a Delonte West drive attempt and then blocked West’s mid-range jumper. Johnson fits in athletically and knows how to use his athleticism for his team’s benefit.

I’m not sure what to expect from Johnson in the NBA, but I’m on the bandwagon. He is the one undrafted free agent I have seen who clearly deserves a roster spot, and I am rooting for him to succeed.

Marcus Smart vs. Andrew Wiggins: Who Was The Best Big 12 Perimeter Defender?

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in NCAA

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Draft consensus is that Andrew Wiggins is likely to be an elite defensive wing in the NBA, as in theory his stellar physical tools ensure lock down D. But there is more to defense than running fast and jumping high, so I am going to use available NCAA data to measure him against my favorite defensive guard prospect in the draft: Marcus Smart.  Let’s starting by assessing the inventory around them.

Coaching: Bill Self vs. Travis Ford

Coaching has a huge impact on team defense, so let’s get a feel for which coaches historically built the best defenses prior to landing their respective stars.  The table notes each team’s NCAA rank (out of ~350) in adjusted defensive rating as per kenpom.com:

Season Ford Team Ford D Rank Self Team Self D Rank
2013 Ok State Smart Kansas 5
2012 Ok State 111 Kansas 3
2011 Ok State 47 Kansas 11
2010 Ok State 60 Kansas 9
2009 Ok State 74 Kansas 9
2008 UMass 58 Kansas 1
2007 UMass 47 Kansas 1
2006 UMass 40 Kansas 3
2005 E Kentucky 126 Kansas 25
2004 E Kentucky 230 Kansas 16
2003 E Kentucky 301 Illinois 8
2002 E Kentucky 274 Illinois 19

In a nutshell: Self always builds elite defenses whereas Travis Ford doesn’t.  Self’s worst defense pre-Wiggins was 15 slots higher than Ford’s best pre-Smart.  Of course, this doesn’t prove that Self is a smarter defensive coach than Ford, it only suggests it at a loud volume.  But Kansas is a name brand school and it stands to reason that Self should have some advantage given his access to superior talent.  Fortunately, Dan Hanner shared his process for making NCAA projections (which he does well) and included coaching as a significant portion of defense projection.

In Step 15 of his article, Hanner notes that he makes projections for defensive statistics (block rate, steal rate, D-Reb rate), prices in recruiting rankings, and gives a boost for players that mysteriously play high minute totals with poor stats (since these types are often are defensive specialists).  He also notes that these factors alone do a poor job.  Using a 10 year sample from 2003-2012, he measured the greatest impact coaches after adjusting for the aforementioned factors and shared his top 15 defensive coaches.  Bill Self rated #1 on his list.  Travis Ford didn’t crack the top 15 because he offers no value beyond the ability to attract enough talent to make himself seem competent to athletic directors.

It is common for people to blame Bill Self for Wiggins’ shortcomings, but this is misguided.  Self consistently gets stellar regular seasons from players who do not go on to NBA stardom, as his teams tend to outperform their talent before disappointing in the tournament.  It is safe to declare that Bill Self completely waffle crushes Travis Ford at building NCAA defenses.

The Bigs

After coaching, the highest impact players on defense are the tall ones.  They provide rebounding and rim protection, so it should be no surprise that height correlates with defensive success.  Good college defenses are often anchored by good rim protection, so let’s compare the two sets of bigs.  Note that total includes each stat’s minute-weighted average for the collection of bigs.

Kansas:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Joel Embiid 647 7’0″ 27.3 2.3 11.7
Tarik Black 446 6’9″ 21.3 1.3 4
Jamari Traylor 549 6’8″ 18.5 1.5 5.3
Perry Ellis 973 6’8″ 18.2 1.7 2.2
Total 2615 6’9.2″ 21.0 1.7 5.5

Oklahoma State:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Kamari Murphy 855 6’8″ 18.3 1.1 5.1
Mike Cobbins 256 6’8″ 15.3 1.8 7.9
Le’Bryan Nash 1017 6’7″ 14.6 1 2.8
Leyton Hammonds 230 6’7″ 12.3 1.8 0.5
Total 2358 6’7.5″ 15.8 1.2 4.0

Oklahoma State’s bigs were undersized and unfit to do good things on defense. The Cowboys were rated as the #5 kenpom team with a 12-1 record when Mike Cobbins went down for the year due to injury. Without him they were forced to play small, as Hammonds was largely worthless and when Murphy was on the bench 6’7″ Le’Bryan Nash played C and Marcus Smart was often forced to defend opposing PFs. I’d wager that Smart spent more time as a defensive PF than Wiggins in spite of being a PG who is 5.5 inches shorter.  Not only did the small lineup make it exceptionally difficult to protect the rim, but Smart was forced to be used as an undersized post defender instead of putting pressure on the ball on the perimeter.  Consequently, Oklahoma State went 9-12 without him and dropped from #5 to #26 in kenpom’s overall rankings.

Meanwhile, Kansas had the defensive player of the year in Joel Embiid whose his size and mobility made him an interior force.  He only played 23 minutes a game and missed a handful due to injury, but Tarik Black and Jamari Traylor offered more value as defensive replacements than OKC’s small bigs without Cobbins.  This is another clear advantage for Kansas.

Guards

Let’s see how each team compares in terms of guard and wing impact on defense outside of Smart and Wiggins.

Kansas:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Wayne Selden 1023 6’5″ 6.4 1.4 1.1
Naadir Tharpe 1001 5’11” 7.4 1.4 0
Frank Mason 565 5’11” 7.3 1.9 0.2
Total 2589 6’1.4″ 7.0 1.5 0.5

Oklahoma State:

Player Minutes Height D-Reb% Stl% Blk%
Markel Brown 1201 6’3″ 12.9 1.6 3.1
Phil Forte 976 5’11” 5.6 1.7 0.1
Brian Williams 793 6’5″ 11.5 2.6 1.5
Stevie Clark 256 5’11” 7.2 3.4 0.4
Total 3226 6’2″ 9.9 2.0 1.6

Finally, an area where the Cowboys have an advantage. Non-Smart Oklahoma State guards did not offer a ton of value on D, but at least Brian Williams and Markel Brown had the athleticism to occasionally make a play and Stevie Clark generated some steals in limited minutes before getting kicked off the team. Meanwhile, Kansas trotted out two small PG’s and Wayne Selden, who has an elite body but has yet to figure out how to use it for good on the basketball court.  Kansas’s guards were certainly weak links on defense.

This advantage for Oklahoma State is less significant than each of Kansas’s advantages in big men and coaching.  Forte was an undersized and unathletic, and Brown and Williams aren’t defensive stoppers, just athletes who sometimes make athletic plays.  Kansas’s guards were bad, but guard defense isn’t high enough leverage to weigh this discrepancy more than others given that Oklahoma State didn’t have a second perimeter stopper.

Overall

Kansas has a much better coach and better bigs, whereas Oklahoma State has less leaky guards alongside their star.  If the two players made similar impacts, Kansas should have a much better overall defensive rating.  Yet they barely finished with a higher defensive rating, as Kansas finished with the 31st adjusted D-Rtg (out of 351) at 96.3 and Oklahoma State finished 37th at 96.6.  The two defenses were roughly dead even, and once you remove the 3 games missed by Smart (Oklahoma State went 0-3), Oklahoma State was a shade better than Kansas.

If we look at Big 12 games only (noting that Smart missed 3 games, Cobbins missed all 20, and Embiid missed 5), Oklahoma State had an adjusted defensive rating of 95.9 vs Kansas’s 96.2.  If we throw out the 3 games that Smart missed, the Cowboy D-Rtg drops to 94.9 to widen the gap by a point.  By all measures these two defenses were similarly effective over the course of the season, and if anything it appears that Oklahoma State had the edge when Marcus Smart was in the lineup.  Given the advantages that Wiggins had with respect to coach and cast, this strongly suggests that Marcus Smart was the better and more impactful defensive player.  Let’s look at individual stats to check to see how it aligns with the longwinded route.  Note that adjusted D-Rtg is individual D-Rtg (as per sports-reference.com) adjusted for team SOS:

Player Minutes DRB% STL% BLK% Adj DRtg
Andrew Wiggins 1148 12.3 2.1 3.1 96.6
Marcus Smart 1014 14.9 5 1.9 88.9

In spite of all of Wiggins physical advantages, Smart accumulated more than twice the steal rate.  Instincts and aggressiveness are key traits on defense, and this is where Smart shines the most.

Individual D-Rtg takes team D-Rtg and adjusts for individual steal rate, block rate, and defensive rebounding rate.  Because Kansas gets so much production out of their bigs and Oklahoma State gets so little out of everybody other than Smart, Smart destroys Wiggins.  This is the short hand version of my analysis, except it doesn’t account for coaching disparity as there is more team level credit to distribute for well coached teams.  Bearing this in mind, there is an argument to be made that individual D-Rtg actually understates the difference between Smart and Wiggins.

What About Age?

It is fair to point out that Smart is a year older than Wiggins and perhaps should make a greater impact given his additional year of experience.  But if we look at Smart’s freshman year, the defense was even better as Cobbins was healthier only missing 5 games and contributing 728 minutes total.  Many of Brian Williams minutes went to 6’10” Philip Jurick, and Le’Bryan Nash was able to swing between the 3 and 4 instead of being asked to be a full time 4/5.  Smart was able to spend all of his time hawking the ball on the perimeter, and the Cowboys finished with the #15 defense in the country.

Smart’s freshman individual adjusted D-Rtg was 85.6, showing that the gap between him and Wiggins widened once he actually played with serious big men.  The Cowboy defense should have been a joke this year, and it’s quite the feather in Smart’s cap that they were able to keep pace with Kansas with such little size.

The Coaches’ Perspective

Big 12 coaches vote on the best defensive players in the conference after each season.  As both a freshman and sophomore, Marcus Smart was a unanimous selection to the 6 person team.  He was the only non-Kansas big to be chosen unanimously (Jeff Withey and Joel Embiid each shared the honor) over these 2 years.  Wiggins was left off the team altogether, which surprised me given the level of hype and attention he received.  I suppose the Big 12 coaches weren’t as impressed with his defense as draft narratives would suggest, even though he was a unanimous selection to the All-Big 12 first team for his overall play.

Conclusions

Based on every piece of information available and every angle from which it may be analyzed, Marcus Smart was a vastly superior NCAA defensive player to Andrew Wiggins.  He was a one man wrecking crew on defense, whereas Wiggins was merely a solidly good defensive player.  Given the predictive power of steal rate and the fact that Smart has the tools to become an impact defensive player in the NBA, this should weigh heavily into Smart’s NBA defensive projection.

On the other hand, this should dispel the myth that Wiggins is a guaranteed defensive stud.  Hype does not equate to truth, but people seem to treat it as such.  It is common for people to seek narratives to justify Wiggins’ hype instead of looking for the actual truth in data that is free of bias.  I believe the hype was justified: a 16 year old kid with his size, mobility, and explosiveness is a rare commodity, and it’s worth getting excited over him.  But when at age 19 he has shown zero signs of development or impact that were projected, it’s time to scrap the hype and brace for the likely scenario that the person inside the body doesn’t have what it takes to convert the potential into reality.

If Wiggins was truly a high impact defensive player, there would likely be data supporting it.  There is data supporting Smart’s impact and there is data supporting Aaron Gordon’s impact, which is why I have them as the top two perimeter defensive prospects in the draft.  Wiggins believers can have their 44″ vertical snapshots, I’d rather get Smart and take the guy who produces results.

Visibility Bias And Julius Randle’s Defense

25 Friday Apr 2014

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One of my favorite players to analytically pick apart this season has been Julius Randle.  It seemed that most people were in accordance that he was largely overrated, but then Kentucky made a tournament run that confounded everything and inspired hope for his future.  Personally, I am not feeling too badly about my earlier synopsis and feel that all of my central hypotheses still hold.  I would absolutely not consider him in the lottery, so I may as well follow up on why I refuse to budge on my anti-Randle stance.

A common trend among people who take exception to my ranking of Julius Randle as a non-lottery pick is that they are not convinced that his defense will invariably plague him throughout his NBA career.  And it makes sense that some people would be skeptical, as defense is exceptionally difficult to pinpoint either statistically or by casually watching.  And even if they acknowledge that he may have been sub-par as a freshman, that is not enough to convince most that he will necessarily be bad in his NBA prime.  So how likely is he to mitigate this wart such that it is no longer debilitating?

His easiest out is simply that his defense is an overstated issue.  But all signs point in the direction of it not being so.  His steal and block rates are exceptionally weak for a lottery PF prospect.  Also his team was not great defensively considering the size and athleticism they boasted, and they were not better with Randle on the floor (or so I have heard and instantly believed.  Anybody know where to find UK on/off splits?).  And, you can watch for yourself as Randle makes a gigantic pile of mistakes in a single game.  He often has no clue what is going on and stands there confused as his assignment waltzes right past him. That lack of mental acuity doesn’t strike me as something that is likely to go away, nor will it be mitigated with marginal improvement. On some plays he was so slow to react that it seems Tennessee could have scored twice before he figured out what was going on.  While not every game is as rife with mistakes as this one, similar errors did persist throughout the season and tournament.  When the eye test, individual stats, and team level performance all strongly suggest that he is bad at defense, the most Bayesian conclusion is that he is almost certainly bad at defense.

So now that we all agree he is bad defensively, how likely is he to elevate his instincts to a more competent level?  His main concern is that he is too slow to discern the offensive play unfolding before his eyes and sometimes fails to react until the ball is going through the net.  I believe this deficiency heavily prices into his low steal rate, as players often generate steals by anticipating what will happen in advance.  Layne Vashro made an excellent post about evaluating potential, and his statistical analysis on the growth of steal, block, and rebound rates is grim:

These traits are something a player either has or does not have. Do not expect a prospect who cannot block, steal, or board to figure out how once he enters the NBA (not that this never happens of course). Instead, these traits should be viewed as a part of the baseline a player has to work from, much as height and leaping ability are popularly understood.

If we roll with the narrative that steals correlate with defensive awareness and instincts, Randle will almost certainly always have bad instincts. After all, it doesn’t make sense that a player may drastically improve his anticipation and awareness without seeing a bump in steal rate.  If increases in steal rate are outlier events, it logically follows that big increases in anticipation and instincts should be as well.  This would doom Randle defensively– if defensive instincts are barely more improvable than height or athleticism, then he is a stone cold lock to be a liability as an NBA player.

But to leave some margin for error: let’s be open minded and say that defensive instincts are as easily improved as the most readily improved skill: shooting (at least I assume this is the case, if there is evidence to the contrary I would appreciate hearing about it). Everybody makes a big deal about Marcus Smart’s shooting ability being a damper on his draft stock, but he isn’t even the worst shooter among guards in the draft. He made 30% of his 3’s and 75% of his FT’s in college. Imagine instead that he made 25% of 3’s and 50% of FT’s– would anybody still want to draft him in the lottery? It would likely be perceived as an insurmountable wart that distracts from every good aspect Smart brings to the table. While it is impossible to equate Randle’s defensive badness to shooting percentages, he is the worst defensive player among big man prospects in the draft. Even in the most impossibly optimistic scenario that defensive instincts can improve as much as shooting, Randle’s defense should still be perceived as an exceptionally costly wart. This perception only fails to be widespread because of visibility bias. When casual fans watch a game, they notice every missed or made shot and normally none of the defensive lapses. Further, this enables season by season tracking of shooting percentages that are not available for defensive acumen.

Consider:
1) Julius Randle’s defense is worse relative to his peers than Marcus Smart’s shooting
2) Shooting is likely more readily improvable than defense, and possibly by a large margin
3) In the instance that neither player drastically improves their wart, Smart has a much rosier upside comparison among a player who shares the wart with similar strengths (Dwyane Wade) than Randle (Luis Scola, David Lee).

All of the concern for Smart’s shot should apply tenfold to Randle’s defense.

As an interesting aside, concern for Randle’s shot should also be great than the concern for Smart’s shot. Floor spacing is quickly being recognizing as valuable. And with analytics becoming increasingly widespread in the NBA, it is worth pondering whether the league is moving in a direction such that players who cannot either hit 3’s or play defense will be coveted at all in the future. Randle’s shot is perceived as a positive as he hit 70.6% of his FT’s, and he has some potential to develop a 3 point shot in spite of only making 3/18 as a freshman. While the bar is lower for acceptable big man shooting, Smart has his defense and PG skills to fall back on and does have superior shooting splits to Randle. If Randle neither steps up his defense in a big way nor becomes a reliable 3 point shooter, it’s difficult to see him ever becoming an impact player in the NBA.

As I mentioned earlier, I could envision Randle becoming David Lee level good. This may sound alright to some people, but to me it is a horrific upside scenario that does not merit 1st round consideration. I do not think David Lee is a particularly useful NBA player because he doesn’t space the floor, and his offensive and rebounding value is consequently outweighed by his poor defense. If Lee is a prospect’s best case scenario, that prospect should be worth little.

There are undeniably a number of positive traits that Randle brings to the table.  He is strong, mobile, great at rebounding, and talented at converting difficult shots in the paint.  His strength enables him to get to the line where he is solid at making his free throws, and he also has some semblance of handling and passing to work with.  Further he appears to be competitive, hard working, and coachable.  But because he spectacularly fails at the most high leverage aspect of his performance (defense), this puts a massive damper on his upside.  He also has uncertainty regarding the second highest leverage aspect of his value (3 point shooting) that further inhibits his value.  These warts are going to be often overlooked because one is not readily visible, and the other is not yet accepted as common NBA wisdom.   But they drown out all of the positive qualities he brings to the table simply because none of his good traits are nearly as valuable as defense or spacing.

Hopefully this sheds some clarity on why I remain bearish on Randle in spite of his late season improvement and solid tourney showing.  I do believe he carries his fair share of bust risk, but I do not necessarily believe he is a lock bust.  The greater concern is that when his successful outcomes still are not that appealing, as he may post good stats as an NBA player without aiding his team too much in the W column.  If he ever averages something like 18 points and 10 rebounds with an 18 PER, I’d hope that nobody trolls me over my ranking of him.  So long as he keeps missing rotations on defense, I would never regret passing on him in the draft.

Video

Marcus Smart: An Intelligent Defensive Player

28 Friday Feb 2014

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After Marcus Smart shoved a fan and received his 3rd technical foul of the season, I wrote about the correlation between technical fouls and defense in the NBA.  As tempting as it was to anoint him as a future defensive star on this alone, playing good defense in games is still important, too.  I compiled a video of his performance vs. DeAndre Kane and Iowa State, which will surely be the toughest matchup he faces all year.  Kane is a 6’4 200 PG who turns 25 in June and is having a great season under Fred Hoiberg, as he is vying with Smart and Andrew Wiggins for Big 12 Player Of The Year.  Also this should shed some light on why Oklahoma State has struggled so much with Mike Cobbins’s injury, as Smart has been forced to play minutes as an undersized PF instead of permanently wreaking havoc as a great perimeter defender.

I believe this game exemplifies what Smart brings to the table on defense.  It seems that nobody wants to discuss him as a defensive superstar because he doesn’t have the super quicks and athleticism of a prospect like John Wall, but everything else about him is so elite that he may be great anyway.  He is listed as 6’4 220 with a 6’8 wingspan, and it may not be long before he is the physically strongest PG in the league.  Each of Iowa State’s bigs tried backing him down, and none of them could push him too deep.  DeAndre Kane is strong for a college PG and was hopeless trying to post up Smart.  Smart’s strength will aid him in fighting through screens in the NBA, and he has the size to match up with PG’s, SG’s, or even the occasional SF.  While he is considered a bit of a tweener, his defensive versatility and ability to cross match automatically makes him one of the good variety.  He makes an excellent pairing with guards such as George Hill or Avery Bradley, as either would create a dynamic defensive duo with awesome matchup flexibility.

Even though he only had one steal this game, it may be the most impressive steal I have witnessed this season.  I do not believe anybody else in the 2014 draft class can both make the lightning quick mental reaction and have the tools to close out and intercept the pass.  Smart is a steal generating machine, and there is no gimmicky press or zone defense involved, just honest to goodness defensive domination.  Oklahoma State plays mostly man to man defense, and prior to Smart’s arrival Travis Ford has never coached a defense that forced many turnovers.  His best rank in defensive TOV% prior to Smart’s arrival is 160th in 2008-09, and they have ranked 77th and 87th in each of the past 2 years respectively.  This is entirely due to Smart, as he has 31% of his team’s steals in 14% of their minutes played, and as a freshman he had 40% (!!!) of his teams steals in 16.4% of their total minutes.  Among regular rotation players this year, Smart has a 4.6% steal rate and the second highest is Brian Williams at 2.3%.  Fringe prospects Markel Brown (1.4%) and Le’Bryan Nash (1.1%) create a small fraction of the steals that Smart does.  As a freshman he boasted a 5.3% steal rate which was more than double any of the Cowboys’ regular rotation players.

Further, Oklahoma State’s opposing eFG% has flourished since Smart’s arrival.  Ford had some defenses that forced difficult shots at UMass, but in his first 4 seasons at Oklahoma State they ranked 219th, 136th, 71st, and 122nd respectively in eFG% defense.  In Smart’s two seasons they have ranked 27th and 49th.  This is less directly attributable to Smart, but there is a good case to be made that he deserves more credit than any other Oklahoma State player for this recent leap.

Of course the counterpoint to all of this is that he cannot shoot.  Even if he is the next Tony Allen defensively, he needs to set himself apart from Tony Allen offensively to justify a top 5 pick.  His overall offensive stats are comparable to those of senior Tony Allen, except he is posting them at 2+ years younger.  His poor shooting is mitigated by his handling, passing, and finishing ability, and he also excels at getting to the line and making his free throws at a decent clip.  Also his shooting woes are mitigated by the fact that he understands that 3 > 2.  He is shooting 29.3% from 3 and 30.2% on non-rim 2’s, which unfortunately compares to Aaron Gordon who is shooting 32.3% from 3 and 27% on long 2’s.  But his overall eFG on non-rim shots is 39.5% vs Gordon’s 31.2%, simply because he knows not to relentlessly launch long 2’s and Gordon doesn’t.  His free throw percentage offers an inkling of hope that he can develop into a respectable 3 point shooter in the pros, after all he shoots an awful lot off the dribble with just 56% of his 3 point makes coming assisted this season.

A common comparison for Smart is Tyreke Evans, and I do not believe it is an unflattering one.  Evans was worse from both 3 (27.4% vs 29.2%) and FT (71.1% vs 76.0%) in college, his shot has developed poorly in the pros, yet he is still a capable scorer.  He had similar efficiency on higher usage (33 vs 28) to Smart as a freshman, but as a sophomore Smart has cut down on his turnovers to improve his efficiency and surpass Evans’ overall freshman stats by a slim margin.  Being behind Evans as a collegiate scorer is not the worst thing in the world, as Evans appeared to be on the path to stardom as a rookie before regressing.  Between Smart’s work ethic, competitiveness, confidence, and the fact that he probably will not be drafted by the Kings, he has a strong shot of developing much better than Evans as a pro.

A common critique of Smart’s game is that he bullies smaller competition and this will not translate.  This critique is poorly founded.  Opposing teams are aware of Marcus Smart and what he does on the basketball court.  They don’t simply let him post up 6’0 point guards ad nauseum.  Believe it or not, they will often use their bigger wing players to match up with him because they noticed that he is 6’4 and built like a linebacker and good at basketball.  It’s not costly for them to do this either, as he is never the smallest player on the floor for Oklahoma State in spite of being the PG.  He may not be able to fully translate his FT rate, but he should prove adept at getting to the line in the pros as he will continue to have a significant advantage in strength over opposing guards.

The important questions regarding Smart are his shooting ability and his ability to run an offense.  If either of these were stronger, he would be in the conversation for a top 3 pick.  But between his array of skills and his elite intangibles, he has a decent shot of nevertheless becoming a valuable offensive player who is a force defensively.  And even if he never quite pans out offensively, he can still be better than Tony Allen on that end with similar or slightly worse defense.  In short, he should be at least as useful as Tony Allen a significant % of the time and he has clear star upside as well.  That may not be enough to merit top 3 consideration, but after Embiid, Exum, and Parker there is no clear #4 and I believe Smart makes as compelling of a pick as any other prospect in that slot.

An Attempt To Quantify the Meaning Of Marcus Smart Shoving a Fan

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in NCAA, Personalities and Intangibles

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In the waning seconds of Saturday night’s Texas Tech-Oklahoma State game, a Texas Tech fan said something to arouse the ire of Marcus Smart, and Smart confronted and shoved him.  Smart’s side of the story is that the Texas Tech super fan dropped a racial slur on him.  It was costly for Smart’s team, as they had an outside shot of winning the game down 2 with 6 seconds left and Texas Tech heading to the line for two free throws.  And the brunt of the incident will be the 3 game suspension he received with his team’s tourney hopes suddenly looking uncertain.  Various people will have various takes on what this says about Smart’s character, and none of them will be particularly illuminating.  He erred, a price will be paid, people will get over it as time passes, and discussing it any further is both uninteresting and uncomfortable.  After all, my goal is to perceive his value as a future NBA player rather than judge his morality as a human being.  So the question of the day is: should we adjust the consensus opinion that Smart has elite intangibles and downgrade his draft stock in light of this incident?

First, let’s look at the NBA incident that most closely parallels this: the Malice at the Palace.  While a quick shove pales in comparison to Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson going into the stands to fight fans, and Jermaine O’Neal punching a fan in the jaw after a running start, it’s what we have to work with for the line between players and fans being crossed.   So let’s take a look at each player’s draft slot, their career win shares, and where they rank all time for win shares at their draft slot:

Pick Win Shares Slot Rank
Ron Artest 16 61.3 3
Jermaine O’Neal 17 64 4
Stephen Jackson 42 36.1 1

There have been 60 selections at 16th or 17th overall and 59 at 42nd in NBA history.  In spite of being crazy enough to physically fight fans and draw enormous suspensions, these 3 players were among the all-time best values for their slot.  There is some selection bias at work, as this analysis isn’t completely fair to the draft busts who couldn’t stay on an NBA roster long enough to have the opportunity to storm into the stands and beat up Detroit area residents.  But the fact remains that being crazy enough to fight fans does not equate to being too crazy to develop into a better NBA player than expected.

There are not many similar incidents to draw from for a thorough analysis.  The next most similar incident that comes to mind is Dennis Rodman kicking the camera man, and he has the most career win shares for 27th overall draft picks.  So to assess a broader range of players, I resorted to the universal measure of NBA player volatility: technical fouls!  Rasheed Wallace is the poster boy for technicals, as he holds the record both single season (41) and career (317) technicals, and he proved to be good value at 4th overall with the 5th most career win shares for the slot all-time.  In any season the technical foul leaderboard it is littered with players who were good draft values.  But again there are selection bias issues, as players need to spend time on the floor to rack up technicals, which prevents bench players and flame-outs from standing out in this regard.

To give the busts and their outbursts fair consideration, I analyzed the correlation between technical frequency and various advanced statistics.  I used season long samples from 2002-2003, 2007-2008, and 2012-2013.  For each season, I calculated the correlation coefficient between technical fouls per minute and RAPM, PER, and Win Shares.  I split RAPM and Win Shares into offense and defense, and I also included Win Shares per 48 minutes.  Here are the correlations:

Statistic 2002-03 2007-08 2012-13
oRAPM 0.025 0.090 0.038
dRAPM 0.224 0.286 0.243
RAPM 0.180 0.276 0.212
PER 0.167 0.149 0.172
OWS 0.102 0.132 0.071
DWS 0.235 0.209 0.180
WS 0.167 0.176 0.123
WS/48 0.186 0.147 0.122

There is a positive correlation across the board between a density of technical fouls and on court production.  This intuitively makes sense, as it is often the most fiery competitors who pick up the most technicals.  The defensive correlation is much stronger than the offensive one, which again makes sense due to defensive value having a greater correlation with effort.  There have been plenty of successful players who don’t get an insane amount of technicals, so I’m not advocating to draft all hotheads and pass up the players who contain their emotions.  But the numbers clearly suggest that volatile players on average contribute more value than the complacent ones.

I do not mean to spin Smart’s outburst as a positive- his competitive spirit was already priced into his draft stock and it would have been preferable if he hadn’t crossed the boundary that he did.  But since we live in a society where following the rules is regarded as important, this may be incorrectly magnified into a notable red flag.  It parallels to Chris Paul’s elite intangibles being questioned when he punched Julius Hodge below the belt in ACC play, and this concern has proven to be misplaced as he became an excellent leader and star player in the NBA.

People are welcome to judge exactly how wrong Smart was to their heart’s content, but they are flat out wrong if they think this adversely affects his ability to contribute value to an NBA team.  By all accounts he is a great leader and teammate, and even if you want to now downgrade those assessments (I do not) he is not a bad teammate by any stretch.  If GMs picking in the middle of the lottery have an inclination to pass him up because of this, I would expect Smart to reward the first team with the good sense to look past the ESPN narrative and realize this is nothing more than a small price to pay for an elite competitor.

Richard Sherman Is Awesome And We Can Learn From Him

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in Personalities and Intangibles

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Recently Richard Sherman has garnered much attention, as he frightened Erin Andrews when he angrily declared himsef the best corner in the game and called Michael Crabtree a “sorry receiver” after Sherman’s Seahawks defeated Crabtree’s 49ers in the NFC championship game.

As a casual NFL fan, this was my first exposure to Sherman.  While people had varying reactions to his postgame mini-rant, I had an inkling that he was one of the more awesome human beings on this planet and did some digging.  Last year he went on ESPN’s First Take and told Skip Bayless “I’m better at life than you,” which is painfully true.  He also demonstrated commendable word choice when he called Bayless an “ignorant, pompous, egotistical cretin.”

But Richard Sherman is more than just an elite troll.  After his 2nd NFL season, he was voted by the AP to the NFL All-Pro 1st team.  Now in his 3rd NFL season, he is widely considered a top 2 NFL cornerback.  He’s on the fast track to become an all-time great, yet in the 2011 NFL Draft he was chosen in the 5th round, 154th overall.  His draft stock was deflated because he started off his college career as a wide receiver, and only had two years experience as a cornerback entering the draft.  He was considered raw, which was something that Sherman himself acknowledged.  But he has good tools and is insanely smart and driven to succeed, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he achieved the heights that he did.  Check out how cerebral his approach to the game is:

And much like Paul George, he had his sights set on extreme goals.  Per an SB Nation interview:

“Doesn’t matter where I play I just want to be a great player.  I don’t want to be a guy that’s in the league a few years, makes a ton of money and has nothing else.  I want to go down as one of the best.I want to prove other NFL Draft websites wrong that say I am the 52nd ranked CB prospect in their eyes.”

The fact that there was a player with the tools to be great and had such an intelligent and dedicated approach to the game yet was passing up multiple times by every team is amazing to me.  Richard Sherman is the archetype of player that both NFL and NBA GM’s should be pursuing, and the fact that he slipped to the 154th overall shows the inefficiencies of the NFL Draft that I believe remain present in the NBA Draft as well.

The NBA player who stands out as the most Richard Sherman like personality is Chris Paul.  He went 4th overall, as he was a polished NCAA superstar, but he neverthless made the GM’s who drafted Andrew Bogut, Marvin Williams, and Deron Williams ahead of him look foolish.  He thrives off of his otherworldly basketball IQ, and there was concern that he was too competitive as he punched Julius Hodge in the crotch during an ACC game.  I feel that he was one of the all-time underrated draft prospects in spite of going at a high slot, as his lack of an extra inch of height got too much attention and his intelligence received far too little.

Players like Richard Sherman and Chris Paul are one of a kind, and most draft classes will not have anybody who compares.  But these personality types are so underrated, part of the prospect evaluation process should be to identify players who show similar characteristics.  It is built from thin slices from afar, but here’s my early list of players to monitor who have shown signs of possible elite drive, confidence, and intelligence.

6) Joel Embiid-  His personality is slippery to assess, as he is still learning the English language and the game of basketball which makes it difficult to fully convey his intelligence.  On the other hand it also makes it difficult to grasp for his mental limitations since there’s an excuse for most of his mistakes. But his massive overperformance when he wasn’t expected to make an impact, and also his demonstration of a basic ability to learn are positive signs early.   Also noteworthy with Embiid is that he seems to have a fiery passion to his game as he already has 3 technical fouls on the season. Some may view this as a negative, but prefer it to his teammate Andrew Wiggins’s passive approach by a comfortable margin.

5) Tyler Ennis- He has an insanely low turnover rate for a freshman PG, and he has been at his best against good competition as some of his worst games have come against the dregs of Syracuse’s schedule.  Further, his stats in the final 5 minutes of games are better than sooner.

4) Dante Exum- he’s outwardly quiet but reputed to be confident and an extremely hard worker.  Derrick Rose is his role model and they seem to have similar deameanors.  He won me over a little bit with an incredibly sharp assessment regarding the pressure of being a high draft pick:

“Being told that you’re going to be a franchise player doesn’t mean anything, honestly they can say what they’d like and it’s just an opinion and it doesn’t mean it’s going to come true…Dealing with I guess that pressure, it doesn’t really matter to me because I know I’m just going to do what I can to get to that.”

That’s an impressive perception for an 18 year old kid, and it should inch NBA teams toward taking the mystery box over the boat.

3) Spencer Dinwiddie- He may not declare for the draft after his ACL tear, but he is an obviously intelligent person in interviews.  In a DX interivew, he cited that he wanted to improve his efficiency last offseason, and demonstrated a solid vocabulary when touched on his capacity to be an “auxiliary scorer.”  He also expressed an inclination to be a franchise point guard but accepted the possibility of a supporting role.  To me, he reminisces of Shane Battier with PG skills.

2) Marcus Smart- he occasionally makes a bad decision on the floor as he is prone to force bad shots, which may be a sign that he does not have elite intelligence.  But overall he demonstrates good feel for the game, especially defensively.  And from watching interviews he seems to back up his name with above average intelligence.  Moreover he demonstrates uniquely good intangibles and leadership skills as I noted in my Embiid breakdown.  He recently had a mini-meltdown where he outwardly demonstrated frustration during a poor game, and had a good apology afterward where he expressed desire to avoid similar behavior in the future. Willingness to accept feedback and learn from mistakes is how people grow, so it’s encouraging to see the reaction from him even though the meltdown wasn’t particularly bad.

1) Nik Stauskas- He strikes me as the complete package in terms of intangibles.  He is a highly intelligent player, and his work ethic must be incredible given the offseason work he put in on both his body and his skills.  He has a confident demeanor as he does things like blow kisses to the Michigan State crowd after a crucial road win.  His coach also acknowledged that Stauskas showed leadership by holding him back from the refs after a missed call.  His physical limitations place a ceiling on his upside, but that ceiling might be higher than common wisdom would suggest.

Note that the list is not comprehensive, and I hope to identify other attractive personalities as the season progresses.  My analysis of on court performance and statistics certainly carries more weight, but personalities can’t be excluded from prospect assessment altogether so this is a subject I will touch on sporadically.  Consider the assessment of the personality underlying each player to be a skill that I am developing as a side project.  In the interim, I will be rooting for Richard Sherman and the Seattle Seahawks to win that football game that is apparently happening tonight.