Brandon Jennings and the Rookie of the Year

The NBA season is over and of course talk has ramped up about the seasonal awards. Let’s start with a quick recap of the awards, and my predictions:

MVP – Of course, there’s no real debate about this award – LeBron wins, though I’d put Durant as number 2.

Sixth man – Jamal Crawford. He shouldn’t even be eligible because the Hawks should have shot Mike Bibby months ago, but here we are.

Defensive player – Dwight Howard. No one dominates the defensive end like him.

Most improved player is ambiguous at best. Should it be unexpected improvement (Marc Gasol) or does Kevin Durant still qualify? In the end, I don’t even care enough to make a pick.

Coach of the Year – In my opinion, it should be between Nate McMillan and Scott Brooks. One overcame tons of injuries, and one got a young team to commit on defense and surprise everyone. I’d go with Nate, because he’s had a tougher road. The Thunder had the talent to be this good all along.

That brings us to the award I really wanted to talk about – Rookie of the Year. The race is both not as close as it should be (Evans vs Curry) and closer than it should be (Brandon Jennings.)

Starting with Brandon Jennings, I don’t think he should even be in the discussion. All the arguments for Jennings boils down to one flawed point: he’s “leading” a team that won 46 games and made the playoffs, whereas Evans and Curry are on teams that only won 51 games combined. Here’s the biggest issue with that argument: top rated rookies go to shitty teams, that’s how the NBA draft works. You cannot take a team’s overall success into consideration in the RoY award because of that. It’s not Jennings’ doing that he landed on a better team in an easier conference any more than it’s Evans or Curry’s fault that they ended up on crappy teams in a really tough conference. If you had put either Curry or Evans on the Bucks, they’d still be in the playoffs, and if you put Jennings on the Kings or Warriors, they’d still suck. So, taking that out of the equation, let’s look at Jennings’ pros and cons:

Pros – 55 point game, good free throw shooting (82%),

Cons – Terrible shooting that continuously got worse throughout the year (43%FG 50%3P in Sept/Oct, 38%FG 32%3P in Nov, 32%FG 35%3P in Dec, 31%FG 31%3P in Jan, 37.5%FG 36%3P in Feb/March),

Not so good assist to turnover ratio (2.35),

Second worst Adjusted FG% for all rookies (43%).

Jennings shot the Bucks to more losses than wins. He shot terribly, and still ended up taking more shots than any other rookie, while playing fewer minutes than Evans or Curry. I don’t care how well the Bucks were as a team, Jennings doesn’t deserve any votes for rookie of the year.

So, the decision comes down to Evans vs Curry. Evans was successful from day 1, while Curry came on stronger as the season went on. Their overall stats are very similar:

Evans – 20PPG, 5.8APG, 5.3RPG, 1.5SPG, 3TO, 46%FG

Curry – 17.5PPG, 5.9APG, 4.5RPG, 1.9SPG, 3TO, 46%FG

Drill down a bit and things spread out a bit:

Evans – 25.5% 3P, 75%FT

Curry – 44% 3P, 88.5%FT

So, they had similar stats, but Curry was more efficient. And, more importantly, Evans had no help at all. He had the ball in his hands all the time, but somehow only ended up with 2.5 more PPG than Curry. On the other hand, Curry had notorious ball hog Monta Ellis (22 FGA per game) next to him. I’d say that makes Curry’s year more impressive. Plus, as I mentioned at first, Curry got better throughout the year, Evans didn’t. Shouldn’t that come into play with a rookie? Yes, it’s impressive when a rookie can come in and play at a high level from day one, but even if that’s the case, shouldn’t he still get better? Consistency is good, but I want to see growth potential in my rookies.

So, as you can guess, I’m going with Curry for RoY.

LeBron and the Cavs

It’s the NBA season, so it’s time for a return of the carefully reasoned rants!

most people don’t share my dislike of LeBron and the Cavs, but here are my issues:

1) I hate the way LeBron plays. he is a freak athlete who is bigger, stronger, and faster than anyone else out there, so all he needs to do (and all he does) in big games is clear out his teammates and charge recklessly into the lane, because he will get the call. if everyone in the lane just jumped out of the way, LeBron would just run out of bounds because he’s not in control enough to actually finish without trucking someone.

2) Mike Brown is a terrible coach, because he fosters and encourages this behavior by LeBron. they lost to the Magic, because the rest of the team can be shut down, and LeBron can’t win by himself. The Celts reinforced that idea in game 1 this year, and the Raptors did the same in game 2.

it’s the Wilt Chamberlain vs Bill Russell theory. Bill knew that if you let Wilt do what he wanted, but focused on stopping the rest of the team, then Wilt would lose. and what happened there? Bill won 11 rings, and Wilt won 2 (only 1 during the course of Russell’s career).

which leads to:
3) the supporting cast in Cleveland is infinitely underwhelming, and easily beatable. without LeBron, that team struggles to make the playoffs in the EAST. strip away KG, and the Celts still make round 2 of the playoffs, take away Kobe, and i’m willing to bet the Lakers make round 2 as well. the Magic played without Jameer Nelson for a long stretch and still made the championship game.

the only real scoring threats outside LeBron are two extremely undersized guards in Delonte West and Mo Williams. Shaq and big Z are too old and slow. Anthony Parker is good, but shouldn’t be more than an outside shot specialist. and Varejao is a streaky energy guy at best.

any of the elite level teams can shut down all of those threats when they need to, and no matter what LeBron puts on the board, it won’t be enough.

NBA Draft

I just pulled this from the e-mail conversation on ESPN between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell:

Gladwell: “The consistent failure of underdogs in professional sports to even try something new suggests, to me, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the incentive structure of the leagues. I think, for example, that the idea of ranking draft picks in reverse order of finish — as much as it sounds “fair” — does untold damage to the game. You simply cannot have a system that rewards anyone, ever, for losing. Economists worry about this all the time, when they talk about “moral hazard.” Moral hazard is the idea that if you insure someone against risk, you will make risky behavior more likely. So if you always bail out the banks when they take absurd risks and do stupid things, they are going to keep on taking absurd risks and doing stupid things. Bailouts create moral hazard. Moral hazard is also why your health insurance has a co-pay. If your insurer paid for everything, the theory goes, it would encourage you to go to the doctor when you really don’t need to. No economist in his right mind would ever endorse the football and basketball drafts the way they are structured now. They are a moral hazard in spades. If you give me a lottery pick for being an atrocious GM, where’s my incentive not to be an atrocious GM?

I think the only way around the problem is to put every team in the lottery. Every team’s name gets put in a hat, and you get assigned your draft position by chance. Does that, theoretically, make it harder for weaker teams to improve their chances against stronger teams? I don’t think so. First of all, the principal engine of parity in the modern era is the salary cap, not the draft. And in any case, if the reverse-order draft is such a great leveler, then why are the same teams at the bottom of both the NFL and NBA year after year? The current system perpetuates the myth that access to top picks is the primary determinant of competitiveness in pro sports, and that’s simply not true. Success is a function of the quality of the organization.

Another more radical idea is that you do a full lottery only every second year, or three out of four years, and in the off year make draft position in order of finish. Best teams pick first. How fun would that be? Every meaningless end-of-season game now becomes instantly meaningful. If you were the Minnesota Timberwolves, you would realize that unless you did something really drastic — like hire some random sports writer as your GM, or bring in Pitino to design a special-press squad — you would never climb out of the cellar again. And in a year with a can’t-miss No. 1 pick, having the best record in the regular season becomes hugely important. What do you think?”

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I don’ t know about pushing it to only having the lottery every other year, but full randomness in the lottery is actually pretty interesting.  Because I think he is right on the fact that the salary cap is the real determinant of success. The Lakers are always going to spend a lot, and they are always on top. The Knicks are starting to use their money wisely, and I like the way the future looks. The Spurs haven’t really bothered with the draft since Tim Duncan, and they are consistently a top level team. While on the other side, Toronto and Milwaukee, Minnesota, Memphis, the Clippers and Golden State don’t spend money, rely on the draft or spend their money unwisely and are consistently disappointing. I like how the future looks for Memphis and Toronto, but do we really expect them to be able to resign Gay, Mayo, or Bosh?

If teams aren’t willing to spend money on 3 key guys needed to win, why reward them for losing the most? Maybe a better idea than either that Gladwell proposes would be to rank the lottery chances in order not reverse order. Give the teams who are on the fringe of making the playoffs like Indiana, Charlotte and Phoenix the best chance at the top picks, so teams won’t routinely be stuck at the bottom with talent who don’t want to be there. Give all the teams incentive to win, and make the top picks worth more because it could really mean the difference between making the playoffs and not.