Stats, analysis, commentary.
What happened last night was an illustration of the gap between the Washington Wizards, one of the league’s worst teams, and the Denver Nuggets, one of the league’s best. The Nuggets shot just 7-32 from three-point range, the Wizards shot 17-38, and Washington got rolled.
The 20-point final margin was deceptively close. In truth, the Wizards got dominated throughout the game, and the only reason they lost by “just” 20 is Denver couldn’t hit wide-open threes.
Unsurprisingly, the game was dominated by Nikola Jokic, the planet’s best player. He had two passes in the first quarter — the length of the court bomb to Aaron Gordon, and the behind-the-back pass (also to Gordon) — that would be season highlights for most players. When the game began, the Wizards were the only team hadn’t triple-doubled on. He was one assist short of the mark by halftime.
Jokic finished with 21 points, 19 rebounds, and 15 assists. He shot 10-10 from the floor. And he might have had another 6-8 assists if his teammates had hit those open threes.
The Wizards returned from the All-Star break with some changes. Interim head coach Brian Keefe had a new haircut and a new starting lineup — Bilal Coulibaly starting in place of Jordan Poole. With Delon Wright bought out and suiting up for the Miami Heat, Keefe found some first quarter minutes for Johnny Davis.
At least against the Nuggets, shuffling the players made no difference. Coulibaly had another do-little game. Poole was abysmal, again. Davis looked well out of his depth.
This & That
- A game after the best performance of his career, Deni Avdija had his worst game of the season — 5 points on 2-12 shooting, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 turnovers. Denver had him scouted and kept forcing him left. He had trouble finishing over Denver’s size.
- Kuzma shot 6-8 from three-point range and grabbed six offensive rebounds. He also came up with three steals, which helped offset his three turnovers. He finished with a reasonably efficient 31 points and 13 rebounds.
- Tyus Jones was hyper-efficient, again — 13 points on eight shots, 14 assists, just two turnovers.
- Marvin Bagley III grabbed five offensive rebounds and scored eight points and was absolutely no contest for Jokic.
- Eugene Omoruyi entered the game in the third quarter and succeeded in annoying Jokic for a few minutes and forcing the Denver big man into some turnovers. He plays hard, all the time.
- Corey Kispert may lead the NBA in inadvertently stepping on the sideline when he has the ball.
- Poole almost certainly leads the NBA in heat checks attempted after making one shot.
- The Wizards are on a nine-game losing streak. Based on their upcoming schedule, that streak could reach 16 before they get a winnable game at home against the Charlotte Hornets. It’s possible they could steal a win somewhere, but they’re facing a string of teams with talent and motivation to win. This could get uglier.
Four Factors
Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).
Stats & Metrics
Below are a few performance metrics, including the Player Production Average (PPA) Game Score. PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).
Game Score (GmSC) converts individual production into points on the scoreboard. The scale is the same as points and reflects each player’s total contributions for the game. The lowest possible GmSC is zero.
PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.
POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.
ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average last season was 114.8. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.
USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.
ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.
+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.
