Stats, commentary, analysis.
Where the New Orleans Pelicans vs. Washington Wizards matchup Friday night was entertaining and competitive, last night’s game was a slog. The game got away from Washington when head coach Brian Keefe went to the bench late in the first quarter, and they never got back into it. The Pelicans led by as much as 21 in the second half before the Wizards trimmed the lead to a respectable 12 by the final buzzer.
With the loss, Washington moves back to last place in the NBA — 6-27 with an 18.2% winning percentage to New Orleans’ 7-29, 19.4%. The Wizards will need to demonstrate their commitment to The Tank. The Charlotte Hornets at 7-27 are just a half game back in the chase for last. The Toronto Raptors are a game back at 8-27. Out west, the Utah Jazz are in contention at 8-25.
Naturally, the front office’s job may be more complicated. Veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon left the game at halftime with pain in his foot and did not return. No word yet on the nature of his injury.
In this game, much of the drama was removed before the opening tip. Jordan Poole sat with a hip injury after a hard fall Friday night. Bilal Coulibaly was out with the illness that kept him out Friday, as well.
As long as we’re talking about injuries, Trey Murphy III (the best player on the floor last night) departed early after landing on Jonas Valanciunas heel and turning his ankle. The last thing the Wizards Pelicans need is for yet another injury to befall a high quality Pelicans player.
Bright spots?
- Bub Carrington was terrific — 16 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists and a steal — and just one turnover. He shot 6-9 from the floor and 4-7 from three. Excellent game from the 19-year-old.
- Alex Sarr — the team’s other 19-year-old — played a strong game — 18 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists. He shot 6-9 from the floor, 3-6 from three, and his defense was good throughout the night.
- Kyle Kuzma shot well — 13-23 from the floor and 2-5 from three — en route to a game high 28 points. He also came up with a couple steals, which was nice. His offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) was a below average 106 (no trips to the free throw line, just 1 offensive rebound and 1 assist, plus 3 turnovers). Given the poor efficiency from the rest of the team, his ortg was acceptable for this game.
- Jared Butler made the most of the 20 minutes he got due to the absences of Poole and Brogdon — 17 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists.
If you get a chance, give a listen/watch to this episode of the Bleav in Wizards podcast with Matt Modderno and guest Greg Finberg. They discuss the Wizards playing better over the preceding weeks and address the question of whether the team has been playing too well to maintain their spot atop the Number One pick standings. (Spoiler: they agree the Wizards are not playing too well, and that the front office has levers to pull to make sure they stay at the top. (Bottom?))
Anyway, I thought I’d put some numbers to their conversation, so I compared the team’s first 20 games to their last 12 (not including last night’s loss to the Pelicans). The record largely speaks for itself — in the first 20 games, they went 2-18 (with a 16-game losing streak). They went 4-8 over the following 12.
On offense, they improved from an offensive rating of 104.2 to 109.7. That’s an uptick of 5.7 points per 100 possessions. While better, that 109.7 is the level of the 26th ranked offense this season (the Orlando Magic). They did it by shooting better (50.0% eFG% to 53.7% and getting a few more offensive boards (21.0% to 25.8% offensive rebounding percentage). Their turnovers ticked up slightly, and their trips to the free throw line went down.
Their defensive rating went from 120.6 to 116.0 — an improvement of 4.6 points per 100 possessions. That’s the level of the 22nd ranked defense (Chicago Bulls). Their defense got better because opponents shot worse (56.4% eFG% through the first 20 games to 53.0% in the next 12) and fouling less. The Wizards forced fewer turnovers and did slightly worse on the defensive glass. (These results are NOT a surprise — the primary way to have a good defense in the NBA is to make the other team miss.)
Interestingly, Washington’s deflections per game dropped from 14.2 to 12.8 as their overall defense improved.
A big factor in the team’s improvement over the last dozen games was three point shooting — both theirs and their opponents’.
First 20 games, Washington shot 31.3% from deep while opponents shot 37.8%. Over the last 12, the Wizards shot 36.0% while opponent shooting fell to 32.9%. The usual “best bet” when three-point shooting flips like this in a small sample is that it’s just random variation — luck.
One reason to think it might not just be luck is that Washington did a better job contesting threes over the past 12 games. Per NBA tracking data, the Wizards contested 44.8% of opponent three-point attempts through the first 20 games. That number went to 47.3% over the next 12. That’s an additional 2.6 contested threes per game. Is that enough to explain why opponents made 0.7 fewer threes per game while increasing attempts by 3.5? Probably not. But it is interesting.
By the way, the Wizards also increased their two-point contests by 1.3 per game, which means they had an overall 9.8% increase in field goal attempts contested…while they simultaneously reducing their fouling. Very interesting.
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.
by Kevin Broom