Stats, analysis, commentary
Welcome to Official NBA Tank Season where winning is losing, losing is winning, and shenanigans abound. The games are still entertaining, especially when the coaches understand the assignment, the players don’t fully buy in, and decision-makers have to get creative.
Take the Utah Jazz, for example. They got fined for blatantly tanking by doing stuff like sitting 23-year-old center Walker Kessler multiple games for “rest” or listing Lauri Markkanen as out with phony injuries.
And then, clearly chastened by Adam Silver’s iron rod of discipline, in the next game, Kessler was DNP-CD (that’s Did Not Play — Coach’s Decision). And in the games three he’s played since, Kessler has 17 three-point attempts (including six last night against Washington). In his previous 188 NBA games, Kessler had 28 three-point attempts.
And oh yeah, Markkanen missed the game against Washington due to “personal reasons.” Hmm.
The Wizards have largely avoided blatant lineup nonsense this season, though head coach Brian Keefe has committed to the bit the past couple games. Against Utah, Keefe started three guards and two centers. The oldest starter was the 25-year-old Jordan Poole, and included two 19-year-olds, a 20-year-old, and a 22-year-old.
Jordan Poole, who might be the team’s best player, sat the entire second half of the team’s loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, and played just 20 minutes against Utah.
Khris Middleton missed the game for “injury management.” Justin Champagnie and Richaun Holmes, who have been among the team’s more productive players this season, didn’t play at all. They were not listed on the team’s injury report. Anthony Gill played 24 minutes.
Against Utah, the team leaders in minutes were two-way players Jaylen Martin and JT Thor, followed by the ultra-slender AJ Johnson (who started), and Colby Jones. The words “lightly used” may have been invented for the NBA careers of Johnson and Jones to this point.
And here’s the fun part about Tank Season: the young guys Washington wanted to play well mostly did:
- Alex Sarr posted 22 points and 9 rebounds in just 23 minutes.
- Bub Carrington notched 6-5-4.
- Tristan Vukcevic scored 17 points on 11 shots in 21 minutes.
- AJ Johnson had a spectacular alley-oop dunk on a well-designed sideline-out-of-bounds play featuring a backscreen from Poole and perfect pass from Carrington. He had a just as impressive long-reach lay-in on an errant lob pass from Thor.
- Colby Jones had the best game of his brief NBA career — 24 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assist, 3 steals. He was 9-11 from the floor and 4-4 from three-point range.
With the loss, Washington moves back into last place in the NBA. This does not increase their odds of landing the top pick, but it would make their worst case scenario a bit more tolerable.
Keefe and the front office will need to remain vigilant — they have 14 games left on the schedule, and Utah has just 12. Washington’s lead is slender, and the Charlotte Hornets are lurking. When in doubt, perhaps Keefe needs to keep in mind this question: “What would Will Hardy do?”
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).
The four factors are measured by:
- eFG% (effective field goal percentage, which accounts for the three-point shot)
- OREB% (offensive rebound percentage)
- TOV% (turnover percentage — turnovers divided by possessions)
- FTM/FGA (free throws made divided by field goal attempts)
In the table below are the four factors using the percentages and rates traditionally presented. There’s also a column showing league average in each of the categories to give a sense of each team’s performance relative to the rest of the league this season.
Stats & Metrics
Below are a few performance metrics. 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).
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.
Players are sorted by total production in the game.