Stats, analysis, commentary.
The Washington Wizards got stellar games from Tyus Jones and Jordan Poole but didn’t get much from anyone else and lost to the injury and illness depleted Utah Jazz. It was an entertaining game for the most part but was still Washington’s 15th consecutive defeat.
The franchise record losing streak is 16. And they face a tough Orlando Magic back in DC next. Their best chance of ending their binge of losing is Friday night against the Charlotte Hornets. After that, they aren’t favorites again until March 29 against the Detroit Pistons.
Anyway, fans can take some solace from last night’s game in Utah. They lost, but Jones and Poole made shots — a combined 19-29 from the floor and 11-18 from three. Jones had six assists and no turnovers.
It was a game of dueling runs. Washington rolled to a 14-point lead in the second quarter, to which Utah responded with a 15-0 run. They rebuilt their lead to 10 points in the third quarter, but the Jazz came back and led by one entering the fourth. The final period was all Utah — they closed by outscoring Washington 25-14 over the final 12 minutes as…well…everyone started tossing up bricks.
Kyle Kuzma’s attempts at hero ball failed — he shot 2-7 in the period. Poole’s hot streak ended — he was 1-5. Deni Avdija shot 1-4 in the quarter. Bilal Coulibaly was 0-3, including getting rejected by John Collins when he tried to steal a garbage time bucket. Jones was 0-1.
Musings & Observations
- Did Poole have a good game? Well, in the first half, he shot 8-9 from the floor and 5-6 from three-point range en route to 23 points in 13 minutes. If the game ended there, his PPA would have been 459. In the second half, he shot 3-9 from the floor, 1-4 from deep, scoring 9 points on 9 field goal attempts in 16 minutes. His second half PPA: 20. Overall, it was his best game of the season. I guess I wish it felt more like he’d actually made better decisions and played better and not just gotten hot for a half before reverting to his previous form.
- Jazz head coach Will Hardy is a clever offensive designer. In the fourth quarter, when the outcome was still in some doubt, Utah ran a screening action in which Collin Sexton dribbled the ball directly at Kuzma, who was matched up on Jordan Clarkson. Clarkson was creeping forward as if he was going to set a screen, and when Kuzma dropped back a step, it suddenly became a dribble hand off that gave Clarkson a wide-open three from out top. The play used principles of good defense against the defender — by using the guy with the ball to set the screen.
- By the way, Poole’s game raised his full-season PPA from 50 to 54. It boosted his five-game PPA from 76 to 126 — the best five-game stretch of his Wizards’ career.
- Jones had an insanely efficient offensive game — 21 points on 11 shots, plus 6 assists to zero assists. His offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) was 199. His efg was 95.5%.
- Not a good night for Kuzma, Marvin Bagley III, Bilal Coulibaly, or Deni Avdija. Avdija contributed on defense — the team defense was at its best when he was out there — but he shot 6-18 from the floor, missed all four of his threes, and committed five turnovers. Lately, he’s been crashing the offensive boards — last night he had a game-high five.
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.