Perspective

The NBA season is 5 games old, 10 games total for someone like me who follows both of the locals. We’re 1-9 on a regional basis. There’s 82 games each for the Knicks and the Nets, and if you anticipate between 20-30 wins for the teams each that projects out to a combined record of roughly 50-114.

I am basketball’s version of a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.

Denver 122, Nets 94: Unacceptable

I’ve caught the Nets twice now this year (the Charlotte game and this one), and haven’t written on them so far since there’s no real good reason to overreact to a few early games for a team with so many players out. That said, tonight was very telling: the Nuggies came out flat and disinterested and exhibiting all the symptoms of a good team which had this game circled on its schedule as a glorified scrimmage where a half-assed effort was likely to be good enough. To their credit the Nets more or less made them pay for this in the first half by keeping it close, but Denver got the hair dryer from George Karl at halftime and pulled away from there with ease to the point where the 4th quarter was entirely garbage time. In essence, one quarter in 4 of serious effort from Denver was good enough for a blowout. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the word is out that the Nets aren’t just a mediocre team, not just a bad team, but one who won’t even give you a game as often as not; a bit of a joke, really. There’s few things harder to watch than a team which is treated as a bit of a joke, and regardless of who’s out, the Nets are now officially into must-do-better territory.

No one expected them to be good this year, but there’s a level of respectability- professionalism, really-which they shouldn’t sink below either. This is two games in a row now where the wheels have come off entirely in the second half, not because of brilliant tactical adjustments by opposing coaches but simply because the instant the opposition began playing up to their actual talent level the Nets crumbled. They get spooked easily, they’re young and play like it, they’ve got a few incredibly selfish players (Hi Rafer), they’re (as of right now, not counting the Denver game I assume) 28th in the league in offensive efficiency, 18th in defensive, dead rat’s-ass-dirt-worst last in rebound rate, 26th in TS%, 23rd in TO’s… the list goes on and on. They’re not one of the uniquely or unusually bad teams which the league throws up sometimes, the kind who have a distinct flaw which can be addressed, or who are so bad that they’re guaranteed a top-3 draft pick; there’s too much talent here to finish with less than 20 wins, but so long as most of it is injured what’s left is a team which is pretty much bad at everything for the moment. All of which is to say: there’s no magic bullet here, and the only way this is going to get better is if the guys who are taking the court right now get together and learn how to play better as individuals and as a team in all phases of the game, out of pride if nothing else. Start with taking fewer contested 20 footers early in the shot clock without a single pass, and go from there. There’s just not much more to say: right now this is an ordinary average 20-25 win terrible basketball team, dreadful to watch.

Fun fact: CDR led the Nets in scoring in this game, and also finished with a team-worst -36 in 36 minutes. Make of that what you will.

…Double Ding-Dong No Buys

My DVR has now officially eaten both the original run AND the replay of the Nets’ season opener, so I’m SOL on that one. I’m going to refrain from saying anything in-depth since I missed it and it was the season opener, but, seriously now, Courtney Lee: 38 minutes, 2-11 from the field, 0-4 3, only one free throw AT THE TWO, 5 points, 3 boards, 2 dimes, 2 blocks (!?), 1 TO, 2 fouls, -4 on the evening. Against the Timberwolves. On a night where Yi freakin’ Jianlian took fewer shots and still scored over triple the points. That is the line of someone who did very little, pretty badly. I don’t want to overreact, but check the archives if you don’t believe me: I’ve never bought this guy and I still don’t. The Nets are rebuilding and I’m all in favor of giving him a million minutes to prove me wrong, but if you’re counting on this guy to be the long term backcourt mate to Devin Harris you may be disappointed.

Incidentally, that game like the Knicks’ season opener is a great advertisement of the power of 4-factor analysis to get a quick handle on a game- the Nets were largely comparable on free throws and total rebounds, lost on the o-boards, shot slightly better but got murdered on TOs 22-10. There’s your problem. There’s always more to say about a game than 4 factors alone, but it’s usually a good way to get a grasp on the generalities of what happened.

Today Is My Birthday

And somebody down there likes me. Throw in a spanking of Liverpool today for Arsenal, and it’s the best day ever.

The Season Approaches….

You know we’re getting close to NBA season when John Hollinger’s player previews come out on ESPN. I’ve been reading his stuff since the Basketball Forecast days, and whatever you think of PER (I like it, within its clear limits) I think it has to be agreed that Hollinger is a fantastic scout and knows as much about the minutia of the league as anyone in the media. He’s also an excellent and funny writer, which never hurts. I like to kick off each preseason by going through some of his player cards and looking for odd, weird, strange, queer, overlooked and just plain unexpected details from the last season, statistical and otherwise; it gets me excited for the season- especially a season where, let’s face it, the local teams are going to be pretty bad. Here’s a few of the more interesting ones I’ve found so far:

- Baron Davis shot 37% from the field last year, had the 65th out of 69 true shooting percentage (TS%) among PGs, and had a below-average PER of 14 and change- a drop of over 5 from his previous campaign. He’s now 30 and missed 17 games last season, while reportedly being out of shape most of the year. Another excellent signing by the Clippers!

- In possibly related news, the final tally for Elton Brand’s awful first year in the city of brotherly battery-throwing was a PER of 14.65, down from 23.17 in his last healthy year in LA. So after all the drama and hoopla of those two passing each other in the night and God knows how many words written about what their free agency choices would and would not mean, in the end they were both below-average players by this metric for largely irrelevant teams. It’s a funny ol’ league.

- Shaq’s turnover % in the last 5 years: 11.1, 13.0, 12.1, 18.5, 12.3. Just plain odd.

- Royal Ivey is entering his 6th year in the league, with his third team. His PER in his first five years has been 8.90, 8.48, 9.59, 9.00, and 7.67. And yet, despite this overall consistency, some of his component stats have varied wildly- his assist ratio has veered between 26.5 and 14.7, and his turnover rate between 14.9 and 6.1. This despite playing at least 500 minutes in every season, and having rock-solid consistency in his shooting percentages, rebounding, etc.

- Jason Kapono, renowned for his abilities as a 3 point shooter, took 38% of his shots from that distance last year…and 39% as long 2s. He has officially become the NBA’s Andy Wang. Shoot from three Jason… JASON, SHOOT FROM THREE!!

- Out of these PER figures from last year, guess which one is Nate Robinson:

18.94, 17.65, 16.63, 18.85, 14.54, 17.25

Lil’ Nate is up there at the top with the 18.94; the rest in order are Ramon Sessions, TJ Ford, Chauncey Billups, Baron Davis and Mo Williams. I’m aware of the drawbacks and limitations of PER and I’m not arguing that Nate is better than all of those guys, but he really is underrated at this point- offensively, he’s just really, really good.

- Jordan Farmer’s TS% by season: 51.5, 56.3, 46.6. His free throw percentages: .711, .679, .584. What the fuck?

- In related catch-a-falling-star news, Matt Carroll’s PER has dropped from 14.63 to 10.87 to 5.57 over the last three years. It appears his usage rate dropped first, after which his shooting was shot and his turnovers spiked. Very odd for a guy who’s only 29. He’s signed for 3 more years and $15 million, BTW, because Mark Cuban hates money.

- Speaking of Dallas, their new acquisition Shawn Marion did indeed finish the year with 3 consecutive seasons of declining PER as he’s dropped from 23 and change to 16, and is a 31 year old player hugely dependent on his athleticism, and has a new 5 year $40 million contract. Hates money. Just despises it.

- The Sacramento Kings have 4 players under contract who turned in a single-digit PER in their last season: Kenny Thomas (8.77), Sean May (6.24), Desmond Mason (7.12) and Donte Green (an atrocious 5.18). Sometimes there’s complicated reasons for why a team is bad; sometimes, not so much.

- Courtney Lee. Hollinger clearly loves his defense (“the Magic’s top defensive stopper”) and likes him as an overall player (“an underrated key to Orlando’s conference championship”) but I’m not at all convinced yet, personally. He had a negative adj +/- last year, and both basketballvalue.com and 82games.com show him as having a mild negative impact on the defensive performances of his teams. It’s only one year’s worth of data which means there’s a ton of noise in it, plus not accounting for improvement as a rookie year continues, plus limited correction for substitution patterns, etc.; but there’s just not a lot of statistical evidence so far to suggest a positive defensive impact from Lee, let alone a really game-changing one. I seem to recall him getting lit up like a light bulb during last year’s finals as well. Throw in a middling 10.78 PER as a rookie and his late first round draft status, and I’m just not that excited for a guy who looks on paper like a spare-part roleplayer. Hopefully he’ll end up better than that, but there’s not a lot of evidence trending that way so far.

- Eduardo Najera: 33 years old, knee troubles, PER dropped from 12.05 to 7.71 in a year. He’s signed for 3 more years at roughly $3 million per. We are so screwed.

More of these as I find them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a completely different side note, check out this list of the ten best players of the last decade. It should be pointed out that it gets one thing absolutely correct, which is often missed- much of the time in NBA history, the best player in the world is a center. Because of the greatness of Michael Jordan I think we often fall into the trap of judging the best player to be the one who most resembles His Airness, especially if we’re not using the nitty-gritty of the more advanced statistical measures. I hate to say it, but I think this has been a huge part of the reason there’s even still a debate about Kobe and LeBron, and probably also part of why CP3 and Dwyane Wade enter these discussions much more rarely than their actual production would justify.

Huh

That didn’t take long- Prokhorov and Ratner et al. have announced the deal. Given the number of approving David Stern quotes out there there’s every reason to assume this one is done and the Nets have been sold, with the last formalities to take only about another 6 months. There’s already speculation about the impact this will have on management decisions (and decisions about management) though so far as I can tell at this point it rests largely on unsourced gossip and speculation off of the translation of Prokhorov’s blog. That doesn’t mean it’s at all inaccurate; but I would guess at this early stage and given how quickly this deal came together that Prokhorov himself probably hasn’t come to any firm decisions one way or another about the future of the club. One possible exception: Tom Ziller, who knows his shit, is convinced that the Nets are about to be gigantic players in free agency next summer, throwing money around as much as possible to improve the team quickly. I have to say, so far as I can tell the evidence points that way given Prokhorov’s funding of CSKA Moscow. It is still the Nets and it is still New Jersey for the moment which may hamper recruitment efforts, but at the risk of being flippant about it, it probably doesn’t hurt that the one brush with the law in Prokharov’s past was for showing his guests a good time.

All of a sudden, next season is a lot weirder and more interesting.

I, For One, Welcome Our Gigantic, Sketchy, Allegedly High-Class Call Girl Hiring, Kickboxing Russian Billionaire Playboy Overlords

I’ll be honest: I saw the initial reports of this one, laughed them off on the theory that these kinds of outlandish notions get booted around the press all the time, and moved on figuring it’d never be mentioned again. I appear to have been really wrong about this one- Mikhail Prokhorov appears to be genuinely interested in buying the New Jersey Nets (instantly re-nicknamed the Nyets) and ESPN is reporting that he’s sent proposals to current shareholders. So much to say about this one, much of it over time as more is revealed. There’s an apparently professional translation of Prokhorov’s blog post here.

Upfront, I’ll say this- if Prokhorov really wants this team I think he’ll get them with no trouble. Money is obviously no object for the richest man in Russia who’s listed by Forbes as owner of a $9.5 Billion fortune. Also, interestingly, so far as some cursory research can determine he appears to be relatively less sketchy than most oligarchs (the arrest for getting hookers for his guests, for which he was not charged, appears to be the only obvious thing) which should help him slide through whatever oversight process the NBA may apply fairly easily. It helps as well that he’s from a potentially important overseas market for the league, has basketball experience as a backer for CSKA, and one presumes has all the right friends and connections. As to whether Ratner is selling, he’s been slashing costs and looking for “investors” for months now, which is all but putting a for-sale sign up; moreover, if he weren’t jumping at the bit for this deal, he’d have had a denial out by now. I’d say the odds are well over 50% of this thing happening especially since in the fine tradition of crazy-rich Russian billionaire foreign sports team owners, I doubt actually making a profit off the team- or worrying about the losses discovered in due diligence- is really foremost among Prokhorov’s concerns.

The major question for a Nets fan is: is this a good thing? The short answer is that we simply won’t know for a while. If this becomes purely some sort of weird let’s bolster-Russia’s-national-basketball-profile thing, we could end up with a coach overmatched by the league, and owner selecting the team, and trading our next 5 first round draft picks for Andrei Kirilenko. That would obviously not be progress. Let’s call that the Vladimir Romanov/Heart of Midlothian option. Alternately, we could have a team with perhaps one or two vanity let’s-have-a-Russian-on-the-Nets players, a bunch of completely harmless-to-mildly-useful background policies like providing training methods and coaching apprenticeships to Russian coaches and exposure in training camps for Russian players, plus colossal financial backing, a new area, and an owner willing to pay for success on the theory that success for a traditionally beleaguered team under Russian ownership will in and of itself bolster the image of Russia. Let’s call that the Roman Abamovich/Chelsea FC option. My instincts, for that that’s worth, strongly suggest that the Chelsea option is more likely here- we’re talking about a potential owner with a profoundly circumspect legal and ethical profile for such a wealthy and famous man, a potential owner who’s ridden the stormy waves of Russia’s politics to the absolute top at age 44 by making a series of prescient and practical decisions. This is not a man to go crazy and start demanding to fill out the team sheet- partly because it doesn’t fit his history, partly because- let’s be honest- a Russian billionaire with a taste for hookers probably has more diverting pleasures to hand than obsessing about our small forward rotation.

It should be noted as well that Vladimir Romanov came of age under the Soviet Union, and was 48 when it dissolved; Prokhorov was 26 (Roman Abramovich was 25), and has spent the majority of his adult and working life in a very different country. The land is the same, but the ideas and pressures are very different. It’s certainly possible to overstate this, but so far the evidence suggests that the younger men who rose to the heights in the privatization years- especially near the center of power- are much more calculating (which can be a good thing), much more measured and precise in their dealings, much more focused on results than bluster and fame, much more professional in a sense. Romanov, a Lithuanian citizen, claimed earlier this year that he was going to run for the presidency of that nation, only to be told that would be impossible as he was born in Russia It’s equally impossible to imagine the famously silent Abramovich making such an embarrassing mistake or causing such a pointless furor. All evidence suggests that Prokhorov’s temperament and experiences are much closer to the latter’s.

One potential concern which will have to be addressed will be in regards to funding. The versions of the deal floating about right now refer to loaning the team money to fund the new arena, rather than picking up the check outright. I’m inclined to be fine with this, on the theory that the loan terms are likely to be generous if contracted with the team’s owner or his interests and the new arena should generate sufficient revenues to service the debt load without a serious drag on competitive integrity. At the moment the team’s in major cost-cutting mode under Ratner partly because of arena debt and arena issues; even if that major drag is only reduced to a minor drag, that can be a substantial improvement.

There will also be, inevitably, some concerns raised about foreign ownership. In effect I’ve raised them myself above by noting the history of men like Vladimir Romanov and Roman Abramovich as team owners. There may be culture clash issues; but the fact that the owner is Russian really shouldn’t be an issue any more than the fact that the power forward is Chinese and one of his backups is Mexican. The issue is winning basketball games and getting this team on some kind of a solid long-term footing for the first time in its existence, arguably- if a Russian billionaire wants to help out with that and advance some his own and his country’s interests in the process, than that’s just fine by me as a fan. Everyone benefits and everyone’s happy.

On a personal note I find this incredibly funny on some level. Ever since Chelsea got Abramovich’ed into a title I’ve reluctantly accepted that similar treatment for my club, Arsenal, would have major problems associated with it (see: Alisher Usmanov) but I’ve always half-jokingly defended Chelsea (and now Man City) fans thrilled at their teams’ takeovers by wealthy foreigners by saying that I’d be overjoyed if the Nets suffered a similar fate. Life appears to have called my bluff on that one, and you know what? I’m actually really ok with that. The bottom line here is that the current situation for the Nets sucks: their arena move is stalled, they’re stuck in a swamp wasting a good young core, they’ve got no money to spend on anything including competing, their attendance is for shit, and given the increasing uncertainty over the ownership and arena issues they’re among the least attractive teams in the league for players. They are, in a word, fucked. There’s a great deal of uncertainty in an ownership change, but to my mind there’s vastly more danger associated with things remaining as they are. I am, cautiously, in favor of Mikhail Prokhorov’s takeover and I look forward to seeing what he does with the Nyets.

Fun facts to clinch it: Prokhorov is 6′9. In a battle between watching Devin Harris’s best years go to waste or seeing my team sold, I’m going to have to go with the gigantic Russian kickboxing billionaire on this one. Whether it works out alright or not, there’s no way this guy owning a team in America’s biggest media market- possibly in partnership with Jay-Z- can’t be a crapload more entertaining than the alternative.

EDIT: incidentally, I’ve seen some people worried that Prokhorov is talking about using the Nets to aid Russian basketball and such on his blog. Folks, let’s not be parochial on this one: the man is a Russian writing in Russian on a Russian website for a Russian audience. Of COURSE he’s going to talk about how this could benefit Russia- it would be ridiculous for him not to! And if his ownership benefits Russian basketball, great- that’s a goal which is potentially achievable alongside making the Nets a contender and improving their foundation for the long term. There’s no reason whatsoever that serving the two ends is mutually exclusive, especially when the methods mentioned so far for benefiting Russian basketball on Prokhorov’s blog are all background infrastructure-building projects which would present no obvious issues for the Nets as an organization. It’ll all be in the execution, or it won’t be- time will tell, and we can scream about interference when and if it happens.

…Huh

You know, if you told me that a sketchy and largely unknown Russian bajilionaire was going to come in on a white horse and offer to fund one of my favorite teams in an effort to restore them to the pinnacle of success they so recently achieved but have fallen from under a manager and coaching staff who arguably have stayed too long, I would not have assumed you were speaking about the Nets.

Local Bits

- Sign & Trade?

Obviously much more to be said about this one if it happens, but on paper it’s a weird one. Boozer’s a good player, but he’s a #2 or #3 player on a title contender- and as a #1, he’s the kind of player who makes you just good enough to never get the draft pick you need to have a real #1 player. Also, stats- pick the player:

Player A: 0.34 2-year, A+/- PER last three years of 24.1, 21.9, 17.2.
Player B: -1.32 2-year A+/-, PER last three years of 20.2, 18.0, 19.0.

A is Boozer and B is Lee; throw in that Lee is younger and cheaper, and I’m not entirely clear how much (if any) of an upgrade this even would be. Maybe it’s best explained as a shell game move- use the Booze to make the Knicks passable this year and keep (some) fans (a little) happy, and then use his expiring deal as part of whatever arcane 2010 machinations are afoot. As for Utah’s end, search me; don’t they already have a Paul Millsap?

- Invest in Nets!

A couple of things to be said about this one. First and most obviously: the Corey Bookers and such of the world really need to give it up. Ratner et al. Have put far, far too much time and money and energy into this deal to allow the Brooklyn move to fall apart so long as they have any influence or control on the matter whatsoever. I’ll not pretend to be unbiased on this one as a Brooklyn guy, but still. Secondly- one of the reasons I remain so frustrated and frankly irritated by the way finances are discussed at Arsenal is because I come from a sporting culture here in the US where intimate details of the financial dealings of various teams are reported as a matter of course for their interest to fans, and addressed as such by team personnel. There’s not the tendency to treat routine financial issues as state secrets and no real attempts to lie to fans other than boilerplate encouraging talk from some cost-cutting teams, which is accepted as part of doing business without being taken seriously. Name me an NBA franchise and I can probably give you a reasonable approximation of their financial perspective as it impacts on their competitive efforts, and that includes teams like the Bucks or the Grizzlies about whom I could not give the least part of a care. With Arsenal we can’t even guess the budget, “we” being even the most obsessive of fans. It’s a fucked up state of affairs.

LeBron to Stay?

So says Ariza says Broussard

Is anyone really surprised by this? The calculus for LeBron has always been heavily, heavily weighted towards the Cavs on every level- financial, competitive, and for LeBron’s long term reputation. Any media glare gained by going to New York would be undermined by a reputation for deserting a competitive hometown team for a mediocre big-city substitute, and he’s hardly lacking attention in the internet-league pass-multiple nationwide TV deals era. Knicks (and Nets) fans really should not get down about this, and honestly probably shouldn’t take much notice of it. Rebuilding our local teams into serious, long-term competitors was and is never going to be just a matter of suddenly signing the right free agents who would join us because, well, we’re New York- right? It’s easy to forget in the aftermath of the Celtics coming together out of nowhere two years ago, but they were an incredibly rare deal- them, the ‘04 Pistons, arguably the Lakers 3 peat if you like Shaq over Kobe, and the ‘83 Sixers were probably the only teams of the NBA’s modern (since 1980) era to win a title with their best player coming by means other than the draft. 6 titles out of 29 awarded, counting with the benefit of the doubt.

I’m not going to say something inane here about it being more satisfying to win a title some day without “buying it” because let’s face it- that’s pretty much horseshit. But I will say that this is one of those times where being realistic about the situation will save you a lot of grief in the long term. He ain’t coming, folks; good thing a plan trumps a man, anyday.