The question this metric essentially asks: "how effective is this player in the role he's been given?" An RAPM of 1.000 means that the player's presence improves his team's point differential by 1 point per 48 minutes; an RAPM of -1.000 means the player's presence degrades his team's point differential by 1 point per 48 minutes. Those may sound like small effects, but they're not... a net point per 48 equates to about three wins over the course of a season, so in a vacuum, a 1.000 RAPM guy would be about six more wins more valuable than a -1.000 RAPM guy. The vast majority of NBA players have RAPMs between 2.000 and -2.000. In the four-year data, no player rates worse than -4.000... only two players rate better than 4.000, those being Dwight Howard (4.717) and LeBron (a brain-breaking 6.046).
Hoop Numbers helpfully splits each guy's results into offensive RAPM and defensive RAPM. We'll take a look at the offensive side of the ledger first... the "Rank" column lists each guy's overall NBA ranking in the category. We'll confine our scrutiny to the players who are still on the roster, so there'll be no beating of the dead horse that is Mikki Moore. As with any stat, grains of salt are recommended -- sample size issues exist for spot-minute guys like Hunter and Tolliver, in particular.
Time to party and freak out, Margaret -- Stephen Curry rates as one of the 20 most beneficial offensive players in the league, and Anthony Morrow's not far behind him. Curry ranks only behind Nash, Paul and Chauncey among NBA point guards, but oddly, he's not the system's highest-rated offensive rookie... Sacramento thug Jon Brockman sits just ahead of him. This system finds targeted three-point shooters like Morrow to be extremely effective weapons, as guys like Mike Miller, Channing Frye and even the corpse of Michael Finley also rate very well here. Could be fluky, but it's more likely that having a guy that locks defensive attention to the perimeter actually really helps an offense. CJ doesn't rank as a game-changing offensive piece the way Curry and Morrow do, but he rates as a strong asset nonetheless. These three play very well, and play very well together, on offense.
Several guys -- Hunter, Maggette, Turiaf, George -- hover right around par. Of the four, the only showing worth mentioning is Maggette's. For all the talk of him stifling the Warriors' offense, he does not rate as a detriment. And his offensive RAPM through 2008 -- 1.119, 76th-best in the league -- suggested that he was an outright asset. Maggette is not an ideal fit here, but the idea that he's an offensive detriment is just silly.
Now let's talk about those offensive detriments. Randolph's poor showing is no real surprise, as he shot often and pretty inefficiently when he played. He also played almost exclusively in an avec-Monta environment, which may not have done him any favors. Azubuike may be getting dinged unfairly for being around only for the Warriors' slow start, but he did rate as an offensive negative last year as well. Tolliver and Vlad are limited offensive contributors who haven't been doing their main thing well, so their bad numbers make sense.
Finally, we come to the Big-Money Strugglers. Biedrins is actually on the rebound a tad, as his and Ronny's results are not as jarringly different as they were a year ago; still and all, his offensive timidity has some real costs. Monta, of course, has the opposite problem. His indiscriminate gunning and turnovering has him ranked 479th among 537 NBA players... Monta, Tyreke Evans and Darren Collison are the only big scorers who rate so horribly.
Like Maggette, Monta and Biedrins rated as strong (1.000+) offensive assets only two years ago. And considering how well several former Warriors are faring -- Crawford, Barnes and Belinelli all have stellar offensive RAPMs this season -- one simply can not avoid the conclusion that the team's offense is dysfunctional. Maybe they should hire a coach or something!
Now, every Warrior fan's favorite subject: defense.
The results are about as grisly as you'd expect... only one Warrior cracks the top 200, and he barely does. CJ does come off as a genuinely good defender, though, rating about the same as noted defensive stalwarts like Jared Jeffries and Rajon Rondo. Many of the bigs come off as helpful here as well, lending credence to the notion that smallball is a dead loser for this team. (Note that Biedrins has had a more positive defensive impact than Ronny -- rebounds matter.) Buike had a slightly above-average showing last year, and there's no real reason to think he wouldn't have posted the same if he'd gotten more time this season.
Randolph is subpar here as well, for reasons we explored when he went down for the year. He needs help on his defensive positioning, help he's not likely to get under the current regime. Monta's effort level on D has often been good this year, but his results have not... he's had to defend a lot of guys who can simply shoot over him, and he quietly takes the occasional play off to save energy. Maggette's defensive RAPM would be a lot better if he hadn't been forced to defend power forwards so often, but there's no reason to think he's an asset on that end. Morrow and Curry... well, they're just really, really bad at defense. Morrow's a lot less terrible than he was last season, and Curry has a good head on his shoulders, so there may be hope going forward, but they're currently miles away from being passable.
(A quick shout-out to an erstwhile Dub: Cartier Martin rated FANTASTICALLY here, with a -2.443 defensive RAPM that placed him in the league's top forty. He doesn't have a place on the Warriors, but he deserves a bench role somewhere with a showing like that.)
Overall numbers:
Do not adjust your computer screen: by regularized adjusted plus-minus, C.J. Watson is the 20th-most effective player in the NBA. That doesn't mean you have to try to get your head around the idea that he's an elite overall talent... several role players, including Matt Bonner, rank even higher than he does. But CJ is very, very good at what he does, and the Warriors would do well to realize it.
Chris Hunter also rates as a good player. Sample size really is a salient variable here, and we should not assume that he is actually the most effective big on the roster. But his strong results are interesting, and it couldn't hurt to give him a little more court time to see if there's anything behind them. Curry and Morrow are birds of a feather: they hurt a lot on D, but help a bit more than that on offense, making them fairly strong assets overall. (Morrow rates just behind Chuck Hayes, who's basically his exact polar opposite.) Ronny's a tad above average, and with some less absurdly cold shooting, Anthony Tolliver may join him ere long.
Devean and Vlad's contributions have been fungible. Azubuike's poor showing is interesting, but not altogether illuminating... we'll need to see more from him next year to have confidence in his numbers. Biedrins needs to fix his foul-related woes on both ends. There are simple things Randolph can do to improve his results, and it's worth noting that a number of younger bigs, including Brook Lopez and Al Jefferson, rate even worse than he does. He has had his struggles, but they are not yet worth worrying about.
Monta's struggles? Okay, his struggles are worth worrying about. 530 players rate better than Monta Ellis here... only six rate worse. And if you look only at this season's data (admittedly a noisier sample), the only NBA player whose presence has been more damaging to their team has been Ryan Hollins. Anyone still think it's an outrage that Monta didn't get named to the All-Star team?
It's not news, but this data drives it home even more emphatically: Monta has been unequivocally ineffective, and his presence has crippled the Warriors' attempts to compete this year. The two main goals of this summer should be firing the coach that let this happen, and hiring one that can undo it.
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3 comments:
Really fascinating numbers. This is a great blog; I've been reading religiously since I discovered it a couple months ago, and it's one of the few things that's kept me interested in this festering wound of a season. Keep up the great work.
Thanks much for reading, and for the kind words. And yeah, "festering wound" pretty much covers it. The Warriors officially clinched their 14th losing season in 16 years last night.
I always thought Nellie was fattening up Monta for the trade not for the future. There is little doubt that the Ws play the Nellie game better without Ellis. The problem seems to be that Ellis got a little out of hand in his new role.
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