SSAC18: Take That for Data: Basketball Analytics

[Music] hello good afternoon or good morning and welcome to the 2018 Sloan Sports analytics conference and welcome to the Bill James room presented by the Action Network my name is Cory Bromberg's I'm a first year MBA student at MIT Sloan it's my pleasure to introduce this panel take that for data basketball analytics our panelists today are Zach Lowe a senior writer for ESPN Mike Zarin assistant general manager of the Boston Celtics daryl morey a general manager of Houston Rockets and Jalen Rose analyst yet thanks Dale Pete I'm a panel today will be moderated by Nick Wright co-host of first things first on Fox Sports the panel will be 40 minutes and will leave about 5 minutes at the end for questions you have any questions please submit them on Twitter using the hashtag take that for data number four and with that I'll pass along to Nick hi everybody thank you for coming I'm just gonna start with the guy directly on my left daryl morey and about Houston Rockets in the style is there any obviously everyone in this room knows everyone on the panel knows the value of the three vs. of the two is there any concern any obligation to the sport at large if that style becomes in the math becomes so overwhelming that you the different styles of play go away everyone's shooting 100 threes a game and what it does to just the visceral and visual enjoyment of the sport or are you just concerned what's the best way we can win the title I'm definitely just concerned about the best way to win so I don't I you know I I care I love basketball I obviously played basketball that was my sport in high school so I love the game so I do care about the game but my job is to win it my obligation doesn't really go much beyond that and people would say there's a hole but if it's really really all that's happened there's still beauty drives to the hoop there's still a lot of ball movement there's still a lot of body movement there's you know there's more open the the talent of the players with more space makes the game more interesting and honestly in terms of style really all that we've done and other teams have done is is told people on shots they were gonna take from the perimeter just just walk back a few feet but I mean other than that well you still have all the beautiful parts of the game I think about this yesterday something that like NBA viewership is at an all-time high I think at certain point if it for some reason the style of play got annoying to people and they stopped watching you know the league would make changes as a whole but it doesn't seem like people are very annoyed at the way the league is going right now I think it's already annoying to some people but I think all those people are 40 and up I don't think I bad I'm 40 enough it doesn't really annoy me but I do like I do hear people in our in our newsroom people in our editorial meeting said well you should write again how there are too many threes again there are too many threes I'm like I already wrote that story and there's more threes coming but I don't think young people seem to care I think is not shooting the three it's who's shooting the three and the Golden State Warriors to me were the first team as a jump shot shooting team that predominantly relied on the three-point shot to actually win the championship well who was shooting the ball splash brothers Steph clay you aunt KD the same with Darryl and his terrific team this year James Hart Eric Gordon Ryan Anderson these guys are terrific three-point shooters it the dynamic is a little bit off sometimes when they're players and not picking on certain players but like for example Josh Smith he was a cut to be the type of player to be shooting six threes per game that's just not his game but when you watch the Warriors play Shaun Livingston doesn't shoot threes because he's not a 3-point shooter do you do you the you mentioned Shaun Williamson I think it's interesting because I don't not show on specifically but just as a maybe a microcosm for it I when we hear about Trey young we are like oh this is gonna be the next wave of guys guys trying to grow up watching step trying to be if there is a wave of guys trying to play that style of basketball unless the league expands you still only have what 12 times 30 360 or 50 you know 450 roster spots at most there if there are more guys like with that style there will be some other guys who used to have spots in the league certainly when you were playing that don't need more the whether that be the big power forward or whomever it is people say the center is going away I don't know if that's really the true but the Charles Oakley type seems to be going away like do you do you see guys that played when you were playing which wasn't a super long time ago that in today's NBA maybe don't have a place for him not necessarily because the one thing about the league only 4,000 people have been fortunate enough to play in an NBA game and it's a boutique league and while we call it a 3-point shooting league there are guys that play in the league on a nightly basis that don't shoot a lot of threes we just had a Minnesota last night on playing against Houston they have a couple of players that shoot threes but they have players that mix it up play mid-range and post up and this idea that the center is extinct that's inaccurate the center is as vibrant right now as it's ever been it's just a type of center I like to call it a will big somebody that's not going to get post ups not somebody that's not a playmaker like a cappella Stephen Adams DeAndre Jordan then you have an ER kitch you have a joke itch boogie Anthony Davis karl-anthony towns so there there are multiple beaks but you are your skillset and then you have a guy like draymond Green who's six seven they play Center I think it's the single skill guy so you used to be able to be an absolutely rebounder or an absolute defender but not do much else and make it in the league and the evolution of the league is that that's gonna make you either too easy to guard or have a hole on your defensive side of the ball I do think those singles can that's a good thing you want more skill on the floor for the game so to Mike's point I think all these evolutions of the game have made the game more interesting to watch most people don't want to watch just a single skill guy who's who's just out there doing one thing as the game a point Zacks made a lot in his writing he's the game's gotten smarter and as the game gets smarter and more front offices are run by guys similar to Mike and Darrell if everyone has or if a lot of the league has the same objectives it's harder to make trades it's if everyone is valuing deciding Oh first-round picks are valuable or this skill set is valuable it's harder to find teams to be able to make viable trades or have you guys seen over the last few years that the ability to win a trade so to speak has the degree of difficulty has gone up because teams are putting value on similar things well no one's training with Mike again after there we've done some trade since then you know it's a pretty illiquid market right you don't miss is there an just infinite number of people to trade with and they're all in very different particularly cap situations so I think you know it probably was the case that you could find more bargains by finding undervalued players in the past than you can now but I don't think the ability to make a trade has really gone down very much because you know you'll make a trade with the team that is in a different position from you they you know you see you see trades like the one between Utah and Sacramento and Cleveland at the deadline where those those three teams just have different objectives from each other right now and so has an objective that's what that's all why are you helping them I'm sorry please continue this is just as long as they don't have one next year it's okay the Celtics have Sacramento's pick next year the Lakers could still do some stuff for us we'll see but I just think I think you'll always have that you'll always have the situation where teams are in different spots and they may value the players exactly the same but it makes sense to move yeah the franchise might be in a different situation even if they value the same ones rebuilding ones trying to win right so that still happens but one of the fundamental issues that we haven't been able to bridge very well in the NBA is it's very like if there's one team value as a guy here the other team values I'm here and one's pushing a trade it's hard to get it done the only way to make that up is draft picks and to me they're like they're like cigarettes in prison they like the value that's the only currency you have the value changes up and down all the time and it's it makes for a not very liquid market we've talked in the past and I know deep luck from Harvard's here if the league office and we've talked about this will allow us to make trades like hey we'll make this trade and then if that player plays well you have to send us another pick or if he gets hurt you know you don't have to send us something later that would bridge some of these value gaps to make trades easier what is the league office response to that to complement some resistance to that because keeping track of all the conditions and then like which conditions do you allow can it be player based it can be team based what what conditions would be allowable so though it's been going look I'll did define your route say something like no no got me in trouble why this I don't know if this so we can talk maybe in the abstract League office wise as people that are running teams people that cover the game do you is there the wish that there was more flexibility or maybe forward-thinking from the league office on things as far as hey we're gonna trade you cap space for a year Leonarda mean we're gonna we're gonna right now we're in rework we're Philadelphia from a few years ago now to pick them Philadelphia now cuz they're but we we don't want to spin to the cap anyway you are the whoever it is the Cleveland Cavaliers two years ago you are trying to win right now we will trade you 20 million of CAP space for this one season for a first-round pick both teams will be happy with that no sport allows it is that even being discussed do you find that interesting is it dumb of me to even bring up like go it's a it's a it's a fantastic idea essentially happens but they make you know they it's complicated you have to do it through multiple player transactions when if you could just simply trade the cap space idea where the the lottery ping-pong balls are actually tradable and if you use an exception that would cost you a certain number of ping pong balls and then you could just a lottery be an auction well it wouldn't be an auction you could decide how many ping-pong balls to put in the lottery every year so that would become the currency instead of second-round picks or it'd be draft odds Plus cap exceptions somehow in one kind so what you're saying when you said it's a pretty crazy I mean there you gotta get the Union if I mean there's all kinds of that would be a drastic change to leave well when you say the lottery ping-pong balls so if you right now under the current system have the worst record I know it's changing you don't have a 25% chance to get the number one pick and that's how call that 100 ping-pong balls I know it's not what you're saying is where you could 250 150 okay per thousand so you could then say we'll trade you 50 of our 250 therefore you get you and now have a 5% chance like things that that far along Zack you go ahead that's too much work for the league office it's too much work or making these guys work too hard it's I thought I saw so many of them teams can effectively trade their cap space now right I mean like the bail McGee into salary space is essentially trading caster I thought that team should have been able to trade their amnesty provisions when the amnesty provision was the thing I thought it's like we don't want to use it we'll trade you will give you an X ray amnesty provision and you give us something I think I don't see why not I do think though we become prisoners of the moment like every once in a while you hear someone say wouldn't it be cool if the Stepien rule didn't exist if teams could just trade like infinite first-round picks we can do whatever we want to in addition that would be in it and then you make you make a trade like you made with Brooklyn and you have a team that's just like oh this is why the step you drew leagues that that they violate it but like we don't want a team particularly in a big market who's just in jail for five years six years or whatever it ends up being that's that that does seem bad for the league somehow so I mean these rules are just all designed for phrasing right well they aggregate over years and that that we have so Jalen I don't know if you read your Twitter mentions I think I've seen you interact with people so you probably have people tweet to you similarly to me just on a larger scale and one of the things that I'm I I get listen I'm a numbers guy I love the analytics but I can get aggravated with people that look at it as like gospel as opposed to part of the picture I have a guy god bless him who sends me Fred vanvleet who's having an outstanding here in a good story you talked about him the other day Zach but sins me Fred BAM deletes per 36 like per this guy is on a hall-of-fame pace per 36 there are certain analytical numbers that I feel are great and some that totally misrepresent what we're actually seeing as a guy that has embraced the numbers but also the only guy up here that played the game at a high level how do you Mel what you're seeing with what the numbers are telling you and are there any particular stats or numbers that you think are really instructive and some you don't care about at all I think initially when the analytics wave came it swung the pendulum so far that it went over a lot of people's heads initially and people who looked at analytics asked the stat sheet initially got offended and now I think it's kind of found its way back into a happy medium somewhat because I don't look at analytics as the only tool to measure a player but I do think it is a healthy tool to help measure a player it's like I'm the founder of a charter high school so I pay attention to a students test scores to me that's your skill but your GPA is your will so the stat that really matter to me I'm not a big per 36 fan I'm not a big plus/minus fan because those can kind of be navigated by the coaching by who you're in the lineup with and things of that nature but there are certain stats that matter and when I hear that teams are measuring how fast the player changes into the floor or how fast they're able to get from side to side with the cut like these are things that weren't discussed before that our true metrics if a player slowing down it it is it is a barometer but ultimately the thing that you can't measure is somebody's will somebody's tangible somebody's heart and their commitment to what you hope to get accomplished but I'm not a person that frowns upon analytics but I do think it's a tool but not the toolbox can I just stick with Jaylin for one second just real quick on the follow-up there do you feel like sometimes the analytical community dismisses the former players as as if the experience you've gained from actually knowing what the body language is knowing the intangible things from being in a locker room that dismisses that too out of hand here's what I think players feel like they got dismissed it's almost a pyramid of information so like on the ground floor you have all of these players in a in an NBA in an NFL that's you know 75% african-american so they're the bottom of the pyramid they're smart enough to play they're smart enough to chime in on their opinions but we're going to pay you a salary and then as you get higher up the pyramid the diversity gets a lot smaller so it gets a lot smaller from coaches then GM's then presidents and before you know it's ownership and so what has happened is players feel and it's actual effect because it is taking place that because I'm able to speak the owners language which is numbers that now gives me the upper hand to get the job and if you look at what has happened in the NBA the former players for example they have that wealth of knowledge of playing their entire I may be working in the media and now study in the game they feel like and it's true in a lot of cases they've been boxed out of these power positions general manager president and ownership and Zack this is why people respect your writing so much I believe is because you do a better job then in my opinion anyone that writes about any sport of melding the two of someone who clearly understands the numbers deeply but also you watch as much basketball as anybody you you're not just watching the biggest game between the biggest teams you you have a you have a grid or something you've discussed about you got to make very it's a very complex but you but you've been able to so what do you do when some numbers that you typically think are reliable you see it you're like that is not match up with what I think I'm saying that does not match up at all with when I watch this team play first of all can I go back to something you said please so I think the / 36 stuff is important like you talked about finding undervalued players that's the low-hanging fruit of finding undervalued players in the and like patient zero of that at least in the modern NBA was Paul Millsap and like it turned out that Paul Millsap spur 36 numbers carried over when you started playing in 36 minutes and then people studied that and they studied other players like that like a lot of those guys actually carried those numbers over carry to 80 percent of them over 90 per se it's still like that's still important to me and and I think I think like it's not it's not necessarily fluky the counter the counter to that though is it doesn't take into account foul trouble or fatigue sure and so the guys play like I think per 36 and be super useful for guys playing 30 to 38 minutes to normalize it guys playing nine minutes a night we don't know could he whose could he sustain that that's what he doesn't factor in there are certain players that a coach says I want to get him on the floor but he can only guard certain guys and so I'm gonna wait until there's a matchup on the floor where I say okay I can put them out there cuz that guy's big enough and slow enough he can guard them and then we can get his shooting on the floor that kind of an argument now to your other questions I mean part of it is is you just when you you have to see what is this guy doing that I'm missing or what is he not doing that I'm missing that's just watching the game I think that the stat right now that is everyone a little bit confused is our real plus/minus set because it's sometimes spits stuff out like Jae Crowder is the 12th best player in the NBA or Tyus Jones is 19th or something a real plus - and then you have two three I said I don't like to play but that's real plus - that accounts for all teammates that accounts for opponents on the floor that critically and so you got to start asking questions about like okay so what lineups is Tyus Jones playing in who is he playing against why is it what is he doing that works what if that carries or is that set meaningful at all it I'm still struggling with it now or it's a regression analysis and you know that 1 out of every 20 players is gonna be really poorly valued by something that has a warm what you sense interval look like there's different kinds of stats right so this is exactly when things might be the most valuable is you watch something because we're good at watching basketball so if you're if you're well some of us are good at watching best I don't know if I am but I think I am if you're watching something and it disagrees with some other process you have that tells you something about what you're watching and they disagree one of them's probably wrong and so you got to go look inside the real plus/minus black box and Herod is this working the way it's got work here and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna open that books or are you watching something that's you know is the way you're watching not capturing something that this black box over here is capturing one of those two things isn't right if they're disagreeing or maybe there's some third truth but probably not know so watch with real plus/minus is some players and and I think we named a few they are playing a role that provides a lot of value to the team shootings probably the easiest example they provide shooting to the team and because they are on the floor providing that shooting and the spacing ro+ by is gonna pick up that the team is winning a lot when that players on the floor but that player could be they're replaceable by multiple players with that same skill set such that it's prot even though it's correct that they're creating that winning and our roles of having to set aside player two player you have to think about how else can you fill that role do you necessarily not have to pay for that player or are they not providing as much value as it says correct and that's where I was going with the plus/minus it's a perfect example of why all numbers can be manipulated it's like a nickname like once somebody calls you something then you start telling them different reasons why you have the nickname and it's the exact same thing with the numbers he just mentioned it if a player is out there for floor spacing and he's playing with the Houston Rockets and they're beating teams by 20 you could put anybody in that spot and still have that same plus/minus number but to Darryl's point you want to try to make that a cap friendly number based on what you hope to get accomplished well and so I I look in the crowd and directly in front of me is a future hall-of-famer named Chris Bosh and if you and people say say your last name wrong Chris Bosh I say Bosch I apologize I got it right that time but so good with it but so the year 2013 I think was when the he'd had a 27-game winning streak there were a lot of players in the league who according to a player efficiency rating according to points per game a lot of metrics were having better seasons than Chris was but there weren't five players in the league that you could replace Chris with and that team would be as good be given a lot some of those were tangibles as far as for spacing and deep and some of those were intangibles as far as a future hall-of-famer saying I know my role I'm gonna play my role and I wonder if at times when we we were in such a dark ages in all sports for a long time when it was just what the scouts see what I you know what the I test if we swung it too far the other way to where we aren't and you got criticized for this not necessarily appreciating the chemistry aspect as much as it needed to be in things that where the guys in the locker room know what that they can't win a title you may be Blake Griffin that you're at better numbers but they wouldn't want the title with him and so how you do those things and who you rely on to talk to from a player perspective a coach perspective how do you do that math well I'm glad Chris is here because we tried to give him hundreds of he's finally agreed to something I would say I would say what's - I would Chris and our pursuit of him was really of course it was based on the numbers cuz but you didn't need it he's a Hall of Fame level player but we thought he was actually quite better than people realized and it was because of our scouting it wasn't because of our analysis we thought he was perfectly where the big position was going in the league and that he was a highly in the way he talked in the last panel about how school used him he was a highly mobile big who I think is still this day super underrated defensively he he was able to basically he was like to me well the bronze amazing but he was the linchpin for that D as much as LeBron and that from the big spot he was so mobile and plugged so many gaps everyone saw he was a good offensive player everyone saw the other things that was why we were sort of obsessed with our pursuit and and you know maybe maybe next time the thing that's happening yeah the thing that's happened it's sort of the thing that's happened that's that sort of changed that dialogue though inside teams is we have these tracking cameras now right so we spend so much more time talking about each attribute of a player's game now than we used to so the the kinds of numbers you're talking about where someone's you know eight spots better up in terms of overall impact than another guy that's in the context of his team like everyone was just saying you're gonna move to a different team when we're looking to acquire a guy we got to think about the skills you're gonna be using when you're on our team and they may not be the same skills and so the beauty of having the cameras is now we say okay here are the things we think this guy's gonna do on our team how has he done those things and and you can break it down by skill so you don't have to be reliant on some big black box number you can actually see our the computer went and watched his you know 500 left side pick and rolls and when they went under he was pretty good you you can do stuff like that and it just makes analyzing what's gonna happen when you engage in a transaction so much easier than relying on some number where you don't really know all of the things that are packaged yeah big composite number you can't come close now to quantifying lots of stuff that people still say oh you can't quantify that you couldn't be like you can almost quantity you can quantify some parts of effort you could certainly quantify the stuff you're talking about like you know you just got Greg Monroe like Greg Monroe is gonna play differently for you than he played for other teams like let's see how he did like your effort huh how would you quantify effort well you would start by doing you know one once the like you have the cameras you can track how fast people move and you know let's talk about that so all else equal everyone would say you know moving more is better than moving not necessarily but like oh no okay so how are you measured you so you don't want F well you can measure people have already written papers about like well to like I guess yes but like who gets back on defense least you know the future for you as a law school professor yeah assume the cameras soon the cameras I bet would be able to pick up like who's standing up on defense who's in a stance most who has their arms out the most likely will make more movement is better than less but if you look at the data on who moves the most and the least and the league the list of the t people that move the least are literally every hall-of-famer they're just more of the guys who moves the least like they're more efficient in their movements like they can beat their guy so easy that they don't need to they don't need to do a lot but you could you empower him to what he did before but when see if he's trying harder or less hard yeah you can look at momentum and things Jalen you're doing everything but saying amen so well a couple of things on so so again like stats can be misleading like for example Steel's you could be leading the league in steals but that also could probably mean you gamble a lot and so people say well such as such had three or four steals but they don't understand it like he gambled eight or nine more times and gave up open shots or cost help situations same for blocks yeah you're going after certain blocks yeah you block three but you went after ten and your man got seven offensive rebounds and put them back in what about the number of times you kept a guy in front of you when he came off a screen yes that's like a good dude you can do that now yes so right so some of them are useful right and I was shaking my head to Daryl's point like great players are moving on the basketball floor like a symphony like playing chess average players are moving like checkers they're the ones that are moving around hectic and frantic the ease the best players they make you look effortless so we have a question from Twitter which kind of goes in line with what I was maybe trying to get to in the beginning which is people ask me why is basketball why is the NBA my favorite league was basketball my favorite sport and it's cuz your favorite player what favorite player all the Houston Rockets do and oh you wanted me to say LeBron yeah I'm a weird guy the greatest player ever is my favorite player but neither here nor there so but why do I love the NBA so much more than the other sports because you all are some superheroes because what because I'm watching guys do things that human being should not be able to do that's why I love it and so the question from Twitter is is athleticism the thing that really attracted me to the game as a kid becoming less important now because so much of it is about range shooting than it was before in your eyes I think it's more important yeah okay defensively you have no chance to guard the modern offenses unless you have like athletes probably at all five you try and hide some non athletes now but but you you need long athletes at all five spots now I think it's more important you're not getting off threes unless you have someone who can get by their guy and get to the rim otherwise they just stand out by just it depends how you define athleticism - right like like there was stroll mile swift athleticism didn't know how to pie Thomas and then like there's there's draymond Green athleticism which is which is pay my dad is like vertically noticeable but it's very noticeable then there's like kyle korver athleticism which is like a few like I put this in a column once like he made a 3 from the corner this year in Orlando where he was so far in the corner he was essentially out of bounds and he lofted it like it came this close to hitting the backboard and switched like that's athleticism too like while that is amazingly impressive when Korver is one of the greatest shooters ever that is that kind of speaks to the issue I think somebody like that type of athleticism you recognize that you appreciated it that is not and say what you want about Stroh Swift that's not Duncan from the free-throw line well this is not and I'm not making a value judgment I'm just saying from a oh my god what did i just see moment it's easier to recognize for i think the average man a top 10 play than the court and that's that's the sort of like the poster guy for that right now is Blake Griffin who's had to go learn how to shoot threes at like almost an average rate and spends a ton of time out on the perimeter cuz he's playing with DJ and then Andre Drummond and it's not the Blake Griffin that we all fell in love with and like if Blake if Blake Griffin can't shoot threes and he's not as valuable a player as he as he was 10 years ago or five years ago well football dominated the we complain popularity landscape for so very long but those days are over and based on the Twitter question I can probably name 50 reasons why number one the popularity of the sport look at a player like LeBron James for example just on his social media he probably has what 40 million people following him that's probably more than all of the top NFL players put together Aaron Rodgers JJ Watt Tom Brady Odell Beckham it is not even a comparison the other thing is that the NBA players have a healthy respect and admiration for their Commissioner where you see in the NFL there's been a lot of disrespect towards their Commissioner the NFL has other issues opioids steroids concussions um things that the NBA doesn't necessarily have to deal with also for the NBA each player has value you and you guys were talking about having like long athletic players and things of that nature I've talked about this for years like growing up being a 6/8 player idolizing Magic Johnson there was a time in a high school game where I would play point guard there was a time in the championship game where I would jump Center and so like that's where the game is now and so as a fan you can appreciate each person's role out there on the floor versus if you're watching a football game you've normally only watching the ball and only talking about the quarterback or the receiver or who's transporting the ball the league's gonna get more athletic because to Jalen's point we're gonna we're winning the war for talent if you're a young elite athlete that has a choice between sport it's not close you're gonna pay the most money you're gonna have the long look nearly the longest career of any sport it's it's not close like which one year well and if you just look at the next generation some of these guys are already this generation where they're from Yanis is from Greece and beads from Cameroon kristaps is from Latvia like you literally can pull global if you have your talent base is the entire world aside from Antarctica and Kyrie says Antarctica doesn't exist so at home right now we could have had Kyrie come to the salon Sports Analytics cop the first year there hasn't been a game during the conference expose Kyrie the data crap and that's my point exactly like the the growth for the NBA is astronomical because there's an influx consistently of international prospect yes that doesn't take place in the NFL the top players in American players sorry no if you look at the NFL there's one path to the NFL American college football except for one player every three or four years that comes either as an Australian rugby player or a European soccer player and those guys are just kickers usually like there's one path there and so know that it for the long-term health of the league there's no question about it another Twitter question is does the data you use to evaluate players what's wrong exact does the data you use to evaluate players change regular-season to postseason we spend so much more time analyzing them don't hesitate yes so much for your players they play well in practice your player to play well in a regular season then they're players that perform in the playoffs but you also just do different things for the playoffs because you're not gonna you go five games in seven nights against you know five different opponents in four different cities mm-hmm you're not gonna change stuff up every night but for the playoffs it's two weeks so you're gonna look at a lot of stuff you don't spend time looking at during the regular season we do eggs two weeks what's two weeks a series series oh so you're just expecting them all to be sweeps for two weeks I was like obviously postseason performance is super critical it's really difficult to know how much weight to put on it a lot of players haven't had a chance to play a lot in the playoffs so you're looking at a limited data set and the opponents are better the opponents are better you can look at their I mean generally most players get worse against better opponents you have the very unique players that Jalen talks about there again the superstars with League who often play better because they're bored during the regular season or for whatever reason but but yeah it's it's difficult to use that data even though it's critical so the there are right now something really interesting is going on the league which is the two highest scoring teams the Rockets and the Warriors the two most efficient offenses two of I think right now Houston is the single most efficient offense in the history of the sport and Golden State is top ten in the history of the sport and by the way those numbers are not skewed just recently like the rest of the top five outside of Houston it's the 88 Lakers the 87 Celtics the 92 Bulls likes so it's some of the all-time teams the Warriors are a near all-time record setting US history you guys meanwhile our bottom of the right now in a number of passes per game in us near the bottom in a cyst rate so two totally different approaches are yielding almost the exact same result which is like 1/16 per hundred possessions how what does that say about about the not the way the league is going but how you can score points in how the league I think it's great for the league cuz everyone says like oh they're the same and you point out very clearly it's not I mean we we score extremely efficiently it's not even early in the clock people are like oh they they score so early in the clock but no I mean you know both James and Chris they're not running it up to floor we pass ahead a lot but generally we we get a scoring opportunity off our first action and if not our first it's our it's our second and and and yet it's super efficient it's very different than a ton of and it's a lot of pick-and-roll it's different than a ton of ball body movement like like Golden State but I think it's healthy for the game that there are different ways to create a winning offense and there are very very different ways to create a winning defense why would you from you like when your team's started running so many isolation plays right I think you lead to leave in isolation you're on pace to be the most efficient isolation team ever but you know the data on those plays says isolation plays are bad so when you started trending that way were you ever like oh this is gonna be damaging or were you like James and Chris are just so good doesn't matter again we take what the defense gives us so like you know teams are basically saying we can't guard the pick-and-roll any other way but but switching and which puts us in isolation and yes thank goodness we might have the greatest ISO player in NBA history and James Harden and Chris Paul is pretty darn good with you I like greatest in NBA history conversation but yes but yeah so and if teams guard us one way we take what's there and what's nice thing is it mike is such a genius at making sure that no matter how we're guarded we're gonna get to a good answer against them and people say and rightfully so Daryl and the Rockets hate the mid-range shot well they do until Chris Paul gets there and he's one of the greatest mid-range shooters ever so now all of a sudden the mid-range shots fine like there's you you are later in the game when you're up or in key moments that you know you just need a point you don't need a three so my egg you might earn a horse shack on anyway here's here's really what it is the dynamics of how you play is based on a skillset of your best players in Daryl's best players Chris Paul and James Harden he just mentioned are terrific and isolation with people's switch pick-and-roll and when he said James Harden is the best isolation player in the league that we've seen that's not far off no he's one of the most unique players the game has had not many people have led the league in total points and total assists I know tiny Archibald did it in the same season which is just crazy but like only four people have ever done that so when you have James and you have CP you have to let them ISO you got to let them cook versus in Golden State their best players are able to play without the ball because Steph is considered one of the greatest shooters of all time but that's catching shoot that's off pick and roll that's a half court that's a full court on by the way they added KD and a half clay so based on that dynamic they can thump it faster without having a high usage rate off the bounce and that's what makes those two teams so much different but yes so much the same so when we do because there's a Twitter question here about how many of the top 100 players of all time would be playing right now if you don't adjust for era and so with the context for the question like Bob Cousy is in everyone's top 50 all-time but Bob Cousy could not get a division 1 scholarship today no we I'm gonna do that but there will be people in 25 years looking at these players doing that you know that's my point is you have to adjust for era when you're doing a fair to what they did but if we are simply saying the best human beings to ever walk the earth at the skill of basketball like are we talking 75 of them are playing right now the 7,500 like Jalen shaking his head no in the time sports Jalen because we know this with with swimming with track and field like Jesse Owens wouldn't qualify for the Olympics now because the athletes get bigger stronger faster what if he had had modern training we don't know of course but that's but that's why I'm saying that's why we isolate for IRRI but Europe I'm gonna start with you Darrell [Laughter] how many I mean I can just Elisha one mark price would still be playing I mean I just guys like to favorite flavor basically yeah I'm gonna say McHale right I guess well McHale now of course you would he would he's a hall-of-famer but yeah yeah but it's not a huge it's not really like see Kevin McHale few hall-of-famer guard Chris Bosh I'd love it I'd like to enjoy sleep oh ho I can see that's why fence Chris you don't think Kevin McHale can do what Clint capela is doing what no are you out of your what I mean by how much Kevin McHale did yeah man plenty of Kevin McHale look go ahead sorry I don't want to Kevin's here's what I mean by that play small ball Center that's really all he's doing yep I do that get you up they Kevin McHale could play small ball Center in a slow slow pace car Anthony towns isn't fast it could I think currently in towns never I don't want to make this about Kevin McHale but but but but but that's but that's my point like the the era's conversation is always gonna benefit the current player I'm not gonna look at dinner Smith doing the 360 in the game and say Dominique never did that so he's better than Dominique at jumping and Duncan in the game it just they have more technology and they have more things going for them in the current landscape Zac when you are watching every team across the league how much has the amount of effort and intercut we hear all the time is they don't play defense anymore back in the because back in the 80s you only hear that from college basketball fans who don't watch okay short or very old people right I want to let you elaborate the level of effort that it takes to be just a competent in an NBA defense from guys off the ball the movement the things like that compared to how the game was not in the 50s but I'm talking on the 80s even early 90s all you have to do is go watch a game from like the finals in the 80s and it's like everybody is jammed 18 feet and into the rim and so it's it's just the sheer amount of forget the complexity of the rule changes and all that but just the sheer amount of space you have to cover is much different now but that's that's partly rule changes and partly a more sophisticated understanding that like three is way more than two and but yeah I think I think it is it's it's there's definitely more physical demand the defense have gotten so much more complicated even in the time we've been in the league I mean they're just it's so much more intricate the game looked different ten years ago a lot it can be frustrating it's one of the reasons why Jalen is so good on TV is it is when it is frustrating at times when the people who can set the narratives are players who of course say it was always better in there it was always harder in their era as opposed to recognizing like with everything people get better people get faster people get smarter people adapt more it wouldn't make sense that in professional basketball is the one thing where it was better thirty years ago well back in the day players trained back in the day players worked out players now date a train date Tommy Heinsohn was selling insurance during the summer right smoking cigarettes at halftime so now you have to keep up with the best players if you want to compete against LeBron James you have to do what he's doing and so those are the two biggest misconceptions about the NBA that players don't play defense and teams don't pass in 24 seconds that ball gets hopping when you watch some of the best teams you may see seven eight nine passes in 24 seconds which is to rely just don't know how anyone with a brain and functioning eyes can watch an NBA game for more than five minutes and say any any of those things I just I just wonder H I just don't understand the Stahl's is a hell of a drug man that's part of it all right it's unfortunately it says we're out of time I want to thank daryl morey that not only for originating this conference with being on the panel Thank You Daryl Mike Zarin Sisson Jima the Boston Celtics act lo the best sports writer in the world [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: 42 Analytics

Views: 22,206

Keywords: Daryl Morey, Jalen Rose, Mike Zarren, Nick Wright, Zach Lowe

Id: jL2ZSMQOOS4

Length: 46min 55sec (2815 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2018