Jacque Vaughn's Right Place in History

After announcing the signing of the organization's new coach, Orlando Magic CEO, Alex Martinis, announced that Vaughn was "the right person for this moment in our history". While preceding history with that possessive "our" concerns DBSF on existential grounds because it suggests multiple temporal orders coexisting, which could then imply that certain space time-continuums are more relevant/ valid than others, which if that were the case would seriously concern DBSF because he has an inkling that the space-time continuum that he's assigned to is likely of lower priority/ value, there's also the possibility that DBSF is just over-thinking all of it.

But moving to the Magic should concern Jacque Vaughn. He's a young ex-player with no head coaching experience. He was an assistant with the Spurs so you can be fairly confident that he knows what he's doing and has potential. But Vaughn should probably have thought more long-term about the job much like Brian Shaw did when he turned down the Charlotte Bobcats job (probably) because it would have ruined his resume and set him back a decade until he could get a head coaching job for another contender. After Ryan Anderson left for too much money, the Magic are left with Dwight Howard, who will likely be gone by the end of the year, and Hedo Turkoglu, who DBSF has suspects takes cigarette breaks between quarters.

Because Howard has been so mercurial with respect to free agency over the last year and as of now appears adamant that he won't sign an extension with any team, his value on the trading block is limited. In a worst case scenario, which DBSF puts around 20% at the moment, the Magic could lose Howard and get nothing in return. If that happens the Magic will be relying on 'Big Baby' Glen Davis for the majority of their offense, which is a virtual guarantee that every season ends with your organization hoping that a ping-pong ball with a low number shoots out of lottery machine so you can retain the rights to whoever was one of John Calipari's three best 19 year old from the previous season. Of course, recommending Vaughn stay with the Spurs and wait out a few lottery picks ignores the possibility that the head coaching opportunity might not be there in four or five years. However if the Magic can't achieve some compensation for Dwight Howard it will likely spell a decade and a half of NBDL purgatory for Jacque Vaughn if he ever wants to be a head coach again.

Bron Bron: Playoff PER

After beating the Thunder and winning the NBA Championship last month, LeBron's critics for the most part acknowledged that he could win a Finals and that he wasn't a choke-artist. The fact that either of these arguments were ever entertained much less blabbered incessantly by the likes of Steven A. Smith reflected a long-standing narrative based on mass-irrationality and the fact that basketball--more so than any other sport--is analyzed almost exclusively on a sample size of last night. The media and fans want to generalize from the most recent events, while ignoring a player's broader body of work. (This, of course, equally affects owners and league executive as evidenced by anytime Elton Brand, Rashard Lewis, or Dan Gadzurik are offered money to play basketball.)

What's so interesting about the argument that LeBron wasn't/ isn't clutch is that it is actually diametrically untrue--statistically speaking he is arguably the greatest playoff player ever, save for Jordan and one or two others. Consider the following table on the 250 greatest single season playoff PERs in NBA history. (PERs is the metric that increases for positive performance and decreases for negative performance while being standardized on a per-minute basis to account for the fact that just because a player plays more than another player it doesn't mean he played better.) The top two PERs on the list, which are 4-5 points higher than the third highest, are Hakeem's 1998 playoffs (38.96) and LeBron's 2009 playoffs (37.39). Because the average PER for those playoffs was 15.00 Hakeem and LeBron's scores mean that each player was equivalent to two-and-a-half average NBA playoff players. So the 1988 Rockets and 2009 Cavs seemingly played an entire playoffs with 6.5 players against 5 on the opposition.

Of the 250 greatest playoff performances based on PER, LeBron has 6. He's only played in 7 playoffs and the one that missed the 250 occurred when he was 21 years old and he still had a 23.2 PER, which was only 0.18 less than the 250th greatest NBA single season playoffs by one player. To offer some context as to how other superstars have fared with respect to numbers of playoffs in the top 250: Wilt (6), Duncan (9), Shaq (10), Tony Parker (1), Reggie Miller (2), Paul Pierce (1), Jordan (11), Oscar Robertson (4), Magic (3), Bird (2), Kobe (6), Garnett (4), Karl Malone (6), Kareem (7), Hakeem (8), Gervin (4), Durant (2), Dwade (5), the Admiral (6), Sir Charles (8), AI (3), and Alonzo Mourning (2). 

With the Addition of Omer Asik . . .

The Houston Rockets become the least bangable team in the NBA. Based on road trips where you can actually chart that an individual player likely impregnated women in different cities based on children being born in those cities to that player in almost sequential daily order save for minor variance in the human gestation period, DBSF assumes NBAers on the whole are kind of diet Sodom and Gomorrah about their relationships.

So it comes as news that in signing Omer Asik to a three-year $25 million contract--which considering his career high for a game is 11 points suggests that owners have kind of gotten over that 'there are too many bad players with hug contracts' thing from the lockout-- the Rockets are probably the most un-Shawn Kemp team in the NBA. Now this doesn't necessarily have to do with aesthetics as much as it does with the individual circumstances of Rockets' players.

For Asik it's mainly that he's a seven-foot tall Eastern European, which is like being an Eastern European version of American teammate Josh Harrellson, which is another way of saying Arvydas Sabonis. Not saying he doesn't conquer but his numbers are definitely anomalous and seriously skew the mean number of NBA-stranger relationships in a season down. Besides Asik, there's new star PG Jeremy Lin, who could probably kill, but with the religious thing going--and unlike the case of Tim Tebow it seems somewhat genuine, or if nothing else not like it was scripted by a marketing team that pitched something like, "Timmy, look at this map. There's a whole lot of people between those two big blue things on each side of this country. You know what the one thing that everyone that doesn't live right next to those blue things has in common?"--is another aberration w/r/t NBA-stranger relationships.

Not to mention, the Rockets also have a bunch of no name second year players, marginally popular rookies, and Earl Boykins, who at 5'5" and 36 years old, runs into obvious issues of trying to convince strangers that you play in the NBA and, thus, are worth copulating with. That's why barring any major acquisition, like Dwight Howard, the Rockets will probably be the least bangable team in the NBA next season. 

Redrafting 2009 & 2010

Among its many excellent tools for objective analysis, basketball-reference.com provides a set of advanced statistics by draft pick over the last few drafts. This measures grant an understanding of the value of picks beyond traditional measures, like points or rebounds per game. Below is a list of the top ten picks in the 2009 and 2010 drafts. On the left hand side is the actual pick number, the player's name, and his win share, an advanced metric that estimates the number of wins the player has contributed to his team. After the backslash on the right hand side is the win share redraft, which lists the actual pick number, the player and his win share. Win shares reported here is cumulative so players drafted in 2009 had one more season to compile contributed wins than did players drafted in 2010.

Below shows that based on three seasons of play, only three of the actual lottery picks remained in the redraft top ten of win shares. That total is one more than the number of second round picks that entered the top ten in the redraft.

2009 
1. Blake Griffin (19.0)/ 3. James Harden (21.0)
2. Hasheem Thabeet (2.6)/ 1. Blake Griffin (19.0)
3. James Harden (21.0)/ 18. Ty Lawson (17.3)
4. Tyreke Evans (9.7)/ 26. Taj Gibson (14.4)
5. Ricky Rubio (2.0)/ 10. Brandon Jennings (13.6)
6. Johnny Flynn (-1.0)/ 7. Stephen Curry (13.5)
7. Stephen Curry (13.5)/ 37. Dajuan Blair (13.4)
8. Jordan Hill (4.6)/ 43. Marcus Thornton (11.3)
9. DeMar Derozan (8.1)/ 17. Jrue Holliday (11.1)
10. Brandon Jennings (13.6)/ 21. Darren Collison (11.1)

In contrast to 2009 all but two of the 2010 redrafted players based on win shares were lottery picks. Landry Fields has obviously outperformed his actual second round pick and if the Wizards combine the output of Wall with Booker they have the second best win share after Monroe. (In fact, adding Kevin Seraphin, who finished 15th in the win share redraft would put the Wizards' first round 2010 picks at a combined at 13.8, or two tenths above Greg Monroe.)

2010
1. John Wall (5.7)/ 7.  Greg Monroe (13.6)
2. Evan Turner (4.7)/ 39. Landry Fields (8.6)
3. Derrick Favors (5.9)/ 10. Paul George (8.4)
4. Wesley Johnson (1.9)/ 13. Ed Davis (7.8)
5. DeMarcus Cousins (5.3)/ 9. Gordon Hayward (6.1) 
6. Ekpe Udoh (2.8)/ 3. Derrick Favors (5.9)
7. Greg Monroe (13.6)/ 1. John Wall (5.7)
8. Al-Farouq Aminu (2.0)/ 23. Trevor Booker (5.6)
9. Gordon Hayward (6.1)/ 5. DeMarcus Cousins (5.3)
10. Paul George (8.4)/ 2. Evan Turner (4.7)

Knicks: Lin?

Carmelo thinks the contract the Rockets offered Lin is ridiculous. Despite Lin being DBSF's third favorite NBA player after the i) Wizards' roster and ii) Bron Bron, he has to agree. But last February when Lin emerged as the Knicks' PG Madison Square Garden stock surged to record highs. Was this causation or correlation? Should the Knicks re-sign Lin?

This might sound absurd but even with Felton and Kidd, Lin is the Knicks best PG. Admittedly there is some bias in DBSF's estimation but last season Lin's PER was 19.9, Felton's was 13.4, and Kidd's was 13.1. (Kidd hasn't been above 15, the league average, in three seasons.) Kidd's age obviously qualifies him in this comparison as at his prime he was far superior to the other two, and he's really being brought on to back-up and to mentor the younger PGs, like Lin (potentially) or Iman Shumpert.

Here's the thing. The Knicks could add Dwight Howard and they still wouldn't make it out of the Eastern Finals (save a LeBron injury, but it is never good basketball-business to plan free agency and a season around arguably the greatest specimen of the male human body becoming in some way physically deficient). So in deciding to sign Lina a rational team should weigh the business side of the equation more so than the let's-win-championships' side.


So here's DBSF's relatively simple calculus for valuing Raymond Felton vs. Jeremy Lin with respect to ROI: How many New York Knicks hats will be purchased in 2012 if the team signs Felton or Lin?


Felton: 1 mom + 1 dad + 2 sisters + 1 brother + 4 cousins + 1 wife + 1 auto mechanic + 4 nephews + 2 neighbors = 17 Knicks hats.


Lin: 1 mom + 1 dad + 2 brothers + 1 GF + 3 Church Friends + 8 Harvard Alumns + 1.3 billion Chinese = 1,300,000,016 Knicks hats.


Maybe Lin?

An Inauspicious Offseason

Supposedly the reason NBA owners locked out players for all of last year's preseason and a quarter of the regular season was because owners were sick of paying under-performing players in a sport/ country/ global economy of declining revenue. So it seems odd that the very transactions that seemed to spur the lockout are occurring again less than seven months after it ended.

Take Joe Johnson to the Nets. The idea was that Johnson would keep Deron Williams (check) and attract Dwight Howard. With yesterday's signing of Brook Lopez the earliest the Nets could acquire Howard now is January 15. In other words, the Nets have essentially kept their roster intact and added a 31 year old two-guard, whom save for a slight uptick during the lockout season, has been exhibiting declining production while entering the fourth year of a $120 million contract (grant it, the Hawks, not the Nets, offered Johnson the contract).

The Nets however are an exception with respect to spending because their owner Mikhail Prokhorov is post-Communist-country-collapse-I-got-in-on-unregulated-previously-state-run-and-controlled-industries rich, which in comparison to wealth one accumulates from inventing the iPhone is like the difference between iPhone-inventor rich and cool Paleo app-inventor rich. So while money is of little consequence to the Nets, reckless spending does have a collateral effect on the rest of the league as other free agents have grounds to demand excessive compensation, which . . .

Explains Ryan Anderson getting $36 million over four year in a sign and trade with the league-owned Hornets. Here's the thing with Ryan Anderson--he's an awesome fantasy basketball player because he shoots like 8 threes a game and at 6'10" can't help but have 8 or so uncontested defensive rebounds bounce his way. In real life, Anderson is a good* NBA player. The asterisk is because his success is predicated on him being on the court with another player that demands double teams (Dwight Howard), which allows Anderson to reverse-cherry pick at the three point line and loaf around until he gets his baker's dozen wide open looks. On the other side of the court Anderson needs a teammate to fulfill a role that only Dwight Howard can--guard multiple big men--to accommodate for Anderson's passive resistance to defensive confrontation.  

In New Orleans, the other offensive threats will be 19 year old rookies and maybe Eric Gordon, which means Anderson will have to find a way to create his own shot. This is fine in theory but much like when the Jazz asked for more than long-distance hoisting from Mehmet Okur, execution proved to be where the challenge laid. In the end, those more penurious owners will continue to gripe as they and their colleagues pay based on past performance and ignore the circumstances that allow a player like Ryan Anderson to go for 16 and 8 in the regular season but have a PER that places him as being worth about half the average player in the playoffs (which, likely incoincidentally was when the Magic were without Dwight Howard).

Literature & Tyrese Gibson

DBSF was perusing Amazon--no need to inquire about search terms/ phrases--when he came across Tyrese Gibson's How to Get Out of Your Own Way.  DBSF hasn't read the book and from the publisher's description it looks to be a standard self-empowerment guide based on Tyrese's rags-to-riches experience. Nothing wrong with self-help. (Of course, the publisher should qualify that Gibson's physical aesthetics likely played a significant role in his success and, thus, that results, i.e., Hangin' w/ Mr. Cooper or co-staring w/ Paul Walker, are not ordinary.)

What stuck out to DBSF about the book though was the fact that it had a perfect 5.0 star rating from Amazon customers. (Customers can rank products on a one to five star scale with results being reported in half-star increments.) So, DBSF started thinking: What are some books rated lower than Tyrese Gibson's How to Get Out of Your Own Way?

King James Bible: 3.5 stars, Torah: 4 stars, and the Qur'an: 4.5 stars. Amazon customers rank arguably the three most definitive books of our society lower than one written by a star of both the Transformers and Fast and the Furious franchises.

Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto: 3.5 stars. Maybe the most influential sociopolitical book of the 20th century, but still not enough to compete with a book that has a chapter titled "How much do you love yourself?" Don't read it. DBSF spent the 6 minutes necessary. The gist? Think positive and be appreciative of what you have. It takes Tyrese about 40 pages to get to that point.


Lolita (4.5 stars), The Great Gatsby (4 stars), Don Quixote (4.5 stars), A Midsummer Night's Dream (4.5 stars), The Brothers Karamazov (4.5 stars) and Ulysses (4 stars). Not sure what most high schools' summer reading lists consist of but Amazon customers seem to be pushing away from novels and into marginally introspective self-helps. 


But not all is lost. Other five star Amazon classics include The Forever Girl (urban fantasy/ paranormal romance, i.e., "I received this information from an alien. As I told my husband, it was in the Paramus Holiday Inn, I was having a drink at the bar, alone, and this alien approached me. He started talking to me. He bought me a drink, and then I think he must have used some kind of a ray or a mind control device because he forced me to follow him to his room and that's where he told me about the end of the world."  Venkman: So your alien had a room at the Holiday Inn, Paramus? "It might have been a room on the spacecraft made up to look like a room in the Holiday Inn. I can't be sure about that, Peter."), Make it Paleo: Over 200 Grain Free Recipes for any Occasion, Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/ Outdoor Grower's Bible, and Mushrooms Demystified. There actually appears to be a trend in that putting the word "Paleo" in your book title will ensure 4-5 star rankings and an Amazon seller's rank that trumps that of most authors that contributed to the canon of Western lit. All Tyrese had to put on his cover was himself in a fitted, button-down cardigan.

Hasheem Thabeet: Life Lottery Winner

DBSF has a theory about this thing called the life lottery. Basically it's the idea that similar to Powerball or any other mega-million interstate lottery there are individuals, who against astronomical odds, win. Except in the life lottery rather than win the rights to a lump sum or annualized cash payment, the individual wins the implicit rights to a fantastic career that they are supernaturally undeserving of.

A classic example from the entertainment industry is Brittney Spears. In the 1990s, she was emerging as a pop star amidst a bevy of other female teenagers of varying talent that basically karaoke'd to tracks likely passed on by 'NSync and The Backstreet Boys, and were marketed along some bizarre oxymoronic virginal-cum-romp vein. (Any aficionado of the 90s pop scene likely remembers that Pink served somewhat as Brittney's foil in that Pink was overt in her sexuality and, thus, one of the progenitors of the 90s slutwave scene.)

Somehow over the next decade Brittney Spears emerges as one of the biggest acts in  music. While she's not as untalented as her critics suggest, there're probably several dozen American Idol contestants every year with better vocal range and certainly greater personality. (Bear in mind, her media team has essentially prevented her from speaking to the media in any form save for the perfectly rehearsed Oprahesque interview.) So why did Brittney win the life lottery? It was a combination of likely an excellent and fortuitous marketing strategy, an unparalleled 'you-want-to-bang-me-regardless-of-your-sexual-orientation' vibe that she possessed in her later teen years, and--most importantly in DBSF's mind--she got 'Hit me baby one  more time', which in addition to its sexual and violent undertones that only exacerbated reason number two, was such a hit that it demanded she would continue to receive top tracks for decades to come.

As a result of the great fortune of receiving one spectacular pop track, an individual from rural Louisianan (DBSF thinks, surely somewhere in the deep south though) with second runner-up in the high school talent show ability  now, a decade and a half later, sells out arenas months in advance regardless of any interaction/ participation with fans, new music, whatever. The definition of winning the life lottery.

DBSF was reminded of this theory when he saw that Hasheem Thabeet was rewarded for being 7'3" with a two-year contract on a potential NBA dynasty franchise. In college, because he was normally at least 6 inched taller than everyone else on the court, Thabeet would block something like 4 shots a game. NBA executives exhibited troublingly little concern over his inability to do anything else on a basketball court when he was drafted second overall in 2009. (Literally every player drafted after him that made it to the NBA has had a better career.) Three seasons later, Thabeet whose advance stats indicate that he has had such awful seasons that he actually contributed to his team losing games (a mathematically impressive feat) joins OKC and exhibits why he is this July's life lottery winner.

NBA Draft, one week later

It's been almost week since last Thursday's NBA draft and DBSF has had time to reflect. There are several narratives worth addressing and Bill Simmons' NBA draft diary captures many of them.One thing that Simmons touches only briefly yet deserves attention is that this was a draft in which the pick where certain players were selected will likely either  prove beneficial or will impose psychological costs associated with expectations that will compromise a player's potential. First the two who were most helped:

Andre Drummond--There's a 90% chance that Drummond becomes Hasheem Thabeet and a 10% chance he turns into Tyson Chandler. One thing you don't want is his fragile 19 year old psyche to get crushed and in the process waste his physical gifts. Assuming he doesn't Eddy Curry it and remains dedicated to basketball in three or four years--right after his rookie contract, unfortunately for the Pistons--there should be ROI. With Greg Monroe, Jonas Jerebko and the addition of 7-foot Ukranian Vyacheslav Kravtsov hopefully Drummond will only have to play garbage and Wizards'/ Bobcats' minutes. If injuries force the Piston's hand on Drummond, they should tell old 6'7" Jason Maxiell to get his Rick Mahorn/ Armen Gilliam (RIP) on. Drummond might be an ideal candidate for spending a rookie year in the D-League.

Perry Jones III--If he was lottery pick there would already be two DWI's and an aggravated assault or solicitation charge. Going at the end of the first round makes it to Jones clear that his physical ability and dimensions are only valued so high. On top of that there is no better team than OKC, which has a great young leader in Durant. Because of Durant's youth there isn't the generational disconnect found in other veteran-rookie failed mentorships, like Jordan and Kwame Brown. So not only will Durant be able to give advice on personality glasses, but by his nature he'll lead by example and impart on Perry that there is no reason to celebrate a one-on-none fast-break dunk when the Thunder are up 25 in the fourth over the Kings.

Now those most adversely affected:

Dion Waiters--this is obvious and not his fault in a way. A) He didn't start on his college team, which means if you're not one of the five best on your team you might not be one of the five best in the draft, and B) unless Tristan Thompson--another reach at fourth overall from the 2011 draft--makes significant offensive strides, the fact that Waiters was the more recent lottery pick will place greater pressure on him to complement Kyrie Irving. This is a no-win for a 6'4" two-guard who averaged single digits in college.

Harrison Barnes/ Terrence Ross--This is a combo because neither play is Clay Thompson/ DeMar Derozan. Basically, Barnes and Ross are two super-hyped high school talents whose popularity waned after they faced Division 1 talent and now are expected to compete for the same position with young, promising players that have NBA experience. DBSF doesn't see Ross working out regardless of where he was drafted, but Barnes is one of those guys who would've been greatly served by a Perry Jones III oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen drop on the draft board. If he went to Houston or some team in the mid-first round he would've had the Tom Brady-I-have-to-prove-myself fire. Instead he's joining a team that will be short on shots after Curry, Lee and Thompson get their looks. Best case scenario for Barnes is that he reinvents himself as a powerful, high-effort defender--something like a Thaddeus Young with a jump shot.