NewArena
All-Star
I can't argue with any of this, unfortunately.
The Stubborn Refusal to Address Defense in the Sacto Era
- Thread starter Bricklayer
- Start date
captain bill
All-Star
I have seen Cuz play with a massive amount of defensive intensity, and look like an all-world defender.
I have seen tons of stretchs of Cuz look like he doesn't care about defense and letting guys get buckets off his lack of effort.
I think if we have a playoff team he can anchor a great defense, but we need to start winning games to get him there.
I have seen tons of stretchs of Cuz look like he doesn't care about defense and letting guys get buckets off his lack of effort.
I think if we have a playoff team he can anchor a great defense, but we need to start winning games to get him there.
Hadlowe
Starter
His weakness is always going to be covering shooters off of screens. It was THE major problem with having IT out there. IT would get screened, not recover, and his man would have a clear look at a three or free throw line jumper. A more mobile center like Chandler will get out on the screens and still recover to stop the roll man. Cousins doesn't have the foot speed to do that.
Hopefully Collison is a part of the answer.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
I find this interesting from the team's twitter feed.
How about getting a plus defender at some point, then?
More evidence our FO and coaching staff are not on the same page.
If this were true or a priority, then why today did we just try to re-sign IT with the apparent plan/hope of running out a Collison/IT/Stauskas/Ben backcourt?
How about getting a plus defender at some point, then?
More evidence our FO and coaching staff are not on the same page.
If this were true or a priority, then why today did we just try to re-sign IT with the apparent plan/hope of running out a Collison/IT/Stauskas/Ben backcourt?
Big Cuz 15
All-Star
I find this interesting from the team's twitter feed.
How about getting a plus defender at some point, then?
More evidence our FO and coaching staff are not on the same page.
If this were true or a priority, then why today did we just try to re-sign IT with the apparent plan/hope of running out a Collisons/IT/Stauskas/Ben backcourt?
nellie ball 4 lyfe. they should stop with all the bs and come out. trot out cuz, gay, stauskas, ben and it.
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
The ultimate case for proper capitalization.
Every time I see IT in lower case, I think we're talking about the clown from Stephen King's novel.
Big Cuz 15
All-Star
they are remaking the movie it. can't wait!
CurseOfTheSalmons
Starter
you all think that ray mccallum is a better defender than isaiah thomas, right?
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
I think a rotten banana would show more consistent defensive effort than IT, so yes.
CurseOfTheSalmons
Starter
then how do we explain this? (click this link)
the link shows two lineups that the kings played last season, one with ray mccallum for 123 total minutes and the other with isaiah thomas for 110 total minutes. the lineups are the same otherwise.
the lineup with ray allowed 113.5 points per 100 possessions. standard deviation: 4.9 pts
the lineup with isaiah allowed 93..6 points per 100 possessions. standard deviation 4.3 pts
which implies that isaiah thomas was the better team defender.
for reference,
indiana allowed ~95 points per 100 possessions as a team last year, best in the league.
the following spurs lineup: parker/green/leonard/duncan/splitter allowed ~88 points per 100 possessions and played 262 total minutes.
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Big Cuz 15
All-Star
are you really going to compare stats from a 3rd year player who has gotten consistent playing time with the starting line up to a rookie who got about 10 games in at the very end of the season?
good use of analytics btw.
smh hella chippen
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I absolutely knew this response was coming "Uhh,, my argument doesn't work so I'm just going to laugh at the guy who poked a giant hole in it and call his argument dumb instead!!!"
Try actually clicking the link for starters. Might help with some understanding
Unless I'm looking at something different, shows 48 MPG with IT-Ben-Gay-Reggie-Cuz and 50 MPG for Ray with same lineup. Either way, it's not enough of a sample size to make any sort of lasting determination. During a season, a normal, healthy starting lineup will get anywhere from 400-600 minutes on the floor together. Spurs are the obvious exception because they're the only team in the NBA who runs 10 deep effectively.
What it does show once again is how much our eyes lie to us. There's no "advanced stats that aren't really advanced" in the numbers you posted. Just pure PPG, Opponent shooting numbers, opponent assists, rebounds, etc.
I do find that incredibly intersting though. The IT lineup was +4.9 in +/-. Small sample and all that jazz, but that would be a lineup to explore more of
edit: Whoops, just saw the 100 possessions. That explains it
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CurseOfTheSalmons
Starter
you're looking at the right thing, and the sample is "big enough". to see the total minutes, you have to change "pp100p" to "total" and look under MIN (click here).
i used this online calculator: (click here), where
total population = 3936 (total minutes in an 82 game season)
confidence level = 95% (arbitrary %, 95 means sample error calculated will roughly equal two standard deviations)
sample size = 110 and 123 minutes
sample error = 9.213% and 8.698% (two standard deviations)
standard deviation for isaiah thomas = (93.6 * 9.213%)/2 = 4.3
standard deviation for ray mccallum = (113.5 * 8.698%)/2 = 4.9
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Big enough for what though? It was one of our more used lineups last season, but we never solidified one "starting 5" with all the player shuffling and random injuries scattered throughout the year. It was an excellent lineup and one of our best last season, but the 100. minutes doesn't tell me enough. It has me wanting to see more if it's really legit or not.
Especially when you posted teams like the Spurs and Pacers, who's lineups and roster have thousands of minutes played together, it's just something you need to see more of.
Great post though. Paints a very clear picture of our defensive units last season
CurseOfTheSalmons
Starter
big enough to say that if the lineup with isaiah played 3936 minutes (full sesason) and we took a 110 minute sample, 95 out of 100 times the OPP PTS would be within 93.6 +/- 8.6 pts.
big enough to say that if the lineup with ray played 3936 minutes and we took a 123 minute sample, 95 out of 100 times the OPP PTS would be within 113.5 +/- 9.9 pts.
using the +/-, you will see that it would be very very unlikely (~ 6/10,000 chance) that the lineup with ray would play better defense than the lineup with isaiah.
if you wanna have some fun, try doing the same analysis with these two lineups (click here).
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I mean, the math makes sense, but in basketball terms, it still doesn't tell us much in the context of a basketball game. Within 9.9 points and within 8.6 points is a gigantic margin in terms of basketball scores. You could guess that margin on every single basketball game and probably be right 75% or more of the time.
But I don't think your sample needs to be nearly that high in minutes though. As I said before, a typical, healthy, starting unit will play between 600-800 minutes/season together.. So roughly 5-8 seasons of one lineup is what you sampled. Even teams like the Blazers and Pacers who run their starting units into the ground together, played around 1370 Minutes last year. That's still 3 seasons of one lineup, which is a ton of basketball.
Regardless, it paints a VERY different picture than what's often talked about here about IT being horrible and the root of all our problems defensively and us getting better with Ray on the floor. The beauty is the minute distribution is so close that while you can question whether or not both lineups are a large enough sample in total, that you can't claim the sample size unfairly rates one lineup over another. And both lineups were in our top 4 most used last season.
Albatros
Starter
I'm not an IT fan at all but I don't think he is "horrible" on defense personally, he's pretty good containing one on one, he's no slouch in the post and very strong but I do think he's very poor defending the pick and roll and his height makes it very easy for bigger guards just to take a step back and basically get an uncontested shot off, hence he struggles to defend the three ball. This is just my eye test anyway because I don't look at the stats.
Padrino
All-Star
man, the faux-academics of attempting to prove that isaiah thomas is somehow not a liability on the defensive end are just getting out of hand. attempting to "read" IT's defensive prowess through the lens of ray mccallum's own defensive struggles is as foolhardy a gesture as i've seen at kf.com. that the rookie mccallum was not a terribly effective defender when thrust into a very demanding role in the starting lineup at the tail end of last season tells us exactly nothing about isaiah thomas' utility on the defensive end. all it really tells us is that a second-round draft pick in his first meaningful nba minutes had difficulty adjusting to the requirements of nba-level defense; this is hardly a revelation, as most rookies have difficulty meeting the requirements of nba-level defense. mccallum has the body and the work ethic to be a solid defender someday. that day has not yet arrived...
as for thomas, if he can be had at about $5 million per, i re-sign him without thinking twice about it. then i stick to my guns by stuffing him on the bench behind collison. if i'm coaching the kings, "fit" matters to me, and i don't care if thomas likes it; it's time to think about what's good for the team. as a 6th man, thomas will do what thomas does, which should be a relief, given how woefully thin the kings' bench is. if the collison experiment fails mightily, then i give IT his job back, and i continue in my [neverending] pursuit of a starting-caliber PG who will be better equipped to play alongside demarcus cousins and rudy gay. if the collison experiment achieves any amount of success, and if IT raises a big stink (which is not really his style) about being shifted into a bench role again, then i give him this very simple instruction: "you will come off the bench, where you will undoubtedly be competing for 6th man of the year accolades, or you will be traded. good luck to you."
re-signing IT to a reasonable deal so that he can be traded down the line would seem like the most prudent gesture, anyway, as collison's arrival in sacramento never struck me as anything other than a stopgap move. more to the point, a longterm PG rotation of collison/thomas/mccallum (or thomas/collison/mccallum) is hardly ideal, given that rotation's lack of size, as well as its defensive and playmaking limitations. given the kings' well-documented difficulties on defense and their struggles to initiate consistent ball movement, i'm just not convinced that such a PG rotation gets it done in the west...
as for thomas, if he can be had at about $5 million per, i re-sign him without thinking twice about it. then i stick to my guns by stuffing him on the bench behind collison. if i'm coaching the kings, "fit" matters to me, and i don't care if thomas likes it; it's time to think about what's good for the team. as a 6th man, thomas will do what thomas does, which should be a relief, given how woefully thin the kings' bench is. if the collison experiment fails mightily, then i give IT his job back, and i continue in my [neverending] pursuit of a starting-caliber PG who will be better equipped to play alongside demarcus cousins and rudy gay. if the collison experiment achieves any amount of success, and if IT raises a big stink (which is not really his style) about being shifted into a bench role again, then i give him this very simple instruction: "you will come off the bench, where you will undoubtedly be competing for 6th man of the year accolades, or you will be traded. good luck to you."
re-signing IT to a reasonable deal so that he can be traded down the line would seem like the most prudent gesture, anyway, as collison's arrival in sacramento never struck me as anything other than a stopgap move. more to the point, a longterm PG rotation of collison/thomas/mccallum (or thomas/collison/mccallum) is hardly ideal, given that rotation's lack of size, as well as its defensive and playmaking limitations. given the kings' well-documented difficulties on defense and their struggles to initiate consistent ball movement, i'm just not convinced that such a PG rotation gets it done in the west...
ParniValjak
All-Star
That guard rotation is not great but its still an improvement on what we has last season.
At least we have a genuinely good back up PG as opposed to last season where we hoped Ray could come in and hold his own while IT was taking a breather.
At least we have a genuinely good back up PG as opposed to last season where we hoped Ray could come in and hold his own while IT was taking a breather.
Are you the same guy that keeps misusing stats on realgm to show what a good defender IT is? If so, please don't start bringing that nonsense to these boards.
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RichieInRocklin
G-League
CurseOfTheSalmons said: ↑
"the lineup with ray allowed 113.5 points per 100 possessions. standard deviation: 4.9 pts
the lineup with isaiah allowed 93..6 points per 100 possessions. standard deviation 4.3 pts
which implies that isaiah thomas was the better team defender."
It would be interesting to see the tapes of the minutes played as quoted above, i.e., what teams were the minutes played against, what opponent's players were playing at the time, what was our offensive game like, etc. I do think that analytics certainly has its place, but so does the "old eyeball". You're just not going to win a lot of games with a 5'9" chucker point guard. Not sure that Ray, Darren, or IT will be our long term answer.
P.S. How to you get the "quote box" from an earlier post as part of your post?
"the lineup with ray allowed 113.5 points per 100 possessions. standard deviation: 4.9 pts
the lineup with isaiah allowed 93..6 points per 100 possessions. standard deviation 4.3 pts
which implies that isaiah thomas was the better team defender."
It would be interesting to see the tapes of the minutes played as quoted above, i.e., what teams were the minutes played against, what opponent's players were playing at the time, what was our offensive game like, etc. I do think that analytics certainly has its place, but so does the "old eyeball". You're just not going to win a lot of games with a 5'9" chucker point guard. Not sure that Ray, Darren, or IT will be our long term answer.
P.S. How to you get the "quote box" from an earlier post as part of your post?
Oh please. Get your lack of real argument so you bash the poster argument nonsense off these boards.
Swaze
Bench
You afraid it might interrupt your "Hate IT Rally" ?
I don't think IT is a good defender either partly due to height and partly due to lack of effort on defense but it is funny that if anybody comes to the support of Thomas so many here get all bent out of shape. Is this KingsFans.com or ShipThomasOutOfTown.com ?
Click on reply and it puts it in quotes.
Yeah, not so much. I'm not bashing the poster. I'm bashing flooding a board full of statistics that don't actually mean anything. I don't spend a lot of time on realgm but someone was using the exact same stats and it was killing conversations.
I don't have an issue with statistical analysis, just the misuse of them.
Again, I have no issue with supporting IT and the conversations it creates.
CurseOfTheSalmons
Starter
these stats shed new light on the darren collison signing. i see why they broke the bank for him.
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Big Cuz 15
All-Star
i don't need to click any link to know the truth. the comparison is apples to grapefruit it aint the same.
