Lakers Thread

[NovU]

Coach Nick says...

phpBB [video]

Promising.

[Jackal]

Damn, if I was a Magic fan I'd be pretty pissed about that ending. Should've just let them redo the last 0.6 seconds out of bounds play. None the less happy with the win. Good distribution by IT in the fourth there, Julius was under the weather which is why he sat out a large portion and BroLo showed up to play tonight. Not on the boards though, how does a guy that huge not manage a single board. What.

Lonzo's effort on defense continues to make me so happy. He just doesn't quit after a play and I love that about him. He just plays the right way, for all the shit he gets because of his dad, I'm glad he's part of the Lakers. Got a good head on his shoulders on the court and that's all that matters to me. Even with his wonky-ass looking shot. If it's dropping...who gives a shit.

[dwayne2005]

One thing that that 'herder of cows' done was show Isaiah's stats for when he played at Boston versus when he did not to prove that he was simply a product of the coaching system in Boston. Anyone who knows basketball statistics knows there is normally a larger story to tell with regards to the averages, so I'll leave them be. But I will take an issue here with the plus/minus ratings that were flashed on the screen which showed he was in positive territory in Boston and negative territory for every other team he played for, which was used to indict him basically with the losing plus/minus in Cleveland, that it was a common trend. He was a loser, basically, and no team was better served with him being in the city. Playing one of the most efficient high scoring seasons in history? Thank Brad Stevens for that. Boston success was all his doing, none of it Isaiah's.

I seem to remember the video actually showed plus-minus in the order of hundreds. Something like -220 or something. I'm not sure what the hell this number means, but whatever. And we all know, statistics don't lie: he is now a proven loser, flashed right before you on the screen, a big drag on every team he plays for, the numbers prove it! Heck, they are even in the hundreds! That's how much of a loser he is!

I'll attempt to illustrate the problem with using this plus/minus average to indict Isaiah Thomas.

Firstly, the figures I use are a per minute stat. How much plus/minus he contributed per minute spent on court. So it removes court time from the equation.

With Boston, he averaged a plus/minus per 48 minutes of +4.3 points. So if they had played him 48 minutes, they might have theoretically won by an average of +4.3 points per game, which is more than a point than they were actually winning by.

When removing Boston from the equation, just like the figures they displayed he enters into negative territory: for the entire rest of his career, his teams were losing while he was on court to a tune of -1.2 points per 48 minutes. So despite using different methods, the numbers tell the same story. Only the story they are telling is misleading. The figures don't reflect the quality of the team he was on, and how much he was or was not improving these teams he was on. You know this is going to be a factor, but with the missing evidence you assume the status quo (that he was on average as bad as the rest) or if you're an Isaiah hater you may even assume he was worse. But the numbers actually paint a pretty consistent picture across his career.

When you relate how much plus minus he was contributing above the team when he was benched, the figures actually show that he was two points higher at +6.3 per 48 minutes in Boston. That is, when he was off the court, the team was -2 points per 48 minutes. When you remove the Boston regular season games, what do we find? The same negative values? Nope. We find he was +3.5 for the teams when he was on court versus when he was off court. Almost all the teams he significantly lifted with his game. The one exception is Phoenix, where he had something like a +1.9 differential and +1.7 over the bench. This includes Sacramento where he posted a +5.2 points differential when he was on court relative the bench when extrapolated over 48 mintues, not too far from his stint in Boston.

My program is only up to date to the allstar break when Isaiah had only played 3 games in LA, and all 3 were losses. He actually had a -7 per 48 minute rating in those 3 games. So do these games indict him in the same way the Cleveland games did? In those 3 games, he was actually a +3 per 48 minutes over the rest of the team when he was benched. Since that time, I assume he has actually been worse than the rest of the team since they have played so well of late, but his plus/minus is fairly good. Last I looked, it was in the top 100 of players during the 6 game winning stretch. These oddities with plus/minus take many games to iron out, and it is not the best reference over small stretches such as the 15 game stretch in Cleveland. Actually, in 5 games leading up to all star break Kyrie Irving had a massively bad Isaiah equivallent plus/minus rating, and he appeared to actually be playing really well! And it was even worse when he was on court. It made sense since Isaiah was playing so inefficiently, but it didn't really make sense when going over Irving's numbers. Because plus/minus is unreliable over small stretches of games.

So, no, Cleveland wasn't the pattern for Isaiah Thomas, it was indeed the exception. He has had a positive impact on every team he has played, and not too far off the impact he had on the Celtics, until, that is, he joined LeBron in Cleveland.

[NovU]

Good post overall, mate.

Stats don't lie, this is why the Cavaliers prematurely gave up on Isaiah because he was an offense genius and defense not so much. Cavaliers throughout this season were suffering on defensive end and deadline was closing in. They hurried and removed Isaiah who was one of the biggest trade assets they had available. It is an understandable decision though we would have loved to see experiment going longer.

Stats don't lie #2. Team System indeed is important for individual success which was a part of reason for Isaiah's success in Boston. But system is only as good as player that executes. Irving under all systems he's played in, is yet to be as great as Isaiah in Boston was.


Isiah is way too short to be effective to play beyond age of 30 imho. Once his quickness starts regressing, his usefulness will disappear rapidly. His time is closing in, and it's safe to say he's not getting a max.

[dwayne2005]

Isiah is way too short to be effective to play beyond age of 30 imho. Once his quickness starts regressing, his usefulness will disappear rapidly. His time is closing in, and it's safe to say he's not getting a max.

He also depends on his jump, but there is little info to corroborate your conclusions. Few people his size have played in the NBA.

In his 10 games for the Lakers, Isaiah is +1.6 per game overall, which is 144th in the league. It is the 5th best mark on his team (possibly deflated by being in the second unit, same as there would be inflation if he were on the first unit). He is +4.0 in the last 7, 6th from those who have played significant court time on the Lakers and 75th in the league overall. LeBron James is +2.9 in the last 7 and +3.2 in the last 10. Isaiah has had a win loss record since departing the Cavs of 6-4 while Cavs are 7-4. You could make a comic on the rivalries of Isaiah Thomas and LeBron James, as they have in my books become arch nemesis and I am deeply interested in this number battle that is playing out even when they are no longer on the same team with LeBron not doing as good as he thought he would be going 4-4 in the last 8 while Isaiah has gone 6-1. There is no doubt Isaiah is playing fairly average right now while LBJ is playing great, though.

[NovU]

Plus minus is kinda misleading because it is heavily a team stats. His WS is under league average while his PER is slightly above league average. He's also shooting below league average(TS%) and this isn't good as his role is a scorer. His value was in being an efficient scorer but he's not anymore or currently. Meaning individually he should be playing much better if he wants to be considered a star.

In Boston(2016-17) : .625 TS%
In LA : .545 TS%

This drop as a scorer, isn't acceptable. If your best scorer was shooting .625 TS%, your team would be winning a lot of games, but with .545 TS%, good luck, because you can replace that number with just about any league average player.


Plus minus also heavily depends on whom he's playing against or together on the court.

[Sauru]

the problem with thomas in cleveland is he was never a good fit for that team. the guy can play but he just did not fit there. i hate when people take something like this as a knock on a player

[dwayne2005]

Plus minus is kinda misleading because it is heavily a team stats. His WS is under league average while his PER is slightly above league average. He's also shooting below league average(TS%) and this isn't good as his role is a scorer. His value was in being an efficient scorer but he's not anymore or currently. Meaning individually he should be playing much better if he wants to be considered a star.

In Boston(2016-17) : .625 TS%
In LA : .545 TS%

This drop as a scorer, isn't acceptable. If your best scorer was shooting .625 TS%, your team would be winning a lot of games, but with .545 TS%, good luck, because you can replace that number with just about any league average player.


Plus minus also heavily depends on whom he's playing against or together on the court.

His TS% for the Lakers was up to 59% before he went 5/21 from the field last week, which is above league average (he was second only to the Lakers for players averaging over 6 points per game). That's when I started to feel he was starting to look good. It was only 3% away from his peak. I spoke too soon. Since that night, he's only been in decline. He hasn't gotten to the free throw line once in 2 games. His TS% last night was as bad as his 5/21 night because of 0 free throws (around 38%). The numbers change so rapidly with such a limited pool of games. I was getting excited for him when he kept improving his numbers. Because the media kept making stuff up about his overall play being weak when he was the second most efficient Laker, it forced me to make a stand on his numbers. Since that point, he has only disappointed me. The game before last, his saving grace was his 9 assists. He had none yesterday, and I am inclined to throw in the towel. He's become an ordinary player. But his legacy has been tarnished with no one accepting he posted the numbers he did. His coach in Boston has stolen his legacy.

I'm sick of being disappointed. He does play Cleveland next, so maybe 1 more round to see if he gets revenge... But he'll probably go 5/21 again. He has lost his drive. The one joy I am taking right now is seeing Cleveland lose all the same without him.

[dwayne2005]

For the record, I encountered some apparent interesting facts when using my program yesterday and looking at LeBron James' stats until the All-Star break.

For games he played at home, the Cavs were 20 and 7. For games they had played on the road, they were 14 and 15. So a fairly expected home/away record. But then when you look at the points differentials, they read +0.4 home and an even 0.0 for away games. This, again, is to be expected. Although strange, Thomas had a weird effect on the Cavs points differentials. But what picture do you get when you remove the Isaiah Thomas games from the equation?

The Cavs were 14-4 at home and 13-10 away (so 6 of the 7 of the Thomas wins were at home). Once again, to be expected H/A win-loss records. Now what is the points differential? +1.7 at home and ... +4.3 on the road! So they were winning by an average of more than double in away games, despite winning far more frequently at home.

Since the all-star break, they have gone 2-4 at home and 2-1 on the road so there has been a little correction. Not much. I don't have the differentials for those games, my software is out of date and don't plan on updating it so regularly. The basketball reference splits do not show the differentials or the opponent teams stats in the splits (https://www.basketball-reference.com/te ... 18/splits/). Using the totals would be misleading due to the effect the Isaiah games had had on the numbers.

The numbers are so strange it makes me wonder if my program isn't glitching, but it is corroborated as it is done twice in two different ways showing the same results.

This issue was not mirrored last season: they went 31-8 with LeBron for a +9.4 at home and a 20-15 for a +0.6 for away games. The overall differential last season was +5.3, but this season is +3.2 minus Thomas, owed largely to the away games. To the all-star break, removing the Isaiah anomally, they were +7.7 worse than last season at home.

In fact, if you isolate the games even further to only the ones Kevin Love played in as well, the difference between the two narrows +1.4 at home to +2.6 on the road for an average +2.1 so based on points differentials they have been worse with Love on court than without.

Although Love has had an extremely efficient offensive season, and last year when you correlate the number of assists LeBron got you found out Kevin Love benefitted greatly in terms of efficiency, much more so than Kyrie did, this might be evidence that the DFG% isn't as worthless a guage as some think, since he was conceding 53.4% against him (https://stats.nba.com/player/201567/defense-dash/), 5.5% worse than expected and one of the worst defensive marks on the team. Maybe this is countering the positive effect he is having in efficiency? (For the record, the earlier observation I made that Isaiah was conceding far higher DFG% the closer in he gets: this is replicated in Stephen Curry https://stats.nba.com/player/201939/defense-dash/ and Kyrie Irving's https://stats.nba.com/player/202681/defense-dash/ numbers, so is not indicting of his stature either.)

[NovU]

Love's having his best season as the Cavs this year. Perhaps being a second option in place of Kyrie is upping his game. But seems he forgot how to pass. His assist numbers are worst since his rookie days. It's kinda interesting as he had just became such a great passer right before he left the Wolves.

But his legacy has been tarnished with no one accepting he posted the numbers he did.

Probably that is what's gonna happen with Isaiah in 30s soon. I always liked this kid and followed him closely. He was such a baller in SAC but was always overlooked and started from bench, so was he in PHX shadowed by other overrated junk PGs. Was so happy to see him finally playing to his capability in BOS but seems like it's back to ground zero once again.

[air gordon]

IT the laker thread. who would have known.

i notice that randle quite often does this butterfly/flutter/scissor kick move... in traffic... i'm surprised this guy hasn't turned an ankle from this ballerina move.

Lonzo Ball.. not bad since coming back from injury

[dwayne2005]

Put together this video of game differential and plus/minus ratings for Cleveland and Isaiah (all of the Cleveland ratings are with LeBron James):

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UPDATE: Taken the video down. They were per 36 minute values, not per 48. I forgot to ammend the totals formula.

Kyrie is getting +4.7 per 48 minutes so far in Boston compared with Isaiah's +6.3 sustained over 2 and a half seasons. (Relative off court = how much better he is for the team than when he is benched. Takes the plus-minus and negates the plus-minus for when he is off the court.)

[[Q]]

IT the laker thread. who would have known.

i notice that randle quite often does this butterfly/flutter/scissor kick move... in traffic... i'm surprised this guy hasn't turned an ankle from this ballerina move.

Lonzo Ball.. not bad since coming back from injury

Lonzo Ball wasn't bad before the injury. After the much talked about shooting struggles in November he's turned into a pretty decent 3 point shooter in addition to his consistent rebounding and defense.

[NovU]

Kyrie is getting +4.7 per 48 minutes so far in Boston compared with Isaiah's +6.3 sustained over 2 and a half seasons. (Relative off court = how much better he is for the team than when he is benched. Takes the plus-minus and negates the plus-minus for when he is off the court.

Kyrie in his own right is playing best basketball in his career. Perhaps within next few years he can top Isaiah's incredible 2016-17 season.

Back to Isaiah, we've seen him at his best, but it was with him as the focal point and everything centered around him then. Problem is that the Lakers are rebuilding team and cannot afford to do that. Letting him hoard the ball over players in development would be a mistake. So how good can he be for the Lakers team that don't need him to be at his best but as a third or fourth string. I sense he's gonna be moved to another team or his already tainted reputation even more soaring if he ends up staying with the Lakers. He was regarded as close to a max player last year but now not even close.

[dwayne2005]

That Cleveland game was funny. The result anyway, at least to the likes of Colin Cowherd, Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe. LOL. Isaiah was probably the 4th best player for the Lakers that night, but it was funny to all those idiots in the press who continually put him down and held him single-handedly accountable for the Cavs defensive collapse during his stretch there.

Despite what the Dean Oliver Drtg says about Isaiah, maybe his defensive field goal percentage is contributing. I'm not at all convinced the Drtg is a good way of estimating a players defense.

It is well accepted that Isaiah stands no chance in getting re-signed by the Lakers. But so far, the young players have played really well in the presense of Isaiah, so some of that might be because of the role Isaiah is playing in the team? It may not be his 'talent', it might be motivating to be better than the shortest player, or they may see him as inspiring because of what he has accomplished, or they may just be playing better because their starting roles might be in jeopardy if they do not. So far I've seen no evidence that the way the others are playing is not due to Isaiah's presence. Will they play this well next season when he is playing for some other team? I don't think it's because he is this good a deliberate motivating force as he thinks he is, but it may be the right chemistry by accident.

I personally think he should chase the best offer he can get. Forget championships. You pour your heart into a team, you are only going to be treated like dirt anyway. For the Lakers to even consider re-signing him, they need a playoffs berth and to advance far into the playoffs, to make people in LA like him. Anything short of that, he stands no chance in LA. And with the 7th to 9th seeded teams in the conference being so healthily over .500, they need to practically win almost everything from here on out and hope those teams underperform for that to happen. It'd be storied if the Lakers do make the playoffs. And if by some fluke it happens, he should still consider offers from elsewhere. Forget loyality. You obviously couldn't blame him if that was his decision.

[NovU]

Despite what the Dean Oliver Drtg says about Isaiah, maybe his defensive field goal percentage is contributing. I'm not at all convinced the Drtg is a good way of estimating a players defense.

DRTg isn't an estimation. It's just a record of what happened defensively while the player was on the court.

It's actually a team stats. For example, if a player recorded excellent 98 DRTg, just means he was a part of great team defense, and does NOT necessarily mean he was the biggest impact maker.


Say if you were a shitty defender individually but have ability to be part of great defense, your DRTg is gonna look nice.



This is kind of stats that mean little to us fans but to teams and management, it is extremely useful because it tells a story what works or not defensively(ie. which rotation) or a player has history of being in part of great defense or vice versa.

[dwayne2005]

Stops1 = STL + BLK * FMwt * (1 - 1.07 * DOR%) + DRB * (1 - FMwt)
FMwt = (DFG% * (1 - DOR%)) / (DFG% * (1 - DOR%) + (1 - DFG%) * DOR%)
DOR% = Opponent_ORB / (Opponent_ORB + Team_DRB)
DFG% = Opponent_FGM / Opponent_FGA
Stops2 = (((Opponent_FGA - Opponent_FGM - Team_BLK) / Team_MP) * FMwt * (1 - 1.07 * DOR%) + ((Opponent_TOV - Team_STL) / Team_MP)) * MP + (PF / Team_PF) * 0.4 * Opponent_FTA * (1 - (Opponent_FTM / Opponent_FTA))^2

Even though working on a statistics program, I like doing my own thing. I don't like following others formulations. Over time, I've learnt that messing with numbers usually leads me to the same conclusions as others. I see numbers in the main equation that lead me to think it is a guestimation of some factor or another. For example, 0.4*OPFTA. What is the 0.4? What does it mean? If you divide FTA by 2, it is roughly a possession, because on the average a player goes to the line for 2 free throw attempts (taking away a possession, on the average). 0.4 used here appears to be a tweak of this. With true shooting percentage, the value they use is 0.44. This presumably accounts for the fact that the true average for free throws is less than 2 due to And-1's and techs and treated the superfluous attempts as bonuses. Which is a guestimation. It is not using the actual number of And-1's. Heaven knows what 1.07*DOR% means.

Does the calculation actually account for everything? It counts defensive stops, but blocks do not always result in a turnover but steals do. Even if that mess that I haven't the brain or education to decipher does account for it, it needs to use an estimation of the average number of offensive rebounds from blocked shots.

And furthermore, you're right, it's a team formula. Which is why when extrapolated to players fudges things further:

With those numbers in hand, individual Defensive Rating can be computed:

DRtg = Team_Defensive_Rating + 0.2 * (100 * D_Pts_per_ScPoss * (1 - Stop%) - Team_Defensive_Rating)

Why are they multiplying values by 0.2? It appears because it is taking the team wide rating and dividing it by 1 in 5 to represent the 1 player. Therefore, it is making gigantic assumptions for the player based on the unit of 5 players as a whole, which I tend to think is about 20% accurate. It is like melting down all 5 players on court into a pool of goo, and then asking to best rebuild the plays out of the goo. Even if it is much more accurate than 20%, even 5% inaccuracy can greatly influence rankings.

Furthermore, this is a per possessions formula. I have never explored per possessions formulas used in this way and my gut does not like it. I like per minute values. Is per possession estimating different rates for the 5 players on court based on them producing more numbers? This is another factor which could fudge the meaning of the results.

It is even worse still when this is not actually based on the data for when a player is on court. When you look at basketball reference stats, you assume they are computing the play by play. But rebound percent, for instance, is based on an estimation of how many rebounds a player would see when he is on court based on the game totals. NBA.com does things differently to properly reflect when a player is on court. So based on that, it is quite like these OPFTA's etc. are not the actual numbers for when a player is on court but taken from the game as a whole and divided by the fraction of time the player was on court.

The formula basketball reference uses for rebound percent from its glossary page:

Total Rebound Percentage (available since the 1970-71 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * (TRB * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm TRB + Opp TRB)). Total rebound percentage is an estimate of the percentage of available rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor.

Dividing by 5 and then multiplying by minutes player (MP) is an estimation for the amount of rebounds a player might have conceivably gotten based on a 1 in 5 share of the total rebounds extrapolated to a players court time.

[dwayne2005]

The Cavs, with and without Isaiah Thomas (up to the all-star break).

phpBB [video]

I made a few errors and something is making me question the results, but I'm reasonably sure everything is right now. For instance, I made a mistake on estimating LeBron's plus-minus in his last 5 games before the all-star break minus Isaiah Thomas. I seem to have sorted the column in the wrong direction and not realized it. Making the colour headers change colours when sorted or putting some kind of column over the results might have helped avert that mistake.

Another number I seem to have plucked from nowhere. I have no idea where it came from, but it greatly amplified LeBron James' plus-minus. The rest are tweaks to correctly reflect per 48 minutes, In an article by ESPN, they said Isaiah finished with -15.8 per 48 minutes in Cleveland. My program is calculating -15.6. Here, I use the on-off value of -17.xx. I am reasonably comfortable that my program is outputting correctly. Can't find the per 48 minute stats for plus/minus. I think the author may have made a typo from either 15.6 or 15.7 (I can explain a 15.7 result due to their estimations of court time to 10ths not 60ths).

[dwayne2005]

Another night where Isaiah shoots an abundance of shots while hitting only 37% from the field, but it was not an especially inefficient night because he hit his threes (for a change) and got to the foul line at 83% efficiency (not as frequent as he was), so his true shooting percentage was 53%. Not disasterous at all, but not especially efficient especially as Randle, Caldwell-Pope, Kuzma and Lopez are still playing very efficiently. He really needs some great games in efficiency.

[air gordon]

as KGB says in rounders, "pay the man his money".

randle man handled milsap. oh boy. too bad chandler did the same to whoever the lakers threw at him.

[Jeffx]

I've really been impressed with Randle (and the entire Laker team) lately.

I know Magic wants two superstars, but I'd think twice before letting Randle go.

[[Q]]

If they stretch Deng's contract, I think they could Max out randle and one superstar and still have enough to get some quality players.

What has been surprising about randle is his hands. He's been catching some crazy uncatchable stuff one handed lately and that's definitely helped prevent unnecessary turnovers. He still needs a second post move because millsap exposed him this week in their two games.

[Andrew]

When it comes to Randle, might it be a case of a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? I mean, if it's LeBron coming to town, then I think you can make that sacrifice if it comes to that. It's not an entirely apt comparison, but it's a little like the Celtics being willing to trade away Al Jefferson (at the time breaking out and seemingly having star potential) to bring in Kevin Garnett (older, but still one of the best players in the league). If it's Paul George...well, I don't know. He is a great player, but what kind of free agent acquisition is he closer to: Shaquille O'Neal, or Carlos Boozer? If the Lakers are giving up Randle, you probably want him to be a franchise player.

[[Q]]

Also one thing to consider is youth. Sure Paul George is a great player, but he won't be getting that much better in the future. Randle has basically took his skills from last year and turned himself into a 20 & 10 guy this year and he's still learning and getting better. Where's the ceiling for this guy? He's already shown this last month flashes of Shaq-like dominance in the paint. Scary part is that it's still so raw and has room to improve too. Could he turn his post game from 96 shaq to 2001 shaq. He's already getting beat up with no-calls like prime shaq

Not to mention you'd be duplicating at the 3 with Ingram there

[Andrew]

Exactly. Again, LeBron is a no-brainer if that's at all feasible, but it's probably a long shot. George is probably more realistic, but even so, is he likely to pan out better than the potential of the young core? Is he good enough to sacrifice what might be, considering he's unlikely to get that much better?