2012-13 Game Preview and Thread: 4 Questions for fearthesword.com’s Conrad Kaczmarek
December 15th, 2012 by Robert Silverman | @BobSaietta | Comments | Permalink |
So, I had the chance to grill Conrad Kaczmarek, from the SB Nation Blog, Fear the Sword. This should get you read for to-Knight’s game. Get it? Knights? Like Cavalier is a kind of knight? I’ll show myself out…
1. It’s pretty obvious the Cavs are in the midst of another rebuilding year, but I certainly didn’t expect 5-19 out of the gate. Aside from the injuries, what’s gone wrong?
Roughly everything. That’s actually not true, but it sounds true. The 5-19 record is a bit deceiving because the Cavaliers really haven’t been that bad. When everybody was healthy, their starting lineup was one of the best ones in the league and it was just their bench that was preventing them from getting wins. Now that the starting lineup has been completely obliterated with injuries, the bench has stepped up. Funny how that works, hmm? The defense isn’t good and the inexperience has shown on a number of occasions. But this team hardly ever gets blown out and has beaten and almost beaten some really good teams. Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think they’re that far away from being a competitive, bottom half of the playoffs team.
2. For those of us who haven’t gotten the chance to see the Cavs play and don’t know much about the team outside of the wunderkind Kyrie Irving and the rebounding prowess of Anderson Varejao, who’s the player or players to watch?
Right now? Like in this game? Not a whole lot. I’d tell you to watch Dion Waiters because he’s really exciting (not always in a good way), but he’s still sitting this one out with an ankle injury. if you want to watch closely, pay attention to all of the little things that Tristan Thompson does to impact a game. His offensive rebounding and solid post defense are quite underrated and not necessarily sexy skills that people notice, but the numbers don’t lie and the Cavs are significantly better when he’s on the court. Of course, if you are looking for sexy stats, Boobie Gibson and CJ Miles might go off and hit a bunch of threes.
3. Speaking of which, there’s been ever-increasing chatter that Varejao will be traded in the near future. Granted, a great deal depends on what the return is, but, say you wake up tomorrow morning and find that you and Chris Grant have swapped bodies, “Freaky Friday”-style. Are you taking advantage of your magical authority to move Sideshow Bob? If so, what’s the parameters of a deal you, fake-Chris Grant would consider?
If I’m Chris Grant, I’m making it known that Anderson Varejao is on the trading block but I’m not actively shopping him. That is to say, I’m in no way TRYING to get rid of him. Maybe I’d ask some teams for a semi-ridiculous package of players and picks and see if they scoff and hang up the phone or if they counter-offer. If they counter-offer, we might be able to work something out. The bottom line is that Andy has too much value to the Cavs and there’s probably not a team that is willing to give back fair value in a trade. If I were Chris Grant and didn’t see any offers that appealed to me, I’d have absolutely no problem hanging up the phone and holding onto the league’s leading rebounder.
4. And finally, what’s your prediction for tonight’s game?
I’m a homer, but I picked the Cavaliers to win. Without Melo, I feel as though the Knicks rely way too much on three-point shooting. If they aren’t falling, the Cavs should be able to spend all night in transition and in the paint with Kyrie Irving. Cavs win 105-100.
Hey, did you know that in addition to banging the keys here and occasionally for the NY Times, Robert is a playwright, an actor and a wand'ring mendicant/gadfly? He also once wrestled a bear...and lost.
Copeland in the starting lineup with Melo out. I like that move by Woody.
Sheed also out, if Chandler gets into foul trouble guarding Varejao Knicks could be in for a real tough game tonight on the boards.
let me get this out of the way. I know that most of us are too busy watching the Knicks and posting about the Knicks to actually procreate, but for those of you with small children, sending calming/ soothing thoughts your way
i can already tell im gonna want to punch varejao in the face by halftime
watching league pass. its funny how we all complain about felton but the opposing announcers are always convinced that he is having a great year
When was the last time the Knicks came out with some intensity on defense in the 1st quarter??
Just as I feared, Chandler picks up 2nd foul late in 1st quarter, Cavs with 26 pts already.
Make that 28 points on an uncontested Cavs layup.
yeah. that was our worst case scenario. although, kurt came to play
yes refs. thats a foul on boobie
NOVAKKAINEEEEE!!!!!
ugh nothing being contested at the rim tonight
Crafty Prigs is crafty!
did prigs do this inbounds move like 15,000 time overseas, or do people eventually catch on??
Can relax now, went from down 6 to up 6 pretty quickly lol. Time to get some dinner!!
NOVAKKKK god that shot is pretty
Sometimes, I prefer Kurt to Sheed…
i love that foul by kidd/ thomas. no layups. and it saved us a point
this is def the novak lifetime defensive highlight tape
man i like felton but he looks like shit tonight
Holy poop, Novak with the block!
i think a good move by woody to sit tyson the rest of the half. now he is ready to go for the second half
I’m sometimes amazed at how poorly JR finishes around the rim for such a great athlete. Hopefully he and Felton will either start hitting or stop chucking.
tyson smash!!!!
RUNAWAY TYSON COMIN ATCHA
Tyson Smash part deux. Too easy.
felotn is remarkably bad at shooting the runner for someone so good who shoots it so often
Knicks scouts are amazing.
Copeland has the left corner three working.
great move by JR!!! now why dont we see that more often??
Varejao has 3 boards in 25 minutes. The Knicks are doing a great job of keeping him off the glass so far
Super lob from JR for a Tyson smash!
It’s not just that Ray missed that runner, it’s that he had someone open for a layup instead.
kidd’s shot is off, but im still so glad he is out there. need to get it to 10 and coast
ray has proven himself to be a perfectly willing passer to open players the year
if kidd could have made anything today, we would be having a serious triple double watch tonight. how amazing is that at this point in his career?
our pg is a bulldog. not the best shooter, but no one plays harder or stronger
Big FTs by Tyson after Cavs closed it to two.
wow the Knicks win with their back court, starters and bench, going 18-56
JR with the strip to prevent a layup. Felton hits his FTs and that should be enough. (or not as Irving hits a three) Make these FTs Ray.
oh my kyrie.
Can’t say I didn’t expect Kyrie Irving to kill us tonight.
Damn Irving is making it tense. Kid is good!
Ball Don’t Lie.
Oh crap. Novak Misses a FT. Varejao gets fouled with a second left down two. He missed the second!
LOL Clyde totally jinxed him.
Clyde willed us to victory on that one.
Also, Kyrie Irving is just… wow.
Exhale.
#1 seed here we come. Sometime it’s just better to be lucky.
The best teams have superior luck.
36-11 under Woodson.
That’s a 63 win pace in an 82 game season.
Look – it’s no shame to only beat the Cavs by 1. Kyrie is a freaking stud, and he pulled those 3′s out of his butt with perfect late-game challenges on them. And of course, missing from the game today were:
Melo
Amare
Rasheed
Camby
Shumpert
That’s 5 out of our best 9 players (Felton, Tyson, JR, KIdd would be the others).
Win’s a win.
Kyrie Irving is good @ basketball… that is all.
whew….Novak missed I think his first FT of the season.
Nets with 10 losses, Sixers and Celtics with 11 losses already. Looking pretty much like a lock the Knicks will win the Atlantic Division for the first time since the 1993-94 season.
Didn’t get to watch the game, but I look at the box score and see Ray Ray with only 1 turnover. I think we are starting to take this for granted, but I can live with 9-20 (or worse) any day of the week if he’s going to have only one turnover. Big difference from last year from the PG position.
Yeah, pretty cool knicks are back on top after all these years, but man– can you remember the league being this weak? Kinda like when the NJ Nets made 2 straight Finals appearances. “2nd best team” by default.
Who in the East, 3-15, even deserves to be in the playoffs this year? The rebuilding Hawks are #3, 1/4 of the way through.
It’s a good year to be half-decent!
exhibit #284729 in why alleged “efficiency” is overrated: the Knick who went 9-10 had a -8 in +/-, the one who went 3-14 had a +5, easily the best of the five starters.
Irving is incredible, wow, most of his shots were totally indefensible. hope Melo’s back Monday…
Really good win, we keep dodging bullets. Imagine winning a game in the past when 4 rotation forwards were out…
Why do you think Lin got so popular lol.
On that note, people really need to stop complaining about the playing time of the only guy on the team that can consistently penetrate, especially since, as usual, people just ignore defense when talking about these players. Novak has been the worst player on the team, and will continue to be that way unless he’s shooting close to 50% on at least 4-5 3′s per 36 minutes, and Chandler shouldn’t even be in the discussion for defensive player of the year the way he’s played most of the season (my candidates are Asik, Varejao, and Noah)
Felton is one of our top 4 players along with Chandler, Kidd, and Melo. Kidd cannot actually run the point, and nobody else can drive and dish or run the pick and roll all that well, so he is absolutely essential to the continued success of this team. Sure I wish that Felton would shoot a little less, but I’m sure Miami wishes Ray Allen could defend, I’m sure the Nets wish Brook Lopez could defend like Chandler, I’m sure the Lakers wish Pau Gasol could shoot 3′s, and I’m sure OKC wishes Kendrick Perkins didn’t waste possessions with post ups (oh wait they can fix that by getting a coach who has a clue)
Felton has warts, that’s why he’s a 3 million a year player who’s bounced around a lot. Let’s not sit here and pretend Jason Kidd, Brewer, Prigs, and Shump don’t have major flaws either. Melo can’t both run all the pick and rolls and play in the post, especially since he’s a much better passer out of double teams in the post than on help defense on the move in a pick and roll. He can score like the best of them, but Felton is a fantastic passer
yeah, the Felton slams are rid
Clyde said the same thing during this game and stuck to it when Breen challenged him a bit, has he watched Felton enough for you? it’s almost as if they know what they’re talking about, as Juany8 just said.
I sometimes think that your brain doesn’t get enough oxygen to think properly. This is one of those times.
hehe, someday you will realize that pretty much everything you think you understand about basketball is fundamentally wrong. actually you probably won’t, but I’ll keep pointing it out to you as long as you stick around.
anyway, Kidd/Chandler from last night isn’t the best example, as Chandler had an incredible second half, but shooting efficiency without context is really overrated, which was my small point there.
It blows my mind that someone would think that because of simple +/-, a player who went 4-13 could be more important to his team than a person who went 9-10. A person who believes that interaction effects make the box score virtually worthless is telling me that a simple box score statistic demonstrates his point about individual value. Absolutely ridiculous.
after the highlights of this game on the NBA-TV wrapup show, they showed the clips from the game where they asked Chandler about how instrumental Kidd has been in winning it (Tyson of course was over the top praiseworthy of Kidd) and then they went back to the studio where the former players talked about Kidd’s impact on the game and not Chandler’s.
and it doesn’t seem to take much to blow your mind, I’d suggest looking into higher grade fuses. :)
(and it was 3-14, not 4-13)
This season’s version of Camby is a more important player than Novak? C’mon now. Novak is the only scorer on the 2nd unit, and he’ll only become more important when we add a second dive man in Amar’e to free up shots on the wing. ESPN mentioned our first and second team when guys come back and they thought Novak wouldn’t be in a 10-man rotation, which is just silly.
I wish Felton shot less too, but JuanNY8 has it right — if he didn’t have brainfart shots, he would be a happy all-star somewhere else. The key is getting him to limit these when there are scorers on the court like Anthony and Amar’e. Without those guys, I htink these shots are more or less an inevitability, even though it would be better if he passed more. But when those guys are healthy, I think he’ll defer (the first Nets game aside, he does seem to give the alpha dog stuff up when he’s on the court with Melo.)
for the record, I don’t actually think that Kidd was bigger in this game than Chandler, but I do think that the gap is far far less than one could gather from their shooting percentages.
On a side note, Carmelo Anthony isnt having as good of a year as Ronnie Brewer according to WP48.
WP48, the metric that revealed that Marcus Camby was the best player in the NBA in 2008, only for the Nuggets to improve in both overall play and rebounding when he left.Of course, we could go on for days with examples like that. same thing happened when Reggie Evans, WP48 god, left in ’06.
Naturally, were James White to start getting Brewers minutes, because Brewer actually been a disappointment defensively, given the nature of Whites role and demonstrated quickness in getting to loose balls, he too would probably be valued more highly by WP48 than all but a few Knicks, still not including Melo.
WP48 is pretty much a junk statistic unless we are comparing low usage front court players whose role is to collect possesions(Chandler and Melos role on defensive boards is to block out their bigger frontcourt opponent for wings and guards to snare rebounds).
We know have two high profile guys with degrees in statistics, who’ve been a part of the apbr community since it began, both hired to be big shots in NBA front offices. Both shit on WP48, as do many other serious PhD level statisticians.
Camby will be the second best player on the Knicks when he returns, and he was the biggest reason those who followed WP48 predicted the Knicks would improve this year.
oh, and +/- isn’t a “simple box score statistic”. it obviously has many issues and can be very odd at times, but there’s no judgment involved in compiling it, either you’re on the floor when baskets are scored or you aren’t.
I am in awe of your stupidity.
heh, I’ve taken shits with more insight about hoops than you.
So it’s LeBron James and 4 paraplegics vs. the Indiana Hoosiers. LeBron plays valiantly, but can’t seem to keep his team in the game. His team is outscored by 50 in the first half, and he ends up with a -50.
The coach pulls the paraplegics AND LeBron (fouled out), and puts in a bunch of NBA 12th men. They smoke the Hoosiers, and Josh Selby ends up with a +51.
Who is the better basketball player?
According to you, and let me reiterate how fucking stupid you are (and continue to show yourself to be), there’s no judgment compiling +/-. Either you’re on the floor when baskets are scored or you aren’t. So yes, Josh Selby had a much better game than LeBron James according to +/-, but it doesn’t tell us a single thing about who he’s playing with or who he’s playing against.
And how are FG numbers not EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME as the thing you just described? Either your shots go in or they don’t. Shots taken, shots made.
good example, well worth discussing. tell us more about Andray Blatche being the worst player in the league and entirely useless and Jeremy Lin’s contract being some kind of asset two years down the road.
and I continue to be deeply amused at how my posts evidently make you see red to the point where you can’t actually read them. I’m certainly not defending +/- as some perfect stat, there is tons of noise in it and some very odd results sometimes (Novak had a really high one a few games ago for no obvious reason, for instance).
but on the other hand, there are plays like Melo’s hockey assists or Chandler’s tip outs of rebounds that aren’t accounted for in any other way. since it’s close to impossible to quantify player’s individual contributions (something you will seemingly never grasp with your lil’ bitty pea brain), +/- is a stat that doesn’t try to do so and thus can be illuminating in a way that no other stat is, AT TIMES.
Funny like a MF. Bottom line in this case: Kidd isn’t getting 8 assists if Jorts is diving rather than Tyson, and Tyson isn’t going 8-9 with Toney Douglas feeding him instead of Kidd. Plus/Minus is perhaps the single dumbest (in terms of scientific control) way to evaluate individual performance; shooting percentage in a vacuum is also highly suspect. I love the intensity of the “dissin’ and dismissin,” but last nights game transcended “who’s better” level discussion; it was a consummate team win.
Thank the heavens for Chandler and Kidd in Knick uniforms, who cares who’s better!
If you believe so firmly in interaction effects, you would suggest that Felton “looks” so good because he’s playing next to the best squad in the East, possibly in the NBA. What makes you think Lin wouldn’t look as good?
even if that’s the case (not sure), Felton is making half of what Lin is. I just don’t think that Lin is an asset attached to that contract.
Felton is shooting 40% from 3 on 5 attempts a game, Lin is shooting less than that from the field and only 31% from 3. Felton’s assist% is higher and his urnover% is lower. He is obvioulsy a far better ball handler than Lin. The coaches and players obviously have/had way more confidence in Felton than Lin. And he has a contract that could easily be dispatched should anything better come along. Really, we’re way past the who’d be better for this team right now argument. Despite a couple of promising games, Lin is arguably the worst starting PG in the league right now, certainly in the bottom 2-3. Felton is probably in the 15-20 range.
Maybe things change for Lin, but right now, he is exactly what Larry Brown called him: a very good backup PG.
They have the same PPS at 1.08, and Lin does it without the vaunted “floor spacing” that’s led Kidd to a .649 eFG% this season.
If you want to say that the players on the Knicks benefit from floor spacing, you can’t compare Lin’s situation to Felton’s. If the interaction effects are as great as most people on this board seem to imagine they are, there’s no way you can excuse Felton’s absurdly bad TS%, no matter how well he shoots from three-point range.
Think about how bad you have to be at two-pointers to have a .458 eFG% with 40% 3PT shooting.
http://bkref.com/tiny/hJfma
The idea that Felton is worlds away from Lin is laughable. You may not like his contract, but they’re both playing shitty basketball right now.
Is this stuff really necessary? Just wondering…
If Mike wants to ban me, he can ban me. I don’t feel a need to be civil to that smug prick.
I was just kind of curious because, when I read this kind of nonsense, it sounds like a pair of 4 year-olds screaming, “You’re a poopy-head!” “No, YOU”RE a poopy-head!” at each other. Which is kind of a shame because, when you get past the juvenile tone of the discourse, the actual substantive debate is usually pretty entertaining and sometimes even informative. And, by the way, I realize that you often make statements that you know are absurd for two reasons — one, you like being viewed as a “strict constructionist” when it comes to certain advanced stats and you feel that, if you were to acknowledge any weakness in the statistical analysis, you would be undermining your own arguments and, two, you get a kick out of how predictable — and reliable — the knee-jerk reactions of some of the posters on this board are. I can see you sitting at your computer saying, “Let’s see if I can provoke a response from Jon Abbey tonight — heh, heh, heh…” and, sure enough, he responds within minutes. (and, by the way, I admit that I, too, sometimes I get lured into your trap).
Given jon abbey’s comment about +/-, you think that I am the one who’s trolling?
Give me a fucking break. I’m no strict constructionist, but give me a statistic that assigns value to parts of the box score over jon abbey’s “JASON KIDD HAD A BETTER +/- THAN TYSON CHANDLER, SO IT’S OBVIOUS THAT 9-10 SHOOTING DOESN’T TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW” bullshit.
My attitude is and has always been that I trust the numbers better than I trust my memory. Will that lead to misinterpretations? Yes. Will it lead to more than the ruruland/Juany8 approach? I don’t think so.
What does this have to do with you being wrong about +/-?
Before this season, Blatche was one of the worst players in the league. Somehow, he doubled his ORB/48. Is this because he didn’t care last season? I have no idea. But last season, it would have been totally accurate to call him an abomination of an NBA player.
Why are you sidestepping my example?
Who said anything about trolling? I said that you are very good at –and probably enjoy — pushing people’s buttons and provoking responses. It was meant as a compliment. After all, how much fun would this site be if someone said “Wow! Melo’s great!” and 100 people posted “Ditto!” “I agree!” “Go Melo!” “Melo’s the greatest!”…
And, while I disagree with a lot of the positions that you take, I do agree that +/- is one of the dumber stats out there.
nothing, just pointing to the first specific examples of your idiocy that I recalled.
“Before this season, Blatche was one of the worst players in the league. Somehow, he doubled his ORB/48. Is this because he didn’t care last season? I have no idea. But last season, it would have been totally accurate to call him an abomination of an NBA player.”
you did it this summer, around the same time you were mocking NBA GMs, one of whom knew enough to sign up Blatche and give him a chance, which he’s delivered on in a big way and almost immediately. somehow the GM did this without checking his WP48, I’m guessing.
meh, people mock cERA (catcher’s ERA) too but I think there’s real value in that also. obviously there’s a lot of noise there, but as I said already, it contains elements which no other stat does, like hockey assists or Chandler’s rebound tipouts to the perimeter.
Just want to point out that THCJ thinks he’s right more often than me and ruru. This is after me and Ruru were by far the highest on the Knicks in the preseason, and laughed at the thought of Nuggets as contenders. This is after Ruru actually made a stake (which I personally backed) that the Nuggets would lose to the Lakers last year despite their superior point differential.
Furthermore, I thought OKC would be as good or perhaps even better this year after losing James Harden, and I was actually assuming that Jeremy Lamb would get to play, which means OKC is set up pretty damn well for the future despite losing their “best player”. I knew Lowry and Dragic were clearly better than Lin, and I knew last year was an anomaly for a lot of players, so that it was very possible for guys like Kidd and Felton to return to their 2011 forms when they were good players.
What’s going to happen when the Rockets, Nuggets, and Timberwolves combine for about 4 playoff wins total when you predicted that two were clear cut contenders (both a clear class better than the Knicks) and that they would all get 50 wins. Hell, if anyone had said before the season that the Knicks should pick up Rasheed Wallace instead of playing Marcus Camby, you might have filled an entire post with the word fuck. It’s laughable that you can’t even admit when you’re dead wrong. Even I can admit that I didn’t think the Clippers would be this good or the Lakers this bad, I might have badly overrated Dwight Howard as a defensive player
I like 5 man lineup +/- more than for individuals. There is just far too much noise for it to be reliable, and you can more clearly point out if a player suffered because of his teammates or because he was having a bad game.
Who said that they are “worlds away” from each other? Please read carefully:
“Lin is arguably the worst starting PG in the league right now, certainly in the bottom 2-3. Felton is probably in the 15-20 range.”
Depending on the stats you value, you could argue that they are both in the lower third of starting PGs, but you would have to be very generous to Lin and very tough on Felton to conclude that they were equally bad.
Felton needs to shoot better and shoot less. But his assist% is 5 points higher and his turnover% is 7 points lower than Lin’s. And while they are both poor shooters, Felton is hitting over 40% from 3, compared to Lin’s 31%, even though Felton takes them at a much higher rate. I truly find it hard to believe that we are 18-5 right now if Lin were our primary PG instead of Felton, considering how important the 3-pt shot and lack of turnovers has been to our success.
Not to mention that Lin routinely gets replaced by the great TD for defense at the ned of games.
yet over and over and over and over again, the real world proves you wrong and those guys right. over and over and over and over…