Frank:
Re: trading Gasol – who wants that guy? Huge contract x 2 more years. Trade value plummeting.

I’d trade Amar’e for him all day! And I’m bullish on Stoudemire. But I don’t think his value has plummeted that much, has it?

Nick C.:
It’s all very complicated and convoluted to parcel out “points” isn’t it? To use Jon Abbey’s “missed shot” conversion. Penetrator who misses gets a missed shot. Screeneer or boxer outer gets nothing. Rebound putback guy gets credit for rebound and made shot.

Yea that’s the problem with all of this analysis, everything is related to everything else, it’s a massive optimization problem that doesn’t have one easy answer. I do think everything should be tied back to how likely it is to increase your chances of winning, which means I think a good shot that rims out is a better indicator of future success than bad shot that happens to bank in. I would literally ignore the results of the shots and start paying attention to the type of shot occurring.

The ideal is to either get an uncontested open layup or corner 3, so I would first find players than can improve my chances of getting those types of looks on a team scale. That’s not Novak and Camby, it’s Melo and Kobe (although someone like Chandler plays an important part with his screening. So does Perkins though). Once I find players that can allow be to run an offense that gets good looks, I go out and find players that can finish those good looks. All the open 3′s in the world mean nothing if you have Landry Fields and Chris Duhon shooting them, and Asik has shown me this year that an open path to the rim means very little if your big man can’t freaking catch the ball on the move.

Still, this isn’t a chicken-egg problem, you very clearly benefit from creating space more so than from good finishers since even Artest will eventually start hitting wide open 3′s, and even Perkins can shoot over 70% at the rim. That’s why the Spurs are so successful, they have players elite at creating space for open looks and can just plug in efficient specialists every year

Nick C.:
Juan – more or less, but the benefit of the O-Board vs. the deflection is the (almost always) new 24.

That certainly has some extra benefit, and so recovering a miss vs. recovering a deflection could be worth a little bit more, but it’s not drastically different, and there’s also the fact that turnovers are usually easier to score off of than defensive rebounds, so saving the turnover might also mean saving an easy two points the other way. Either way, that kind of value is not consistently applied, how is there not some stat for a player saving a ball by diving out of bounds? That’s a surefire turnover, should we simply give the give who made the bad pass a turnover and then give the guy who hustled and got the ball back credit for “saving” the possession?

jon abbey:
one extreme example in the ongoing offensive rebound debate: the Nets had 16 last night to OKC’s 2, yet still lost at home.

One interesting thing to keep in mind: Even though offensive rebounds are good, they are a symptom that your team is missing shots too. Even if you have good offensive rebounders, I’d rather just make the shot than get an offensive rebound, which is why I’m still sticking to my model that treats an offensive rebound as a way to erase a missed shot.

Think about it, every time you get an offensive rebound you are making up for a missed shot, the possession is basically being reset and your team is in a similar position to the one they were in before the shot went up. From a team perspective, getting back a missed shot isn’t much different than throwing a bad pass that gets tipped but ends up being recovered by your teammate. Either way you very nearly lost the ball to the other team without scoring, but you didn’t, and so essentially nothing happened to create value

Juany8: I’d love it if Houston would get him, he’d turn Asik into a stud and find some way to get Lin going.

Amazing how Houston goes from the perenially underrated but awesome coach in Adelman to McHale of all people. I would love to see what metrics Morey used to suggest that that would be an upgrade or even a lateral move.

Re: trading Gasol – who wants that guy? Huge contract x 2 more years. Trade value plummeting. Minnesota? Adelman would love Gasol, but not sure you give up Pekovic to get him. Derrick Williams? There’s no easy 2 team trade there.

Frank:
And interesting that Harden’s winning play (pass-off to Smith for winning FTs) is completely lost in the boxscore for Harden even though he blew by Artest causing the defense to collapse, creating room for Greg Smith to cut and get fouled.

And last thing re: Dwight Howard — boy does SVG come out smelling like roses so far.Dwight looks lost (for him) on defense – some of that might be health, but I’m pretty sure scheme has something to do with it — and I’m pretty sure the scheme is not getting much better anytime soon with MDA at the helm.Can’t really blame the other players on the Lakers too — seriously, DH12 was covering for Turkoglu, Quentin Richardson, Redick, Rashard Lewis, etc and dominating in Orlando, and he has at least 3 competent defenders in LA with Pau, Kobe, and Artest.

The year Orlando went to the finals, the starters were Rashard Lweis, Hedo, a rookie Courtney Lee, and Rafer Alston. Not one of those guys was an above average defender. Their bench was better, but Stan Van Gundy just totally outclasses MDA as a coach, I’d love it if Houston would get him, he’d turn Asik into a stud and find some way to get Lin going.

And last thing re: Dwight Howard — boy does SVG come out smelling like roses so far. Dwight looks lost (for him) on defense – some of that might be health, but I’m pretty sure scheme has something to do with it — and I’m pretty sure the scheme is not getting much better anytime soon with MDA at the helm. Can’t really blame the other players on the Lakers too — seriously, DH12 was covering for Turkoglu, Quentin Richardson, Redick, Rashard Lewis, etc and dominating in Orlando, and he has at least 3 competent defenders in LA with Pau, Kobe, and Artest.