THE WAITERS IS
THE HARDEST PART
THE HARDEST PART
-VS-
Game Time Start: 6:00 PM ET
Where: The Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN
Officials: E. Malloy, C. Kirkland, M. Kogut
Media Notes: Indiana Notes, Oklahoma Notes
Television: FOX Sports Indiana / FOX Sports Oklahoma
Radio: WFNI 1070 AM, 107.5 FM / WWLS 98.1 FM
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PACERS Chris Copeland - Is very, very sorry for being stabbed (out) CJ Watson – Sore Right Elbow (questionable) Shayne Wittington - Mad Anting (out) THUNDER Kevin Durant - right foot surgery (out) Serge Ibaka - right knee surgery (out) Perry Jones - left ankle sprain (out) |
Justin W: James Harden, Russell Westbrook - The Dichotomy of Scoring A screaming comes across the court. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too late. The defense still contests, but it’s all theater. There is no way to stop him. No player can keep up. The defenders strain and stall, steps behind the blur that goes through them. The rim shakes. And the backboard — glass — is contorted by his force: the threat of a shatter. Defense is about having a few ordered states to stop certain movements and contain scoring. But there is nothing to stop him now. … Another figure thousands of miles away moves in deliberate, calculated paces, limbs rotating in precise arcs to maximize the chance of defender contact. The chaos of contact is now a harnessed medium. The defenders are part of his offense; they are one step behind spatially and two steps behind mentally. He is the means for the end. He exploits the system of basketball and mines the rule-book for advantages. He is an extension of the court itself. There are no cheers, yet the points matter just the same. … When they meet, will it be the entropy or will it be order? Hold still and watch the chaos unfurl. A screaming holds across the court. Will he bring an end to the system, or will he be enveloped by it? Will it end in darkness or in light? … The arena is now wrapped in twilight, hours after the two figures tangled. Nothing had been settled. The game had been close, and both forces fought hard — but what happened? And who were they? The Incredible MVP Race and Our Antithetical Foes With Kevin Durant injured and a 30 year-old LeBron lagging behind the top of the field, needing a two week recovery period, there was a power vacuum at the top of the league, and a handful of young players fought for the crown. Stephen Curry is the likely victor as he’s led a truly great team — the list of best players on teams as great as the Warriors is pretty short and includes Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and either Jerry West or Wilt Chamberlain. Anthony Davis is playing like a young David Robinson and has been much better on offense than we expected; his team is just in shambles and due to a number of factors like coaching and the sad decline of Ryan Anderson, it’s absurd Davis has been as good as he has been and that they’ve even competed for a playoff spot. But two Durant teammates, one former, are on the shortlist too and have swayed a number of influential people. James Harden has a solo act in Houston, propping up a disheveled cast that hasn’t had a fully healthy Howard and other pieces, and the team outside of Harden appears to be one very far away from a 50+ win season. Then there’s Westbrook in Oklahoma City who did everything supermanly possible to keep the team in the playoffs despite injuries to the former MVP Durant and Ibaka, among others — and he’s succeeding so far. The similarities between Harden and Westbrook can only be sketched out vaguely. Both are MVP candidates; both were teammates; and both are high-scoring, high-assist forces on offense. Russell is a so-called “zero guard” as a scorer, or shooting guard, trapped in a point guard’s role, or so we’ve been told; the Beard is a nominal shooting guard with the role of a point guard on his own team, creating plays and open shots for others. Yet the two guys derive their value from different means and don’t really play alike. Both are valued because of their offense and are not in the race for their defense, but they arrived there differently: Westbrook was a defensive prospect in college who’s had his moments in the NBA but gambles too much and is clearly not a stopper, while Harden used to be a human highlight reel of defensive miscues but has curtailed many of his mistakes and by some measures has been decent. You’d never think to compare the two players at a surface level unless you were sorting through top guards or MVP candidates. The difference between these MVP foes partly comes down to the old skill/athleticism dichotomy. Westbrook has a good case for being the most athletic player in the league and attacks the basket with great ferocity. He’s not a shooter, however, and can be too aggressive and will make mistakes. Harden’s a pretty good shooter, but his skill lies in what he’s able to do off the dribble and how crafty he is around the rim. He doesn’t need to jump over people to get points; he can just go into them and get to the line. Both guys are probably underrated, however, on the other side of the coin: Harden’s pretty athletic and Westbrook does have skill or else he’d just be a track star. These different approaches can lead to the same net result, but a large portion of the basketball world doesn’t seem to think so. The schism might be due to philosophical issues. Harden isn’t a classical star, and some old-school stat-readers see his FG% and aren’t swayed. There’s a lot of negative discussion about how his game doesn’t count because his free throw trips are bogus — apparently. his “true” Platonic value is lower because in some ideal world he would never get to the line with the same frequency and, consequently, he would not be a star. And we toss out any information on his scoring efficiency because of its exotic nature — for years, teams won without any notion of true-shooting percentage. Westbrook, naturally, gets praised for his high-scoring and criticized for his inefficiency by others. But he’s undeniably a force for good for his team, so some people take this concept and run away thinking efficiency should hardly be valued at all. Yet there’s something missing. Why Does Efficiency Matter? One of the biggest shifts the statistics movement caused in basketball was a focus on shooting efficiency, especially one that’s adjusted for three-pointers and free throws. For decades, the common measure for “efficiency” was field-goal percentage, which just describes field goals and not points — remember, you win games with points, not field-goal percentage. The stat true-shooting percentage is basically just a points adjusted field-goal percentage and more accurately reflects value than pure FG%. Thus, people like John Hollinger ushered in an era where we lauded guys like Chauncey Billups and Kevin Martin for their ability to draw fouls and get to the line. Arguments on the internet soon switched to that dogma, criticizing past superstars like Iverson and even, unfairly, Kobe for their inefficiency. In some ways, this approach with TS% has gone too far, but it’s not something to be entirely ignored either. There’s definitely value in looking at points produced per shot attempt (TS% is like points per shot except it’s transformed to look like FG% because that’s what we’re used to) as an efficiency measure, but we can’t stop the analysis there. For one, that doesn’t count turnovers, which are, obviously, a significant part of basketball. Dwight Howard’s shooting percentages look less impressive when you see all his turnovers and Chris Paul looks like a giant on offense when you consider his absurdly low turnover rates, which helps to explain LAC’s now annual dominance on offensive efficiency. Then there’s the playmaking issue of how certain players can raise the efficiency of their teammates by drawing defensive attention and passing, even if they are inefficient; this is the Iverson effect. By boilerplate standards of efficiency, Iverson was a harmful force on offense, but that’s misleading and his team did well when he shot more often. When Westrook entered the scene...CONTINUE READING NYLON CALCULUS |
Pacers Candace Buckner @CandaceDBuckner Jared Wade @8pts9secs Tim Donahue @TimDonahue8p9s Tom Lewis @indycornrows Ian Levy @HickoryHigh Whitney @its_whitney |
Thunder Darnell Mayberry @DarnellMayberry Royce Young @royceyoung J.A. Sherman @WTLC Zebulun Benbrook @ZebulunBenbrook Tyler Parker @_tkparker Trey Hunter @TreyHunter87 |
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