The NBA’s Preseason is finally over. Naturally, then, it’s time to rank some teams.
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Tag: Ben Simmons
The Butterfly Effect: Has Immanuel Quickley unexpectedly become the Knicks’ best asset?
Note: this post was originally published for The Strickland. Give them a click!
I never check a weather forecast until 1 or 2 days before.
It’s simply far too difficult to predict – infinitesimal changes on one side of the globe can cause massive swings in the climate on the other. As the old saying goes, a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo can cause a tornado in Tennessee. The Butterfly Effect – a tiny, seemingly irrelevant occurrence may cause colossal consequences weeks, or even years, later.
On July 1st, 2019, the New York Knicks verbally agreed to sign Reggie Bullock to a 2-year, $21 million contract.
Continue reading “The Butterfly Effect: Has Immanuel Quickley unexpectedly become the Knicks’ best asset?”
Tanking is Over, Long Live the Process
Tanking has been a pest for the NBA for over a decade, but no team embraced tanking as blatantly as the Philadelphia 76ers. 47 wins over 246 games, winning one out of every five games over three years, was rewarded with four young players with very cheap rookie contracts: Joel Embiid (4 years / $20M), Jahlil Okafor (4 years / $21M), Ben Simmons (4 years / $27M), and Markelle Fultz (4 years / $37M).
Visualizing the NBA’s Trend Toward Positionless Basketball
The NBA has transitioned into a somewhat positionless sport. As the years have gone by, more and more teams have continued to employ lineups that don’t contain centers, or utilize point forwards that guard the paint but facilitate the offense. Players have been thought of less and less as “shooting guards” or “power forwards” and more and more as “wings” or “bigs”. We wanted to visualize this massive change in play style by using data science methods to compare the play style of the current NBA to that of the NBA in the 1980s. Through unsupervised learning, we were able to see how the clustering of player data by position has changed over time, and what that says about how the play style of the league has evolved.
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Atlantic Division Preview: Last Year’s – and Potentially This Year’s – NBA Champs
Welcome to the sixth of the Corner Three 2019-2020 NBA division-by-division season previews. In each of these previews, we use RJ Garcia’s player-by-player ratings (based on on/off metrics and career trajectory) and per-game minutes projections (taking into account potential minutes lost to injury) to project overall team quality for the upcoming season. RJ and Derek Reifer also provide their own analyses and commentary to provide any context and additional insights.
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Southeast Division Preview: From Salary Capped to Salary Floored
Welcome to the fourth of the Corner Three 2019-2020 NBA division-by-division season previews. In each of these previews, we use RJ Garcia’s player-by-player ratings (based on on/off metrics and career trajectory) and per-game minutes projections (taking into account potential minutes lost to injury) to project overall team quality for the upcoming season. RJ and Derek Reifer also provide their own analyses and commentary to provide any context and additional insights.
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Who, Why, and In How Long: Round 2 of the NBA Playoffs (East)
The first round hasn’t been made best-of-5 yet, so it played pretty much according to script. In the East, that is. The Warriors have dilly-dallied, and the Nuggets have had trouble closing out the Spurs.
With some help from my co-host RJ Garcia, we already broke down round 1. Now, things get a lot more interesting. The big 4 in the East finally clash, after months of well-deserved anticipation. How do we see things shaking out?
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Who, Why, and In How Long: Round 1 of the NBA Playoffs
After a long wait, it’s finally here, and we had to do a quick breakdown of each of the 1st round matchups. Arya vs. Daenerys could be a doozy, and Bran vs. Jaime has all kinds of history…
Oh yeah, the NBA Playoffs are here too. I guess I’ll break those down too, with some help from my co-host RJ Garcia.
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The Sixers Aren’t Superman, but their Kryptonite is Green
Boston and Philadelphia.
Perhaps the two most historic American cities; one with a football team named the Patriots and the other with a basketball team named after the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. One who traded for Jayson Tatum, and one who traded for Markelle Fultz. The NBA’s two Atlantic Division (because I guess that’s technically a thing) rivals have had an interesting pair of seasons: the Celtics had championship aspirations from the start, and despite a disappointing, drama-filled run, they stayed put at the trade deadline; the Sixers have made multiple huge win-now moves and effectively capped off their long, arduous Process.
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The Process Is Over
During Sam Hinkie’s introductory press conference as President of Basketball Operations for the Sixers in 2013, owner Josh Harris said that the previous regime had made decisions without “good process. They weren’t good decisions.” Now, in 2019, the two leadership teams’ processes since Hinkie departed, led by Brian Colangelo and Elton Brand, have culminated in today, where the Sixers are stuck with decisions that – weren’t good.
Corner Three 