Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Hornets vs. Jazz. Paul vs. Williams

The Jazz played the Hornets last night and it was the first match up between two teams that were supposed to be title contenders. The Hornets are doing their part as they are percentage points ahead of San Antonio for second in the West. The Jazz have been disappointing this year and are currently ninth in the West and out of the playoffs but that can be attributed to injuries. The Jazz looked good last night and played a well balanced team game. The Hornets were tired and this was basically a scheduling loss as they came off a tough win over LA the night before.

Current records aside, these teams have a lot similarities other than the obvious Williams and Paul comparisons. They are two young teams that have the talent to be contenders and are maturing at similar rates. They both gained valuable playoff experience last year and set the foundation for future expectations. Both teams are lead by young point guards drafted 3d and 4th in 2005. Both teams have all star power forwards as the second half of their lead duos. Jerry Sloan and Byron Scott both have gone to the NBA finals twice and lost both times.

I will compare Paul and Williams but before we get to that, lets compare the rest of the rosters.

Carlos Boozer vs David West - Both average similar numbers, Boozer being 21, 11, and 3 assists with very efficient shooting numbers. David West gets 20, 7 and 1 block a game. He shoots nearly .500 and is almost 90% from the free throw line. Boozer gets his points on post ups, mid range jumpers and pick and roll lay ups. He is more of your typical power forward that bangs with guys down low. West can go down low but prefers the 10-15 foot jumper and can go out to the three point line. Boozer is a much better rebounder and can get tough rebound in traffic which West cannot. He is also an underrated passer. West is pretty much a black hole but West is a better defender. Boozer has a history of strange injuries but West has had tough time with injuries as well. The bottom line is that salaries aside, If the Jazz offered Boozer for West straight up, the Hornets would do the deal in a heartbeat. Boozer is an Olympian, West is a fringe all star. Advantage Jazz

Mehmet Okur vs Tyson Chandler - very different players that play the same position. Chandler can't shoot at all and has no offensive game other than to catch alley oops. He is lean, long and athletic and you wish that he could harness his skills to be a dominant center. He had a break out year last year but he still hasn't justified being the 2d overall pick. He makes his money on the defensive end and by rebounding but is too foul prone. He is also a bit of a head case. Okur is practically the opposite player. He makes his money by shooting long jumpers and has added a little dribble drive to his game. He needs to lose a couple of pounds, can't jump at all and looks more like a writer than an athlete. His defense consists of waving people by and yelling "toro" and then hacking them so they don't get a lay up. Would the Jazz trade Okur for Chandler? I think they would. The Hornets might like that trade too. Very small edge Jazz.

Ronnie Brewer and CJ Miles vs Rasul Butler and Morris Peterson - Good thing Morris Peterson went to the Hornets so Brewer got minutes to develop the way that he did over the past year. Brewer is getting better but still has some holes that he needs to plug. His jumper is still unreliable. He gets steals but his on ball defense is lackluster. He can't dribble or create his own shot which is essential in a league of 2 guards that score at will. Butler and Peterson are good shooters that stretch defenses but don't do much otherwise. Butler and Miles are similar but on different ends of their careers. Miles is young enough that potential is his biggest asset. Butler is a solid pro that is happy being on a winner. Advantage Jazz

Kyle Korver vs Peja Stojakovic - Peja is a shell of his old self, now surviving in the league purely on his shot. When his shot is off, he is useless. He is a poor defender, doesn't rebound or pass well and is getting worse each year. If Korver played the same minutes as Stojakovic, they would have the exact same stats. 12 points, 40% from three and not so great from 2, good FT shooter. Stojakovic has playoff experience, Korver is younger and not getting worse each year. Small edge Hornets this year, next year advantage Jazz.

Andrei Kirilenko vs James Posey - Posey was a nice pick up but I think they overpaid for him. Posey is the kind of pick up you make when you are one piece away - like the Celtics were last year - but the Hornets are not one piece away. They are one piece away now that they have Posey. He is tough defender and good 3pt shooter that provides a toughness that you cant measure by numbers, but more by championships. Kirilenko is overpaid but has been playing pretty well off the bench. He does a lot of things that is difficult to measure by traditional numbers. His true value can be seen by stats like PER and +/- numbers. Posey is on the downside of his career and has one or two good years left. Kirilenko is getting worse but is only 27 and capable of still being a starter. Advantage Jazz

Rest of the Bench
Devin Brown, Hilton Armstrong, Melvin Ely and Antonio Daniels - Daniels was a great pick up. He can back up both guard positions, he has experience and he plays good defense. Devin Brown is a Jazz cast off that is inconsistent. Hilton Armstrong and Melvin Ely are first round busts that take up space. Julian Wright is supposed to be talented but he hardly plays. This team misses Pargo for instant offense off the bench. The Hornets really only go seven deep.

Paul Milsap, Kosta Koufos, Ronnie Price and Brevin Knight.
Milsap is already having a break out year and might be better than West in a couple of years. It makes me sick that he didn't get these minutes last year. Koufos is already better than Armstrong or Ely. Price is really undersized shooting guard. Knight does a good job in limited minutes. Advantage Jazz

Coach Sloan vs. Scott.
Byron Scott is a good coach and did anice job before he got run out of town in NJ. He took a team that had no history of success to two NBA finals. Granted, those were two of the weakest eastern conferences in history and two of the worst NBA finals ever, but the NBA finals are the NBA finals. Sloan is already a legend. I don't agree with a lot of his player management decisions but he is a proven winner. Advantage Jazz

Looking at the comparisons, the Jazz have an edge at almost every position but their record last year do not bear that out. Last year at full strength, the Hornets ended up with two more wins than the Jazz. This year is hard to compare as the Jazz have had so many injuries. Still, with the Jazz being younger, deeper, with more playoff experience and a better coach, are the Jazz underachievers or the Hornets overachievers? The answer lies in Paul vs. Williams.

Paul vs Williams.
Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of Williams and feel that he hasn't yet reached his full potential. Bill Simmons wrote an article at the beginning of the year that was recently cited by the Salt Lake Tribune that said that Williams and Paul really isn't an argument, Paul clearly being the better player. That angered a lot of Utah fans but he is on the money with a lot of what he wrote. An argument can be made that Williams is the better player but most numbers say otherwise.

Williams has a few advantages over Paul. He is bigger and stronger which lets him guard the bigger point guards and can post up smaller guards like Paul. In head to head match ups, Paul has had trouble guarding him in the post and has had foul trouble. Williams is a very good mid range and 3 point shooter. Paul has improved his shooting this year but still would prefer to go to the basket than take a 15 footer.
Paul is a much better penetrator and can get to the basket almost at will. He creates so many problems, drawing defenders and scoring when he a second defender isn't quick enough to get to him. Even then, Paul is athletic enough to finish and is the better finisher of the two. He also gets a slight edge in passing with more assists and less turnovers.
Just comparing statistics, the two are very similar. Since Williams has been injured this year we will use their 07-08 per game averages.

Williams 37 min 18.8pts 3.0 rbs 10.5 ast 1.1 stl 3.4 to .507 fg .395 3fg .803 ft
Paul 37 min 21.1pts 4.0 rbs 11.6 ast 2.7 stl 2.5 to .488 fg .369 3fg .851 ft

The scoring difference of 2.3 pts is explained by Paul taking 2.4 more shots per game. The biggest disparity is in steals. Paul currently leads the league in steals while Williams is probably a little below average for point guards. While these statistics don't show much of gap between the two, using other statistics it becomes more obvious.

In the age of "Moneyball" in baseball, basketball has its own equivalents of advanced statistics which help analyze players better than traditional stats. These can be found on http://www.basketball-reference.com/ and http://www.82games.com/

Season Age Tm Lg
G
M PER TS% eFG% ORB% DRB% TRB%
Williams 2007-08 23 UTA NBA
82
3059 20.8 .595
.544 1.4
8.3 4.9
Paul 2007-08 22 NOH NBA
80 3006 28.3 .576 .524
2.4 10.3
6.2

AST% STL% BLK% TOV% USG% ORtg DRtg OWS DWS WS
43.6 1.5 0.6 17.7 23.1 118
110 9.0 2.3 11.4
52.2 3.9
0.1 12.1
25.7 125 103
12.8
4.5 17.3










A couple of differences stand out. One is PER which is a rating created by ESPN's John Hollinger that tries to put one number on a players total performance. For an explanation of what it means, click below
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&id=2850240

Williams PER of 20.8 is a very good PER. PER is curved to have an average of 15 so Williams is well above the average and is 20th overall for the year. Paul's PER of 28.3 was 2d to Lebron James and is 38th overall ALLTIME.

Another number that stands out is Win Shares. This is a stat that basically measures the number of wins a player is responsible for by himself for the year. Williams WS of 11.4 is excellent and his best year to date. Paul's WS of 17.3 lead the league last year and was 18th ALLTIME. Offensive rating, defensive rating, assist percentage, steal percentage all bear out the disparity between the two stars. These stats do not say that Williams is bad and that Paul is good. These statistics say that William is good and Paul is great. It also says that Paul's 07-08 season wasn't just great, but historic. The amazing thing is that Paul is even better this year with his PER over 30!

Finally if the statistics don't convince you, then the team comparison should. The Jazz are even or have an edge at every position outside of point guard. So how did the Hornets win 2 more games last year than the Jazz? The Hornets only have an advantage at point guard and as Jazz fans we would like to believe that advantage isn't that great. The truth is that Paul is worth about six more wins a year than Williams. Paul is the great difference maker on that team and if the Hornets were to offer Paul for Williams straight up, it would be a clear no brainer. Am I happy that the Jazz have Williams? Of course. I love Williams and I think his best years are yet to come as point guards don't peak till their late 20's. He might end up a top 20 point guard of all time. I am certainly glad that they didn't take the 5th pick Raymond Felton that same year. Do I wish that they took Chris Paul with the 3d pick instead of Williams? Only a fool would say no. Paul might end up being a top 5 point guard of all time. In fact, it might be the difference between being yearly contenders for the title, and the Jazz winning their first championship.











Friday, January 2, 2009

Utah's case for a national title

Did you catch any of the pre-game show before the Sugar Bowl? If you did, then you basically saw the announcers say that the Utes weren't in the same class as Alabama. Most of the country agreed and even die hard Ute fans weren't crazy enough to predict more than a close victory. Barry Switzer echoed the sentiments of most pundits when he said that Alabama wouldn't even have recruited a single one of the Ute players. The funny thing is that he's right. The recruits that Utah and teams in the MWC get are not the nationally ranked players that go to play at Alabama and the SEC. Tonight's game showed what a team can accomplish versus individual talent. This game doesn't mean that Utah has more talented players, but it does mean that Utah is the better team.

The final score for the game doesn't even tell the whole story. If you started watching in the second half when Alabama made it 21-17, you might think that these were two evenly matched teams heading into the fourth quarter. The truth is that Utah DOMINATED this game. Brain Johnson played one of the best games of his career and lead a precise passing attack. Alabama never got any pressure on him and so he had all day to throw. Their receivers made exceptional plays for big gains in the first quarter and seemed to get the extra yards they needed for first downs. The SEC is supposed to be known for its defense but their defense was really a non factor in this game. They looked slow, they missed tackles and didn't make the stops they needed to make.

There were many surprising aspects of this game but Utah's defense was astounding. They looked like they were playing against a slow BYU team the way that they were beating Alabama's O-line. Their overall team speed was impressive and the way they forced John Parker Wilson into making bad throw after bad throw was the difference maker. Alabama would put a couple of good plays together and then Utah would get a sac that killed their drive. Utah's secondary also played well and there were at least three balls that were easy interceptions that Utah defenders dropped that would have blown this game out. The crazy thing is that Utah is only the second fastest defense in the MWC.

The knock against smaller conferences is that they don't have the athletes to compete with bigger conferences. It wasn't the case here as Utah was so much faster on both sides of the ball and I don't think it was an intensity issue. I know that Alabama must have been disappointed to not be in the Championship game but that was weeks ago and if you can't get up for playing in the Sugar Bowl then you probably shouldn't have been invited to be there. Another wrinkle to this victory is that it was practically a road game for Utah. The game was in SEC country and Nick Saban has a lot of fans down in Louisiana for his work at LSU. Utah doesn't have a national following like Alabama and the crowd was decidedly crimson. The near silence in the fourth quarter was all you needed to hear about the power of this victory. If you played this game five more times, Utah would win four of them.

National Title hopes
Utah numerically has no chance at winning the national title but now you wonder how they would fare against Florida or Oklahoma. Honestly, I don' t think that they would beat either of those teams, or even beat USC but we'll never know and there is beauty in that. Ute fans can forever feel like they were robbed of a chance at the national title and end the season on a high instead of feeling disappointed. No one remembers second place but people will remember an undefeated season and the belief that they could have won the national title will stay with them forever.

Looking a little closer at the resumes of Utah, Oklahoma and Florida
Oklahoma has played a great schedule and has a very impressive resume.
Their wins against bowl teams are (rankings)
1.Cincinnati ( 12) 55-26 H
2.TCU (11) 35-10 H
3.Texas Tech (7) 65-21 H
4.Oklahoma State (13) 61-41 R
5.Missouri (21) 62-21 N
6.Kansas (NR) 45-31 H
7.Nebraska (NR) 62-28 H
They lost to 3d ranked Texas 45-35. The stunning thing about their wins are the numbers that they put up. The destroyed good teams by whopping margins. People in the MWC know that TCU is a good squad and if you watched the game, it was over before at the end of the first quarter. They did play 5 sub .500 teams to pad their win total but they thoroughly demolished those teams too. This is a team that not just beat but killed really good teams and lost close to one great team.

Florida also played a quality schedule as seen by the number of bowl teams on the list but they don't have as many wins against good teams. Their loss vs Miss is looking better than it did a couple of weeks ago as Miss finished strong but the loss was at home and it still isn't like losing to 3d ranked Texas.
1.Alabama (4) 31-20 N
2.Georgia (15) 49-10 R
3.Florida State (NR) 45-15 R
4.LSU (NR) 51-21 H
5.Vanderbilt (NR) 42-14 R
6.Kentucky (NR) 63-5 H
7.South Carolina (NR) 56-6 H
8.Miami (NR) 26-3 H
9.Hawaii (NR) 56-10 H
Loss to Miss 31-30 H
Florida gets credit for having played a lot of tough games for the duration of the season. Something that gets overlooked is how tough it is mentally to prepare yourself each week for a good team vs every once in a while. As you look closely, you notice that a lot of their wins are not against the upper echelon teams and their best wins are a close win against Alabama and a disappointing Georgia team. Hawaii and Miami squeaked into bowl games and both lost to mediocre opponents.

I have gone over Utah's record in previous posts, in summary
Alabama (4) 31-17 R
TCU (11) 13-10 H
BYU (16) 48-24 H
Oregon State (NR) 31-28 H
Air Force (NR) 30-23 R
Colorado State (NR) 49-16 H
Ok, not super impressive but more impressive than any previous non-BCS team. It really would have helped Utah if Michigan was good this year and they didn't play Weber and Utah state. Regardless, if you compare the three teams wins, I think Oklahoma's looks the most impressive but how much is loss worth? Or how many good wins is worth a loss? Or better how many good wins does it take to erase a loss? 1 good win, 2, 3 good wins cancel out a loss? Hard to say. Utah has better top tier wins than Florida. It also played three less bowl eligible teams but it also didn't suffer a loss. I think it is clear that Oklahoma has the better resume vs. Florida but between Utah and Florida it isn't as clear. It all depends on what a loss is worth.