MVP: The 3-headed monster of Tony Parker, Patty Mills, and Danny Green, who combined to score 58 points on just 34 shots from the field and 3 total free throws. Parker was able to live in the lane all game, and Green and Mills couldn’t miss from the outside, which allowed the Spurs to completely torch the helpless Cavalier D despite minimal contributions from Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan.
LVP: The Cavs’ defense, which allowed the Spurs to shoot 59% from the field and 47.8% from 3-point range. They had no idea how to stop any pick-and-roll involving a center, which every team in the NBA runs, and the Spurs were able to get wide-open 3s, layups, and easy trips to the foul line all game long. An absolutely pathetic effort from Cleveland’s defense.
X-Factor: 109 of San Antonio’s 125 points came from inside the paint, outside the 3-point arc, or at the free-throw line — the highest-efficiency scoring areas in basketball. In other words, the Spurs would have won this game by 19 points if they’d missed every single one of their mid-range jumpers. The Spurs have always been great about understanding where high-percentage shots come from, and the Cavs’ defense was powerless to stop them.
Turning point: The game was tied at 16 midway through the 1st quarter before the Spurs went on a 16-2 run to end the quarter, which the Cavs never came close to recovering from.
That was…ironic: Danny Green, who the Cavs decided to cut from their awful, awful, awful basketball team last season, is looking like a true NBA ballplayer for the Spurs. He plays smart, he hits open threes, and he’s a do-it-all guy on both ends of the ball. Playing with better teammates in a better system is certainly helping Green, but that’s still no excuse for a team as pathetic as the Cavs to have cut a promising 24-year old player go.
It may be too late to go into full tank mode, but I’m still semi-hoping for a Kyrie shutdown. All this season did was prolong the period before watching this team became absolute and total misery. Now that Kyrie has hit the rookie wall, there is no joy here. Miserable offense, miserable defense, miserable everything. Abandon all hope, unless that hope is for a miracle Anthony Davis lottery win. I mean, if it happened last year with the Clipper pick, it can happen this year, right?
Found your blog from Google, thank you for the informative read.
Meh–what you would really want to get the best value would be each team’s preference-order and value for at least the full lottery. Plus, conditional charts assuming they have potential access to a second lottery pick. Then, you’d have to weight those values based on team-by-team probabilities of winning various positions — i.e., the difference between second and third is minimal for team X, if they love Drummond more than Beal or MKG.
But, yeah…for our purposes, weighted average is a pretty good measure
Meh–what you would really want to get the best value would be each team’s preference-order and value for at least the full lottery. Plus, conditional charts assuming they have potential access to a second lottery pick. Then, you’d have to weight those values based on team-by-team probabilities of winning various positions — i.e., the difference between second and third is minimal for team X, if they love Drummond more than Beal or MKG.
But, yeah…for our purposes, weighted average is a pretty good measure
Bookmarked your write up!
@passerby. Exactly. The weighted average is the best measure of the value of each draft order. It is strictly increasing in draft order.
4th position’s median selection: 5th
4th position’s weighted average selection: 3.846
@ Tom, I thought it was very counter intuitive when I first saw it. Interesting how stats work. In order for us to get the 4th pick, the three teams with the three worst records MUST be selected for the first three pics. In any other circumstance we do not get the 4th pick. It’s just how the draft is structured where the first three picks are based on the lottery but the remaining selections are by record. If every single draft slot was a lottery system, then you’ll probably find a more linear probability based on record and thus… Read more »
@Tom
Wikipedia article on the Lottery lays it out in an extremely useful table. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery#Process
Kevin – where is a breakdown of ping pong balls/pick. I need to wrap my mind around those strange probabilities.
Without Irving and Varejao, Cleveland is: – Tristan Thompson – Old players, clearly on the downward arc of their career. Worst case = Parker, but also Jamison and Walton – Players that in the last two to three drafts were either extremely late 2nd round picks or were undrafted. They were not players considered to be NBA players, and other than Gee, they are not players that have stood the test of time and proven they are NBA players. They are playing in the NBA, because Cleveland has to trot out 13 players every team; 8 – 10 of whom… Read more »
Dan,
I will concede to being unneccessarily harsh regarding Sloan vs Teague.
AlexS,
I think for almost all NBA teams you could take their top two players away and they would still clearly be better than any college team ever.
To me, Cleveland right now is the extremely rare care where it may actually be up for discussion.
Dan, I understand that it’s certainly not that simple, but the Cavs are really bad right now. They lost by 35 at home last night with Kyrie, and I’m discussing a no-Kyrie situation. Part of the issue is that Anthony Parker today may be worse than he was in college. He’s 36. Everyone’s career is a parabolic curve and it certainly looks like AP is far down the other side of his. There are definitely 19 and 20 year old players better than him. I’m not willing to go their with Jamison, but same concept. Anthony Davis is better than… Read more »
Regarding my question above about Cleveland vs UK, as of right now… Sloan vs Teague. I’ll give the 24 year old the benefit of the doubt. Parker vs Lamb – If they traded places today, I have a hard time envisioning the Cavs being worse off for it. Gee vs Kidd-Gilchrist – I think MKG is awesome, but again I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the 24 year old over the 18 year old. Jamison vs Jones – Jamison is shooting 30% from the field since the trade deadline. I’ll give the slight edge to him anways though,… Read more »
Yes, but if you take any team’s two best players away, most of them would look like amazing college teams. If James and Wade are injured, do you think UK could beat them? Washington without Nene or Wall looks pretty pathetic. So do the Nets without Deron and whoever you choose to be the 2nd best player.
@ Kevin – you’re still missing the point that someone as completely terrible as Samardo Samuels was a totally studly in college. He shot over 50% from the floor, averaging 15 ppg and 7rpg as a sophomore. In fact, he looked a lot like Sullinger. These guys at Kentucky are kids. Anthony Parker would shoot over all of them (He was, of course, also a first round pick). Parker’s junior year in college – he shot 19ppg, and 42% from 3. He also had 6.5 rpg and 3.5 ast per game. Even Donald Sloan was studly in college. Maybe if… Read more »
The NUPE,
Ka’s numbers are based on the statistical probability associated with each team’s number of ping pong ball, not on past lottery performance.
Kyrie is out for a little while. When a reporter said that the Kentucky Wildcats could beat the Washington Wizards, he took a lot of heat for it. But couldn’t Kentucky beat the Cavs sans Irving? The argument against the Wizards statement was that “sure UK has 6 NBA players, but Washington has 13. Plus all of UK’s players are rookies.” But the Cavs are just putrid now, mainly rostering a group of guys that aren’t NBA players and are rookies or second year players. Without Irving, the Cavs top six players vs UK’ are: Sloan – Marquis Teague Parker… Read more »
Ka/Kevin, past results in a lottery don’t predict future results. Just because experience shows that 35% of the time a team in the top 4 is bumped, does not indicate any chance/predictability for the up-coming draft. It’s like the ond example from elementary school, if you flip a coin 99 times and in every instance you get heads, the chances of getting heads on the next flip is still 50/50. In any event, any of the top 10 or so guys should be an instant upgrade for us (unless they bust). The additional pick from the Lakers at #25 (assuming… Read more »
No matter what is happening on the court right now or in the draft later, the team is better now than it was one year ago. Four draft picks in the top 35, lots of cap space after this season, and several promising players on the roster. The offseason should be exciting.
Because we are picking 5th as of now. Kyrie and Davis will be the second coming of Penny and Shaq. This would be enjoyable.
Tom,
35.1% of the time, exactly one team between 5th and 13th leapfrogs the 4th team, while the 4th team doesn’t get drawn. That seems pretty reasonable.
Whoa, why 35.1% chance of being 5th? Also, the comment monster has been trolling me big time lately.
Less than half the time the pick is 1 – 4. Hopefully these shellacings are worth it.
@Ka, The NBA draft lottery is a very strange animal. The worst team also only has a 25% chance of actually getting the #1. Hopefully the Nick Gilbert bow tie magic will be back!
If we lose to Toronto on Friday, we’ll be pretty much locked into the fourth worst record. We’re not catching anyone and the teams behind (or ahead?) of us are at least 5 games apart. It’s interesting to me that if we end up with the fourth worst record, we are more likely to get any of the 1st three pics than the 4th pick. In addition, we’re MOST likely to get the 5th overall pick. Chances of getting picK; 1st – 11.9% 2nd – 12.6% 3rd – 13.3% 4th – 9.9% 5th – 35.1% 6th – 16% 7th –… Read more »
Its an 11.9% chance right now actually if you go by win percentage!!! Wooo Sacramento is better than us! Glad we are getting a supreme talent (hopefully Beal or Lamb or please god Anthony Davis), but it is pretty unwatchable right now.
Oh well, we’re closer to a championship this way, no matter how suicidal mallory is right now.
Iso that’s not a bad move if it’s a keeper league. I’d rather have Kyrie in 3 years than Blake. If that was for this year only that might hurt cus he probably will get shut down. Yeah wow the Cavs are doing this perfectly. They won a lot of games early when guys were healthy. Now between injuries and trades, they are in freefall. They will finish with the 4th worst record, and their draft pick should net a star. John I liked your Greg Oden prospect comment in the 5 on 5. I was wondering how scouts felt… Read more »
Noo don’t shut kyrie down I just traded for him in fantasy basketball!!! (but it was a total homer move, I gave up blake griffin. I still can’t believe that I did that).
Every loss gets us closer!
ESPN Lottery machine says 11.9%
I hate tank mode. I hate how Luke Walton is a better passer than Donald Sloan. I hate how much Hudson and Jamison shoot the ball. I hate how I can no longer blame Ryan Hollins for the Cavs problems. I miss you Sessions :'(