22 Comments
Jan 30, 2021Liked by Eric Apricot

I’d like to see a breakdown of Eric Paschall and his bully ball. When does it work and when is he just forcing it. How his passing and shooting has improved or not. Plus, when the Warriors would force feed a guy when he was hot, and if they still continue that with the new guys.

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Jan 30, 2021Liked by Eric Apricot

Yes please! As the Dubs' 5th leading scorer, I want to know how his game will improve/translate when Klay comes back and they become real contenders again. He's been inconsisntent recently though, and I want to know why he's been struggling to get his averages.

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Jan 30, 2021Liked by Eric Apricot

Thank you for this. I went to YouTube and liked it there as well. Does that help at all where you’re not even publishing this on your channel?

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author

Haha, hey it can’t hurt.

Though it’s true I’m taking a break from caring about what random people on YouTube think. I’m focusing on caring about LGW subscribers and my own curiosity.

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author

I’ll probably do a little film watching / video making tomorrow morning. Anything people want me to focus on?

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I'm really curious why the advanced stats (raptor/bpm) still thing Wiggz is pretty mediocre, despite him passing the eye test, and his counting stats looking pretty darn good... I'm wondering if there are subtle breakdowns I'm missing on offense or defense or both. I know there have been some very "quiet" games where Wiggs ends up with a respectable looking line, are there plays where he's not engaged that I'm just not seeing?

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RAPTOR takes into account a ton of things. It's pretty complex and tries to account for context (eg. on offense, who's guarding you affects your score... how open you are, etc.).

Without going in depth, it's hard to say. Wiggins is getting a lot of Wide Open shots (20% of his shots)... compared to somebody like Kawhi (8%) so there's at least one factor.

If you're curious, they have an in-depth explanation about how RAPTOR works: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/

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Things wiseman has shown improvement on (with before/after examples) and bonus: things he's yet to improve on that he needs to

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author

I have a piece on Wiseman on his dunks from the Spurs game, so I thought people might be Wised out. But I think his pick and roll with Steph is getting better every game

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author

*piece on dunks coming in the future, on top of the piece on his assists, so I thought...

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How about finding a good defensive stint vs. a bad one (doesn't have the be the same game)? There are games where we put pressure on-ball, fighting through screens, causing some deflections (thinking about Clippers and Lakers) and then there are games like Utah and the Suns where it feels like we just sit back and absorb punches as they attack us.

Or maybe it's just a difference in effort and not all the interesting...

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author

hmmm, let me think about this. The main differences I see are in quality of rotations (and sometimes hustle on transition defense). The on-ball effort seems generally pretty good.

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The problem with the Utah and Suns examples is there were mitigating circumstances in each of those that you could blame for low energy outings, and the D is where that seems to be the most consequential.

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Jan 29, 2021Liked by Eric Apricot

This is great. I gotta say I love DraymondWantsItMore's comment. That was pure gold.

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I screenshotted the article since it's likely the closest to fame I'll get haha

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author

lmao

> And if you think I sound so amazed every time the Warriors run a basic play properly or score a basket… just remember what the first two weeks were like.

Is it better now? I feel like we are still sorta floating in mediocrity

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Yeah, it’s better. I’d say we’re around average now, and in the first two weeks we were rock bottom. I had heartfelt amazement any time the offense was run correctly

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If we are average right now, then Klay is an MVP, because if you add him to this team it’s a clear contender.

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Our core three are like a well-oiled, high precision, basketball machine. Take out one of the parts and it's just your run-of-the-mill basketball team... and yes Dray included... we'd look like Blazers+ without Dray... a pretty good team but always in search of that last missing piece to complement our firepower.

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I feel like Looney and Lee are pretty dependably able to play as part of the well-oiled machine and Wiggins is almost there. Everyone else has moments where they gunk things up and we’re depending on them to be less gunky with more experience. If Wanamaker, Paschall and especially Wiseman and Oubre can each take one step forward toward really understanding how to play the “Warriors way” consistently, it would seem to make a huge difference to whether the team is a fringe playoff team or a team that can do some damage in the post-season.

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Besides the obvious loss of superstar firepower in Klay and KD, the other big missing piece is a supporting cast that “gets it”, be it Iggy, Liv, West, Zaza or Bogut.

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Jan 29, 2021Liked by Eric Apricot

Love these and really appreciate the insights!

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