Something else I've realized about how Steph, Klay, Draymond, and Kerrball have ruined me: Steph and the system generate so much offense that I don't crave offensive dynamos when I think of players I want to acquire, especially if their defense is suspect. Instead, I probably end up overvaluing defense (if that's possible at all).
A long way of saying that those Moody videos were fun. Moody didn't really shine offensively: not a great dribble penetrator and that offense had him standing still way too much, he just quietly makes the right moves. However, it was so fun watching him on defense, always alert, dripping high intelligence. Cautiously optimistic to see him play defense in the big leagues, and feeding off of cuts and catch and shoots in the Warriors system!
Doesn't really work with the tournament, but I was thinking in the context of signing Millsap that that would result in a pretty awesome "hired guns" lineup:
Man looking at those 3 units, it's easy to see how talented the team is top to bottom. I predict "the kids" will be ranked tops in terms of garbage-time units (if there is such a thing). They might even make 4th quarters interesting in games the dubs are getting blown out. F*ck, this is gonna be a fun season, I can feel it
I agree. He gets called "Loon" as far as nicknames go more often than anything else, but I never liked that because a loon is either a bird or a crazy person and Kevon never reminded me of either on the floor because he is groundbound and very deliberate.
Moose is good but if I was to call Looney something that was more related to his game than his name, I would call him Mountain Goat because he's surefooted, tough, and provides a lot of utility (A mountain goat does it by producing wool, dairy, and meat and Looney does it by guarding 1-5).
But when it comes to who No. 14 overall draft pick Moses Moody says he has learned the most from so far, it's none of them.
"Right now, it's really been [Damion] Lee," Moody told NBC Sports Bay Area's Kendra Andrews and Grant Liffmann on the Dubs Talk podcast. "He's been a guy I've been talking to a lot. He's been telling me a lot of game, behind-the-scenes type stuff, and really how to approach the league coming in as a young guy."
That right there is why it’s important to bring in high character players. A lot of guys in Lee’s position would look at Moody as a potential threat to their livelihood and cold-shoulder him. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who follows the team that Lee isn’t wired like that.
It’s also low-key another good reason to pick 18-19 year olds like Jonny K and the Grumpy Prophet over a 24 year old grown man like Duarte. Preserves the natural pecking order and gives a clear mentor/student relationship, whereas with Duarte v DLee you’d create a minutes conflict pretty much from day one.
There’s one video of the seated shots with Faried where James Harden is trying out the shot after Steph and Faried, so he’s not participating in the fun of competition, lol.
I’ve triggered an interesting Twitter thread arguing over a DARKO projection of NBA teams next season. Maybe should be turned into a proper article.
Spoiler: the projection is for GSW to have a net rating of +1 and for 41-42.
In my opinion, the most interesting part is to think about why their model doesn’t like many players (e.g. Poole), and what has to go right for players to outperform the individual projections; NOT interesting are any variations on “math can never capture basketball”, “fnar your minutes projections are butt”, etc..
One of the things interesting about sports “analytics” is the attempt to project highly variable outcomes from sparse data. It’s really the opposite of the approaches taken in modern machine learning (where the amount of data is extreme, and it allows for different approaches) and is more like what we had to do when I was studying in the early 2000s, and clever approaches like SVMs were en vogue.
Looking at this approach, I think it’s interesting in seeing the variation in projections and I think its interesting how far it diverges from expert and fan opinion. I do think the floor on this season is way lower than most folks realize, and modeling does a good job of helping to understand things that diverge from the attractive causal story around this season.
That being said the person explaining the model seems to be way too anchored on the numbers produced, not understanding the level of divergence projecting from sparse data with broad assumptions can give you. So though the prediction is thought provoking, most of the discussion around it is very wrong (on both sides).
My general impression is that the model especially hates players for which there isn't much (or any) data. Wiseman, Moody, and Kuminga all rank low because your guess is as good as the models as to how well they will play. Klay Thompson completely sucked the last 2 years because he didn't play. That's going to put a pretty sharp downturn on his projection and, as others have pointed out, models didn't like Thompson much even before then as he doesn't block shots or get many steals or rebounds. I doubt the model gives extra credit for scoring 37 in a quarter once ... but it should. I'm guessing the model has Curry at 11th most valuable, if that is what it means, simply due to age. Most players are on the downward side of their career at 33 and Curry probably is as well, but going from greatest shooter of all time as well as last year to #11 seems pretty steep.
Moody and Kuminga automatically got -2.0 as a default for all rookies. Wiseman earned his way to a -2.9 via crap stats in his rookie year.
As for Curry being 11th valuable or not, I can’t get too fussed about that, due to age and difficulty of measuring defense, and the fact the top players are probably pretty close in value.
I'm guessing that -2.0 default is some sort of average for all rookies? I'm hacing trouble with the Wiseman projection just because it is 1 year of data and while he was bad, it would be pretty surprising if he was equally bad this year. His per 36 numbers weren't terrible and he still has height and athleticism, it all depends on how much better he can get on defense. I was a little surprised to look at his shot chart and discover he only attempted, and made, 1 corner 3. That seems like something he might be able to do with more success than taking them from the top of the arc. Anyway, I get that he was bad so any model based on past performance is going to expect him to continue to be bad.
Yes the -2.0 is a default. Wiseman is the most volatile of players to project. In the thread, I asked them to recalculate team wins if Wiseman played merely at replacement level bad (-1.7), and that contributed 2 wins, which is a huge shift for this kind of calculation.
Going deeper into it, having Chiozza rated over Wiggins, Bjelica, JTA and Poole is definitely a spicy take.
Can't knock them too much for Klay, advanced stats have never loved him and who knows how he'll look after all the injuries.
Their minutes projections seem all over the place, with Curry penciled in for <30 MPG and Wiseman penciled in for 20.
Not certain what projected_dpm_rank is, but if they think Steph is gonna provide the 11th most value in the league next year, they got another thing coming.
Discussing minutes projection, and specifically why the model might be wrong, and everything else about the model is interesting. I just want people to engage with the work instead of saying “I have a totally different way to project” or “analytics is bunk”.
If Steph is healthy and plays ~80 games, we're not winning only 41 games. Even last year, when Steph played we were 37-26 and our NRTG without Wiseman/Oubre in the lineup was up there with the best in the league. Regardless of what anyone thinks about question marks like Poole/OPJ/Klay, Steph + Dray alone gets us ~45 wins with a non-tanking roster.
45 is not very different from 42. And you should address their specific numbers to engage with the projection. The most interesting is their expectation that Wiseman will play a lot of minutes and be catastrophic.
With Klay back and what looks like a deeper bench I just can't see any justification for a worse winning percentage than last year. 54-28 seems about right to me for an over/under.
I hope you're right. It's so many unknown variables. How will Klay be when he returns? When will he actually return? Will Porter and Bjelica be remotely healthy? How will the young guns develop? Does Poole continue onward an upward or regress? Does Wiseman come back stronger and more court aware, or is he basically starting over? And so on...
45 is the lowest baseline. I think we win 50+ games next year (assuming health which is a big if obviously), and I'm probably one of the most pessimistic fans on here lol.
I also highly doubt Kerr will play Wiseman a lot of minutes if he is as bad as he was last year.
I think he is asking for too much, i prefer Millsap over Mulder ( Well i prefer a Center 🤷🏻♂️ ) .
[Fischer] "Golden State has been the team most often linked by league sources to Paul Millsap...but Millsap's conversations with teams this summer have revolved around salary figures at or near the $5.9 million tax-payer mid-level exception, sources said."
I think 6mil is totally reasonable for Millsap. Now whether it's reasonable for ownership to pay 25mil for the privilege of paying him 6mil, that's another question.
It's also a matter of committing to filling the roster with another big. If they sign Millsap and Poole or DLee get injured, we'll be pretty light in the PG/SG side of the roster with limited options to recover. Giving up optionality with the MLE through the season shouldn't be taken lightly...
I agree it's not an ideal positional fit, but Millsap is probably multiple tiers above any other player we could sign to that last spot. Who do you think we could realistically sign who could legitimately play in the playoffs?
I was in on Millsap early in FA but after the Bjelica and Porter signings I would rather have Hartenstein. Not that there has been anything linking him to the Dubs.
I mean not me! but when you frame it like that it's harder to get mad at them. As a warriors/A's fan I'm just counting my lucky stars that we have Lacob as an owner and not he-who-shall-not-be-named
Sad -- and crazy that this ends up being reported as news. I know that this is the public life that comes with being an NBA star and with being Steph Curry's parents, but it's amazing to me that people write about this stuff. :-(
Something else I've realized about how Steph, Klay, Draymond, and Kerrball have ruined me: Steph and the system generate so much offense that I don't crave offensive dynamos when I think of players I want to acquire, especially if their defense is suspect. Instead, I probably end up overvaluing defense (if that's possible at all).
A long way of saying that those Moody videos were fun. Moody didn't really shine offensively: not a great dribble penetrator and that offense had him standing still way too much, he just quietly makes the right moves. However, it was so fun watching him on defense, always alert, dripping high intelligence. Cautiously optimistic to see him play defense in the big leagues, and feeding off of cuts and catch and shoots in the Warriors system!
Not sure if this has been. posted. Klay is coming along nicely.
https://twitter.com/NBCSWarriors/status/1430308313045012484?s=20
I missed that little hop into the jump shot.
This new Thompson kid can shoot…nice!
Not so sure about Andrew Eggwooddollar. Seems like a long shot to make the team.
This would be a fun 3-team round robin tournament to actually watch:
“The Kids” Chiozza Poole Moody Kuminga Wiseman
“The Middle Children” Lee Porter Wiggins JTA Looney
“The Elders” Steph Klay Dre Green Belly
Doesn't really work with the tournament, but I was thinking in the context of signing Millsap that that would result in a pretty awesome "hired guns" lineup:
Chiozza/Iggy/OPJ/Millsap/Bjelica
Man looking at those 3 units, it's easy to see how talented the team is top to bottom. I predict "the kids" will be ranked tops in terms of garbage-time units (if there is such a thing). They might even make 4th quarters interesting in games the dubs are getting blown out. F*ck, this is gonna be a fun season, I can feel it
I was thinking they could go full on hockey substitutions with these three teams and run opposing teams into the ground by half time.
We probably will see that at some point, depending on the matchup
Even though I think physically, the moose handle would better apply to Looney, I love it as a nickname for Moody.
I agree. He gets called "Loon" as far as nicknames go more often than anything else, but I never liked that because a loon is either a bird or a crazy person and Kevon never reminded me of either on the floor because he is groundbound and very deliberate.
Moose is good but if I was to call Looney something that was more related to his game than his name, I would call him Mountain Goat because he's surefooted, tough, and provides a lot of utility (A mountain goat does it by producing wool, dairy, and meat and Looney does it by guarding 1-5).
I’ve heard Draymond yell “Looney Tunes!” after he makes a good play.
he has a hell of a wingspan, and sometimes when he's defending he looks awkward like a bird when it walks with its wings out
Can’t make up nicknames…
No, you can't make up your own nickname, that's the rule. Everyone else is fair game.
Unless your Kobe I guess.
Moody on podcast.
***
But when it comes to who No. 14 overall draft pick Moses Moody says he has learned the most from so far, it's none of them.
"Right now, it's really been [Damion] Lee," Moody told NBC Sports Bay Area's Kendra Andrews and Grant Liffmann on the Dubs Talk podcast. "He's been a guy I've been talking to a lot. He's been telling me a lot of game, behind-the-scenes type stuff, and really how to approach the league coming in as a young guy."
https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/warriors/moses-moody-reveals-which-warrior-he-has-learned-most-so-far
That right there is why it’s important to bring in high character players. A lot of guys in Lee’s position would look at Moody as a potential threat to their livelihood and cold-shoulder him. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who follows the team that Lee isn’t wired like that.
It’s also low-key another good reason to pick 18-19 year olds like Jonny K and the Grumpy Prophet over a 24 year old grown man like Duarte. Preserves the natural pecking order and gives a clear mentor/student relationship, whereas with Duarte v DLee you’d create a minutes conflict pretty much from day one.
But then he could just be mentored by the older guys like Iggy/Klay
For funsies, and because I had not seen all of these before: https://fansided.com/2021/08/24/steph-curry-trick-shots/
There’s one video of the seated shots with Faried where James Harden is trying out the shot after Steph and Faried, so he’s not participating in the fun of competition, lol.
I’ve triggered an interesting Twitter thread arguing over a DARKO projection of NBA teams next season. Maybe should be turned into a proper article.
Spoiler: the projection is for GSW to have a net rating of +1 and for 41-42.
In my opinion, the most interesting part is to think about why their model doesn’t like many players (e.g. Poole), and what has to go right for players to outperform the individual projections; NOT interesting are any variations on “math can never capture basketball”, “fnar your minutes projections are butt”, etc..
https://twitter.com/ericapricot/status/1430192052336164866?s=21
One of the things interesting about sports “analytics” is the attempt to project highly variable outcomes from sparse data. It’s really the opposite of the approaches taken in modern machine learning (where the amount of data is extreme, and it allows for different approaches) and is more like what we had to do when I was studying in the early 2000s, and clever approaches like SVMs were en vogue.
Looking at this approach, I think it’s interesting in seeing the variation in projections and I think its interesting how far it diverges from expert and fan opinion. I do think the floor on this season is way lower than most folks realize, and modeling does a good job of helping to understand things that diverge from the attractive causal story around this season.
That being said the person explaining the model seems to be way too anchored on the numbers produced, not understanding the level of divergence projecting from sparse data with broad assumptions can give you. So though the prediction is thought provoking, most of the discussion around it is very wrong (on both sides).
My general impression is that the model especially hates players for which there isn't much (or any) data. Wiseman, Moody, and Kuminga all rank low because your guess is as good as the models as to how well they will play. Klay Thompson completely sucked the last 2 years because he didn't play. That's going to put a pretty sharp downturn on his projection and, as others have pointed out, models didn't like Thompson much even before then as he doesn't block shots or get many steals or rebounds. I doubt the model gives extra credit for scoring 37 in a quarter once ... but it should. I'm guessing the model has Curry at 11th most valuable, if that is what it means, simply due to age. Most players are on the downward side of their career at 33 and Curry probably is as well, but going from greatest shooter of all time as well as last year to #11 seems pretty steep.
Moody and Kuminga automatically got -2.0 as a default for all rookies. Wiseman earned his way to a -2.9 via crap stats in his rookie year.
As for Curry being 11th valuable or not, I can’t get too fussed about that, due to age and difficulty of measuring defense, and the fact the top players are probably pretty close in value.
I'm guessing that -2.0 default is some sort of average for all rookies? I'm hacing trouble with the Wiseman projection just because it is 1 year of data and while he was bad, it would be pretty surprising if he was equally bad this year. His per 36 numbers weren't terrible and he still has height and athleticism, it all depends on how much better he can get on defense. I was a little surprised to look at his shot chart and discover he only attempted, and made, 1 corner 3. That seems like something he might be able to do with more success than taking them from the top of the arc. Anyway, I get that he was bad so any model based on past performance is going to expect him to continue to be bad.
Yes the -2.0 is a default. Wiseman is the most volatile of players to project. In the thread, I asked them to recalculate team wins if Wiseman played merely at replacement level bad (-1.7), and that contributed 2 wins, which is a huge shift for this kind of calculation.
I guess the Rockets are really going to suck with so many rookies getting minutes.
I dunno, blindly assigning Cade Cunningham and Georgios Kalaitzakis the same projected impact is a red flag to me.
I don’t consider it a red flag, merely a conservative wrong guess by a guy doing a first pass analysis.
And the Rockets probably will suck with so many rookies getting minutes!
Going deeper into it, having Chiozza rated over Wiggins, Bjelica, JTA and Poole is definitely a spicy take.
Can't knock them too much for Klay, advanced stats have never loved him and who knows how he'll look after all the injuries.
Their minutes projections seem all over the place, with Curry penciled in for <30 MPG and Wiseman penciled in for 20.
Not certain what projected_dpm_rank is, but if they think Steph is gonna provide the 11th most value in the league next year, they got another thing coming.
RAPM loved Klay, RPM loves him less.
Their model is bad and they should feel bad.
Ugh. Clicked on the link and saw Sonya Curry filed for divorce. :(
Yes, I know you said minutes projection discussion is not interesting... but first thing that jumps out to me is that the model assumes:
1. Wiseman will suck a lot...
2. Wiseman will get lots of minutes (20MPG)
If these two things happen together, Steph and Dray are demanding to be traded at the deadline, and Kerr is getting fired.
Discussing minutes projection, and specifically why the model might be wrong, and everything else about the model is interesting. I just want people to engage with the work instead of saying “I have a totally different way to project” or “analytics is bunk”.
If Steph is healthy and plays ~80 games, we're not winning only 41 games. Even last year, when Steph played we were 37-26 and our NRTG without Wiseman/Oubre in the lineup was up there with the best in the league. Regardless of what anyone thinks about question marks like Poole/OPJ/Klay, Steph + Dray alone gets us ~45 wins with a non-tanking roster.
45 is not very different from 42. And you should address their specific numbers to engage with the projection. The most interesting is their expectation that Wiseman will play a lot of minutes and be catastrophic.
37-26 translates to 48-34 in an 82 game season FWIW. And is, of course, with zero Klay games.
I can imagine this team is super hard to numerically analyze since the priors are so mixed or missing.
With Klay back and what looks like a deeper bench I just can't see any justification for a worse winning percentage than last year. 54-28 seems about right to me for an over/under.
I hope you're right. It's so many unknown variables. How will Klay be when he returns? When will he actually return? Will Porter and Bjelica be remotely healthy? How will the young guns develop? Does Poole continue onward an upward or regress? Does Wiseman come back stronger and more court aware, or is he basically starting over? And so on...
I don't think Bjelly was injured last season, but the teams he was with chose not to play him for various reasons.
Whoops 39-33 is what I should have based that on. I'm gonna set my over/under at 50 wins.
(And by "analyze" I mean "project". Oh, for an edit button).
The range of possible outcomes is what makes this team so interesting and difficult to project!
45 is the lowest baseline. I think we win 50+ games next year (assuming health which is a big if obviously), and I'm probably one of the most pessimistic fans on here lol.
I also highly doubt Kerr will play Wiseman a lot of minutes if he is as bad as he was last year.
If Wise is as bad as last year, he's going to get lots of minutes in the G League, and that's it.
I heard Vegas has them at 48.5 wins which is probably about where I'd put them. I'd say 45 is a good estimate of a -1 sigma variation.
Moody after 25+ point games:
18, 5, 5, 28, 5, 12
It seemed more dramatic looking at the boxscore, but the three 5 point games is interesting to me.
Indeed, there’s really extreme variation in Moody’s aggressiveness on offense within a single half.
I think he is asking for too much, i prefer Millsap over Mulder ( Well i prefer a Center 🤷🏻♂️ ) .
[Fischer] "Golden State has been the team most often linked by league sources to Paul Millsap...but Millsap's conversations with teams this summer have revolved around salary figures at or near the $5.9 million tax-payer mid-level exception, sources said."
I think 6mil is totally reasonable for Millsap. Now whether it's reasonable for ownership to pay 25mil for the privilege of paying him 6mil, that's another question.
You are pretty much right
Due to the luxury tax/repeater, signing any player to the TPMLE ($5.9 million) would cost the Warriors an estimated $30-45 million
In other hand... who cares about billionares money ;)
It's also a matter of committing to filling the roster with another big. If they sign Millsap and Poole or DLee get injured, we'll be pretty light in the PG/SG side of the roster with limited options to recover. Giving up optionality with the MLE through the season shouldn't be taken lightly...
I agree it's not an ideal positional fit, but Millsap is probably multiple tiers above any other player we could sign to that last spot. Who do you think we could realistically sign who could legitimately play in the playoffs?
As of right now, yes, Millsap is tiers above other players, but through the season things can change.
I was in on Millsap early in FA but after the Bjelica and Porter signings I would rather have Hartenstein. Not that there has been anything linking him to the Dubs.
I mean not me! but when you frame it like that it's harder to get mad at them. As a warriors/A's fan I'm just counting my lucky stars that we have Lacob as an owner and not he-who-shall-not-be-named
I hope they get it done, Millsap is a great player even at 36. Major D.West vibes.
When you invoke D_West, I'm in
Offense can run thru Millsap just like it can with Dre and Bjelly. The possibilities would be amazing.
Always and forever (his 2-minute championship speech):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNp5ho0rd-U
We'd have insane depth. If D. Lee, JFK and Moody are at the end of your depth chart you're in good shape
***
Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving were both drafted in 2011.
But despite missing two straight seasons due to injury, Klay has still played more regular season games than Kyrie.
https://twitter.com/bballforeverfb/status/1429990397472776202?s=21
Wild stat! Btw it’s also true of Kawhi (who was also drafted in 2011 and has played 576 games)
Across Klay’s first 8 years (aka up until 2019 inj) he missed a total of 25 games.
https://twitter.com/samesfandiari/status/1430184321013276672?s=21
That's why you can't count on the Nets to be there at the end. Kyrie is just too much of a wildcard sometimes.
Also just to clear things up I'm talking about recent Kyrie. I believe the games he missed early on his career were all injury related.
Not sure it matters what the reason is, if you can't stay healthy you're still not available.
Sad -- and crazy that this ends up being reported as news. I know that this is the public life that comes with being an NBA star and with being Steph Curry's parents, but it's amazing to me that people write about this stuff. :-(
I mean… it seems to be relevant to people around here for some reason
Ugh