They could have got a defensive small forward with and outside shot like Battier then tried to get a big to pair with TD.
For me the frustration with Bonner comes only from playoffs failures.
Bonner is a +/- king in the regular season. So, no matter if we like him or not, we didn't lose many games because of him.
But in the playoffs, not only his individual numbers are bad but he also has consistently one of the worst +/- on the team.
Bonner spreading the floor does not work in the playoffs.
But Pop sticks to his rotation and will once again try to do some adjustment when we will be manhandled in the first round.
This post makes altogether too much sense....and that makes me sad.
Pop's little "push it" dance with the happy feet and the Furniture Factory Warehouse-arm is the new version of the D'Antoni "GoGoGo!"
Last edited by Dex; 01-21-2012 at 04:17 AM.
The +/- statistics on Bonner are nice, but I'd really like to know his playoff FG%. Still, I don't need statistics to tell me what it already quite evident. As far as I'm concerned Bonner's reputation as a playoff choker were evident the first year after Robert Horry retired. He's only managed to cement that reputation every year since. For Pop to continue relying on Bonner as a rotation player, regular season or playoffs, and expecting different results, is not only insane, but it's also the classic defintion of the word, insanity.
Career 0.392 FG% 0.323 3P%
+/- or FG%, he is bad in the playoffs
Thanks. I was too lazy to look it up. I figured he got worse in the playoffs.
Bonner's great when teams aren't paying attention to him and he can take virtually uncontested 3's. Heck, that's all he practices every day, shooting uncontested 3's. If he got the same looks in the playoffs I'm sure he would probably be shooting close to 40% too. But in fact we know that doesn't happen in the playoffs.
Fantastic write up on the merit of research and effort. The context is pretty damn good too. Hopefully Splitter does get more burn and we can re-visit the statistics with a much higher sample size.
The regular season allows you to catch teams unprepared but in the playoffs their better prepared. Wide open 3's you see in the regular season just don't happen in the playoffs especially the deeper you get. You don't make it far in the playoffs by leaving people wide open from the 3pt land. It will never work in the playoffs. You need to be able to hit contested 3's in the playoffs.
This.
If he is playing with Manu,Tp and TD as starter the numbers would be differents
All those bunnies Blair misses of passes become fouls and/or dunks.
Taking uncontested 3's in practices requires NO mental toughness, which is why he's good at it.
Great article, timvp. But nestled amidst all the insightful analysis is a premise based upon sand.
Taking a team's points per minute scored when one player or another is on the court seems about as reliable as trusting lottery numbers in a fortune cookie.
There is no underlying anaylsis tying the result (points per minute) to the varaible (who is on the court), simply an assumption that some correlation must exist.
This is analogous to a gambling theory called "trends." Proponents of trends analysis take a set of seeminly unrelated (but important-sounding) variables and run permutations of them until they find a pattern of results that deviates from the norm. They then look for those variables in upcoming contests (e.g., road underdog of more than 10 points after a home loss) and use them to attempt to predict future outcomes. It is a complete sham and trends bettors are soon tapped out. Why? Because the variables are arbitrary and meaningless although they seem significant when juxtaposed against an apparent pattern of results.
For example, let's theorize that the reason that the Spurs' points per minutes go up when Bonner is on the floor is due to Bonner's negative effect on the Spurs defense -- opponents score their points in less time per possession which gives Bonner's Spurs more possessions per minute in which to score. Conversely, maybe opposing teams take longer to score (or not score) when Splitter is in the middle, giving Splitter's Spurs less posessions per minute. That may or may not be the case but it seems at least worth knowing.
Look at the Spurs' great defensive teams during the twin towers era. I bet the Spurs' points per minute when Robinson or Duncan were on the floor were less than those of Bonner's current Spurs. So is Bonner an inherently superior offensive player to Duncan or Robinson?
The great Spurs teams enforced a slower pace that hurt their own offensive output but hurt their opponents offensive output more resulting in a net benefit to the Spurs (and playoff wins).
Could Splitter's presence on the court be having the same effect? I don't know but it seems unfair to compare the Spurs' offensive output with Splitter (vs Bonner) on the floor without comparing their respective defensive points allowed per minute. (And even then, you're just into a "plus-minus" analysis which is very suspect as well, i.e., the guy who goes 9-12 from the field with 10 rebounds and has a minus 10 vs. the guy who goes 1-10 from the field and has a plus 10 -- what does this really tell us about their relative worth in a game?)
There may be a reason that NBA teams send scouts to evaluate players and upcoming opponent teams rather than simply "running the numbers." Our eyes tell us one thing about Splitter and another about Bonner. We could all see the effect of the old Spurs defense turning the screws on a team until their team's body language told us more than a spread sheet ever could.
I don't know if Splitter and Leonard (along with Duncan) can lead the Spurs back to those days, but I'd sure like to find out.
Last edited by Russ; 01-21-2012 at 11:34 AM.
Good thread.
As far as playing Duncan and Splitter together more, I don't see why Tim and Tiago shouldn't be able to coexist on offense. Tim is taking quite a lot midrange shots these days, so it's not like they would get in each other's way constantly.
HOW the roster got put together is about as relevant as yesterday's weather. This is the roster they have. They can't get anything for Jefferson, they can't get anything for Bonner, and they don't want to break up the Big 3. They might trade Splitter, but since they need an additional big that would be sort of self-defeating.
You people can keep whining and ing and debating what happened in the past. (And you will.) You can keep believing that economics don't figure into the equation. (And you will.) I was trying to look for an explanation that was a little more logical than "Pop has a man-crush on Bonner" - or "Pop suddenly quit believing in defense".
In the workplace, low-level peons always believe their boss does random, stupid . You can try to explain to them that thinking like that is a big part of the reason they are still low-level peons. But if they could understand it, they wouldn't be low-level peons to begin with. Not that the boss is always right. It's just that it's usually better to try and understand the whole picture, instead of jumping to weak conclusions. (Now I'll sit back and wait for the flaming - from the low-level peons. Step right up.)
There are all kinds of problems with looking at a stat like that in a vacuum, Russ. For one, it's not pace-adjusted. For instance - points per 48 minutes isn't pace-adjusted, like points per 100 possessions would be. But, hey, apples... oranges... it's all fruit.
82 games has another pair of stats listed under "off" and "def" that shows the number of points per possession while that player is in the game. It shows that the Spurs offense scores 1.05 points per possession while Splitter is in, but the defense gives up 1.06 points per possession. (105 points per 100 possessions scored, and 106 points per 100 possessions given up) So if the Spurs give up more points than they score while Splitter is in the game, how can his overall +/- be positive? The answer is because the Spurs get more possessions than their opponents, while Splitter is in. One stat is pace adjusted, one isn't.
82 games has another stat called "Net 48". Basically, it's the net points (+/-) for a player, per 48 minutes on the floor. Everyone on the team is positive, except for Leonard, Neal, and Joseph. From that we can conclude that by getting rid of those three players, the Spurs would win every game. Hey... maybe that's true. I've just unravelled the mystery of the Spurs' losses through statistics.
Nice catch on that "pace adjusted" correction, GSH.
My favorite statistic was a basesball stat. Bob Gibson's won-loss record.
When it came to won-loss record, statistically speaking, Bob Gibson was the luckiest pitcher that ever lived -- he always pitched when the other team didn't get any runs.
I think you missed the point of his post. If the spurs average 4 more possessions a game when Splitter plays then does it really matter that the opposing teams average 1 more point per 100... spurs will still come out ahead every time.
The point of my post (dumbed down) is that I like Splitter.
ok sorry misunderstood your point
Points per possession stats are also available (I posted them for Splitter) which adjusts the pace and would expose any such issues. I know that you were just using that as an example but that isn't what's going on with the Splitter and Bonner stats.
True, championship Spurs teams weren't very impressive in terms of points per 48 minutes. However, in points per possession, they were elite.
I agree that plus/minus numbers have major limitations. It'd be dumb to ever draw conclusions on a player without watching them play.
That said, I don't think plus/minus is worthless. Especially when you have a large sample size (multiple seasons) a lot of truths are shown .... such as Ginobili being an offensive master, Duncan and Bowen being great on defense, etc.
The Mavs and Mark Cuban used plus/minus and an extreme amount of advanced stats on their way to the championship last year. Cuban's take on plus/minus is that while it gives you an idea of how productive a player is, it's actually more useful in telling you whether or not the coach is using the player correctly. In this case, I think Cuban has pretty much nailed it with that take. And with regards to Splitter, I truly believe that his plus/minus stats are ugly largely because Pop hasn't figure out how to use him.
You're probably not being serious but just to clarify a team can go 0-82 and still have every player with a positive plus/minus.
I don't think that would be statistically possible. There's have to be at least 1 game that was a severe blowout win to achieve that.
Ha yeah meant 1-81.
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