... a computer.

According to Jeff Sagarin's rating system, Portland is the 9th best team in the NBA, and every team we have played is a "top 16" team.  According to basketball reference's SRS rating (basically opponent adjusted point differential), Portland is the 6th best team.

In both cases, a surprisingly strong strength of schedule is the reason for the slack.

The sky isn't falling.  It's just a good team going through a tough stretch.

I'm pretty sure I started this JD just so I can complain about an off topic subject.  As a Detroit Lions fan, I can't believe they are about to give the most guaranteed money in NFL history to a QB that's never played a single NFL down.  My full rant is posted at the Lions blog though...

I like to think of myself as a pretty level headed guy, but I've slept on this one and I'm still pretty unhappy about it.  Maybe I'm just level headed around here because being  Detroit Lions fan puts a few minor gripes about an actual playoff game, on a team that is still improving at an incredible rate, in to perspective.

Anyway, here's to hoping I'm wrong about Stafford and that the Lions pick up sleepers with every other pick.

If you're trying to avoid depressing thoughts or trying to make yourself feel better about Stafford, this isn't the fan post for you.  I need to rant right now and I'm not going to pretend to think anything other than what I really think.

Now I gotta admit, I really like Jim Schwartz.  He's impressed me from the day he was hired.  The rest of the head staff, on the other hand, has me worried.  Both the O and D coordinators got their reputations only team with very impressive talent and heve since bombed in other places without that talent.  I don't know if you've looked at the talent around here, but it's only very impressive in how much we don't have... as in less than those other places where our coordinators have already bombed.

Then their's Lewand and Mayhew.  When they were promoted, 83% of us thought it was a bad move.  Since then we've somehow managed to talk ourselves in to the idea that, even though they joined the Lions at about the same time Millen did (i.e. have been in the front office for all that time), that Millen just never listened to anybody.  These guys are totally innocent of anything that happened with this franchise over that span.  Well, I'm just not drinking that Kool-Aid.  Case in point number 1:

We just gave an unproven quarterback that's never played an NFL down the most guaranteed money in the history of the NFL.  Some people point to the jacked up contracts #1 picks have been getting, and that's certainly a part of it, but we just upped the ante by 25% over the second biggest rookie contract ever.  Really?  That's the best you could do?  We're not talking about a Peyton Manning "everybody is drooling over him and thinks he's going to be great" quarterback here, we're talking about somebody that has been primarily been talked about, by #1 pick standards, in pretty luke-warm terms.

He's not exactly dropping in to the best situation either.  Situations like the Lions eat up and spit out promising young QBs with ruthless efficiency.  Here's the way I feel about his chances:

10% - Star (8+ pro bowls, maybe HoF)

25% - Solid starter (goes to a some pro bowls, has a great year or three, never seen as a weakness)

45% - David Carr-like career (shows potential greatness up front, but lack of offensive line, an average-ish running game, and only one good receiver ends up killing his career)

20% - Straight up bust

It's the David Carr comparison that seems all to close to me.  The Lions have expansion level talent overall.  Megatron = Andre Johnson (super stud receiver on a crappy team).  Kevin Smith = Dominick Davis (solid, but not great running back).  Lions crappy O-line = Texans crappy O-line (self explanatory).

It's a bigger deal than just this draft though.  As I mentioned in the title of this fanpost, I'm not from Detroit.  I grew up in Portland, OR.  I'm also a huge fans of the Portland Trailblazers and Oregon Ducks... but those make sense.  They are my home town teams.  They represent my home.  As for the Lions, I just picked them up because Portland doesn't have an NFL team (Seattle is the closest, but it's not "my home" so it doesn't count).  The exact reasons why are beside the point right now.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'll stick by the Blazers through thick and thin.  I stuck with them through all the Jailblazer years and through their recent run of not making the playoffs, including a year with the worst record in the NBA.  I stick with them because they represent my home, and therefore me.  I may stop following the NBA altogether some day, but if I follow the NBA, I root for the Blazers.

With the Lions, I guess the only thign that's kept me a fan in plain old loyalty.  I've even got DirecTV, just so I could get NFL Sunday Ticket, just so I could watch the Lions for most of the past decade (seriously, 18 months ago I moved in to an apartment that can't get DirecTV and I haven't even bothered getting any kind of sattelite or cable TV, the Lions were the main reason I had TV service at all).  I sucked it up through the tough times.  I joined in on the fire Millen chants.  I even went along with the whole "the Lions need 0-16 to finally hit rock bottom so we can start building our way back up" thing, but I'm losing hope.

Even if Stafford does pan out, we're probably going to need to go through a few more years of sucking to find out.  A few more years of watching poor QB play, to maybe have a good QB, or maybe find out we're screwed for four years at $10 million a pop with Joey Harrington 2. It's such a boom or bust pick, and now we as fans need to go in to "well maybe he'll pan out later, we need to give him the benefit of the doubt for a few more years" mode.  Why take a risk on somebody that's not really considered to be a super-stud QB prospect when the downside is all but ensuring four more years with a crappy team?

Seriously, what's wrong with just picking the guy who fills one of our biggest needs and is pretty sure to at least be a solid contributer for years to come?

CENTER

Portland:  We know our guys.  Przybilla is a rebounding/defense machine that's good enough around the hoop at the offensive end that he can't be completely ignored.  You won't ever see the ball intentionally passed in to Przybilla for a post up move though.  Oden is also a rebounding machine, but hasn't fully regained his quickness after the microfracture surgery which hurts him defensively.  His offense also suffers from his loss of quickness and currently relies heavily on overpowering other players.  He has shown a few extra tricks near the end of the season, but his offensive arsenal is still pretty limited.

Houston:  Yao Ming isn't a typical center.  He very big (7' 6", 310 lbs) and very skilled.  In particular, he is an outstanding shooter inside 18 ft.  He is a capable and willing passer and makes a very high percentage of his FTs (87% this year) which makes it so you can't just foul him like you might with Shaq or Dwight Howard.  His biggest weakness is that he is a liability on the defensive end when defending other centers with at least average skills and quickness.  His help defense is solid though.  He also is a good rebounder, but doesn't get quite as many boards as you would figure a guy with his size would (14th in rebs/48).  Mutumbo, even at 74 years old, is a solid backup for 10-12 minutes a night.

Matchup:  Unfortunately for Gregzilla, Yao is just about custom built to outplay them.  Yao's shooting touch, height, and post up abilities allow him to score on almost anyone.  The best bet is to get in his face and try to frustrate him, but don't get too in his face or you might send him to the line.  If the refs call it loose, our guys should be able to hold him down on the offensive end.  If they call it tight, he's going to get his points.  The ideal situation would be to then return the favor by taking advantage of him on the other end, but Pryz doesn't have the skillset and Yao is one of the few people Greg can't just out muscle to the hoop.

Verdict:  Somewhere from small to solid advantage Houston, depending on how it's called

POWER FORWARD

Portland:  LaMarcus Aldridge is a man of very few weaknesses.  He is a great shooter, a freakish athlete, has solid post up moves, is above average in both one on one and help defense, is a capable passer, and rarely leaves you thinking "what the heck was that?!?!?!"  His main weakness is that from time to time he slips in to "finesse mode" and then out hustled by the other guy.  I consider Frye the 10th man in our 9 man playoff rotation and expect Outlaw to get the backup minutes (who I'll cover at SF).

Houston:  Houston has a three headed "kinda small, but really really scrappy" monster at PF.  Their two main guys, Luis Scola and Carl Landry, are also great shooters that tend to put themselves in the right place at the right time.  Chuck Hayes is only 6' 6", but makes up for it with physical play and energy.

Matchup:  There's no readily apparent reason LMA shouldn't be able to dominate this position, but the Houston trio have a habit of out playing themselves.

Verdict:  Advantage Portland, as long as LMA keeps playing like he has for the past several weeks

SMALL FORWARD

Portland:  Here we have two guys that are almost opposite of each other.  We have the quite, focused, and intense Batum with his pesky (i.e. good) perimeter defense and "good enough to burn them if they let him go" offense as our starter.  He's not afraid to get his nose in anywhere and tends to come up with a lot of energy and hustle plays.  "Backing" him up (with backing in quotes because he plays more minutes), we have the laid back, super-freak athlete Outlaw who can get his shot off against anyone and seems to play the last shot of a tied game the same that he plays a random play in the second quarter (and I mean that in a good way).  He is really hot and cold on the defense end (sometimes shutting down the opposing team's best player, sometimes going in to full on matador defense) and, while it's gotten a ton better from the beginning of the season, still has a few more... situational awareness lapses than most of our players.

Houston:  Some folks might say one of these two guys should be a SG since they both start and both play starters minutes (in fact they are #1 and #2 on the team), but I say Houston just defies normal convention and plays two SFs.  The two guys are the crazy, intense, and intimidating Ron Artest, and the no stats all star, Shane Battier.  They are quite possibly the two best perimeter defenders in the league and are, in order, crazy enough and smart enough to do all the little things that help teams win.  Both can shoot the 3 (40% and 38%) while Artest is also a solid post up and driving threat.  There is nobody on the depth chart behind them, but there doesn't need to be.

Matchup:  Purely at the SF position, I think Portland does fairly well here.  Both Outlaw and Batum should be able to hold their while defending, while Outlaw should still be able to get his shot off enough for everyone to remember that he's there and Batum doesn't really need to get much offense in to affect the game.  The real problem here is that both Battier and Artest (especially Artest) have a good track record shutting down Brandon.

Verdict:  Huge advantage Houston, when you consider that one of them will be hounding Brandon all night long

SHOOTING GUARD

Portland:  Brandon Roy.  Smooth.  Poised.  Drives.  Shoots.  Posts-up.  Passes.  Rebounds.  Defends.  Leader.  Clutch.  He's not perfect, but it's hard to find anything to criticize.  His backup aint too shaby either.  Rudy has mostly been an outside threat for us, but has shown excellent passing skills and an ability to get to the hoop when he needs to.  He's also good for a good scrappy hustle play or three a game.

Houston:  With Tracy McGrady down and two SFs starting, the only SGs with any notable playing time are Brent Barry, and a fellow by the name of Von "The Baron" Wafer.  Recently Wafer has been getting the bulk of the minutes and seems to be doing a decent job picking up a little of the scoring hole left by T-Mac.  He's not as good on the offensive end and is certainly not as good on the defensive end, but he's playing much better than the guy we remember.

Matchup:  Most, if not all of the time, Roy will be guarded by one of Houston's SFs.  If Wafer/Barry see much time, they will probably be guarding Rudy or Batum.

Verdict:  Ginormous advantage Portland (since the defense factor was already considered above)

POINT GUARD

Portland:  For the playoffs, I expect our three headed PG will be trimmed down to a two headed PG (sorry Rex).  Blake won't blow anybody's socks off, but is exactly what this team needs at PG.  A good passer/playmaker (5 ast/gm) that can make an open 3 (43%) that doesn't make many mistakes (1.6 to/gm).  His defense is solid, but quicker guards can get around him.  Sergio is a passing wizard (75% of Blake's assists in half the minutes), but is still a little too error prone (100% of Blake's turnovers in half the minutes) and his defense is clearly the worst of any of the nine guys that I put in our playoff rotation.  Both of those negatives have been getting better this season, but there's still a good distance to go for him.  As for scoring, his outside shooting is merely average (33%) and, while he has the quickness to get to the basket, he isn't a great finisher.  Both his and Rudy's paly pick up when they are both on the floor, which is probably the difference that keeps him ahead of Rex on the chart.

Houston:  The rockets split time between Aaron Brooks and Kyle Lowry who are both young borderline NBA-level starters.  Both are skilled players, with Brooks having a more polished scoring game and Lowry having a more polished passing game.  Neither are still learning one of the most difficult positions in basketball and could use work in the decision making department.  Neither is a standout defender, although both at least put in the effort most of the time.

Matchup:  Brooks is exactly the kind of quick guard that tend to have career games against Portland.  They may also prove to be pesky enough on D to disrupt our guys.  While I feel Blake is the best all around PG on the floor, this is another place where matchups just don't fall our way.

Verdict:  Small advantage Houston, mainly because I can already see Brooks exploding for an out of nowhere 26 point night on 8-14 shooting and 8-9 from the line (probably during a game in Houston).

FINAL THOUGHTS

I consider Houston the worst possible matchup for Portland.  They seem to be custom built to stop our strengths as exploit our weaknesses.  I would give us a much better shot agianst any other west playoff team from 2-8 and I change my mind every 30 seconds on whther the Blazers would have a better shot against the Rockets or the Lakers... and I mean that in a bad way.

Even a month ago I would have seen this draw and figured it was already over, but with the Blazer's improved play over the past month (particularly LMA and overall team defense) and home court advantage, I'm feeling more optimistic.  My head still says Rockets in 6, but my heart says the Blazers pull it off in 7.

GO BLAZERS!!!

You may or may not have seen that according to Wages of Wins' Wins Produced metric, LMA is a well below average player (and Przybilla is having a Hall of Fame year).  For those not familiar with the stat, .100 is an average player's production.  LMA is at .032 and Pryz is at .356 (Roy is .226 for comparison).

This intrigued me because, while no stat analysis can ever be completely comprehensive, Wins Produced (henceforth called just WP) is usually much better at separating real contributors from the Stat-Bo players.  To figure out what this meant, I first had to figure out how WP is calculated.

Calculating Wins Produced:

The actual process is very complicated.  Here's my attempt at simplifying the process.  You can skip to the analysis below if you don't care how it's calculated.

Preparation Step:  Figure out the correlation between offensive and defensive efficiency (i.e. points per possession) to the number of wins each team has.  Once you know that X points per possession is approximately worth Y wins, you can calculate the value of each individual stat that goes in to calculating points per possession.

Step 1:  Use the values from step 1 to asses production of each player.  The stats that go in to this calculation are 2 pointers made (2FGM), 3 pointers made (3FGM), free throws made (FTM), field goals missed (FGMS), free throws missed (FTMS), offensive rebounds (REBO), defensive rebounds (REBD), assists (AST), turnovers (TO), blocks (BLK), and steals (STL).  There is also an additional value that takes a players percentage of the team's total fouls and penalizes them for that percentage of the oppenents free throws made (FTMO).  The exact values change because of how they are calculated, but it is roughly equal to the following:

(2FGM + 2*3PFGM - FGMS + .55*FTM - .45*FTMS + REBO + REBD + .55*AST - TO + STL - .55*FTMO) / 3

The formula above gives total production.  This is divided by minutes played to get production per minute and then multiplied by 48 to get production per 48 minutes (i.e. per game).

This model has rebounds, turnovers, and steals equal to a 2 point field goal (i.e. 2 points) rather than the usual model that has them worth half the value of a 2 point field goal (i.e. 1 point).  3 pointers also end up being worth double what 2 pointers are worth.  Here is a chart (from Wages of Wins) with the exact values from 91/92 through 06/07.

Value of Player and Team Statistics

1991-92 to 2006-07

Step 2:  Adjust each individual's score based on how much they benefited from their teamates blocks and assists.  This is done becuase blocks create rebounds (that may otherwise have been a made shot) and assists increase other player's chances of hitting shots.  I skip the exact process and just mention that the adjustment is fairly small (usually less than .01 WP/48 minutes, rarely more than .02).

Step 3:  Adjust for team defense.  WP does not calculate individual defense.  Instead, it holds every member of the team equally responsible for their team's defensive efficency (points allowed per possession).  Again, I'll skip the exact process and mention that this adjustment is also fairly small (usually less than .015 WP/48 minutes, rarely more than .03).

Step 4:  Adjust for position played.  This is one of the main things that sets WP apart from other metrics.  WP acknowledges that the big men get more rebounds and have less turnovers, not because of their skill, but because of the nature of their position.  There are three adjustments:  one for PF/C, one for SF, and one for SG/PG.  A player that splits time between areas will ge the average of their two positions (e.g. Outlaw would get the average of the PF and SF adjustments).  The adjustments are calculated by a brute force "add up the numbers and divide by everyone in the league at each psition and compare" process.  Here is the chart for the 06/07 season:

Value of Adj. P48 Across Positions

The values on this chart are just plain ol' subtracted from the production/48 number that we've been adjusting through the process.

Step 5:  At this point we have each player's value relative to "the average player" (i.e. an average player will be equal to 0.0 at this point), but the average player is worth more than 0 wins because an "average team" wins half of their games.  An average team has .5 wins per 48 minutes, so the average player is worth .1 (.5 divided by the 5 players on the court).  The actual average wins is actually about .099 / 48 minutes because of overtime games.

To finish the process, all we do is take the value that came out of step 4 and add .099 to it.

Analyzing Wins Produced:

There are several things that jump out from this model:

- WP loves rebounds

- WP loves making the most of your minutes on the floor

- WP has a defensive adjustment, but still doens't really nail down the hard-to-quantify value of an individual's defense.  It can even end up adjusting a player up/down when they really deserve the opposite because of their team's defense.

- WP doesn't care too much about total points as much as it cares about efficent points.

WP Strengths:

- WP is completely objective.  There is no tricky "how many points is an assist worth?" guess work.  It just analyzes data to calculate that X stat has been worth Y wins.

- WP isn't impressed by large inneficient point totals.  If you need to jack up 25 shots to make 10, WP is gonna give you the smack down.  You better make your free throws too.

WP Weaknesses:

- The objectivity is good, but the lack of subjectivity can also be bad.  More on this below.

- The defensive adjustment is very crude and probably only marginally effective.  It probably gets it right more often than it gets it wrong as good defensive teams are going to have more good defensive players and bad defensive teams are going to have more bad defensive players, but this also means that when Glenn Davis was warming the bench on the Spurs, he was picking up a nice fat WP team defense bonus.  The adjustment is fairly small, but it's still something to consider when WP is way off from conventional wisdom.

Wins Produced vs LMA (and Przybilla)

So what's up with LMA?  The following are all factors:

- The Blazers have a below average defensive efficency this year (109.5 vs 16.9 league average) so he losing a little there whether he deserves it or not, but not a lot and other players are able to overcome it just fine.  LMA is usually one of our better defenders so he's probably unfairly penalized here.

- He doesn't rebound a whole lot for his position.  He is 35th among PFs in rebounds per minute (and WP loves rebounds).

- Since he is mostly a jump shooter, his field goal percentage isn't that great for a PF either (21st among PFs in field goal %, 17th in free throw %), but his position adjustment still has it's curve set by guys that primarily shoot lay-ups and dunks.

I don't think it's time to hit the panic button yet.  He is still young, he's learning more post moves, and even just this year his shot has started falling a lot more.  His defense is also improving quite a bit each year.  He also gets a lot of minutes on some nights when the offense isn't going through him, which hurts "per minute" stats like WP... but he could make up for that with more rebounds though.

Considering his age and experience level, and the prgoress he's made so far, I'm not too worried.  It would be nice to have more and I expect more down the road from a #2 pick, but all things considered I'd call his performance pretty normalwhelming.

As for Przybilla, I like that this shows how superb he's been this year... but .356 seems a little crazy.  Dwayne Wade, for example, is at .350.  I think the efficiency loving WP gives him too much credit for his 75% shooting.  To a math equation, all 75% shooting is the same, but we all know that vast majority of his shots are wide open dishes from a driving guards or putbacks.  Yes, most post players can say that to some extent and that's what the whole position adjusment is about, but Pryz takes it to the extreme.

First a disclaimer... I have no particular expertise in this area and intend only for it be an interesting thinking point.  Take it with a grain of salt.  That said, I'll start with my own story.

About a week ago, I got contact lenses for the first time in about 15 years.  I am mainly nearsighted, but have alittle bit of astigmatism.  Normally a small amount of astigmatism can be corrected by overcorrecting the nearsightedness, which, because of the complexity (and expense) of correcting astigmatism with contact lenses, is usually tried first (with glasses, it's all the same so they just do right the first time).

It turns out, I'm one of the weird ones who's eyes just won't let the overcorrection make up for the astigmatism.  Over the past week, my eyes were trying though.  My vision seemed to go in an out throughout the day.  If I ever just let my eyes relax though, my vision would always go out.  I wasn't ever conciously trying to make my eyes adjust, but there was definitely something subconcious going on.

The interesting part to me was noticing that I was so much less aware of everything around me.  This was not only true of the times when my vision seemed to be the best, but was actually most true when my vision seemed to be at its best.  Somehow putting the mental effort in to self correcting my vision (even subconsciously) was reducing the amount of mental capacity I had to analyze what I was seeing.  While I could look around and see everything around me, I just didn't have that natural awareness of things like "while pulling out of this street, I need to be aware of the cars 10 seconds out to the left" and lost even more mental capacity as I had to make a conscious and deliberate effort to compensate.

The first time I saw the optometrist when getting my contacts, I was able to finagle my vision in to being close enough to 20/20 for the optometrist to let me go, but on the followup today, I just let my vision be where it wanted to be and they gave me some of the fancy astigmatism contacts.  My vision is very very nearly as good as it is with my glasses and the awareness problems are gone.

So how does this relate to basketball?  I've heard so many times about players who "just see the court better".  It's been said about ever great passer that ever played.  They clearly have it going right already, but what about those less fortuante players that just can't ever seem to be aware of what's going on around them?  The Z-Bo and Trout's of the world?  Is it possible that they have natural vision problems that the "vision control part of the brain" is working overtime to correct, thereby robbing them of potential court vision?  Or perhaps they already know they have astigmatism (or somethign similar) and just don't have it treated properly.

Some people are just blessed with natural ability.  Usain Bolt was just built better for sprinting than Bill Walton.  Some people are just going to have better vision.  As far as I know though, what I've described in this post isn't something the normal optometry community considers, and we may have some players that are unnecessarily hold thier own "court vision" back.

I was upset about losing two in a row, but then I realized how cool it is to be upset about losing two in a row.

I admit that is somewhat mood voodoo and not very championshiply of me to say, but I'm only worried about being playoffshiply this year so... meh.

Of course if we lose to the Clippers, all zen bets are off... but that's not gonna happen so I don't need to worry about it.