First sorry for the formatting issues, I have no idea how it decides to format stuff but I did my best to at least make it readable. I'm not necessarily trying to draw conclusions with this post but let the numbers speak for themselves and hopefully generate some discussion.

This is simply the impact he has on the team and game. Unfortunately Rubio got hurt and the season went downhill but I thought it would be interesting to look at what really changed with the team after the injury. To do this I took the hoopdata basic team stats and looked at the per game averages during different periods of the season. Originally I broke the season into two sections: with Rubio and without Rubio. The last few games of the season were pretty bad so I decided to break the "without Rubio" section into two more sections for people to compare: with Love and without Love.

Here's the basic info:

Slightly more in-depth info:

Shot location info:

The most obvious:
Rubio's biggest impact on the team comes on defense, the 10 point difference in points against says it all. With Rubio was the only part of the season where we had a positive point differential, it was also the wolves lowest average points per game, this trend is also seen with the difference in offensive and defensive efficiency. Also the opponents TOR dropped without Rubio which I believe is a direct result of Rubio's ability to get in passing lanes and get steals.

The most shocking:
Rubio has almost no impact on offense, I think this has more to do with how well Ridnour played after Rubio got hurt and how well JJ played when Ridnour got hurt. We did have less possessions with Rubio which comes from his ability to know when to push it and when to slow it down, something that's not a strength of Ridnour and JJ. Aside from that the offense would appear to run smoother without Rubio: roughly identical efg%, less turnovers, less long twos, and even slightly less assists. My theory on the lower assists comes from the increases FTR, perhaps this was a result of some of his setups which didn't end with an assist.

I've coached a few different high school level sports teams and to evaluate my coaching and compare myself to other coaches I would look at three things:

First did my team win a lot of games?

Second if it was a team that didn't win many games did the players atleast show significant improvement?

Third did I get the most out of each player?

So how has Rambis been doing? I would say terrible. Before everyone joins the SnP bandwagon and says we can't expect a coach to do anything with our D-league roster lets see how much potential talent really is on the roster.

Kevin Love- I admit to being the biggest Love hater but even I know he's a boarder line all-star on a daily basis.

Michael Beasley- A great player who has the talent to be a top 5 SF in the league. Even though he is under performing he is about 7th in per at SF.

Luke Ridnour- Definitely not D-league, has reached his full potential at this point in his career and is about 20th in per for his position. I don't think 10 other teams are playing with D-league point guards.

Darko Milicic- Talent wise not D-league, consistency wise D-league.

Corey Brewer- D-league offense, NBA level defense. Usually has the toughest defensive match up and is usually able to hold his man to below average.

Martel Webster- Getting time and contributing on a playoff team makes him an NBA talent.

Wes Johnson- NBA length, athleticism, shot, and also plays solid D. He is no where near his full potential but has the talent to play in the NBA.

Jonny Flynn- Needs lots of improvement but there is enough talent/potential there to be a very good scoring PG.

So now that we've established that there are actually decent players on the team how has Rambis done?

They don't win many games so that's a failure. There are 2 huge problems with this team, turnovers and defense. There has been absolutely no progress so improvement is a failure. He also has only gotten the most out of 1 player, Kevin Love. Beasley, Johnson, Flynn and Darko all of the talent to be much much better. I'll give Rambis a pass with Darko because he's been in the league for awhile and no one else has gotten Darko to play his best, but I still think a really good coach could get more consistency out of him. That's four of our most talented players who the coach isn't getting the most out of so that's a failure.

Basically it's time to move on and find some who actually knows how to coach!

Over break I thought it would be a good idea to look at things that help teams win games. To do this I gathered all the team's basic box-score stats plus opponents stats (points, FG%, and 3PT%) from the past 4 years and looked at the correlation they had to the number of wins each team finished the season with. Here's what I came up with:

Based on this the most important aspect of basketball is defense. It's interesting that points against has a much higher correlation then points for. I believe this is because everyone has off games scoring the basketball but there are no off games on defense because defense is all about athleticism, instincts, being smart, and giving a good effort. It's like the saying in baseball that speed never slumps. Defense never slumps because the other teams can't take those things away.

Solution number 1: find players who are above average defenders

This solution should be obvious even without any analysis and I think it's part of the reason why Brewer has recently been starting.

The next 2 important things are FG% and defensive rebounding. FG% is pretty straight forward, teams that make shots generally wins games. Along with FG%, 3PT% has a decent correlation because each make is more important (an extra point) but teams take less attempts which keeps it from having a higher correlation. Defensive rebounding is also important because teams need a defensive rebound to stop the other team from scoring after misses. What's interesting about rebounding is offensive rebounding has a negative correlation to winning, I think this is because good teams make shots and making shots means less available offensive rebounds. This doesn't mean we should stop getting offensive rebounds it just means as the team improves our offensive rebounds should start to decrease.

Solution number 2: keep Kevin Love

I admit I'm in the group (maybe it's just me and chuckd) who isn't a fan of Love, I think he plays more of a women's style game, will never be a guy we can rely on to win games, and is terrible at solution 1 (defense). That being said he is so good at solution 2 I think he's not only worth keeping, but he could actually help win games given he's our 4th or 5th best player.

The last 2 things that have a highish correlation (about 0.5) to winning are turnovers and assists. Plain and simple we need guys who pass the ball to OUR team. Everyone knows this and have been complaining about it all season so I won't say anything else.

Solution number 3: get Rubio here ASAP

The position that contributes to assists and turnovers the most is PG so we need to get our future PG here next year so we see what we have and hopefully he is the solution to this problem.

I plan on posting my trade machine solutions to these problmes when I figure out who I think our best options are. I know most of these things can be seen without mathematical analysis but I thought I would put this out there anyway and see what you think.

Basically there have been a couple of different rumors that keep popping up. The trades have some variations but look something like:

Philly gets: Jefferson + Gomes + 23

Minnesota gets: Brand + 2

Golden State gets: Love + 16

Minnesota gets: Randolph + 6

Quick reason why each one seems reasonable:

Philly does it because they get Jefferson and a first round pick in a deep draft while also being able to get rid of Brand's contract.

Golden State does it because they get the best player in the trade while also getting pick 16 gives them a good shot at drafting Whiteside who would be a perfect fit with Love.

Minnesota does them because they would get Turner, also the Wolves are trying to become more athletic so getting Randolph and 6 is a big step in that direction.

If the wolves do any deal with Golden State I think it would be very wise to also add the necessary 2nd rounders to get pick 34. Prokhorov wants a more international team so I could see using 34 and/or maybe Pek? to move up to 3. This would allow us take Favors instead of Cousins.

With those trades we would have a lineup of:

Flynn / Sessions / Rubio in 2011

Turner(2) / Ellington

Johnson(6) / Brewer

Randolph / Brand

Favors(3) / Darko


If the rumors are true what do you think of that team?