I don't know about the rest of you, but for me Dave's reminder that the glorious Blazersedge Jersey Contest does not start until November was a major gameday buzz kill. I had my Excel Spreedsheets, Stata 10.0, and favorite stat websites all set-up and ready to roll. But now I see that they'll have to sit idle for a couple more days... Arrrgh! What fun is a Blazers game if it does not provide me with the opportunity to prove that I am not as good at predicting the future as I think I am? What fun is the day after the game if I don't get to see how poorly other people--especially people that disagree with me--did in the Jersey Contest???

Fortunately, I decided that I should not spend the day sulking, wishing Blazersedge was different than it is. I decided that instead of being a victim, I should take action into my own hands!  I should create my own **** contest!! No, not my contest. Our contest. And it wont be for one game. It will be for the entire season! Take that, Dave. Ha-ha! Yes, a prediction contest for the results of the season. Perfect. It will take a lot of patience--it's for the Bedgers that know that they will be here April 15th, 2010, even if Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Greg Oden all go down with season ending injuries today... But, it should be a fun way to test a different aspect of our prognostication skills... or..er... luck. 

Okay, great.... So, will there be a prize for this contest? Well, that's putting the cart before the horse. First, I need to figure out if the results will be scored. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees there. I'm pretty clever with inputting data, but I don't know how to create one of those cool submission forms (i.e. http://blazersedge.reaxion.org/gameform.php) and I may be incredibly busy in April. Perhaps a collective effort will get the job done? We'll just have to see. EDIT: That being said, I will probably be able to do it, so expect to see a post summarizing the scoring some time in April. Assuming the results are scored, then I'll gladly send a (cheap) Blazer-themed prize to honor the winner. If other s feel similarly compelled to reward greatness, perhaps resources can be pooled and the prize will be somewhat cool. EDIT: At the very least, the winner will be able to add, "I dominated Jscot in the Regular Season Prediction Contest!" to the signature of his or her posts. 

On to the questions. 

The Biggies

1. How many games will the Blazers win this season? (20 points possible, -2 points off for each win off)

2. Will the Blazers win the Northwest Division? (10 points)

Blazer Statistics. For all questions concerning season averages, the numerator will be the number of games that the player or players in question actually entered (not 82 games).

3. Which will be greater, (a) Kevin Durant's per game scoring average +3, or (b) Brandon Roy's per game scoring average? (2 points)

4. How many rebounds will Greg Oden average per game? (4 points possible, -1 point for each rebound off)

5. How many assists with Andre Miller average per game? (3 points possible, -1 point for each assist off)

6. Which will be greater, (a) LaMarcus Aldridge's rebounds per game+points per game, or (b) the sum of the per game scoring averages of Blake, Pryzbilla, Outlaw, and Batum? (2 points)

7. How many three pointers made per game will Rudy Fernandez average? (2 points possible, -1 for each .25 of a three pointer off)

8. How many games will Jerryd Bayless play (for the Blazers)? (2 points possible, -1 for every 5 games off)

9. What FG% will Jerrdy Bayless shoot (for the Blazers) ? (rounded to the nearest whole percentage, e.g. 36%, his projected FG% on espn.com. 2 points possible, -1 for every 3 percentage points off)

10. What FT% will Greg Oden shoot? (rounded to the nearest whole percentage, e.g. 64%, his projected FG% on espn.com. 2 points possible, -1 for every 2 percentage points off).

Over-Unders for Regular Season Wins. For the following questions, answer by saying whether the team's regular season win total will be over or under the number next to it. (2 points each)

Western Conference

11. LA Lakers 61.5

12. Denver Nuggets 52.5

13. Utah Jazz 49.5

14. Oklahoma City "Thunder" 34.5

15. Minnesota Timberwolves 25.5

16. Houston Rockets 35.5

17. San Antonio Spurs 54.5

18. Dallas Mavericks 49.5

19. Phoenix Suns 40.5

20. LA Clippers 34.5

Eastern Conference

21. Cleveland Cavs 61.5

22. Orlando Magic 58.5

23. Boston Celtics 58.5

24. Chicago Bulls 40.5

25. Toronto Raptors 40.5

26. Detroit Pistons 40.5

27. Indiana Pacers 34.5

28. New Jersey Nets 27.5

Miscellaneous (2 points each)

29. Will LeBron James win the MVP?

30. Will Dwight Howard win the defensive player of the year Award?

See my response below for the preferred answer format. The cleaner your entry, the more likely that it will actually be scored someday! 

Okay. That should help you waste a few minutes while waiting for tonights game. Good luck! 

When I think of the "first" basketball hoop, I have in mind a wicker basket that looks something like this:

Apparently, however, Dr. Naismith's first hoop wasn't really wicker, at least that's not how I would describe the basket in this photo:

via www.authenticbasketball.com

Continue reading this post »

With the release of the 2009-2010 NBA schedule yesterday, we saw the first wave of predictions for the upcoming season. In making predictions for the Blazers or any other team the first thing most people consider, whether explicitly or implicitly, is a team's record the previous season. The previous season serves as a baseline in our mind and then we try to figure out if the team will improve or get worse. By and large, this is a sensible way of thinking.

However, an additional consideration that should go into our thought process--but that we often forget--is a phenomenon called regression to the mean. Regression to the mean is a technical term in probability and statistics that refers to the fact that, left to themselves, things tend to return to normal, whatever that is. The term was coined by Francis Galton, inventor of the regression, when he noticed that the offspring of very tall parents tended to be shorter than their parents--at least that's the story they always tell in statistics classes. Regression to the mean in NBA wins would imply that teams that tend to win a lot of games in one season are more likely to win fewer games the following season, or conversely that teams that win few games in one season are more likely to win more games the following season. In other words, a 60 win team in 2009 is more likely to win 55-59 games than 60-64 in 2010, while a 25 win team in 2000 is more likely to win 26-30 games than 25-21 games in 2001. Does this happen in the NBA? Indeed it does. In fact, regression to the mean is quite pronounced and holds controlling for the average age of teams. Details below.

Continue reading this post »

I know we are starting to move on from the Houston series, but before we do, I wanted to settle an argument that I have been having with myself.: the Blazers lost several player match-ups in the Houston series, but I have not been able to figure out which is the most disappointing or worrisome development. I figure the best way to do it was to rely on The Wisdom of Crowds. In addition, I have never done a poll before and thought this would be an approrpiate topic. It's a somewhat negative topic and I generally dislike dwelling on negative outcomes, but I could not resist.

In choosing which is the most disappointing, use whatever criteria you think is appropriate, though I personally had in mind the long term implications of the series (what it revealed about the "true" underlying value of the player in question) AND how surprising it was to me.

Comments are welcome.

Reports suggest that Oden will soon start playing again for the Blazers. There has been a lot of discussion about whether he should start or come off the bench when he returns. My guess is that he will come of the bench, simply because Nate tends to be risk adverse when making rotation decisions. Nonetheless, I wanted to see what an analysis of past games would say about the subject. My analysis suggests that the team has played quite a bit better with Oden coming off the bench, about 6.3 points better than it has played on average. By constrast, when Oden started the Blazers have played at their season average.

Measuring the Oden off Bench and Oden Starting "Effects"

Building off the methodology I used in a previous post I estimated the "effect" of starting Oden vs. bringing him off the bench. In particular, I compared the margin of victory in games that Oden came off the Bench to those in which Oden started, controlling for the following factors:

• Opponent's Average Margin of Victory (so Cleveland is Good, Sacaremento is Bad)
  

• Opponent's Average Home/Away Advantage/Disadvantage (which varies by team, see previous post).
  

• Either Team playing on a Back to Back, which hurts teams, on average, about 1 point per game.
  

• Whether or not either Team played 5 games or more in 7 days, which hurts teams, on average, about 1.7 points per game.
  

• Whether or Not Roy Played. The Blazers have played about 7 points better per game when Roy has played than when he was out with injury.
  

• Whether or Not Rudy Played. The Blazers have played about 10 points better when Rudy has played than when he is out.
  

• Whether or Not Blake Played. The Blazers have played about half a point better when Blake has played than when he was injured (counting the Philly and Clippers games as injured games).
  

By my count, Oden came off the bench in 7 games and started 39 games. Controlling for the factors above, the Blazers have played about 6.3 points better with Oden comeing off the bench than in games where he started or was injured. By contrast, when Oden started, the Blazers have played no better or worse than average. Note that if the Blazers had played better than average with Oden as a starter, then one would have to compare the Oden Bench advantage to the Oden Starting advantage. However, because the Blazers played no better when Oden started than when he was injured, the "benefit" of playing Oden off the  bench is simply 6.3 points per game.

Since Oden only came of the Bench in 7 games these results should certainly be seen as tenative. Indeed, the "Oden Off the Bench Effect" is not statistically significant, if one were to use a standard hypothesis test. That being said, it is interesting to look at the seven games he came of the bench to investigate the matter further.  The following are Oden's Bench games:

The Unexpected Margin, is the margin of victory over what was expected, controlling for all of the factors listed above. The Chicago game is certainly an outlier and helps Oden's Bench average, but its important to note that there are no terrible games in that seven game stretch, which is significant in itself. Indeed, the worst game was a loss to the Suns in Phoenix before Amare got hurt and when the Suns were playing relatively well. My guess is that its hard to get pummeled when your back-up center collects 5 offensive rebounds.

Caveats

I put effect in quotes because this is certainly not definitive evidence that the Blazers should bring Oden off the bench rather than start him. There are a variety of alternative explanations for the team playing better with Oden off the bench that I cannot rule out. Among other things, it may have taken teams a few games to figure out how to defend Oden; injuries to Deng in the Chicago game and Martin in the Kings game probably overstate the results; and as mentioned above, the sample size is small and margins of victory are quite noisy-the result could be a fluke--the equivalent of winning a hand of Texas Hold'em starting with a pair of sevens (which is an okay, but not great starting hand).

Discussion

That being said, this analysis does suggest that there is a real chance that the Blazers will get a nice little "Oden Bump" if he, once again, comes off the bench when he returns. In fact, the model used to do the analysis above predicts that the Blazers would finish the season 51-29 31 if Oden does not return at all. If he returns and comes of the bench Wednesday, the model predicts that the Blazers will win 54 games. That difference is enough to give the Blazers home court advantage in the first round. He could easily make the difference in games against at Indiana and Milwaukee and would give the Blazers a better chance to beat LA, Houston, Denver, and San Antonio.

Will Nate continue to start Pryzbilla when Oden returns? Will Nate do it for the rest of the season? Should he? Does the analysis above pick up something real or was it a fluke? If its real, why does Oden fit better with the second unit? Would Oden still benefit from playing in the second unit if Bayless remains the back-up point guard? This one will be intersting to watch.

With the Blazers continued road woes and the importance of scheduling in the Western Conference playoff race, I thought I'd take do a little analysis of home court advantage in the NBA this season.

Measuring Home Court Advantage

The simplest way to measure home court advantage is to compare a team's home court and away records. Because schedules in the NBA are unbalanced, however, it is possible that some teams have played more difficult schedules at home than away. In addition, as John Hollinger and others point out, margin of victory is a better predictor of future record than wins and losses. Since most of us are interested in projecting how the rest of the season and playoffs will unfold, it makes sense to measured home court advantage by margin of victory rather than wins and losses.

To create a measure of home court advantage for each team, I started by downloading a log of all of the 2009 regular season games from basketball-reference.com (through Saturday March 14th). Then, if the game went into overtime, I set the margin of victory to zero. Then I used standard statistical/econometric methods to control for strength of schedule and create an estimate of each team's home court advantage.  (For those interested in the technical details, I created the measure by regressing margin of victory on a set of dummy variables for each team, a dummy variable indicating which team was home and set of team*home court interaction terms. The team dummy variable is the team "Fixed Effect", it accounts for each teams average margin of victory. Each team's home court advantage is the coefficient on the home court variable plus the team*home court interaction. The team*home court interaction is described as the "Extra" Advantage). The results are below.

Results

Home Advantage is the difference between a team's average home margin of victory and average road margin of victory, controlling for their opponents' average margin of victory and their opponents' home v. away advantage. Note that, by construction, a team's away disadvantage is just their home advantage multiplied by -1. The average home-court advantage in the NBA this season is 7.87 (if overtime games count as ties).

"Extra" Advantage is the difference between each team's home court advantage and average home court advantage in the NBA. As with the raw numbers of home court advantage, a high number can be taken to indicate that a team plays well at home or poorly on the road. Similarly, low numbers can indicate that a team plays well on the road or poorly at home; it's impossible to distinguish between those characterizations of what the numbers mean.

Discussion

The results conform, more or less to my expectations, with a few surprises. Portland has a "larger" home court advantage than the average team, but Utah and Golden State have even larger home court advantages (or road disadvantages). It's interesting that thee top four teams in terms of "extra" advantage are also relatively young, while three of the teams with the smallest home advantages are also young. It is amazing to see that Minnesota has actually played worse at home. I think the depressing faces that Phil Jackson referred to must be in Minneapolis-St. Paul, rather Portland.

Obviously teams like Utah and Portland would like to be able to play as well on the road as they do at home. However, given that the advantage of playing at home seems to be connected to how loud fans are... I'm not sure it's possible to just flip a switch and make the team play as if 20,000 people are enthusiastically supporting their every move.  Perhaps some improvement can come with experience, but I would not expect any big changes this season. Thinking about this a bit reaffirms to me the importance of the Blazers getting home court advantage in the playoffs.

A few limitations of the method that I used: it assumes that each team's "strength" and home court advantage do not vary systematically throughout the season. Each team plays poorly some games and well in other games, but any variance other than home court advantage and opponent strength is (random) noise. One way to improve the analysis above would be to include "month" indicators for each team to account for streaks that occur during the season. There is no reason that "hot streaks" would care about the calendar, however, so this would be a pretty dirty fix. Another approach is to include lags and leads of margin of victory. I played around with this a bit, but saw little evidence of auto correlation. A more promising approach would be to include variables that indicate when key players have been out due to injury (or even playing while injured). If anyone knows of a nice data set on player injuries, I'd be happy to give that a shot. Indeed, I've already looked into this for the Blazers and the results suggest that having key players out matters quite a bit, in some cases. More on this later.

There is a great article in the New York Times Magazine this week by the author of Money Ball, Michael Lewsi. It is about Shane Battier, Houston's GM Daryl Morey, and the "new" stats in basketball: The No-Stats All-Star. It's a must read.

A few highlights, comments:

-Some great discussion of exactly how and why Shane Battier is a good defender.

-One of the interesting claims made by Lewis and Morey is that in basketball, unlike Football or Baseball, the traditional statistics give players an incentive to be selfish. I always knew that to be true in basketball, but never realized that it was less of an issue in other sports.

-Some hints about the types of statistical analysis that teams keep "in-house." Stuff that is not publically available that is useful to teams when scouting.

-There was a suggestion that Houston believes that it's very important not to foul. That fouling is the worst type of defensive play. Greg Oden, I'm looking at you.

-Frankly, I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of the details of the "new" statistics and a bit broader coverage (discuss other teams that are interested in this trend).

In response to the questions and comments on my previous post on ages and success in the NBA, I did a little additional work. I could not do everything that people asked about, but I tried to improve the previous analysis in four ways:

1. More Data!

It is relatively easy to download the entire statistical history of the NBA at databaseBasketball.com. Minutes played data "only " go back to the 1950-51, so that is the earliest season included below. It also does not include the current season, but I manually added the 2008-2009 Blazers. The coolest thing about having older data is that it gives us a target for a (somewhat goofy) record: the best record for a team whose average age is under 25 in the (modern) history of the NBA.

2. Better Measurement of Age

The databaseBasketball.com data has players' date of birth, which makes it easy to get calculate their age to the day (ie. 24.53 years rather than 24). Each player's age for each season is determined by their age on December 31st of the given season. This may not seem like a big deal, but it actually made this year's Blazers about half a year older.

3. Years of Experience

Several people were interested in seeing the results if the measurement of maturity was years of experience, rather than age. I measured experience in two ways. The first, which I refer to as "Years of Experience" is just the number of seasons since their first seasons in the league, counting their rookie season as their first season. So, if a player's first season in the league was 1990, they would have one year of experience in the 1990 seasons and six years of experience in the 1995 season. The weakness of this measure is that it counts a year of experience whether or not a player played any games. So, I created a second measure, referred to as "Years of Game Experience" that counts a season of experience as playing 77 games. Why 77 and not 82? It's actually fairly rare for anyone to play all 82 games of a season. Why 77 rather than 72? In short, I just picked a number, but since everyone's years are scaled in the same way it does not matter too much. In addition, the two measures ("years of experience" and "years of game experience") tracked fairly closely for star players like Kareem or Bird when I used 77 games.

4. Tracking Team Trajectories

A lot of people were interested in seeing the trajectories of particular teams over time.  As you will see, I tracked a few team trajectories in only the most simplistic way: a did three seperate graphs that highlighted the team-age relationships for three franchises: the Blazers, Lakers, and Clippers. For those that really want to try to make projections about the future, this is probably not enough. It is, however, fun to see. Moreover, I did not see an obvious way to use the data to make projections that would be any more definitive than what we would all do in our heads.

Win % by Average Age, 1951 to 2009

So, what are the results? First, I plotted win percentage by the average age of the team on the floor. I also drew a line for the average win% pct given average age, just for reference. For an explanation of how I calculated average age and drew the line, go here... The two best under 25 teams are in red. This first graph is almost too awesome to believe. Keep in mind that this is after the Blazers lost two games in a row... and comes with the Blazers having played a brutal schedule so far (the graph looked even crazier before last night's game):

via i36.tinypic.com

Yes, this year's Blazers top competition for best record by a team whose average age was under 25 years is the 1976-1977 Portland Trailblazers. Here is a link to see the ages and minutes played for that legendary Portland team. 1977 was the year I was born, so I did not know that that team had a relatively pedestrian regular season record. Obviously, that is also the youngest team to ever win an NBA championship. That's one achievement that I do not think this year's team can match.

Win % by Years in the League, 1951 to 2009

How do the 2008-2009 Blazers compare when maturity is measured by years experience in the NBA? In some way this helps this year's team because of one of it's rookies, Rudy Fernandez, is an older rookie. On the other hand, Travis Outlaw and Aldridge have a lot of NBA experience for their age. As in the previous graph, in the graph below, I plotted win% by the average years of experience for the team. I highlighted in purple the teams with the best record and an average of less than 4 years of experience:

via i38.tinypic.com

First, note that when maturity is measured by years of experience rather than age, there is still a fairly strong maturity-success relationship. Second, there are actually a few teams more exceptional than the Blazers, including the 1991-1992 Golden State Warriors with Mullin, Hardaway, and  Marciulionis and the 1970-1971 Milwaukie Bucks with Oscar Robertson and Kareem in his second season. That being said, the 2008-2009 Blazers are doing remarkably well by this measure. 

Win % by Years of NBA Game Experience, 1951 to 2009

As I said above, I thought that these results might be misleading if a player hardly played his first few seasons or missed a season or two with an injury. While some experience can be gained from just being around the team and practicing, most people think game experience is what players need and what this year's team needs. In addition, this year's Blazers are doing well early in the season even with three rookies seeing significant minutes. The graph below follows the same format as the previous two, but with the best teams with less than an average of 3 years game experience in green:

via i38.tinypic.com

My guess is that this measurement of experience probably exaggerates the Blazer youth to some extent, but still reinforces that the success of the team is pretty extraordinary.

Team Trajectories: Blazers, LA-Lakers, and LA-Clippers

Lastly, I thought it would be fun to look at a few franchises in isolation/comparison. Tominhawaii joked that I should color code the teams and use their logos, which gave me an idea for how to display team trajectories and patterns. Since the graphs can can cluttered really quickly, I just did three seperate graphs for three fairly familiar franchises: the Blazers, LA Lakers, and LA Clippers (the Minneopolis Lakers and San Diego Clippers are considered separate teams in the databaseBasketball.com data and I did not see any reason to change things). Obviously, I could have done more teams or restricted any team to a particular era, but looking at just these three teams says enough. In all three graphs, I plotted the average age against win%, as in the first graph in this post. It's best to look at the three graphs together.

To lift your spirits, I put the Clippers after the Blazers:

via i35.tinypic.com

via i33.tinypic.com

via i34.tinypic.com

I found myself tracing the history of the Blazers from year to year by connecting the dots in my head. Try it, I think you'll find it enjoyable.

Analytically, these three graphs strongly suggest that if one were to account for "franchise effects" or "GM effects" the age-success relationship would be even stronger. I'll leave the rest of the commentary to you.

One of the major themes of this seasons has been that the Blazers have been unusually successful for their age. I wanted to know, more precisely, just how young the Blazers are and just how successful they have been, given their age. So, I did a little research and found out. The answer? In short, they are one of the younger teams--though far from the youngest--and on pace to be by far the most successful team for its age in the past five years. 

Average Age

Most media sources call the Blazers the second youngest team in the NBA, with the Golden State Warriors being the youngest. This description comes from calculating the the average age of each roster in the NBA. As many people have pointed out, however, this is a less than ideal measure of age because some rosters have veterans or rookies that seldom or never play.

A better measure of a team's age, in my view, is the average age of the players on the floor. (To be more precise, define the average age of players on the floor as the expected value of the average age of the team on the floor from a randomly selected moment in the season). Believe it or not, this is relatively easy to calculate. It is just each player's Age * Minutes played divided by the total minutes played by the team.

Here are the average ages of teams calculated in that manner, with the teams currently projected to go to the playoffs by Hollinger in bold:

Team Average Age
MEM    22.8978
POR    24.1397
CHI    24.7834
CHA    24.8325
MIN    25.0516
OKC    25.2086
UTA    25.2347
GSW    25.3229
MIA    25.3542
NJN    25.6025
ATL    25.8435
NYK    25.9501
MIL    26.0521
PHI    26.3214
SAC    26.5633
IND    26.7588
CLE    26.8154
LAL    26.9129
TOR    27.0772
WAS    27.2451
ORL    27.5021
LAC    27.5592
DEN    27.7794
NOH    27.9039
BOS    27.9651
DET    28.2222
HOU    28.3585
DAL    29.2533
PHO    29.5305
SAS    30.6093

As you can see, when calculating the average age of teams in this manner, the Blazers are indeed the second youngest team, but the youngest team is the Memphis Grizzlies (now, whenever you hear an announcer say the Warriors are the youngest team, you can snicker at their ignorance). It's also pretty damn clear that older teams, in general, are much more likely to make it to the playoffs. 

Average Age Part 2: An Alternative Measure of Maturity

Now, some might think that even the average age of players on the floor is a less than ideal measure of  what we really care about when we talk about the youth of a team--it's maturity as a basketball team. What if, for example, a team's stars are veterans and its younger players are role players? Certainly that is a more mature team than a team whose stars are young and whose veterans are role players, right? Perhaps. The only difficulty is that it's a little tricky to objectively determine who is a role player and who is a star. Nonethelss, in order to investigate if measuring the maturity team in some way dramatically changes the picture, I calculated teams' average age weighted by the number of field goals attempted (each players age*fga/total field goals attempted by the team). Think of this as the average age of the team's field goal attempts:

Team FGA weighted Age:
MEM    22.5476
POR    23.9251
OKC    24.4223
MIN    24.5981
CHI    24.7143
CHA    24.7957
UTA    25.0517
MIA    25.2547
GSW    25.5418
NYK    25.8768
NJN    25.9572
MIL    26.025
PHI    26.096
SAC    26.2507
CLE    26.2931
ATL    26.351
IND    26.6009
TOR    26.8093
WAS    27.1953
LAL    27.2098
DEN    27.2108
ORL    27.4351
LAC    27.6127
NOH    27.9389
HOU    28.1777
DET    28.5663
BOS    28.8435
DAL    28.9353
PHO    29.5283
SAS    29.8134

As you can see, this doesn't change the story too much. The Blazers are a little younger, but still the second youngest. This is primarily because Pryzbilla does not attempt a lot of field goals per minute. One of the teams whose ranking changes the most when calculating team age in this manner is, interestingly, Boston.

Win % by Average Age and FG weighted Age

The next thing I wanted to do was to get a better sense for where the Blazers stood in terms of the success given their age. To do this, I plotted team's win percentage this season against their average age and drew a (non-linear) regression line that shows (roughly) the average win percentage of a team, given their age:

via i37.tinypic.com

The results are interesting. There is a pretty strong trend toward success (defined as win percentage) increasing with age up until a team's age reaches 28 or so. The top three teams in the league (Boston, LAL, and Cleveland) have an average age between 26 and 28, though so do some of the worst teams (Cllppers, and Wizards).  The oldest teams, Dallas, Phoenix, and San Antonio, are all winners, but they are not the league's elite.

The Blazers are clearly the best 24 and under team and appear, to my eyes, to be on a trajectory towards joining the league's elite in the next couple of years. Of course, no one can be certain what the future will hold, and making projections into the future is dangerous, but it is easy to see why so many of us are optimistic about the future.

We see roughly the same picture if plot win percentage against teams' age weighted by field goal attempts. The only difference is, perhaps, a shortening of Boston's window for elite play:

via i37.tinypic.com

Power Ranking by Average Age and FGA weighted Age

Since the Blazers have played such a difficult schedule, I also plotted the Sagarin power ratings against their age and FGA weighted age:

via i35.tinypic.com

via i33.tinypic.com

The same general conclusions seem to hold. The Blazers are ahead of the curve and on pace to join the league's elite. These graphs suggests, even more strongly, that there are diminishing returns to age (teams peak at 28 or so). In addition, I was amused to see that the teams that have fired their coaches are all significantly below the age-power ranking curve.

Age and Win % in the Past Five Seasons

Finally, I was curious to see if the age-success relationship that we see this season holds for previous season. And, I wanted to know if there had been any other teams as young as the Blazers that had been as successful. So, I put the data together for the past five season (2004-2005 to 2008-2009.... I could do more, and I might).

In the graph below, I plotted win percentage against team average age. I labeled Portland this season and last, as well as the nearest competitor for the title of "best young team in the last five years":

via i37.tinypic.com

The only team in the past five years that could possible argue to be a better "young" team than the Blazers is the 04-05 Phoenix Suns. The average age of that Suns team was 25.1, a full year older than the Blazers. They were, however, led by the veteran Steve Nash, who was 30 years old by the end of the season. So, I give the title of best young team in the last five years to this years' Blazers.

UPDATE: Age and Win % in the Past 10 Seasons

I had a little more time this afternoon and added five additional seasons. And, because some were interested, I marked which teams eventually won the NBA championship in each season (they are the black diamonds). With five years of additional data, the 2008-2009 Blazers still stick out:

via i33.tinypic.com

Lastly, a question to ponder and discuss: the age success relationship appears to only get stronger as I add more data; why aren't there more older teams in the NBA?

If Portland is going to contend for NBA championships some day, it will need to improve its team defense. Although the season is going quite well so far (in my opinion), Porltand is only 20th in the leage in defensive efficiency. It is highly unlikely that the Blazers can win a NBA championship playing that level of defense. Fortunately, there are some very encouraging signs that Oden, even early in his rookie season, is having a positive effect on Portland's team defense. I have commented on this before, but thought I would provdie a little visual evidence to support that claim.

The majority of the discussion of Oden's effect on the team has focussed on the plus-minus statistic or comparison of statistics with Oden in the game and with Oden out of the game. Although there some valuable insights can be gained from looking at those kinds of statistics, they have a couple of drawbacks. One, it is possible that during Oden's minutes he has faced, on average, stronger players or played with weaker teammates. Since there are no readily available statistics to quantify the strength of his opponents or teammmates when he is on the floor, this is a significant problem. Two, having Oden in the line-up can affect how the team plays when he is out in the game as well as when he is on the bench. As is becoming increasingly obvious, Pryzbilla can play much more aggressively when he plays limited minutes because he does not have to worry as much about foul trouble and has more energey. In addition, when Oden plays, Frye is more likely to defend PFs rather than Cs, which is a big improvement.

For those reasons, I think a better way to assess the effect of Oden on Portland's defense is to compare Portland's defensive efficiency in games that Oden played to it's deffensive efficiency in games that he did not play.  Since "good" offensive teams will, by definition, score more than "bad" offensive teams, we want to know if teams Porltand has played better defense without or without Oden, "controlling" for the offensive strength of their opponent. If Portland's defensive effiency was better with Oden, but they played weaker teams when Oden played, we wouldn't know much. A rough measure of offensive strength is simply their average offensive efficiency in games this season. So, a simple way to see if Oden might have an effect on team defense is to plot opponent's offensive efficiency when they played Portland against their average offensive efficiency and compare the games that Oden has played to the games that Oden did not play:

via photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net

This graph shows several things. One, as expected, teams that have better average offensive efficiencies tend to score more effieciently against Portland, on average. Two, the relationship between average scoring and scoring against Portland has roughly the same slope whether or not Oden plays. This is shown in the green and orange lines (the "Fitted" lines). The fitted lines show, in essence, Porltand's average defensive efficiency, given an opponent's offensive strength with and without Oden. Three, given an opponents offensive strength, Porltand has played, on average, signicantly better defense with Oden.... In particular, teams have scored between .1 and .13 fewer points per possession against Portland when Oden has played than when he was out with an injury. Though it is not shown in this graph, the effect is so large that passes standard tests of a statistical signficance (in a regression based t-test, the probability that the oden effect is zero is less than 5%).

Now, is this definitive, 100% ironclad evidence that having Oden in the line-up has caused Portland to play better defense. No. Certainly there are other deterimants of an opponents offensive efficiency than simply their average offensive strength. It's possible that, home court advantage, injuries, a "lucky streak" of good defense , or something else can explain this pattern. It is worth noting, however, that controlling for home court advantag actually increases the size of the "Oden effect" and controlling for opponent injuries does not eliminate eliminate it.

That being said, this is really just an early development that will be interesting to track the rest of the season.

My girlfriend and I drove from San Diego to downtown L.A. to watch the Blazers take on the Clippers at the Staples Center. Living in Southern California, there are not a lot of opportunities to see the Blazers live and in person, so we had to go. It was a great decision.

I figured that we could buy scalped tickets at the arena. When we got there, however, no one seemed to be selling any tickets. There were just a ton of high school kids getting off of buses and people meeting up with friends. We walked around looking clueless for a few minutes and were about to try to buy tickets from "VIP tickets" when a man pulled us aside and said, "you just won the lottery." I was a little skeptical--sounded like a hackneyed sales pitch--but he whisked us into the arena and sold us courtside seats for peanuts! Apparently he liked my girlfriend's smile. Whatever. Courtside seats! To see Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldrdge, Greg Oden, Rudy Fernandez--the Blazers!  Wow. I usually sit in the upper concourse or whatever, but we sat right behind the Clippers owner, Donald Sterling at midcourt. It was crazy. And, as luck would have it, I sat next to another Blazer fan who also reads Blazersedge. We talked Blazers and tried to avoid being too conspicous about our giddiness about the Blazere's good fortune within earshot of Donald Sterling.

Obviously, the laws of karma dictate that I relate, as well as I can, my experience and impressions to those of you that were not so fortunate. It looks like the game was not televised and the radio and box score can only tell you so much. Since the box score is available, I'll try to focus on things that you could have only known if you were there and I'll try to highlight was in which I think the box score is misleading for this game.

Pre-Game Impressions:

Everyone has probably heard this a million times, but it has to be said: NBA players are huge!

The strangest thing about sitting courtside is that the players look you in the eye during warm-ups. Obviously, as a fan I am watching the players as the players warm-up. This makes sense: it's a professional baskteball game and watching them play is what I came there to do. But, when you are that close to the players watching them feels like staring and the players sometimes stare back. If I had better social skills, I would have said hello or "Go get em" or something, but obviously I don't have good social skills, so I just stared blankly. Part of the strangeness of the interactions is that the the players all look familiar to me--I've seen their pictures a thousand times--I fell like I know the team personally. So, part of my brain is saying "Hey Rudy, what up?" But, then the rational part of my brain is saying, "Sam, he doesn't know who you are. He thinks you are some crazy dude that's staring at him." Anyway, it's odd to be so close to the players.

Baron Davis was out before all of the other players going through a solo workout. As you know, he did not play, and was primarily working on his shot. Baron is a somewhat charismatic guy and a somewhat goofy guy and i enjoyed watching his shooting routine. Surprisingly, Baron was not very impressive shooting the ball. In fact, I shoot a higher percentage when I'm shooting by myself than Davis shot and I'm nothing special on the basketball court. I expected an NBA star like Davis to drain at least 70% of his shots on air. He was hitting about 40%. As I said, Davis is a little quirkly, so perhaps he was trying to get the misses out of his system.

Gernal Game Impressions:

-This was definitely a preseason game. There were some moments where the game become intense, where players really hustled, but neither team played their hardest. If anything, I thought the Clippers came out with a bit more determination than the Blazers at both the beginning of the game and the beginning of the third quarter

-The Blazers made the Clippers' offense dysfunctional for most of the game. This is probably not saying a lot, given how little talent the Clippers weilded tonight, but the Blazers were more aggressive defensively than I can remember. They were poking at the ball and forcing turnovers throughout the night, though the line-up of Rudy, Blake, Roy, Aldridge, and Oden was particularly effective at this (the box score reflects this as well, Rudy, Roy, Blake, and Aldridge each had three steals).

-When the Clippers managed to maintain possession of the ball, they took contested shots or difficult shots at least 60% of the time. My infallible "lucky shot detector" said that the Clippers hit more than their fair share of prayers. Cutino Mobely, in particular, seemed to be in the good graces of the patron saint of desperation floaters... The solid defense was primarily the result of sound on the ball defense and solid rotations. The few times the Clippers got easy baskets, it was usually the result of preseason laziness... of a simple lack of hustle. It was nice to see the Blazers prevent Al Thorton from going off after Kevin Martin's performance on Monday.

-Pryzbilla and Frye absolutely dominated the offensive glass. They did some of their ditry work against the Clippers starters and some of it against Paul Davis and Deandre Jordan. It was impressive and Clippers fans were quite frustrated by it. If he stays healthy, I think Pryzbilla will have an even better rebound rate than last year. It's going to be a huge advantage for the Blazers to play Przybilla against back-up centers and tired centers. In addition, Frye, playing against back-up power forwards and next to Pryzbilla is going to be a pest.

-The Blazers did not shoot particularly well tonight, but they were getting relatively open shots on most possessions. Perhaps they shot a somewhat high percentage of jump shots, but they shot a lot of  wide open jumpers. Roy was the only Blazer that hit his open jumpers consistently (most of his misses were off of lay-in attempts). If the Blazers had had an average night shooting, they would have won by about 10 additional points.

-I am not really enamored with the Blazers half-court offense--seems a little predictable and it does not generate many easy shots... mostly jumpers. On the other hand, I really don't have a great feel for NBA offensive strategy, so I do not have any counter proposals. What worked tonight was the dirve and kick off the pick and roll and feeding Oden in the post (the latter did not happen all that often). What did not work was giving the ball to the PFs on the pick and roll. Nate seems to have given the green light to Aldridge, Frye, and Outlaw to shoot contested 18 foot jumpers. They are hitting about 30% of those shots.

-Blazers were pretty good scoring off of steals and in transition. Blake seems to be pushing the ball harder and Rudy is very sneaky on the break.

Player Thoughts:

-Roy. Without the benefit of the box score, I would not have known he was the leading scorer. He was pretty quiet. He missed more lay-ins than usual, but made up for it with his three point shooting. He seemed to want to let his teammates get most of the work on the offensive end.

-Rudy. Had a much better game than the box score might indicate. He was everywhere. He got key rebounds. He got important loose balls. He made timely steals. He did not shoot particularly well, but he was taking the right shots. He was taking wide-open threes. Those shots will drop. He moved the ball well and continues to move well without the ball. Not playing without Sergio might have cut 3 or 4 points from his total, but he looked comfortable with whoever was on the court. 

-Aldridge. Forced some shots on offense, but was otherwise solid. He was active on defense and on the boards. He and Oden shared several rebounds that ended up in Oden's hands. He had a nice dunk in transition off a pass from Blake. I LOVE when Aldridge runs hard on the break.

-Oden. It was a pretty impressive night for Greg Oden, Jr. Every summary of Greg Oden's games should start with a summary of his defensive effort. I'll follow my own advice. He gave Kaman fits tonight. Considering that Kaman is an established, veteran center in this league, that the Clippers were running a ton of plays for Kaman, and that Kaman was playing hard, that's probably the most impressive thing Oden has done all season... You know that you are playing well as a rookie when the home fans start heckling the guy that you are guarding. That happened tonight to the man Oden guarded. "C'Mon Kaman! Shoot the ball!" they yelled. "Do something, Kaman!" they pleaded. It almost got ugly. I felt bad for the guy. O, and Greg, Jr played Kaman for about 30 minutes and only had two personal fouls. Wasn't Oden supposed to foul out every game this year? Oden was a little less impressive as a help defender, but that may have been by design.

On offense, Oden looked good. When you see 12 points for Oden in 30 minutes, keep in mind that the Blazers are not running many plays for him. He's getting most of his points off of offensive rebounds. This is important. I'd guess that Aldridge touches the ball about 70% of the possessions when he's in the game. Oden's at about 35% (my guestimate). I did not really appreciate how important this is until watching a game in person. In fact, the comparison between the way the Clippers used Kaman and the Blazers used Oden was striking. The Clippers moved Kaman all over the court. They set screens for him. They ran the pick and roll with him. Most of the time Oden waited on the block for something to happen--by the design of the play. When he got the ball, it was usually just off of a simple post up--no help from screeners or ball movement. When Oden becomes a focal point of the offense, his point total will jump quickly. I'm fine with Nate easing Oden into the offense, I just think fans and beat writiers ought to take this into heavy consideration when assessing Oden's early season production.

-The one part of Oden's game that had me concerned was the way he jogged down the court. He jogged really, really slowly. Now, this has very little to do with the game of basketball. I know that. But ,I don't know why he jogs so slowly. Many people have described this as lumbering. It's a good description. Greg lumbers in transition. I don't think he's that out of shape. I don't think his knee is bothering him. I think it's probably just a bad habit, but I worry that it will prevent him from being getting into peak shape by the time the regular season starts. But, really, it's fine. I love Greg Oden. God loves the Blazers!

-Bayless. The reports of the demise of Jerryd Bayless are greatly exaggerated. Bayless had a superb night. Two of his three turnovers came in garbage time. He was  spark off the bench.  His defense was excellent. He ran the half-court offense relatively well and he hit his jumpers. He lead a big run by the Blazers in the fourth quarter with a steal and a three point play, a couple of assists, and an easy basket in transition. He's a long way from being a perfect basketball player, but he has some skills that no one else on the Blazers have and he's only going to get better.

-Outlaw. Just when I was about to beomce really concerned that something was seriously wrong with Travis, he erupted for 7 points in about 5 minutes, which helped break open the game. Yes, he has not looked great in preseason. Yes, at times he failed to hustle at times tonight.. Yes, he has taken some questionable shots. But, it is preseason. I would not get too worried about Travis.

Okay. That's it. Fun game. Lot's to like. I'm a liker. Can't wait from the regular season to start. Sorry for the typos. It's late.

There has been a lot of discussion about how Bayless will fit into the Blazers offfense. It is clear that he is a prolific scoerer with a gift for penetrating and drawing fouls. He has not demonstrated, many have said, the skills or the instinct of a pure point guard (either in summer league or in college). Indeed, in one of the fan posts below Bayless has already been labeled a bust by scouts because the Blazers need a "distrubtor" at point guard: (Bayless a Bust).

Is that really true? Many people , including many astute observers on Blazersedge as well Kevin Pritchard, disagree. I also disagree and would like to provide some evidence to that effect by way of an analogy.

I see Bayless fulfilling the same role on the Blazers as Tony Parker plays for the Spurs. I do not think Parker and Bayless' skills and talent are identical, but I think they could serve a similar purpose for their teams. If you look at Parker's statistics (or watch the games) Parker is not the Spurs primary playmaker. Parker has averaged 16 points per game and between 5 and 6 assists over the course of his career. For most of his career, Parker has dribbled the ball up the court and made a simple pass to Duncan or Ginoboli and allowed them to work one-on-one or with each other. As he has matured, he has statred to make more plays in the half-court, but his primary function on the Spurs is to keep the defense honest, too punish opposing defenses for doubling Duncan or Giniboli. Parker puts pressure on defenses by being able to slash to the hoop and finish. 

Keeping a defense honset is precisely what I would want out of a point guard playing with Oden, Roy, and Aldridge and is exactly what Jerrdy Bayless seems to be able to do. Teams are going to double Oden in the post, they are going to try to trap Roy off of pick and rolls, the more players on the floor that can make opposing teams pay for this strategy, the better. The fact that Bayless has the speed and the skill to get to the basket and draw fouls at a high rate, like Tony Parker, seems to make him a great fit for the Blazers.

The only way Bayless scoring prowess would be a problem is if he were to refuse to pass to Oden and Roy or were to refuse to follow the instructions of the coaching staff... I just don't see that happening, because if he did it, he wouldn't get any playing time and he'd look like a fool.. Even if he were "selfish" (which I don't think he is), he would learn to fulfill his role on this team out of his own self interest.

Granted, Tony Parker is a proven NBA starter and NBA finals MVP, while Bayless is a rookie, but am I crazy for seeing Bayless doing for the Blazers (in a few years) roughly what Parker has done for the Spurs?

All of the debate and discussion about the value of the young talent on the Blazers and how much the Blazers should get back in any trade of its young assets raises a very interesting set of questions: how much do players improve, on average from year to year? Do they improve quickly early in their career and then level off or is it more gradual assent? How many years does it take for a player to plateau? Or, more specifically, how good are Webster and Outlaw going to be in a couple of years? Are there many players at their position that go from their level of production during their third years in the league to being NBA All-stars? What is the chance that they regress? Certainly there are many players that take a step backwared in their fourth or fifth seniors, like Leandro Barbosa,  Luke Ridnour, Kirk Henrich, Ben Gordon, and Juwan Howard--and that's not counting players that sustain a significant injury, like Darius Miles. 

Obviously, a lot depends on the individual player. Players that are dedicated to their games improve more than those that are not (duh!). On the other hand, raw players have, by definition, more room to improve (see Ridnour). There may also be differences in player improvement by the age a player enters the league, by position, by NBA era, by skill set, and by team environment. On the other hand, not using the history of other players to inform one's projections about current players just because they are not identical seems unwise to me.

Thanks to basketballdatabase.com it is now possible to address these questions quantitatively. Data on every player that played from 1950 to 2006 is freely available. So, having a little free time, I downloaded the data and crunched the numbers. In order to focus my analysis, I selected a sample of players that I consider a reasonable comparison group to Webster and Outlaw, while leaving in enough players to have some "statistical" power. I know most BEs aren't really interested in confidence intervals or the finer points of statistics and probability, but it should be pretty obvious that if, in the last 20 years, there is only one player of Webster's height, weight, position, age of entry, and first year stats, we probably aren't going to learn much by just comparing him to that person. It turns out that there are relatively few players (36) that have entered the league at age 19 or younger and played for five seasons by 2006-07. However, I think this is an important enough issue that, in general, I went with smaller samples with players more Webster-like and Outlaw-like players rather than larger samples with many players that were quite different from Webster and Outlaw.

There are many different ways to try to answer the questions posed above, and I've used three different approaches (two shown in this post). The first is relatively simple: I selected all players that entered the league at the age of 19 or younger and were between 6 ft and 6ft 9in, started their careers after 1980, and had at least 5 years of experience. With this sample, I calculated  the average production by year of experience (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th). That is, the table below shows how many points, rebounds, assists, etc that the average early entry guards and forwards produced per 36 minutes in their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th seasons. In this analysis, it is important to restrict the sample to players with 5 years of experience because if players leave the sample after their second year, then the averages calculated for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th years will be  from a different group of players than those calculated for years 1 and 2. Scaling the "stats" to "stats" per 36 minutes is also important since playing time can vary greatly depending on team depth, coach, etc. Here are the results:

Table 1

What do they say? Probably depends one what your expectations were. As much as anything, rookies look surprisingly productive, they just do not have the trust of their coaches to get minutes. Second, some parts of the game have a different learning curve than others. Points, FT% and 3P% show a pretty steady improvement. Steals, Turnovers, and FG% surprisingly, bounce around. And Rebound productivity, if anything, declines. Secondly, there is still a considerable amount of improvement to be had for players that were 21 in their third year in the NBA. On the other hand, by these numbers it would appear unlikely that a player averaging 13 points per 36 minutes in their third year, like Webster or Outlaw, will become a scoring champion by their fifth year... even though scoring is one of the areas where players improve the most. While it's true that Webster and Outlaw got slower starts than the average player in this sample, they really weren't wildly different by year 2:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/w/webstma02.html

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/outlatr01.html

In case you are wondering, here is the career trajectory for a similar sample of players that played at least 8 seasons (though the sample only includes 12 players):

Table 2

They show the same general pattern. Note, however, that these players plateau in their 6th season from a statistical stand-point.

Now there are a lot of reasons to question the validity of any inferences using this data. A fairly obvious problem is that both samples were quite small. An alternative approach would be to include players that started later in their careers and look at productivity by age. By including players that started when they were 21 or younger, we loose the unique experience of players that entered the NBA as teenagers, but we get more players (91) and it is still interesting. So, the next table shows the progression of the same type of players (6ft to 6ft 9in, started careers by 1980, etc):

Table 3

This pattern reinforces, more or less, the observations made above. Players definitely improve, on average, over time, but expecting dramatic improvement is probably questionable, because some players get worse and some players do not improve a great deal after the age of 22 in terms of rare productivity.

Conclusion:

In my first cut of looking at the experience of other players "like" Webster and "like" Outlaw, it's clear that players tend to improve after their 3rd seasons, but that they do not tend to improve enough for either Webster or Outlaw to turn into all-star caliber players. Strictly speaking these figures do not provide a way to project Webster or Outlaws future, but if we were to do so, any where between 12 and 17 points per game would seem reasonable. Therefore, in my view, those that expect a lot of improvement from Outlaw and Webster and those that don't expect much, both have plausible arguments. One group is being optimistic, another pessimistic.    

In my next post, I will use some slightly more advanced analytical tools to make projections for Outlaw and Webster's production in future seasons. These methods (OLS regression) will provide me with a way to try to address the fact that both Webster and Outlaw were relatively "raw" players when they entered the league. The types of conclusions I have drawn thus far, assumes that the amount of improvement does not depend much on one's initial productivity, which might turn out to be false. Should be interesting.

Thoughts?

Footnote:

A statistical caveat: the amount of improvement suggested by tables 1 through 3 is biased upward to some degree. Since I dropped all those players that fell out of the league entirely and were unable to play, the players in the sample are all, in a sense, successful players-it doesn't include the washouts. On the other hand, given that I expect Martell and Outlaw to last well beyond their fifth seasons and older players are as likely, if not more likely, to have a career ending injury, I think it's reasonable to restrict the sample in this way.       

As a fellow Blazer's Edge reader, I know what you are thinking: "I need to read about another trade proposal... about as badly as I need another hole in my head.."

But, here's the thing: Kevin Pritchard is going to make some kind of trade. He just is. He's talked about it many, many times. All of the NBA insiders are reporting that Portland's pick is on the block. Recently Prichard even said that the trade talk is heating up. It is going to happen. Where there is smoke there is fire. Unfortunately, I have no idea what he's going to do and it is driving me a little nuts. So, like many of you, I scour the internet for word of teams that are looking for players and try to piece together a plausible answer. It's a great puzzle (My girlfriend cannot figure out why I haven't solved it yet). On most days I come up with nothing. Today, however, I find this little gem of a story from HoopsWorld. Here is the key information:

Why Dallas Has to Trade

Today the Dallas media is talking about Eddie Jones, who could opt out of his contract with the Mavericks and give Dallas an eighth potential roster spot to fill... As much as the Mavs would like to believe they're going to be contenders next season, it's not going to happen without some other team out there taking pity on them. They're fighting luxury tax/salary cap issues because they're overpaying Josh Howard and Jason Terry. It made sense to overpay them at the time because the team was so deep and seemed so close to winning a title. But now with Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd taking up the bulk of the team's cap space, it becomes hard to fill all of those other roster spots when there's no money to do it with.

Ultimately the Mavs are going to need to trade one of their top guys and get multiple players in return. Not multiple players like they got from the Nets, but multiple players who can actually crack the rotation and contribute to winning basketball games.

Multiple players that can play? Hmm, who has more players than minutes. WE DO! They have a need. Maybe they'll do something relatively hasty: Jack, Martell and the 13th pick for Howard? I don't know. I don't do the whole salary cap thing.... which is why I posted this on Blazersedge. The best Blazers-Mavs trade gets a big huge prize! Let's hear it! Have at it, trade hounds!

There is not much NBA news right now, so I thought I'd do a little research on one of the more likely draftees for the Blazers according to the mock drafts, Joe Alexander. When watching college basketball, I primarily watch the Pac-10, so I did not know a lot about him. Fortunately, there is a wealth of information on the internet about him, including some extensive highlight videos. This post focuses on reporting facts, but I'll include a few comments as well.

Basics: 

6-8, 230 lbs. 21 years old (born same month and year as Martell Webster)

Stats, junior year at West Virginia:

Mpg: 31.6, ppg: 16.1, Fg%46.2, FT%81.4, 3P%26.8 6.4 rpg, 2.4 apg, 2.2 TO

West Virginia played at a relatively slow pace (197th in Division I) and against a strong Big East. Overall, West Virginia played the 34th best defense, according to http://kenpom.com/rate.php. He played more like a 4 than a 3 at West Virginia... The stats make clear that ge's not a three point shooter.

Video.

Highlights against UCONN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YkitJ5-wuQ&feature=related

Demonstration of leaping ability: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PKY3ashUMI&feature=related

EXTENSIVE HIGHLIGHTS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdAYyqSOuPc&feature=related

What the videos show: a SF with more of an interior game/mid-range game than current Blazers SFs. Lot's of dunks. Lot's of pull up jumpers. Not great handles. Not a great three-point shooter. Great leaping ability. Not great lateral quickness.

Biographical information from draftexpress.com and the New York Times

http://www.draftexpress.com/profile/Joe-Alexander-1185/

"he’s only been playing organized basketball for about five years now"

"averaged just 1 point per game only three years ago playing prep school basketball at Hargrave Military Academy"

"everyone we spoke with that had been working with him over the past week could not stop raving about how well he had been responding to them thus far. “A fierce worker,” Joe Abunassar told us. “He’s an animal in the weight room,” strength trainer Tony Falce told us. “He’s worked non-stop for every minute since the second he got here.” One after one, each of the trainers filtered over to our direction to share a story about their favorite pupil. And indeed, physically he’s extremely impressive, quick off his feet, agile, with a great frame, and big hands. “He has great strength, balance, and power” Abunassar told us."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/sports/ncaabasketball/25wvu.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=041567b8905008a0&ex=1206590400

"He spent six years of his childhood in China and barely played on his prep school team. But the recipe he has used to rise to stardom is familiar — he has a work ethic so maniacal that one of his brothers refers to it as “unhealthy"

"Be it in China or playing high school ball in the United States, Joe Alexander always had a ball in his hands. He would dribble in the school locker room for nearly four hours until volleyball practice ended and he could use the gym."

My random thoughts: any player that is still improving is intriguing, but also scary. Would seem to be something of a gamble. Similar to Outlaw and Webster in that he is raw, but a much different game than Outlaw or Webster. Nonetheless, if the Blazers drafted Alexander it would probably mean either Outlaw or Webster is on the trading block or was already traded. I'm not sure if he "fits" the Blazers needs any better or worse than Webster or Outlaw, though my instinct says the Blazers need Websters outside shooting more than Alexander's midrange game and rebounding. Neither Webster nor Outlaw is a defensive specialist, but they have more potential than Alexander.

Your thoughts?

CBS rebroadcasted the 2007 national championship game. It was a great opportunity to watch Oden play and fantasize about what he'll bring to Portland next year. Keep in mind that the guys he's played against, Horford and Noah have produced at the rate of an "average" NBA center this year.

http://www.82games.com/0708/07CHI17C.HTM
http://www.82games.com/0708/07ATL12C.HTM

After four minutes, he's already had two great blocks and a nice left-handed hook shot. The thing that I have noticed most thus far is that he has great hands and quickness. He's very rangy for a 7-foot 250 lbs man. UPDATE: Oden ended up with 22 pts 11 rebounds and 5 to 6 monster blocks. He looked tired for much of the second half, but he was a monster.

I listened to the chat with Dave, Quick, Henry, and Casey today and the conversation about future roster moves got me thinking: we really do not have a good idea of what type of players Pritchard and McMillan want to put around the core. Assuming that Oden, Aldridge, and Roy are now the core of the Blazers, what are the team's long-term personnel needs?

Does everyone else on the roster need to be "a role player?", as Abbott suggested? If you had to choose to add another "A+" player, which position is more important, PG or SF? Why? Are there any A+ players in the organization for the 1 or the 3? Again, if you had to choose, would you surround those three with 1-3 that are shooters or slashers? I'm curious to see what folk's dream teams look like.

My dream squad would be a sweet shooting/defensive specialist at the 3 (like Bowen or T. Prince), and a lighting-quick point-guard that could penetrate and create shots. My concern with the current roster is that Roy is the only player that can create his own shot off the dribble... and he's probably an A- slasher in the NBA, very good, but not amazing.