SB Nation User Blog: jemagee

Who should start at center?

jemagee — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:08:22 -0000

The sixers currently have two centers on their roster both of whom have strengths and weaknesses. I'm going to do a purely free flowing comparison of these two centers as the thoughts occur to me while I take a break from work.

Shall we proceed?

One is Samuel Dalembert, a center who has been on this team for years and still has the offensive game of my 7 year old niece who has never picked up a basketball. In fact her game would probably be better because she's smart enough to realize what she is and isn't capable of doing. Yesterday Detroit game was a perfect example of Sammys offensive ineptitude. Every time he touched the ball he was a disaster, dribbling like a spastic monkey, throwing the ball away, taking shots he shouldn't ever take, being unable to count to there.

But wait, you say, we need Sam on the court. He's awesome defensively and makes the sixers a better rebounding team. Well, yes it's true, the sixers are probably better defensively when Sam is on the court, but the numbers don't back up that they are a better rebounding team. Check them out here.

And yes, the sixers give up a lot more points per 100 possessions when Sam is off the court, but they also score a lot more points. The offense is much much better when Sam is on the floor so far this season and the defense is much much worse.
Option number two is Mareese Speights. A second year player who admitted has holes in his defensive game, but he's a second year player, and if the sixers are going to win ANYTHING that matters (41-41 first round playoff losses aren't relevant seasons to me) Speights is going to be one of the important keys to such relevance.
The Speights relevant on off court numbers are available here. And like with Sam, but in reverse, the offense is much better with Speights on the court and the defense is much worse (per 100 possessions). But wait, what's this, the sixers are better on the defensive glass so far this season with Speights on the floor? That's right folks, to this point this season the sixers rebound the ball better when Speights is on the floor as when Sam is on the floor. I know it makes no sense cause Sam is an awesome rebounder, but there it is.
Now, let's not look at this in a vacuum, let's look at the most important thing we can (to me) right now. How does each player play with the starting unit? What's that you say? If only we had a way to see how that works out? Well I'm glad you asked Virginia, because look at this.
Remember how the defense was worse with Speights on the floor for all of his minutes while the offense was better? Well check out the (albeit limited) numbers when Speights plays with the rest of the starting 5 (Lou, Andre, Thad, Elton). The standard starting five has a 'net difference' of .04. Yes the offense seems to be functioning better than the other teams but the defense of the starting five keeps it close. Now, let's look at the net difference for the starting 4 + speights. For those math challenged, it's .48, which is 12 times better than the 'normal' starting five.
Yes, I realize that it's a limited sample size and that the sixers have only played six games. And yes, I realize that I've been at the forefront of the Sam Sucks movement (for longer than i've posted here, for like 4 years now when I was allowed to post at realgm.com), but, the available evidence right now indicates that the starting 4 + Speights is better than the starting 4 + Dalembert. It's also pretty well known that if the sixers could find any team to trade for Dalmebert for even a bag of Doritos they'd trade him, which indicates to me that he's not part of the future of this franchise when they hope to be contending for a title. If that's true, then tell Eddie Jordan it's ok to bench Sam, that the development of Speights matters more than the W/L THIS SEASON, because it's about building towards a championship, and Sam Dalembert isn't a starter on a championship NBA team.
In short, start Speights, tonight, and tell Sam he's a bench player, and every time he whines to the media fine him 10K for conduct detrimental to the team...it's time for Sam to grow up and accept his place in the NBA.

Lidge (and others) to have surgery

jemagee — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:31:27 -0000

Lidge (and others) to have surgery

I wonder how long that thing has been in his elbow - many people speculated that he wasn't 'right' - be pretty irritating if that was there all season.

Who's a bigger traitor?

jemagee — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:31:20 -0000

So, the yankees just won the world series (they were the better team and it played out exactly how I expected it to, so I guess, meh, for predictive skills) over the Phillies and the Eagles and Cowboys square off Sunday Night (woo hoo FINALLY get to see an eagles game this season), so a question occurs to you...and most of you will know where it comes from.

There's a poll so we can quantify this precisely of course, but which is worse:

A sixerrs fan who is a cowboys and astros fan

A sixers fan who is an eagles fan as well but a yankees fan.

This is purely for entertainments sake and to bust balls cause the phillies lost and the sixers are terrible.

Poll

Which fandom is a worse combination of good & evil?

Hey - at leat utley is the sexiest.

jemagee — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:11:13 -0000

Hey - at leat utley is the sexiest.

Chase Utley currently leads this poll on people magazine - those who aren't insecure in their sexualities should vote.

How do you feel now - 1st game over reaction edition

jemagee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:20:11 -0000

So we all know Jordan made his poll about how everyone felt on about the team on a scale from 1 to 10. 52% of the people who replied were at a 7 or higher (30% were 9 or highter even)

Well no we've played a game, so let's recap.

The sixers got walloped, due to coaching, bad defense, or just bad players, the second unit in the 2nd quarter got demolished and whatever the sixers tried, they couldn't stop it. Speights scored a lot of points but all reports indicate that defensively he was garbage.

I'm going from articles, I did not see the game.

Dalembert got his traditional 2 fouls in the first half and sat but in the third he picked up THREE quickly...and per usual, make or miss, he was taking shots he shouldn't ever be taking. Iguodala shot for shiznit.

Then there's the things that are always problems, since the end of the freaking larry brown era. Bad 3 point defense? Check. Bad 3 point shooting? Check. Crappy Free throw shooting? Check. Not enough assists on baskets? (Ok that's just a pet peeve of mine, the A:FG ratio I call it, shouldn't be below .5 ever) Check.

Admittedly, I didn't see the game, but I have to think the 37 points in the 4th quarter were because the Magic starters were resting after kicking the living crap out of the team for 3 quarters. Yes the sixers 'averaged' 25 points a quarter like Jordan wanted, but in the 3 quarters that mattered, they only scored 69 (23 per quarter) but they gave up 98. But let's ignore the 2nd quarter as an aberration if you want, they STILL gave up 29 and 28 in the 1st and 2nd respectively. I don't care if you average 25 points a quarter offensively Coach Jordan if you give up 28.5 points a quarter - you'll lose every game.

So - Where do you stand now? This is Philadlephia folks, we over react after ever pitch oin a baseball game, we're ready to get rid of McNabb after Kevin Kolb shreds the Kansas City Chiefs - tell me or tell Eskin :)

yes, it was the Magic, yes the magic are probably the best team in the east right now (at least to me, Shaq makes the cavs worse in my opinion and the celtics are older and have a pouting all star point guard looking to leave after this season), yes the sixers probably should have lost this game, but as I understand it from reading and comments, they were embarassing in the way they lost.

Sixers finally realize they can't defend P&R?

jemagee — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:03:27 -0000

I haven't seen anyone mention this anywhere and I kind of think it's a big deal. Maybe this new regime really is learning something?

Towards the end of the practice, assistant coach Randy Ayers took over and worked specifically on pick-and-roll defense. Not a bad thing for the Sixers to be working on considering it has been a problem area with them for years. Ayers has the screener's defender showing hard against the ball handler, letting the on-ball defender slip on top of the screen (but below the show defender), and recovering to his man. Of course, this leaves the show defender behind, since their man has rolled to the basket. Ayers was going over all these rotations and it's the first time we've actually been watching as they went over these defensive principles. It's early, but they looked improved in this area. Jordan also began teaching a full-court press they'll be using ... which I think he called 43.

This is from Kate Fagans Blog about Day 3 Practice

Click Here

Did You See What Joe Nathan Just Did?

jemagee — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:33:49 -0000

So as if it was needed, but did anyone just see what 'uber closer' Joe Nathan just choked against the Yankees?

3-1 bottom of the 9th, Tex, A-Rod, Matsui the first 3. Tex leads off with a bullet t right field for a single and A-Rod slams a bomb to right center to tie it up (inning still going). Nathan ran the count 3-0 to A-Rod before the obligatory 3-0 called strike.

Here's the thing, they showed the numbers before hand, sure it's small sample size, but both Tex and A-Rod are 6-10 against Nathan. Maybe bringing in a guy who matches up better with each guy would have been a smarter move? And yet - no one will question it because Nathan is the 'closer' - I wonder who else in the pen has better numbers against those two - do you suppose gardenhire even checked?

The Recommendation Corner

jemagee — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:08:18 -0000

Yes, I'm aware that this won't be a basketball or sixers related post, however at the same time, we do end up polluting basketball posts by tangents of recommendation and discussion of things like movies and books (ok, so usually I instigate it, but not always), and I still haven't gotten the gumption up to start my own blogs. So I'm throwing this up here for a place for folks to ask for or make recommendations fo books / movies etc...so most of jordans posts can be made mainly about basketball.

Last night Jordan asked for comedy recommendations and it was determined that he is woefully under populated in some of the classics.

John Belushi films, I don't know if he's seen it - but any mel brooks movies also should be seen immediately.

The Great Dictator while having funny moments isn't purely a comedy - but a very important film (even for when it was made, but thinking about what it's about and when it was made you can see that not only was chaplin brilliant, he recognized a coming evil sooner than most people)

Albert Brooks is more esoteric - Defending your Life, Mother...both excellent but more high brow

Mother Sues Phillies for Howards 200th

jemagee — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:40:30 -0000

Mother Sues Phillies for Howards 200th

So - I guess the 12 year old girl who caught Ryan Howards 200th Homerun in Florida didn't get enough swag. According to the article when she caught it - they did the traditional exchange of stuff for the ball - girls momma not happy - files suit - she gest ball back

I wonder - did the cash hungry (My assumption) mother ask for the ball back first or just sue assuming they'd pay her off cause they wanted the ball?

Cliff Lee BABIP 5 versus 3

jemagee — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:47:42 -0000

I'm not sure if this is an oddity or just him pitching badly, I have not seen many of Cliff Lee's outings. And I'm not 100% sure I calculated this right (Errors were counted as 'outs' instead of hits - on balls in play...if that's incorrect I can correct it)

I did a little looking at Cliff Lee's numbers from first five to past three, his pitch 'distribution' is about the same, his pitch velocities don't seem terribly different...I still don't know what all the variables ON a pitch mean so i'm hoping to figure that out this coming week after getting my one month subscription to BP to read one freaking article :).

If I collected this correctly these are the BABIP (with codecil regarding errors above) For Cliff Lee's first 8 starts as a Phillie.

.174
.316
.286
.105
.286

When you combined all the In Play balls in his first 5 starts - it works out to a BABIP .233

Lee's past 3 starts where people seem to worrying more because the outcomes of his starts have been a lot worse:

.500
.600
.357

Those 3 starts the BABIP works out to be .460

For all 8 starts, his BABIP works out to be .319

In Cleveland this year his BABIP was .326, last year it was .304

So I'm thinking he's not as bad as the past 3 starts nor is he really as dominant as he was in the first 5, but he's somewhere in the middle?

Critiques to this welcome as it's my first attempt at doing anything even remotely statistical...I suppose I could look at 'first pitch/count distribution' - was he ahead more or behind more or whatever, but I don't know if that is something that is ever useful...but i've seen this calculated.

Again, apologies if i did the calculation wrong...i may have treated the errors wrong as a site called firstinning.com has Lee's Philadephia BABIP at .316