Some (more or less) consequential tidbits from B-ref & NBA.com/stats

[LogGrad98]

Do you know what plus minus is? It has nothing to do with being the "best" scorer.

Do any of the two-man lineups listed look like typical garbage-time pairings?

Did you read the other post I had that mentioned that the Jazz are overall terrible in garbage time? How does that help Niang have good plus-minus stats?

The bigger point you are missing is it doesn't matter and no one cares. No one in their right mind will try to make the connection that any of those 2-man groupings are good because of Niang. Yet that was your implication. It really brings into question whether you even know basketball at all. You can show anything you want with statistics. Look hard enough and you can find positive stats for about anyone or anything. For you to use this to try to imply that Niang is the reason for that stat just proves that point and that you really don't understand what you are trying to prove.

 

[idiot]

Due to the small sample size of total minutes and relatively large amount of garbage time in those minutes, these numbers are actually heavily skewed. The kiddos have gotten destroyed when they're on the court. Here are the the non-garbage time numbers from CTG:

On Court / NET

Gobert: +7.5 / +0.4
Bogey: +2.1 / -14.8
O'Neale: +5.0 / -7.6
Mitchell: +4.5 / -9.8
Conley: +10.6 / +10.0

Favors: +10.0 / +4.1
Niang: +23.1 / +20.1
Ingles: +0.0 / -13.0
Clarkson: +11.5 / +9.3

Some quick takeaways, which are not worth much more than descriptions of what's happened so far:

- Starting lineup is not doing as well as last year (+3.7), but it's been a night and day difference in the last 4 games as Mitchell began to play well. As long as Mitchell and Bogey aren't both playing terrible, I'm still confident this is one of the better starting lineups in the league.

- The in between lineups are working well for the most part, especially w/o Ingles. You can roughly break up the rotation int 5 segments. Gobert has three stints. Favors has two shorter ones in between. The first sub with a healthy squad is typically Ingles/Favors for Conley Gobert. That lineup has gotten rocked (-10.2). But the second Favors stint has fared really well. The main difference in this second stint is Clarkson in place of Ingles. This lineup has been terrific (+24.6). Obviously there's some wonkiness here, but that's what can happen in small sample sizes. Ingles was available when we were struggling and missed a few of the recent blowout wins. Don't think this is his fault. Overall, Favors is +9.1 without Gobert, that's what we paid for.

- The "bench" unit has mostly been led by Clarkson, Conley, and Gobert. You can roughly capture these minutes with Conley+Gobert on the court and Mitchell off the court. These minutes have been dominant (+11.9) and particularly dominant with Niang (+15.6). With Oni+Niang, the numbers are absurd. +41.0 in 53 minutes. These "bench" minutes have been dominant on the defensive end, not the offensive end. In fact, the offense hasn't been good at all. It's really just Gobert dominant second units who don't have the talent to get around him.



As far as what we can expect going forward, here are my guesses for what might be different or the same going forward:

- The starting lineup will get back to form. It's already started to happen and the catalyst has been Mitchell not being awful. As long as Mitchell plays like Mitchell, we have a great lineup.

- The Favors, no Rudy minutes will continue to be good. Both groups he plays in are due for some regression. The lineup with Clarkson is over performing, but the group with Ingles should be better going forward. These are very strong lineups to catch opposing teams and build leads. We have 5 starter caliber players on against units with 2+ subs on the court.

- The Rudy + Conley "bench" units will get worse defensively. The defense is playing unrealistically well, but I still expect Rudy to be a one man force against bench groups. You have to have a lot of talent on the floor to challenge Rudy and there simply aren't many bench units that can do so. A 93.9 defensive rating is unsustainable, however.

- On the other hand, the offense will get much better. The offense is at just a 105.7 ORTG. This is mostly due to Gobert and Niang being trash on offense this season. They are much better offensive players than they've been thus far, and with regression back to the mean I could see this ORTG jump to 115+. I think this will be the most dominant part of the game for us.

Very nicely analyzed

 

[Agent#00]

Due to the small sample size of total minutes and relatively large amount of garbage time in those minutes, these numbers are actually heavily skewed. The kiddos have gotten destroyed when they're on the court. Here are the the non-garbage time numbers from CTG:

On Court / NET

Gobert: +7.5 / +0.4
Bogey: +2.1 / -14.8
O'Neale: +5.0 / -7.6
Mitchell: +4.5 / -9.8
Conley: +10.6 / +10.0

Favors: +10.0 / +4.1
Niang: +23.1 / +20.1
Ingles: +0.0 / -13.0
Clarkson: +11.5 / +9.3

Some quick takeaways, which are not worth much more than descriptions of what's happened so far:

- Starting lineup is not doing as well as last year (+3.7), but it's been a night and day difference in the last 4 games as Mitchell began to play well. As long as Mitchell and Bogey aren't both playing terrible, I'm still confident this is one of the better starting lineups in the league.

- The in between lineups are working well for the most part, especially w/o Ingles. You can roughly break up the rotation int 5 segments. Gobert has three stints. Favors has two shorter ones in between. The first sub with a healthy squad is typically Ingles/Favors for Conley Gobert. That lineup has gotten rocked (-10.2). But the second Favors stint has fared really well. The main difference in this second stint is Clarkson in place of Ingles. This lineup has been terrific (+24.6). Obviously there's some wonkiness here, but that's what can happen in small sample sizes. Ingles was available when we were struggling and missed a few of the recent blowout wins. Don't think this is his fault. Overall, Favors is +9.1 without Gobert, that's what we paid for.

- The "bench" unit has mostly been led by Clarkson, Conley, and Gobert. You can roughly capture these minutes with Conley+Gobert on the court and Mitchell off the court. These minutes have been dominant (+11.9) and particularly dominant with Niang (+15.6). With Oni+Niang, the numbers are absurd. +41.0 in 53 minutes. These "bench" minutes have been dominant on the defensive end, not the offensive end. In fact, the offense hasn't been good at all. It's really just Gobert dominant second units who don't have the talent to get around him.



As far as what we can expect going forward, here are my guesses for what might be different or the same going forward:

- The starting lineup will get back to form. It's already started to happen and the catalyst has been Mitchell not being awful. As long as Mitchell plays like Mitchell, we have a great lineup.

- The Favors, no Rudy minutes will continue to be good. Both groups he plays in are due for some regression. The lineup with Clarkson is over performing, but the group with Ingles should be better going forward. These are very strong lineups to catch opposing teams and build leads. We have 5 starter caliber players on against units with 2+ subs on the court.

- The Rudy + Conley "bench" units will get worse defensively. The defense is playing unrealistically well, but I still expect Rudy to be a one man force against bench groups. You have to have a lot of talent on the floor to challenge Rudy and there simply aren't many bench units that can do so. A 93.9 defensive rating is unsustainable, however.

- On the other hand, the offense will get much better. The offense is at just a 105.7 ORTG. This is mostly due to Gobert and Niang being trash on offense this season. They are much better offensive players than they've been thus far, and with regression back to the mean I could see this ORTG jump to 115+. I think this will be the most dominant part of the game for us.

That seems accurate.
How long did you type this?

 

[LogGrad98]

That seems accurate.
How long did you type this?

Till the very end.

 

[KqWIN]

The other thing to watch is the closing lineup. We've only had two closing lineups so far in competitive games, the starters and Ingles in for Bogey. The Ingles instead of Conley lineup (which was one of the most effective lineups in the league last season) has yet to be seen. But that is understandable given Conley's play.

4th quarter lineup results:

Starters: +1 in 14 minutes
Ingles instead of Bogey: +14 in 14 minutes

Bogey has closef in 4 of the 7 competitive games. Ingles 3, Clarkson 0.

It'll be how Quin manages the rotation. I think Clarkson is making a case to have a much bigger role. Right now he's clearly third in priority behind Bogey and Ingles. If we based it on currently play, you'd reverse that.

 

[Jazz4ever]

Sample size for +/- is way too small at this point. At all star break I expect Niang to be back around 0 or slightly negative on net +/- where he was the last two years. This is the same player, he hasn't improved.

 

[Jazzmix]

Sample size for +/- is way too small at this point. At all star break I expect Niang to be back around 0 or slightly negative on net +/- where he was the last two years. This is the same player, he hasn't improved.

His effort on defense is clearly better this year. He also benefits from the fact that he has good players around him now, doesn't play with Tony anymore. I think his +/- will stay positive if we don't have significant injuries forcing him to play bigger role than he should.

 

[KqWIN]

Niang's +/- numbers are going to be great the whole year if the rotation stays the same. He exclusively plays in an unfair lineup against bench units, though it should be noted that even metrics that adjust for teammate/opponent (which are very noisy this early on) are heavily in his favor.

These numbers alone aren't enough to evaluate Niang...but they do give some credence to my opinion that he gets too much flak for his defense. Niang is terrible in some of the most visible aspects of defense but has always been decent in the less obvious areas.

But there's no doubt that his offense has been lacking this season. If this bench units needs something, it's a knock down shooter to play around Conley, Clarkson, and Gobert. If he can regain his offensive form, that will offset the inevitable regression on defense.

 

[idiot]

Sample size for +/- is way too small at this point. At all star break I expect Niang to be back around 0 or slightly negative on net +/- where he was the last two years. This is the same player, he hasn't improved.

I agree with your first sentence. The rest remains TBD, I suppose. (btw, to even end up somewhere around 0 in +/- stats would be a big improvement for Niang individually and would greatly help the team, compared to past years. He's been pretty bad on these stats up till this point in his career.)

@KqWIN is right that Niang's traditional stats are bad this year, but somehow the lineups that he's in are great. The latter could indeed (and to be honest, is very likely to) be due in large part to random luck, but we don't have any statistical evidence that his teammates are "carrying" him. The (albeit) limited evidence points more the other direction, if anything. And I do agree that he's been looking pretty good on defense so far, particularly in comparison to expectations. And there's no sign (other than sub-par shooting percentages) that he's hindering the offense in any way.

Part of the point is that +/- stats are quite variable from year to year for many players (it's the true stars like Gobert that are always near the top). It just depends a lot on role, circumstance, fit, and so on. The Jazz were confident that Conley and Niang could be useful rotational players for the Jazz's system. It appears (so far) that they were right.

 

[KqWIN]

I agree with your first sentence. The rest remains TBD, I suppose. (btw, to even end up somewhere around 0 in +/- stats would be a big improvement for Niang individually and would greatly help the team, compared to past years. He's been pretty bad on these stats up till this point in his career.)

@KqWIN is right that Niang's traditional stats are bad this year, but somehow the lineups that he's in are great. The latter could indeed (and to be honest, is very likely to) be due in large part to random luck, but we don't have any statistical evidence that his teammates are "carrying" him. The (albeit) limited evidence points more the other direction, if anything. And I do agree that he's been looking pretty good on defense so far, particularly in comparison to expectations. And there's no sign (other than sub-par shooting percentages) that he's hindering the offense in any way.

Part of the point is that +/- stats are quite variable from year to year for many players (it's the true stars like Gobert that are always near the top). It just depends a lot on role, circumstance, fit, and so on. The Jazz were confident that Conley and Niang could be useful rotational players for the Jazz's system. It appears (so far) that they were right.

I think it's pretty clear that Niang's +/- is getting carried by his teammates. The defense is what's carrying these numbers, and it's fairly obvious who's carrying the defense when he's in the game. It's Gobert, not Niang. OTOH, the narrative that Niang is such a horrific defender that he's unplayable isn't holding much water right now. As much as Gobert is carrying the defense, Niang is still a part of these lineups and that success. If he can turn around his shooting and get back to where he was that'll make him a really solid role player and great fit into the bench lineup.

 

[idiot]

I think it's pretty clear that Niang's +/- is getting carried by his teammates. The defense is what's carrying these numbers, and it's fairly obvious who's carrying the defense when he's in the game. It's Gobert, not Niang. OTOH, the narrative that Niang is such a horrific defender that he's unplayable isn't holding much water right now. As much as Gobert is carrying the defense, Niang is still a part of these lineups and that success. If he can turn around his shooting and get back to where he was that'll make him a really solid role player and great fit into the bench lineup.

Yeah, I don't disagree. Just saying that the numbers themselves aren't showing that Niang is being "carried" by certain teammates. For example, Niang has better on-off numbers with Favors than with Gobert, as well as better numbers overall than with Gobert (though sample size problems are exacerbated of course).

 

[framer]

Niang is still vitally important to spacing, even if he isn't shooting or he's having a bad patch. You still have to defend him at the three point line and account for him. Having that that threat certainly has made Conley's life easier.

His defense is night and day better this year too. The problem with guys like Niang too often is that they don't improve. Ir certainly feels like Niang is improving, even if he sacrificed a little of his shooting prep in the shortl offseason. I'm not worrying about his shooting.