During the offseason, it’s easy to get caught up in narratives about which moves are graded by experts to be A’s, B’s or F’s. Some love Isaiah Hartenstein’s fit with the Thunder because he addresses their glaring rebounding issues, and others can’t handle the fact that while he’s on the floor, they won’t be able to play their drive-and-kick 5-out shooting system they relied on (successfully) last year (okay, no one’s that mad). Many people aren’t enthusiastic about DeMar DeRozan’s fit in Sacramento, but others say, rightfully, “this was their best shot at a real talent upgrade for a low cost!”
Fit is a combination of skill complementarity and quality, ensuring that certain skills meet their required levels in a modern basketball environment. Playmaking for one’s self and others (specifically in the pick n’ roll), rim pressure, and shooting off the ball are required in today’s day and age, with other skills (e.g. cutting, post ups) being helpful when they work well with the core players on the team.
An obvious caveat with all of these conversations is that players aren’t modular pieces of a machine which have the same limited capabilities no matter which system they’re placed in. Players have skills they don’t use in certain situations, and they get better and worse over time. Devin Booker was a 6th man shooter at the University of Kentucky in 2015, while Karl-Anthony Towns was a bruising post up menace on the same team. Now, Booker is one of the best on-ball scorers in the league, and Towns is what Towns is.
Last week, I used an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to group the league’s players into eight groups, and talked about the different things I noticed with those findings. This week, I wanted to look forward to the upcoming season, with the roster changes we know about. We don’t know what’s in the heads of coaches like Mike Brown, Nick Nurse, and others, but we can sure act like we are qualified to tell them what to do. That’s what NBA discourse is all about!
Also, quick reminder for everyone: this is not a defensive exercise. So, I will do my best to keep that in mind, but the stats I used were completely based on the player’s offense.
A Quick Synopsis from Last Season
As a reminder, here are the eight groups that we created:
The Benefactors
High-usage PnR Creators
Secondary Creators
Tertiary Creators
The Beneficiaries
Shoooooters
Stretch Big-ish’s
Non-shooting bigs
The Hybrids
Undecided usage guys
These groups represent different distributions of frequencies of spotting up, PnR ball-handling, cuts (including rolling in the PnR), and running isolations. If you enjoy sub-optimal graphs where I tried to represent these, there are some on the previous post.
Looking at the best offensive lineups in the league last year (pretty subjectively), and the groups they are in:
Denver: Murray (High-usage PnR), Caldwell-Pope (Stretch Big-ish), Porter Jr. (Stretch Big-ish), Gordon (Hybrid), Jokic (Hybrid)
Phoenix: Booker (High-usage PnR), Beal (High-usage PnR), Allen (Shooooter), Durant (Hybrid), Nurkic (Hybrid)
Milwaukee: Dame (High-usage PnR), Beasley (Shooooter), Middleton (Stretch Big-ish), Giannis (Hybrid), Brook (Undecided usage guy)
Boston: White (Tertiary), Holiday (Secondary), Brown (Hybrid), Tatum (Hybrid), Porzingis (Hybrid)
Oklahoma City: Shai (High-usage PnR), J-Dub (High-usage PnR), Dort (Shooooter), Giddey (Tertiary), Chet (Stretch Big-ish)
Dallas: Kyrie (Hybrid), Luka (High-usage PnR), DJJ (Shooooter), PJ Washington (Shoooooter), Lively (Non-shooting big)
Sacramento: Fox (High-usage PnR), Heurter (Shooooooter), Barnes (Shoooooter), Murray (Stretch Big-ish), Sabonis (Non-shooting big)
One piece of data that likely would have helped differentiate more would have been some passing metric for guys like Jokic and Sabonis. However, we can still see a few things:
Having shooting matters. Every one of these lineups has at least 2 of the shooter, stretch big, and hybrid types.
These high-usage PnR guys need to be good shooters as well. The Orlando Magic, as I mentioned in last week’s post, have two of these in Paolo and Franz, when neither are significant shooting threats. Their defense is stellar, but they continue the Zach Lowe streak of bottom 10 offenses in Orlando Magic history.
The secondary and tertiary creators don’t seem super necessary for most of these lineups. For Boston, it makes sense since they don’t have a high-usage guy in their top 5 (or 6). But otherwise, the only other player here is Josh Giddey, who was ignominiously traded away this offseason.
Obviously, there’s value for many of them to come off the bench, and this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means of good lineups. But, it’s just interesting to see.
The Upcoming Season
The teams that have changed their roster topography the most, and also are trying to win next year, are:
Philadelphia 76ers
Sacramento Kings
New Orleans Pelicans
San Antonio Spurs (not trying to win at the same level, but it’s clear that they’re not tanking anymore)
In a lot of ways, this is just a good excuse to talk about these teams even beyond the groupings. So, here we go.
Post-process Sixers
As others have suggested, I think that we can officially say that The Process (TM) is done. This is the final step. Through a convoluted set of moves dating back to 2017 that somehow netted them Tyrese Maxey, they lucked into this. Time to get to work. Here’s the projected 8-man rotation, with their play-type groups from last season:
PG: Tyrese Maxey (High-usage PnR)
SG: Caleb Martin (Tertiary)
SF: Kelly Oubre (Tertiary)
PF: Paul George (Hybrid)
C: Joel Embiid (Hybrid)
Bench: Eric Gordon (Shooooter)
Bench: Kyle Lowry (Tertiary)
Bench: Drummond (Hybrid)
A couple questions for Nick Nurse:
How are you going to distribute the shooting? Maxey and George are AWESOME shooters, and most of the role players are not. According to what I wrote above, it feels like the skills are almost inverted: the role players are better with the ball in their hands and two of the three stars are great off the ball.
Is size a concern? Embiid is a much better anchor, but this kind of feels like the Suns roster last year, who had a problem with physicality. Those Suns were a lot stronger on shooting and weaker on some of the toughness, but the size concerns came up in the playoffs.
Honestly, I might just start Eric Gordon in Martin’s place. Kyle Lowry’s already a backup point guard, and they need the spacing for this to work. He wore down last year with the Suns, but I think that you can mainly play him in starter lineups but at less than 30 minutes per game.
Quick stat: Of the Hybrids, George (Gen Z’s Tracy McGrady) had the most efficient season according to my data. Ahead of Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, and Kawhi. I think his fit with Maxey and Embiid will be incredible. Again, it’s just the other guys (and the obvious shout out to the “if they’re healthy” crowd!).
Kings of 2-pointers
DeMar DeRozan’s arrival to the Kings is fascinating, as it felt like a clear talent-over-fit move. DeMar’s transformation over the years is nothing short of commendable, but, at the same time, he still loves to dribble and take midrange shots. Here’s the 8-man rotation, according to me:
PG: De'Aaron Fox (High-usage PnR)
SG: Keon Ellis (Tertiary)
SF: DeMar DeRozan (High-usage PnR)
PF: Keegan Murray (Stretch Big-ish)
C: Domantas Sabonis (Non-shooting Big)
Bench: Malik Monk (Secondary)
Bench: Trey Lyles (Shooooter)
Bench: Kevin Huerter (Shooooter)
A couple questions for Mike Brown:
How can we make sure that Ellis and Murray are bombing threes? Both were very good off the catch last year, but the offense was a lot more efficient per possession with Huerter rather than Ellis, because of Huerter’s reputation as a movement shooter (Ellis was more stand-still in the corner). With that, you’ll need Fox shooting more from 3 since you replaced a Shooooter in Barnes with a high-usage PnR guy in DeMar (he was the 2nd most efficient among the high usage guys, by the way).
Will this stunt Keegan’s growth? Obviously you wouldn’t want that (even if it could result in a cheaper extension next offseason *cough*). Keegan needs reps as a self-creator to achieve his peak-Khris Middleton potential, so hopefully that can be found. Maybe he can stick with DeMar while Fox and Sabonis play together a lot.
Unlike the Sixers, I don’t think you can inject Huerter or Monk into the starting lineup in Ellis’s place because Ellis is key to their defense. I think that the bench lineups will have plenty of shooting (as you can see with the 3 guys first off the bench), so you’ll likely just do a good amount of staggering.
Peli-Can-We-Trade-Brandon-Ingram-Already?
In trading for Dejounte Murray, and still not having any starting center, and still having Brandon Ingram on the books, and…
Well, the Pelicans are confusing. For those who don’t know, Dejounte Murray had his most efficient AND highest scoring season of his career last year. They gave up a decent price for him, but I think that he’s a great fit next to Zion, as he’s developed a lot more of his off-ball game in Atlanta. Let’s check out the rotation (according to me, after trading Ingram):
PG: Dejounte Murray (High-usage PnR)
SG: Herb Jones (Shooooooter)
SF: Trey Murphy III (Shoooooter)
PF: Zion Williamson (Hyrbrid)
C: Daniel Theis (Undecided usage)
Bench: CJ McCollum (Secondary)
Bench: Jordan Hawkins (Shoooooter)
Bench: Yves Missi (Rookie, but Non-shooting Big)
I don’t really have too many questions for Willie Green, because the rotation seems to fit really well. The one question is about talent level, since they are missing Ingram (or what will be returned in a trade for Ingram). Many are very high on Trey Murphy III’s potential as well, so this would likely be a great opportunity for him to show whether that’s true.
So, this is more of an idea for Mr. David Griffin, head honcho over the Pelicans.
Speaking of Ingram…
Here’s another FTI for Ingram, just for fun.
Why the Pelicans do it: They get a really good starting center.
Why the Lakers do it: They still need a talent upgrade, and Ingram is all that’s left. And they can be jumbo with him. Welcome back! (To Matt Ryan too)
Why the Cavs do it: They have all the big contracts coming next year, so an expiring + a great pick seems worthwhile. And Vando is a fun fit next to Mobley off the bench.
Win, win, win!
Wemby’s Short-term Supporting Cast
Victor Wembanyama averaged 21.4 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.2 steals, and 3.6 blocks (!!!) on league average efficiency last season. The team, for a while, was putting ill-fitting lineups around him (Sochan at point guard, Collins at center), and once those were resolved, the team became (relatively) a lot better. He’ll continue to improve individually, but the Spurs clearly decided that they’d put a few more good-fit players around him. From my point of view, they know that its unlikely that they will be a bottom-feeder, so they might as well improve the situation around Victor as long as it doesn’t cost their future assets that they’ve accumulated. The rotation, as I see it, looks like the following:
PG: Chris Paul (Secondary)
SG: Stephon Castle (Rookie, but Tertiary)
SF: Devin Vassell (Secondary)
PF: Jeremy Sochan (Undecided)
C: Victor Wembanyama (Hybrid)
Bench: Tre Jones (Secondary)
Bench: Harrison Barnes (Shooooooter)
Bench: Keldon Johnson (Tertiary)
Bench: Zach Collins (Hybrid)
A couple questions for Pop:
How long will the Jeremy Sochan experiment go? I have never been a huge fan, but to be fair to him, didn’t he feel like more of a high-ceiling pick before you knew that you’d be getting the Alien? In some ways, he feels like the equivalent of OKC’s Josh Giddey, except his skills are a little bit more on the defensive side of the ball. I think that the best lineup you’ll have will have Harrison Barnes in his place.
Will you have Vassell go the way of the Hybrid of the high-usage PnR? I would bet he’s got more Hybrid in him, given his lack of high-level passing (AND THAT’S NOT A BAD THING). But for him to be foundational, I think he needs to choose a lane.
If Castle hits, this team could be pretty annoying to the rest of us Western Conference fans. I actually predicted that Castle would be this year’s ROTY, so I think he’s got a real shot. But we’ll see. Victor may be coming for the crown/throne/keys/driver’s seat.