The Numbers Crunch: Wizard destroyed by bulls

After this ended, I spent some time staring at the numbers and thinking about two questions:

1. If a hypothetical NBA coach was given the Wizards roster and asked to win a game to save the life of a loved one, who would he play against? And,
2. Would it make a difference?

The state of the Washington Wizards is such that I tried a few permutations to answer #1 and then said “F” because of the answer to #2. Michael Winger, Will Dawkins and Travis Schlenk have largely coached the player personnel. Maybe one day some of the young people will be good. But that is not the case today and will not be the case until some unspecified point in the future.

Maybe older players could contribute to good teams in other roles. But those roles don’t exist on this team due to the complete lack of talent.

What’s left is a team that went up against a weak Chicago Bulls team that came into DC ranked 18th in offense and 28th in defense and was unable to slow down Chicago’s offense or to generate points.

The Wizards’ roster has been so bad this season that it rivals history. They currently have the fourth-worst winning percentage of all time (tied with the 1947-48 Providence Steamrollers). They have the third-worst adjusted scoring margin in history. By the end of the season, they could very well be bottom all-time in each of these categories, especially if they swap out some of the veterans.

Also, in the last two plays I’ve talked about rebranding the Wizards – first with Gabe Ibrahim and then with Albert Lee. It would be difficult to find a better new name than Steamrollers. I’m just saying it.

So are there any bright spots after Washington’s 127-108 loss to the Chicago Bulls?

• They didn’t lose by 20.
• Alex Sarr, the 19-year-old rookie center who was the No. 2 overall pick in this year’s draft, played well – 20 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, a steal and a block. He shot 4-5 from three-point range and increased his three-point percentage to 24.2% for the year.
• 51.5% of the team’s minutes went to players 20 years old or younger.
• Kyle Kuzma was okay.
• Malcolm Brogdon was fine.
• Anthony Gill was okay?

That’s about all I have, unless we want to talk about people putting in a lot of effort or wasting time in production.

I mean, this Wizards team was kicked off by a version of Talen Horton-Tucker — a minimum-salary guy trying to hold on for a few more days of pay — who now resembles a slower, stiffer, less explosive, less muscular Ledell Eackles. (Don’t argue: Horton-Tucker scored 13 points on 6 shots. He had two assists, a steal and a block. His offensive rating was 188. The league average is 113.3.)

Also:

Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images

Four factors

Below are the four factors that determine wins and losses in basketball: shooting (EFG), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

Statistics and key figures

Below are some performance metrics, including Player Production Average (PPA) Game Score. PPA is my overall performance metric that recognizes players for things they do to help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defense) and rewards them for things that hurt (misses, turnovers, poor defense, fouls). ).

Match result (GmSC) converts individual production into points on the scoreboard. The scale is the same as points and reflects each player’s scale Total contributions for the game. The lowest possible GmSC is zero.

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. With small sample sizes the numbers can get strange. In the PPA, 100 is average, higher is better, and the replacement level is 45. For a single game, the replacement level is not particularly useful, and I would like to point out again that small samples sometimes produce strange results.

POSSIBLE is the number of possessions each player had on the floor in that game.

ORTG = Offensive rating, which is points scored per possession x 100. The league average last season was 114.8. Points scored are not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as the distribution of credit when an assist is received.

USG = offensive usage rate. The average is 20%.

ORTG and USG are versions of statistics created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that takes into account the value of shots, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and the free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.

+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points each player gained or lost based on their efficiency in that game compared to the league’s average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an Offensive Rating (points per possession x 100) of 100 using 20 possessions would score 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league would average 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So the player in this hypothesis would have a +PTS of -2.8.