Point Blank – April 7, 2017
How Pops got the Weasels in Spurs/Lakers (Remembering the Alamo for all the wrong reasons)…Matt Harvey was legitimately good on Thursday, James Shields may have been legitimately bad (though W/L and ERA were gracious)…There may be sheep in Wolves uniforms at Salt Lake City tonight…
Next Friday in this spot it will be time to break down the opening of the NBA playoffs, a badly needed fresh breeze blowing across a league that has had a rather wretched regular season from an integrity standpoint. Today I will bring some aspects of those integrity issues into the lead; while they have been discussed on occasion over the last few months, most data-bases this season are littered with junk. But was that really Gregg Popovich lighting a candle of dignity in a dark cave on Wednesday? I’ll get to that in a moment.
First time to close out the jukebox tribute week to this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class, to be inducted this evening, and it will be a unique treat today. In order to connect to the NBA’s rather sorry 2016-17 offering it will be a double shot of Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, live from the Bridge School benefit in 2014, a pair of covers capped by Neil Young’s “Fuckin’ Up”, that being the almost perfect connection to some of the NBA issues in general, and certainly attaching to the Lakers in particular -
Now back to Wednesday evening in San Antonio, when those Lakers tried to reach a new low, but weren’t allowed to fully scrape the bottom…
Item: And Pop(s) goes the Weasel(s)
The things I am going to write about Gregg Popovich today may not be true. I am purely making observations from a long way away, based on the experience of what I know of sport, and of Pops in particular, from so many years of study. But I would bet that this is true, at the right price, of course.
Few folks in any sport treat what they do as seriously as Popovich, a well-educated and well-studied man. Hence what the Lakers are doing down the stretch has to have bothered him from a professional standpoint, and on Wednesday I believe he simply refused to let LAL lose a game.
Most of the story will not be new to you, but let me set the stage with a few key details first. While tanking is unfortunately a reality in professional sports, rarely has a team been in as blatant of a position to do it as LAL this season, through some awkward trades that the NBA did not properly think through. Unless they have one of the top three picks when the lottery balls are drawn, their #1 pick goes to Philadelphia, along with a 2019 #1 to Orlando. If the Lakers are in the bottom three, they keep this year’s pick, and owe the Magic a pair of #2’s instead.
It wasn’t as though LAL had to tank this season away, they were rather dreadful anyway, despite a run of recent high draft picks. The current sad state of affairs? It has come from having the #7 pick (Julius Randle), the #2 (DeAngelo Russell), and the #2 (Brandon Ingram) over the last three drafts, so for folks enjoying their race to the bottom, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything better going forward.
(By the way, this is where I could go to my aside about the problems on One-and-Done’s in the modern era, in particular on the defensive end, and note that in drafting three straight such players with those high picks the current LAL defense is in a legit race to be the NBA’s worst over the past decade.)
Down the stretch the Lakers got blatant, however, not just trying to guarantee being in the bottom three, but also competing with Phoenix for next-to-last, which increases the odds of getting a higher pick. Veterans Luol Deng and Timofey Mozgov were shut down early, because they are the kind of pesky competitors that might have played hard in order to land a job elsewhere next season. Nick Young has been shut down with what is called an ankle injury, but who knows.
So when the left-overs were off to face the Spurs on Wednesday, a bottom three slot not locked up yet, Luke Walton decided to change things up – no practice the day before, and instead a visit to Lackland Air Force base. From Walton - “It was good to break things up and get out of the routine a little bit. You always take that into consideration. But there’s (a few) games left and player development is the most important thing for us. Doing things like that is great for the guys. We’re going to have plenty of practice time this summer together.”
That had to bother Popovich, an insult to the sport in general and to the Spurs in particular, and it may have gotten worse when DeAngelo Russell was scratched before the game, listed as a knee injury, but again who knows. Russell was off of scoring 28 points, with six rebounds and five assists, over 36:02 in his previous game vs. Memphis, but it was a night in which he played well enough for the Lakers to win, which was not a good thing in the grand scheme.
There was one more. To further insult the sport LAL announced that David Nwaba would play vs. the Spurs, which he did, then leave right after the game to play in a Developmental League playoff game at Hidalo, Texas the following night. And sure enough, D-Fenders GM Nick Mazella was there to pick him up after the game, and they drove off.
So when the game started I don’t think Pops wanted the Lakers to be rewarded for their shenanigans, and that message may have been sent to his players, who quickly fell down 40-14. That margin made things difficult for Walton. Ingram got off to a good start, eight points, three assists and two rebounds in just 9:36, the Lakers going +13 in that span, but he left and did not return, the team saying something unofficial about a “knee injury”. Fellow starters Randle, Jordan Clarkson, and Larry Nance Jr. never saw a minute in the fourth quarter, Walton giving that entire frame to Nwaba, Tyler Ennis, Tarik Black, Thomas Robinson and the split of veterans Corey Brewer and Metta World Peace. A coach can’t do much more to lose than that, because those were the only players left that were dressed. In order to make the lead go away, Walton was using the worst possible grouping of available bodies.
Popovich wasn’t going to have it. Tony Parker only played 16:21, LaMarcus Aldridge 16:01 and Kawhi Leonard 14:03. There was no attempt to chase, although the margin did shrink because of the LAL ineptitude. And it almost got touchy late when back-to-back triples by Spurs rookie Davis Bertans cut it to five.
But God bless Tania Ganguli of the L.A. Times, and I mean this with the utmost possible respect for the job she has to do, and her phrasing of “The Spurs got within five with a minute and 19 seconds to go, but the Lakers, defiantly, turned them back.” That, folks, is Pulitzer stuff.
Popovich was not going to get into trouble for saying the wrong thing afterwards, but he did have to offer something, and this was it - "I didn't want to overplay anybody just to win a basketball game. That doesn't make much sense in the long run. We started out pretty poorly and got better as we went. Being down like that and then sitting some guys showed me something - that the reserves could stick in there and do what they did. So that was nice."
Bravo, for “nice” at the end. I don’t think there was any way within his control Pops was going to allow the Lakers to lose that game.
Item: And the problem for the handicapper
At the best of times the NBA can be a statistical challenge, the long circus of the regular season being filled with so much garbage (if you have some free time on your hands, take a gander at last night’s Brooklyn/Orlando closing stretch; if you have anything at all better to do please don’t).
This season got particularly difficult because the practice of sitting key players has become rather routine, and while it adds a layer to the workday, that is a good thing for the shrewd handicapper. Chaos favors those that work the hardest in order to understand it.
But tracking each game is an impossibility for many that choose to bet the sport, and they have to rely on the stat services that are out there. The problem is that they track every result the same regardless of the level of integrity, and there are some games, like Lakers/Spurs on Wednesday, that shouldn’t be counted at all – there was absolutely nothing in that game flow of any legit merit going forward (the irony is that if the Lakers don’t fall below the 2009 Kings for the worst defense of the past 10 years, it may be because of the single game 94.4 PP100 they got credited with at San Antonio).
What is said about statistics also applies to trends as well. Over time it will look rather nice on the Walton resume that he went in and got an outright win as a double-figure underdog vs. the Spurs. Yet he wasn’t actually do anything to win that night. So for those of you that aren’t in the position to track the NBA deeply, but still want to do enough to be successful betting it, there at least needs to be the acknowledgment that many of the stats and trends sites are weighed down with various degrees of gibberish.
About Last Night, MLB…
Matt Harvey and James Shields were focus points here yesterday, and the quick glance of the Friday box scores over a cup of coffee shows Harvey opening his season 1-0/2.70 and Shields at 1-0/1.69. But there was a world of difference between their performances.
Harvey was sharp, throwing first-pitch strikes to 11 straight batters to open his season, hitting 95 on the radar gun. Of his 78 pitches, 56 were in the strike zone, and the only blemishes were a pair of home runs from Matt Kemp. The other 20 Atlanta plate appearances produced one hit, no walks, and four strikeouts.
From catcher Travis D’Arnaud – “The demeanor, even when he ran out to the bullpen, reminded me of a couple of years ago.” And Terry Collins – “You’re going to look hopefully in the middle of the summer and he’s going to be back to where he was. Now is he going to be throwing 98 again? I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball. But I think Matt Harvey can pitch as good as anybody when he’s at 93 to 95, and he showed it tonight.”
Harvey wasn't just physically throwing the ball well, after getting off to a good start he was confident and aggressive. That matters.
Meanwhile the totality of the pitches thrown by Shields was far different from the way the simple bottom line registered his outcome. He got a favorable strike zone from HP umpire Dan Iassogna, but even with that had as many walks as strikeouts, and only 58 of his 104 pitches were recorded as being in the zone. His GB% was a frightening 15.5, but the sport was kind to him, a single-game .083 BABIP, and a perfect 100.0 LOB%. That 1.69 ERA? FIP calls the game 6.16, right near the 6.01 that tracker placed him at last year. I believe FIP is the better indicator going forward, and it may have been a dream result yesterday, cashing a ticket while bringing the opportunity to cash more ahead.
In the Sights, Friday NBA…
One of the teams that has been difficult to track this season has been the Jazz, not through any intentional wrong-doing on their part, but the fact that injuries have taken such a toll, with 186-player-games being taken away from Quin Snyder’s rotation. Yet look at where they are, sitting at 48-30 and with a chance to take control of the race for the #4 seed tonight. With a convenient schedule of home practices this week it has allowed some of the walking wounded to get back on the court, so the energy and focus should be at a high level tonight, and that puts #512 Utah (9:05 Eastern) into pocket, with some key precincts at -8.5 in the early trading, and value holding to -9. The gassed-out Timberwolves provide an ideal foil.
While I don’t expect to see George Hill on the court in this one, his return to practice is good for the overall Utah spirits, but there is the very real prospect of Derrick Favors, Raul Neto and Rodney Hood seeing action, all participants in the Thursday sessions. It has been back-to-back off days for the Jazz since a comfortable win over Portland on Tuesday, and that also means game-planning for an opponent that they will absolutely take seriously, Minnesota having bounced them 107-80 in an embarrassment on this court five weeks ago.
The T’Wolves are a far different team these days. As noted back in the Monday edition, Tom Thibodeau has chosen to go to the whip with Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, and while there is no way of telling what the ramifications will be when training camp rolls around, Wiggins is #1 in the NBA in minutes played at 2,905, and Towns #2 at 2,881. Now it is four games in five nights across four different courts and three different time zones, the last three being on the road, and there was simply nothing left in the tank in the fourth quarter at Portland last night, when they were out-scored 25-11. It wasn’t just the 39:47 for Wiggins and the 38:56 for Towns in that one, but 39:06 for Gorgui Dieng, 38:45 for Ricky Rubio, and 35:33 for Brandon Rush. And of course they are not helped at all by Thursday's late tipoff, and the quick turnaround.
It would be awfully difficult for Minnesota to summons much energy for this one even if the game did matter, but for a team that is already badly worn down (over the last 10 games only Denver rates worse defensively) the challenge of competing tonight becomes even harder, and the Jazz should be able to build this margin out into double figures.
In the Sights, Friday MLB…
The front-lines of the Baltimore and NYY bullpens are going to be headaches for hitters all season, and also headaches for the oddsmakers in the early stages, the problem for shops that offer Second Half lines of getting caught in tough math settings when the starters are unimposing. On a blustery April evening in Camden Yards that will have #968 Orioles/Yankees Second Half Under (7:05 Eastern) in pocket, with 3.5 Under -120 available in the early trading and value holding to -130. It is part of the problem the oddsmakers have of a Severino/Jimenez hook-up, which forces those 9’s out there, and while we are not stealing here, getting a win on a “3” when Betances/Chapman/Britton are all fresh and ready allows for participation.
I will detail the particulars of the pitchers early next week as part of setting a full-season strategy, but here is what helps tonight – by the time the bullpens are in play the wind chill will be below 40 degrees, and that is not a promising time for the hitters to take on three of the best relievers in the game. The risk, of course, is the game breaking open early and the better arms not being used, but even under those circumstances all over bullpen arms are fresh, and there is the chill in the air as a plus factor.
The complete Point Blank Archive
@PregamePhd (a work in progress, feedback appreciated)