Point Blank – May 5
Might fatigue be making cowards of the Raptors (and perhaps conscience as well; how often do George S. Patton and Shakespeare make the same sentence?)…Last night J.R. Smith was The Bomber, and so were a few others (yes, more Joe Walsh is on the way)…They haven’t been Giants in the field (yet)…Making good numbers is an “art”, and it indeed may be fading away…
There wasn’t a whole lot of mystery concerning last night’s outcome in Cleveland, and in the process the mystery from which button was going to get pushed for the jukebox today also went away. Since the Cavaliers have become the James Gang on the court, there will be fitting tributes from the band of that same name as long as LeBron & Co. remain alive in these games, Joe Walsh and the gang having made some terrific music in Cleveland before James, Irving or Love were even born (hell, Walsh had already moved on to the Eagles before Tyronn Lue was even born; the intro to today's clip eludes to such).
As hinted in yesterday’s thread, there was the hope that J. R. Smith would go off on one particular night to set up “The Bomber” as the proper reference (it is going to be much tougher connecting up “Funk 49”), and Smith was just one of many firing away for the Cavaliers on a historic offensive night. So let’s go to a recent version, latter-career Walsh live in Pittsburgh in 2012, a little sloppy but having a lot of fun -
Cleveland scored 1.56 PPP in the First Half, the likes of which we may never see again, and it will raise some fascinating pendulum questions when it becomes time to sort out game 3 here tomorrow. Now back to Toronto…
Heat/Raptors #2 – How much is physical fatigue now a part of this for Kyle Lowry and Toronto?
I hope it is not being redundant to keep tracking the shooting performances of Lowry and DeMar DeRozan in these playoffs, but it is the prime storyline for this series, and also keys any take on tonight’s encounter. The numbers aren’t pretty -
All FG 3-pt
DeRozan 53-160 3-18
Lowry 34-111 8-50
Combined 87-271 (32.1%) 11-68 (16.2%)
That includes a combined 12-35 on Tuesday, or to be more proper, 11-34 outside of that late heave by Lowry in regulation that forced overtime. Lowry was so upset with his performance that it led to a late-night shooting session, staying in the Arena until 12:45 AM trying to find his stroke, before offering - “It sucks that I'm playing this bad when all eyes are on me because I know I'm way better than this. So I've got to pick this s--- up. I passed up a lot of shots tonight. I passed up a lot, a ton of shots actually. I think that's what (his shooting skid) did to me a little bit.”
As noted here often, when a slump gets into a player’s head it becomes more real. But today let’s add an element – while there is absolutely the notion out there that continuing poor playoff performances are a mental block for Lowry (DeRozan has at least had the occasional good game), is there also a serious issue of fatigue at play?
George S. Patton may or may not have originated the classic line “Fatigue makes cowards of us all”, but it would not be a shock if it was his, and Vince Lombardi used it in the arena of sport. That may fit Lowry, and after reading his self-diagnosis after Tuesday’s late night shooting session there is also “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” that Shakespeare created for Hamlet (Act 3, Scene I). Today let’s focus on the former.
Lowry has been in the NBA for 10 seasons, and tonight will be the first time he has started a game as late as May 5. In only one of those other campaigns was he still playing at all, six games past the date as a reserve for Houston in 2009. Lowry was second to James Harden in minutes-per-game across the NBA this season, and only the fact that he sat out five times prevented him from reaching his career-high in minutes (which he will eclipse now in the playoffs). So while confidence and that legacy of post-season failures are a genuine issue, might a case also be made that Lowry is wearing down?
It is one thing for a player to reach back and re-charge their batteries if it is a place they have been before, but this is not the case for him. Lowry has played more than 80 minutes across game 7 Sunday vs. Indiana and Game 1 in this series on Tuesday, and 10 seasons into his NBA career his body is being asked to do something it simply has not done before, and that is before even addressing the ability of his psyche to create the proper confidence level.
Miami went into pocket in Game 1, and I again believe this line is in the wrong place given where the two teams are right now. Consider this – each has played eight playoff games, five home/three away for Toronto and four/four for the Miami, but the Heat are +68 in point differential vs. -16 for the Raptors, and that is with Erik Spoelstra’s team also having a tougher first-round opponent. But I do have to respect what NBA playoff history tells us about home teams in Game 2 that lost the opener – you get the very best of what they have, while for some of the visitors it is already “mission accomplished”, having aimed for a split on the road. So I stay inactive for now, but if a +5 appears over the course of the day, that becomes the “buy” price for Miami.
(UPDATING: Because Dwyane Wade dinged his knee in the shoot-around today, I am holding off any grabbing any +5 until the pre-game warmups, although that number is beginning to show a little, perhaps because of Wade.)
(UPDATING II: With Wade appearing to be OK, and the line climbing to +5.5 in some key precincts, the Heat fit for about two-thirds of a unit.)
Item: About the San Francisco defense
After a day in which the Royals, among the best defensive teams in MLB the last 2+ seasons, played a game in which they set MLB history by committing three errors before they recorded the first out, it is appropriate to bring defense front and center. Once the teams reach 25 games enough has happened for the numbers to be trusted, and in one particular instance there has been some head scratching for me – the curious case of the San Francisco Giants.
First let’s note that I use rather conservative measures in defensive performance because the more advance metrics getting out there still can’t be fully trusted yet, part of the problem being the way that many of them disagree with each other (there are necessarily high levels of subjectivity involved when such things as “zone ratings” are being compiled). So at this time each season the unsexy but trustworthy PADE (Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency) comes into focus, and perhaps it should be over a breakfast of Shredded Wheat. No explosion of flavors coming, but something tried and true.
What jumps out when looking at the table for the first time in 2016?
#29 – San Francisco
The reason for that is –
2015: #2 San Francisco
2014: #6 San Francisco
What in the name of Brandon Crawford is doing on here? The players and alignments have not changed much; if anything having Denard Span in the OF was expected to help. But balls are falling into play for hits at a much greater rate than in the past –
Giants Pitching/Defense BABIP
2016: .324
2015: .283
2014: .282
What would cause the consistency of the 2014/2015 performances to take such a jump? Yes, some of it can be blamed on the whiplash-inducing contact against Jake Peavy, who is leading the Major’s in hits allowed (47) and ERA (9.00).
Peavy’s personal BABIP is a stratospheric .414, which has absolutely contributed to the team showing in that category. But Madison Bumgarner is also at a .333 in the category, compared to a career .290; Johnny Cueto is at .328, vs. a career of .278; and the .266 that Matt Cain has been riding for over a decade has morphed to .349 this season (I’ll be getting back to him in a moment). Is there something to see here, or is it just noise? That is a major handicapping issue in tracking the Giants going forward.
Item: A good industry read
One of the issues the Sports Book industry faces today is the conundrum of using technology to lower expenses, in particular the form of following lines of key market drivers instead of going through the expense of creating their own, at the occasional cost of having lesser knowledge of what they are doing. It can be a slippery slope. There is a good two-part series available on that front “The Lost Art of Odds Compilation”. Part II is here, and while the particular focus is on British shops and soccer, the theme is universal.
In the Sights, MLB…
When you see a 1-0/1.69 next to Christopher Rusin’s name in the pitching forms do you have to believe it? I don’t see any reason to yet; a guy with a career 11-19/4.95 over more than 250 Major League innings does not call for that kind of upside. Meanwhile Cain’s 0-3/7.00 opening takes his last three seasons to 4-14/5.16, and with career lows in GB% and SWS% so far the reality may be that his expiration date is approaching. So with a reasonable Total available tonight, 7.5's now across the board, plus a hitter’s wind to left, #912 San Francisco/Colorado Over (10:15 Eastern) gets in play.
I do not see a resurgence coming from Rusin – had he shown the ability for such, the Rockies would have had him in the starting rotation from the get-go, instead of low-leverage long relief. And keep in mind that it is not just recovering from injuries that has altered Cain’s career path, but the fact that he ran together eight straight seasons of 184.1 IP or more, including six in a row that topped 200. There has been a lot of toll taken from an arm that was never all that special (his career xFIP and SIERA now track him as having been below average), but was able to induce enough fly ball outs in West Coast ballparks to hang around. Through 2012 he had never had a HR/FB rate above 8.4 percent, since then his low for a season has been 10.8. It is a simple fact of life that if you begin giving up more contact, more of that contact goes in the air, and those fly balls are traveling further, it is a dangerous career arc.
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