Point Blank – May 4, 2017
On those NBA 2nd-round disappearing acts…Can Scott Brooks be a Wizard with his reserves (yes, back to that again)…For the Warriors it may still be “just win baby” again…
There was a great comment from an industry friend last night in sorting through the NBA results - “this is what we’ve been waiting for?” The gist is easy to understand – after a disjointed regular season in which we each threw more games out of our databases than ever before, the hope was that there would not only be a return of integrity to the processes as the second round of the playoffs began, but also to a higher level of basketball.
Only part of that has come true – the higher level has been in spurts from some fantastic individual & team performances, but they have been countered by some rather shocking no-shows. Over the past two nights Isaiah Thomas, LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard have been special (Leonard’s all-around game among the most efficient you will ever see), while the Warriors did not need any individual to step up all that much, but had some great team moments. But how about this flip side –
BRADLEY BEAL. 4-15 from the field, 1-9 on 3-pointers, twice as many turnovers (4) as assists (2).
GORDON HAYWARD. Matched Beal’s 4-15 from the field, and was 2-9 from 3-point range.
DEMAR DEROZAN. 2-11 from the field, only 3 rebounds and 3 assists across 31:08 of playing time. 0-7 in the first half when the Raptors lost contact.
JAMES HARDEN. 3-17 from the field, including a 1-8 on two-point attempts in which the only make was a tip-in off of his own miss.
Four key cogs from the teams that teams that fell on Tuesday/Wednesday were 13-58 from the field, including 5-28 from 3-point range, and none of the quartet made up for much of that with their play in other areas of the game.
That isn’t quite the level of basketball that had been hoped for, which does call for some juggling in putting together the handicaps for the next set of matchups. It takes us next to Washington tonight, where Scott Brooks may have some of the most difficult juggling of all to do…
BOSTON/WASHINGTON – About that Wizards bench, redux
Thomas was simply brilliant down the stretch in Game #2, his motor not slowing down at all, and if you want to have some fun with truly meaningful numbers there is this, the scoring tally from the beginning of the fourth quarter on -
FG 3-Pt FT Pts
Thomas 11-16 3-5 4-4 29
Wizards 11-29 2-11 6-8 30
That crunch time showing will be remembered for quite some time across the NBA annals, and it should. It will also be remembered that the Wizards had led by as many as 14 points earlier in the game, after a 16-point lead got away in the series opener. But while the Thomas heroics sealed the deal, a big part of how those leads got away not only matters in properly grading the first two games, but also in anticipating tonight, and hence the headaches for Brooks.
This will not be new to faithful readers because it was a talking point during the regular season, and already brought to the surface here in leading up to game #2, but we simply have to re-visit the Washington bench cast. Let’s look at the sad tale, using Net PP100 from the first two games of the series as the guide -
Min Net
Oubre 54 -40.3
Bogdanovic 27 -55.5
Smith 26 -19.5
Jennings 24 -26.1
Ouch. To set some perspective, the worst Net PP100 player during the regular season, of those that played at least 20.0 mpg, was Jerryd Bayless at -7.0. The Wizards aren’t just losing ground when the reserves are on the floor, they are getting crushed.
Want to take it a step further? When Bojan Bogdanovic has been out there the defense has allowed Boston to score at a 150.0 PP100, which is mind boggling. But the Celtics do a lot of things right under Brad Stevens, and one of them is the ability to move the ball to get it in the hands of the player against the opposing team’s weakest defensive link.
The Washington problem is not new. As noted in a lead piece earlier in the season, the Wizards were the only team to have four players in the Top 30 in total minutes played, because the bench could not be relied on. And while there were attempts to make the supporting cast better they bring some additional assimilation issues – Bogdanovic and Jennings have only been with the Wiz since the All Star break.
Does Brooks look for more from John Wall tonight because of those bench issues? That is a difficult call, because Wall played 47:06 on Tuesday, and looked tired at the end. There is the comfort of knowing that the series does not resume until Sunday, so there is the opportunity for some rest afterwards, but is there enough in the tank for Wall to play at a high level for a long stretch this evening?
Now for a quick Marketology interlude, which shows the nature of how markets adapt over time. Teams coming home down 0-2 in the playoffs in recent years have produced a strong pattern of winning the First Half of Game #3, and the first two games of this series have shown Washington clearly getting out on top early. Hence, many folks will want to put that into play with a Wizards First Half ticket.
So what is the going rate on Thursday morning? Washington -5, despite the full game line sitting at -6 in most key precincts, though some are still at -5.5 (as this is being posted Pinnacle is -6 -103 for Full Game, and -5 -108 for First Half). There is indeed a handicapping logic to the Wizards First Half, but much of that logic has already been incorporated into the betting line. It’s just how this stuff works.
UTAH/GOLDEN STATE – Mike Brown and the Warriors made their intentions known in the opener, does any of that change here
I believe the best place to begin for Game #2 is go back to the same place where we began Game #1 – this series has an unusual psychological dimension for the second round. I don’t believe the Warriors are cocky for a moment, but I do believe they have an incredible basketball savvy, and as such can lay out a blueprint as to how the rest of the playoffs may flow, which means taking care of business vs. Utah, but not going too far beyond that. Meanwhile for the Jazz there isn’t much pretense of winning, but there is a goal to go out and play as well as possible, regardless of the scoreboard outcome.
Combining this into a formula to attack the pointspread is not easy. There is a practical basketball notion that was clear to see from the opener – Golden State wants to beat Rudy Gobert down the floor. The Warriors were dynamic in getting into the offensive zone, winning 29-6 in fast-break points and 20-4 in points off of turnovers, the latter count extremely significant in that Utah only turned the ball over 13 times.
That aggressiveness led to a couple of spurts that built a comfortable lead. But once that lead was in hand, the intent was also easy to see – the Warriors starters were only on the court for 16:59 of a possible 60:00 in the fourth quarter, including just 0:21 for Steph Curry. The pace slowed, and Brown was more than content to grind away in the latter stages.
Do those flow elements change tonight? The first part may, in that Utah might be more effective in terms of transition defense. Part of the Jazz struggling in that aspect on Tuesday was that they are indeed up against a simply superb team, but it was also both the physical fatigue and the lack of tactical preparation time in transitioning from the LAC series.
What does it leave to work with at the betting windows? The outright ATS result may be similar to Tuesday, one floating near the projection because the Warriors have no motivation to get a margin, while the Jazz will plug away and keep playing in structure no matter how big the deficit gets. I do get an Under at 206, though the price point is unlikely to show – the pace may not change much from Game #1 (93.3), but I believe the Utah defense will be a little better in getting back in transition, having had some time to put a game plan together.
Item: On pitcher grading conundrums, and Ubaldo Jimenez
Baseball post-mortems bring unique issues almost every single day, and part of the Thursday morning process is what to do with the showing of Jimenez from last night in Boston. He had been struggling mightily prior to that appearance, a 7.43 ERA and his mechanics all over the place, but while he struggled with the strike zone again vs. the Red Sox his stuff was dynamic, allowing only one hit over three scoreless innings, with only one fly ball out (a 57.1 GB%).
To set the background, Jimenez was originally scheduled to start today, but Buck Showalter had to juggle things after Kevin Gausman was thrown out of Wednesday’s game after only facing five batters. Part of that juggling meant moving up Jimenez, with Tyler Wilson being called up from Norfolk this morning to faced the BoSox tonight.
So for those of us charting Jimenez, what do we do with this outing? Does it get graded as though it was a start, and blend the numbers in (ironically the 3.0 IP in relief came after each of his last two starts had only lasted 3.1)? Does it get left off as a separate category? Might the fact that there was lesser game pressure have worked to his advantage?
Here is what I will do – I will allow his next outing to tell me how much last night’s was worth. If it allowed him to clear his head a little, it can be graded as a positive. But should he struggle again, that relief stint may be better set to the side as a separate category.
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