Donatas Motiejunas the 8th best rim protector in the NBA. Dwight 3rd.

I'm with you. DMO went from being a bad defensive player to at least a very good one, no matter how skeptical someone may be of the stats. He is using his height and lateral speed really well to cut off opposing players or alter their shots. He plays the switch really well too - when he switches he is fast enough to stop the point guard in time to mess up the pick and roll. What I care about is he is a legit center and we've probably found our solution to backup center and starting of backup PF. It takes a while for most bigs to really take off, and it looks like DMO has just done that. I'm not sure I trade him even for Milsap at this point (although I would think hard). I think DMO will be much better by year end, and will be a monster next year if he continues like this.

 

To true dude!

 

I don't know exactly how SportsVU works. But I suspect that it does not solve the problem I posed.

Let me give you a hypothetical situation. Cousins is posting up on DMo on the left block. He fakes to the baseline and then spins back to the middle for a hook. But he sees Howard coming over to the rim. So he spins back the other way and put up an awkward shot. DMo is guarding him the whole time. Now tell me who gets the credit of Cousins' miss. How does SportsVU assign credit exactly?

You see, it is not a matter of a machine helping us capture the action. We know the action clearly. We just don't know how to judge it. I doubt that a machine or a algorithm can help. And there are tons of situations like that at the rim all the time. The interior is a crowded place. Most of the times there are more than one defender there. How do you know who is responsible for the opponent's shooting percentage at the rim?

 

so he spun back to DMo and was forced to put up an awkward shot? D12 cause him to spin back but DMo caused him to put up an awkward shot

I would think the nearest defender when the shot is taken

 

So basically what you are saying Rockets are playing good defense.. what shock :}

 

It's been a year-by-year progression for DMo.

First year, he had to grow heavier and stronger. We also tried to turn him as a stretch 4 but his 3pt shot is not for volume shooting.

2nd year, he got tutelage from Hakeem because that was the year we signed up Dwight, but his timing was bad. He was rushing his shots when he was at the post besides the coaches did not trust him at the post. They were working with Dwight. But we see glimpses of his positional defense when he did well in guarding the likes of Dirk and Gasol.

3rd year, Chris Finch coached him in the summer league and he was posting DMo up everytime. I remember an interview with Bickerstaff in which he basically said DMo is the hardest worker out there but what he needs is confidence. To slow down and not to play so frenetic.

Well, with Dwight injured, coaches and teammates have been forced to take a long hard look at DMo. Put him in the post and he delivers this time. McHale probably finally has been giving the finer tips of post-play to him both on defense and on offense.

Who knows what a full season will turn DMo into? So why would we want to trade him? Tell me who among active players have footwork as polished as he does right now. Dream-lite. Much much better than Dwight's.

Motie was right the first time he was here. Now Dwight has to chase him.

 

It's not so much the footwork, it's that he has decent touch out to about 8 feet on his hook, whereas Dwight basically has to force himself in under 3 feet to get anywhere. So defenders can just sit on Dwight and wait for him to try to make some move close to the basket, whereas Dmo will just turn heel sitting into a 6-8 foot open hook.

 

It is a problem Easy I agree. But NBA front offices have been looking at the data for years and if there was a big problem they would have had it fixed. I have to believe that plays like you describe are a small percentage of total plays. Even if two NBA analysts looked a large body of plays, they will have differing opinions about some of them.

 

The teams do their own filtering, the raw data from sportsVU shows the turnovers for example (remember?), but the "processed" stuff we're being fed is about as naked as a stripper.

 

Given the extreme volume of data I have to believe that NBA teams are relying on SportsVU data and analysis. Plus SportsVU provides to NBA teams data like the average rate D-Mo closes out shots on the perimeter when he begins in the paint. Humans cannot reliably do that. They just do not have the manpower to do a frame by frame analysis of every play.

Where well staffed front offices probably are most dependent on SportsVU (NBA coaches are pretty good at this stuff) is probably when they are identifying trade or free agent targets. Is Morey going to dedicate 500 hours of staff time to thoroughly analyzing all of the tape on a player, or is he just going to type in his requests and have SportsVU answer all of his questions in 30 minutes?

SportsVU is the best data we fans have ever had. It is much much better than the eye test. However it needs to be used wisely. OPs need to understand that it is data, and they then can draw their own conclusions. It should never be presented as "truth" because it is just data.

 

I'm talking about what we're getting now as opposed to what we were even getting last year is significantly less. As for what Morey does, i think he would dedicate the hours of staff time, why even have the staff if you're not going to use them?

 

Do you have any idea how big Morey's staff is? I would estimate 7-8 people, but I don't have a clue honestly.