Kelly Iko: The Rockets are not interested in breaking up their core for Giannis Antetokounmpo

PIE?
LEBRON?
What stat do you like?

 

"not a star"

 

I like EPM. I'm not too familiar with Lebron, but it uses RAPM which helps a lot to capture defense. Without something like RAPM to estimate defense, I have a hard time taking an all in one stat seriously as defense is half the game. EPM's values make sense to me. Lebron has more weirdness, but I could just be wrong.

PIE...I think that is just an advanced PER that just uses blocks and steals to estimate defense. BPM is probably the best of the all in one stats that use traditional statistics to create an all in one metric as it adds a couple of other things to help with defense, but still just not very good except in extremes. VORP is just BPM giftwrapped. While EPM is only decent at defense and it takes a large sample, PIE, BPM, VORP, and PER just should be avoided as long as one has access to EPM or other stat with a RAPM component. As basektball is a team game and currently tracked defensive stats just aren't sufficient, any all in one stat that doesn't really heavily on +/- data and lineup data to augment a stastical model to estimate defensive value is suspect to me.

I think OFF Rating, Def rating, Net rating, can be helpful looking intra squad to determine who are the big factors on offense and defense, but also need to look at who are on the court together to ensure causation and not just correlation. Lineup data is good for who's playing good with who, but doesn't factor in who is on the court for the other team.

 

I just looked at https://dunksandthrees.com/epm and they had Kawhi Leonard listed pretty high there. Kawhi hasn't played a minute this season.

Now I'm confused.

Edit: OK, now I looked at the one which seems to have the actual stats:

https://dunksandthrees.com/stats/player

Sengun ranked 13 among all NBA players.

However, Ty Jerome ranked 5 and Fred (who has been pretty bad) ranked 12, so not sure what to make of that one lol.

 

They changed the way they do EPM which sucks, it's now a prediction stat instead of a "what has happened" stat

 

I edited my post...seems like the other link has the "what happened" stat. But any method that has Ty Jerome THAT high...seems flawed to me.

Anyway, Sengun is ranked 13th. It really doesn't matter what advanced stat you pull up - he is consistently ranked top 15-20 at least. And that's with him yet to rediscover his touch around the rim.

"Not a star".

 

Predictive stat is better for saying how good a player is likely (assuming healthy enough to play). Players go hot and cold and the predictive stat basically says how much we should change our view of player based on samples that might be a hot streak or a big step forward.

They have the what happened EPM in each of the player stats pages under historical.

 

So Sengun is ranked:

13th in EPM
13th in LEBRON
11th in D-LEBRON
18th in PER
8th in Win Shares
6th in Defensive Rating
1st in Defensive Win Shares
6th in DBPM
10th in BPM
7th in VORP

And that is all with his shot having been off and his offense clearly not being at the top of his potential (and his assist targets missing everything, in addition).

"Not a star"

So either you think ALL advanced metrics are crap, or you have a bias against the guy, or you think there are fewer than 10 stars in the NBA.

 

I have not watched Ty Jerome.

That said, PER, BPM, and PIE all have Ty Jerome as a Top 50 player. I'm guessing it is a small size, but if Ty Jerome continues with a TS% above 70%..stats are going to like him.

 

To me Sengun is more like a Pau Gasol type "star" than a Jokic type star... but that's still a HOFer

 

Still flabbergasted by how someone could have watched Jabari for a year and come to the conclusion that he can be "elite", but Sengun cannot.

Same person doesn't think Sengun is a star.

 

If he ends up somewhere between Jokic and Gasol (which I would consider a likely outcome, based on his age and trajectory so far), that is definitely a "star".

 

Agreed, I was just making a distinction between an A tier star and a B tier star.

I think Sengun is definitely at least a B tier star.

 

It's a good comparison.

Here they are, at the same age.



Another one that I always thought is a good comparison is Chris Webber. Personally, I wouldn't be opposed at all to Alpi playing PF with the right C (or them playing interchangeable roles).

 

For me, the ability to take over in the 4th quarter is part of it.



I also think Alperen is a much better defender, a more dangerous player in isolation, and a far superior ball-handler. Alperen has a lot of responsibilities that Sabonis simply doesn't have. Sabonis does dribble handoffs and sets great screens. Alperen Sengun is a dynamic creator and passer who shows flashes of controlling tempo, which is something that only a handful of NBA players can do. Alperen Sengun gets double-teamed, and Sabonis hasn't been double-teamed since the 8th grade.

I have Alperen ranked above Sabonis this season, at 22. Sabonis is a hell of a player and works his butt off, but he isn't Alperen. I think Sacramento would murder to swap Sabonis for Alperen, even If they were both the same age.

 

This whole team is a product of Ime. Without Ime this would be a .500 or less team. Ime needs to become a lifetime Rocket. Give him a statue and his own table for life at Landry's. Give him the presidential sweet at the Nugget and keep him away from all hot womens that work for the franchise.

 

Sabonis is the better shooter and rebounder but that can't trump the better overall offensive and defensive player in Sengun. Defense is half the game and Sengun is already a better defender than Sabonis at the 5.

Sabonis is becoming a poorer and poorer man's Sengun.

 

I think there's a lot of people who could get us to this success (most of them unattainable) but what Ime has brought that's priceless is the development in defensive skills/IQ, unselfishness and overall effort. If someone had told you 2 years ago Sengun and Green could start on a top 2 defense without another rim protector on the floor, you probably wouldn't have believed it. I feel like it's the right way to start a long contention window.

To get the statue though he has to follow through on the next phase: expanding and improving the players' offensive game. He actually has just one task: improve everyone's 3PT shooting as much as possible everything else is great.

 

They have the same rebounds per 36.

 

Sabonis is a different player to me......it is like you said if you compare Chris Webber to Vlade Divac.

I still remember when Sabonis was not even predicted to be an All Star and he was scoring as if he was Jabari Smith......12 ppg.....and he was already 22.

Hovering around 18 ppg for 6 years. And then he did make the All Star game with Indiana.