One thing that's surprised me about McHale's offense is how often he's willing to go small ball, especially at the frontcourt. He's getting a lot out of playing Scola and Patterson together at the end of games. Despite his reputation, the coach seems just as comfortable going without a traditional shot-blocking big. Though things might change with the addition of Camby.
Morey and number crunchers should know better than that. Statisticians always look for a chance to point out the difference between numbers findings and conceptions. Its not so much that some players rise ABOVE the median in crunch time. Its that a lot of players and coaches can WILT and PANIC in those situations. You CANT say Chris Paul isnt nails down the stretch, compared to Kevin Martin. Stats guys will say "their games and skills are different" but thats just called one being more clutch than the other.
What really tells you how good your team is is what their record is against other playoff teams. Today, our record is 10-13 against teams that would be in the playoffs if they started today. Our total point differential agaisnt those teams is -62. Total point differential per game is -2.695. And we have exactly half of our games left against teams that are playoff teams today. We also have 2 games left against Denver, who shares the same record as us, and is fighting for the playoffs. When you add in Denver and Milwaukee, two teams that are fighting to make the playoffs, our record against teams fighting for the playoffs is 11-15. And our record against teams with winning records (subtracting the Knicks and adding the Nuggets) is 10-14 and our total point differential is -78, which is -3.25/game. Now, our record against New Orleans, Sacramento, Charlotte, Washington, and New Jersey is 7-0 with a total point differential of +89 or 12.7 points per game. I picked these 5 lottery teams because at no point in the season were they ever competing for a playoff spot. I can't say the same thing about Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toronto, Golden State, Portland, Minnesota, Phoenix. Milwaukee and Phoenix are still going for it. Portland was in the thick of it early and really should be in the playoffs if not for a colossal coaching failure. Golden State, Cleveland, Toronto, and Minny have all been fighting for the playoffs at some point during the season until injuries took their toll or until the obvious "we aren't good enough" finally came to light. So, here's the point. When you take our record against teams that were never competing for the playoffs out of the picture, teams that we should be whipping up on because we have been competing since day 1, we have a record of 19-22, and a point differential of -87 against the rest of the league. Not real promising for getting to the playoffs and definitely not real promising as far as making noise in the playoffs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Now for the good news. I'll keep this short and sweet. Up until the middle of February, our record against teams with records of .600or better was 2-6 with a point differential of -27. However, in the last few weeks we have punked OKC twice and recently the Lakers and bringing our record back to a respectable 5-6 with a point differential of -22 or -2 points per game. Since Lowry went down, we are playing .625 ball. That's not a knock on Lowry. Knowing him, he was probably playing ill for 2 weeks before they hospitalized him. And since Martin has went out we are 4-2. And now we are finding out that he was dinged for a while before he went out. (Shooting percentages reflect this.) Goran and Lee have been nothing short of sensational. They have changed the dynamics of this team. This team is playing better than they have the whole season. And the acquisition of Camby has finally lit a fire under Dally's a.. Our rotations are set. If we get a healthy Kyle back, we'll be even better. Trade deadline is past, clearing out guys that weren't contributing and bringing in a guy that can make a huge difference (Camby) and establishing who our go-to guy is (Goran). This team is going to go where Goran takes them. He's our best player right now. He's making a tremendous difference in our whole team. And he's got his mates accepting him as the leader and playing with him. It's been fun to watch. For this reason, you have to remember, just like in the stock market, the trend is your friend. This team has taken a different trend since Goran has been the go-to guy. You have to throw out a lot of the season's numbers because this team as constructed right now, would probably have about 30 wins if they had been in this rotation for the whole season. At this point, McHale has to go with Goran and Lee. If Martin comes back, he's got to come back off the bench, getting spot minutes, perhaps Chase's minutes, if he earns them. And Lowry has to come back off the bench as our super sub first guy off the bench to ignite the bench unit along with Camby. If Lowry accepts this and if McHale has the balls to maintain the current rotation and bring Lowry off the bench, this team will make the playoffs and is a serious candidate to upset teams like OKC, the Clippers, Memphis, and Dallas. We won't be able to beat the Lakers and Spurs in a 7-game series. But it will be fun to watch and hopefully we draw one of those other teams as a first round opponent.
One reason McHale is willing to go small at the end of games is because our perimeter defense with Goran, Lee, and Parsons has been the best in the business for a little while now. That trio has been sensational defensively.
I agree. I'd personally rather have higher point differential than any clutch factor. It just raised an eyebrow when I looked at the stats, because most statheads tend to believe in point differential. Yet Morey hired a guy that somehow exceeded the norm, while firing a guy that seem to underperform compared to stats. But really, with Lowry and KMart being out for significant amount of time this year, you can't exactly expect the same out as last year. Not to mention the coaching change and all that other stuff we went through.
Your comparison makes no sense. Of course Chris Paul would perform better in the clutch than Kevin Martin. Chris Paul is the best PG in the entire NBA and widely considered among stat geeks to be the best decision-maker in the NBA. This isn't about him being clutch. He makes the best decisions whether it's 2 minutes left in the 4th, or 10 minutes left in the 1st. Chris Paul isn't a superstar because he performs well in the clutch, he's a superstar because he's a superstar for entire games.
I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that there has been virtually no practice time, and time for the players to really ingrain the defensive sets and know/trust where each other will be. The team has shown flashes of very good defense, but you can often see them thinking too much and not just reacting out there. This is much more so because the newer players are the more prominent defensive players like Parsons, Camby, Dalembert who really had to learn the defense on the fly. If these guys are still here for next year, I would expect a large jump in defensive efficiency.
The stats would show Paul to be better than Martin at everything anyway, clutch isn't a factor. People call Kobe clutch even though he's a career 35% shooter in the clutch. He's still clutch because his game is so good normally that the lack of clutchness doesn't bring him down to scrub level, like it does to Martin.
