Replace Brandon Jennings with average point-guard = Rudy Gay effect?

Everyone knows what the Rudy Gay effect is, right? When Memphis traded Rudy Gay for Tayshaun Prince, Memphis got better. When Toronto traded Rudy Gay for basically Greivis Vasquez and Pattrick Patterson, Toronto got better. TV analysts didn't know what to make it of, all they could say was "the ball movement got better", which is also true but the real reason for the "Rudy Gay effect" or "addition by subtraction" was Rudy's scoring inefficiency--something Brandon Jennings shares.

The average team's TS% (true shooting %) is roughly 55%, with the best offenses typically shooting closer to 60%ts as you can see HERE. The season Rudy was traded from Memphis he was shooting 49.4%ts, and the season he was traded from Toronto he was shooting an atrocious 47.8%ts. Considering the volume of shots he was jacking up, he was shooting his team out of games--no hyperbole. To be more specific, it was Rudy's mid-range shots which really hurt his efficiency.

Just to talk about the mid-range shot a little. The best shot you want is the one at the rim (league average is 65%), and you can lump free throws in there because most players who get to the rim a lot will get fouled a lot (league average on free throws is 85%). The second best spot on the floor you want to take shots is behind the 3 point line (league average is 35% which is equivalent to 53% on 2-pointers). In contrast, the league average on mid-range shots is 38%--exactly where Jennings is.

Now, if you can shoot around 50% from mid-range then this whole analytics theory just goes the window (ie. Aldridge, Chris Paul, Bosh, Garnett ect.), but these types of guys are very rare. Guys who can shoot 35%+ from behind the arc are very common. Jennings doesn't fit the bill in either case, making 38% of his mid-range shots and 33.7% of his threes last season.

Another thing that can throw that theory out the window is the fact mid-range shots are great for buzzer beaters, one look at Jordan's or Kobe's highlights can tell you that. Statistics show that threes are more accurate earlier in the clock (especially transition threes), so it makes sense that fast teams shoot a lot of threes (ie. Rockets, Nash's Suns) while slow teams shoot lots of mid-range (ie. Memphis).


Mid-range shots are great for buzzer/clock beaters and not great for much else

When the "eye-test" and useful metrics like RPM point towards the same direction (assuming your eye-test is reliable), it's usually pretty safe to draw a conclusion. A simple explanation of RPM would be that it's a metric to measure how well a player fits on his team and into their system, it is mostly based on how line-ups perform with you vs without you, so don't overreact if you notice a role-player with a higher RPM than a key-player or whatever.

Brandon Jennings ranked 75th among point-guards in RPM, a huge minus on both ends of the floor, indicating that he may very well not only shoot his team out of games, his defense would make James Harden proud (to be fair, Harden can actually play strong post-up defense, so overall Jennings is worse). If Detroit were to trade Jennings for an average point-guard, Detroit would very likely get better on both ends of the floor.

 

My mistake. Wrong forum.

 

To be fair, the same thread could be made for Brandon Knight, but Brandon is still young and could breakout this season.

 

I thought he improved. Where do you find that stat for last season? Hoopdata only has 2013 and prior.

 

Thank goodness Harden has added/improved a mid-range shot then. Maybe we can avoid more shot clock violations and close losses because of it.