The NBA regular season has concluded and the Play-In Tournament starts tonight. The Warriors went 18-7 in their last 25 games, but the Wolves (18-7) and Clippers (19-6) each kept pace as well and kept the Warriors in the Play-In Tournament. Of course, those records for the Warriors and Clippers include an incredibly entertaining season finale between the two teams that the Clippers won as it provided ample opportunity for analysis.
Let’s start by going back to the offseason, when Moses Moody signed a 3 year, $39M extension that included $500k in incentives for each of the three seasons. Despite signing it, he entered the season in an uncertain position as it looked like he didn’t have a rotation spot locked in and the extension might just be used for salary matching purposes in the future. In order to earn the incentives and turn them from unlikely to likely on the Warriors’ cap sheet, Moody needed to hit all of the following three benchmarks in a season:
- Play 1600 minutes
- Attempt 9 or more 3 pointers per 100 possessions
- Have a true shooting percentage of 60% or more
He just cleared the 1600 minute mark at the end of the season thanks to moving into the starting lineup following the trade for Jimmy Butler and playing nearly 27 minutes per game in that role after averaging 18.5 MPG as a reserve. He also cleared the second benchmark by attempting 9.9 threes per 100 possessions, but unfortunately fell a bit short of the third one by recording a true shooting percentage of only 57.8%, though this was a hair above the league average.
All in all, it seems like a successful year for Moody after establishing himself in the rotation by carving out a 3-and-D role for the Warriors. He often guarded the other team’s top perimeter option and acquitted himself well, despite Steve Kerr playing GP2 over him for most of the last 11 minutes (last six of the fourth quarter plus five minutes of OT) in the finale. Both Moody and GP2 allowed Harden to go 4-6 from the floor, but Moody at least forced 2 turnovers to GP2’s one and didn’t commit any shooting fouls while GP2 committed two, including the costly 3 point foul in OT. GP2 also doesn’t provide the same level of spacing on offense and allowed the Clippers to put Zubac on him rather than Draymond Green.
That was one of the big takeaways from the finale, as Kerr clearly went with his guys in the game, and especially in crunch time. The big story in that regard is Jonathan Kuminga recording a DNP-Coach’s Decision and despite Kerr insisting postgame that Kuminga could get back into the rotation, it seems unlikely. It also makes a take I’ve been sitting on drop in spice level, which is that Kuminga is either signed and traded to another team or signs the qualifying offer during the offseason.
My last takeaway from the finale is that Jimmy Butler, despite scoring 30 points and playing his usual solid defense, was a little non-existent on offense over that same final 11 minutes that I mentioned earlier. I’m not sure if he was tired from guarding Kawhi (and occasionally banging with Zubac) or if the cramped spacing with him, Green, and GP2 on the floor together kept him from attacking more, but he only took two shots and recorded one assist in that time period. What’s more, the two shots were a bail out 3 on a possession that was going nowhere and a layup off a designed play coming out of a timeout. It’s up to the coaching staff to figure out a way to keep him more directly involved at the end of games.
Switching gears to a thread from one of the other big late season changes, Zeke Nnaji was singled out in reporting about the dual Michael Malone and Calvin Booth dismissals in Denver as a point of tension. It is a bit funny to me that despite the several developmental successes Booth had as GM, he seemingly fixated on Malone’s refusal to play Nnaji, in particular at power forward where he’s had the most success playing alongside another big.
The stats do bear that out, with lineups having Nnaji playing with another center recording a positive net rating of +8.65 over 1202 possessions while those with Nnaji as the sole true big have been negative to the tune of -14.7 over 2633 possessions. It’s worth pointing out that Owen Phillips found these double big lineups were generally successful this season. Furthermore, he’s not just a Jokic merchant in these lineups since the numbers are also positive with DeAndre Jordan, Jay Huff, and Thomas Bryant, though of course slicing up the lineups more leads to even smaller sample sizes. It certainly impacts Nnaji’s efficiency as he has a true shooting percentage of nearly 63% with another big on the floor compared to 55.4% as the lone big.
Yet another interesting detail is that Nnaji was dangled in deadline trade talks, presumably as a salary matching piece since his four year, $32M extension signed before the 2023-24 season looks pretty bad right about now. New interim coach David Adelman only played him 6 garbage time minutes in his 3 games in charge, so Nnaji doesn’t seem to have favor with him, either. But given this information plus the descending nature of his contract and the rising cap, it could be smart for a team towards the bottom of the standings to snag him along with a second rounder in the offseason. It clears space for Denver, gets Nnaji out of a bad situation, and trying more double big lineups with him could either provide a decent option for a bad team or a stealth tank commander if that success doesn’t carry over.
Moving to another thought spurred by Owen Phillips (subscribe to The F5!), he posited on the Nothing But Respect podcast (55:50 mark) that basketball has become more of a weak link sport than it was previously. This is a rule of thumb that means you can expect the team with the worst player losing rather than the team with the best player winning. Maybe there’s not a connection at all, but my mind went to Howard Beck’s piece on expansion from earlier this year (Are We Sure Expansion Is A Good Idea?) where he used data from Taylor Snarr’s EPM model to show that while the number of Tier 1 players has remained fairly steady, the number of Tier 1-3 players has increased over the last 25 years.
If the number of Tier 1-3 players has increased, then it stands to reason that playoff teams also have more of these players than they did in the past, which means it’s less likely that playoff teams have a weak link to pick on. So if a team does have a weak link, then that player can be picked on and cause a team to fall behind whereas in the past there were more weak links so it mattered more if your strong link was stronger.
That all feels a bit convoluted in writing, but I think it makes sense logically. The conclusion for the league is if they want a return to a more strong link style game, then expansion seems like a good move.
Lastly, the podcast episode talks a bit about analytics and how it probably would’ve happened eventually anyway (~49 min mark), it just so happened that Steph Curry put it at the forefront. It reminded me of an similar piece I wrote years ago about how Curry was essentially the first mover and busted down the door, but the path of basketball would’ve always lead to some of these changes in the game.
I’ll leave you with a hoops haiku:
Play-In Tournament\ Fighting on or start chanting\ 1-2-3 Cancun!\
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