A Tale of Two Players

Ken Pomeroy recently wrote an interesting piece about what constitutes similarity from one player to another. His ultimate thesis was that mainstream media fixates on a pair of players, usually because of superficial similarities, but rarely delves any deeper into the subject to find players that produce similarly on the court. I have long believed that Mike Dunleavy was the 3rd pick in the 2002 draft mainly because he was white. While Dunleavy was a fantastic player at Duke, I also have no doubt that the ceaseless Larry Bird comparisons would not have existed if Dunleavy wasn't white. At any rate, that's neither here nor there. The point of this post is to look at the careers of two Duke players removing from the analysis all mention of names, years they played, who their teammates were, and so forth. Unfortunately, unlike the comparison that Pomeroy fixates on at the end of his article (Kevin Durant and Luke Harangody), the two players in this comparison are both of the same race. And they play(ed) the same position. And they play(ed) for the same school. Comparisons would seem to be inevitable... but between these two players they almost never happen.

To start, I don't know Pomeroy's system of creating "similarity scores." That's fine. I'd rather just list important stats for both players to get a more accurate picture of what each player brought to the table. We'll start with his freshman year.

Player	3P %	2P %	eFG%	FT%	TO%	FT Rate	Ast%	Stl%	PPG	ORating	%TMPoss
Player A	35.6%	34.7%	42.9%	76.9%	35.1%	54.6%	33.0%	2.7%	11.6	93.4	19.1%
Player B	31.4%	40.7%	43.0%	78.4%	33.0%	50.3%	26.1%	2.7%	9.2	92.6	17.2%

One quick word on the stats chosen. I originally also looked at offensive and defensive rebounding rates, and block rates, but I don't find either very illustrative. Both players had insignificant block rates and rather low rebounding rates. It's hardly important. I also want to point out that "PPG" is not points scored per game, but points produced per game, which is a different calculation involving an estimate of how many points this player individually created/produced for the team. It takes into account, for instance, assists (as are most important for this comparison). It also takes into account total team points scored, which can vary from team to team based on tempo and overall offensive efficiency.

At any rate, it's very plain to see that these two players had shockingly similar freshman seasons at Duke. They shot a nearly identical eFG%, predicated by one's ability to shoot a bit better inside the arc and the other's ability to shoot 3s slightly better. They shot a nearly identical percentage from the line. They both had tremendous turnover problems. Player A got to the line a little more often, but nothing incredibly significant. They had nearly an identical rate of stealing the ball. However, Player A assisted many more baskets while on the court, and not shockingly had a higher points produced per game, even though both players operated at about the same individual offensive efficiency. Player A also used more possessions - another contribution to his greater points produced.

Player A probably had a better season, but the difference is not compelling. Now we move on to the second year.

Player	3P%	2P%	eFG%	FT%	TO%	FT Rate	Ast%	Stl%	PPG	ORating	%TMPoss
Player A	40.4%	44.8%	53.8%	72.8%	29.8%	34.2%	31.5%	1.9%	13.6	104.8	19.3%
Player B	45.0%	46.3%	57.5%	75.3%	27.2%	28.4%	23.5%	2.1%	11.9	105.7	21.0%

Both players have improved dramatically, but still remain pretty similar. It's now evident that Player B has improved his shot a great deal and outshoots Player A convincingly. Again they have very similar FT percentages and turnover rates - though both improved. It seems Player A remains able to get to the line more often than B, though both saw their free throw rate drop noticeably. Both suffered a dip in their assist rates (1.5% for Player A, and 2.6% for Player B). Again they have very similar steal rates (though both saw it drop from their freshman numbers). At any rate, at the end of the day, they produce about the same points per game yet again (the difference mainly in the assist disparity). Both improved their offensive efficiency - and significantly, Player B did so while also increasing his individual importance in the offense. As a freshman, he only used 17.2%, but as a sophomore he increased that number to 21%. As a side note, it is more rare to see a player both improve his efficiency and improve his usage - it reflects a great deal of improvement. As Pomeroy notes here, a player with a usage of about 17.1% his freshman year will most likely end up with a usage of about 18.2%. Player B here increased his to 21%, which is somewhere in the 80-90th percentile I would imagine. A substantial improvement.

Well by this point, it's probably no surprise who these players are. Player A is none other than NCAA All-Time leading assist man, and starting point guard for back-to-back national champions, Bobby Hurley. And Player B, of course, is none other than perhaps the single most criticized and maligned Duke point guard in the K era, Greg Paulus.

Seeing as how the two players followed a pretty similar course of improvement over their first two years, I think it's at least moderately illustrative to look at Bobby Hurley's Junior campaign as, perhaps, a preview of things to come.

Player	3P%	2P%	eFG%	FT%	TO%	FT Rate	Ast%	Stl%	PPG	ORating	%TMPoss
Bobby Hurley	42.1%	44.4%	53.7%	78.9%	25.8%	46.8%	35.1%	1.9%	15.5	113.7	22.4%

As can plainly be seen, after his sophomore year, Hurley saw another year of improvement across the board. He shot better from the field, he turned the ball over less often, had a higher assist rate than he ever had (after having a slightly down year his sophomore year), produced more points, and at a higher efficiency, while carrying a larger offensive burden. Hurley is absolutely beloved by Duke fans - considered by many of them as the greatest point guard in NCAA history, and at any rate the greatest point guard in Duke history. I think what this demonstrates is in that any accurate and demonstrable way, Paulus and Hurley had at least similar freshman and sophomore years, and both improved nearly across the board in every major stat associated with their position. I suppose that's the difference between Hurley having Grant Hill and Christian Laettner and Greg Paulus having... who exactly in 06-07?

I can also use this time to dispel some myth that Bobby Hurley was a tremendous defender and Paulus is an atrocious defender. They had an identical rate of stealing the ball their first year (and Paulus actually had a higher defensive rebounding rate both years for whatever that's worth - by about 2%) and Paulus actually had a higher rate his second year. Hurley was chiefly an offensive player in nature, which worked just fine considering how absolutely good his teams were offensively (the 1991-92 team is one of 3 Duke teams to crack an efficiency of 1.2 points per possession). What is sometimes overlooked is that the 1991-92 Duke team is (shockingly) the third worst defensive team in terms of raw efficiency that Duke has fielded in the last 20 years, giving up .9987 points per possession (most Duke teams give up somewhere between .9 and .95, and the awful 95 and 96 teams gave up 1.06 and 1.02 respectively). If anything, Paulus is probably a better defender than Hurley was. And he did it with a broken bone in his foot that needed to be removed. As an aside, do people still believe that defense wins championships? After Florida's mediocre defense in the tournament last year, I hope that myth has been dispelled. The 34-2 Duke squad in 92 is pretty persuasive evidence against that myth too.

Ultimately my point isn't that Greg Paulus is as good as Bobby Hurley. That argument would never fly with anyone - where are Paulus' rings? Where are his endless accolades? I think what the comparison does show, though, is that perhaps we, as Duke fans, should be patient with Paulus. His talent is really awfully similar to Hurley's talent - and neither were in the same stratosphere as Jason (Jay) Williams who developed into a monster as a sophomore. The biggest difference is the level of talent surrounding Hurley vis-a-vis Paulus. This year, most Duke fans are expecting our team to be much improved offensively. Whether that comes true or not, I think we can very reasonably assume that Greg Paulus will have a very successful junior season offensively.

Durant/Oden and Practice

It's late so I'm keeping this (relatively) short. Reading back over some of my earlier posts, I suppose I ought to feel a bit silly advocating so strongly for Oden now that he appears to be quite injury prone. Oh well, he's still young and surgeons are insane these days. I just hope he comes back and is able to compete at the level we know he could when we saw him play in the Final Four. He seems like a really good kid who doesn't deserve this kind of bad luck.

As for actual Duke basketball, there's not much to say. I got to see a team practice last Wednesday and that was exciting. It looked like everyone who returns had improved, and the freshmen look competitive (Singler looked outstanding). Henderson and Singler will likely be All-ACC at the very least. The style the coaches were advocating was a real up-tempo Phoenix-like game, which perfectly suits a team without a true big guy but with a great number of athletic wings and guards.

My short preview for the season: Duke will win a lot of games, some of which they maybe shouldn't. However, some games we'll run into foul trouble guarding big guys and have issues defending the paint and lose games we maybe should win. I also think we'll be fine rebounding and be one of the best perimeter defensive teams in the country (up there with Kansas and UCLA), as well as a very good 3 point shooting team. Such a team is volatile and unpredictable in some ways because if shots are dropping, they can seem unbeatable. I can see a team like this losing in the first round or going to the Final Four. Either way, I'm excited just to see what the hell we're going to look like this year.

USA USA USA

Though it is still the off-season, at least the NFL season has started so we don't need to suffer through the monotony of another baseball infested summer.

On the basketball end of things, though, we at least had the pleasure of watching Team USA compete in the FIBA Americas tournament, if compete is really the right word to use. Let me get the qualifiers out of the way. This tournament was not full of powerhouse teams. Argentina was missing Ginobili, Oberto and Nocioni, and the next strongest teams are Brazil and Puerto Rico - neither of whom are real international powers (although with Nene and Barbosa on Brazil's squad, they certainly have a good looking future). Compared to these teams, the USA looked like the Spurs vis-a-vis a college team - giving as much credit to the international competition as possible.

That being said, we often thought the same of international teams prior to these big tournaments and yet of late have continued to come up short time after time. What's different now? Is anything different not?

The stats suggest no weaknesses. Playing an incredibly fast tempo of 85 possessions a game (in a 40 minute game), the team maintained a 137 offensive efficiency and a 90 defensive efficiency. They shot 69% eFG holding their opponents to just 43%. They only turned it over on 12% of their possessions, and forced turnovers on almost 20%.

The rebounding statistics are actually a little strange - though I have a theory to venture about the cause. The phenomenon is that the USA, in total rebounds, actually were, as they say, "outrebounded" in a number of the games. When you actually break down the rebounds properly, you find that the USA often had a substantial advantage on defensive rebounds (as one would imagine given disparity in FG%), but were getting incredibly outrebounded offensively. Over the course of the tournament, the USA grabbed offensive rebounds on only 27.5% of their possible chances, whereas their opponents grabbed about 31.4%. Looking at the opposition's rebounding rate, it's clear that Team USA were really not giving up an abnormal amount of offensive rebounds relative to the amount of shots the team missed (which was many), but were themselves simply not rebounding offensively very often. Why could this be? Often the USA fielded Dwight Howard and/or Amare Stoudemire - both are huge and freakishly athletic (quicker than most international guards and yet almost 7' tall each).

Of course, one has to first note that the international paint is much wider near the basket, thus making offensive rebounds near the basket slightly more difficult. Big men are offensively less inclined to stay so close to the basket for as long of a period of time as in the NBA since they have much farther out to go to "reset" their 3 seconds. Furthermore, the only reason anyone wants to grab offensive rebounds to begin with is to increase offensive efficiency - rebound margin itself means nothing. When your team shoots 69% eFG and has a 12% TO rate, the need for offensive rebounds is fairly low. Otherwise on paper there is really no reason to be concerned. Generally very good offensive rebounding teams are very athletic teams with size advantages at a few key positions (as are good defensive rebounding teams). It's hard to imagine a more athletic team that outsizes their opposition at every position as much as Team USA. Just as important to their loss on rebounding margin is the sheer quantity of missed shots their opposition had. Yes, they had on the whole a tendency to grab 5% more possible rebounds than Team USA, but 31% is still a very low number. The large number of actual offensive rebounds was a result of a massive number of misses caused by a suffocating perimeter and interior defense.

Now, none of this wankery really guarantees victory in Beijing. There are still powerhouse teams out there we haven't yet faced: Greece, Slovenia, Russia, Spain, Argentina at full strength. However, I can't imagine that those teams would enter a game facing a starting 5 of Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard with a tremendous amount of confidence. In Japan last summer Team USA lacked Jason Kidd (who is really the perfect floor leader for this style of play - keep in mind he had 46 assists to just 5 turnovers in these qualifiers and has never lost a game in international play), and Kobe Bryant (who is, frankly, probably the best player in the world). It's also worth noting that Amare sat out last summer as well given that he had been recovering from knee surgery. This summer, Team USA, for the first time in a long time, looked comfortable on the court. They looked like they were having a tremendous amount of fun running up and down the court, shooting tons of 3s, and throwing improbable alley-oops to one another. There is very clearly no team in the world who can match USA's talent, athleticism, and depth - not to mention coaching experience. However, USA is still young and they still are subject to criticisms of past years - these are just all-stars, they all have egos to assuage, they have lapses in defense (though on the whole, they played exceptional defense) and so forth. I think what we're seeing is an actual team who has been somehow brought together from a group of probably 6 future Hall Of Famers, a dozen more All-Stars, and coached by an exceptional group of experienced coaches who get along well and have similar enough styles to not conflict too much. I have long thought that Coach K is best at motivation and interpersonal skills, and not exactly a strategic master of basketball. Add with him Mike D'Antoni, Jim Boeheim and Nate McMillan and I think you have a pretty excellently drawn team of coaches.

At any rate, for the first time in 12 years, I am actually excited about watching Olympic basketball next summer. Quite frankly, this Team USA might be better than the 1992 Dream Team, but the mystique and the results will never compare because that 1992 Team was full of veterans who were already on their walk into the Hall and were playing a much, much weaker international competition. In those days, teams just had fun watching Charles and Michael dunk all over them and losing by 50, but these days international teams are really out there gunning for Team USA - to stick it to America and prove that basketball isn't just "our" game anymore. Considering that USA's closest game in the recent FIBA tournament was a 15 point win over erstwhile undefeated Argentina, shortly followed up by a 37 point win over the same team - I think that Team USA may be able to get some revenge for a decade of international shame.

Duke Rebounding 2008

From my perspective, rebounding is the most misunderstood aspect of basketball. The most obvious evidence is that rebounding margin is still one of the 4 or 5 major stats that an analyst will show at half-time for any game. The idea this conveys to most people (incorrectly) is that whoever gets the most rebounds is the better rebounding team. Usually analysts will also show the stat to reinforce just how much one team is dominating another.

Of course, rebounding margin might be a sign of one team dominating the other, but not for the reasons some might think. Why are rebounds important? At the most basic level, it's the same reason why rushing is considered a fundamentally important aspect of any offense in football: ball control. The team who has more chances to score will probably win. So to that end, I'll tend to agree that yes, the team with the more rebounds has a better chance at winning, in theory. However, rebounding margin is one of the lesser stats correlated with winning, while field goal percentage is the most.

But why should number of raw rebounds matter the least in deciding who is the better rebounding team in a head to head match-up? What if one team is shooting 60% and the other shooting 30%? Obviously, the first team will have many more opportunities for rebounds (since, typically, a defense has about a 60-70% chance of getting a defensive rebound) than the first team. Very good teams without exception have many more rebounds than their opponents because very good teams shoot a much better percentage from the field than their opponents. Simple as that.

So specifically related to Duke: I actually am one of the few people who think rebounding will be the least of our concerns next year. In fact, I will contend that we will be a good rebounding team. In order to argue this, though, I need to do some groundwork.

What's interesting to note is that after Shelden Williams graduated, a lot of critics suggested that Duke would have trouble rebounding without him in the paint. Of course, in reality, the 07 Devils were a much better rebounding team than the 06 Devils. In 06, our team rebounded about 29.61% of offensive rebounds, and 60.01% of defensive rebounds. This is incredibly bad. The slightly shocking part of it all is that Shelden Williams was such a dominant rebounder (12% OR, 22.6% DR by himself). So, of course, the common pundit might suggested that losing Williams from an already abhorrent rebounding team will simply make the team even worse on the boards.

In 07, however, we were one of the best rebounding teams in the ACC. We rebounded 35.03% of offensive rebounds and 67.12% of defensive rebounds, in spite of losing one of our best rebounders of all time. How does that work? Well, one notion that I will try to dispel is the idea that our change of pace affected our rebounding somehow. In 06, we also averaged about 71.6 possessions a game, which dipped to about 66.4 in 07. The suggestion might be, then, that because we played a fairly slower game, we had more people to crash the boards and a greater ability to grab rebounds on both sides.

Taking a quick look at the stats for ACC teams this year, what I find is that there is really no discernible correlation between tempo and rebounding.

Team	Tempo	OR%	DR%
North Carolina	73.92	39.43	70.77
Maryland	73.64	36.66	63.93
Wake Forest	72.57	30.75	66.83
Virginia	71.67	33.49	66.58
Georgia Tech	70.62	41.36	67.26
Clemson	68.76	37.85	66.47
Florida State	68.22	35.01	63.89
North Carolina State	67.56	27.74	66.08
Duke	66.38	35.03	67.12
Miami	66.24	38.48	66.37
Boston College	66.16	38.07	62.65
Virginia Tech	65.57	32.71	65.78

What I find most interesting about this list, actually, is not just how little tempo has to do with rebounding, but how little offensive rebounding has to do with defensive rebounding. Boston College and NC State are especially interesting. NC State is at once the worst (by far) offensive rebounding team in the ACC, but still was a decent defensive rebounding team. BC was one of the better offensive rebounding teams in the league, but the worst defensive rebounding team. This, at the very least, really hammers home the point that the two are completely different stats and should be entirely separated. At any rate, tempo does not appear to be a substantial factor in rebounding. Duke was the 3rd best defensive rebounding team behind the much faster UNC and the faster Georgia Tech. That being said, I am still not willing to preclude the possibility that tempo has some effect on rebounding.

Now, looking at a list of the top 15 rebounders in the ACC (these are all players with over 40% of minutes - so at least 16 minutes a game or so) it seems that rebounding is mostly a function of personnel.

Player	DR%
Jason Cain (UVA)	20.65
Reyshawn Terry (UNC)	20.22
Ra'Sean Dickey (GT)	19.52
Ekene Ibekwe (UMD)	19.06
Kyle Visser (WFU)	18.74
Brandon Costner (NCSU)	18.73
Josh McRoberts (Duke)	18.71
Uche Echefu (FSU)	18.45
James Gist (UMD)	17.68
David McClure (Duke)	17.67
Tyler Hansbrough (UNC)	17.04
Jeremis Smith (GT)	16.6
James Mays (Clemson)	16.41
Al Thornton (FSU)	16.35
Dwayne Collins (UM)	16.16

Each of the three best defensive rebounding teams has 2 players in the top 15. Maryland is sort of the strange one since Gist and Ibekwe were both excellent defensive rebounders yet they still were not a very good defensive rebounding team. The problem for UMD was more that outside of those 2 guys, the other major players (Vasquez, Jones, Strawberry) were nearly non-existent defensive rebounders. This may have been affected by style, since Maryland had a tendency to shoot off on a break with those three guys leaving the frontcourt to clean up rebounds. So maybe Maryland is an example of a high tempo team that suffers on the boards because of its style.

Now it may seem an obvious and stupid conclusion that personnel has a huge impact on rebounding. But I think the conclusion is a little more subtle than that. The idea is not that you need one guy in the paint who can rebound really well or something, it's that you need a team who can come together to grab a lot of rebounds. For instance, just looking at Duke, we had 6 guys who played over 40% of minutes, and of those 6, 4 of them averaged 10% or more of the defensive rebounds (Nelson, Henderson, McClure, McRoberts). Looking at UNC, they also had 6 players who averaged 40% of minutes or more, and they also had 4 of them grab on average over 10% of defensive rebounds (Ginyard, Terry, Wright, Hansbrough). Georgia Tech had 7 guys over 40% of minutes, and 6 of them averaged over 10% DR rate (Crittenton, Young, Smith, Dickey, Peacock, West).

It seems that having one or two really reliable defensive rebounders is key, but then you also need several support guys who can contribute a lot of defensive rebounds as well. So, now that the groundwork is done, what will Duke be like in 08?

Well, the kneejerk reaction is to say that we will be worse off because of losing McRoberts. I actually don't think this is exactly true. I do think we will probably be a worse defensive rebounding team, but not because of McRoberts. Say, for instance, our line-up is Paulus, Henderson, Nelson, McClure, Zoubek next year. We would actually be a very good rebounding team with McClure and Zoubek in the frontcourt and very good rebounding wingmen Henderson and Nelson. I think this line-up will see a fair bit of burn. But factoring in guys like Singler (unproven, so I can't predict how well he'll do), Scheyer (not a good rebounder) or Thomas (could become a decent rebounder, but wasn't his first year) will probably affect our ability to rebound. That being said, though, McClure only played a little over 700 minutes this year (53% of total) with much of the time he spent sitting being filled in by Lance Thomas, and we were still the 3rd best defensive rebounding team in the ACC.

The point is, a lot of Duke fans want to see a return to the faster paced teams of the the late 80s, early 90s and the late 90s, early 00s. This 07 Duke team was tremendously slow by Duke standards. Yet there is also a fear that we will not be able to rebound well enough to get out on a break. I don't really believe that at all. I think we will be, again, a very good rebounding team with the tools to run a faster paced offense (71, or 72 possessions a game would be nice to see run well).

The other point I wanted to make was simply that rebounding is misunderstood and covered poorly by basketball analysts. Just look back at ESPN's top 10 best teams of the last decade: they actually criticized a 2001 Duke team for having a smaller rebounding margin despite being a more efficient offensive team than any other champion on the list and being among the better defensive teams.

More in favor of Oden #1

Oregon Live has reported the results from the Orlando pre-draft camp. The link name is sufficient. Oden is incredibly fast, agile, and huge. 7' with shoes and a 7'4.25" wingspan? 9'4" standing reach? Hello!

Durant's measurements are actually really impressive... I never had any idea he was actually 6'10"+ with shoes, but that really justifies his freakish wingspan (7'4.75"). Given that wingspan, I'm not entirely shocked that he can't put up 185, but even once? I'm about 6'7" with about a 6'10" wingspan and I find benching to be much harder than my shorter friends, but even so, 185 is not particularly difficult. He'll REALLY need to bulk up a bit to take the strain of his future position in the NBA.

Durant??

So I was looking over Draft Express, and noticed they had Durant going first to Portland in their mock draft.

First, let me say that yes, this is yet another blog entry by some random guy about Oden and Durant. And yes, this is yet another blog entry talking about why Oden is the better pick. I understand this is not a particularly controversial position. I just hope I can provide a couple fresh arguments for why Oden is the better pick.

Common Sense

I cannot for the life of me figure out why the Trailblazers would select Durant over Oden. I mean, it's hard to say either decision is the wrong one, especially this early in the game, but I just cannot understand why, at the forefront, a team would think Durant is the better pick.

I'll voice some concerns I have for Durant. First, he's skinny. I know he's young and will get stronger... but I think he's probably got that kind of bodytype that doesn't put on weight very easily. For Durant's first handful of seasons he will be best served as a jumpshooter probably. The size and physicality of NBA interior defenders will wear on him quickly if he drives, and I don't think he has the strength to post up on decent sized NBA power forwards. The great upside about Durant is that the kid is sort of a freak in terms of a mix of size (including knuckle dragging primate arms), skillset and athleticism. When he gets bigger, he will be a force, but does Portland really want another perimeter player offensively? Even when Durant fills out and gets used to the rigors of the NBA season, he will be a perimeter player first, and an interior player second. The answer, of course, is no.

The problem really is that you are probably not going to win with two superstar perimeter players unless one of them is named "Jordan." Look at Denver, for instance. They have a good, solid team built: Blake, Iverson, Carmelo, Nene and Camby as their principle five. Two perimeter superstars, a solid, quick PG who can defend and hit some 3s, and two good interior defenders/rebounders, but no scorers. Now, maybe Denver will mature into a complete and consistent team, but as for now, their dependence on the perimeter game for offensive production severely limits them. Portland would see the same problem if they picked Durant. Randolph is a problem anyway, and they should deal him no matter what, leaving Aldridge as their main inside option if they picked Durant. Aldridge will probably turn into a solid player, but I don't really think he'll carry a team offensively in the middle like Elton Brand or Carlos Boozer or Tim Duncan (notice how I put 2 Duke players first?).

So again, why would Portland pick Durant? If they pick Oden, they can deal Randolph and they are left with an imposing interior defense with immense upside on the offensive side. Brandon Roy has all the right tools to become a legitimate perimeter star with some good coaching and some good teammates. That's called balance, and balance wins.

Stats and Effect on Team

Durant was the golden child of the NCAA this year for his gawdy stats, but it's easy to forget that his team lost in the 2nd round and went 25-10. Some might argue that Texas just wasn't very good without Durant. Well, maybe, but Durant headlined an excellent recruiting class and there were a number of very promising players on that Texas team. In fact, they will without a doubt be a pre-season top 25 team even without Durant.

Meanwhile, Oden's team went 35-4 and lost in the NCAA title game (which was, as we all know, not any fault of Oden's). Some might say that OSU was just a better team than Texas outside of Oden. A lot of people even went as far as to say that Ohio State played better without Oden on the floor. Now at this point we all know that's wrong. In the 10 games before the NCAA tournament, Ohio State had a net +27 points per 40 minutes with Oden on the floor. In the NCAA tournament, with only two exceptions (Florida and Xavier), Ohio State dominated the opposition with Oden on the floor, and... well, didn't with him on the bench. The fact is that the Buckeyes were a rather... average team without Oden near the end of the season as Cook stopped producing. They relied too heavily on Lewis to score, but though he was a pretty solid support for Oden and Conley, he couldn't carry a great team. Cook fell off towards the end of the season after having a solid early season. At any rate, Ohio State was as good as they were precisely, and primarily because of Greg Oden.

The difference was not necessarily offensive (though, and I will get to this, I believe Oden was a better player to have on the floor in order to open up offensive options for other players than Durant was). In fact, I think it's safe to say that Oden's biggest impact is defensive. Keep in mind that Oden only played 59% of the total minutes that Ohio State played this year (missing 7 games and being a big man limits minutes), and he still logged 105 out of 218 blocks for the team. He blocked 12.7% of all opponents' 2 point shots while on the floor, and I have no idea what kind of atmospheric number he altered. The paint was virtually impossible to score from while Oden was on the floor. Furthermore, he grabbed well over 23% of the possible defensive rebounds (although, to be fair to Durant, he grabbed about the same percentage).

Now about the offensive side, obviously Durant scored more and scored in many more ways than Oden did, but Oden scored more reliably. I look here to floor percentage (essentially a stat used to estimate how often a player scores when he tries to score) and find that Oden's is an impressive 61.8% and Durant's is 55.1%. Furthermore, since Oden played in the paint and was such a dominating physical presence compared to the other college big men, he was able to net 15% of all possible offensive rebounds: a tremendous number in itself. To summarize, Oden increased his team's chances to score by dramatically increasing the team's ability to get offensive rebounds, and was a constant threat because he scored nearly 2/3rds of the times he tried. One other stat not to be overlooked is Oden's FT rate vis-a-vis Durant's. While Oden shot about 64 free throws for every 100 FGA, Durant shot about 39.6, but against different competition. I think the implication here is that Oden will almost always get an opposing big man in foul trouble and open up the middle for easy, predictable (but much less exciting) baskets while Durant will mostly be scoring with less reliable midrange jumpers and 3s (Oden shot 61.6% from the field while Durant shot 53.6% - eFG% of course).

There has long been a sort of wisdom in basketball that a great big man will bring you championships, but for some reason people have gotten away from this. My best guess is that the most hyped center of all time (Ewing) brought home zero rings to the Knicks in his long hall of fame career. Of course, that was primarily due to a freak named Jordan standing in his way, because the Knicks had championship caliber teams with Ewing in at least 2 years (and probably more). Kareem, Russell, Wilt, Walton, Hakeem, Shaq, Duncan - all these guys anchored (multiple) championship teams offensively and (most importantly) defensively, and within 10 years I imagine Oden will be added to that list.

So I ask again, Durant?? Really??

Cavs v. Spurs

I like how Cleveland was able to really attack Detroit in all the right ways for 6 games. I don't like the insinuation that Detroit just played poorly throughout the series. Detroit was coming off a series where they beat a very good Chicago team pretty easily, so there's no reason to think they wouldn't be playing well. Furthermore, teams don't just randomly play poorly for 6 games straight - Cleveland forced them to play poorly. The Cavs may be ugly to watch, but they play good defense, rebound well, and are able to score well enough to win.

Now a comment about San Antonio:

Here's the thing (off topic a sec), I think San Antonio (as much as I dislike them for their style of defense and for all the Euro-soccer like whining and drama) is not an ugly team to watch play basketball. They aren't a fast team to watch play, but neither was Georgetown this season (and I think the Hoyas were great to watch - spectacular on offense). San Antonio has the best big man in the NBA right now, one of the most explosive playmakers, and an off-guard who can score from all over the court. The reason people assume that the Spurs are bad to watch is that they control the ball and keep a somewhat slow tempo. But their offense is right at the top of the league. Let's sit back and enjoy good basketball, because the Spurs are the best team in the league.

The Spurs will beat the Cavs and win another championship, but the Cavs will compete. I think 6 games is appropriate. But that being said, Duncan is not a young man and as Duncan deteriorates, so do the San Antonio Spurs. Meanwhile, LeBron pretty much single handedly took his team to the Finals, and he's 22. With Durant and Oden both going to the West, we are probably going to be looking at the Cavs in the NBA Finals a lot over the next decade or so.