Author Topic: Has Doc Rivers disproven the claims his detractors made about him this year?  (Read 15149 times)

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Offline Fafnir

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  I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.

Offline CelticG1

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Well hes taken a much better team jusy as far as they went last year.

I think it will be a complete failure if they dont make the WCF.

If they do than hats off to Chris Paul and Doc.

If they dont than how many freebies are we going to give Paul? And does bumping his knee or elbow in the first round exhonerate him from failing?

And for Doc he was brought in to make this team a winner. being the Status quo kinda makes this whole change pointless.

We'll see what happens although if they do fail to make it at least their id say its more of an indictment on the playersthan Doc as i always thought a lot of those clips were overrated, Paul, Griffin , jordan

Offline D.o.s.

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  I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.

Thanks for that. TP.

Well hes taken a much better team jusy as far as they went last year.

I think it will be a complete failure if they dont make the WCF.

If they do than hats off to Chris Paul and Doc.

If they dont than how many freebies are we going to give Paul? And does bumping his knee or elbow in the first round exhonerate him from failing?

And for Doc he was brought in to make this team a winner. being the Status quo kinda makes this whole change pointless.

We'll see what happens although if they do fail to make it at least their id say its more of an indictment on the playersthan Doc as i always thought a lot of those clips were overrated, Paul, Griffin , jordan

I agree with you that they really need to make at least the WCF to have made the season worth the bluster, but I also think that Doc leading them to 57 wins without having Chris Paul for 20 games is more impressive than VDN leading that same team to 56 wins while having CP3 for all but 12 games.
At least a goldfish with a Lincoln Log on its back goin' across your floor to your sock drawer has a miraculous connotation to it.

Offline BballTim

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  I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.

  What's the strength of schedule argument? Relative to the rest of the league the other division team's offenses were as good or better in 2013 than in 2014.

Offline CelticG1

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  I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.

Thanks for that. TP.

Well hes taken a much better team jusy as far as they went last year.

I think it will be a complete failure if they dont make the WCF.

If they do than hats off to Chris Paul and Doc.

If they dont than how many freebies are we going to give Paul? And does bumping his knee or elbow in the first round exhonerate him from failing?

And for Doc he was brought in to make this team a winner. being the Status quo kinda makes this whole change pointless.

We'll see what happens although if they do fail to make it at least their id say its more of an indictment on the playersthan Doc as i always thought a lot of those clips were overrated, Paul, Griffin , jordan

I agree with you that they really need to make at least the WCF to have made the season worth the bluster, but I also think that Doc leading them to 57 wins without having Chris Paul for 20 games is more impressive than VDN leading that same team to 56 wins while having CP3 for all but 12 games.

I just dont think 8 more games means that much to be honest, and i think docs team was better up and down and another year of experiemce helped Griffin and Jordan out. Its not like they had Phil pressey backing him up either

Offline D.o.s.

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You don't think Chris Paul tilts at least one or two or three of those eight games from the L column to a win?
At least a goldfish with a Lincoln Log on its back goin' across your floor to your sock drawer has a miraculous connotation to it.

Offline BballTim

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You don't think Chris Paul tilts at least one or two or three of those eight games from the L column to a win?

  The team's winning percentage without CP was virtually identical to their winning percentage with him this year.
 

Offline Fafnir

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  I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.

  What's the strength of schedule argument? Relative to the rest of the league the other division team's offenses were as good or better in 2013 than in 2014.
This statement isn't true.

Edit: To show my work first column is offensive rating the second is relative to league average

   14                13      14   13
LAL   104.2   107.8      -2.5   1.9
PHX   109.5   101.2      2.8   -4.7
SAC    105.7   105.9      -1   0
GSW    107.5   106.4      0.8   0.5
Total    426.9   421.3      0.1   -2.3
Av   106.725   105.325         
Lg Avg   106.7   105.9         

I'd also add that this rough calculation is somewhat inaccurate due to not incorporating pace. Fast paced games will effect your overall DRTG more than slow paced games naturally because each possession is weighed equally in the overall season's average.

On a tangent I seriously think the Nuggets, 76ers, and Lakers alone probably pushed up the league average offensive rating. They all played some seriously terrible defense at a really fast pace. Last years bad defensive teams were playing 91ish possessions per game. Those three were knocking out 98!
« Last Edit: April 17, 2014, 03:22:31 PM by Fafnir »

Offline BballTim

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  I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.

  What's the strength of schedule argument? Relative to the rest of the league the other division team's offenses were as good or better in 2013 than in 2014.
This statement isn't true.

Edit: To show my work first column is offensive rating the second is relative to league average

   14                13      14   13
LAL   104.2   107.8      -2.5   1.9
PHX   109.5   101.2      2.8   -4.7
SAC    105.7   105.9      -1   0
GSW    107.5   106.4      0.8   0.5
Total    426.9   421.3      0.1   -2.3
Av   106.725   105.325         
Lg Avg   106.7   105.9         

I'd also add that this rough calculation is somewhat inaccurate due to not incorporating pace. Fast paced games will effect your overall DRTG more than slow paced games naturally because each possession is weighed equally in the overall season's average.

On a tangent I seriously think the Nuggets, 76ers, and Lakers alone probably pushed up the league average offensive rating. They all played some seriously terrible defense at a really fast pace. Last years bad defensive teams were playing 91ish possessions per game. Those three were knocking out 98!

  You did more research than I did. Last year the other 4 teams were 9th, 11th, 12th and 29th in offense, last year they were 8th, 12, 20th and 22nd. It occurred to me that there was a chance the 29th would pull the average down, but the difference is pretty small. The difference in the better offenses would be roughly 1/4 of the difference. Possibly overlooked, but the much bigger difference you cited was the difference in league average. But between the two effects the 2014 numbers will still come up slightly below the 2013 average. I suppose I should amend my original statement from "worse" to "close to the same" (not a big deal, since I'm no more worried about "winning" when I post stats than you undoubtedly are), but that doesn't help him much.

  Also, from a cursory review, the 2013 team with the worst offense played at the slowest pace of the four, while the 2014 team with the worst offense played at the fastest pace of the four, so that will likely work against you.

Offline Snakehead

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You don't think Chris Paul tilts at least one or two or three of those eight games from the L column to a win?

  The team's winning percentage without CP was virtually identical to their winning percentage with him this year.

That was what impressed me most about that team and Doc this year.  They looked great without Paul.

Griffin also deserves a lot of credit.
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Offline footey

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Doc does his best when he has vets. He was perfect for us after we got KG and Ray.  I think Brad Stevens will better serve a young team like the one currently constructed. 

Offline BballTim

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You don't think Chris Paul tilts at least one or two or three of those eight games from the L column to a win?

  The team's winning percentage without CP was virtually identical to their winning percentage with him this year.

That was what impressed me most about that team and Doc this year.  They looked great without Paul.

Griffin also deserves a lot of credit.

  Griffin really stepped up in those games from what I saw. That should help out a lot in the long run.

Offline Fafnir

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You don't think Chris Paul tilts at least one or two or three of those eight games from the L column to a win?

  The team's winning percentage without CP was virtually identical to their winning percentage with him this year.

That was what impressed me most about that team and Doc this year.  They looked great without Paul.

Griffin also deserves a lot of credit.

  Griffin really stepped up in those games from what I saw. That should help out a lot in the long run.
That and they played a bunch of bad teams for the big stretch he was out. Though a lot of those games were on a long eastern road trip so that always makes things tough.