In Defense of Thaddeus Young

[thedoper]

But alas, Adrien is gone, so both are going to get plenty of playing time the rest of the way and all we can hope for is improvement. I guess your guy Hummel is the "stick" Flip will use when Bennett is not playing the right way.

Real funny! :)

Isn't Hummel more of a wet noodle then a stick?

[Coolbreeze44]

Guys, can we all agree on one thing - That CoolBreeze is the Truth? I think we should use that as our foundation and go from there. :LOL:

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

But alas, Adrien is gone, so both are going to get plenty of playing time the rest of the way and all we can hope for is improvement. I guess your guy Hummel is the "stick" Flip will use when Bennett is not playing the right way.

Real funny! :)

Isn't Hummel more of a wet noodle then a stick?

Heh, I hate to say it, but he is probably our most effective PF right now! He makes the fewest mistakes and plays the best defense. I'm not sure though how he'd hold up as a starter. We literally have zero good options right now at PF (so much for not missing Kevin Love). But yeah, I'd play Hummel over Bennett if I were the coach. And we've seen Flip do this from time to time when AB was in his doghouse.

[mjs34]

Guys, can we all agree on one thing - That CoolBreeze is the Truth? I think we should use that as our foundation and go from there. :LOL:

A solid jumping off point!

[mjs34]

BB reference has Bennett listed at 22.6 to 12.7 for Dreb%. Mikkeman took two specific lineups, but if one guy is getting less minutes with that group, wouldn't it show up in team defense? The added missed shots don't really help if we aren't getting the rebounds, and those steal attempts seem to end up in layups more often than not. It is to the point that Gorgi is doubling on thad's man almost immediately.

[MikkeMan]

I guess I am not understanding your logic. If a team shoots and misses it doesn't matter who got the rebound for that possession. The possession doesn't continue on if the team got an offensive rebound. They reset the clock and start their next possession. So if Trey Burke takes a shot and Favors gets the rebound over Young and puts it back in on a layup the eFG% is 50, not 100.

You can find the definition of possession that is used in advanced metrics for example from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APBRmetricsWikipedia. It is calculated with following formula:

Possessions = .96 * (FGA - ORb + TO + (0.44*FTA))

The logic about the way possessions are calculated there is that offensive rebound doesn't cause new possession, it basically just extends original possession. This means that team defensive rebounding is part of defensive rating and team offensive rebounding is part of offensive rating. That makes perfectly sense because I think defensive rebounding is part of defense and offensive rebounding is part of offense.

In your example, it is true that eFG% is just 50% if points are scored from offensive rebound but for offensive rating (and defensive rating) it doesn't change anything whether points are scored with one shot attempt or by taking several offensive boards before finally scoring.

Also if you look team offensive rating stats from http://stats.nba.com/league/team/#!/advanced/?sort=OFF_RATING&dir=1NBA.com, you see that Phoenix for example has currently higher offensive rating than Atlanta (106.4 vs 106.2) despite having worse TS% (55.8 vs 56.5) and higher turnover rate (15.3 vs 14.9). This is possible because they are much better offensive rebounding team. (offensive rebounding rate 24.4 vs 21.0)

[MikkeMan]

Q, I was referring to getting comfortable playing together, and learning each others tendencies, like Young selling out on steals so Gorgi is already behind him waiting to pick up his man!

I think that Young is not that much more comfortable playing together with anyone on Wolves team than Bennett since their starting line up has changed a lot this season. Rubio, Lavine and Williams have started as point guard, Martin, Brewer and Muhammad as other wing and Dieng and Pek as center. Basically Wiggins have been lone constant starter. Young did not either have any experience from previous seasons about playing with any of current members of Wolves team. So from that perspective he is comparable for Bennett.

Only thing that I can think that could partially explain Bennett's awful defensive stats, is that he has been forced to play some minutes as center because of injuries. But when I calculated defensive rating of those lineups that featured Hummel/Brewer and Bennett as bigs, it was exactly same 117 that is Bennett's overall defensive rating. So even that cannot be used as a explanation why Bennett's overall defensive rating is so much worse compared to Thad.

[MikkeMan]

Holy shitballs. Every one of those numbers, with Young, With Bennett... is so far below the league average. Q nailed it when he wrote Young is the "less bad" player. I think that's what a few of the Young "apologists" have hinted at over the past few weeks. Bennett is sort of like the de facto 3rd string QB right now.

Yes, every wolves player except Rubio and Adrien has had quite awful defensive rating this season. And of course they cut Adrien... But there is still some difference how bad defensive stats other guys have had. Mo, Robinson, Pek, Young, and Hummel have had defensive rating between 107.8 and 108.6 while Lavine and Bennett has it between 113.3 and 114.5. Rest of the guys have it around 110.

There might be some small difference on how defensive rating stats have been calculated in NBA.com and 82games.com, since they won't be identical even for those players that have been injured lately. (82games.com doesn't include stats from last couple of games).

[TheGrey08]

Agreed SJM. I'd rather see Bennett get more consistent minutes to try to mesh with guys like Dieng, Bazz, Wiggins & Rubio when he's back. Trial by fire almost for the rest of the year. What do we have to lose?