Bad Flip
by Corey
It is in times of perceived Cavaliers implosion that I usually write a "don't panic because the Cavs are in fact better than you realize" post. I am fully prepared to do just that right now, except that I did one, like, a week ago.
Briefly, however: Anonymous, our most loyal of readers, recently threw a wrench into the "Don't boo LeBron" machine with his sacrilegious LeBron-bashing. To him I will simply say that it is entirely possible for a team to have shortcomings (which the Cavs, like any team, do have) in addition to--or in spite of--certain glowing strengths. To say that LeBron must be doing something wrong because the Cavs have done something wrong (a proposition that, again, is being blown out of proportion) is to ignore the Cavs players who truly are doing something wrong. LeBron has played better this season than anyone in the NBA. What is He supposed to do, be the most efficient player in the NBA by a slightly greater margin?
I didn't sit down here today to praise LeBron, though. Believe it or not, I sat down here today to complain about something Cavs-related, that something being the acquisition of Flip Murray. The Mike Wilks-Flip Murray trade, from what I've seen and heard, has been universally praised by the traditional media. They think a guy like Flip Murray is what the Cavs needed, and I can understand why they think so. For one, there's the eyewitness factor: Murray looks like a good player because he's fast and can dunk and moves around a lot on defense. Secondly, traditional stats are generous to a guy like Murray. People see that he averages 10 points a game coming off the bench and are satisfied.
When he's not scoring one of those points, though, he's hurting his team in a multitude of ways. Peruse this summary of Murray's career statistics, and then let us count the ways:
Nextly, Murray's usage rate is through the roof. His career mark is higher than any Cavalier's is this season, except for LeBron. That means that Murray is using up an incommensurate percentage of his team's possessions. If he were an efficient scorer, that would be a good thing, but since he's not, it's a glaringly bad thing. Call Damon Jones a chucker if you want; at least his career usage rate (16.0) is lower than Murray's. And Damon's '05-'06 usage rate is even lower (12.3).
Moving on, Flip plays poor defense. His D-rating of 110 is higher (ie: worse) than Damon Jones' career 108 rating and Sasha Pavlovic's career 106 rating. Over the last three seasons, in fact, Murray had one of the highest D-ratings in the NBA among players with significant minutes. Combine that with a deplorable O-rating of 96 and you get a truly ugly Player Win Percentage of .148. In other words, a team that scores 96 points per hundred possessions and allows 110 points per hundred possessions (ie: a team of Ronald Murray-caliber players) will win about 14.8% of its games.
OK, so I think I've established what a bad player Murray is. Here's the tricky part: he's arguably better than Mike Wilks, for whom he was traded. If it were up to me, I would still prefer Wilks, whose career numbers are superior, but in '05-'06, Murray has actually been the better player. Besides, the Cavs' depth problem is probably direst at shooting guard, not point guard, so let's assume for the sake of argument that Murray is more valuable to the Cavs than Wilks was. That would mean that, in some sense, the Cavs "won" the trade with the Sonics.
This would all be well and good if Coach Brown were using Murray as he did Wilks--essentially, not at all. During the first 54 games of the season, Wilks played a total of 250 minutes, most of it in garbage time. Murray, however, has already played 100 minutes in just 3 games. He even started the Cavs' most recent game, playing 40 minutes. 40 minutes! Only LeBron played more in that game.
In other words, Murray is not replacing Wilks. He's replacing a bunch of minutes that used to go to Sasha Pavlovic and Damon Jones--both of whom are better options, as I've shown. We can only hope that this usage pattern doesn't continue. The Cavs may have a problem with guard depth, but so far they have only made the problem worse.
Briefly, however: Anonymous, our most loyal of readers, recently threw a wrench into the "Don't boo LeBron" machine with his sacrilegious LeBron-bashing. To him I will simply say that it is entirely possible for a team to have shortcomings (which the Cavs, like any team, do have) in addition to--or in spite of--certain glowing strengths. To say that LeBron must be doing something wrong because the Cavs have done something wrong (a proposition that, again, is being blown out of proportion) is to ignore the Cavs players who truly are doing something wrong. LeBron has played better this season than anyone in the NBA. What is He supposed to do, be the most efficient player in the NBA by a slightly greater margin?
I didn't sit down here today to praise LeBron, though. Believe it or not, I sat down here today to complain about something Cavs-related, that something being the acquisition of Flip Murray. The Mike Wilks-Flip Murray trade, from what I've seen and heard, has been universally praised by the traditional media. They think a guy like Flip Murray is what the Cavs needed, and I can understand why they think so. For one, there's the eyewitness factor: Murray looks like a good player because he's fast and can dunk and moves around a lot on defense. Secondly, traditional stats are generous to a guy like Murray. People see that he averages 10 points a game coming off the bench and are satisfied.
When he's not scoring one of those points, though, he's hurting his team in a multitude of ways. Peruse this summary of Murray's career statistics, and then let us count the ways:
TS% Usg PER ORtg DRtg PW%Firstly, Murray is quite an inefficient shooter. And it's not as if he's taking low-percentage shots; he's a guy who prefers to drive to the hoop. His career TS% of .477 is 31 points lower than--I kid you not--Ira Newble's career percentage. It's also 41 points lower than what Damon Jones is shooting this year and 48 points lower than what Sasha Pavlovic is shooting this year. And Flip's '05-'06 TS% is even lower than his career average.
'02-'03 .391 28.9 6.6 71 107 .007
'03-'04 .497 24.4 15.4 98 109 .187
'04-'05 .433 22.2 9.9 91 110 .066
'05-'06 .461 23.0 11.5 N/A N/A N/A
career* .477 23.9 13.6 96 110 .148
*not counting '05-'06
Nextly, Murray's usage rate is through the roof. His career mark is higher than any Cavalier's is this season, except for LeBron. That means that Murray is using up an incommensurate percentage of his team's possessions. If he were an efficient scorer, that would be a good thing, but since he's not, it's a glaringly bad thing. Call Damon Jones a chucker if you want; at least his career usage rate (16.0) is lower than Murray's. And Damon's '05-'06 usage rate is even lower (12.3).
Moving on, Flip plays poor defense. His D-rating of 110 is higher (ie: worse) than Damon Jones' career 108 rating and Sasha Pavlovic's career 106 rating. Over the last three seasons, in fact, Murray had one of the highest D-ratings in the NBA among players with significant minutes. Combine that with a deplorable O-rating of 96 and you get a truly ugly Player Win Percentage of .148. In other words, a team that scores 96 points per hundred possessions and allows 110 points per hundred possessions (ie: a team of Ronald Murray-caliber players) will win about 14.8% of its games.
OK, so I think I've established what a bad player Murray is. Here's the tricky part: he's arguably better than Mike Wilks, for whom he was traded. If it were up to me, I would still prefer Wilks, whose career numbers are superior, but in '05-'06, Murray has actually been the better player. Besides, the Cavs' depth problem is probably direst at shooting guard, not point guard, so let's assume for the sake of argument that Murray is more valuable to the Cavs than Wilks was. That would mean that, in some sense, the Cavs "won" the trade with the Sonics.
This would all be well and good if Coach Brown were using Murray as he did Wilks--essentially, not at all. During the first 54 games of the season, Wilks played a total of 250 minutes, most of it in garbage time. Murray, however, has already played 100 minutes in just 3 games. He even started the Cavs' most recent game, playing 40 minutes. 40 minutes! Only LeBron played more in that game.
In other words, Murray is not replacing Wilks. He's replacing a bunch of minutes that used to go to Sasha Pavlovic and Damon Jones--both of whom are better options, as I've shown. We can only hope that this usage pattern doesn't continue. The Cavs may have a problem with guard depth, but so far they have only made the problem worse.
10 Comments:
Your article on Flip Murray was very well written. I love the statistical analysis. I doubt Danny Ferry knows as much...he should be calling you for help.
Anyway, I am not Roger Brown (although I wish I was...my dreams of Sharon Reed may then be attainable) and I am not a Lebron-hater, as I may have come across. If anything, I am a Mike Brown-hater, and I do believe that The Chosen One can lead us as a perennial power (ala Jordan's Bulls).
To me, the short term growing pains are hard to watch with such high expectations. Corey's post on Flip Murray does not make me feel better--it doesn't seem they are getting any better, even when they had money and players to throw around for trades. I am holding out hope that Mike Brown finds his magic teaching wand and Lebron takes it to even another level, that can help the Cavs over-achieve and hide some of the other player's weaknesses. In the end, I try to remind myself that the journey is the most important thing and it's not where you go, but how you got there. So I'll just try to enjoy the season for it's many exciting moments.
I think the key will be how the Cavs end the season...a wise man once told me, "It's how you finish that counts." People always remember that last game, that last series, that last run.
You don't know basketball, obviously. Flip Murray is the least of the Cavs problems. His usage rate? Did you watch the last 5 games? . Nobody wants to shoot on this team. They pass up open jumpers because their confidence is gone. The 4th quarter of the last two games have been particularly painful. Flip is one of the few guys attacking the rim. Your defenseive analysis (i.e. looking at one lame defensive stat and obviously not watching one live basketball game in your life) is flawed. Is he a great defender? No. But worse than Sasha or Jones? I think that means the one stat you use is whack. LeBron deserves a lot of criticism for his play lately too.
Forget it, your site has a lot of potential, and I love a lot of what you guys do, BUT as long as you rely only on a couple derivative stats for every analysis, it reflects the lack of actual knowledge of sport.
The best football player doesn't necessarily have the best DVG and DPAR or whatever your 2 stats for football is. The best basketball players don't necessarily have TS% or efficiency rating.
I think you misunderstand usage rate. The number of possessions the Cavs will have in a game is constant, regardless of whther the shots go in or not, whether the ball is turned over, whether the players have confidence in themselves or not, or who takes the shots. To say "we need someone to take shots" is silly because the numbers of shots we take will stay the same. The point is, we want the most efficient shoors taking those shots. And Ronald Murray, historically, has been less efficient than most of his teammates. I'm sorry, but that's a fact.
The best basketball player doesn't necessarily have the best TS%--on that you're right. But the best shooter does necessarily have the best TS%. The methodology behind a stat like TS% is perfectly sound. I understand your being skeptical of statistics whose formulae are unfamiliar to you, but statistics do paint a more accurate picture of team and individual success than anyone's subjective, biased eyes can give them.
I watch the game, too. I've watched nearly every game of the season. I've probably seen Flip Murray play about as many times as you have over the last four seasons. So if watching the game is what qualifies one to pass judgements, and if I "don't know basketball, obviously," then obviously, you don't either.
I understand the value of the stats you use, the problem I see with some of the posts on this blog is that it is all you use. You have huge write ups about a player or a browns game and it is totally based on one or two statistical analysis. To me, that is too simplistic. Stats should be used to supplement a position, a post, an observation, but they are misused when they are over-relied on.
Re: Murray-
I'm sure you watched the game tonight. He probably didn't have a great usage rate. He certainly had a bad TS%. But the 4th quarter showed his value to this team. Not just the game winner, but he scored 11 points during the quarter in which LeBron was passing too much, Z was on the bench because of fouls and Marshall and Jones have about as terrible confidence in their shooting ability right now. Anderson looked good, but he is not a good guy to go to late in the game.
Re: Usage rate:
Guards are going to disporportionately take tougher shots with the shot clock running down, big guys are going to get put backs and easy shots, and have smaller sample sizes. Again, its not a bad stat, but can't be relied on to determine the value of a player.
Besides, before the last two possessions of the game, Murray had shot 3 of 11 with 2 turnovers and one trip to the free throw line. Who's to say that, had those 14 possessions been used up by another player, the Cavs wouldn't have come away with more than 8 points? I mean, that's .57 points per possession, which is way below what the Cavs offense usually averages (1.09 points per possession).
Also, I still think you misunderstand usage rate. It does not rate a player's performance. It simply tells you how much weight should be assigned to his performance. Having a high usage rate is neither good nor bad. LeBron has a high usage rate; so does Murray. LeBron is generally an efficient player, however, so in that case, it's good. In Flip's case, it makes a bad situation even worse.
There is no way that Mike Wilks is more valuable to this team that Murray. I don't need stats to tell me that.
And here I am being, somewhat-and I emphasize "somewhat"-crticial of LeBron. He is settling for jump shots way too easily. Part of this may be attributed to Murray's negative effect on the offensive scheme. But the fact is that LeBron has to slash and get to the hoop to establish his interior game, and then spot his jumpers later on. He can't rely on them as his main way to score. Sometimes I think LeBron tries to score via the jump shot just to prove that he can, which is somewhat immature. I can understand why though: because the main criticism of his game when he came into the league was his lack of a jump shot. He has improved that shot greatly, but he needs to use it selectively, which should make him a much more efficient offensive player.
I wasn't able to catch the game during which LeBron was booed because I didn't get it (I live in Pittsburgh). But Michael "I've clearly had a facelift" Reghi and Scott Williams said that it was overblown, and was only a very small fraction of the crowd. Then again, Michael Reghi has been known to do a pretty serious home job from time to time. The bottom line is that the only thing that matters this season is keeping LeBron in Cleveland, and booing him is not a good means to that end.
If a new statistic comes out and better encapsulates the value of a player, wherein Murray surpasses Pavlovich do you think, "That Murray is better than Pavlovich." I can't see how you can believe that from observing the guys play.
Murray does put it up too much, but he's able to run the offense somewhat effectively with LeBron getting his 1 minute of rest per game. He may be a much more selfish player than he's shown thus far and I may sour on him later on (ala McGinnis), but to say you'd rather have those other guys on the floor before him . . . I couldn't disagree more. Pavlovich, seriously? Maybe Murray is really an evil ball hog that we'll all one day hate, but until that time, please, leave Newble, Pavlovich and Jones on the bench as much as possible.
I'm wondering is you have a similar analysis on what Donyell Marshall has given us this year? did we overpay?
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