The Cavs in Bubble Form
by Corey
If there are two things I can never pass up, they're a bowl of matzo ball soup, and a graph about the Cavaliers. So, since we haven't posted anything in a while, here are two Cavs graphs I cooked up, in which the Cavs themselves are represented in matzo ball-form. Sort of.
This first one is pretty simple. It compares each Cav's O-Rating to his D-Rating. These metrics were developed by Dean Oliver and are available at Basketball-Reference. Anyway, the further to the right a player appears, the better his offense has been, and the closer to the top he appears, the better his defense has been, at least by Dean Oliver's methodology. The twist is that I've decided to represent each player as a bubble, whose size reflects how many minutes he's played. Click to enlarge:
For your viewing convenience, here we have the same graph, but cropped to include only the interesting parts:
By O-Rating and D-Rating, it looks like the most valuable Cavs, after LeBron, are in fact Anderson Varejão, Ben Wallace, and Delonte West. Mo Williams looks like the one getting more minutes than he deserves (mostly because he has a poor D-Rating compared to his teammates). Note, however, that D-Rating, unlike O-Rating, does tend to discriminate by position; that is, centers and power forwards tend to have much better D-Ratings than guards. This may in fact reflect an increased importance for big men on the defensive end, or it may be a quirk of Dean Oliver's methodology. So Delonte's defense is especially good (for a guard) and Mo's questionable defense may not in fact be so much of a concern.
Dean Oliver's ratings, of course, are just one way of measuring offense against defense. Another way is the plus/minus methodology originally developed by Dan Rosenbaum (you can view the Cavs' +/- over at BasketballValue.com). Here I've prepared essentially the same graph, only using net +/- ratings instead of O- and D-Ratings (click to enlarge):
Once again, here's the same thing, but cropped for easier viewing. Sorry, Jawad Williams:
Truly, LeBron is the Hokkaido to His teammates' Honshu. And J.J. Hickson is Kyushu. But seriously, these data seem to agree with the earlier set in terms of the broad strokes, but there are some significant disagreements when it comes to individual players. Plus/minus does not like the defense of Varejão or Hickson nearly as much, nor is it too fond of Szczerbiak's offense. On the other hand, +/- does seem to like Big Ben's offense this year (what the...) and has a little bit more love for Gibson and Ilgauskas.
Anyway, time for a soup break. Smell you later, Cleveland.
This first one is pretty simple. It compares each Cav's O-Rating to his D-Rating. These metrics were developed by Dean Oliver and are available at Basketball-Reference. Anyway, the further to the right a player appears, the better his offense has been, and the closer to the top he appears, the better his defense has been, at least by Dean Oliver's methodology. The twist is that I've decided to represent each player as a bubble, whose size reflects how many minutes he's played. Click to enlarge:
For your viewing convenience, here we have the same graph, but cropped to include only the interesting parts:
By O-Rating and D-Rating, it looks like the most valuable Cavs, after LeBron, are in fact Anderson Varejão, Ben Wallace, and Delonte West. Mo Williams looks like the one getting more minutes than he deserves (mostly because he has a poor D-Rating compared to his teammates). Note, however, that D-Rating, unlike O-Rating, does tend to discriminate by position; that is, centers and power forwards tend to have much better D-Ratings than guards. This may in fact reflect an increased importance for big men on the defensive end, or it may be a quirk of Dean Oliver's methodology. So Delonte's defense is especially good (for a guard) and Mo's questionable defense may not in fact be so much of a concern.
Dean Oliver's ratings, of course, are just one way of measuring offense against defense. Another way is the plus/minus methodology originally developed by Dan Rosenbaum (you can view the Cavs' +/- over at BasketballValue.com). Here I've prepared essentially the same graph, only using net +/- ratings instead of O- and D-Ratings (click to enlarge):
Once again, here's the same thing, but cropped for easier viewing. Sorry, Jawad Williams:
Truly, LeBron is the Hokkaido to His teammates' Honshu. And J.J. Hickson is Kyushu. But seriously, these data seem to agree with the earlier set in terms of the broad strokes, but there are some significant disagreements when it comes to individual players. Plus/minus does not like the defense of Varejão or Hickson nearly as much, nor is it too fond of Szczerbiak's offense. On the other hand, +/- does seem to like Big Ben's offense this year (what the...) and has a little bit more love for Gibson and Ilgauskas.
Anyway, time for a soup break. Smell you later, Cleveland.
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