05-01-2022, 08:13 AM
(04-30-2022, 07:21 PM)Jommybone Wrote: I like your liking! But I’m afraid I want to argue a little with your smart, stat-based take. (Which maybe means my take is dumb. Please hear me out anyway.)
Despite your stats (which surprised me), I just can’t lay the blame for the last series’ loss on Mike Conley. He couldn’t hit a 3, couldn’t contain JB, and had trouble staying on the court, all true. But the +/- numbers for his backup weren’t so hot either (Clarkson’s +18 in game 4 the only real exception.) And other than game 3, Conley’s on/off numbers were no worse than the team’s as a whole.
More importantly, as the teams made adjustments as the series wore on, Conley’s on/off numbers improved pretty dramatically. Game 5, Utah was a horrible -25, Clarkson -17, Conley just -7. Game 6 the Jazz lost by 2, Clarkson -5, Conley +2. Those were the deciding games. Conley’s +/- numbers don’t indicate that he was the reason for those losses. And he only got 22 minutes in Jalen’s breakout, 41-point game 2. So it’s hard for me to attribute that loss to him either.
At most, in my opinion, Conley cost his team game 3. There he was -16 in an 8-point loss, while shooting 6/14 from the field, 2/7 from deep, and 7/8 from the free-throw line for 21 points. Certainly not a choke job.
If I’m the Jazz, I blame the dramatic fall off in 3-point shooting attempts and accuracy for the loss. And I blame most of that on the ill-advised defensive strategy of wearing your best players out by asking them to work much, much harder on defense than they had all season long. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But it’s what it looked like to me.
I don't know that this deserves a ton of time. You made the point that the upcoming series will be largely about Luka. The corollary for the last series would be that it was largely about Gobert (or Mitchell). It is rarely that simple.
I was using straight On-Court. In a small sample On Minus Off is too dependent on who plays when you sit. Shawn Marion was a fantastic player here, but his On Minus Off was horrible. Why, because he spent a lot of his minutes as Dirk's backup at PF. Dirk was an On Court monster and when he sat we weren't nearly as good and it killed Marion's numbers in that particular metric. I think we put too much weight on single game On Minus Off around here. It just isn't true that the guy who was most plus was great and the guy who was most minus was terrible.
I think it is reasonable to compare Conley's numbers to what the team did as one data point. The team was bad. He was similarly bad (as was pretty much everyone), therefore Conley didn't "cause" the team to be bad. But, if everyone drops their normal On Court numbers (which happens when you lose a series), you have to look deeper. I'd argue his variance from the norm was the greatest and therefore he contributed more. He had a good game one and then was -32 in the games after that (-7, -16, -4, -7 and +2). That's -6.4 instead of his usual +7.7. Yes, the team lost by more than his number in most of those games. But there is a ton of noise in three point variance. Even someone sitting when a foul is called is misleading. Should the two FT's go on the tab of the guy who just sat or the guy who checked in and wasn't on the floor when the foul occured?
But, we are still dealing with a really small sample size. Next you have to ask why were the team's numbers so bad? I'd say it was largely because Conley couldn't score to save his life. After game one he was .288 from the field and .174 from three. His O-Ratings across six games were 93, 42, 107, 95, 63 and 102. His norm in the regular season was 120 and he hit 40% of his threes. Man, I hope we do that to someone on Phoenix.
I probably shouldn't have tried to pin Utah's failings on Conley. That wasn't the point. The point I wanted to make is Luka could certainly win or lose this series with good or bad play. But, he could also average an outrageous number (say 45 a game) and Dallas still lose. Phoenix has the personnel (Bridges) to take Brunson out of this series and the length elsewhere to hedge toward Luka and still get back to contest open shots by DFS and Reggie. If we can't get efficient scoring from those guys, it won't matter if Luka averages 60 a game. It won't be enough.