Tyus Jones in 2017-18 is having a Weird and Wonderful Season

If you review this list of player seasons:  http://bkref.com/tiny/o6JKA you will see the seasons by guards/guard-forwards/forward-guards that are the most similar to Tyus Jones' 2017-18 season (so far).  There are not many.


Tyus currently through 555 minutes has the following stats:


Offensive rating - 126
Defensive rating - 109
Net Rating - +17
Usage rate -- only 10.9%
Assist-to-turnover -- 5 to 1
Steal to turnover - 2 to 1
True Shooting Percentage .596


A player who is a pretty normal player who you want to go to offensively is around 20% Usage.  Jones, remarkably, has an Offensive Rating of 126, a good True Shooting Percentage, is shooting 47% from the field, 43% from 3, and 83% from the line and is in the top 10 in the league in assist-to-turnover ratio.  Yet he almost NEVER has the ball!!! 


This is the sort of statistical work you would generally see from a big man on a good team who only sees the ball when he is dunking it (of course, that player generally will not have a 5 to 1 assist to turnover ratio).


So, when you sort things out to get rid of big men, who do you generally see?  You see guys who played on really, really good teams and who virtually never made a mistake while on the court.  They contributed a ton in very limited touches.  Some examples:


Steve Kerr with the Jordan Bulls
John Paxson with the Jordan Bulls
James Jones with the LeBron-Wade Heat
Thabo Sefolosha with the Durant/Westbrook Thunder
Fred Hoiberg with the really good Wolves team of 2003-04 (Garnett/Cassell/Sprewell)
Iguodala for the 2016-17 Warriors


(Side note - MY LORD was Fred Hoiberg a good player for the 03-05 Wolves teams!  In 3100 minutes of play he had 11.3 WS, that is roughly low all-star level of play).


The only guy on the list who played for a losing team was Pablo Prigioni who played for the 2013-14 Knicks (but they had Carmelo a high usage but low performance player - you cannot have a Jordan Usage Rate and not be very good; it kills your team).


Anyway - Tyus Jones's stats are consistent with all of these good contributors to all of these good teams (and Prigioni, who apparently is the exception that proves the rule), but they don't really match up to anyone in particular.


Example - Hoiberg and Iguodala have some similar stats (assist to turnover, steals to turnover), but certainly no one would compare these 6'5" players to the 6'2" Jones from an overall "game strengths"
standpoint.  TR Dunn was a defensive stopper, Ron Harper was used in the same manner, same with Thabo.  And while Kerr and Paxson kind of remind you of how the Wolves currently use Tyus (small guy forced to go stand around and not do much unless the ball falls to him under 6 seconds on the shot clock) and they were high percentage shooters with great assist to turnover ratios, Tyus is on a pace to have 100 steals in far fewer minutes than Kerr had 67 steals and Paxson had 49.  (Prigioni had around a 1-1 steals to turnover ration).


Final side note - how about T.R. Dunn!!!  101 steals to 26 turnovers in 82 games!  How rare is that?  Pretty freaking rare -- http://bkref.com/tiny/ImaNb and http://bkref.com/tiny/hFZ51  It just does not happen.  Guys do not have seasons like that.  How rare is it to play a guard with a shockingly low Usage Rate because he gets steals?  Very, very rare -- http://bkref.com/tiny/NcTDc


So, my point?  Tyus Jones has been great.  He is having a very weird and wonderful season, and since Thibs seems intent on never letting him play 20 mpg (and since Jeff Teague's defensive indifference will almost never put him in foul trouble) it is likely that Tyus will put up a huge bench season that will make him another person on the list of great limited-minutes contributors to great teams.  (Or he could be Pablo Prigioni, but God let's not go there).


HM

Larry Bird Is Overrated as a Playoff Performer.

Look, first of all, I want to state what no one on Twitter seems to understand - saying someone is "overrated" is not the same as saying someone "sucks."  It is also not the same as saying (for an active player) any of the following:  "I'd cut him" "I am giving up on him" "Trade him for nothing."


"Overrated" means exactly what the word says - people "rate" (value) this person "over" what his actual value is in some category.


With Larry Bird, the overrating comes in the fact that he is evaluated as an all-time great clutch player in the playoffs when, in fact, the players he is believed to be the equal of (Jordan, LeBron, Magic, Kareem, Shaq) were far superior to Bird as playoff performers.


Larry Bird's career WS/48 in the regular season is .203.  This is excellent, top 20 all-time. 


His regular season VORP is 10th best all-time (9th if you exclude Dr. J's ABA years).  Again, remarkably good. 


Now, Bird has to be marked down some on the all-time list for his lack of longevity.  For example, he has 145.83 career Win Shares, 27th best all-time.  The two guys below him are Ray Allen and Gary Payton.  The two guys above him are Robert Parish and Paul Pierce.  This, of course, can be explained by the fact that Bird was almost 23 when he debuted in the NBA and he suffered a bad back that hampered him after April 1988.  Bird really only had 9 great seasons.  Again, those who rank him as a top 10 player apparently fully discount this fact and just use his best years.  OK, but where is George Mikan then?  Mikan had 6 great seasons and 5 titles.


Anyway, I digress.  Let's examine Bird's playoff performances, starting with the great.  In 1984 and 1986, Bird was the Finals MVP and he had the following great seasons:


1984 - 26 PER, 4.7WS, .236 WS/48, 2.9 VORP


1986 - 24, 4.2, .263, 2.4 VORP.


In 1981, the Celtics won it all, but Cornbread Maxwell was the Finals MVP and Bird went 22/3.1/.198/2.0


Bird has no other playoff season above .155 WS/48.  He has only one season (1987) over 3  playoff Win Shares.  His career WS/48 in the playoffs is .173 - well below his regular season marks.


If you look at Bird's THREE BEST playoff seasons, and search for similar seasons - Chauncey Billups has as many as Bird (3) and Kevin Durant has more (4).  The guys with whom Bird is always compared - LeBron, Michael, Magic, Shaq, Duncan, Kareem, Hakeem all have better stats.


Guys who aren't exactly known for playoff performance (Karl Malone, Chris Paul) appear on the list just below Bird.


In fact, if you consider basic math, Bird's .173 WS/48 in the playoffs actually gives him too much credit.  Bird had 3 seasons where he was very good and NINE where he was not particularly good.  Averaging out his three really good seasons wasn't that helpful to his teammates who suffered through his 9 subpar efforts.


If you review Bird's overall performance in the playoffs against the 20 other guys who have at least 20 playoff Win Shares, http://bkref.com/tiny/Tj0my Bird does not rank at or near the top in ANY statistic other than Free Throw Percentage.


WS - 11th
WS/48 - 14th
Points - 9th
FG% - 13th
3 point % - 10th
Eff FG% - 16th
TS% - 13th


What you see when you analyze Bird's career playoff performance, is that his playoff career was FAR from a top 1 or 2 career, certainly nowhere near a top 5 career.  Rather than comp-ing to LeBron or Jordan or Magic, Bird's nearest comp is Dwyane Wade or Dirk Nowitski.  Certainly these guys are both great playoff performers, but no one would ever assert that they are in the top 5 players of all-time. 


So - why is Bird so overrated:  1) great name, 2) the Boston PR machine for basketball is completely unmatched - it placed both Walton and McHale in the top 50 all-time of NBA players when neither deserved a mention based upon their resume; 3) for a stretch of 1984-87 it was "Bird versus Magic" so everyone links the two men and assumes their resumes are the same; they are not.  Any fair review of the two players' playoff careers shows that Magic was the better player.


So, when I revise my Top 36 list in April of 2018, you will see that Larry Bird is still not in the Top 10.  The actual numbers just do not justify that level of placement.

What We Can Learn by Using the Stat "Game Score" to Evaluate Players

There is a stat called "Game Score" that is designed to evaluate the overall production and efficiency of a player on a game-by-game basis, using their stats.  https://captaincalculator.com/sports/basketball/game-score-calculator/


While the commentary to the above link indicates that 10 is a good "Game Score", my review of various games (and a review of the top 5 Game Scores posted every day on www.basketball-reference.com is that a starter who has a good (i.e. just above average) game generally has a Game Score of around 15.  In addition, my review of LeBron James' Finals history (posted elsewhere on this blog) indicates that a very good Game Score for a game is 22.5.  If you have a 22.5 Game Score, you are generally a top 5 performer in the NBA on a given night.  If you have a 30+ Game Score, you have had a great night.


You can achieve negative Game Scores (see my last blog entry) and you can achieve Game Scores over 60.  So, there is a wide range.


What does Game Score not capture?  Well, as you might expect, it does not capture any positive or negative play that cannot be statistically captured in a box score.  So, if you are a terrible individual or team defender, your Game Score will overrate you. If you are a great positional defender but don't get a lot of steals or blocks, your Game Score will underrate you. For example, if you look at a list with a lot of minutes played but poor Game Scores you'll get guys like Shane Battier, Raja Bell, Bruce Bowen, Charles Oakley, Joe Dumars, Derek Fisher. Defenders who didn't get a lot of steals or blocks. These are the sort of players likely to be underrated.


The guys who will be overrated?  Guys who are excellent offensive players but sieves defensively (particularly if they get a steal and a block a game).  So, Game Score is not a perfect statistic. 


BUT if you look at the list of guys with the most 15+ Game Scores (post 1982) you are going to see guys who rank very high on most all-time lists and who played a long time:  http://bkref.com/tiny/gsRcw


What Game Score will definitely tell you is the guys who played super hard every night and were productive every night. 


For example, the king of the Game Score is Michael Jordan.  if you look at Game Score greater than 22.5, Jordan has 567, LeBron 551, Karl Malone 524. 


But if you go to Game Score efforts of greater than a 30 Game Score, it gets even more heavily unbalanced in Jordan's favor.


10th Place - Magic 85 games
9th Bird 108
8th Kobe 112
7th David Robinson 114
6th Shaq 124
5th Hakeem 130
4th Karl Malone 139
3rd Barkley 142
2nd LeBron 151


#1?  Michael Jordan -- 257  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So, if you took LeBron and Bird combined, they'd have 2 more great regular season games than Jordan.


Similarly, in the playoffs, Game Score over 30 is again owned by Jordan


Duncan 14 games
Kobe 15
Wade 17
Bird 18
Barkley 19
Magic 20
Hakeem 22
Shaq 25
LeBron 32
Jordan 48.     So add LeBron with Kobe and you still have one less great game than Michael.


It should be noted, however, that if you set the bar at 22.5 Game Score, LeBron becomes the playoff king


Dirk 51 games
Karl Malone 51
Bird 57
Duncan 59
Kobe  62
Hakeem 68
Magic 72
Shaq 80
Jordan 105
LeBron 113.


One thing we learn from Game Score reviews, LeBron James has played at a high level for a long, long time.  His consistency as a great player will almost certainly place him #1 on the all-time Game Score >15 and Game Score > 22.5 lists for both regular season and playoff and NBA Finals.


Jordan, on the other hand, simply played at a level so high that no one else, even LeBron, challenged him for either great individual games or for most season games with a great Game Score (30+).


Look, for example, at Jordan's dominance here:  http://bkref.com/tiny/pVqQj  and here:  http://bkref.com/tiny/yqLer


Jordan also had a season where he had 80!!! games with a Game Score of at least 15.  if you watched Jordan and wondered whether he was going to have a bad game..........he wasn't.


So, if you take this list and you ask for the top 60 most consistent seasons of very good play every night, what you see out of those 60 seasons, is that Jordan absolutely dominates the list, but dig a little deeper and you see:


of the top 60 seasons, 11 guys have one super season full of consistently great games (Ewing, Dantley, KG, Curry, Davis, TMac, AI, Love, CP3, Wade, Westbrook).


3 guys have 2 such seasons (Magic, Kobe, Durant)


3 guys have 3 of the top 60 seasons (Barkley, Hakeem, Harden)


3 Guys have 4 such seasons (Shaq, Bird, David Robinson)


1 Guy has 5 (Karl Malone)


James has 8
Jordan has 9.


And what all of these Game Score lists tend to show us is that since 1983-84, Jordan has been the best player, then there is a gap to LeBron, then there is a pretty big gap to anyone else (Barkley, Karl Malone, Shaq, Hakeem).


This "Jordan Gap LeBron Gap" becomes less pronounced when you look at the NBA Finals - http://bkref.com/tiny/5OKrE and http://bkref.com/tiny/eZoj4  Jordan and James become virtually tied and Shaq and Magic burst way up and become in the conversation as well.


When you use Game Score to evaluate a player, it is pretty safe to say that the best players generally put up great Game Scores.  The two guys probably hurt the worst by the stat are Duncan and KG and the two guys probably helped the most by the stat are Nique and Iverson. 


Guys definitely on a run in the past few years?  Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Anthony Davis   .http://bkref.com/tiny/a13hJ  and the old man, LeBron James.