Brand get hurs. Sixers get better.

Well, I know that first part happened. The verdict on the second part of that title is still up for debate. But the results since he was hurt have been somewhat positive. Checking the schedule...the Sixers are 6-6 since Brand got hurt (including the game against the Bucks in which he got hurt) and just 10-14 before the injury.

Hmm.... Not a huge difference, but certainly everyone's view of how they're doing seems to have changed. I guess expectations will do that to you-- going sub-.500 with Brand was considered a let-down, but going .500 without him is considered playing well.

In all fairness to Brand, this "hot streak" is probably less impressive than it seems. After all, the Sixers have simply beaten the sub-.500 teams and lost to the above-.500 teams during this stretch. They did beat the Rockets, but they also lost to the Pacers to balance it out.

Still, it does appear that the Sixers are playing a little bit better. Much of the talk of the Sixers' "improvement" over the last couple of weeks has centered on their return to a running style of play that wasn't possible with Brand.

Maybe that's the answer, but the answer might actually be a bit simpler-- Brand simply wasn't playing that well, so having someone else take his playing time has made the Sixers better. It was a change in players, not a change in style that has been making the difference.

After Mo Cheeks was fired, Professor Berri took a look at the Sixers over at the Wages of Wins. Back in 2006-07 (pre-injury), Brand had a WP48 of .213. But before his injury this season, Brand only had a WP48 of .075. Remember-- .100 is an average player (and average starters are even higher), so Brand was playing worse than an average NBA player. And he was playing 35 minutes per game.

Samuel Dalembert (.138), Marreese Speights (.127), and Reggie Evans (.121) all had higher WP48 than Brand, but none of them were playing nearly the minutes he had played. So when you take Brand out of the rotation, all of a sudden the Sixers improve.

Now, Brand isn't alone in playing below expectations. From our core contributors, WP48 shows Dalembert, Thaddeus Young, Evans, and Louis Williams all playing worse than last year. (Igoudala has actually been playing better this year according to WP48, despite his scoring woes.) Still, Brand was playing worse than the other bigs. Not exactly what we were hoping for out of our big off-season acquisition.

Here's hoping that Brand's performance is just the result of him still not being 100% healthy after his major injury from before, and that he'll get better once he returns from his curent injury.

The Elton Brand chase

The big news this summer has obviously been the Elton Brand signing. We've discussed the signing fairly extensively already (disbelief that we were really in the chase, excitement at the actual signing, evaluating whether Brand made the right choice in choosing the Sixers over the Clippers), but we obviously can't have a round-up of the Sixers' moves this off-season without evaluating the Brand signing.

For the purposes of this analysis, it's important to recognize that the chase for Elton Brand actually involved two transactions by the Sixers- (1) the trade of Calvin Booth and Rodney Carney to the Timberwolves, and (2) the actual signing of Elton Brand.

First, let's look at the trade of Booth and Carney.

When it comes to Booth, it quickly becomes apparent that the Sixers didn't lose anything by trading him away. He didn't play enough minutes to be evaluated by Adjusted +/-, but his PER (7.11) and WP48 (-0.033) don't exactly inspire confidence. It's hard to imagine that whoever takes his limited minutes this upcoming season won't be an improvement.

The Carney story is somewhat similar. Carney's PER (12.15) and WP48 (-0.032) are both somewhat dismal. However, his adjusted +/- is actually quite good (1.54). Still, going with our "majority rules" principle, I think that we can make the assumption that trading away Carney isn't going to have a negative impact on the Sixers' performance this year.

So not only did trading away Booth and Carney create the cap room needed to sign Elton Brand, but the act of trading them away also removed some deadweight from the roster (clearly the case with Booth, likely the case with Carney). Good work.

Next, we turn to the actual signing of Elton Brand.

I (along with everyone else) thought the Sixers scored a real coup by signing Brand. Looking at the numbers is a little tricky since Brand was hurt for most of last year, but I think they bear out everyone's intuition that signing Brand was a good move. The only question raised by the numbers is whether Brand was worth the max money he received.

Brand didn't play enough minutes last season to have an adjusted +/- calculated for him, but he had a PER of 18.04 and a WP48 of .058. His PER was good (although lower than Igoudala's), but his WP48 last season was below average. Of course, if you go back to the 2006-07 season (i.e. when he wasn't injured), Brand had a WP48 of .213. And if you go back to 2005-06, Brand had a whopping WP48 of .274. Plus, Brand's career average PER is 22.7.

What do these numbers say to me? If Brand can return to his form from three years ago, then he'll be worth every penny of the money we gave him. Even if he doesn't return all the way to that standard, but simply returns to close to his 2006-07 form then it was still a signing that will signficantly help the Sixers on the floor this coming season.

Signing a top-tier low-post scoring threat wasn't exactly on the list of most desperate needs, but it sure isn't a move you can argue with-- act while the iron is hot and all those other good expressions. And the addition of Brand does actually help the Sixers' bench by moving Reggie Evans to the back-up power forward spot and allowing Thaddeus Young to play more at small forward.

All in all, a very nice move.

Great for the Sixers. Great for Brand? -- Part II

In my previous post, I compared the Sixers' and Clippers' "other" starting four (apart from Elton Brand) based on PER to try and see whether Brand made a mistake in deciding to come to the Sixers if he was just concerned about being a part of the better basketball team. Based strictly on the PER numbers, the decision to sign with the Sixers appeared to be the correct one.

Today I'll be checking to see if Adjusted +/- gives a different take on the situation.

You can find adjusted +/- stats at basketballvalue.com. Sixers stats are here; Clippers stats are here. Baron Davis's stats from the Warriors come from here.

Looking at the point guards, Baron Davis (6.29) has by far the highest +/- of any of the eight "starting" players, while Andre Miller (-8.70) has by far the lowest. Compare that result to PER, which ranks Davis ahead of Miller, but only slightly. Also in contrast to PER, but this time in a good way for the Sixers, adjusted +/- ranks Samuel Dalembert (0.73) ahead of Chris Kaman (-2.23)

As expected with the shooting guards, Cutino Mobley (-3.63) and Willie Green (-0.75) both fall in the negative range, although surprisingly (at least to me) Green isn't in the realm of the terrible. On the other wing, Andre Igoudala (4.95) unsurprisingly trounces Al Thornton (-5.57). Corey Maggette (3.88) had a very respectable adjusted +/- (just as with PER), but he's no longer with the Clippers.

So based on adjusted +/-, the Sixers hold an advantage at three of the four positions. In addition, the Sixers' adjusted +/- total is -3.77 -- bad, but still better than the Clippers' overall total of -5.14.

As discussed with PER, this total ignores the likelihood that the Sixers slide Igoudala to the SG position and insert Thaddeus Young into the starting line-up at SF. Based on adjusted +/-, this change makes a huge difference in favor of the Sixers since Young had an extravagantly high adjusted +/- of 12.33 (not a typo; he had the third best adjusted +/- in the league last season). Putting Young in the starting line-up would leave the Sixers with their advantage at three positions, but it would increase the Sixers' overall total to 9.31-- increasing their advantage over the Clippers from 1.37 to 14.45.

I can't imagine Young will have such a high adjusted +/- next season. But even assuming he regresses towards an average performance and Thornton improves (as Clipper fans expect), it still seems like the Sixers come out ahead in this analysis. And I don't think anyone should expect Eric Gordon to put up better numbers this year than Cutino Mobley did last year, so I really don't see the addition of Gordon making much of a difference to this analysis either. I guess it's possible that if you just say Thornton improves and Green remains in the starting line-up than the Clippers can overcome the 1.37 adjusted +/- difference that exists between the starting line-ups based on what happened last season. But then again, we could make any assumption we want about how people will perform next year (after all, anything can happen) if we want to reach a certain result. So I think that we should just stick with the numbers from last season for now.

I will say that I was shocked to see that Miller did so poorly in adjusted +/-. He's generally considered a very good, if not quite top tier, point guard. Watching him play, he always seems to be doing positive things. In terms of the other advanced stats, he ranks well in PER, and I know that he also does well under Wins Produced (which I'll look at tomorrow). Hmm. Definitely something to think about.

(One side note-- Reggie Evans had an adjusted +/- of 2.75 last season, third best on the team. He'll most likely get reduced minutes to some extent with the arrival of Brand, but if he gets the vast majority of the back-up big man minutes (in a three man rotation of Brand, Dalembert, and Evans) then the Sixers will be very solid up front according to adjusted +/-.)

So what have we learned so far about whether Brand made a good basketball decision to sign with the Sixers over the Clippers?

According to PER, the Sixers and Clippers each have an advantage at two positions, but the Sixers are stronger overall.

Adjusted +/- leans even more in the Sixers favor, giving the Sixers an advantage at three positions, as well as an overall advantage.

Check back tomorrow to see what Wins Produced has to say on the matter.

The Reggie Evans Experience- Part 3

Yes, I promise, I'll stop talking about Reggie Evans all the time. But first, I hope someone can help me out. Since I'm in Anchorage (and the local cable company doesn't carry NBA League Pass), I'm not really able to watch the Sixers play. So I'm hoping that someone actually seeing the games can tell me what I'm missing.

Looking at the box score from the Sixers' third game (an 88-93 loss to the Nets on Saturday), I noticed that Evans had 11 rebounds in 21 minutes. That's an amazing performance, but I couldn't figure out why he only played 21 minutes if he was rebounding that well. He only had 2 personal fouls, so concern with fouling out couldn't have been the problem.

Is something going on that isn't showing up in the boxscore? Despite his rebounding, is the offense bogging down while he's in the game? Is he playing terrible man-to-man defense or is he rotating late on help defense? According to the game flow display over at the popcorn machine, he had two break-even stints and one brief, bad stint, but then he didn't even get into the game in the fourth quarter. (And the bad stint occurred during a small ball line-up-- the starters, except with Korver in place of Dalembert. Why are we playing this line-up? I give up.)

Over three games, Reggie Evans has grabbed 35 rebounds in only 71 minutes of play--a rate of .49 rebounds/minute. (Last year, Kevin Garnett grabbed .32 rebounds/minute to put that number in perspective.) I hope someone watching the games can let me know what's going on, because from my box score driven view of the games it sure looks like Mo Cheeks is not making very good use of a very useful player.

The Reggie Evans watch- Game 2

Okay, Sixers games aren't entirely about Reggie Evans, but I am fascinated by his nose for the ball. In their second game, the Sixers defeated the Bulls 96-85. Evans played 29 minutes and had 9 rebounds. That's pretty good, and he wasn't even the Sixers best per minute rebounder. Dalembert had 11 rebounds in 31 minutes and Jason Smith grabbed 6 rebounds in 14 minutes. The guards also helped out the cause-- Igoudala grabbed 10 rebounds, and Willie Green (Willie Green!) grabbed 8. All in all, the Sixers rebounding in the first two games has been superb-- a 77% defensive rebound rate and a 40% offensive rebound rate. That offensive rebound rate in particular is pretty stunning.

Two other trends I noted from the box score: (1) Mo Cheeks is definitely sticking with the small line-up. The Sixers big men played 77 minutes out of the 96 minutes available to them. Two games still isn't proof, but I think we can see the trend. (2) In big games, Mo Cheeks is going to play Igoudala (45 minutes) and Miller (41 minutes) big minutes. Willie Green (38 minutes) also played big minutes, but from the box score it looks like he was having a pretty good all around game so his big minutes might have been an aberration (Igoudala's and Miller's big minutes confirm something we could have guessed, which is why I'm more willing to jump to a conclusion from one game.).

[oops- I thought I had posted this already, but apparently I just saved it as a draft.]

He's only 27?

Great to hear that Reggie Evans is becoming a vocal presence on the team. I think the fact that Andre Miller asked him to say something was a good sign--they played in Denver together, so I can't imagine Miller would have asked Evans to speak out if he didn't think that Evans could do it well.

I was shocked to see that Reggie Evans is only 27 years old. I feel like he's been around for ever. Maybe it's just because I remember him from the Sonics playoff series against the Spurs a few years ago when the Sonics just kept putting big bodies on Duncan. I thought that all the players the Sonics were using were established veterans, so I must have just classified Evans that way in my mind. The fact that he's actually still relatively young (although he's a grizzled veteran compared to many of the Sixers) is a nice bonus--if he does fit in well with the Sixers, we can hold onto him for a number of years.

Reggie Evans, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Reggie Evans.

What do I think of the Sixers' acquisition of Reggie Evans (and the rights to Rickey Sanchez) from the Denver Nuggets in return for Steven Hunter and Bobby Jones? I can tell tell you in three short words: I like it. Want a few more words? I like it a lot!

The Sixers really needed a power forward who could provide rebounding and solid interior defense, and Reggie Evans fits the bill. As the Philadelphia Inquirer put it:

The 6-foot-8, 245-pound Evans will give the Sixers some much-needed toughness in the interior. Last season, he led the NBA in rebounds per 48 minutes (19.7). Evans averaged 7.0 rebounds in 17.1 minutes per game.

Even more impressive, Reggie Evans had the best rebound rate in the NBA in 2004-05 (23.9%), 2005-06 (21.4%), and 2006-07 (23.0%). Also, he isn't a rebounder on just one side of the ball. He gets both offensive and defensive rebounds, averaging 5.5 offensive rebounds and 10.8 defensive rebounds per 40 minutes.

As for the non-rebounding portion of his defense, I recall him being a very physical defender (although not necessarily a very good defender). His average of 5.1 fouls per 40 minutes supports this observation about his defense. It also helps explain why he has been traditionally overlooked--coaches are reluctant to keep him on the floor because he gets into foul trouble (and because coaches generally don't like to play non-scorers, despite all the talk about the importance of defense). I say leave him on the floor until he fouls out. If we can get 30 minutes a night out of him as our starting power forward and get his rebound production for that amount of time, then I think accepting a few extra fouls as the price for his production is a good trade. Yes, I'd prefer fewer fouls, but you take players as they are, not as you want them to be!

For what it's worth, Win Score metrics also indicate this trade was a steal for the Sixers. The numbers available show that both Steven Hunter and Bobby Jones were below average players last season. Reggie Evans, on the other hand, was well above average with a WP48 of .300 (.100 is average for all NBA players). The proof is in the pudding, but for now I'm very enthusiastic about this trade for the Sixers. Now we just need to hope that the Sixers' coaches are smart enough to take advantage of the rebounding machine they've been given.

The Sixers make a move

I'm still on the road, but I caught this tidbit:

Steven Hunter and Bobby Jones to Denver for Reggie Evans and Ricky Sanchez. Plus, the Sixers signed Calvin Booth.

I'll comment on the trade once I get to Anchorage.