First of all, yes, there are a billion posts that I owe you guys that are in the pipeline. (I may just make one mega post about a whole bunch of stuff that I never got done in time called "yesterday’s news" – this trade really made a whole lot of extra work for me, so thank you for that Kevin O’Connor.) Second, yes, there’s going to be a Sunday Syncopation up. The last month has been tough, and the Syncopations have sucked. I am going to fix that. Third, yes, there’s going to be a bigger stat post on what’s happening 60 games in. But right now, just a look at the Gestalt Offensive (GO) Ratings. Astute observers will notice that I went back through the boxscores for the first 30 games in worked out the stats for that time period. It happened during the Christmas break – where I took a lot of time off – and did not get a chance to do that work then. I could have slacked on this, but that’s what the resident stat guru for some other team would do. I’m a Jazz fan, and Jerry wants me to do my best and make no excuses.
Point guards, Shooting guards, and Small Forwards:
Power forwards and Centers:
Further analysis below . . .
New Here?
If none of this makes sense, and you don’t know what GO Rating is, well, shame on you. Check out the ‘Stats’ section of this webpage, and read about it there. It’s late and I have a lot of other posts to finish . . .
Point guards, Shooting guards, and Small Forwards:
[Chart too small up above? Click here (opens in new window)]
So now we have Devin Harris to add to the fold, while keeping in Deron Williams. There is some level of overlap here and Harris has only played in 2 games so far for our squad. As a result, I fully expect to keep Deron up here for the 70 game post and the 82 game post as well. This is handy, and for me, a little reassuring. Devin Harris, is without a doubt, a very good player. Sure, he’s not Deron Williams, but he’s a former All-Star and one of the best players on the team. He is, without a doubt, the guard who presents the most challenge to the opposition. Earl Watson is scraping a GO RATING of 20, Ronnie Price has a cumulative rating of 6.3 so far in the season. By this frame of reference, Devin’s 90 is pretty sweet. Yes, it’s not the 140+ we’ve enjoyed this season from Deron, but it’s nothing to cry about. C.J. Miles’ shooting slump hurts his numbers (basically a 50 since game 40) as he drops to a 47. When you don’t pass much, or shoot efficiently, a shooting slump can hurt. And it has for C.J. Andrei has seen a boost in short order with the changing of this guard in Utah Jazz history. He’s posting great scoring numbers and seems much more energized and, dare I say it, used on offense. He’s responding. Back at the beginning of the season when he couldn’t miss his Go RATING was 46. After 60 games it’s jumped back up to a 44 after weeks in the 30s. Let’s see how high he can raise it.
Power forwards and Centers:
[Chart too small up above? Click here (opens in new window)]
Paul Millsap has really leveled off since his amazing start. Part of it is falling back to earth, while the other is sharing the ball more with Al Jefferson. Millsap remains a highly useful player on offense with a 75+ Go Rating. On the other side of the block, Al Jefferson continues to be that locomotive that could, as he continues to improve over time. It is worth mentioning that these results are not for 10 (or close enough) game periods. These are cumulative scores over the course of the year. And aside from that setback around Game 30, Big Al has raised his score during each time period. This is hard to do, as each game is worth less and less. To retain this slope he has to really kick it up and produce. He has been. Rookie Derrick Favors has only played 2 games for the Jazz (like Harris), but he has shown that his offensive acumen has been sorely missed. With Mehmet Okur on ice all season long, and Paul starting, the bench has been left wanting for a competent big on the offensive end. I am interested to see if a) he can keep it up, and b) if he can get more minutes per game in this system as the season progresses. Jeremy Evans has been shut down by Favors addition to the team. He’s still a promising young player, but finding time for him was already difficult. Francisco Elson (since I went back to add the 30 Games in stats) looks to be giving us the finger. His rise from under 10 to nearly 40 is (according to the subtotals) due to him shooting 94 ft% during this stretch of the season. This heavily skewed the numbers as bigs usually don’t shoot that well (and the average for the league hovers around 75%). As the GO Rating is based upon a number of universal ratios, this made him super duper good looking on paper. In real world production, though, he only averaged 2.6 ppg and 2.3 rpg. (Memo averaged about the same stats then, but did it much less efficiently; hence, the lower Go Rating) Last, and statistically least, is Kyrylo Fesenko. As we saw with the huge surge in Go Rating for Elson (due to crazy good free throw shooting) we see the persistent opposite in Fes’ Go Rating. His ft% is horrible. It’s beyond comprehension. He’s not horrible at other things on offense. He gets offensive rebounds, he sets screens and passes well. We even saw him become proficient with post scoring, and he even had a baseline spin-move dunk on two defenders . . . but everything falls apart on offense when he gets to the line. This problem is acerbated by the one reliable quality he has on offense – he actually get to the line. Despite only playing 8.7 mpg, and only playing in 43 total games – he’s actually only behind a few guys on the team in total, season Free Throw attempts. (And these guys have names like Deron, Al, Paul, CJ, Andrei and so forth. ) In fact, looking at the numbers, C.J. Miles has a FT Attempt : Minutes played ratio of 0.092. Fesenko’s is 0.112, which is 22% better than our best slasher on the team. Alas, this is fodder for a discussion on other statistics, and not Go Rating . . . which I should start writing now . . .