Breakfast discussion

We’ve got one game in the books and, unfortunately, we came up on the wrong end of the stick. Damian Lillard had a monster game, put the Trailblazers on his back, and willed them to a win. How big was it?

Here’s some stats I computed (where PIE is the NBA Player Impact Estimate, discussed further below):

D. Lillard - estimated PER of 47.29 and PIE of 20.0%

Allen Crabbe - estimated PER of 24.00 and PIE of 8.1%

CJ McCollum - estimated PER of 23.59 and PIE of 8.4%

PIE of Portland top three players for the night totaled 36.5%

J. Johnson - estimated PER of 42.49 and PIE 15.7%

R. Hood - estimated PER of 27.59 and PIE of 10.4%

R. Gobert - estimated PER of 16.73 and PIE of 9.1%

PIE of Utah top three players for the night totaled 35.2%

PIE attempts to measure how much a player influences the outcome of an individual NBA game. The measurement totals each players box score numbers (think points, assists, rebounds, blocks, steals, fouls, etc) for the game and divides it by the total box score numbers of all players. Simply stated, Lillard accounted for 20% of the box score in our opening game. Contrast Lillard’s PIE with what Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love did in their game with the Knicks. James accounted for 17.8%, Irving 15.1%, and Love 13.1% (total of 46.0%) of the total box score for their opener.

Sometimes you just have to take your hat off to a guy. On the flip side, ISO Joe had a monster game too, it just wasn’t as other-worldly as Lillard’s. Of note, our second and third players had a greater impact than the Trailblazers’ second and third guys.

Worst analogy

There were some wonderful comments last week about the “Shia LaBeouf” Live video. Once again, 15,806 assists utilized Gif Oracle to find meaning, though to mixed reviews. Initially, 15,806 assists contemplated that the Jazz would make the playoffs (barely) with injuries just prior; however, Solo Green corrected him and foresaw that Utah would leave the league in the fetal position with our play. While gubihero likened the video to the Spurs rather than the Jazz due to their penchant for returning from the dead when everyone had written them off; and VegasPete saw an underappreciated Jazz team who are geniuses in their time. This was a difficult decision between gubihero and VegasPete, but VegasPete retains the WACB (Worst Analogy Championship Belt) with a split decision. Congrats VegasPete!

This weeks reference is Tiny Food videos (shown below):

Good luck; may the best SLC Dunker win!

Cap space

I came across a couple of tweets that I wanted to share. Here’s the first:

Despite the off-season acquisitions the Jazz made, they still rank 5th in team continuity. I’ve always felt that continuity gives a team a competitive advantage when it comes to basketball; hopefully, this is something that will workout in our favor.

Secondly, while preseason statistics should be taken with a grain of salt, I found the following chart interesting:

Really, what is up with Houston (see middle top of chart). You want your team to be in the top left corner (good offense and defense) and as far away from the bottom right (bad offense and defense) as possible. The Jazz ended the preseason with decent defense and average offense.