NBA Fantasy Trends: Stats & Pod: The Love Movement
Remember when coach Ty Lue said on May 14 this is the most help LeBron James has had in years? Well, yeah. About that.
The Cavs have been destroyed in the last two games while LeBron played well in those. If you want to play the blame game, you have to start with Kevin Love. He has been benched for the last two entire fourth quarters while Richard Jefferson played the entire fourth in Game 4. In the last two games, Lue has said it isn’t “fair” to put Love back in the game because of a hostile environment on the road. Love has hurt his shoulder and knee in this series, but Lue has downplayed the injury both times. On May 19 he called him “fine” in that win. After Game 4, Lue said he wasn’t sure on Love’s knee injury, and did say he was concerned with his play. Lue then switched the focus on how Channing Frye was a better option down the stretch. Check out Love’s shot chart in his eight May games:
Say what? How can you even go 3-of-20 within three feet? Heck, Stephen Curry was 3-of-12 from beyond halfcourt during the regular season. Love was blocked five times in those 20, so that high number doesn’t totally explain it either.
Besides the scoring, what’s up with Love’s rebounding? This is a guy who was third in the NBA in rebounds per game back in 2013-14. Lately, he has been a mediocre rebounder at best for a 6’10”, 251-pound big man. Sure, the fact that he’s more of a floor spacer on offense is a factor, but Love wasn’t really a great offensive rebounder at his best either. That said, Love only has one offensive rebound in this series. One! That’s good for a horrific 1.1 offensive rebounding percentage. Even the smallest stretch four shouldn’t have that kind of a percentage.
Back in 2013-14, Love had 5.0 contested rebounds per game, but they’ve seen a precipitous slide since. In these playoffs, he only has 3.0 contested rebounds per game. That’s the same exact average as LeBron James while Tristan Thompson has 4.6 per game in 3.9 fewer minutes per game. Could it be due to his shoulder? Maybe, but he’s not really even chasing after rebounds and getting in there.
We’ve seen Love hit some lows before and personally it was a big reason why I was so surprised the Cavs won their first 10 games in the postseason. By now you’ve probably heard all about how he can be exposed in pick-and-roll. Maybe he’s hurt, maybe he’s not. It wouldn’t be a total shock for Lue to try and keep Love’s injury a secret, but it doesn’t really make sense. It’s not like the Raptors are overly concerned with Love and Lue is openly hurting the confidence of one of his max players. Whatever the case, he has to be better.
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Everything
So it turns out Kyle Lowry is pretty important. Check out his shot chart in the 10 wins (top) and eight losses (bottom) this postseason:
Crazy differences. On the whole, that equates to a 56.9 true shooting percentage (TS%) in wins and 38.9 TS% in losses. On top of that, Lowry has a 2.5 assist:turnover ratio in the wins and just 1.6 in the losses. Basically, he’s taking better care of the ball while posting a whopping 20 percent increase in efficiency.
Specifically, it’s all about the threes. Lowry has a greater distribution of threes during the losses. That’s what a gambler might call chasing bad money because he just keeps chucking even though he’s not on. The other big difference is how he has thrived at the rim. The Raptors lived on their drives all season and were able to beat the Cavs off the dribble. This isn’t really a big surprise because we’ve said for years Lowry and DeRozan are at their best when they attack the basket. If the Raptors can keep this trend going, they have a shot to pull off the upset. The Cavs absolutely have to stop Lowry off the dribble almost at all costs.
As for fellow All-Star DeMar DeRozan, he continues to thrive on contested jumpers. Back in Game 3, the Cavs switched LeBron James to DeRozan and it sort of worked in late in the game. However, Game 4 was a different story as he scored 12 points in the fourth quarter mostly against James. Instead of stats, let’s go with this beautiful picture from Steve Russell (@RussellPhotos):
Can’t Keep Runnin’ Away?
Do the Warriors have to take the advice of Cali hip-hop group The Pharcyde and stop running? They might because things sure got interesting in Game 3 on Sunday.
Even though we hit on the death lineup in last week’s column, we have to hit it again. In that one, it was basically showed how the Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green lineup was neutralized in Game 5 against the Blazers and Game 1 against the Thunder.
Well, now it’s been dominated. The Warriors used that lineup for seven minutes in Game 3, but it put up an unreal -120.9 net rating in that time. Quite shockingly, that lineup had a 134.7 pace in those seven minutes. Just for fun, if that lineup played 48 minutes at that pace, they would have lost by 163 points based on those numbers being extrapolated. But I digress. Anyway, how did they do it? They basically gave them a taste of their own medicine.
Here are the lineups the Thunder used against it:
Westbrook, Waiters, Roberson, Durant and Ibaka (4 minutes in 2Q)
Westbrook, Foye, Waiters, Roberson, Ibaka (less than a minute in 2Q)
Westbrook, Waiters, Roberson, Durant and Ibaka (3 minutes in 2Q)
Coach Billy Donovan basically swapped in that lineup whenever the death lineup was thrown out there. Two of those substitutions came at the exact same time, too. On top of that lineup being used for those seven minutes against the death lineup, they were used for five additional lineups. In those 12 minutes, they were obviously fast at a pace of a 122.5 with an absurd +98.7 net rating. They ran all over them with plenty of transition buckets with several possessions under seven seconds. Mike D’Antoni has to like that.
If you’re surprised to see that OKC lineup get so much run all of the sudden, you should be. It was used in just one previous game during these playoffs for only four minutes. Needless to say, the Warriors weren’t really ready for it because it’s not often teams kill them with a small-ball lineup. The Warriors were 1-of-16 from the field with the death lineup out there, including 0-of-6 from three. They’ll be ready tonight, though.
Additionally, the Warriors kind of got away from using Curry in off-ball screens. That has to change because the Thunder have had their number for their pet play: Curry-Dray PNR. With Draymond ready to go, the Warriors obviously can’t ditch that play to disrupt their offense.
The Warriors actually went away from their death lineup in Game 2, so maybe they try to go big against them. Although, they were beaten up early with a bigger lineup against the small OKC group, so there should still be around eight minutes for the death lineup. Expect them to be a lot better now that they won’t be surprised.
Side note: Runnin’ might be my favorite hip-hop beat of all time.
We’re recording the podcast now, so check back shortly! It’ll have most of the DFS analysis from these stats, etc.
