The Conference Problem

Over at Grantland, Zach Lowe has an interesting article about the growing disparity between the two conferences and what people around the league are saying about it. The West is much better than the East - it is known. There have been a lot of proposals about what to do about it and there are a few more in Lowe's piece, but the things that really jumped out to me in his article were tucked away in the middle of the piece.

Any change would appear to be a hard sell for Eastern Conference owners who enjoy playoff revenue. There is anxiety around the league over more new owners voting in their teams’ interest rather than thinking league-first — a trend that seized the lottery reform debate and promises to intensify as the NBA discusses changes to its revenue-sharing system.

That first sentence certainly seems like a bit of an understatement. According to Lowe's numbers, NBA teams make an average of $2 million per home playoff game. That type of money adds up really quickly, even for guys with as much money as your average NBA owner. A system that makes it harder for his team to have home playoff games would take money out of his pocket. These are people who are about their money.

For a franchise like Charlotte, why are they going to vote for anything that makes it harder for them to make the playoffs? They have a hard enough time making the playoffs out East! If you force them to compete against some of the big dogs out West, they might need a decade to get into the playoffs - look at what happened to Minnesota. Would it be hard to sell MJ on the benefits of conference re-alignment? I'm going to say yes.

If the Top 16 teams by record made the playoffs last season, that would be $4 million bucks less for MJ. He didn't get to where he is now by agreeing to take less money for the greater good. That's not the way the game works. What's the value of making the playoffs for the Hornets as a franchise? When you look at building brand equity and growing a fan base, it's way more than $4 million. That's the money MJ would need to see to agree to this.

As the article mentions, the push for re-alignment is coming from Western owners like Robert Sarver in Phoenix who want to make more money. His team won 48 games and didn't make the playoffs - he is bummed about that and he would like to create a system where it would be easier for his team to make it. Logically, then, owners like MJ in Charlotte are going to be opposed to a system where it would be harder for them to make it. There's a lot of money on the line.

The balancing process would accelerate if teams that needed high draft picks the most actually got them. That’s how you sell realignment to East owners who can’t see past playoff gate receipts: Your 35-win first-round roadkill doesn’t get a lottery pick today, but in a 1-to-16 world where conferences don’t matter, you might pick 12th instead of watching the 48-win Suns grin on the lottery dais.

In the last five drafts, the East had the Top 3 picks in 2010, 2013 and 2014. They had the No. 1 pick in 2011 and the No. 2 and No. 3 picks in 2012. It's unfortunate that the one top pick that didn't go to the East in that time-span was Anthony Davis, but teams in the East are winning plenty of lotteries under the current system. And when you look at the bottom of the East, there is usually one below .500 team at the 8 seed and that's it.

There may be some benefits to more Eastern teams having picks slightly higher in the draft, but they aren't going to overwhelm the huge advantages that playing in such a weak conference does for any decent team that makes the playoffs. The Toronto Raptors and the Washington Wizards have a real chance of competing for a conference title out East and they would be two of the teams fighting for one of the last playoff spots out West. Those are two young teams who are starting to come into their own - if they can make a few runs to the Conference Finals, much less an NBA Finals, it will take those two franchises to a whole different level. Why are they voting for a proposal that makes that harder for them?

It's the same thing with every other team in the East. They are going to be looking out for their own self-interest, which was the really enjoyable nugget that Lowe threw in the piece - some people around the league are a bit concerned that owners are voting for their own narrow financial interests and not the overall strength of the league. I get the feeling that is another understatement and it tells you all you need to know about any proposals based around the idea of growing the game or thinking long-term to improve the product.

There are still a few family-run NBA franchises in the NBA, but most of the ranks of the ownership corps have changed over in the last 15-20 years. The money just got too big for the original owners, who all ended up making an absolute killing from their time in the league. For the new generation of owners, the NBA is a straight up business. It's not the family farm. You don't spend $2 billion on anything if you don't intend to treat it like an investment.

Let's not forget what the business of the NBA league office actually is. It's not to put on the fairest and most competitive tournament for a championship. It's to maximize the money of the owners of the league's 30 franchises. If putting on the fairest possible tournament is the best way to do that, that's great, but it is kind of beside the point. The point is for each owner to make as much money as he possibly can from owning his team.

The owners are essentially Marlo from The Wire. Marlo isn't really a character in the traditional sense because he doesn't seem to have discernible personal emotions or back-story. Marlo is Capitalism, capital letters. It doesn't really matter who the owners are - the game would still be the game and whoever was in charge would want as much money as they could get their hands on. The system selects for people who are going to maximize ROI.

There's always going to be a Marlo. No Marlo, no game.

In this scene, one of Marlo's underlings is robbed and he tries to convince Marlo to take the loss, rather than him.

Omar ain't no terrorist. He just another nigga with a gun. And you ain't no Delta Airlines, neither. You just a nigga got your shit took. So bring me what you owe, and talk that global economy mess somewhere else. Feel me?

That's kind of how I picture a meeting between Adam Silver and the owners, if he ever tries to convince them to take less money.

Here's how Marlo negotiates. Tell me if it sounds familiar.

Drug Dealer: Look man, all I'm saying if I'm gonna take you're package, split me and be fair. I got to pay all my people the same, and here you're upping the price on me. 

Marlo: Pay your people less.  

Drug Dealer: They my people, though. 

Marlo: Then short yourself. Split is 60/40. If you want better? You need to tool up and wait for Chris, Snoop, and the rest of my people, come pay a call on your people. 

Snoop: We will be brief with all you motherfuckers, I think you know.

That's the lockout in 100 words. We're changing the deal. Pray we don't change it any further.

The silver bullet is slicing games off the schedule. You don’t even need to get down to a 58-gamer in which every team plays everyone else twice, minimizing travel headaches. Every game you lop off from 82 makes it a hair easier to nibble away at schedule imbalances. 

That’s obviously not happening anytime soon. Gate receipts are soaring in some markets, and neither players nor owners are eager to give those up. The Knicks approached a record $145 million in net gate receipts last season, nearly $3.5 million per game, and the Lakers pushed $90 million, per several league sources. A bunch of smaller-market teams don’t even sniff $1 million in gate per home game, but that scarcity makes every game feel precious. 

The NBA’s mammoth new national TV deal might withstand a schedule slice, since the league could earmark the same number of games for its broadcast partners. But local TV deals are based on teams filling 82 prime-time slots, and several teams are set to negotiate fat new local deals over the next couple of years.

Of all the pie in the sky reform ideas out there, the one I have always been the most partial to is reforming the NBA schedule. There are way too many regular season games and everyone knows it. It makes all the sense in the world to play fewer games, but as Lowe says, that is obviously not going to happen. Teams are making way too much money per game to even think about cutting the number of games. It's not smart business.

The name of the game these days is providing content, so why would you diminish the amount of content you can produce and therefore sell? The biggest reason why baseball players make more money than the guys in other sports is they play 162 games a season - 81 home dates means a lot of tickets, a lot of stadium revenues and a lot of commercial slots on local TV. Those 41 regular season home games? They aren't going anywhere.

When you are making $3.5 million a home game, why exactly would you play fewer home games? It just doesn't make any sense. And when you are negotiating for a local TV contract, why on Earth would you agree to any change in your business model that would lower the ultimate price you could command? The NBA is like any business responding to what the market wants. If the market will pay for 82 games, than 82 games it is.

It's not just the owners. The players may want to play fewer games, but they aren't going to want to take less money. It would be the same for any of us. If you could get a 5-10% cut to your paycheck if the NBA didn't play 82 games, you would probably be cool with them playing all 82. With all the money that owners and players are making with the current system, they are going to want to find a way to make it work.

Even a small step like shortening the pre-season is not going to be easy. Whose going to make up for the money they would have made on those pre-season games? A lot of times they play games in cities that don't normally see NBA teams, which is a pretty guaranteed money-maker, so the owners aren't going to want to get rid of that. The money is going to have to come back at them some other way. They aren't just going to take the loss.

When people talk about reforming the NBA, they have cause and effect wrong. They see problems and look for solutions. For the owners, the problems come and go but the solution is always the same - they need more money. Whatever the problem is that justifies the solution doesn't really matter. If the problem doesn't require a solution that gets them more money, then it's a problem they aren't going to be in a huge rush to solve.

If you walk into an owner's office with a proposal that involves him losing money, it's going to be a pretty short meeting. This is something that comes up a lot in rap songs - once you have made enough money, you have a hard time talking money with people who don't have any. Just because I am rich, don't think you can hit me up for money whenever. If you want to talk to me about something, talk to me about how much money I can make.

All this stuff about competitiveness and fairness is great, but can we put a $ sign on all of that? When you are wealthy, money is the only language you speak. The question is the same with every proposal - how will it affect my team's money, directly or indirectly. If you want to make any type of substantial change to the structure of the NBA, it has to involve getting the vast majority of owners a lot more money. That's the only reason they would ever do anything.

The NBA's Class of 2005

At RealGM, a look at the last group of high schoolers to go straight into the league.

Calipari's Platoons

Even by the standards of Kentucky, this season's roster is an embarrassment of riches. When Willie Cauley-Stein, Alex Poythress and the Harrison Twins decided to come back to school, John Calipari suddenly had more high-school All-Americans than rotation spots. In order to get everyone playing time, he split his team into two five-man platoons, alternating most of the first half before giving way to a free-flowing rotation in the second.

Kentucky essentially plays like an AAU All-Star team, coming into almost every game with an overwhelming talent advantage on their opponent. Their second unit, which features three of the top high school recruits in the country and two sophomores getting NBA looks, has the talent to hang with every other first unit in the country. No matter what happens, they are going to be able to maintain a contact with the other team in the first half.

On the call of the Providence-Kentucky game on ESPN, Fran Fraschilla compared playing Kentucky to a heavyweight title fight. The first few rounds, the champ is feeling out his opponent and trying to find his weaknesses. Eventually, as the fight drags on, he begins to wear on his challenger, finding the weak spots and moving in for the kill. That's what Calipari does with his players - he is constantly shuffling line-ups, trying to find the right mix in a particular game.

There's a reason that he has gone 21-3 in the NCAA Tournament since taking over Kentucky and it's not just the amount of talent that has been on his teams. Calipari is a really good in-game strategist, capable of rapidly reacting to what's happening in the court and re-arranging his line-up at the drop of a hat in order to exploit a weakness in the opponent. If doesn't matter if you have the best players if you don't put them in a position to succeed. 

The perfect example of this is the Wichita State game in last year's second round. Cleanthony Early was the big star for Wichita State, as he was able to use his ball-handling and shooting ability as a stretch 4 to light up Kentucky's young big men from the three-point line, where they weren't comfortable guarding him. To make up for his lack of size on defense, Wichita packed the paint and dared Kentucky to beat them from the outside.

Wichita was up 5 with 4 minutes left when Calipari made a switch on defense, putting James Young on Early and moving Julius Randle to the least threatening perimeter player on the floor for Wichita State. The move completely bottled up their offense, as Early didn't have a speed advantage over Young and wasn't able to consistently create shots over him in the post. That was one of the keys to Kentucky's late charge to win the game. 

Of course, the game still came down to Aaron Harrison's shot going in and Fred Van Vleet's shot going out, but a lot has to go right just to get to that point, especially when you are an 8 seed playing a 1. Cal is able to systematically shift the odds in his team's favor over the course of the game - he's not afraid to try unconventional things and he's not going to leave wins on the table when there are still moves he can make with his rotation.

That's what happened in their win over Providence, which was a game at half-time. Cal sicced Willie Cauley-Stein on LaDontae Henton, who came into the game averaging almost 25+ a game. Henton had 3 points on 1-8 shooting against Kentucky, as he had no idea what to do against an agile 7'1+ monster who could move his feet on thee perimeter. Not many C's can guard the other team's SF and not many coaches would re-arrange their D for their C to do that. 

Kentucky has so many different line-ups that can kill you this season. They can go super-sized with their starters (6'6, 6'6, 6'9, 7'0, 7'0) or they can play 4-out with the freshmen and one of the Harrisons. Almost all of their players can slide between multiple positions on offense and defense, so Calipari has almost infinite flexibility. From there, it's just probe-probe-probe until he finds the weak spot in the other team's rotation and goes for the kill.

The key for a system like this to work is to get the players to buy-in to playing for the team and not for their own individual statistics. What makes Calipari's approach so genius is there's no way you can use per-game stats to evaluate any of Kentucky's players as individuals. The top 9 scorers on their team average between 5 and 11 points and no one plays more than 22 minutes. As a result, there's a built in excuse for any underwhelming individual stats. 

The only way to judge the pro potential of Kentucky's players is to look at their per-minute numbers and their role on the team. Karl Towns is averaging 8 points, 7 rebounds and 3 blocks a game. Per-40 minutes, though, he is averaging 17 points, 16 rebounds and 6 blocks a game. He can't control the number of minutes that Calipari plays him - all he can do is play well in the minutes that he is on the floor. In those minutes, he has dominated.

Per-minute stats are really the only "advanced" stat you need to evaluate a college player and they really aren't all that advanced. The point is that you want to measure production by rate and not by volume - that's what all the advanced stats are trying to get at when they look at players. That's obvious if you think about it, but the bias for per-game stats still subtly drives the conversation about college players in a lot of different ways.

Far too often in draft coverage, people look at individual statistics outside of the context in which they are created. Guys get credit for playing a role in a system rather than for their individual ability. What goes for Towns goes for everyone else in the country - you should be using per-minute statistics and looking at the role a player has on his college team when looking at every prospect, not just the guys in a 10-man rotation. 

There a thousand different examples of that. On one end of the spectrum, there are guys like Thomas Robinson, who put up outstanding numbers as a cog in Kansas two-post system but hasn't been able to replicate them in the pros. On the other, there are guys like Zach LaVine, who played behind multiple future NBA players at UCLA and had only a small role on his college team, but whose per-40 minute stats indicated he could be a player. 

Everything is contextual at the college level. The reason Calipari has gotten his guys to buy in is that they know they will be judged on their individual game, not the role they had on their college team. As a result, they can sacrifice their individual stats for the good of their team without being penalized for it by pro scouts and the media. As long as that's the case, why not come to Kentucky, win most of your games and play for a national title?

If you go anywhere else in the country, you have to be a star to be get noticed by NBA scouts. If you play at Kentucky, you can be a role player and people will still talk about you. That's a very appealing message that Calipari can give to recruits. When you go to Kentucky and you win games, there isn't as much pressure to prove yourself as there is at a lot of other places - you have already been validated by the ultimate status signal.

Marquis Teague went in the first round after averaging 10 points and 5 assists a game on 41% shooting as a freshman. He was very well-regarded coming out of high school, but I don't think there's any other school where he could have put up those types of numbers and been taken in the first round. As it turns out, the per-game stats weren't lying about Teague, but there was $2 million more in his pocket then there would be otherwise.

John Calipari too real he said, "they say that they want players to get their education, well I want my players to be millionaires..."
— Trey Hobson™ (@TreyHob21) October 17, 2014

The most impressive part about Calipari's track record of getting guys to the NBA isn't guys like John Wall, Anthony Davis or DeMarcus Cousins. Anyone could have gotten those guys into the league. The accomplishment is getting guys like Josh Harrellson, Darius Miller and Doron Lamb shots in the NBA. None of them look like they are going to make it, but they will still be eating off being ex-NBA players for the rest of their career as pros.

There's a reason that Cal keeps bringing in the top recruiting class every season and it isn't that he's the most charming guy in the world. He has a long track record of getting his players into the NBA and that's all you can ask for as a high-school player - a chance to get to the next level. Kentucky wins or they lose and they keep churning out NBA players. So many guys are going to want to play there, he might have to keep the platoon system.

Life Without DeRozan

The Toronto Raptors storybook season hit its first road bump this weekend, when they lost DeMar DeRozan to a torn tendon muscle that will keep him out for at least a month. After starting the season with a 13-2 record, the best in the NBA, the Raptors have lost their first two games without DeRozan, a home loss to the Mavericks (the game in which he was hurt) and an OT road loss to the Lakers, the start of a 3-game West Coast road trip.

You never want to lose one of your best players right before the start of a road trip, particularly when you are an Eastern team crossing the Mississippi. With a back-to-back against Sacramento and Utah coming up, the trip is manageable, but Toronto could just as easily be headed back home with an 0-3 record if they are not careful. Right now, they are still trying to figure out a new identity and rotation without their leading scorer.

Against the Lakers, Dwane Casey opted to start Greivis Vasquez and move Terrence Ross to SF. Of the three possible candidates to replace DeRozan in the starting line-up, Vasquez is the best all-around offensive player, a 6'6 combo guard who can run point, make 3's and take over the game as a scorer and a passer. The other options are Lou Williams, a pure scorer, and James Johnson, the most defensive-minded of the bunch.

Who ends up replacing DeRozan will come down to whether the Raptors think the offense or the defense is more of a priority without him. He was a two-way player, a super-athletic 6'7 wing who could be the focal point of the offense while matching up with multiple positions on defense. Toronto was one of the most balanced teams in the league, so taking him out of the mix means they will have to balance one side of the ball against the other.

The problem against the Lakers was the defense, as neither Ross nor Vasquez had much of a chance of defending Kobe Bryant, who turned back the clock with a triple-double - 31 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists. Ross is an elite athlete with good size (6'6 195), but with only a 6'7 wingspan, he doesn't have the length to contest the shot of a bigger wing like Kobe. He's best defensively as a SG, where he can defend smaller players.

The guy who had the most success defending Kobe was Johnson, a behemoth of a perimeter player at 6'9 250. Johnson was one of the most underrated FA signings in the league - a mammoth wing capable of playing high-level defense at PF, SF and SG and possibly even swinging to C or PG, depending on the match-up. He's also a sneaky-good ball-handler who can finish around the basket and crash the offensive glass.

The problem with starting Johnson as opposed to Vasquez or Williams (who is likely going to stay in his role as a 6th man) is what it does to Toronto's floor spacing, as Johnson is only shooting 17% from 3 this season. DeRozan isn't a lights-out shooter either but he's much more of a perimeter threat than Johnson. If you go Johnson and Johnson (Amir) upfront, that leaves Ross as the only three-point shooter other teams have to respect.

The Raptors lack of a perimeter stopper became obvious in last season's playoffs, when Joe Johnson absolutely bullied DeRozan and Ross in the post and Toronto didn't have another big-bodied wing on their bench they could trust to put on him. If they don't play Johnson a lot of minutes at SF, they are going to be at a huge disadvantage against guys like Rudy Gay and Gordon Hayward on this road trip, although Gay may not play.

If they do play Johnson more minutes, the obvious adjustment is to increase Patrick Patterson's playing time at PF. Patterson is a knock-down shooter and he often closes games because of his ability to spread out the other team, though he isn't as good a rebounder or defensive player as Amir Johnson. However, the presence of James Johnson should lessen Patterson's burden on that side of the floor and the two could work together in tandem.

The good news for Dwane Casey is that there are extra minutes available in his rotation for Amir Johnson, if he decides to minimize some of his playing time with the starters. He has been giving consistent minutes to either Tyler "Psycho T" Hansbrough or Chuck Hayes as the backup 5, but if Amir isn't closing games, he might as well take the minutes next to Patterson on the second unit in order to create a three-man big man rotation.

Here's what a post DeRozan Raptors team would look like in that scenario:

Starters:

PG - Lowry
SG - Ross
SF - James Johnson
PF - Amir Johnson
C - Jonas

Bench:

PG/SG - Vasquez
SG - Williams
PF - Patterson

You could soak up most of the remaining minutes by playing Ross as a backup SF and Amir Johnson as a backup C. Any leftovers could go to some combination of Landry Fields, Hansbrough and Hayes, who shouldn't kill you out there but probably shouldn't be taking much PT from any of Toronto's Top 8 guys. That's a rotation that should be able to minimize their defensive issues while still scoring a ton of points on offense.

If you look at the box score against the Lakers, scoring points shouldn't be too much of a problem even with DeRozan gone, although LA does have a historically bad defense. Four guys got the majority of the shots - Lowry (28), Williams (17), Vasquez (16) and Ross (12) - while Jonas (10) and Amir (5) mostly feasted on the offensive glass. Among those six guys, the Raptors have more than enough firepower to win NBA games.

The guy I really want to see more of over the next month is Ross, who has been DeRozan's understudy since coming into the league three years ago. As a result, he has been consigned to role player status, with 6 FGA's as a rookie and 9 FGA's over the last two years. DeRozan, in contrast, has been at 15, 18 and 16 in that span, which is what you would expect from the older player and is why most people think he's the Raptors best perimeter player.

However, if you break down the numbers closely, you will notice that the two wing players shot the same percentage last season (42%) before diverging this year with Ross shooting 45% and DeRozan shooting 39%. In and of itself, that doesn't necessarily mean anything, since Ross plays off DeRozan and Lowry while DeRozan creates most of his own offense. It does make you wonder, though, what would happen if their roles reversed.

After all, Ross was actually drafted higher than DeRozan coming out of college. Of the two, he's every bit as fast and athletic and he's a much better shooter. With his ball-handling continuing to improve, he may be ready for a bigger role in the offense. As long as DeRozan was holding the ball, though, there was only so much Ross could do, especially when he was also playing next to ball-dominant PG's like Lowry, Vasquez and Williams.

When he has gotten the green light to shoot the ball, good things have happened, most notably when he scored 51 points against the Clippers last season. While that game was a fluke, it wasn't for the reason that most people thought. DeRozan rolled his ankle in the 2Q and missed the rest of the game, which allowed Ross to take 25+ FGA's. If he had stayed healthy, that wouldn't have happened and he has been remarkably healthy since coming into the league.

DeRozan is a hard worker who is well respected inside the Toronto locker room and is starting to climb up the ranks of the NBA hierarchy after making his first All-Star team last season and playing in the World Championships this summer for Team USA. But while he puts up good per-game numbers, eventually his efficiency statistics were going to be a problem - he is averaging 19 points, 4 rebounds and 2.5 assists on 39% shooting.

In fact, DeRozan is one of the least efficient players in Toronto's rotation, with JJ (57%) Jonas (56%), Amir (56%), Ross (45%), Lowry (44%) and Lou Williams (43%) all comfortably ahead of him. That's partly because DeRozan takes a lot more tough shots at the end of the shot clock, but what kind of sense does it make to let the least efficient player on the team throw up the most shots? One way or another, the center could not hold.

The Raptors schedule gets tougher after a fairly easy first month that featured a lot of home games, so it's unlikely they would have kept up their pace even if DeRozan had stayed healthy. Without him, though, they could end up being a much more efficient offensive team, which should be able to make up for most of the loss on the defensive end, where they won't be quite as big and athletic on the wings without a 6'7 220 guy who plays 35+ minutes.

In some ways, this is a repeat of the Rudy Gay situation last year, when Toronto lost another ball-dominant uber-athletic wing in the middle of the season. That type of player can be really good in a situation like Sacramento, where there aren't a ton of other options on offense and he can soak up a lot of possessions semi-efficiently. However, on a team with as many offensive weapons as the Raptors, that type of ball-holding is unnecessary.

Here's the bottom line - if the question is how is Toronto going to replace a guy who takes 16 FGA's and shoots them at a 39% clip, it kind of answers itself.

UConn Scouting Report

At Barking Carnival, previewing the defending national champs before their game against Texas on Sunday.

Raptors Scouting Report

At Mavs Moneyball, a look at the early front-runners in the East.

Mamadou N'Diaye

At The Cauldron, a look at the biggest player in college basketball.