No doubt many of you have seen this already, an article in velonews reporting on commentary in Nature about problems with the current rather sorry state of testing procedures in athletic competitions.

Especially important in Dr. Berry's article is that there's dreadfully little know about the false positive rates of any of the tests.  Such assessment requires actual rigorous scientific testing, far beyond what actually passes for 'validation' in current practices.  While I suspect strongly that the recent CERA tests (and supported confessions) indicate that it can detect it, an unvalidated test really should bother many people.

We're still working with rumormill numbers, but as it appears that the cap is set at 58.68 mil, there's some real numbers to work with.  I'm hashing these out on the fly, so some things may be off, but they should be close.

If true that Maggette's deal is 50 mil over 5 years, he's starting at about 8.62 mil for next year.  What this means is that with Pietrus off the books, considering Foyle's buyout salary, penciling in Randolph's rookie deal and a min sal for Hendrix, we're sitting still with more than 9 mil under the cap.  That's what we have to play with. 

Azubuike can be signed independent of the cap, as can Ellis and Biedrins.  I'm gonna guess: 2.2, 9, 9 for the trio next year.  This keeps the team right below the lux tax if they spend the rest of the cap.

Is there something out there worth buying at that price?  Childress? Seems superfluous at this point since he's the same 3 that Maggs is.  I'd assume that Maggs takes the combined Pietrus/Barnes minutes.  I'd also assume that if Wright actually plays, this means the anemic rebounding Jax spends more time at the 2 where he can be the reasonable distributor big defender that we want paired with Monta.

Probably the best use of the cap is to see what happens in trades in the next couple of weeks. Not much worth spending big bucks on in PGs, so that will likely come as a trade. Cap room helps us in being able to make unequal trade, but unfortunately, the piece we'd most likely move is one that has a bigger dollar value.  Still, if Harrington can bring an adequate point guard, the team could be both exciting and productive again next year.

Here's more reality before a hundred all caps posts about Josh Smith:  it was going to take the max to pry Smith from ATL (or Iggy, even after Brand, or Okafor of Deng). 

So 9 mil to spend or swap with.  Anyone see a sub 9 mil point guard on a marginal team that might want to shed salary?

I don't actually expect 50% of the people posting to read this and pay attention, but to save some time for rebuttals to the numerous "we shouldas" that are going to flood in.

1 "We shoulda made that Detroit trade [Baron and anyone for Billups and Wallace]" 

reality:  No such trade ever existed or was ever possible.  Baron was not a tradeable commodity as his opt out clause made trades contractually illegal *unless* he was willing to officially waive his opt-out. That wasn't going to happen, so we couldn't have traded him.

2 "If he opted out earlier, we could have used the TE."

reality: Using the TE would have been stupid if we knew he was going to opt out.  If we had used the TE, we'd have less cap space at this point to pursue other options.  It would be reduced by whatever price we paid to a guy with the TE.  Sure, we'd have whatever player we got with the TE, but nothing prevents us from using the cap space to get that same player now.  This situation is better in that we're not limited by the $10mil top dollar that the TE had *and* we're not limited to acquiring players in trades.  Cap space is more valuable than a TE.

3 "If we knew he was opting out, we coulda drafted a point guard." 

reality: this is true, but this draft wasn't exactly rich in point guards to draft.  Rose wasn't available.  The point guards available would have required a trade up and/or were combo guards (e.g. Augustin, Westbrook,  Bayless).  The solutions weren't there in the draft to replace Baron.  We might have gone after a second rounder at the point, but that's not a solution either. Odds of a second rounder being able to do more than come in as a limited minute backup is low.  We'd be in more or less the same position had we gone after Chalmers or someone similar.  This could be marginally better, but only marginally.  More likely we'd simply have a worthless point guard instead of Hendrix.  Evaluate that as you see fit.

4 "The timing screwed us"

reality: the timing didn't matter.  Only thing that could have changed with the timing is that Mullin could have made a lousy trade with the TE in panic that would leave us in the same position now, but without as much cap room.

5 "We shoulda done <fill in the blank> before <fill in the blank>

reality: this was about money.  The Clippers were wiling to invest money in Davis.  They're willing to take the gamble on the back end of the deal.  They may not be as scared of another 50 game season from Baron when he's making $15mil a season to rehab his knees/back.  Yes, this will hurt the Warriors in that we won't have him.  But there's a real equation that has to be made.  I'm not sure that there's a right answer; There's certainly not a simple answer, but the only way Baron was going to come back here was if the offer on the table was for more cash.

So here's where things stand: 

A: We're going to have cap room, somewhere between $10 and $20 million depending on where the cap is set, what we decide to do with Pietrus and the POB (and perhaps Perovic heading home on a buyout).  That's money to go shopping.  Contracts are coming for Ellis and Biedrins but they'll be signed late because their cap holds are low (especially for Ellis) relative to what they're likely to get.  The biggest worry is another team swooping in and offering them something we'd have to match, as an offer sheet signed means the cap hold is replaced with the offer sheet dollars.

[Fantasy Junkie, if you're reading this.  My fiendish strategy to screw the Warriors was for them to offer a contract to Ellis, forcing us to match so we'd have reduced cap room once Davis left.  It wasn't guaranteed to get them Davis, but it was guaranteed to either lose Davis or Ellis, likely without cap room, or push into lux tax territory.  It's all about business, but I suspect that such a move would have been nasty enough that the fraternity of owners would have frowned that sort of move out of existance.]

B: There aren't point guards on the market (save perhaps Gil) worth that sort of change, so that hole needs to be filled through trade. Trades don't have to have the salaries match though because we've got cap space. 

C: Were I Rowell/Mullin/Cohan, I'd look into tampering to see if the Clippers made an under the table deal with Ramasar/Davis ahead of the opt out.  Seems like everyone was covering their ass (e.g. texting that he wanted to stay, LAC saying they wanted to keep Mags) but what the hell, so long as he's going to make it all about business, make it all about business and make sure that the business was on the up and up by the rules.  He ain't coming back, but wouldn't it be great if we could screw over the Clips and Davis?  Yeah, long shot, but I'm feeling spiteful this morning.

Reality: 30 picks in the first round are lucky to turn into a couple of stars and a half dozen real difference makers, another handful of eventually acceptable, but never particularly memorable rotation players, and larger collection of young millionaires who seem best suited as gigantic paperweights to keep the bench from flying upwards towards the ceiling.  Even "lottery picks" are more likely to be mediocre or worse than to actually benefit the W column in the standings.

Looking back at the 2006 draft (It's a bit too early to judge 2007, and even 06 may be a bit premature for some of the 'potential' picks), roughly a third of the picks seem to be bettering their teams in some way albeit not necessarily as stars.  (I'm excluding Morrison from this list, who was more valuable hurt in that he almost imperceptibly less likely to make a basket or grab a rebound when sitting out the year and certainly less likely to toss up bricks or get burned on D. Generally, you look for a player to make you better by playing.)  Another 3rd or so are questionable, serving some purpose presently as "role players" but I dare say most people wouldn't really notice if they weren't around.   And then there's the busts, guys like our beloved POB who seem to be auditioning for work in a Taiwanese league in the near future.

OK, perhaps 06 was a spectacularly weak draft.  07 and 05 look better in terms of contributors, but all drafts will contain several guys, a few taken in the lottery, who are forgettable, occasionally regrettable, who, at the time, were praised by *someone* for their 'upside.'  Mock board evaluations seem to have some assortment of 30 players roaring to come in and improve their clubs at some point. Seldom does a draft bio state "he's a washout waiting to happen" even though applying that tag across the board is likely to have the highest overall success rate in predicting the future. I suspect that at heart, a dart board would perform as well as most draft-nosticators.

Mock Trades and rumors are fine for what they are, but most run afoul when they ignore basic realities of NBAeconomics.  Most players have value, but this value is mitigated if not completely overshadowed by by contracts associated with the players.

Continue reading this post »

Yes, I know he's exciting.  Yes, I know he puts up points like no one's business.  No I do not think acquiring Iverson would be a good idea for one simple reason (paired with a verbose explaination of why this seems to be): he doesn't seem to make his team better.

There's a truth about Iverson.  He scores points.  There's another truth.  He takes a zillion shots in the process.  He's a career 42% shooter, 31% from 3 pt. range and down quite a bit this season.  He is not an efficient scorer and as a consequence he helps his team far less than it seems he should. To score 25-30 points, he's taking close to 25 shots.

In 2001 he led the Sixers to the finals.  They were a rather good team, winning 56 during the regular season. In subsequent years they've won 43, 48, 33, 43, and 38 games.  The trend has them downward and they play in the eastern conference.  That's not a ringing endorsement that Iverson = wins. Obviously Iverson isn't entirely responsible for his team's fortunes.  There's 4 other guys out there.  However, in his case, there's 4 other guys fighting for a limited number of touches meaning that you've got to get guys who produce in other departments.  They don't have these guys (and neither do we).

Sixer management hasn't been terribly smart in building their team around him.  Some of this is handicapped by his huge salary.  Some of it is their own faulty analysis. (This analysis is strikingly similar to most of the "let's get Iverson--he's 'The Answer'" hype that sees him as a savior and sees him as such despite the annoying fact that for the most part, he's played on teams performing at a rather mediocre level in the Eastern Conference.)  Get him another scorer to share the load and...and...and...well he doesn't really share and now you've got an underutilized secondary guy to share blame with while rebounds and defense goes the way of the dodo.  This equates to Warrior-level basketball for the last 4 seasons who have won a few fewer games, but have done so in a much more difficult and top-heavy conference.

The Sixers have thought that they need someone else to grab more of the scoring load.  Perhaps true, it hasn't worked, in part I suspect because Iverson just needs to take tons of shots, even if he's inclined to miss them far more often than make them.  Adding another scorer, someone like Iguodala who converts at a reasonably high rate, but his actual impact is going to be heavily

No, what a team featuring Iverson needs is rebounders and defenders.  It needs many of them to consistently grab those Iverson misses and allow themselves multiple opportunities for him to score and needs defensive rebounds to ensure that their opposition isn't going to score on each and every possession.   And in their most successful season, this is exactly what they had.  They were the second best offensive rebounding team in the league, necessary when Iverson misses 15 (yes, 15--this is not hyperbolic exaggeration of his actual shooting woes) shots a game.  You want to track winning percentage by Iverson-led teams?  Track their rebounding stats.  It's pretty striking and rather undeniable.  As his team's rebounding goes, so go their chances of winning.

It wasn't even so much that when they were successful that they had an amazing rebounder (save Mutumbo--who came in late), but they got above average defensive contributions at 3 or 4 positions and above average rebounding at 3 or 4 positions all the time.   They always had 3 guys on the floor who were capable or 9-11 boards a game and they had guys on the bench who rebounded at this same rate, so while no one averaged that individually, they had fresh hard workers rotating in all the time. And if you're playing with Iverson, you cannot win any other way.  

In subsequent years, Sixers management has allowed these guys to fall away, replacing them with secondary scorers who don't get the ball because Iverson dominates it.  

Hmm.  Lots of secondary scorers, not much defense or rebounding. Where else have I seen this combination?

The Warriors have several inefficient scorers, some of whom under Nelson have for the most part been better than that.  What they do not have is an abundance of rebounders or above average defenders.  Biedrins might fit that bill (certainly as a rebounder) but after that they've got few guys who have short-comings in one or more of those departments.  Murphy can rebound but not defend.  Consequently, Iverson here would very likely be exactly like Iverson in Philly which produces results more or less like the Warriors do now.

The argument for Iverson is 30ppg but that comes in a pure vacuum that ignores that his 30ppg hasn't produced a consistent winner in a rather long time and that he's only produced winners when teamed with a multitude of above average rebounders and defenders.  So if it's likely to be the same sort of composition here as it is in Philly--and it is--what's to argue getting Iverson?  What makes trading young for old, tall for short (the two things that conventional wisdom make for bad trades) in this case better?  What makes him worth $20million a year, almost certainly pushing us into lux tax territory in upcoming seasons, when he isn't getting it done in Philly?  Who, after trading for Iverson, is going to do the dirty work of defending and rebounding that is absolutely necessary to make Iverson's often exciting brand of basketball successful in the W-column?

Long winded summary:  we trade for Iverson and the team will be exactly the same save a larger chunk of the salary will go to one guy who will also score a larger chunk of the points in losing efforts more often than not.