Time for another edition of the NBA mailbag.
Throughout the NBA season, I will be answering your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
This week's edition includes looming issues with the Los Angeles Lakers and their frontcourt, philosophies in selecting All-Stars and identifying the king of the half-court heave.
"Anthony Davis doesn't look right this year. He rarely goes to the basket in post-up situations and is settling for way more jumpers (and missing more often as well). Do you think he's injured? Saving his body? Are Marc Gasol and Montrezl Harrell clogging the paint?"
-- Jonathan
Since this question was posed, we've gotten an answer: Davis is in fact bothered by the Achilles tendonosis that sidelined him this week, which he told reporters has caused soreness around his right calf muscle for "a couple of weeks."
I think it's worth digging into how that might have affected Davis' performance.
First, let's note how high a bar Davis had to set for his still-excellent play -- he ranks 13th in the NBA in my wins above replacement player despite the time he missed this week -- to not look right. But there are meaningful differences, particularly in the interior play you mentioned (albeit not post-ups specifically, which are largely unchanged). Per Second Spectrum tracking, Davis' shot attempts in the restricted area are down from 8.0 per 100 possessions during the 2019-20 regular season to 5.8 so far this season.
That entire drop can be attributed to half-court possessions, where his attempts in the restricted area are down by more than a third (6.4 per 100 possessions to 4.2). It naturally follows that Davis isn't getting to the free throw line as often -- 8.3 attempts per 100 possessions, down from 11.7 last season and his lowest mark since his rookie season.
It's interesting that this trend predates when Davis said the soreness in his right calf began. In fact, his rate of half-court attempts in the restricted area is actually up slightly in the past month. And his free throw rate was lowest at the start of the season. Over the first four games of 2020-21, Davis attempted just 13 free throws, his second-lowest four-game total with the Lakers. That suggests there's something more than just the injury going on here.
At first, I was skeptical of the hypothesis that it had to do with the Lakers' centers given Marc Gasol is providing more floor spacing than Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee did last season. And it's true that Davis' half-court attempts in the restricted area per 100 possessions were better when he played center in 2019-20 (8.0 per 100 possessions) than so far this season (6.9). But I was probably missing an important point, which is that Davis hasn't played center very much this season.
According to analysis of data from NBA Advanced Stats, Davis has played just 12% of his minutes this season as the Lakers' center as compared to 40% last season. He's played more frequently with starter Gasol (53% of his minutes) than McGee (40%) and with backup Montrezl Harrell (34%) than he did Howard (20%). This might be by design to save Davis from additional wear and tear during the regular season. If so, we can expect AD to look more like himself when the Lakers turn more frequently to smallball lineups in the playoffs like last season, when Davis played 60% of his minutes at center.
#peltonmailbag Do you have a std methodology for all star voting? Feels like the borderline players get screwed based on subjective methodologies (eg "top 4 seed deserves an allstar", "he's averaging 30 ppg!", "the team +\- is amazing when he's on, not his fault the team sucks")
— Kalash Jain (@kalashjain1) February 9, 2021
My guiding philosophy on All-Star voting is to pick the best players, which is a bit more complex than it sounds on the surface. For one, the best players aren't exactly the same as the players having the best seasons. Given what we know about the variability of performance, I don't think it makes sense to give 100% weight to the first couple months of the current season. That stands the chance of rewarding performance that won't hold up the full year.
In practice, I'd say my approach is similar to how seasons are weighted in my SCHOENE projection system: about half weight on this year and half weight to recent track record. Certainly, we wouldn't want to pick the same 24 players every year, and there should be some accounting for the expected development of young players. But I don't think going through and looking up the most valuable players to date is a good way to pick All-Stars either.
Typically, the All-Star picks that age worst come when coaches feel a team deserves a certain number of representatives because of their record. For one, team win-loss records are subject to that same variability over the first half of the season. Additionally, there are lots of ways for team performance not to match the number of deserving All-Stars on the team. We already have a reward for teams based on their performance: It's called the playoffs, and they happen every year.
"I was listening to a Lowe Post pod a while ago and an interesting analytics topic came up. What if shots with less than five or 10 seconds left in a quarter didn't count against a player's shooting percentage if they missed the shot? This would be like shots when you get fouled - the made field goal helps your percentages, but you don't get penalized for a miss."
-- Eduardo
"I notice a lot of players wait just long enough to shoot so it looks like a buzzer-beater but isn't really. I think it would entice more players to take shots and add some intrigue. Let's get fewer fake buzzer-beaters. There are also players like Steph Curry and Dame Lillard that will gladly shoot at the end of quarters. How much higher would the shooting percentages for players like Steph be if we took out those misses?"
-- Shaun
This must have struck a chord since I got two different questions about the effect on Curry's shooting percentages. First, I'd absolutely endorse such a change that treated missed heaves from beyond half court as team shot attempts rather than attributing them to the individual, something Zach has brought up as a possibility. So much of good statistical analysis is making sure that metrics measure what they purport to measure and this is a case where the value is actually paradoxical -- players who aren't taking and missing these shots are costing their team the small chance they go in.
(In a Michael Lewis New York Times Magazine piece centered on Shane Battier many years ago, Daryl Morey said the Houston Rockets factored such shots out of their analysis but Battier was "smart enough to know that his next team might not be smart enough to take the heaves out.")
Although you're correct to highlight Curry as the current king of the heave, he's not the all-time leader. In the play-by-play area (back to 1996-97), Andre Miller is the only player to attempt more than 100 backcourt 3-pointers according to data from NBA Advanced Stats.
Because Miller was not a prolific 3-point shooter, this does make a noticeable difference in his overall 3-point percentage. He made 25% of his career attempts inside 47 feet, somewhat better than his official 22% career accuracy on 3s.
In Curry's case, the effect is not nearly as pronounced. His 18 backcourt attempts in 2016-17 are the most in a single season in the play-by-play era. If we take out the 17 misses, Curry's 3-point percentage would improve only modestly from 41% to 42%.
The career difference is even smaller, as Curry's 3-point percentage would go from 43.5% to 44% with backcourt misses removed.
While we're here, which players have made more backcourt 3s than you'd expect based on their number of attempts and the league-wide accuracy of 2.6%?
It's not surprising that Crawford was so accurate from beyond half court, but Randolph's percentage is shocking. A full 2.5% of his total career 3-pointers came on heaves.