Bucks Diary

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

I thought Villanueva's defense was good


Driving around this morning, I heard a soundbite from Bucks coach Scott Skiles following the team's absolute thrashing by the much improved Minnesota Timberwolves in their preseason debut, 117-78.

The coach was commenting on the Bucks game high scorer Charlie Villanueva when he said, "Charlie got his points, but his defense has a long way to go..."

By my defensive analysis of last night's exhibition, I think Villanueva had an excellent defensive game.

The Reverse Box Score

The one HUGE weakness inherent in Defensive Win Score is its lack of game-to-game statistics needed to calculate the metric. There is, however, one way to get those necessary statistics, but its tedious and very time consuming. You have to essentially construct a reverse box score, which I did in very small part this morning using the NBA's "Play-by-Play description" of last night's exhibition. I got sick of the project right away, though, and quit after I finished only two Bucks players... SG Michael Redd and PF Charlie Villanueva. I'll do better once they pare the rosters down.

Here are my brief defensive "reverse" stats for Villanueva and Redd from last night's exhibition (Redd's statistics I'm very certain of, Villanueva's... pretty certain of, although there was a stretch in the third quarter where he was paired with real training camp vagabonds, so recognizing proper matchups was especially hard... but I'm pretty sure I had CV on the right guy).

Michael Redd's DWS line: 19 min; 5pts; 2-3 FGAs; 2 Rebs; 5 Ass; 2 PF
Opponents Win Score Above Average per 48: +7.4

Charlie V's DWS line: 22 min; 4 pts; 2-3 FGAs; 2 Rebs; 1 Ass; 2 TOs; 2 PF
Opponents Win Score Above Average per 48: -10.2

So, as you can see, I thought Villanueva played superbly on defense, whereas Redd just texted that game in. Sure, it helped that Villanueva was guarding the absolutely unproductive "Dancing Machine" Madsen for most of the night, while Redd had to check the underrated Mike Miller (though, in fairness, Villanueva did have to guard Kevin Love as well). But you check who's in front of you. (Please notice the exorbitant amount of assists permitted by Redd. That is one of my most reliable shorthand indicators of defensive effort. Think about it. When are you able to see the passing lanes and make your best passes? When your defender is slacking off. Thus, its not a scientific indicator, but pretty indicative nonetheless).

All in all, a terrible beginning for the Green and Red. Not because of the loss. I'm not worried about the result. But with a new regime and all, I would have thought the players might have had just a smidgen of professional pride and maybe therefore they might have summoned a better effort than they did. Didn't happen. The effort they gave was, to paraphrase Kevin Garnett, "garbage and more garbage."

If I were Scotty, I'd have the industrial size pipe reamer working full blast today. Knowing him I'm sure he will.

8 Comments:

At October 7, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This team is headed for a few lottery picks and then it is headed for Seattle.

 
At October 7, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Blogger Ty Will said...

No Seattle Bucks, NO!!

Actually, that's my conspiracy theory, or rather my domino theory... have you been reading the blog?

The truly sad thing is that if the team does go to Seattle, they WILL NOT be the Bucks anymore. They are going to, I believe create the historical fiction THAT THE BUCKS WERE ALWAYS THE SUPERSONICS!! Our collective memories will be wiped out like some sort of Orwellian Stern thing.

If you look on basketball-reference.com, its already begun. There is no mention of the Seattle Supersonics!! They mention every other precedent team (the New Orleans Jazz, et al) but there's no mention of the Sonics. Following, I assume, NBA doctrine, they have already created the historical fiction that the OKC Thunder have existed since 1968.

Yeah, don't you remember Downtown Freddie Brown makin those 3 balls for the Thunder?

Frankly, and i know i sound sarcastic but im serious... that kind of thing pisses me off. Why keep an historical record unless you intend to accurately record history?

In other words, don't fuck with our memories!!

I'm off my soap box.

 
At October 7, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting stuff. I thought CV played ok on defense last night as well. But on offense he wasn't concentrating and let a few passes slip off his hands.

 
At October 7, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Blogger Ty Will said...

Did you go to the game? And hey, have you seen Berri and Hollinger have each declared the Lakers "unbeatable"?? I can't wait till that hits Celticsblog!

 
At October 8, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Come to think of it, I can remember Jack Sikma wearing his Seattle Supersonics "road" jersey, which said Bucks on it, passing the ball to Ricky Pierce and Terry Cummings.

 
At October 8, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I didn't see the game the other night Ty but take out Bogut, Ridnour, Bell, Lue and Alexander and have RJ play only 7 minutes and we're going to struggle badly, any team would.

As I said over on Realgm no need to panic just yet, if we flip that coin and take Al Jefferson, Miller, Foye, McCants, Love and Telfair out of the Wolves team, put them up against our full squad and guess what happens?

They'd want to improve soon, but that game against the Wolves at this point means nothing - other than giving Skiles an excuse to tear them a new one at training.

 
At October 9, 2008 at 7:26 AM, Blogger Ty Will said...

I know they don't mean anything.
But I have to sort of pretend they do... this is a one team blog, after all.

But, you notice the Bucks did play slightly better defense last night. Or else the Pistons just didn't care. You see my dilemma?

 
At October 9, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I did notice that, but I'd guess having our best starting defender in Bogut back in the lineup, albeit briefly, had a fair bit to do with the improved defensive performance.

I didn't necessarily mean the preseason games are totally meaningless, more that the first game against the Wolves was meaningless because they ran their full squad at our d-league team missing 6 of it's best 9 or 10 players.
Once the full squad, or something close to it, is back on the court I'll definitely be looking for some strong performances and they will definitely carry some meaning.

 

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