July 30, 2025 • 29 mins
Which NBA Summer League stats actually matter and are useful for evaluating players? Which ones can be ignored? And what do the numbers say about this year's crop of rookies?
To answer these questions, Owen Phillips joins this episode of Fastbreak Breakfast to share his analysis on the most and least predictive stats from Summer League.
Also covered: how many more heaves will we get in the NBA this season now that they don't hurt a player's 3-point percentage?
Join the listener slack only at patreon.com/fastbreakbreakfast
Sign up for the free F5 newsletter from Owen at thef5.substack.com
Get 20% off a Stathead annual subscription with code FBBF
Try Underdog Fantasy and use code FBBF to get a free pick, plus a deposit match up to $1000: play.underdogfantasy.com/p-fastbreak-breakfast.
Use promo code FASTBREABREAK at SeatGeek for $20 off your first ticket purchase
Check out the merchandise at teepublic.com/stores/fastbreak-breakfast
Episode 806 (S11 Ep. 31)
To answer these questions, Owen Phillips joins this episode of Fastbreak Breakfast to share his analysis on the most and least predictive stats from Summer League.
Also covered: how many more heaves will we get in the NBA this season now that they don't hurt a player's 3-point percentage?
Join the listener slack only at patreon.com/fastbreakbreakfast
Sign up for the free F5 newsletter from Owen at thef5.substack.com
Get 20% off a Stathead annual subscription with code FBBF
Try Underdog Fantasy and use code FBBF to get a free pick, plus a deposit match up to $1000: play.underdogfantasy.com/p-fastbreak-breakfast.
Use promo code FASTBREABREAK at SeatGeek for $20 off your first ticket purchase
Check out the merchandise at teepublic.com/stores/fastbreak-breakfast
Episode 806 (S11 Ep. 31)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
All right, and welcome to Fast Break Breakfast MBA podcast.
My name is Keith Parrish and I'm here today with
the first guest in a long time, here with Owen Phillips,
who writes the F five newsletter. Owen, you're here in
(00:26):
the future. I'm talking to you. You're in Sydney, Australia.
How's the morning over there?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Rainy, cold, wet, no basketball. It feels very strange to
be sitting in the middle of winter time here in
Australia not being able to turn on my television and
watch indoor hoops. So a little bit of a bump.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you have a weather related like sensation that, oh,
this is hoops weather and it's thrown off in the
Southern Hemisphere?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, yeah, it's one of it's cold at night. You
think you're gonna like go home and turn on the
television and watch a Sacramento King's game or something like that.
And now I'm just like home and it's Australian Rules
football and National Rugby League on the television and I don't
know what the hell is going on, and I'm just
trying to follow the ball.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I have a I think I have a I
have a National Rugby League kit from Australia from from
a visit. I just it was like a purchase from
like I was in Australia, Like this looks nice. I
don't think I've ever worn it. I don't like I
don't I have NBA jerseys.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I don't wear this. At least has sleeves. I could
wear it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
But I hope you didn't buy the shorts because those
shorts are very very short, even you know, compared to
how shorts are I feel like in the NBA, these
ones are even like right right up to the point.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, no, I did not get the full kit, so
I can rock that. But oh, when you write a newsletter,
it's really I find it very informative, but also you
seem to hit topics that specifically speak to me a
lot of You have a lot of stuff about a
referee database, where it was I loved the referee database
(02:04):
talking about you would post on social media something like
people would be commenting like, there's a lot of fouls
called in this game, and you'd be like, well, actually
not that not so much based on the history of
Bill Kennedy or whoever is like calling the game.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So that's all that's very super informative.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
But I wanted to get you on to talk about
your post you made about summer league stats. So you're
aching in Australia in the weather to watch some basketball.
I'm in blazing hot Tennessee in the US of A.
I don't know if I'm aching to watch basketball. I'm
kind of aching for NBA news. It feels like the
(02:42):
biggest NBA news desert we've had in a while. I mean, technically,
Gilbert Arenas was just arrested hours ago as were recorded,
or maybe running a high stakes poker game in California,
but like as far as NBA transactions, it was like nothing.
So I'm still kind of in my summer league glow.
And you wrote a thing about summer league stats and
(03:04):
about which summer league stats might be meaningful in which
ones we can totally ignore.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Is that a fair characterization?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, that's right on point. I feel like everything you
hear about summer league in terms of like how players perform,
everyone always says summer league doesn't matter. It's like, don't
pay attention to summer league. And when someone usually has
like these broad declarations of what you should and shouldn't do,
there's typically like some nuance in there that people are disregarding.
(03:34):
And so a couple of years ago I got really
interested in the idea of thinking about, well, maybe there's
some signal in the summer league stats that we can
pull out that translate to a player's rookie season, but
like which ones are they actually important to look at?
And so what I did this year I've done in
the past is I took a bunch of box score
stats that you can find that summer league that you
(03:55):
can find in a player's rookie year and basically compared
the two. So, how did a player who scored a
bunch of points that summer league, did that translate to
their rookie year. How about if they had a lot
of assists at summer league and that did that translate
to their you know, their rookie year. And so I
looked at that over like a pretty long time period,
I think between two thousand and seven and twenty twenty four,
(04:15):
and sort of mapped out all the correlations of which
stats tended to translate the most to a player's rookie season,
and I kind of referred to these as sticky stats,
ones that tend to stick regardless of whether they're playing
in Vegas or whether they're playing in the NBA. And
what you find is actually like a pretty interesting like
hierarchy of stats that once you see them kind of
(04:37):
laid out, like which ones tend to be most correlated,
it's like, oh, that's why, Like that totally makes sense.
And the ones that aren't correlated, you're like, oh, okay,
so that's why people say summer league doesn't matter. So
I can kind of walk you through maybe which stats.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, I would say one thing that's I found interesting,
Like there's certain ones where I'm like, oh, of course,
there's no correlation statistically between a player's summer league plus
minus in his NBA. Yeah, Like that's I mean, how
are you supposed to do anything? Although I feel like
Draymond Green maybe never lost a summer league game, and
(05:11):
that feels like maybe that that could have been useful.
But yeah, I do believe it makes sense that like
plus minus will have no correlation. There's some where I'm
like surprised. I'll tell you one where it's in the
lower tier of relatable SATs, the icky stats as you
have labeled them, like free throw percentage. I would have guessed,
(05:32):
and I feel like I've gone through years where I'm like, oh,
so and so was like twenty for twenty one in
summer league. That's a good sign for his ability. So
I find that that was one that actually surprises me
that there hasn't been really any correlation.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, you know, in that one in particular, I think
it's tricky to measure across summer league in the NBA
is because you're getting a lot of players at summer
league who are probably only taking between like zero and
three free throws. So if they go, say one for three,
all of a sudden, they're shooting thirty three percent, and
you know that might be not correlated at all to
like them being a seventy percent free throw shooter. So
that one was a little trickier to model, and I
(06:07):
took a stab at it, like it's more correlated than
say three point percentage, but it's still pretty poor correlation overall.
I think that's largely just due to sample size. But
I think just intuitively, if someone goes nineteen for twenty
at summer ly, they're probably going to be a pretty
good free throw shooter at.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
The NBA as well as well, So there maybe is
some if you get enough attempts, you could be like,
all right, that's pretty solid. I feel like the thing
I've gotten into it's like because I don't know anything
about these college guys or you know, even the undrafted players,
and so I'll go and look at it, like they're
on the Grizzlies, and I'm trying to figure out more
about them.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I look at their summer league stats, and then I'll
do their G league stats, and.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I'm like, oh, this guy is consistently put up some
of the same numbers, so I get maybe kind of excited.
The one that I think maybe surprises people is the
three point shooting and how not only is itchy? Is
it an icky stat it's like one of the worst
where there's absolutely maybe zero core relation. And I understand
a little bit on this small sample size, but still
(07:04):
it's weird to be like, it doesn't matter that guy
made all us threes or that guy missed all his threes.
There's don't draw any conclusions yet.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, And I think it's just it's probably along the
same line is that three point percentage is pretty low
at summer league overall. I think it's like the league
average is below thirty percent, you know, and players are
taking very audacious threes at Summer League two, so that's
probably part of it. But I think again it's probably
just a more has to do with the lack of
(07:33):
three of these players probably take at Summer League, and
so it just gets that those like small sample size
players dragged down the like overall correlation and things like that.
So that's that's that's probably my best guess as to
why it's so uncorrelated, you know. And again, like in
the NBA, we've done a lot of like analysis on
how long it takes for three point percentage to stabilize,
(07:55):
and that's like takes almost half a season before you
get to a I trust this player's three point percentage
to be representative of what's gonna their three point percentage
is going to look like going forward. So it makes
sense to me that in a couple of games you're
just getting like no signal out at three point percentage.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, So what are the what are what are the
best steps or the ones that you think are the
most correlated? And also what of what use is knowing that? Like,
how do you use that information?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Sure, so the one that is the most correlated between
a player's summer league performance and rookie season performance is
three point attempt rate, And that's just a metric for
seeing what percentage of a player's shot attempts come from
beyond the art. So a player who's all of a
sudden taking eighty five percent of their shots from beyond
the arc oft summer league, you can pretty much bet
(08:47):
your bottom dollar like they're going to be bombing threes
as like their whole personality in this in their rookie
season as well. So and that makes sense. Someone's not
all of a sudden going to, you know, develop the
willinginess or confidence to start taking threes. If they didn't
do it at summer league, they're not going to all
the other time by the time October rolls around, start
bombing threes with reckless abandon you know. So I think
(09:11):
that's pretty interesting in the sense that it gives us
a little bit of an idea of what a player's
role is going to be in the NBA. So maybe
they were someone in college who you know, were largely
an on ball player, who you know, we're doing one
thing or another, but now they're in the NBA and
they're kind of relegated to a more of an off
ball role and they're bombing three. So what you saw.
(09:31):
Like one thing I thought was really interesting is one
of the rookies who had the highest three point of
temperate was Igor Demon for the Brooklyn Nets, and he
had like eighty something percent of his shots came from
beyond the arc at summer league, and that was like
pretty interesting because at college it was only like fifty percent.
So and I remember reading something that basically the the
(09:53):
Nets coaching staff told them, hey, we want you shooting
it pretty much every time you're out on the court.
And I think that's probably because they're imagining role for
him in the NBA that is more off ball, more
bombing threes, because they have so many players on their
roster already that are like primary ball handlers, and they
wanted to see, maybe what is he going to look
like as a you know, floor spacing secondary player as
(10:14):
opposed to someone who's just running a million piket roles.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So another one of your high correlated the sticky stats
is blocks p thirty six. I was a little bit
surprised that steals for thirty six not as good.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I thought it was one of.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Those things because I know I look at you know,
whenever I'm like casually dipping into drafts Twitter to try
to fit in, and everyone's talking about their steal in
block percentages of these players.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
And they filtered it by like who's done this?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So I'm always watching summer League, like, all right, who
gets steals in blocks, Let's get excited. But I think
it's interesting that blocks it does seem to carry over,
there is a correlation and not so much steals.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Do you have theories for why that is?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, I'm glad you actually mentioned because I ever got
a chance to talk about it. And I think, like
the biggest reason is in summer league, there are just
a ton of live ball turnovers that have maybe nothing
to do with necessarily the defense's ability to cause those turnovers,
but rather the you know, the player who's dribbling the
ball's ability to actually keep possession of the basketball. So
I think turnovers are just like one of these stats
(11:15):
that doesn't seem to correlate at all between Summer League
and the NBA. So therefore, steals themselves are not necessarily
a reflection of the player's ability to generate steels. They're
just the ability more reflective of the other players inability
to keep the ball. So I think that's why steels
don't correlate. Blocks, on the other hand, is just like
raw ability, right, Like you're not going to learn how
(11:37):
to block a shot in between Summer League in the NBA,
Like you either have that ability or you kind of don't.
Either have that willingness to go chase after blocks or
you don't. And I think the guy who led Summer
League this year in terms of just like blocks per
thirty six was Jean Berge, the big center guy in
the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had like was like seven blocks
(11:58):
on one of those yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I
think like a pretty good, you know rule of thumb
is like, Okay, I expect this guy to be a
shot blocker once he gets to the NBA, Like that's
gonna be kind of his calling card. And it's just
a little interesting to see. Also some of like the
smaller players who were actually like not bad at you know,
(12:19):
blocking shots, Like Walter Clayton Junior was like like a
very small guard. Uh that's was drafted by Utah, but
he actually like had pretty decent block numbers relative to
his size. So just like things like that, and like
Hansome Yang was another player who just like kind of
popped up the block numbers and you're thinking, Okay, maybe
like this size will actually translate to the NBA kill
(12:40):
off for summer in protection.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, I'm seeing uh, I'm seeing Grizzlies two way signing.
PJ Hall maybe did pretty good on blocks for thirty six,
also pretty good on rebounding for thirty six.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
But PJ Hall is not a rookie, is he though?
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Is yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, he's like twenty for maybe yeah second year. Now,
I'm just I was looking at the just the general
real GM.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
And it's worth pointing out like if we have like
stats from a players G league season, those are probably
going to translate more than the summer league ones. It's
just interesting the summer league because this is the only
data we have on a lot of these rookies and
some sort of you know, NBA context.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So going back to the steels thing and the fact
that there are just so many turnovers, I was curious
if you knew this, do do NBA teams keep track
of steels that are like you actually stole the ball
or you generated that steel versus the ball came to
(13:40):
you like you were standing there and whoever lost his handle?
Like I would like, is there a super steel stat
out there? Yeah, it's like you actually stole the ball.
You ripped the ball away from this person because of
your long wingspan, your deflection, your instincts, your movements, or
like so and so dribbled it off his foot and
you picked the ball.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I interesting, don't think anyone tracks that was actually a
pretty good idea. Someone mentioned that to me the other day. Actually,
it's so such a good coincidence about like live ball
turnovers are so important in basketball, Like there's so much
more powerful than a dead ball turnover because a live
ball turnover turns into fast break points. But you know,
not all live ball turnovers are caused by the defense,
(14:21):
just like you said, some of them are caused by
the player dribbling the ball off their foot or something
like that. And I think in most cases those still
get registered as steals, which is kind of interesting, and
maybe there should be some sort of like unforced air
turnovers or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I know for a fact they're counted as steals from
playing fantasy basketball. So it's like there's steals, there's other ones.
Where it's like they do credit to the guy who
knocks it away most of.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
The time, and then sometimes I'm like, that was my guy.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Whatever, Yeah, that's one I'd be I'd be interested to
know what those stats look like, because I was looking
at the guys who have the most steals in a
Summer League game ever, because jamiir watch. I think the
Wizards guy. I think he picked up eight, which tied
the Summer League record. Donovan Mitchell. That was a game
I went to. He took the ball away from Wade
(15:08):
Baldwin the fourth like four times in that game, and
those were like yeah, But then I saw like Cam
Whitmore had eight steals in a game and he's not
really known for the defense. I also want to know
this is just unrelated to any of the Summer league stuff.
If we improve that stat, does anyone keep track of, Like, like,
I need a rebounding stat that deducts the uncontested rebounds.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I don't care, Like I need NBA stats that say, like,
if if Owen was on the court, he would have
gotten that rebound. I need all those erased. You know,
if I'm standing on the court and there's nowhere near
me and the ball comes right to me. Let's I'm
more interested in like contested rebound rate or something like that,
and I need to know if that if that's available anywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Dude, I think that actually is available on NBA dot Com.
I think they have a category for contested rebounds and
stuff like that. But yeah, that was like a big
sticking point to me when I was when I was
with the with the Knicks, I would always remember Julius
Randa would get a bunch of free thrower defensive rebounds. Yeah,
and it would just be like like just an extra
one or two there every every night.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Well, I'm so sensitive as as a Grizzlies fan in podcaster,
when everyone's like I wish Jaron Jackson Junior averaged nine
rebounds per game.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
You're like, why what is that? Like four extra?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Like I wish he got contented rebounds I got. I
wish he got more of that. I'm not saying he's
an excellent rebounder, but the general, the whole, like he's
six eleven, he should get eight rebounds. Like rebounds are
the most fungible stat in the Ameria, Like, just show
me where he's at. Are there any other players going
back to summ League. Are any of the players or
rookies that that jumped out based on this the sticky
(16:46):
stats that you have.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, So the ones that I thought were kind of
interesting were Colinmary Boyles. He was second in offensive rebounds
for thirty six at Summer League and was just like
kind of like a two ways out there a little bit,
just a huge energy guy, and like the knock on
him is like, this guy can't shoot, but he kind
of does like literally everything else and that might be
(17:08):
enough to kind of make up for the fact that
he's missing this one core skill. So if you were
like a big proponent of Calinary Boyles, who was drafted
by the Raptors, you're like really encouraged by the fact
that he just like went out there and terrorized people
on the offensive class. The other one that I thought
was pretty interesting was well two of them. So one
was Curtis Jones, was the two way player for the
(17:29):
Denver Nuggets who was unsigned, I mean he was undrafted
and then was signed after Summer League because he was
just like awesome. He was one of the like the leaders.
I think he actually averaged more points per thirty six
than any other rookie Wow, at Summer League, he had
a ton of assists and he was bombing threes and
he was just making all his threes. So that's like
a really deep cut. Went to Iowa, Iowa State, and
(17:52):
he could be really good, but who knows. The other
guy that I thought like popped a lot was two
guys in Charlotte, like Liam McNeely and also Ryan Kulkbrenner.
I thought both of those guys were like awesome at
Summer League, which was kind of funny that kan Kinnepple
won Summer League MVP when I was like, I think
he might have been maybe the second or third best
player on his team because also Hall was on that team, right, PJ.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Hall was, Yeah, so he wasn't allowed to play in
the championship game a deal. I was curious about con
Kinnipple because like he did pop at least like the
assists for thirty six they were, Yeah, they were pretty
high for him. Also, I think he had maybe one
of the higher three point attempt rates, so that maybe
he was actually playing a similar sol to what he
might look like.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Totally yeah, I'm looking at him. It's like him and
Leam McNeely. Are like right next to each other on
the leader board, like Liam McNeil had five assists per
thirty six, khn had four point nine three point attempts.
Con had nine point one, Liam had eight point seven.
Ye like they're just like they were like pretty much.
It's just funny that Kan Kinepple got a lot of shine. Yeah,
feel like there were other players on Charlotte that were
also very good.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I was.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I admittedly it was too heavily influenced by one game
I saw where Kalchbrenner was getting blown by by Walter
Clayton and Isaiah called you over and over and over,
so that that that left too strong of an impression
on me to maybe something.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
I might I might go down the ship on that one.
But I okay, that's fair like boy is sitting on
a hot take that I think Charlotte actually might be
sneaky good next year. And I kind of liked the
centers in Charlotte way better than I like the centers
in Phoenix. Who you know they if.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You get if you get the pick offer from the Suns,
might as well move on from Mark Williams try something new.
It was only a couple of games but my guy
Javon Small jumping off the board, all his advanced stats
looking great, and he really high assist for thirty six,
So yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
He let all I think he led all drafted rookies,
and assist for thirty six was just kind of killing
it out there. So it's so was Mayshack.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Though Mayshack was thirty six also very high, So yeah,
it was just kind of very high.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That was p find. It seems like, let's move on
for a couple other things that I know are of
particular interest to you and me. At summer League, the
NBA implemented this rule change they're gonna add to the
regular season, which is heaves no longer count against your
field goal percentage if you miss them, as long as
(20:18):
you fulfill a bunch of things like shoot it from behind.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
What was it?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
It's not even half court, it's like the yeah, it's
like it's weird.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
It's like the extended circle on the other side of
the court. Basically, so once you cross half court and
once the logo basically cuts off or the center circle
cuts off, that's where you can shoot it from where
it doesn't count against your own individual field goal attempts.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But This is a This is a needed change. I've
been a proponent of this for a long time. I've
been using my position, as small as it may be,
to shame players who do this, Like Lebron James has
shot like two keaves in the last sixteen years, Kevin
Durant never takes heaves, and we're talking guys doing it
in the play offs New it's Atlanta Hawk Luke Canard
(21:03):
preserving that precious field goal percentage, like not doing like
this is the This should eliminate.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
The right after the buzzer heave or shot.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You know, we're like, oh, I tried to get it off,
but it did seem like I don't have the numbers.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Do you have the numbers in summer league?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So I couldn't find the summer of the So it's
funny because like used to, they used to record back
court field goal attempts that you could find pretty easily,
but because they made this change, those are no longer
counteriza court field but they're just gone. So like h
there was there was way fewer of them this year, effectively,
so you have to kind of actually go back and
watch the stafer dig into the play by play dad
to find out.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
It felt it felt like they were going up a
little more frequently. I felt like guys were launching them
full court many many times.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I appreciated that.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, for me, there's no downside. It's like what
a weekend. I mean, what are the numbers going to say?
Are may get six more makes? I mean, we're not
gonna get that many more makes?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
You know, Yeah, that was interesting thing. So, like the
G League introduced this change last year after having the
same problem as the NBA does. Players weren't taking them.
So twenty three to twenty four there was only three
hundred and seventy of these heaves attempted. Once they institute
the rule, there was five hundred and sixty five, So
like it went up fifty percent, but was interesting just
to your point, there was actually only two additional makes.
(22:18):
So because players were taking like increasingly audacious why the
hell not kind of shots. It's like, well, it doesn't
cost me anything, so I might as well, like throw
a hook shot from seventy five feet back. And I
think we're going to kind of see some of that
in the NBA, like more of that stuff that you know,
like Jokic was doing, which was just you know, doing
a euros step to a three point shot by the
(22:39):
opposite free throw. He made stuff like that, and he.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Made some of the strangest shot put full court things. Yeah,
he's the one guy because you wrote in your news
letter how absurd it was that so many players didn't
take them because they don't affect your they barely affect
your stats at all. Yeah, Jokic was so notable last
year because he was the first who's like it actually
affected his stats because he took so many of them.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, I mean, it's that was it. That's been my
whole bugaboo about these heaves is that players are always
talking about preserving their three point percentage of their field
goal percentage. I'm like, it's like five extra shots. Like
it's not actually going to materially drag down your numbers,
particularly if you're taking like three hundred threes in a season.
But it was just it was to your point, it
was very interesting that you know, Jokic took twenty five
(23:25):
heaves last year that would have changed his three point percentage.
He was he shot forty one point seven percent on
the season. But if you removed those missed heaves, and
if it were you know, the rule had counted last year,
he would have shot forty five percent from three. So, uh,
that was just extremely interesting in the sense of he's
one of the first players who took enough heaves to
where it would have like actually materially affected his top
(23:48):
line numbers, because like in the past, he had guys
like Andre Miller taking like twenty heaves which were which
was effectively a third of his entire three point attempts,
and so you know, he's just getting like he extra misses. Yeah,
in his denominator. So going from like a you know,
a thirty seven percent three point shooter to a twenty
five percent three point shooter.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I want to know if anyone in Denver has asked
Nikola what happened to this year? He never shied away
from them. But I'm looking at his Basketball Reference page.
He had twenty eight before this season in his career. Yeah,
and then he just started launching him. Maybe he's like,
I don't care anymore, I'm just gonna put him up.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I think he's just he's just a guy that feels
like he adds a new trick every year. There's always
one new thing, Like he's doing these you know quick
inbound passes. One year he's doing like the trying to
draw the full court shooting foul, which I think is
like his white Whale, where he's always trying to you know,
trying to get someone to to call on that, which
I think is gonna be great whenever that happens. But yeah,
(24:48):
I think he's just always adding one little new trick
to the book every year.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
It honestly feels like if I'm Lebron James, I still
don't take heaves because I feel like it looks worse
if Lebron takes like ten this year, it's just push that.
Guys like me sitting in a basement yelling at him,
We're like, you're.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Being selfish, Like, you know, why would you pass up
the chance? At three points?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I went I almost full sick on mode this year
during a very slow period of the F five, and thought,
I'm gonna watch every end of the period to see
who has you know, ignored the heave the most, Who's
who's often out of the heave the most. Yeah, And
I got pretty far down the path and I was like,
this is stupid. This is going to be interesting to
like two people. And I was like I don't think
this is worth it, but maybe I'll revisited this summer
(25:32):
when there's a little more time.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
That's no.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I'm one of the two people, so I appreciate the
effort that you have put into many of your things.
To wrap up, I do want to go back to
one thing about your summer league stats. You did it
sounds like expressed some reservations about Cooper Flag. And I've
never heard anyone express reservations about Cooper Flag. So Owen
(25:55):
plant your flag?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
What what?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
What?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
What?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
What negatives did you take away from the two games
by Cooper?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Look, I don't want to sound any alarms. This is
not to say Cooper Flag is a bust or that
he's not gonna be everything everyone hoped him to be.
I just think there's a after watching him at Summer League,
I am now tempering expectations in terms of the type
of player he's going to be in his rookie year.
I was, in my head had him as like this,
you know, ultimate connector glue guy who's like AK forty
(26:26):
seven on steroids or something like that. You know, just
like a guy who's kind of at threat to do
a five x five on a basketball game or something
like that. Having watched him at Summer League where he
was kind of asked to initiate the offense a lot,
sort of like be the primary playmaker. He sort of
looked to me this I do not mean this as
an insult. I mean this like as just a way
(26:46):
of sort of describing who he is. He kind of
looked more to me like Detroit era Jeremy Grant, who
was like finally thrust it into a role of like
being a primary playmaker after playing years as sort of
a secondary guy. And it makes sense, like it sounds
like they're going to be without Kyrie Irving next year.
They only have like one other player on the roster
who can dribble a basketball. So maybe the match just
(27:07):
kind of wanted to see what Cooper Flag would look like.
But if you go look like, he didn't really have
a lot of assists, He had no offensive rebounds, had
very low block numbers. Like those are things that I
would have thought he would have really popped in based
on sort of his play in college and sort of
his general scouting profile of this guy who sort of
does a little bit of everything. Instead, he was sort
of just like poor man's Jason Tatum at summer League,
(27:29):
which is totally fine, Like, maybe that's good, Maybe that's
better for his development long term, if you want him
to be that kind of player. I guess in my
mind I kind of thought he was going to be
one type of player, and then seeing him at Summer League,
I'm like, Oh, he's just going to be like this
other kind of player and that he might not be
very good at his rookie year, which is to be expected.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, so that's what the that's what the stats are
telling us. So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
What about your Charlotte Hornets guy for your optimism, because
I knowed this last year, like Tejean Salon no steals
or blocks combined last year. He picked up two blocks
this year. So real GM has him tracked at one
hundred and thirty one summer league minutes, no steals yet.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
But yeah, I'm not buying a lot of stock in
Salon Island. I think that on that one might go
down as a pick that the Charlotte lit on fire
a little bit there.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
They regretted that one a little bit.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah. Yeah, well, Owen, thank you so much for coming
on and talking basketball with me.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Tell everybody give everybody the elevator pitch for the F five.
If I haven't presented it well enough, No.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
You did a great job. It's a weekly newsletter about
data in the NBA where I kind of explore interesting
trends and things that I catch my eye and try
to talk about them through charts and more accessible language
when it comes to stats and numbers and stuff like that.
So if you like that kind of stuff, give it
a shout. It's free comes out once a week.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Also, you just did a thing on the restricted free
agent impass pointing out there's been basically offer sheets have disappeared.
No one even bothers with those anymore, and the restriction
free agents no one will sign them.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
So yeah, check that out.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Thomas jos Also, this goes back to my my pet
peeve of the NBA.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
It's harder for these free agents when like a third
of the teams don't want to win or or only
want to win in a specific way, and so it
becomes like really tough for the guys who like I
can actually score. They're like, we don't want that. Okay, anyways, Owen,
thanks so much, you guys. Go check out Owen. Everybody
who want more from me, Patreon dot com, slash fast
break Breakfast, thanks for listening. You guys are the best,
(29:33):
and remember breakfast is the most important thing.
All right, and welcome to Fast Break Breakfast MBA podcast.
My name is Keith Parrish and I'm here today with
the first guest in a long time, here with Owen Phillips,
who writes the F five newsletter. Owen, you're here in
(00:26):
the future. I'm talking to you. You're in Sydney, Australia.
How's the morning over there?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Rainy, cold, wet, no basketball. It feels very strange to
be sitting in the middle of winter time here in
Australia not being able to turn on my television and
watch indoor hoops. So a little bit of a bump.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you have a weather related like sensation that, oh,
this is hoops weather and it's thrown off in the
Southern Hemisphere?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, yeah, it's one of it's cold at night. You
think you're gonna like go home and turn on the
television and watch a Sacramento King's game or something like that.
And now I'm just like home and it's Australian Rules
football and National Rugby League on the television and I don't
know what the hell is going on, and I'm just
trying to follow the ball.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I have a I think I have a I
have a National Rugby League kit from Australia from from
a visit. I just it was like a purchase from
like I was in Australia, Like this looks nice. I
don't think I've ever worn it. I don't like I
don't I have NBA jerseys.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I don't wear this. At least has sleeves. I could
wear it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
But I hope you didn't buy the shorts because those
shorts are very very short, even you know, compared to
how shorts are I feel like in the NBA, these
ones are even like right right up to the point.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, no, I did not get the full kit, so
I can rock that. But oh, when you write a newsletter,
it's really I find it very informative, but also you
seem to hit topics that specifically speak to me a
lot of You have a lot of stuff about a
referee database, where it was I loved the referee database
(02:04):
talking about you would post on social media something like
people would be commenting like, there's a lot of fouls
called in this game, and you'd be like, well, actually
not that not so much based on the history of
Bill Kennedy or whoever is like calling the game.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So that's all that's very super informative.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
But I wanted to get you on to talk about
your post you made about summer league stats. So you're
aching in Australia in the weather to watch some basketball.
I'm in blazing hot Tennessee in the US of A.
I don't know if I'm aching to watch basketball. I'm
kind of aching for NBA news. It feels like the
(02:42):
biggest NBA news desert we've had in a while. I mean, technically,
Gilbert Arenas was just arrested hours ago as were recorded,
or maybe running a high stakes poker game in California,
but like as far as NBA transactions, it was like nothing.
So I'm still kind of in my summer league glow.
And you wrote a thing about summer league stats and
(03:04):
about which summer league stats might be meaningful in which
ones we can totally ignore.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Is that a fair characterization?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, that's right on point. I feel like everything you
hear about summer league in terms of like how players perform,
everyone always says summer league doesn't matter. It's like, don't
pay attention to summer league. And when someone usually has
like these broad declarations of what you should and shouldn't do,
there's typically like some nuance in there that people are disregarding.
(03:34):
And so a couple of years ago I got really
interested in the idea of thinking about, well, maybe there's
some signal in the summer league stats that we can
pull out that translate to a player's rookie season, but
like which ones are they actually important to look at?
And so what I did this year I've done in
the past is I took a bunch of box score
stats that you can find that summer league that you
(03:55):
can find in a player's rookie year and basically compared
the two. So, how did a player who scored a
bunch of points that summer league, did that translate to
their rookie year. How about if they had a lot
of assists at summer league and that did that translate
to their you know, their rookie year. And so I
looked at that over like a pretty long time period,
I think between two thousand and seven and twenty twenty four,
(04:15):
and sort of mapped out all the correlations of which
stats tended to translate the most to a player's rookie season,
and I kind of referred to these as sticky stats,
ones that tend to stick regardless of whether they're playing
in Vegas or whether they're playing in the NBA. And
what you find is actually like a pretty interesting like
hierarchy of stats that once you see them kind of
(04:37):
laid out, like which ones tend to be most correlated,
it's like, oh, that's why, Like that totally makes sense.
And the ones that aren't correlated, you're like, oh, okay,
so that's why people say summer league doesn't matter. So
I can kind of walk you through maybe which stats.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, I would say one thing that's I found interesting,
Like there's certain ones where I'm like, oh, of course,
there's no correlation statistically between a player's summer league plus
minus in his NBA. Yeah, Like that's I mean, how
are you supposed to do anything? Although I feel like
Draymond Green maybe never lost a summer league game, and
(05:11):
that feels like maybe that that could have been useful.
But yeah, I do believe it makes sense that like
plus minus will have no correlation. There's some where I'm
like surprised. I'll tell you one where it's in the
lower tier of relatable SATs, the icky stats as you
have labeled them, like free throw percentage. I would have guessed,
(05:32):
and I feel like I've gone through years where I'm like, oh,
so and so was like twenty for twenty one in
summer league. That's a good sign for his ability. So
I find that that was one that actually surprises me
that there hasn't been really any correlation.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, you know, in that one in particular, I think
it's tricky to measure across summer league in the NBA
is because you're getting a lot of players at summer
league who are probably only taking between like zero and
three free throws. So if they go, say one for three,
all of a sudden, they're shooting thirty three percent, and
you know that might be not correlated at all to
like them being a seventy percent free throw shooter. So
that one was a little trickier to model, and I
(06:07):
took a stab at it, like it's more correlated than
say three point percentage, but it's still pretty poor correlation overall.
I think that's largely just due to sample size. But
I think just intuitively, if someone goes nineteen for twenty
at summer ly, they're probably going to be a pretty
good free throw shooter at.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
The NBA as well as well, So there maybe is
some if you get enough attempts, you could be like,
all right, that's pretty solid. I feel like the thing
I've gotten into it's like because I don't know anything
about these college guys or you know, even the undrafted players,
and so I'll go and look at it, like they're
on the Grizzlies, and I'm trying to figure out more
about them.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I look at their summer league stats, and then I'll
do their G league stats, and.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I'm like, oh, this guy is consistently put up some
of the same numbers, so I get maybe kind of excited.
The one that I think maybe surprises people is the
three point shooting and how not only is itchy? Is
it an icky stat it's like one of the worst
where there's absolutely maybe zero core relation. And I understand
a little bit on this small sample size, but still
(07:04):
it's weird to be like, it doesn't matter that guy
made all us threes or that guy missed all his threes.
There's don't draw any conclusions yet.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, And I think it's just it's probably along the
same line is that three point percentage is pretty low
at summer league overall. I think it's like the league
average is below thirty percent, you know, and players are
taking very audacious threes at Summer League two, so that's
probably part of it. But I think again it's probably
just a more has to do with the lack of
(07:33):
three of these players probably take at Summer League, and
so it just gets that those like small sample size
players dragged down the like overall correlation and things like that.
So that's that's that's probably my best guess as to
why it's so uncorrelated, you know. And again, like in
the NBA, we've done a lot of like analysis on
how long it takes for three point percentage to stabilize,
(07:55):
and that's like takes almost half a season before you
get to a I trust this player's three point percentage
to be representative of what's gonna their three point percentage
is going to look like going forward. So it makes
sense to me that in a couple of games you're
just getting like no signal out at three point percentage.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, So what are the what are what are the
best steps or the ones that you think are the
most correlated? And also what of what use is knowing that? Like,
how do you use that information?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Sure, so the one that is the most correlated between
a player's summer league performance and rookie season performance is
three point attempt rate, And that's just a metric for
seeing what percentage of a player's shot attempts come from
beyond the art. So a player who's all of a
sudden taking eighty five percent of their shots from beyond
the arc oft summer league, you can pretty much bet
(08:47):
your bottom dollar like they're going to be bombing threes
as like their whole personality in this in their rookie
season as well. So and that makes sense. Someone's not
all of a sudden going to, you know, develop the
willinginess or confidence to start taking threes. If they didn't
do it at summer league, they're not going to all
the other time by the time October rolls around, start
bombing threes with reckless abandon you know. So I think
(09:11):
that's pretty interesting in the sense that it gives us
a little bit of an idea of what a player's
role is going to be in the NBA. So maybe
they were someone in college who you know, were largely
an on ball player, who you know, we're doing one
thing or another, but now they're in the NBA and
they're kind of relegated to a more of an off
ball role and they're bombing three. So what you saw.
(09:31):
Like one thing I thought was really interesting is one
of the rookies who had the highest three point of
temperate was Igor Demon for the Brooklyn Nets, and he
had like eighty something percent of his shots came from
beyond the arc at summer league, and that was like
pretty interesting because at college it was only like fifty percent.
So and I remember reading something that basically the the
(09:53):
Nets coaching staff told them, hey, we want you shooting
it pretty much every time you're out on the court.
And I think that's probably because they're imagining role for
him in the NBA that is more off ball, more
bombing threes, because they have so many players on their
roster already that are like primary ball handlers, and they
wanted to see, maybe what is he going to look
like as a you know, floor spacing secondary player as
(10:14):
opposed to someone who's just running a million piket roles.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So another one of your high correlated the sticky stats
is blocks p thirty six. I was a little bit
surprised that steals for thirty six not as good.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I thought it was one of.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Those things because I know I look at you know,
whenever I'm like casually dipping into drafts Twitter to try
to fit in, and everyone's talking about their steal in
block percentages of these players.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
And they filtered it by like who's done this?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So I'm always watching summer League, like, all right, who
gets steals in blocks, Let's get excited. But I think
it's interesting that blocks it does seem to carry over,
there is a correlation and not so much steals.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Do you have theories for why that is?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, I'm glad you actually mentioned because I ever got
a chance to talk about it. And I think, like
the biggest reason is in summer league, there are just
a ton of live ball turnovers that have maybe nothing
to do with necessarily the defense's ability to cause those turnovers,
but rather the you know, the player who's dribbling the
ball's ability to actually keep possession of the basketball. So
I think turnovers are just like one of these stats
(11:15):
that doesn't seem to correlate at all between Summer League
and the NBA. So therefore, steals themselves are not necessarily
a reflection of the player's ability to generate steels. They're
just the ability more reflective of the other players inability
to keep the ball. So I think that's why steels
don't correlate. Blocks, on the other hand, is just like
raw ability, right, Like you're not going to learn how
(11:37):
to block a shot in between Summer League in the NBA,
Like you either have that ability or you kind of don't.
Either have that willingness to go chase after blocks or
you don't. And I think the guy who led Summer
League this year in terms of just like blocks per
thirty six was Jean Berge, the big center guy in
the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had like was like seven blocks
(11:58):
on one of those yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I
think like a pretty good, you know rule of thumb
is like, Okay, I expect this guy to be a
shot blocker once he gets to the NBA, Like that's
gonna be kind of his calling card. And it's just
a little interesting to see. Also some of like the
smaller players who were actually like not bad at you know,
(12:19):
blocking shots, Like Walter Clayton Junior was like like a
very small guard. Uh that's was drafted by Utah, but
he actually like had pretty decent block numbers relative to
his size. So just like things like that, and like
Hansome Yang was another player who just like kind of
popped up the block numbers and you're thinking, Okay, maybe
like this size will actually translate to the NBA kill
(12:40):
off for summer in protection.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, I'm seeing uh, I'm seeing Grizzlies two way signing.
PJ Hall maybe did pretty good on blocks for thirty six,
also pretty good on rebounding for thirty six.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
But PJ Hall is not a rookie, is he though?
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Is yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, he's like twenty for maybe yeah second year. Now,
I'm just I was looking at the just the general
real GM.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
And it's worth pointing out like if we have like
stats from a players G league season, those are probably
going to translate more than the summer league ones. It's
just interesting the summer league because this is the only
data we have on a lot of these rookies and
some sort of you know, NBA context.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So going back to the steels thing and the fact
that there are just so many turnovers, I was curious
if you knew this, do do NBA teams keep track
of steels that are like you actually stole the ball
or you generated that steel versus the ball came to
(13:40):
you like you were standing there and whoever lost his handle?
Like I would like, is there a super steel stat
out there? Yeah, it's like you actually stole the ball.
You ripped the ball away from this person because of
your long wingspan, your deflection, your instincts, your movements, or
like so and so dribbled it off his foot and
you picked the ball.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I interesting, don't think anyone tracks that was actually a
pretty good idea. Someone mentioned that to me the other day. Actually,
it's so such a good coincidence about like live ball
turnovers are so important in basketball, Like there's so much
more powerful than a dead ball turnover because a live
ball turnover turns into fast break points. But you know,
not all live ball turnovers are caused by the defense,
(14:21):
just like you said, some of them are caused by
the player dribbling the ball off their foot or something
like that. And I think in most cases those still
get registered as steals, which is kind of interesting, and
maybe there should be some sort of like unforced air
turnovers or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I know for a fact they're counted as steals from
playing fantasy basketball. So it's like there's steals, there's other ones.
Where it's like they do credit to the guy who
knocks it away most of.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
The time, and then sometimes I'm like, that was my guy.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Whatever, Yeah, that's one I'd be I'd be interested to
know what those stats look like, because I was looking
at the guys who have the most steals in a
Summer League game ever, because jamiir watch. I think the
Wizards guy. I think he picked up eight, which tied
the Summer League record. Donovan Mitchell. That was a game
I went to. He took the ball away from Wade
(15:08):
Baldwin the fourth like four times in that game, and
those were like yeah, But then I saw like Cam
Whitmore had eight steals in a game and he's not
really known for the defense. I also want to know
this is just unrelated to any of the Summer league stuff.
If we improve that stat, does anyone keep track of, Like, like,
I need a rebounding stat that deducts the uncontested rebounds.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I don't care, Like I need NBA stats that say, like,
if if Owen was on the court, he would have
gotten that rebound. I need all those erased. You know,
if I'm standing on the court and there's nowhere near
me and the ball comes right to me. Let's I'm
more interested in like contested rebound rate or something like that,
and I need to know if that if that's available anywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Dude, I think that actually is available on NBA dot Com.
I think they have a category for contested rebounds and
stuff like that. But yeah, that was like a big
sticking point to me when I was when I was
with the with the Knicks, I would always remember Julius
Randa would get a bunch of free thrower defensive rebounds. Yeah,
and it would just be like like just an extra
one or two there every every night.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Well, I'm so sensitive as as a Grizzlies fan in podcaster,
when everyone's like I wish Jaron Jackson Junior averaged nine
rebounds per game.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
You're like, why what is that? Like four extra?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Like I wish he got contented rebounds I got. I
wish he got more of that. I'm not saying he's
an excellent rebounder, but the general, the whole, like he's
six eleven, he should get eight rebounds. Like rebounds are
the most fungible stat in the Ameria, Like, just show
me where he's at. Are there any other players going
back to summ League. Are any of the players or
rookies that that jumped out based on this the sticky
(16:46):
stats that you have.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, So the ones that I thought were kind of
interesting were Colinmary Boyles. He was second in offensive rebounds
for thirty six at Summer League and was just like
kind of like a two ways out there a little bit,
just a huge energy guy, and like the knock on
him is like, this guy can't shoot, but he kind
of does like literally everything else and that might be
(17:08):
enough to kind of make up for the fact that
he's missing this one core skill. So if you were
like a big proponent of Calinary Boyles, who was drafted
by the Raptors, you're like really encouraged by the fact
that he just like went out there and terrorized people
on the offensive class. The other one that I thought
was pretty interesting was well two of them. So one
was Curtis Jones, was the two way player for the
(17:29):
Denver Nuggets who was unsigned, I mean he was undrafted
and then was signed after Summer League because he was
just like awesome. He was one of the like the leaders.
I think he actually averaged more points per thirty six
than any other rookie Wow, at Summer League, he had
a ton of assists and he was bombing threes and
he was just making all his threes. So that's like
a really deep cut. Went to Iowa, Iowa State, and
(17:52):
he could be really good, but who knows. The other
guy that I thought like popped a lot was two
guys in Charlotte, like Liam McNeely and also Ryan Kulkbrenner.
I thought both of those guys were like awesome at
Summer League, which was kind of funny that kan Kinnepple
won Summer League MVP when I was like, I think
he might have been maybe the second or third best
player on his team because also Hall was on that team, right, PJ.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Hall was, Yeah, so he wasn't allowed to play in
the championship game a deal. I was curious about con
Kinnipple because like he did pop at least like the
assists for thirty six they were, Yeah, they were pretty
high for him. Also, I think he had maybe one
of the higher three point attempt rates, so that maybe
he was actually playing a similar sol to what he
might look like.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Totally yeah, I'm looking at him. It's like him and
Leam McNeely. Are like right next to each other on
the leader board, like Liam McNeil had five assists per
thirty six, khn had four point nine three point attempts.
Con had nine point one, Liam had eight point seven.
Ye like they're just like they were like pretty much.
It's just funny that Kan Kinepple got a lot of shine. Yeah,
feel like there were other players on Charlotte that were
also very good.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I was.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I admittedly it was too heavily influenced by one game
I saw where Kalchbrenner was getting blown by by Walter
Clayton and Isaiah called you over and over and over,
so that that that left too strong of an impression
on me to maybe something.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
I might I might go down the ship on that one.
But I okay, that's fair like boy is sitting on
a hot take that I think Charlotte actually might be
sneaky good next year. And I kind of liked the
centers in Charlotte way better than I like the centers
in Phoenix. Who you know they if.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You get if you get the pick offer from the Suns,
might as well move on from Mark Williams try something new.
It was only a couple of games but my guy
Javon Small jumping off the board, all his advanced stats
looking great, and he really high assist for thirty six,
So yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
He let all I think he led all drafted rookies,
and assist for thirty six was just kind of killing
it out there. So it's so was Mayshack.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Though Mayshack was thirty six also very high, So yeah,
it was just kind of very high.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That was p find. It seems like, let's move on
for a couple other things that I know are of
particular interest to you and me. At summer League, the
NBA implemented this rule change they're gonna add to the
regular season, which is heaves no longer count against your
field goal percentage if you miss them, as long as
(20:18):
you fulfill a bunch of things like shoot it from behind.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
What was it?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
It's not even half court, it's like the yeah, it's
like it's weird.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
It's like the extended circle on the other side of
the court. Basically, so once you cross half court and
once the logo basically cuts off or the center circle
cuts off, that's where you can shoot it from where
it doesn't count against your own individual field goal attempts.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But This is a This is a needed change. I've
been a proponent of this for a long time. I've
been using my position, as small as it may be,
to shame players who do this, Like Lebron James has
shot like two keaves in the last sixteen years, Kevin
Durant never takes heaves, and we're talking guys doing it
in the play offs New it's Atlanta Hawk Luke Canard
(21:03):
preserving that precious field goal percentage, like not doing like
this is the This should eliminate.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
The right after the buzzer heave or shot.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You know, we're like, oh, I tried to get it off,
but it did seem like I don't have the numbers.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Do you have the numbers in summer league?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So I couldn't find the summer of the So it's
funny because like used to, they used to record back
court field goal attempts that you could find pretty easily,
but because they made this change, those are no longer
counteriza court field but they're just gone. So like h
there was there was way fewer of them this year, effectively,
so you have to kind of actually go back and
watch the stafer dig into the play by play dad
to find out.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
It felt it felt like they were going up a
little more frequently. I felt like guys were launching them
full court many many times.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I appreciated that.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, for me, there's no downside. It's like what
a weekend. I mean, what are the numbers going to say?
Are may get six more makes? I mean, we're not
gonna get that many more makes?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
You know, Yeah, that was interesting thing. So, like the
G League introduced this change last year after having the
same problem as the NBA does. Players weren't taking them.
So twenty three to twenty four there was only three
hundred and seventy of these heaves attempted. Once they institute
the rule, there was five hundred and sixty five, So
like it went up fifty percent, but was interesting just
to your point, there was actually only two additional makes.
(22:18):
So because players were taking like increasingly audacious why the
hell not kind of shots. It's like, well, it doesn't
cost me anything, so I might as well, like throw
a hook shot from seventy five feet back. And I
think we're going to kind of see some of that
in the NBA, like more of that stuff that you know,
like Jokic was doing, which was just you know, doing
a euros step to a three point shot by the
(22:39):
opposite free throw. He made stuff like that, and he.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Made some of the strangest shot put full court things. Yeah,
he's the one guy because you wrote in your news
letter how absurd it was that so many players didn't
take them because they don't affect your they barely affect
your stats at all. Yeah, Jokic was so notable last
year because he was the first who's like it actually
affected his stats because he took so many of them.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, I mean, it's that was it. That's been my
whole bugaboo about these heaves is that players are always
talking about preserving their three point percentage of their field
goal percentage. I'm like, it's like five extra shots. Like
it's not actually going to materially drag down your numbers,
particularly if you're taking like three hundred threes in a season.
But it was just it was to your point, it
was very interesting that you know, Jokic took twenty five
(23:25):
heaves last year that would have changed his three point percentage.
He was he shot forty one point seven percent on
the season. But if you removed those missed heaves, and
if it were you know, the rule had counted last year,
he would have shot forty five percent from three. So, uh,
that was just extremely interesting in the sense of he's
one of the first players who took enough heaves to
where it would have like actually materially affected his top
(23:48):
line numbers, because like in the past, he had guys
like Andre Miller taking like twenty heaves which were which
was effectively a third of his entire three point attempts,
and so you know, he's just getting like he extra misses. Yeah,
in his denominator. So going from like a you know,
a thirty seven percent three point shooter to a twenty
five percent three point shooter.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I want to know if anyone in Denver has asked
Nikola what happened to this year? He never shied away
from them. But I'm looking at his Basketball Reference page.
He had twenty eight before this season in his career. Yeah,
and then he just started launching him. Maybe he's like,
I don't care anymore, I'm just gonna put him up.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I think he's just he's just a guy that feels
like he adds a new trick every year. There's always
one new thing, Like he's doing these you know quick
inbound passes. One year he's doing like the trying to
draw the full court shooting foul, which I think is
like his white Whale, where he's always trying to you know,
trying to get someone to to call on that, which
I think is gonna be great whenever that happens. But yeah,
(24:48):
I think he's just always adding one little new trick
to the book every year.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
It honestly feels like if I'm Lebron James, I still
don't take heaves because I feel like it looks worse
if Lebron takes like ten this year, it's just push that.
Guys like me sitting in a basement yelling at him,
We're like, you're.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Being selfish, Like, you know, why would you pass up
the chance? At three points?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I went I almost full sick on mode this year
during a very slow period of the F five, and thought,
I'm gonna watch every end of the period to see
who has you know, ignored the heave the most, Who's
who's often out of the heave the most. Yeah, And
I got pretty far down the path and I was like,
this is stupid. This is going to be interesting to
like two people. And I was like I don't think
this is worth it, but maybe I'll revisited this summer
(25:32):
when there's a little more time.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
That's no.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I'm one of the two people, so I appreciate the
effort that you have put into many of your things.
To wrap up, I do want to go back to
one thing about your summer league stats. You did it
sounds like expressed some reservations about Cooper Flag. And I've
never heard anyone express reservations about Cooper Flag. So Owen
(25:55):
plant your flag?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
What what?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
What?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
What?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
What negatives did you take away from the two games
by Cooper?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Look, I don't want to sound any alarms. This is
not to say Cooper Flag is a bust or that
he's not gonna be everything everyone hoped him to be.
I just think there's a after watching him at Summer League,
I am now tempering expectations in terms of the type
of player he's going to be in his rookie year.
I was, in my head had him as like this,
you know, ultimate connector glue guy who's like AK forty
(26:26):
seven on steroids or something like that. You know, just
like a guy who's kind of at threat to do
a five x five on a basketball game or something
like that. Having watched him at Summer League where he
was kind of asked to initiate the offense a lot,
sort of like be the primary playmaker. He sort of
looked to me this I do not mean this as
an insult. I mean this like as just a way
(26:46):
of sort of describing who he is. He kind of
looked more to me like Detroit era Jeremy Grant, who
was like finally thrust it into a role of like
being a primary playmaker after playing years as sort of
a secondary guy. And it makes sense, like it sounds
like they're going to be without Kyrie Irving next year.
They only have like one other player on the roster
who can dribble a basketball. So maybe the match just
(27:07):
kind of wanted to see what Cooper Flag would look like.
But if you go look like, he didn't really have
a lot of assists, He had no offensive rebounds, had
very low block numbers. Like those are things that I
would have thought he would have really popped in based
on sort of his play in college and sort of
his general scouting profile of this guy who sort of
does a little bit of everything. Instead, he was sort
of just like poor man's Jason Tatum at summer League,
(27:29):
which is totally fine, Like, maybe that's good, Maybe that's
better for his development long term, if you want him
to be that kind of player. I guess in my
mind I kind of thought he was going to be
one type of player, and then seeing him at Summer League,
I'm like, Oh, he's just going to be like this
other kind of player and that he might not be
very good at his rookie year, which is to be expected.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, so that's what the that's what the stats are
telling us. So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
What about your Charlotte Hornets guy for your optimism, because
I knowed this last year, like Tejean Salon no steals
or blocks combined last year. He picked up two blocks
this year. So real GM has him tracked at one
hundred and thirty one summer league minutes, no steals yet.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
But yeah, I'm not buying a lot of stock in
Salon Island. I think that on that one might go
down as a pick that the Charlotte lit on fire
a little bit there.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
They regretted that one a little bit.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah. Yeah, well, Owen, thank you so much for coming
on and talking basketball with me.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Tell everybody give everybody the elevator pitch for the F five.
If I haven't presented it well enough, No.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
You did a great job. It's a weekly newsletter about
data in the NBA where I kind of explore interesting
trends and things that I catch my eye and try
to talk about them through charts and more accessible language
when it comes to stats and numbers and stuff like that.
So if you like that kind of stuff, give it
a shout. It's free comes out once a week.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Also, you just did a thing on the restricted free
agent impass pointing out there's been basically offer sheets have disappeared.
No one even bothers with those anymore, and the restriction
free agents no one will sign them.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
So yeah, check that out.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Thomas jos Also, this goes back to my my pet
peeve of the NBA.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
It's harder for these free agents when like a third
of the teams don't want to win or or only
want to win in a specific way, and so it
becomes like really tough for the guys who like I
can actually score. They're like, we don't want that. Okay, anyways, Owen,
thanks so much, you guys. Go check out Owen. Everybody
who want more from me, Patreon dot com, slash fast
break Breakfast, thanks for listening. You guys are the best,
(29:33):
and remember breakfast is the most important thing.
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