Stats, commentary, analysis
For a few minutes in the first quarter, the Washington Wizards played well, Jordan Poole kept hitting shots, and the Wizards stayed close to the defending champion Boston Celtics. Then Boston awoke in the second and third quarters, built a 30-point lead, and coasted home to a comfortable 20-point win.
It’s about the best that could have been reasonably hoped for given the wildly divergent expectations for the two teams. Boston is the favorite to repeat as champions. The Wizards will have one of the league’s worst records.
The Wizards started three kiddos, including first round picks Alex Sarr and Bub Carrington — both 19-year-old rookies, and Bilal Coulibaly, a 20-year-old second year man.
Both Sarr and Carrington were overmatched for the most part. Coulibaly had a decent game as a playmaker and getting to the free throw line. One of his turnovers was a carry, which left me a bit torn. On one hand, I agreed with the ref’s call — it fit the rulebook definition of a carry. On the other hand, I don’t know what differentiated Coulibaly’s dribble on that play from dozens of other dribbles by players leaguewide. Poole probably had 10-15 dribbles last night that were more obvious carries, but none were called. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The story of the first quarter was Poole. He opened hot, hitting 6-8 from the floor and 5-7 from three-point range. The Celtics adjusted, and Poole cooled — the rest of the way, he shot 3-9 and committed three of his four turnovers. Poole was disruptive at times on the defensive end where he contributed four steals and a block.
Overall, I wasn’t enamored with Poole’s game. The results were good early, though his decision-making still seemed off. He seemed to be more on balance than he was last year. I mean that literally — last season, he slipped and fell a lot when he danced and gyrated with the ball. Last night, he kept the stumble-bumming to a minimum.
Jonas Valanciunas, the free agent center signed in the offseason, came off the bench and was fine. He made shots, grabbed a few boards, and didn’t turn it over.
Corey Kispert was unable to find a rhythm on offense other than attacking the much smaller Payton Pritchard in the second quarter. He shot 3-6 from the floor, but missed all three of his three-point attempts. It was good to see him grab five rebounds and produce three assists — his anemic non-scoring contributions have been an issue with him through his first three seasons.
Kyle Kuzma picked right up where he left off in the preseason, which was not a good thing. His offensive efficiency was atrocious, and he airballed at least two three-point attempts. None of his five long-distance attempts were close.
The team’s youngsters had inauspicious debuts. Sarr, Carrington, and Kyshawn George each struggled against Boston’s high-quality roster. Carrington suffered what’s been reported as a mild sprain of his left ankle attempting a dunk late in the game.
Something I’d forgotten until I sat down to write about this one: the last time the Wizards played a regular season game, they lost 132-122 to the Boston Celtics.
Four Factors
Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).
Stats & Metrics
Below are a few performance metrics, including the Player Production Average (PPA) Game Score. PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).
Game Score (GmSC) converts individual production into points on the scoreboard. The scale is the same as points and reflects each player’s total contributions for the game. The lowest possible GmSC is zero.
PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.
POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.
ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average last season was 114.8. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.
USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.
ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.
+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.
