Long time, no see, hear or read. Along with everyone else, I took a little time to decompress from the NBA finals, as well as throw myself into the World Cup. But good news, WOH is back with a brand new invention. Or really, just a new podcast with Rob, where we spend 90 minutes, first talking about the rumored Kevin Love deals with Golden State, (I get my Klay Thompson hate ON), break down the Spurs victory in the finals, before finishing up with some World Cup talk. We recorded pre-draft and pre USA NUMBER 1's winning-by-losing effort against Germany, so that's why it might sound dated.

Yesterday, I looked in depth at some of the cleverness that makes San Antonio so deadly in their half court execution.  Today, I want to give the same treatment to the Wizards.  It seems slightly churlish to be critical - they did just have an enormous Game 1 victory over Chicago. But, I don't think it was their offensive execution which paved the way: Nene made a lot of midrange shots - 7/12 from areas where he shot 43.4 % during the regular season, and the Chicago offense (like the Chicago offense does) sputtered.

I've talked before about the difference between physical tools and the ability to "make a play," and have done so specifically in the context of reading the pick-and-roll. The Spurs, despite having a somewhat clunky offensive game by their standards, still put on a master class in pick-and-roll execution. By comparison, despite their victory, the Wizards young guards clearly have things still to learn. In this post, I'll look at what the Spurs guards do well, and in the next, I'll tackle where the young Wizards guards sometimes fail (though not the Professor Andre Miller as if there's one guy who knows how to win without speed...)

Apparently, the Pacers are done for. Local columnists are sharpening their knives. Zach Lowe has weighed in. The team is squabbling internally.  Their net efficiency is more than 10 points per 100 worse since the All-Star break. At this rate they'll be lucky to get out of the first round. That is, if you buy the prevailing narratives.

Agreeing wholeheartedly with two seemingly contradictory opinions or theories is always a difficult quandry in which to find one's self. On the one hand, it's hard to dispute Krishna's demonstration that the midrange shot is the least desirable look, especially early in the shot clock. Many of the teams with structural offensive problems (i.e. not just they have bad offensive players but are employing the players they have in silly ways) fall victim to the trap of the early midranger. Cleveland and Golden State are prime examples.

As you might have noticed, NBA.COM now includes (some) SportVU player tracking data in each game's box score (e.g.). I'll have a longer piece soon on using and interpreting this box score level data. But, now that we're at the All-Star Break, now seems like a natural time to update the Isolated Rim Protection and TrueUsage/TrueTurnover Rate metrics I've been looking at all season.