Dave in Green

Zeke's stock in the NBA draft may go up as a result of a new metric just introduced to the basketball analytics community. Introduced at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was a paper entitled The Dwight Effect: A New Ensemble of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA. The paper introduces new spatial and visual analytics capable of assessing and characterizing the nature of interior defense in the NBA. In a nutshell, the paper asks two questions: 1) Who is the best interior defender in the NBA? 2) What metrics would you use to answer that question? The paper is worth a read for those interested in stats. For those who want the Cliffs Notes version, after analyzing more than 76,000 shots taken in the NBA, one of the best interior defenders in professional basketball is none other than the Milwaukee Bucks' Larry Sanders, a player we saw at the JAR when VCU visited in 2008. Sanders led VCU to three straight wins over the Zips before being drafted after his junior season. Sanders is probably one of the closest players to Zeke in the NBA in terms of size and style. He's 6-11, 235 pounds, and has a 7-7 wingspan compared with Zeke's 7-0, 235, 7-5. He started out as a shot-blocking defensive specialist and gradually developed his offensive game in college. His junior season stats are remarkably similar to Zeke's senior season stats. Zeke outperformed Sanders in most categories except rebounds, where Sanders averaged about two more per game than Zeke. After reading the paper, as well as an ESPN article on Sanders (Sanders Swatting Way to Stardom; Milwaukee's Young Center Has Become One of the Best Defenders in the NBA), here's what I think: New metrics show that Sanders is currently one of the most effective interior defenders in the NBA in only his third season. Zeke is a similar player to Sanders in both size and defensive style of play. Zeke's final season college performance was similar to Sanders' final season college performance. Any NBA team looking for a Sanders-like performer will probably give Zeke a good look in the next few months leading up to the NBA draft. If one of these teams believes that Zeke can be another Larry Sanders, Zeke gets drafted. Following are brief quotes from the paper's introduction and analysis of Sanders' interior defense: The paper can be found here, the ESPN article here, and the final college season stats comparison between Zeke and Sanders here.

@OU Dude, initial police reports typically have direct quotes of allegations from complainants. That is far from the whole story. As these allegations are checked against observations from witnesses and other evidence, it often turns out that events were not exactly as originally alleged. We each have a unique perspective. We all see things a little differently, we all recall things a little differently, and we all judge things a little differently. The more data we have available to us, the more likely we are to come to a fair judgment. In some cases, much data is withheld from the public and we have to make our judgments based on limited input. It's been my experience from many decades of trial and error that the less data available, the more likely one is to err in judgment.

I never cease to be amazed at how these arena discussions always go off on tangents with some either not understanding or deliberately misrepresenting the positions of others. I don't think anyone posting here in the Basketball Forum is inherently opposed to a new basketball arena that can also accommodate hockey and other activities that require a larger floor space as long as the arena is optimized for basketball and doesn't have compromises for basketball viewing. If I'm wrong about this, please speak up and let us all know if you are absolutely opposed to such a facility. As for me, and I believe most if not all other basketball fans, the only concerns are either that there would be compromises that would make basketball spectating less than optimal or that the added cost of a more flexible arena might cause economic issues for UA. If the additional funding is there for a more expensive arena that can accommodate events that require more floor space than a basketball court and there are no compromises for basketball viewing, I have no issues at all. Just do it.

@RootforRoo44, thanks for the summary.

Andy Katz has some thoughts on the subject in a blog entitled Why Coaches Are Content with Staying Put.

No surprise on Alford. He's a traditional coach in the sense of job hopping. UCLA is his fifth head coaching gig.

Unfortunately, Hugh Hefner wasn't the CEO of the corporation where I was working.

Hey, you guys, my computer's running slow. Could one of you ..... Just kidding. Slightly OT story. I've been a computer hot-rodder with no formal training for more than 25 years. I was working for a major corporation that had its own computer support department. Everyone in our department hated the service they got from the IT professionals, so they used to come to me for help. One guy in our department had years of engineering data on his computer, which he never backed up. His computer crashed and nothing would make it boot. The IT pros looked it over, said there was nothing they could do to retrieve his data, and that they were going to have to reformat his hard drive. He came over to me with wide eyes screaming HELP! I told the IT guy to give me a couple of hours. Ended up using DOS commands to rebuild the master boot record. His computer came back to life, and he was able to back up all his engineering data before letting the IT pros reformat and rebuild his hard drive. Hope the IT pros are getting better training at UA than our corporate IT guys had.

Wikipedia has a brief description of Bachelor of Computer Information Systems, including the following:

Various sites are now reporting that Brad Stevens is also passing on the UCLA gig to remain at Butler. It's a whole new world in college basketball coaching.

With the Zips basketball season over except for the annual banquet, the most intriguing question left about this season's team is where Zeke will go in the NBA draft. Draft analysts and NBA scouting reports offer mixed opinions, with mentions of everything from first round to second round to not getting drafted at all. Some Zips fans have expressed those same opinions right here on ZN.o. I thought I'd start off this thread by moving my last three NBA draft-related posts from the Zeke's #1 thread to this new one. The 2013 NBA draft is June 27, so we'll have the next three months to track where everyone thinks Zeke will end up.

For fans of Marshall Henderson, which part of his character do you admire most, that his probation was revoked after he reportedly tested positive for alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, or that the reason he was on probation in the first place is because he was found guilty in a case which stemmed from buying marijuana with counterfeit money? ESPN link

It's funny, but even though Jake's screen name no longer shows up in these arena discussions, if you read between the lines you can almost sense his presence.

If the purpose of a Zips student section is to create a home court advantage, students should not be encouraged to sit and be comfortable. Students should be encouraged to stand and make the visiting team uncomfortable. Some schools with the loudest, most intimidating student sections don't even have bleachers for those sections, but standing platforms. This includes big name schools such as Duke, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State, etc. From the Wikipedia entry on student section (my boldface):

Any number that doesn't represent negative cash flow over the long run would be just fine.

If the juco route is the best option for JJ, then when Nyles Evans graduates from UA in two years there might be an opportunity for JJ to transfer in and be an immediate Zips contributor as we're hoping Nyles will be next season.

There's a new paradigm in college basketball coaching as first demonstrated by Gonzaga with Mark Few and later VCU with Shaka Smart and Butler with Brad Stevens. It's no longer a given that all rising mid-major coaches will jump ship at offers from high-major programs, even for one of the most storied high-major programs. A lot now depends on the level of commitment a mid-major school makes to its basketball program and to its coaching staff. Coach Smart's decision is only surprising in the context of the way things used to be in college basketball.

@zippy5, I get your point. We all bring slightly different viewpoints to these discussions, and there's often little hard data presented to support anyone's beliefs. Ultimately it's up to those who are actually spending the money, or asking others to invest their money, to produce a quality analysis of the market with projected ROI. It would be nice if we could all have access to whatever feasibility studies UA and/or the city may have conducted to see what specific numbers they project for various iterations of a new arena.

@zippy5, you had me confused there when you asked for some real numbers without providing any real numbers of your own. I get it now that it's just a message board discussion. You make a good point that UA is not likely to try to build an all-purpose arena on its own without the city as a partner. If it's just UA building the arena on its own property and not downtown in partnership with the city, it's likely to be a basketball-optimized arena. So I'd say the odds of an all-purpose arena are pretty small, though I don't have the exact numbers.

The whole concept of men taking primary responsibility for anything involving any physical contact with women is based on the sound principle that men are generally more physically powerful than women and are more likely to do physical harm in an altercation. In reality, there have been documented cases of powerful women physically abusing slightly built men. Beyond that, there are cases of females using mental and emotional abuse to try to offset the male's physical strength advantage. So these situations are not always as obvious as they might appear on the surface. Anything that is done to de-escalate any situation where there's a potential for minor incidents to evolve into major incidents is a good move, even if the solution might not be 100% fair to both parties. Both men and women need to try to understand where their vulnerabilities lie, and try their best to avoid situations where they put themselves in jeopardy.

@zippy5, I'm going to assume here from the points you're making that you've had little experience in the business world. The way it works is that those who believe a profit can be made on a speculative project must convince investors that it's worth investing in that project. I can assure you that it does not work by asking skeptical investors to prove that money cannot be made on a speculative project. The best businesses and the best investors typically do a thorough analysis of the market before investing a dime in physical properties. Folksy tales about once upon a time something similar was somewhat successful for a limited time before pulling up stakes and leaving will not get the job done.

The point that zippyman23 was making is that whatever additional costs are incurred in building, maintaining and operating an all-purpose arena over a less complex, less costly basketball-optimized arena must be paid for exclusively by non-basketball activities. Zips basketball will never generate enough income to underwrite other activities that can't carry their own weight.

Getting close to invoking Godwin's law here.

That speculation addresses only one incident. In fact, there were multiple incidents. There were no reported injuries nor any indication that either party wanted to physically injure the other. Multiple incidents over many months suggest that this was a classic case of two people who couldn't live without each other and couldn't live with each other. If they remained in close proximity, based on previous incidents there was at least a possibility that future incidents might occur. UA decided that the prudent course of action was to create physical separation between the two by excluding one from the UA campus.

I could not agree more with Dyer's praise for Coach Dambrot. He's a pretty special basketball coach when it comes to looking out for his players. There's a line in the story that's something new to me. All the speculation I've seen to date has been that Abreu signed for the package. The following suggests that it was the other kid who lived in the house where the package was delivered who signed for it. It's likely that there are many details about the situation that are not yet public knowledge.