The Boxscore Geeks Show #250: Undefending Russell Westbrook with Greg Steele

Greg Steele joins us to discuss his work on analytics, Chris Paul for Russell Westbrook, and Paul George and Kawhi on the Clippers.

Hosts

Special Guest: Greg Steele(@GreekGodofStats)
Andres Alvarez (@nerdnumbers)
Produced by Brian Foster (@boxscorebrian)

Sources

You can watch us live at twitch.tv/nerdnumbers; we usually go Wednesday at 9:30 pm EST. Follow us on Twitter, and we'll keep you posted!

Please subscribe to Channel NerdNumbers on YouTube and like us on iTunes!

You can download the show direct here.

Video Show

We talk:

Greg Steel of greekgodofstats.com joins us to discuss his work on analytics using updating NBA stats. We break down a lot of how to look at NBA offense and defense w/ new stats.

Greg is in the middle of writing a four-part series on the 76ers and "The Process." The final paragraph in part 3 is poetry.

We also talk the Russell Westbrook / Chris Paul trade and how James Harden will co-exist and if Russell Westbrook's defense will compare to Chris Paul's. We talk the Kawhi Leonard / Paul George teamup in LA.

Greg has some advice for what the Clippers should look for. We lament the Bucks cutting corners on the heels of a great season.

Tune in!

Longform Additions

For those that don't listen to the whole show, I did want to elaborate on two things Greg brings up. Greg uses the new stats the NBA added from tracking data in 2015 to further breakdown player evaluation. The metaphor I use is baseball and batting order. Greg essentially examines a player's role by how much of the load they take on offensively or defensively (not to be confused with the outdated usage metric) and then compares them to other similar players in the NBA. As I noted on the show, this type of approach and methodology is what I wish was more common in the analytics movement.

We also discuss the Bucks and letting Malcolm Brogdon walk and Greg crystalizes a point we've made about building winning teams. Greg notes you can always dump a bad contract in the future (see Chris Paul), but once a good player is off your team, you can't get them back.