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As the NBA moves forward into the future, analytics are becoming a very integral part of team building and roster management. Now, you may ask, what are analytics and how does it apply to basketball?
In the simplest form, analytics, in general, involves teams diving into many different numbers and calculations to find out the most efficient way to score the basketball and defend the other team.
A good example of a team going all-in on the analytics movement is the modern day Houston Rockets. In the 2016-2017 regular season, they took 88% of their shots from the rim or the 3-point line. They pretty much abandoned the least efficient mid-range shots. As a result, they had the 2nd most efficient offense in the league (behind the Golden State Warriors).
As more and more teams have started using analytics, 5 former NBA stars have found that their style of play has become more and more undesirable. Let's find out who they are.
#5 Jeremy Lin
On February 10th, 2012, an undrafted free agent from Harvard University by the name of Jeremy Lin, dropped 38 points on Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. That day marked the birth of Linsanity. The world went crazy for Jeremy Lin and he didn't disappoint for a month. On March 31st, 2012, Lin hurt his meniscus and as abruptly as it had begun, Linsanity had ended.
What happened next?
At the end of the season, the Houston Rockets, blinded by the brief flash of Linsanity, signed Lin to a 'poison pill' 3 years, $25 million contract. Aside from getting matching haircuts with Dwight Howard, Lin didn't do much in a Rockets uniform. He had 38 points against the San Antonio Spurs though. However, James Harden was out of that game, proving that Jeremy Lin can't be effective unless he is the primary ball handler. Analytics draw an even clearer picture of Jeremy Lin's inefficiency as a basketball player.
For a player with almost zero athleticism, Lin has shot a dreadful 43.3% from the field and an even worse 35% from the 3-point range over his career. On top of that, in 26 minutes per game, he has 2.4 turnovers with only 4.5 assists. He just can't move to his left and has only made 29% of the shots from the left side of the court.
He is even worse on defense and most of today's top guards can replace him with a turnstile and the result will be the same. His minutes have steadily declined and the former phenom is just another player on the Brooklyn Nets squad now.
So, what do you think about the steep decline in the value of these NBA players?
#4 Rudy Gay
Now a solid role player for the San Antonio Spurs, Rudy Gay was once considered a great scorer and a great player during his tenure in Memphis. He averaged about 20 ppg for almost 5 seasons. However, the Grizzlies weren't going anywhere with him. In fact, right after they traded him to the Toronto Raptors, they had the best season of franchise history (56-26) and made the Western Conference Finals in 2013.
History repeated itself in Toronto. In the 2013-14 season, the Raptors were 6-12 with Gay, after they traded him to Sacramento, they went 42-22 for the rest of the year and made the playoffs. Many analytics experts dubbed this the 'Rudy Gay Effect'. If you want to improve your team, get rid of Rudy Gay.
Why does a 20 ppg guy make his team that much worse though? Once you look at the numbers, it becomes very clear. For most of his career, he was a ball stopping black hole on offense. He averages more turnovers (2.4) than assists (2.4), doesn't shoot many threes or draw fouls (4.3 Free Throw Attempts/game) and isn't a good defender (108 Defensive Rating). He also has an astronomical career usage rate of 25% (same as Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce) and he's nowhere near their level. Gay is basically a one-dimensional volume scorer and nowadays most teams are avoiding players like that.
Fun fact: He once banned stat sheets from the Raptors locker room.
#3 Monta Ellis
In 2012, the Golden State Warriors split the fan-favorite backcourt of Monta Ellis and Steph Curry by sending Ellis to the Milwaukee Bucks for center Andrew Bogut. And the rest is history. Years later, this is what Ellis had to say about that trade "I think everything happens for a reason. I think if I was there, we probably wouldn’t have won a championship."
If analytics ever measured truthfulness, Ellis would have some of the highest ratings. Now, on to his time with the Bucks.
In 2013, Ellis turned down a 3 year, $36 million offer from the Bucks as he was looking for 4 years, $40+ million offer elsewhere. Despite averaging 19.2 ppg, 6.0 apg, and 2.1 spg in the 2012-13 season, Ellis did not get any offer that he wanted. Numbers like that usually fetch great contracts for players, especially if you are only 27 years old. However, he ended up signing a meager 2 years, $16 million contract with the Dallas Mavericks. Way less than what he had targeted. His agent was fired in the process.
Let's see why this happened.
Out of all the qualifying guards for the 2012-2013 season, the only player who scored less efficiently than Ellis was Tony Allen (who's not in the NBA for his offence). The Bucks' offensive ratings dropped to 100 when Ellis was on the court, compared to 104 when he was off it. On top of his inefficient scoring, Ellis was an undersized shooting guard and one of the worst defenders in the league.
All of this made Ellis the prime example of the type of players who the NBA GMs are not going to pay big. As of today, a 32-year-old Ellis isn't the part of an NBA roster.
#2 Josh Smith
For the first 9 years of his NBA career with the Atlanta Hawks, Josh Smith was a jack of all trades on offense and a very good defender. Teams in the league saw this and Smith was a valuable free agent. The Detroit Pistons signed him to 4 years, $54 million contract in 2013 and one-year later....they waived him!
In the 2013-2014 season, Smith averaged 16.4 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 3.3 apg, 1.4 spg and 1.4 bpg. They look like good numbers for a starter until you see Smith's efficiency(or lack thereof). He shot 42% from the field, an abysmal 26% from the 3 point range and just 53% from the free throw line. Out of all the players who took at least 15 shots per game, Smith had the lowest True Shooting percentage by far. His plus-minus rating was also negative.
Aside from the heroic performance in Game 6 of the 2015 playoffs against the Clippers which helped the Rockets overcome a 3-1 deficit, Smith's NBA career has been pretty much dead since 2014.
He played for the Sichuan Blue Whales in China, joined the pre-season team for Israel's Maccabi Haifa, and was most recently waived by the New Orleans Pelicans after 3 games.
#1 Rajon Rondo
Even though he recently had 25 assists in a game for the New Orleans Pelicans and has somewhat revived his career, he is still nowhere close to his time with the Celtics when he was a contender for the title of the best point guard in the league. In his 4 All-Star seasons in Boston, he averaged 12.4 ppg, 10.8 apg, 4.7 rpg and 2.1 spg on a 51% true shooting percentage.
In his 2015-2016 season with the Sacramento Kings, he averaged 11.9 ppg, 11.7 apg, 6.0 rpg, and 2.0 spg on a 51% true shooting percentage. Despite his numbers being almost identical to his All-Star years, why don't many teams want him anymore? The Bulls waived him to just get him off the roster. What could've caused that?
Well, let's take a look at Celtics' offensive ratings during Rondo's last few years with the team: With Rondo: 102.3, Without Rondo: 104.1. With Rondo on the floor, the offense stagnated because the opposing teams crunched the numbers to find out the best way to defend Rondo, which is to NOT defend him. He never really had a jump shot and he was dreadful from the free throw line, so the defenders just sagged off him and clogged his passing lanes. This made him very inefficient and ineffective as a playmaker and many teams realized that a point guard like Rajon Rondo isn't worth having anymore.
Guess the Lakers players!
