Maybe just start The Garbage Time Gang?
Through the Washington Wizards’ first five games, their best lineup includes Eugene Omoruyi, Ryan Rollins and Bilal Coulibaly – The Garbage Time Gang.
Mix and match the lineup with Anthony Gill, Johnny Davis, Delon Wright and Deni Avdija, each of them imbued with the elixir of trash time.
Of course this is a small sample theater.
Of course, it was almost certainly just luck that the team was so far behind that there was no hope of changing the result.
But what exactly is there to lose?
If the Wizards take the field Monday night against the Philadelphia 76ers with a starting lineup of Rollins, Wright, Omoruyi, Gill and Coulibaly, they will almost certainly be shut out.
Here’s the thing though: , they were taken off the field with their “best” players.
Kuzma, Poole and Jones are arguably the best players on the team.
In 5 games, Wizards were completely destroyed by these guys.
This should not be taken as a criticism of Wes Unseld Jr.
and the coaching staff, who I believe are working professionally with this group.
Their offensive design is as solid as their defensive scheme.
The problem is not a lack of adjustment or playing the wrong person.
The truth is, they’re all bad guys – at least in their roles with the Wizards.
That’s the nature of rebuilding a team.
Some guys have to take on more responsibility than they should based on their skills and abilities while the franchise figures out if they can get the young guys to become good someday.
Kuzma’s best role is as a sixth man or fifth starter who plays more with bench units.
Jones was an excellent backup and spot starter.
Poole seems ideal for an instant offense off the bench role.
As the top two or three players, they’re out of their depth.
This is not a knock on them as players – each has real strength and real value to an NBA team.
But not in the roles they have to play in Washington.
What Unseld does when assembling a rotation is a kind of “least worst” calculation.
Essentially, he estimates which players would be the worst in a larger role.
For good reason, he chose Kuzma, Poole and Jones to fill the key roles.
These roles probably won’t change much this season, because the truth is that other options would probably be even worse in a role of similar importance.
I really like Omoruyi’s efforts (for example), does anyone other than Omoruyi think he can attack well?
Does Omoruyi believe that?
Last night the Wizards played Miami as expected.
They even trailed by one, led by six at halftime, then got trampled in the third quarter.
They fell behind by as many as 25 with 6:444.
38 remaining, at which point Unseld gave up.
He replaced Omoruyi, Anthony Gill and Johnny Davis to accompany Rollins and Coulibaly, then the Wizards immediately staged one of their fourth-quarter comebacks, cutting Miami’s lead to only 10 left at the last minute.
Rollins’ three-pointer with eight seconds left made it a final seven-point game.
Observations and Thoughts Poole played his best game of the season, at least offensively.
He shot 8-14 from the floor and 3-4 from three, while dishing out 6 assists on just 2 turnovers.
The team’s defense was confused when he was on the field even though he had 4 interceptions.
At least he kept the Shaqtin’ a Fool games to a minimum.
The only truly embarrassing moment was when he tried to tackle Bam Adebayo in an iso position, rushed the All-Defensive selection four times in an attempt to draw a foul, and ultimately fell to the floor for a turnover.
Perhaps the best game of Davis’ career – 5-5 from the field, three of which were offensive rebounds and a steal.
I don’t think he can shoot well from three with flying knees and elbows, but I buy his defense.
Deni Avdija played a solid game with good shooting, good decision making and timely cuts.
The team’s defense played him very poorly, but I don’t think that’s particularly to blame on him.
I’ll be looking at the backyard – especially Poole.
Coulibaly had some great moments in transition and he made three catch-and-shoot plays.
He also has a good track record of garbage-time pick-and-rolls, which is what he needs to do when the outcome of a game is in doubt.
Kuzma takes a shot in the first half then collapses.
His overall shooting wasn’t bad (52.
6 field goal percentage), but five turnovers to three assists hurt his effectiveness.
Washington’s efficiency was 64.
8% and they lost because the Heat shot 68.
1%.
The starting lineup is especially porous.
I repeat: I don’t think this is a ploy or bad leadership.
I think it’s because Poole and Jones are small and not very strong.
.
.and have average armor penetration.
I think this comes from Kuzma focusing more on the offensive side of things and Daniel Gafford having trouble chasing down blocks.
And I think that’s due to the decline in Avdija’s defensive impact since his second season.
.
.and the abandonment of his ability to penetrate the middle.
Consider me a fan of the tournament during the season.
I don’t like this court, but I like that there’s something special about a regular-season game in November.
By the way, for those who need to hear this: The Miami Heat don’t play in South Beach.
South Beach is essentially the southern tip of Miami Beach, located across Biscayne Bay from Miami.
Kaseya Center, where the Heat play, is located in downtown Miami.
It takes about 10 minutes to drive from downtown to South Beach if there is no traffic and you take the MacArthur Causeway.
Four factors Below are four factors that determine winning or losing in basketball: shooting the ball (efg), rebounds (attacking counter-attack), handling the ball (spinning), fouls (making free throws ) .
Four Elements: Zeal Sorcerer FOUR ELEMENTS THERMAL WITCH FOUR ELEMENTS THERMAL WITCH EFG 0.
648 0.
681 OREB 4 7 TOV 20 19 FTM 9 1 2 P ACE 100 ORTG 114 121 Statistics and Measurement Ci Below There are several performance metrics, including Player Production Average (PPA).
PPP is my measure of overall production, giving players credit for things they do that help the team win (scoring, rebounding, assists, defending) and criticizing them for things that hurt them.
damage (missed shot, redirection, poor defense, foul).
Game Score (GmSC) converts individual products into points on the scoreboard.
The scoring scale is like points and reflects each player’s total contribution to the game.
The lowest possible GmSC is 0.
PPA is a per-possession metric designed for larger data sets.
At small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird.
Reminder: in PPP, 100 is average, higher is better, and the replacement level is 45.
For a game, the replacement level is not very useful, and I reiterate caution on small double samples when producing strange results.
POSS is the number of assets each player has on the floor in this game.
ORTG = Offensive Rating, which is the number of points produced per individual possession x 100.
The league average last season was 114.
8.
The number of runs created is not the same as the number of runs scored.
This includes the value of assists and rebounds, as well as the sharing of credit for receiving an assist.
USG = attack usage rate.
The average is 20%.
ORTG and USG are statistical versions created by Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me.
ORTG is a performance metric that takes into account the value of shots, rebounds, assists and turnovers.
USG includes shots from the floor and the free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.
+PTS = “Point plus” is a measure of the number of points each player gained or lost based on their performance in that game compared to the league average performance on the same number of possessions.
A player with an attack rating (points generated per possession x 100) of 100 and using 20 possessions will generate 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.
Stats & Metrics: Wizards WIZARDS MIN POSS ORTG USG +PTS PPA GmSC +/- WIZARDS MIN POSS ORTG USG +PTS PPA GmSC +/- Jordan Poole 28 59 125 25.
1% 2.
1 178 20.
2 -21 Johnny Davis 13 27 221 14.
1% 4.
2 333 17.
5 19 Deni Avdija 24 49 131 20.
0% 2.
1 131 12.
4 -14 Bilal Coulibaly 26 55 135 12.
0% 1.
6 107 11.
2 13 Ryan Rollins 7 15 147 32.
5% 1.
8 264 7.
8 15 Tyus Jones 24 50 119 14.
3% 0.
6 69 6.
7 -14 Eugene Omoruryi 7 14 141 22.
5% 0.
9 234 6.
2 18 Anthony Gill 7 14 129 32.
8% 0.
9 176 4.
7 18 Danilo Gallinari 9 19 105 34.
9% -0.
4 113 4.
3 -4 Kyle Kuzma 31 64 93 33.
6% -3.
8 20 2.
5 -20 Daniel Gafford 20 41 104 11.
6% -0.
3 6 0.
4 -10 Mike Muscala 12 26 88 19.
9% -1.
2 -2 0.
0 -11 Landry Shamet 14 29 62 7.
0% -1.
0 -12 0.
0 -13 Delon Wright 17 36 26 13.
6% -4.
1 -75 0.
0 -11 Stats & Metrics: Heat HEAT MIN POSS ORTG USG +PTS PPA GmSC +/- HEAT MIN POSS ORTG USG +PTS PPA GmSC +/- Tyler Herro 37 76 123 25.
9% 2.
6 231 33.
9 7 Duncan Robinson 30 61 142 20.
0% 3.
8 223 26.
4 2 Jimmy Butler 31 65 127 21.
5% 2.
3 209 26.
3 6 Jaime Jacquez Jr.
21 44 182 13.
5% 4.
2 270 23.
0 3 Kyle Lowry 26 53 104 14.
3% -0.
5 117 12.
0 2 Josh Richardson 26 53 128 16.
2% 1.
5 113 11.
6 -2 Thomas Bryant 18 37 109 24.
1% -0.
2 60 4.
3 1 Haywood Highsmith 22 45 116 11.
6% 0.
3 24 2.
0 10 Bam Adebayo 30 62 91 28.
3% -3.
5 12 1.
4 6
