Typical Saturday night Brief Bazooka point. Tonight’s focus will be on David Lee.
Lee has very excellent individual stats. Last season his WP48 was .240 and he was responsible for about 14.1 of the Knicks 32 wins. This year, at the halfway point, Lee had a WP48 of .247 with 7.8 total wins produced.
As a barometer, .100 is average.
Lee’s PER was 19.0 last year and is 22.0 this season. 15.0 is average.
By advanced aggregate statistical measures David Lee is by far the best player on the Knicks.
How is it possible then that he was out of the game tonight when the Knicks made their run?
This is where defense matters.
Lee had a -12 tonight. Of course, he was on the floor for much of LeBron’s unconsciousness, so it makes sense that this number would be low. But when you look at Lee’s overall +/- numbers, you see a similar story.
Lee’s Adjusted +/- this year is -1.53
Using three years of data, his Regularized Adjusted +/- number is -1.624
On defense, he’s actually a +3.850 - meaning the Knicks give up an additional 3.850 points with him on the floor - or second worst on the entire team.
By contrast, a player like Al Harrington, who was on the floor while the Knicks made their run has a -2.105 defensive number … and a rating of -.014 when it comes to WP48.
In other words, defense matters.
But I will give David a lot of credit for what he yelled to Shaq during tonight’s game —
“J.J. Hickson has the easiest job in the world.”
Amen, David. Amen.
Nets on Tuesday.
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