The More Things Change

Now that the Wolves have processed their final preseason trade, they finally have settled on a 15 man roster for the year. And unless we see a major drop in a young player's market value (or an in-his-prime star, like Kirilenko), I imagine this 15 man squad is going to remain static for the rest of the season. The only 4 players that aren't young or expiring are Greg Buckner, Marko Jaric, Mark Madsen, and Antoine Walker. I expect Jaric to be the only one to draw interest from other teams, but I doubt they would offer anything for beyond expiring contracts, which the Wolves might not even need at this point.

So I went back and adjust my numbers for the 2007-2008 season, adding in Walker and Doleac's performances, and so my prediction has now dropped from 35 to 32 wins.

Player	PS	GP	Min	PTS
Corey Brewer	SF	82	2050	654
Greg Buckner	SG	31	652	145
Michael Doleac	C	60	1112	318
Randy Foye	PG	82	1640	727
Ryan Gomes	PF	82	1932	749
Gerald Green	SF	82	1476	699
Marko Jaric	SG	82	1264	295
Al Jefferson	PF	76	3060	1460
Mark Madsen	PF	20	270	35
Rashad McCants	SG	76	2020	853
Theo Ratliff	C	70	1050	270
Craig Smith	PF	82	1510	598
Sebastian Telfair	PG	82	1066	323
Antoine Walker	PF	51	578	20

So with that we're right back to last year, which would be considered an accomplishment by most. But one thing to consider is whether there is relationship between a team's possession percentages from year to year. The short answer: no. The long answer: depends on the team. Going back five years, there is a definite relationship for some teams (Houston, Washington, and New Jersey), and not for others (Minnesota). Having a possession percentage of 50% would give the Timberwolves between 28 and 35 wins. An average number of points surrendered per possession would give the Timberwolves a Pythagorean Win number of 32 wins.

Just for fun, I decided to use the +/- numbers for the Wolves to get an alternative win projection. I used the +/- from last year for all of the players except for Ratliff and McCants, where I used their preseason numbers. I also didn’t count any +/- for Brewer. Using this system, the Wolves should be expected to win 26 games next season. Not a successful season, certainly, but not a historically bad season like some are predicting. Now, Brewer’s preseason +/- is -14.7 per 48 minutes. When combined with the 2050 minutes I expect him to receive, that comes out to a +/- total of -628 points for Brewer and a +/- of 988 for the Wolves. That changes the expected Wolves wins to 9 for the season. Either the +/- for the preseason is off (which is most likely) or else Brewer is going to be dreadful. If it’s the latter, I doubt they’ll be playing him 2000 minutes.

The New-Look Wolves: The Rashad McCants Project

At the end of the month, the Timberwolves are going to have to decide what they are going to do with Rashad McCants. Their deadline to pick up his option for next year is the 31st. Despite protestations about his last season, there are several reasons the Timberwolves should keep McCants. They are, in particular order:

1) Depth. With the Walker/Davis trade completed, the shooting guards are McCants, Gerald Green, Greg Buckner, and Marko Jaric. Of course, Buckner and Jaric are journeymen, and Green is young scorer who will probably be spending as much time at 3 as the 2.

2) Trade considerations. McCants is seen as a project, which is more or less accurate to where he is right now. If the Wolves don’t pick up his option, they’re guaranteeing that they won’t be able to trade him if they sour on the project. No rebuilding team would ever want to take him in for half a season, and if he’s good enough that a playoff team wants him in order to make a run, he’s good enough to stay in Minnesota.

3) He’s hasn’t recovered from mircofracture surgery yet. If you check out Wikipedia, it claims that the surgery takes at least 4 months of recovery. Most news stories on it in context to basketball seem to place it at 6 months. But it seems like it takes a lot longer for players to get to full speed.

To figure out a timetable for McCants’ return to form, I looked at several players who had microfracture surgery (Pat Garrity, Adrian Griffin, Penny Hardaway, Mat Harpring, Allan Houston, Jason Kidd, Kerry Kittles, Eduado Najera, Zach Randolph, John Stockton, Amare Stoudemire, and Chris Webber). There are several other players who have had the surgery but I didn’t include for various reasons, mainly those who retired after surgery and those that have yet to return.

Before diving into recovery times for microfracture surgery, I want to make clear that this uses a very small sample size and includes players of various heights, ages, and positions. So the conclusions from this are somewhere between “wild guess” and “informed opinion”.

Let’s start with the overall picture of the players’ performances (for simplicity and my own general sanity, “Year 1” refers to the season before the surgery took place, “Year 2” refers to the season played within a year of the surgery, and “Year 3” refers to the first season after a full year had passed since surgery).

Years	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%	TR/48
Year 1	46.66%	55.70%	37.35%	79.77%	7.606
Year 2	43.86%	51.05%	36.18%	76.36%	8.554
Year 3	46.12%	53.53%	34.01%	77.85%	9.492

Years	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PTS/48
Year 1	5.227	1.713	2.852	0.623	23.09
Year 2	6.162	1.723	3.134	0.456	21.79
Year 3	4.944	1.888	3.071	0.714	22.04

One of the things I find most interesting about this is that the statistics that are indicators of athleticism (rebounds, blocks, and steals) all increase in the third year. My armchair analysis would be that it returning players are attempting to demonstrate their full health, while simultaneously warding off any bench players who might have designs on keeping the minutes gained while they were on the IR.

Of course, Rashad McCants is a unique case. At 21 he’s the youngest player I can find who has logged NBA minutes, gone under the knife, and returned. Here’s how he’s done during his two seasons in the NBA:

Year	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%	TR/48
2005-2006	45.05%	53.90%	37.22%	73.58%	5.029
2006-2007	35.03%	45.43%	26.67%	68.97%	4.065

Year	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
2005-2006	2.215	1.547	3.024	0.774	6.189	22.048
2006-2007	3.286	2.249	3.459	0.605	6.141	15.914

Notice the prodigious drop in scoring, even beyond the norm for players coming right back from having surgery. The athletic statistics have decreased slightly, but could be within the year to year variation. But does this mean the Wolves should expect last season’s McCants back? Well, there is no simple way to answer that question. The two closest players in age to McCants that returned to the NBA are Zach Randolph and Amare Stoudemire. Both came back successfully from surgery, but neither of them (6’9’ and 6’10”) fit McCants in terms of body. The closest in terms of height are Jason Kidd (28,984 minutes played before surgery), Kerry Kittles (9,292 minutes), and Adrian Griffin (5060 minutes). None of them are great matches. Kidd was ten years older than McCants when he had his surgery, Kittles missed an entire season, and Adrian Griffin was a backup who took two years before he saw more than 1000 minutes in another season. Here are the numbers for the three players:

Player	GP	Min	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%
Griffin Year 1	74	1373	43.32%	46.29%	25.00%	84.38%
Griffin Year 2	19	133	27.78%	27.83%	50.00%	0.00%
Griffin Year 3	69	667	36.02%	41.86%	22.22%	75.00%

Player	TR/48	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
Griffin Year 1	9.229	3.671	2.692	1.643	0.21	5.489	11.362
Griffin Year 2	6.857	3.609	2.526	1.083	0.722	6.135	3.97
Griffin Year 3	10.51	3.814	3.094	2.159	0.288	5.613	10.867

Player	GP	Min	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%
Kidd Year 1	67	2449	38.37%	48.48%	32.08%	82.73%
Kidd Year 2	66	2436	39.77%	50.61%	36.03%	73.96%
Kidd Year 3	80	2978	40.44%	52.60%	35.19%	79.51%
Player	TR/48	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
Kidd Year 1	8.389	12.113	2.391	4.194	0.274	2.156	20.305
Kidd Year 2	9.616	10.739	2.424	3.291	0.177	2.167	18.739
Kidd Year 3	9.349	10.831	2.418	3.095	0.467	2.531	17.166

Player	GP	Min	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%
Kittles Year 1	62	1896	43.70%	53.52%	40.00%	79.53%
Kittles Year 2	0	0	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Kittles Year 3	82	2601	46.60%	54.25%	40.50%	74.42%
Player	TR/48	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
Kittles Year 1	5.696	3.595	2	1.418	0.481	3.038	20.43
Kittles Year 2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Kittles Year 3	5.075	3.986	2.399	2.012	0.572	1.993	20.337

These numbers offer 2/3rds of a hope for McCants. Kittles and Kidd were able to come back in Year 3 and shoot better percentages across the board, while not losing much on their non-scoring statistics (though Kittles did a better job in maintain his performance).

Of course, we can see that McCants has played remarkably well in this preseason. And as a point of comparison, he has done far better in this preseason than he did in his rookie year.

Preseason	G	Min	FG%	3P%	TS%	TR/48
2005 Rashad McCants	8	189	46.80%	47.40%	53.70%	4.83
2007 Rashad McCants	5	145	52.00%	33.30%	63.20%	4.3

Preseason	AST/48	STL/48	BLK/48	TO/48	PF/48	PTS/48
2005 Rashad McCants	3.3	1.52	0.76	3.05	8.89	23.87
2007 Rashad McCants	4.3	1.99	0	4.63	5.3	25.16

Of course, part of the reason for his success is that it’s the preseason, and established players aren’t playing as hard or getting regular minutes, and there are quite a few bubble players who are still with teams (I would personally like to see Carmelo or Kobe play a full forty-eight, just to see if they can break Chamberlain’s scoring record). And McCants has 1 ½ seasons of experience in the NBA. Nevertheless, these numbers seem to demonstrate that he is on the right track for his recovery, and should be a valuable part of the Wolves for the next few years.

--All stats are from http://www.dougstats.com, except for the Timberwolves Preseason stats, which are from the Timberwolves homepage.

Of Course

The day after I post my prediction for the upcoming season, the Timberwolves trade Ricky Davis and Mark Blount for Antoine Walker, Michael Doleac, and Wayne Simien, plus a future first round pick. That opens up a 2658 minute gap in my prediction. Rather than dash off and try to figure out how this effects the Wolves' chances this year I'm going to wait until the 31st or the 1st to adjust my predictions, since this guarantees either a 2 for 1 trade or a buyout before the season begins. But this pretty much guarantees a Ratliff/Jefferson/Brewer/McCants/Foye Opening Night lineup, health permitting.

A Bright And Sunny Season For The Timberwolves

The time is upon us once again, as the dawn of the new season approaches, like effusing golden rays heralding the new dawn. A unique crispness fills the air, settling with the comfort…

Sorry about that. I had some purple prose to work out of my system. But since we’re at the beginning of a new season, I thought it would be a good time to unleash my prediction for the Timberwolves’ next season. This is a long and complicated process, which I’ll explain in a lengthy piece here. Skip to the three ellipses if you want to avoid something that sounds like a high school math lecture.

The major problem is that I wanted to try something fairly scientific to determine what happens next. The first half of that is simple. I pulled out the Pythagorean Expected Win-Loss formula (Points^16.5/(Points^16.5+Opponent’s Points^16.5)), which is a predictor of how a team will do in the next season. Of course, I need to know exactly how many points the T-Wolves will score and surrender. Having offended the local witchdoctor, I needed to find a different way to divine the . The first part of it was figuring out who the T-Wolves are going to play, and for how long.

Player	GP	Min	PTS
Blount, Mark	82	1148	455
Brewer, Corey	82	1640	523
Buckner, Greg	4	154	34
Davis, Ricky	82	1510	687
Foye, Randy	82	1640	727
Gomes, Ryan	82	2132	826
Green, Gerald	82	1476	699
Howard, Juwan	4	198	72
Jaric, Marko	82	1264	301
Jefferson, Al	76	3060	1460
Madsen, Mark	4	270	35
McCants, Rashad	76	1520	642
Ratliff, Theo	70	1050	270
Smith, Craig	82	1722	682
Telfair, Sebastian	82	1066	323

This is based on my projections of how many minutes each player will have in the season. The games played is there as a rough marker of why I allocated certain minutes in the way that I did. If you’re curious (and I’m sure you’re waiting with bated breath) I’m predicting a starting lineup of Blount/Ratliff, Jefferson, Brewer, Davis/McCants, and Foye, with all of the young guys getting significant minutes this season. Minutes distributed like this means that the Wolves would be serious about their youth movement, and that the old guys would be getting the short shift, regardless of how good they actually are. Based on this, I took the Timberwolves numbers from last season, multiplied them out so that they would be equal the number of minutes I expect the players to get this year, and viola!, we have the Timberwolves points for the season. Well, almost.

The problem with this is three guys who should receive significant time this season: Corey Brewer, Rashad McCants, and Theo “the Contract” Ratliff. Brewer has yet to play a minute in regular season action, and McCants and Ratliff are recovering from surgeries that I prefer to describe as “horrific.” So I had to find some numbers and fudge them a little in order to describe (however loosely I could) what these three will do. McCants was the easiest; he had a ghastly 2006-2007 season due to the microfracture surgery (despite what the NBA and the doctors say, it seems to take 12-16 months for a player to recover from this surgery, something I will expand upon when I look a McCants more in depth) and so I simply took his career numbers and expanded them to a 1520 minute season. As for Ratliff, I didn’t know what to expect from him; back surgery at the age of 34 is a serious matter, even for those of us who aren’t 6-10 NBA centers. He only played three games last season, so his number from then were obviously unusable, but there is no way of knowing how similar he will to his pre-surgery form. Lacking a good option, I went with the least bad option and simply expanded out his preseason stats. Which sounds (and is) a crazy way to do it. Of course, I did the same thing with Brewer; these games are the only thing he has played at the NBA level, and even though the game is going to be exponentially more difficult in the regular season, it was the best I had.

So the numbers for Brewer and Ratliff are almost certainly optimistic (I believe the numbers for McCants to be about right, as this year’s model is going to be unrecognizable from the 2006-2007 itineration). However, everyone else’s projected stats are pessimistic. Assuming Wittman and McHale go and stay young, then the way these players will hit my expectations if none of them improve. If Al Jefferson is still a borderline star, if Randy Foye, Craig Smith, and Ryan Gomes continue to play more or less like NBA role players, if Gerald Green and (God help us) Sebastian Telfair play with more promise than skill, and if Ricky Davis doesn’t turn it on in a contract season, then this prediction will be accurate. Anything else is a bonus.

Of course, know the points scored is only half (well, 2/3rds) of the equation. The rest is figuring out how many points the Timberwolves will surrender in the season. To figure this out, first we need to know how many possessions the Timberwolves will have. A large part of how many points a teams scores (7736 for the 2007-2008 Timberwolves) depends on how many possessions a team has. Using the simplified possession formula from Dean Oliver’s Basketball on Paper (Field Goals Attempted + Turnovers + (0.4 * Free Throws) – Offensive Rebounds), the 2007-2008 Timberwolves will have 7529 possessions.

A quick diversion before I continue: these numbers are within the range put up by NBA teams last season, though on the low end. 7736 points would make the T-Wolves the third lowest scoring teams last season (1: Atlanta, 2: Portland), and 7529 possessions would put the Wolves as the sixth slowest team in the league (1: Detroit, 2: Dallas, 3:Miami, 4:Portland, 5: San Antonio). Quick math says that that comes out to 1.02 points per possession, which would be tied for 5^th worst in the league, behind Indiana, Boston, Atlanta, and Charlotte, and tied with Philadelphia, and, well, the 2006-2007 Timberwolves.

So using this information, we can know build an approximation of how the Timberwolves opponents will fair. If we look at the number of opponent possessions, it differs slightly from the number of possessions a team has. Even though possession always goes back and forth during play, it is possible to start and end a quarter with the ball, which will give you a +1 lead in possessions. It is possible to get as many as 164 additional possessions a season (assuming no overtime) by taking the buzzer beater in every quarter of every game. But I digress. Looking at the numbers from last season, I took the % of total possessions each team had.

As you can see from the chart, it is remarkably consistent. All but 4 teams ended up between 50.2 % and 49.8 %, and 16 teams are between 50.1 % and 49.9% The highs and lows are 49.63% and 50.21%, with the average being 50.00%. So taking this and a formula of Poss% * x = 7529, we find the number of possessions in a Wolves game. Subtracting the 7529 from this, we find that Wolves opponents should have anywhere from 7466 to 7641 possessions next season. Taking those two plus a 50% possession for the Wolves (7529), we can multiply them by the league’s opponents points per possessions numbers how many points the T-Wolves opponents are going to score (the Opp PTS/Poss range from 0.98 to 1.10, with 1.04 as the league average). So from all of this we come with a range of 17 to 59 wins for the Timberwolves.

Helpful, wasn’t that? Okay, seriously, to figure this out I simply assumed the Wolves would be average at defense and percentage of possessions. Doing that, I come out with…

…

…

…

35 wins for the Wolves! So after all that excitement and drama, why did I give such positive name to this post? Simple: everyone else is expecting them to be somewhere between historically bad and low twenties in wins. 35 wins would be a positive step for the Wolves, showing that they are on par with last season’s team (remember, the Wolves packed it in for the last seven games in order to ensure a draft pick. So they were better than 30 wins. Maybe 2 or 3 wins better, but they were) and pretty much guaranteeing that our draft pick goes to the Clippers after the season. I personally consider that a good thing, as dragging out the process of surrendering the pick simply means that the Wolves have to choose whether they are going postseason or bust every year, which in turn means there are factors besides winning that are part of every game. And stabilization would give the younger players hope as they look towards where they are going to play after their rookie contract finishes. And being that close will certainly allow the Wolves to be part of free agents deals if and when they end get out of salary cap hell.

Personally, I can wait for the Timberwolves next losing season!

---The data used for the basis of this post is from http://www.dougstats.com

The New-Look Wolves: The Curious Case of Mark Blount

Out of the current Timberwolves, no one is likely to cause the fans more aggravation in the upcoming season than Mark Blount. The reason is quite simple: of the 7 players on the team that can be considered prospects for the teams, they break down like so: 2 point guards (Foye and Telfair), two shooting guards (Green and McCants), a small forward (Brewer), and a two power forwards (Gomes and Smith). So not only do the Wolves not have an up and coming center, but Chris Richard is their tallest of the prospects in camp (6’9”), and almost certain to be cut from the 15 man squad. This is a problem, as their other two ppssible centers for this season are the Contract Formerly Know As Theo Ratliff and Al Jefferson. Ratliff can be a decent backup, but unless the Timberwolves plan to keep Jefferson on the court for every minute of every game, he’s going to be paired with Smith, Gomes, Mark Madsen, or Juwan Howard. There’s potential for this combination to get horribly abused by any front two that consists of even average players.

If you were to make a list of Timberwolves that need to be traded, Blount would definitely be number one. I’d say with a bullet, but this has been the case since about halfway through last season. He’s certainly disgruntled, and hasn’t been doing anything for the Wolves besides scoring in bunches. He also makes $7 million a year, which is more than any team is willing to put out for a seven foot jump shooting center. If he was a small forward he’d be the anti-Bruce Bowen and would probably have some value on the trade market, but he’s a center, which is a position where teams look at more than just points per game. And so the Timberwolves are stuck with him, despite deleterious effects he could have on both the team’s and the fans’ morale.

The problem with Blount seems to stem from his apathy about the game. He’s 7 feet tall, not unathletic, and can definitely score, but he’s not interested in playing when he doesn’t have the ball. The thing is, there was a time when he used to care.

Season	PTS/FG	DRB/48	STL/48	BLK/48	TO/48	PTS/48	TO%
2000-01	1.01	5.86	1.71	3.32	2.71	10.84	19.19%
2001-02	0.84	6.82	1.85	2.20	2.66	10.87	18.36%
2002-03	0.86	6.74	1.44	2.33	3.52	13.72	18.16%
2003-04	1.13	7.63	1.60	2.12	3.00	16.85	16.19%
2004-05	1.06	5.72	0.74	1.44	3.56	17.38	16.17%
2005-06	1.02	5.76	0.86	1.63	4.16	19.59	17.25%
2006-07	1.03	6.96	0.81	1.09	3.00	19.06	13.82%
Fall 2000-Spring 2004	1.02	6.97	1.60	2.43	3.05	14.32	17.41%

The only positive from these stats are that Blount has figured out how to cut down his turnovers from horrifying to merely average (starting centers average 13.67%, centers in general 13.99%) as a percentage percent of possessions. The rest shows a player who entered the league with a strong number of blocks and steals, but gradually gave up on trying defensively in favor of putting up solid jump shot numbers.

How do we know he gave defensively? Well, I don’t feel entirely comfortable with advanced defensive measures from Dean Oliver or John Hollinger, so I’m simply going to look at the rebounds, steals, and blocks. And while they barely tell any part of the defensive story, some value can be squeezed from them. In Blount’s case, we can approach them the same way astronomers approach dark matter; the overall drop in the numbers imply that Blount’s effort on defense has dropped since he came into the league.

Now for the fun task of reversing course a bit: Mark Blount isn’t that bad. He’s certainly not a star, and he shouldn’t start, but he knows how to make jumpers, and would be an acceptable scoring option for the second squad. Of course, there’s no way the Timberwolves can move a backup making $21 million the next three years, meaning that he’s going to be taking valuable cap space during that time. But if the Wolves give him starter’s minutes, his terrible defense is going to end up costing them (not to mention that every minute plays at center is a minute Al Jefferson spends at power forward, depriving Gomes and Smith of playing time). My suggestion would be to put him in as a starter for the first month or so and make sure he scores at least 20 points game; follow up by shopping him around the leaguer as a scoring center. In the meantime he’s making money the Timberwolves could spend on Jefferson, he’s taking up time (and roster space) that younger (and probably better) players could use, and his sideline attitude is poor at best. And even though I expect to see Blount in a Timberwolves jersey the rest of the year, I hope that they can trade him by the beginning of next season. After all, there’s someone out there who needs a small forward trapped in a center’s body, right?

-The stats are based on Mark Blount's stats page at http://www.basketball-reference.com/