The Washington Wizards have been a big disappointment. Most preseason predictions placed the Wizards in the playoffs, but currently the Wizards are languishing in 12th place. I believe the Wizards can easily improve their play. Adjusted +/- ratings (see Chapter 40 of my book Mathletics for an explanation of Adjusted +/- ratings) provide the lens through which we can diagnose and solve the Wizards’ problems.
· Haywood with his +17 Adjusted +/- and -21 defense rating is probably the league’s most underrated player. Haywood is the league’s #1 defender. We estimate that when Haywood is in the Wizards give up 21 points less than they would if he were replaced by an average defender.
· Foye (-16 Adjusted +/-) ,McGuire (Adjusted +/- of -13) and Stevenson (Adjusted +/- of -10) have killed the Wizards.
· The Wizards are horrible when Foye and Arenas play (16 points worse than average) When Arenas plays without Foye the Wizards are very good, 3 points better than average. When Foye plays with Haywood and without Arenas the Wizards play well, 8 points better than average.
· When Haywood and Arenas are in without Foye the Wizards are great, 7 points better than average.
Reducing the time that Foye and Arenas play together will really help. Keeping Haywood on the floor with Foye when Arenas is out would also help a lot. Here are the Wizards best lineups. The Wizards can compete with any team when these lineups are on the floor. For example the first listed lineup (1 A)played 14.87 points better than average per game in 140 minutes outsscoring opponents by 35 points (other numbers are not important).
WAS 14.87 ( 7.40 5.58 -1.82 28.51 0.80 9.82) 140.28 minutes 53 appearances 1 A 11.98 35 $
Arenas Butler Haywood Jamison Young 29.20 years 16709_WAS_2009
WAS 11.68 ( -1.94 4.75 6.70 -13.02 -0.51 11.18) 109.95 minutes 45 appearances 2 A 11.35 26 $
Arenas Butler Haywood Jamison Stevenson 30.04 years 8517_WAS_2009v
WAS 7.06 ( 20.09 22.94 2.85 52.44 2.01 10.67) 45.78 minutes 18 appearances 6 A 5.24 5 $
Arenas Butler Haywood Jamison Miller 30.26 years 2373_WAS_2009
WAS 2.15 ( 19.15 13.51 -5.64 17.75 1.46 10.78) 30.33 minutes 11 appearances 7 A -6.33 -4 $
Arenas Blatche Butler Haywood Miller 28.22 years 2119_WAS_2009
ACTUAL THEORY OFF DEF IMPACT ZSCORE SIGMA PLAYING TIME SIMPLE �
WAS 52.78 ( -0.02 -4.44 -4.42 -9.53 -0.16 10.64) 27.24 minutes 22 appearances 1 B 52.86 30 $
Arenas Blatche Butler Haywood Boykins 28.96 years 32839_WAS_2009
WAS 27.36 ( 22.27 10.70 -11.56 42.74 1.97 10.47) 25.78 minutes 11 appearances 2 B 5.59 3 $
Arenas Butler Haywood Miller Oberto 30.51 years 6213_WAS_2009
WAS 1.29 ( -17.42 4.55 21.98 -29.27 -1.32 5.22) 23.99 minutes 19 appearances 3 B 2.00 1 $
Arenas Blatche Butler Jamison Boykins 29.66 years
WAS 8.09 ( -24.16 -18.68 5.47 -92.70 -2.80 8.18) 20.66 minutes 16 appearances 6 B 16.27 7 $
Blatche Butler Foye Oberto Stevenson 28.59 years 12326_WAS_2009
WAS 30.16 ( 0.36 7.36 7.01 3.07 0.29 14.15) 20.25 minutes 13 appearances 7 B 23.70 10 $
Arenas Blatche Foye Haywood Miller 27.51 years
WAS 7.25 ( -10.94 5.14 16.08 -25.92 -0.92 4.81) 18.93 minutes 14 appearances 9 B 10.14 4 $
Arenas Blatche Butler Jamison Young 27.86 years 16647_WAS_2009
WAS 27.30 ( 6.60 -1.76 -8.36 8.89 0.39 9.81) 18.85 minutes 6 appearances 10 B 33.10 13 $
Arenas Haywood Jamison Oberto Young 30.20 years 20801_WAS_
Thanks for the informative analysis but data tables looks awful.
Figuring out a way to improve the view would help! Maybe pasting your screen-captures rather than copy-pasting the values?
Comment by Serhat — December 30, 2009 @ 4:33 pm
Yeah, Wordpress has to have a table function. Or at least, an option to add excel spreadsheets attached to a post. Or something.
Also, you might want to try shrinking your font size. You don’t really need to do everything in 18-24 point font.
Comment by KMils — December 30, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
The Wizards are a mess and I won’t take much time to think about them. If they can trade Arenas and Jamison of course they should. Those extensions are millstones. But short of that they max out the playing time of Blatche, giving him as much run at backup center as he can handle in addition to his backup PF role. Of course Miller should play and shoot as much as you can get from him. As bad as they are they are only 2 games out of the 8th seed. Get into the playoffs maybe they get serious and play better.
Comment by Crow — January 1, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
I appreciate the larger font.
Comment by Crow — January 1, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
should be…
they “should” max out Blatche
Blatche isn’t great but he is better than McGee on offense and by the numbers better at center defense too.
Comment by Crow — January 1, 2010 @ 1:25 pm
I added explanation of table. Sorry for previously omitting the explanation.
Comment by wwinston — January 2, 2010 @ 7:33 pm