Charlotte Bobcats – Offseason Review

Since the beginning of their existence, the Bobcats have come to define mediocrity on and off the court. On the court, various collections of NBA castaways and second fiddles have combined to produce four losing seasons in the (L)Eastern Conference. The executive one-two punch of Robert Johnson and Michael Jordan seem much more interested in gracing the covers of business magazines and passing off blame to others than building a successful team. But there is some hope for this franchise in 2008-2009. The Bobcats resigned Emeka Okafor to a long-term contract, thus ensuring that one of the few decent players the franchise has cultivated would remain on the team. However, the bigger news was the signing of Larry Brown as head coach.

Brown is one of the most recognizable and respected of current NBA head coaches. While his penchant for changing teams and exerting a tyrant’s hand in the front office has lead some to question his value, those worries should not be a problem for Charlotte. Brown’s ego is likely still bruised from his ignominious exit from the New York Knicks, and he is likely to want to see his new Bobcats project through to a more successful conclusion. Furthermore, Brown is now 68, and has been voicing concerns about his family and his health for some time. Most importantly, he has a strong personal relationship with Bobcats GM Michael Jordan, a relationship much stronger than he has had with team executives in past stops. But even after pushing those questions aside, the question still remains, what can Brown do for the Bobcats?

The Brown Effect

Coaches, unlike players, are judged by one primary stat: win-loss record. In the absence of any other compelling stat, it will be interesting to see if anything more can be gleaned from this most basic statistic. First, it might be interesting to look at the records of Brown’s teams the year before he started as head coach and his first year. (Because Brown took over the Clippers mid-season, I am calling the portion of the season before the takeover “Record before LB,” and estimating the difference between Brown’s 35 games and how the Clippers would have performed in those 35 games if they maintained a consistent w-l record).

Team Record before LB Record Season 1 Difference

Cougars(ABA) 35-49 57-27 +22

Nuggets(ABA-NBA) 37-47 65-19 +28

Nets(NBA) 24-58 44-38 +20

Spurs(NBA) 31-51 21-61 -10

Clippers(NBA) 22-25 23-12 +7 (est.)

Pacers(NBA) 41-41 47-35 +6

76ers(NBA) 22-60 31-51 +9

Pistons(NBA) 50-32 54-28 +4

Knicks(NBA) 33-49 23-59 -10

Bobcats(NBA) 32-50 ?

Overall, an average of Brown’s first year win improvement is apparent (3.7 wins for just his NBA stints, and significantly higher if you factor in his ABA jobs). But such an analysis seems superficial. It doesn’t take into account that Brown mostly took over bad teams. Bad teams usually 1) have high draft picks and 2) and some imperative to improve (as evinced by firing the previous head coach and replacing him with someone else, often Larry Brown). So, on average, a team that finished with 20 wins is more likely to increase their wins by a greater factor than a team that finished with 50 wins.

Such analysis also does not properly analyze individual coaching efforts. While the Pistons only won four more games under Brown than they did under Rick Carlisle the previous year, Brown’s first year with the Pistons is arguably his best coaching job, insofar as he won the NBA title that year by defeating the heavily-favored Lakers. If you were to add playoff victories in an attempt to rectify the situation, then other coaching efforts, like Brown’s turnaround of the Clippers (who broke a significant barrier by making it into the playoffs only to lose in the first round) would be undervalued.

Properly Measuring Brown’s Effect

A more sensitive analysis might examine the difference between the records of Brown’s teams and their projected win-loss record based on points scored and points allowed (commonly called Pythagorean W-L, based upon the formula used to derive the projection). This intuitively makes sense, because good coaches would make the most difference in close games that feature teams of similar talent level, where strategy and analysis could make the difference.

So perhaps the proper analysis is to analyze the difference between the actual record and Pythagorean projection of Brown’s predecessor, the difference for Brown upon takeover (when the team is most similar to what the previous coach was working with) and Brown’s average difference (to establish a quantity with a larger sample size).

Team Pythag before LB Pythag Season 1 Average Pythag

Cougars(ABA) +1 +3 -0.5

Nuggets(ABA-NBA) -4 +6 +2.8 (+1.3 in NBA)

Nets(NBA) -2 +1 +0.5

Spurs(NBA) +2 -2 +2

Clippers(NBA) -1 -1 -1

Pacers(NBA) -5 -4 -1.8

76ers(NBA) -2 -3 -0.2

Pistons(NBA) -2 -5 -2

Knicks(NBA) -1 -1 -1

Bobcats(NBA) +3 ?

While initially promising, problems arise in interpreting anything meaningful from this data. Brown’s W-L records compared to Pythagorean projections show no clear evidence of anything, and probably require much more sensitive analysis (a problem I will return to in a later blog). My cursory analysis here shows little in the way of patterns or other useful indicators. My hunch is that Pythagorean projection work best in baseball, where runs are scored more independently of the game situation (score and time). In basketball, score and time dictate much more, as coaches put in worse players when ahead or behind by a significant amount. Baseball also has more games than basketball, creating a larger sample size.

Furthermore, Pythagorean projection has an error of 3.5 wins. Basically, since the calculation is a projection, it cannot be relied upon to be completely accurate, and the amount to which it could be regularly believed to be inaccurate is the error. As you can see, most of Brown’s individual seasons and nearly all of his cumulative totals fall within the error figure or so close as to render the results meaningless.

Note: After fiddling with how the approach Brown’s split 1991-1992 season with the Spurs and Clippers, I decided to throw the season out, since every way of approaching the problem still lead to results that fell inside the error.

I hesitate to make any strong statements about this disappointing analysis. It weakly stands for proposition that a coach’s impact on his team is a difficult, and perhaps impossible, skill to measure. (It is an interesting question whether or not the near non-existence of useful coaching stats biases statistical commentators on the NBA, such that they neglect or downplay the impact of coaches.)

What to make of the “unmeasurables”

The Bobcats eschewed free agency is year, looking more toward internal (read: cheaper) solutions in improving upon last season.

1) The team will be returning intriguing performers from injury. Neither Sean May nor Adam Morrison have had stellar NBA careers to-date, but their relative youth and initial draft position require some pause before completely writing off their careers. How they might be deployed depends upon how Brown deploys his roster:

Traditional: Beyond Okafor (and perennially frustrating Nazi Mohammed), the Bobcats have little productivity potential in the post. May’s basketball IQ, ability to score around the basket and collect offensive rebounds could be useful in traditional offensive sets, considering Okafor’s limited offensive game. However, traditional lineups required Morrison to defend stronger, quicker players and be a reliable shooter from the outside. In his rookie season of 2006-2007, Morrison was neither. While Matt Carroll was not particularly a good defender or a great shooter last year, he has shown a consistent ability to do both better than Morrison.

Up-Tempo: The Bobcats’ most common (and relatively productive) lineup last year played Okafor, Gerald Wallace, Jason Richardson, Ray Felton and Jeff McInnis. All players excluding McInnis were playing a position “larger” than their traditional position. In such a scenario, Morrison might be a more effective combo-forward, a player who role on offense is less defined and more opportunistic, similar to his role at Gonzaga. While Morrison may never be a good defensive player, accentuating his offensive game would maximize the gain the Bobcats could get from him. However, May would likely flounder in an up-tempo lineup. He would be an extremely undersized center, and placing him at a forward position negates gains in quickness.

2) Much will be made of how DJ Augustin and Larry Brown click during training camp and the coming season. Brown is notoriously hard on point guards, and if previous experience is at all telling, is unlikely to give Augustin the reigns to the team and let him play the sort of up-tempo style that the rookie seems most suited for.

It appears that the Bobcats best course of action would be to stick with one of its most productive lineups from last year, plugging in Augustin for McInnis, and making use of Morrison and Carroll as first reserves. This would marginalize May, but unlike Morrison, he is not the victim of a fluke knee injury, but several injuries that may be chronic, and the result of his lack of conditioning.