"Material possessions wear out and become a burden. Possessing the ball endures."

--Craig Ross (via Leon Blum)

At media day in 2018 Luke Yaklich said (something very close to) “what gets measured can get accomplished.” Looking at Michigan’s surprising (to me) 30-7 season, I wonder if a corollary might be even more salient; that “what isn’t measured, or isn’t measurable, isn’t appreciated.”

Michigan’s terrific season found the Wolverines to be pretty average in all elements of shooting the ball. Number 24 in offensive efficiency is hardly terrible, but the Wolverines were (slightly) below average from the line (70.1% versus 70.7%), slightly below average from 3 (34.2% versus 34.4%) and slightly above average from inside the line (51.8% versus 50.1%). These numbers are OK, but not this-team-is-winning 30 of its games OK. So, what’s up?

The answer, of course, is defense and the homily that “defense travels.” Shooting comes and goes, but the thinking is that defensive ability can remain within more narrow limits over a number of trials. Kenpom tracks defensive efficiency and Michigan (after clocking in at # 3 in 2018) was in the top five all year on this measure, finishing at # 2 (TTU, of course, was #1) and flirted with #1 over the last couple of months of the season.

Defense is a team game, of course, but I have had the luxury of sitting close to the floor and the trio of X, Matthews and Teske, was well, I dunno, enthralling for a basketball junkie. I watched Ricky Green and Gary Grant for their entire careers and I never thought I would see better defenders at the point in my lifetime of observing UM. I was wrong. X is a magician on D.

Charles Mathews has been a unique defender since he has the ability to erase a shooting guard or forward. He can cover a point. He won’t back down from a big man on an unhappy switch. From a defensive perspective, the only Michigan forward who matches Charles was Wayman Britt (Britt is the best UM defender I have ever seen) who could (and did) demolish Adrian Dantley (Britt was 6’ 2”) or switch and check a point with ease.

For the record, John Beilein says “Simpson and Matthews are the most driven defensive players I have ever coached.” By rumor, Beilein has coached for a long time.

Chris Webber was a phenomenal defender in his years at UM (let me get back to that) and Steve Fisher used to intentionally funnel ball carriers to the baseline due to Webber’s unusual ability to eliminate any ordinary advantage. Indeed, it was death to most possessions to try to beat those teams to the baseline. Of course, Webber was playing with Juwan Howard, a solid 6’ 10” quasi-post player who could help cover a player disengaged by Webber. The Fabs could play offense, but their defensive abilities weren’t far behind, if they were at all. Rose could defend. Jackson and King could defend. And, at the time, fouls were often called for breathing hard.

Taking Webber out of the comparative equation, I have been stunned by Jon Teske’s ability to play defense. It isn’t just me. When Mark Turgeon stepped to the podium after his impressive team’s loss in Ann Arbor, his first words were “Jon Teske” and how he limited Maryland in their inside game. “Teske,” Turgeon said, “was everywhere.” This is, I think, hard to appreciate if you are watching a game from distance or not watching in slow motion. Teske’s ability to cover the pick and roll---allowing the original defender to catch up---his ability to hedge off ball screens and still defend a big man in the paint, is at a level I have never seen at the NCAA; or maybe any level.

WHAT STATS WE HAVE

But this is pure holism, I concede. It is just an opinion, though I was gratified to see that Mark Turgeon shared it. So I began to wonder if there was some way to measure at least some elements of defensive ability and I came up with the construct of “Extra Possessions Created.” [I can’t swear someone else didn’t think about it before or isn’t tracking it comprehensively now.] I don’t suggest this is the entire way of measuring player value. Not even close. I don’t even claim it is a complete measure of defensive ability. It isn’t. But I think it may hold some kernel of “objectivity” concerning the “defensive” value of a player.

Start with a simple example. Team A shoots 47% as a matter of effective field goal percentage. This would be a dreadful number, what Northwestern did in 2018 at # 327 in the country. Assume they are playing Georgia, a team at 50.7 % and # 178, a very average number. HoeHow How many more shots does Northwestern have to take to balance the books? Assume an average number of shots per game (shot equivalents) is 65. I haven’t evaluated this, but I did run a few teams to see if this was close. If NU takes 65 shots and Georgia takes 65 shots NU loses by 5 points, 66 to 61. But what if NU can grind out 5 more shots? The game is now a push. Would we ordinarily consider 5 shots to be a big deal? Well, it seems like it might be.

This idea led me to consider the value of a “defensive” player in the number of “Excess Possessions Created.” This might be:

ORBs+Steals+ (%*Blocks)-TOs=EPC

Offensive rebounds seems obvious. You get an extra board? You just created an extra possession for your team. Same for a steal. Blocks are a bit more problematic, since not all blocks will lead to another possession. Sometimes the ball goes off the defender. Sometimes the ball lands in the hands of an offensive player. Originally I guessed about 1/3 of blocks resulted in an extra possession for the blocking team. But this has been studied in the NBA (“Kill Rate”) and it seems, at least with the pros, the percentage is between .5 and .68. For the moment my hypothesis is to work with .55, knowing this may be a placeholder and knowing that there is at least one other problem.

The problem is the (theoretical) “intelligence” of the guy blocking the shot. We have all seen players who are more interested in style points, the spectacular play. A ball being blocked about 5 rows into the stands is impressive. But less impressive blocks, those that fall into the hands of a teammate, are a lot more functional. Could it be that some players have a greater capacity to keep balls in play? Anthony Davis, in one study (50 blocks) had a 66% kill rate. Draymond Green? 50%. Andre Iguodala? 80%. My guess is you might have guessed this. On the other hand, the sample sizes are low. The macro data, averaging it all out, is around 55%.

Another problem is the question of TOs since TOs are of different quality. A charge, an illegal screen, or a ball thrown into the crowd isn’t as bad as being picked at mid-court. One results in an ordinary extra possession. The other is likely to lead to an easy run out. This leads to another question, whether it is logical to weight TOs and Steals equally. Since a steal is more likely to lead to a run out than a (say) charge, weighting this equally seems problematic. I am going to guess here, that a steal is about 10% better than a TO. With the caveat that this is a very preliminary stab, here’s my first idea for the construct for a “defensive” valuator of Excess Possessions Created. It is:

ORBs+ (1.1 * Steals) +(.55 * Blocks)-TOs=EPC

Using this, here are the numbers applied to some centers. Why centers? Good question. Partly because I mouthed off on radio and said, excepting Webber and Howard, Teske was the best center in UM history. Partly because I think the primary value of most centers is defensive. They have to be (a) the primary rim protector and (b) be able to get out on balls screens and make sure the offense doesn’t get easy looks off the pick and roll. Also, since most centers are not primary scorers, their value accrues in giving the offense the greatest number of opportunities. That’s my theory at least, with the admission that guys like Kareem or Olajuwan or even Ethan Happ have a value that doesn’t come close to being expressed in such an equation. Note that “Ad.EPC” normalizes to 1000 minutes.

Teske’s EPC amount to 3.4 extra possessions per game. Go back to the Northwestern and Georgia hypothetical to see how consequential this is.

Oden was tremendous in 2006-07. And his offensive numbers (1.63 points per shot compared to Teske’s 1.31 points per shot) are better than Teske’s despite the fact Teske was an above average three point shooter in Big Ten games (36.4%) though flopping out of conference (Teske was 3-22 OOC and Oden never attempted a three.) Holistically, I believe Teske creates more space on offense than Oden ever did, but, yeah, Oden. But Oden was known as a great defender and he was. Maybe as good as any center in the BT in a long time. Teske, however, is not all that far behind.

Webber? Well, let’s throw him into the chart.

Not sure what to make of this at the moment. A work in progress. However, I will go through box scores to get a better number on C Webb’s offensive rebound numbers. Here’s a scan for all BT centers in the 2018-19 season:

EXTRA POSSESSIONS CREATED, 2018-'19 BIG TEN CENTERS

At the moment this is just the start of an idea of some creating some “objective” way of evaluating a center’s (at least) “defensive value,” with ORB added into “defense.” I will be curious about others impressions of the matter.

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Notes & Errata

1. Senior Year
2. Junior Season; ORBs estimated from his Junior Year
3. Player of the Year in the BT. Estimated ORBs at .33.
4. #1 Player in the NBA draft.
5. Year 2.
6. Estimated from 362 total rebounds
7. Year 1
8. Estimated
9. No surprise to Brian Cook, on the Tillman train for some time.