Who is at Fault, Part III

More comments from Bill Simmons on what makes coaches bad coaches.

Not enough winning streaks. Obviously, this doesn't count for the Dream. The Dream don't have any winning streaks. Simmons is attempting to account for teams that are world-beaters one night and egg-beaters the next. I'm assuming that a "win streak" in Bill's mind is a set of two or more consecutive wins. Therefore, a W-L-W-W-L-L-W-L record would consist of one "win streak" in eight games.

Opposing 3-point percentage. Will the three-point shots be contested by the defense? The Dream aren't bad off -- they're in sixth place, with opponents only shoting 32.4 percent beyond the arc. (The leader is the Fever, which holds its opponents to 25.7 percent; at the bottom of the league is the Comets with opponent shooting 42.9 percent from the arc.)

Clearly, Atlanta is keeping teams from dropping bombs from outside. Then again, teams might be more comfortable to just drive the ball into the paint rather than shoot from outside, and that might be relected in the stat line.

Lousy record on the road. I'd say our road record is pretty bad. I think every team in the W has won at least one away game, putting the Dream in dead last.

Lack of a consistent rotation. According to Simmons, it's important for a team to get to know each other. As a point guard, for example, you'd know the tendencies of every player. Who to pass to, who you can expect to make the shot on the low post, who really needs a great open look before you care to pass them the ball. Teams get to know each other's personalities. If the coach is buzzing people in and out with every stoppage of play, there is no flow. A coach who screws around with the lineup all the time destroys a team's confidence, since most players are egomaniacs and take any sort of benching as a slur on their innate ability.

I don't think there's any sort of stat that can measure that, but I'd claim that the Dream are some major offenders, at least in terms of starting lineup. I'd say Betty Lennox, Ivory Latta, and (now) Tamera Young are dependable, but you don't know what sort of mismash of players Coach Meadors is going to throw out there to fill the holes in the other two spots. I tend to agree with Simmons. Pick somebody, even if it's defensive liability Jennifer Lacy or immobile center Katie Feenstra. You have to decide, at some point, "this is what we're going with, win or lose." One message board poster complained about Coach Meadors subbing people in after just two minutes of the first quarter.

Downright stupidity. Or as someone called it, "monkey f--king". A "monkey f--k" is when the coach makes some egregiously dumbass move. The message boards have begun to take note of what they consider such monkey f--ks during Dream games.

* Not performing a countdown from the bench when you are near the ball handler and the shot clock is counting down to zero.
* Having Betty Lennox play point guard at times.
* Putting in Ann Strother to make a critical inbounds pass late in the game when Strother had been sitting on the bench the entire game until that point.

Has the poor monkey been violated egregiously during Dream games? When you're looking for bad things, you'll find them, and you might have a tendency to ignore the good. However, when you're 0-12, it becomes very hard to point out what is "good".

(* * *)

I'll review Simmons's points on what are his supposed signs of a bad coach:

1. Lousy record in close games.
2. Too many turnovers.
3. Too many offensive rebounds allowed.
4. Not enough winning streaks.
5. Opposing three point percentage.
6. Lousy record on the road.
7. Lack of a consistent rotation.
8. Downright stupidity.

Many of the things there can be found in the statistical records.

1. Lousy record? 0-2, and the New York loss was particularly frustrating.
2. Turnovers? We're 12th. But Betty Lennox sure turns over the ball a lot.
3. Offensive rebounds? We're just horrible, at the bottom of the league.
4. Not enough winning streaks? Yes, because we haven't had a win.
5. Opposing three point percentage? The high point. We're sixth in three point percentage against.
6. Lousy record on the road? Yes. Lousy record at home, too.
7. Lack of a consistent rotation. I don't have a stat to look at this, but I'd say "yes".
8. Downright stupidity. Message board posters will continue to note humps of the ol' monkey.

My conclusions will come in a future article.

Who is at Fault, Part II

I'm going to continue an earlier entry which asks the question "Is Coach Meadors the reason why the Dream are doing so badly? Or is it the team that's not up to par?

Offensive rebounds. Bill Simmons's uses an offensive rebound differential stat:

Your offensive rebounds - Your opponent's offensive rebounds.

I consider that stat just a bit suspect. Offensive rebounds are all about second chance points. However, your offensive rebounds are basically how many second chances you get at a shot. When you subtract the opponent's offensive rebounds, you're taken away your opponent's chances. I don't quite understand why these two should combine, except as a measure of general rebounding aggressiveness or toughness.

Here are the results:


Off Reb/Game
Off Reb of Opp/Game
Difference
Detroit
12.8
9.1
3.7
Houston
11.8
9.4
2.4
Washington
9.5
8.4
1.1
Connecticut
11.8
11.3
0.5
Sacramento
11.8
11.3
0.5
New York
10.2
10.2
0
Indiana
9.9
10.1
-0.2
Minnesota
10.2
10.8
-0.6
Los Angeles
11.1
12
-0.9
Seattle
10.5
11.4
-0.9
Chicago
10
11
-1
San Antonio
9.5
10.7
-1.2
Phoenix
10.8
12.1
-1.3
Atlanta
10.5
12.9
-2.4

The first smell test for a statistic is "do the results jibe with my common sense?" In this case, they do. We'd expect Detroit to be at the top of the table and Atlanta at the bottom. What I didn't suspect is how far down along the bottom we'd be. Note the big jump between the Mercury's difference (-1.3) and the Dream's (-2.4)

However, much of this isn't Meadors's fault. We've had problems for several reasons -- Erika DeSouza is injured. Izi Castro Marques was off playing for the Brazilian team. There have been gaps in the rebounding game due to the fact that the players we expected to be there weren't there.

Some might point to the Ann Wauters/Camille Little trade as a mistake. However,

1) There was no guarantee that Wauters would play. She's sat out seasons before. She declined to play for the Liberty. She's European, and she can simply pick and choose what WNBA team she wants to play for. Do we have any guarantee that she would have even reported to the Dream?

2) We get a 2009 first round draft choice. That's going to help build the team.

I think even with the bad rebounding, we have to give Coach Meadors a pass. If the rebounding stays bad...? There are still over 20 more games to play. Give it time.

Who is at Fault?

Note: Today might be just as busy as yesterday. So I'm going to start this post, and I will probably finish it later. And yes, I know we're still waiting for lots of things -- an analysis of the Dream's game against the Silver Stars, other WNBA outcomes, and the like. We might have to wait for some time if work keeps busy. I'm writing on my lunch hour.

Bill Simmons might be a jerk when it comes to the WNBA, and he might have unfortunately popularized the "more about my personal life and pop-culture tastes than actual game analysis" style of sport journalism, but every now and then, he writes a gem.

With some Atlanta fans turning against coach Marynell Meadors, I want to know if she's really just as bad as they say she is, or is it just that the team is bad and there isn't much she can do about it. You give Casey Stengel the 1962 Mets, and he's going to lose games. Maybe no coach could have made chicken salad with the chicken...stuff on the court that the Dream is providing.

Simmons, in an article about former Celtics coach Doc Rivers called "What's Up, Doc" lists what he believes makes a bad coach. The good thing about his list is that most of it can be hunted up in the statistics; the stats don't lie, but we have to decide how to interprent what they mean.

His bad-coach metric consists of anaylzing the following:

Lousy record in close games, or games with a final margin of five points or less. He does't provided much of an analysis of why this margin-of-victory stat is important.

The Dream have only had two such games: an 85-81 loss to Minnesota and an 81-77 loss to the Liberty. The Dream are dead last in average margin of victory, losing games by an average of 13 points. The first loss was really decided in the second quarter and the Lynx had to shoot the lights out to win it. However, if we're looking for Games Thrown Away, it would be the game against the Liberty, where the Dream turned a six-point lead going into the fourth quarter into a four point loss.

Turnover average. According to Simmons, well-coached teams don't turn the ball over. The Dream are 12th in the league with 18.7 turnovers per game. Two other teams in the bottom half of the NBA are actually worse, with the Monarchs actually an additional turnover worse than the Dream. In terms of "turnover versus", we turn the ball over on an average of two times a game more than our opponents, which puts us at 11th. It could be worse. The Sparks give the ball to their opponents three times a game, worst in the league.

I had a nice rant about rebounding coming up, but the WNBA site doesn't break down rebounds into offensive rebounds and defensive rebounds. So I might have to do that myself.

Lunchtime is coming to an end. Check in later!