The 5 Most Indispensable NBA Players

Posted by HoopsAvenue on September 7, 2008 under General NBA | 4 Comments to Read

Today, Tom Brady went down with a serious knee injury and it looks like he is done for the season.  Brady is  undoubtedly one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks and has been practically injury-free throughout his career.  In fact, he’s so injury free that his name appears on the team injury report every single week as a joke because everybody knows he will be out there.  So, if Brady can get hurt, anybody can get hurt.  Think about that.  Any NBA player could go down in the 1st quarter of the 1st game this season…just like Brady.  Brady is obviously one player no team could afford to lose, but who are the NBA’s most indispensable players?

Remember when David Robinson was injured (allegedly) in the ’96 – ’97 season to propel the Spurs to the bottom of the standings and top of the draft board?  We’re looking for guys that would have that kind of effect on a season.  In order, the top 5:

5. Joe Johnson – It’s hard to convince some people that anybody on a 37-win team could possibly be considered indispensable, but after JJ’s playoff performance against the Celtics last season, it’s hard not to be convinced.  The Hawks could win 45+ this season, but if JJ goes down you’ll hear more about the Hawks in Letterman’s punch lines than you will in SportsCenter highlights.

4. Steve Nash – Nash was never the best player.  He won back-to-back MVP awards for the sole reason that he is indispensable.  It’s not hard to figure out why Amare Stoudemire is so well known for his power dunking.

3. Dwight Howard – Just looking at Orlando’s roster you’ve got to wonder how they managed to win 52 games last season.  Howard, like Shaq in his prime, is a classic example of a guy who makes his teammates that much better just by drawing so much defensive attention.

2. Lebron James – Lebron does it all and the Cavs would certainly have fallen flat on their face in the past without the King, but things might finally be a little different this season.  With Mo Williams in town, a little bit of the burden is lifted off Lebron.  Just a little.  He’s still indispensable.

1. Chris Paul – Paul showed how indispensable he was last season surprising the basketball world by taking the Hornets to 56 wins and a #2 seed in the West.  David West is nice.  So is Tyson Chandler.  But, this team is lottery material without Paul.

Who do you think has that Tom Brady-esque quality of indispensability?

Who are really the best rebounders and shot blockers?

Posted by HoopsAvenue on July 8, 2008 under NBA Stats | Be the First to Comment

If I were to ask you to name the best rebounders and shotblockers in the NBA, you’d probably rattle off some names like Dwight Howard, Marcus Camby, and other players on the league leaders list, and rightfully so…but, what if they didn’t have their height advantage? What if Dwight Howard was 6’5″? Would he still be a good rebounder? Better than a 6’5″ Nate Robinson? Of course we will never know the actual answer to this, but we can make some guesstimates. I took a look at the height of all the players in the league, their rebounding abilities, and shotblocking prowess to come up with two prediction models. Basically, you tell the model how tall a guy is and it’ll tell you how many rebounds he should get and how many blocks he should get. If you’re Nate Robinson, expectations are low, but if you’re Dwight Howard you’re gonna have to put up some pretty big numbers.

So who did better than expected according to the model? Here are the top 10 rebounders with the percentages indicating how many rebounds they got per 40 minutes compared to how many they were expected to pull down:

So you can see Dwight Howard is a great rebounder no matter how you look at it. Here are the numbers for blocks:

Mostly big guys who you’d expect there, but Jason Maxiell at 6’7″ is impressive. Ben Wallace is still looking good and almost certainly would have topped the list a few years ago. And, don’t underestimate the shotblocking abilities of Dwyane Wade and Delonte West, both whom just qualified for the list with 0.76 Blocks per 40 minutes. The minimum requirements were 0.75 Blocks per 40 minutes and 1500 minutes. For rebounds, they were 5 Rebounds per 40 minutes and 1500 minutes.

Perhaps the most impressive player from these top 10 lists is Marcus Camby, ranking on both lists despite that fact that the model has high expectations for a 6’11″ player such as himself. I’d guess he would drop off the lists if we adjusted for wingspan, though.

If you’re interested, a similar analysis was done for the 2004-05 season at lowpost.net. The analysis over there factored in height as well as body mass index (BMI) and even devotes some special attention to the Knicks. It’s worth checking out.