Quick: Rudy and Roy

by bleedingblackandred on Jun 25, 2008 2:18 PM PDT

Jason Quick had a chat with Sean Meagher, saying that the Blazers envision Brandon Roy and Rudy Fernandez playing together, quoting a team official as saying they would be "rock-em sock-em robots," and that he would take them over K#be and Vujidagijaiogjaldjglkadj for the next eight or nine years.

Doesn't this mean our team is pretty good already, without any moves? If we had Roy, Rudy, Outlaw/Webster, Aldridge, and Oden starting that would be killer already.

We shouldn't be overreacting and trying to trade everything away just yet. Lets see if Roy can play the point.

All that said, in KP I trust.

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I've thought the same myself

but wouldn’t mind another guard off the bench who’s 2/3 who has some serious talent… OH the finland kid!!!

DJ Augustine might also be a good fit as both those guys are pretty big for PG and might be slow.. DJ could compliment the PG position and allow speed adaptability.

Rudy is definitely seeing major minutes this year though. ummm book it with ice cream baby.

Ford: Bill, you're claiming victory already? Have you had a "Mission Accomplished" banner printed yet?

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2008/columns/story?page=DraftDebate-080624

by ratbastird on Jun 25, 2008 2:32 PM PDT reply actions

Augustine and Kop

I think both seem to be good fits for this team.

It really sounds like Kop has stepped up his game, I can’t wait to watch his summer league, and hopefully his regular and post season!

Witty Unpredictable Talent and Natural Game

by iDea on Jun 25, 2008 3:30 PM PDT reply actions

All well and good

But. Roy and Rudy have not played a single game together as a starting backcourt in the NBA. Add to that Roy has not played many minutes at PG and Rudy has never played in the NBA and I think it’s fair to want some insurance. It’s an intriguing idea for an experiment. It could work great, but I let’s not say they are better than Kobe and any Laker before they’ve won a single NBA game together.

by PoliSam on Jun 25, 2008 3:59 PM PDT reply actions

I dont know

It seems like Roy has been our defacto point guard since the Milwaukee game when Jack proved that he can not handle full court pressure. Roy may be technically a sg but for a good deal of the year he was getting us into our offense which is really the pg job.

In response to the main post. I think the question is whether or not Roy can guard points and also if we want him expending all the energy that a pg expends bring the ball up and initiating offense when it is not crunch time (What a weird phrase. I now regret using it.).

PollSam. Seeing as you are stat savvy guy I am wondering if you would take a look at my post on a metric I was playing around with and tell me what you think. Thanks. either post in the comments or shoot me an email jonestr at unm dot edu

Life is exhausting when you are this stupid.

by jonestr on Jun 25, 2008 4:28 PM PDT up reply actions

True

Roy has been a playmaker a lot. As you said, some of the concern is defense. Some of the concern that playing point full-time take away from his playmaking. For what it’s worth, this happens to me when I play point guard in rec or intramural leagues. I often get a lot of assists as a guard, but when I have to bring the ball up the court it’s less likely to come back into my hands later. It might be an issue for Roy. Might not… and the uncertainty is what I’m point to. I’m also not sold on Rudy; I don’t know why most Blazers fans aren’t more skeptical given that he’s never played for us and given given the record of Euros coming out since 1995: Part-Two-2937/” target=”_blank”>http://www.draftexpress.com/article/Eight-Rules-for-Draft-Night-Success-Let-History-Guide-Part-Two-2937/

Regarding your metric. It’s interesting. The basic idea of the deviation in mean is very sound. The part I wonder about is how to weight each category… which you mention. You present rankings with different weights, but what would be nice is a theoretical reason to weight different categories according to their importance. Suppose we had statistical measures x_1, x_2, ... x_n, all scaled in deviations from mean. Ideally, I’d think I’d want to weight each variable depending on how they contribued to winning, margin of victory, margin of victory squared or some other interesting outcome. So if y is your outcome of interest you want to find the betas (b_1… b_n) in the following equation y=b1x_1+b2x_2+b1x_3+...+.b_nx_N Of course, that’s exactly what an Ordinary Least Squares Regression would give you. So, perhaps the weights could be produced by regressing adjusted plus minus on those variables? Seems feasible. I’d be interested in the results.

by PoliSam on Jun 25, 2008 6:25 PM PDT up reply actions

that last equation

A little tricky to write out the equation without the use of subscripts. To be clear it should be

Y=C+ b_1x_1 + b_2x_2 + b_3x_3 +...+b_nx_n

Where Y is the dependent variable (margin of victory), C is a constant, the b_n’s are the weights and the x_n’s are the stats, scaled or not scaled. Or, the equation should look like the first on the link below:

http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765/regress.htm

by PoliSam on Jun 25, 2008 6:33 PM PDT up reply actions

let me see if I understand you.

I should try and find the what correlates to winning or margin of victory etc. Then apply the weights and then compare the players. If so I would say that is what is done in Wages of Wins guy Dave Berri. Philosophically I am opposed to the idea that correlations imply causality. What I wanted to do is try and find a simple way of comparing players where they were punished for being sub par and praised for being above par. The only reason I weighted shooting %s at all, which I just did by pace adjusted shot attempts per minute, is that I wanted to make sure that poor shooters who shoot a lot were punished more severely than poor shooters who dont shoot a lot. Otherwise players were just compared to the mean.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my previous post and comment on it.

Life is exhausting when you are this stupid.

by jonestr on Jun 25, 2008 8:24 PM PDT up reply actions

In response to why people are high on rudy

I would say that he is a KP pick and KP has given us reasons in the past to be excited about his drafting and decision making. Compound that with good youtube highlights, his winning ways, a transition made easier by Sergio and you might give yourself cause to be excited. I would state my position as cautiously optimistic merely because KP is so excited by about having Rudy here, and that is enough for me to get on board.

Life is exhausting when you are this stupid.

by jonestr on Jun 25, 2008 8:28 PM PDT up reply actions

He has also been putting up some phenomenal stats in the ACB league this year

If you look at past players that have come from the higher European leagues and how their stats changed when they come into the NBA, you should be able to get a descent prediction of what Rudy’s production will be next year. There are a couple different ways of doing this, but basically the statistical projections say that Rudy will probably be better than Outlaw next year.

by trk on Jun 25, 2008 9:44 PM PDT up reply actions

Will be interesting

A little better than Outlaw offensively (FG%, AST, PTS) seems possible, but I have concerns about defense and people are not talking about him like he’ll be another Outlaw. Some folks are talking about him like he’ll be an all-star in a couple of years.

I’d love for him to be great. I’m just skeptical.

by PoliSam on Jun 25, 2008 10:05 PM PDT up reply actions

Keep in mind that that projection was for NEXT YEAR

Even predicting one year ahead is impossible to do with 100% accuracy, but the accuracy is a lot better than if you try to predict a player’s whole career. I don’t claim to have a crystal ball that will tell me what Rudy’s ceiling is, but if he follows the statistical projection and is better than Outlaw as a rookie then I think that would be a pretty good start for his NBA career.

by trk on Jun 25, 2008 10:53 PM PDT up reply actions

RUUUUUUUDY !

Rudy will backup BRoy at the 2 and be playing 25 mpg. They will
be paired in the backcourt when Blake comes out. Roy will play about
12 mpg at the point to ease the club into transition. Period.

Beware of our ROY candidates. GO & Rudy !

It's GO time !

by walkoff41 on Jun 25, 2008 6:00 PM PDT reply actions