Tag Archives: Luke Ridnour

Offseason Primer: Not So Spot-on Wing Production

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Heading into the draft and free agency, the Wolves really have only three starters that they can pencil into next year’s starting lineup. Ricky Rubio, fingers-crossed when healthy will be the team’s starting point guard. Kevin Love arguably one of the most underrated players in the league will remain in his spot as the power forward. The emergence of Nikola Pekovic last season gave the Wolves a center with a body temperature above at least 32 degrees fahrenheit. Other than that the team still has holes on the perimeter. It should not come as a shock that the Wolves should be searching for a scoring wing this offseason who can produce a nightly basis.

Sadly, as the chart below indicates, the Wolves had the worst net PER ratings (team’s PER at position minus opponent’s PER at position) at both shooting guard and small forward in the entire league. It is pretty tough to be the worst in the league at one position let alone two, that is unless you are the Charlotte Bobcats.

Yet the team still won almost 40% of their games without get hardly any production from their wing spots. Most of those swingman minutes went to Martell Webster, Michael Beasley, Anthony Tolliver, Wayne Ellington, Wes Johnson, Luke Ridnour, and Derrick Williams. As mentioned in the previous post, three of those sevens players may not be on the team next year. One has to anticipate some sort of personnel turnover at these two positions in the near future and it shouldn’t be hard to upgrade those spots, considering how bad they were.

The total measure in the chart is just a summation of the net ratings across every position. Those two spots (shooting guard and small forward) for Minnesota combined for a -8.9 rating, which is downright embarrassing. The total net rating and win percentage coincidentally last season were highly correlated with a .94 correlation and a R² of .89. So it is fair to say the higher your net total rating is the better chance you have of winning games. Taking this into account, had the Wolves gotten at least a negative one net rating at each of those positions, they would have hovered around a zero net team rating. Which would have had them a lot closer to the playoffs.

The quickest way to improve the Wolves rating and win total, is simply improving at the wing positions. Considering how bad they were last year, there is really no direction to go but up. So, the main priority this offseason should be finding affordable able bodies who can produce better than last year’s crusty crop of players. You are probably thinking to yourself, well thanks for all these numbers, but we already knew how bad the team’s perimeter players were and what the team needs this offseason. Sometimes though it is just interesting to see just how bad they were in comparison to the rest of the league.

Let’s now look at those aforementioned seven players who took up a majority of the minutes this year at shooting guard and small forward.

(Click to enlarge image)

Shooting guard last season, consisted of the trio of point guard Luke Ridnour, Martell Webster, and Wayne Ellington. Ridnour arguably played out of position for most the season last year, but was probably the Wolves best option at shooting guard. Ridnour had the best offensive rating and almost best defensive rating of the three players, he also had the best net PER rating too. His net shooting percentage was the worst, probably because he was being guarded by taller and bigger shooting guards, instead of smaller point guards. The sad reality is the Wolves best shooting guard was a point guard. Let that sink in for a minute. The Wolves best shooting guard wasn’t even a true shooting guard. Although this may have fulfilled David Kahn’s two point guard fantasy (minus the Johnny Flynn part), it would have helped if the Wolves could have started a prototypical two-guard all season long..

Looking at the small forwards, Derrick Williams was the only player to produce a positive net PER rating, although he had the worst net rating at -5.6 than any other Wolves small forward, that includes Wes Johnson’s -4.7. Surprisingly Michael Beasley held opponents to just a 44% effective field goal percentage and had the best net rating with a positive 2.9. Martell Webster usually brought a nice shooting punch from the wing, but he had the two worst defensive ratings among both groups, which proves the perception that Webster is just not that good on defense, getting his doors blown off on consistent basis.  Ironically the chart above is really inconsistent throughout much like the play of the small forwards all season long. Nobody really sticks out as a solid starter at small forward. This should scare the front office.

When looking at some data via Synergy Sports, the Wolves offense consisted primarily of pick and roll (20.5% of possessions) and spot up (catch and shoot) shot opportunities (18.5%). The Wolves did fine in pick and roll situations ranking 7th in the league averaging 0.88 points per possession (PPP). Spot up chances, however the Wolves ranked just 23rd in the league at 0.91 PPP. Minnesota shot just 35.7% in spot up situations, shooting 33.8% on spot up threes. The seven wings players listed above took almost exactly two-thirds (66.5%) of those spot up chances, their results are listed below.

(Click to enlarge image)

On PPP basis Ridnour, Ellington, Beasley, and Webster were above the team average of 0.91 PPP. Ridnour and Ellington were the two best in spot up situations, producing PPP numbers over one and ranking in the top-100 of all players in those situations.

On the flip side, Anthony Tolliver was downright atrocious, producing an awful 0.64 PPP, ranking 321st in the entire league. When considering that there were 352 players last season who played at least 400 minutes, Tolliver (882 minutes) was one of the worst spot up shooters in the league. In all fairness he had quite a poor shooting season compared to his career marks, but still he had one job to do, based on the fact that almost 44% of possessions were used on spot up jump shots, yet he could hardly ever execute.

Wes Johnson also took a good amount of spot up jump shots last season — the most among this entire group. Johnson jacked up 175 spot up shots only hitting on 34% of them, producing a very subpar 0.86 PPP. He ranked outside the top-200, which is not good. For the sake of comparison, Johnson produced a 0.95 PPP (185th) his rookie season in these same situations, shooting 37.6% from the field and 35.3% from deep. So his rookie season was not that much better than his sophomore season and closer resembled the average season of  Martell Webster this year. Things aren’t looking good for Wes Johnson at this moment.

Derrick Williams also chucked his fair share too when given catch and shoot opportunities. He took the second most spot up shots among the group, 129 shots. He shot a paltry 29.5% on these shots, ranking himself almost outside the top-250 in the league. If Williams ever dreams of playing the small forward in the future, he is going to have to become a better shooter off the catch.

The good news is that the two better catch and shoot options on the team, Ridnour and Ellington, in all likelihood will be back next season. Bad news though is that two of the worst catch and shoot players on the team, Johnson and Williams, are under contract for next season (Tolliver could also be resigned at a discounted price). They could always get traded this summer, but if they remain on the team they will need to improve this skill if they want to help the team win games. Worse news is that Johnson produced average numbers in his rookie season, so it is unlikely that he all of sudden start hitting his catch and shoot jumpers next season at an outstanding clip unless he really starts dedicating himself to the game, which he does not seem too interested in doing right now. Slightly better news is that Williams, who is just 21 years old and wasn’t able to participate in a summer league or much of training camp last season due to the lockout, may just need some time and maturity to improve in these situations as well as other facets of his game. Only time will tell with him on whether he will ever adopt a small forward role.

No surprises here, the Timberwolves need wings players bad. There will be plenty of options in the offseason to try to fix the problem. Free agency, the draft, and even trades could bring in some new wing talent. Now that the obvious problem has been diagnosed, the next step is finding solutions for the problem. This is always the hardest part, and based on how the Wolves past wing players have performed in recent years, this is a department the team has not always excelled at.

The Damage of the Rubio Injury

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Since today marks the day that Ricky Rubio will have surgery to repair his left ACL, I figured it would interesting to see how the Wolves have done since he went down a little less than two weeks ago. The Wolves have played six games since and have gone an unpleasant 2-4 playing five of those six games on a current West Coast road trip. The Wolves were playing good basketball before Rubio’s injury. The word “playoffs” was even being thrown around when talking about the Wolves. The eyes of Wolves fans were becoming more fixated on the day-to-day standings than on latest mock draft. The Timberwolves were gaining serious steam too, going 8-4 in their past 12 prior to Rubio going down. The chart below shows that Rubio was essentially the Wolves second best player in terms of the amount of wins he helped produce. Kevin Love was playing at a MVP-level, Nikola Pekovic was fast becoming the Jeremy Lin west of the Mississippi, Rubio was solid and consistent and brought the Wolves toughness and leadership at the point, Luke Ridnour was playing at a slightly above-average level, and Derek Williams was starting to really come on. Martell Webster was slowly coming back from his back surgery and was experiencing his ups and downs. Michael Beasley, Wes Johnson, J.J. Barea, and Darko Milicic were all underperforming or just plain bad before Rubio’s injury.

What’s Happened Since

Since the injury, coach Rick Adelman has had no choice but to do his best damage control act to pick up the pieces and try to keep the team in playoff contention. To make things tougher on Adelman the team was just about to embark on the team’s longest road trip in franchise history (seven games in 12 days). It has only been six games, so a very small sample size to work with here, but lets see how the Wolves have fared in Rubio’s absence.

Ridnour has shifted over to the point, playing almost exclusively (90% of minutes at PG opposed to 20% before) now with Rubio out and has actually been playing a little better than he had before. He has not played at a Rubio-level, but more appropriately at a band-aid-level. Which is certainly fine for this team when the alternative would be “bleeding” out at the point guard position. Ridnour has kept the point guard position afloat and respectable at the moment however it is his point guard counterpart who has not held up his end as of late.

J.J. Barea has been…well… bad. How bad? Pretty bad. He continues to play with the reckless abandon that got him into the league and could at a moments instance (i.e. Andrew Bynum) take him out of the league. In fairness Barea has dealt with a myriad of injuries and has not had the time on the court as others. However, Barea continues to play like a maniac now that he knows point guard minutes are guaranteed to him. So he tries to get away with doing things like this:

And this:

It’s plays like this that have led Barea to shoot a career-worst 38% this season. The saddest part about this is that is may never stop. It is built into the generously listed 6’0″ Puerto Rican’s DNA. Now that he got his fat new contract this offseason and the team’s star point guard goes down Barea thinks in his mind – “Here is my opportunity to show my true worth”. What he should do is realize: (A) The guy that went down was a pass-first point guard (B) The team was doing well when that pass-first point guard was in there (C) I now have to take some of the minutes left by that pass-first point guard (D) I am a shoot first point guard (E) Maybe I should consider passing rather than shooting for the betterment of the team before reverting to ball hogging ways. (Side Note: An interesting article on “Ball Hogs and Long Meetings“)

Since Rubio has gone down here is the point guard breakdown between Ridnour and Barea. As the table shows, Barea continues his shot-chucking ways. He is shooting more often the Ridnour, but shooting a worse percentage. Turning over the ball more than Rindour and in addition producing a worse assist-turnover ratio. Most importantly is that Rindour is scoring more points than Barea, but is taking 3.3 shots less than him. The Wolves were contemplating trading for veteran chucking swingman Jamal Crawford at the trade deadline by giving up a much younger similar shot-chucker in Michael Beasley. Makes sense, right? One inefficient scorer for another inefficient scorer. In the end, the Wolves never pulled off the deal, but if they wanted a shot-chucking guard a simple solution would be to just tell Barea “our starting point guard went down be ready to play more minutes” which translates in Barea’s mind to “more minutes equal more shots”.

What to Expect

So what should the team expect in their last 19 games. Well on their current pace they are only expected to win about six of seven more games winning about one-third of their remaining games. Which means a final record of something like 30-36. Whereas had Rubio, who was worth about 4.5 wins, finished the season the team would have been more likely to finish something like 34-32 contending for a final playoff spot. The Wolves are really going to need something short of a miracle to make the playoffs this season and will need someone not names Kevin Love to step up their game. Derrick Williams has produced better as of late, particularly because he shooting numbers have greatly improved. Shooting efficiency has also improved for the likes of Martell Webster, Michael Beasley, and yes even Wes Johnson in the seasons second-half.

The toughest part of their season is almost over with and a softer schedule is coming up in the season’s final month of April. It has been a bumpy ride for the Wolves since Rubio has gone down and it may stay that way for the foreseeable future. Fans may soon be reverting to their old Wolves fandom ways of looking at the lastest mock draft instead of the playoff standings, but wait they do not have a draft. Well that is unless the Utah Jazz make the playoffs in which case the Wolves would receive the Jazz’s draft pick for the upcoming June draft. So let’s go Jazz?

Cheers to ‘The Streakin Rican’

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The Wolves made a pretty interesting move this week by signing free agent point guard José Juan (or more affectionately known as J.J.) Barea to a 4 yrs/$19 million deal. He will make in the neighborhood of $4.2 in the first year of that contract and $5.3 million in the final year, by which time he will be 30 years old. Speaking of 30-year-old point guards, the Wolves currently have one on roster in Luke Ridnour. In fact, he is the reason some were scratching their head at the Barea signing.

The Wolves now have three point guards who deserve minutes in the NBA and that are all getting paid more than your average bench warmer. Some discussion has been that the Wolves made this move to help spread out the minutes at the point over the course of the condensed NBA season (seems reasonable). Some believe that the Wolves wanted to bring in a mentor for rookie Ricky Rubio and who better than bring in a player who speaks the same language (Spanish) as Rubio (it’s an added bonus, but doubtful that was the main reason). Barea and Rubio also share the same player-rep agency headed by Dan Fegan (which couldn’t have hurt in the negotiations). There has been some talk that Luke Ridnour never seemed like he was the right guy to become the mentor for Rubio when the time came. Ridnour’s time in Minnesota could possibly be coming to an end, especially when considering his relatively movable contract (3 yrs/$12 million remaining). But, Rick Adelman has said this week that he would fulfill Kahn’s documented desire to play two points at once. Adelman has done that in the past with some of his teams. Sacramento it 6’1″ guards Jason Williams and Bobby Jackson. In Houston it was 6-foot guard combo of Kyle Lowry and Aaron Brooks.

Besides his improbable play in last season’s NBA Final, Barea has been your average backup point guard throughout his career. Without his Finals performance, he never would have received such a deal. One also has to wonder who was behind the deal. Who is calling the shots right now? Is it GM David Kahn, or coach Adelman, or  player personnel director R.J. Adelman?

It is interesting that the Mavs were so willing to let Barea go in free agency, considering they are the model franchise for statistical player evaluations. So perhaps their numbers on Barea were not good enough to warrant giving him a deal (the Mavericks reportedly did offer Barea a 1 yr/$8 million contract) as they wanted to keep their salary open for next summer. Dallas also had bigger fish to fry with handling the rest of their team as they focused on retaining center Tyson Chandler and were looking at other players on the free agent market. Did Mav’s owner Mark Cuban know something about Barea that no one else around the league knew about and decided to let Barea walk? Did Cuban just come to the realization that Barea played way over his head in Finals and his future play was not going to warrant the money he was demanding, so he gave him two option: take a one-year deal or walkout the door? Or did he really want to resign him to a long-term deal, but couldn’t because he wanted to keep the team’s cap number down in the future?

Barea gives the Wolves a player who knows what it take to win at a high level and another player who can handle the ball. Adelman recently has criticized the lack of ball handlers on roster, so the front office did addressed that issue. Whether the two point guard system will be effective remains to be seen.