Defense, Boards, and Youth Close It Out as Wizards Beat Bucks

With a 109-99 victory over the spiraling Milwaukee Bucks, the Washington Wizards have their third two-game winning streak of the season.

This one was an offensive struggle. Not in the sense that either team played well on offense — more like what the bricklaying did to my basketball sensibilities. The teams combined to miss 55 three-point shots, shooting a combined 18-73 — “good” for 24.7%. Bilal Coulibaly missed one so badly, I rewinded several times convinced it had to have been blocked or tipped. If it was, I couldn’t find the evidence.

With their all-world star Giannis Antetokounmpo sidelined with a calf injury, the Bucks continued their drop in the standings. Giannis trade rumors are the number one topic around the NBA — so ubiquitous that the guys on Thinking Basketball briefly touched on it.

Just before tipoff, I had a classic, “There’s your problem!” moment when I realized the Bucks were starting three former Wizards — Ryan Rollins (who’s playing well this season), Bobby Portis (who’s been okay), and Kyle Kuzma (who’s been not much good).

The Wizards won with an atrocious 43.8% effective field goal percentage because they dominated rebounding battle (61-43 overall; 18-7 on the offensive glass) and got to the free throw line. The Wizards owned the boards despite playing a smaller lineup most of the night. In the 16 minutes Alex Sarr (17 rebounds; 7 offensive) rested, head coach Brian Keefe used a center-less lineup.

Give some credit to the opponent — Doc Rivers teams eschew pursuit of offensive rebounds in favor of getting back on defense. This approach may have had more merit in the past. Nowadays, teams In recent years, coaches (led by former Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau) have figured out a way “tag up” to pursue offensive boards without getting killed by fast breaks. Rivers has stuck to what worked for him in the past.

“Tagging up” is a system whereby offensive players immediately make physical contact with a defensive player as soon as a shot goes up. The strategy — developed by Aaron Fearnes in the Australian National Basketball League (he’s currently coaching the NCAA Charlotte 49ers) — increases the offense’s chance of getting the rebound while simultaneously matching up and creating pressure points to stymie transition opportunities. The concept has entered the NBA in recent years with the influx of international assistant (and head) coaches.

There was a lot to like from the Wizards in this one. Even accounting for a talent-deficient Bucks roster, the Wizards made life difficult for Milwaukee on the offensive end. On many possessions, the Bucks had to run multiple actions to get a shot. At times, you could see Milwaukee players rush a meh look early in the shot clock because they had a sliver of an opening.

One of the cool things in this one was that it was the youngsters making plays late to secure the win.

Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

The four factors are measured by:

PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.

ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average so far this season is 115.5. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.

ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.

+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.

Players are sorted by total production in the game.