The Houston Rockets and the Value of Will Graves

Trevor Ariza was an essential role player on the Lakers team that won the championship last year. He played hard-nosed defense, made lots of hustle plays, and hit the open three when Kobe inevitably drew the double team. He had plenty of key steals and key scores as the Lakers marched through the play-offs. He couldn't pick a better time to play the best basketball of his career: That summer, after everyone saw how Trevor Ariza helped the Lakers win another championship, Trevor Ariza was a free agent and certainly in-demand.

When the Lakers elected to use the money they could have used to re-sign Trevor Ariza on notorious head-case/lock-down-defender/mercurial-forward Ron Artest, Ariza essentially took his place on Artest's former team, the Rockets. On the Rockets, however, Trevor Ariza assumed a very different role.

The Rockets had been constructed in the early 2000s as a team based around the dynamic duo of two superstars: Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. Both players, when signed were absolutely phenomenal, and when they were on the court together and healthy, they were incredibly successful. The rest of the team simply had to play their roles and victory would come to the Rockets. Trevor Ariza was hired to merely be Robin to McGrady's Batman, or maybe to be the Gleek to McGrady and Yao's Wondertwins. The point is that he was a sidekick. Well, like every Justice League ever (going to keep trying with the super hero references), when Superman and Batman are captured/busy/incapacitated, the rest of the Justice League has to step up, and someone has to take on the mantle of leadership. Unfortunately, bad luck struck in Houston: Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming were both laid low with injuries and the role players became headliners.

And that's how Robin got the spotlight. It might not surprise you to realize that maybe there was a reason Robin was only a sidekick and didn't try to do everything Batman did. And so it was with Ariza: While he thrived as a sideman in Los Angeles, he struggles in Houston as the Rockets primary offensive option. He shoots too much and makes a really low percentage of his shots. He shoots inefficient shots and that hard-nosed hustle, and unselfish passing disappeared under the weight of his new responsibility as The Man for Houston. It's been ugly.

I bring this because for a long time, I thought Will Graves was basically Trevor Ariza. I believed that he could thrive as a role-player for a contender, as a complementary piece, supporting his star teammates but that if asked to shoulder the burden of being the primary offensive option for his team that he would falter and his team would fail. That's the difference between Trevor Ariza on the Lakers and the Rockets and I thought it was also the difference between Will Graves on last year's championship winning Tar Heels and this year's cringe-inducing Tar Heels. That's just how I saw it. You know this, because I talked a lot about things like the Will Graves Theory.

Now, at this point, the savvy reader will note that I carefully said that this is what I "thought" about Will Graves. Past tense! Well, savvy reader, you caught me: my perspective may have changed for the more optimistic.

See, Will Graves isn't Trevor Ariza: Will Graves is Shane Battier.

But wait, doesn't Shane Battier just suck at everything but defense? And even there, isn't he really overrated? Well, casual NBA fan, that myth was actually dispelled almost exactly one year ago when Michael Lewis penned an article about Shane Battier, the Houston Rockets, and advanced basketball stats. It was basically the "Moneyball" of the NBA story and is still probably the most important thing written about the NBA in the past two years or so. If you haven't read it, you should read it now.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, so now you know about how Shane Battier is underrated, how conventional stats don't capture his team contributions, and about how a smart and savvy player can help his team in nearly invisible ways? Right, well that's good. But you still don't know how this pertains to Will Graves? Doesn't he shoot too much and play as Robin-gone-power-mad-in-Batman's-absence like Ariza?

Well, lets focus on this:

One well-known statistic the Rockets’ front office pays attention to is plus-minus, which simply measures what happens to the score when any given player is on the court. In its crude form, plus-minus is hardly perfect: a player who finds himself on the same team with the world’s four best basketball players, and who plays only when they do, will have a plus-minus that looks pretty good, even if it says little about his play. Morey says that he and his staff can adjust for these potential distortions — though he is coy about how they do it — and render plus-minus a useful measure of a player’s effect on a basketball game. A good player might be a plus 3 — that is, his team averages 3 points more per game than its opponent when he is on the floor. In his best season, the superstar point guard Steve Nash was a plus 14.5. At the time of the Lakers game, Battier was a plus 10, which put him in the company of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett, both perennial All-Stars. For his career he’s a plus 6. “Plus 6 is enormous,” Morey says. “It’s the difference between 41 wins and 60 wins.” He names a few other players who were a plus 6 last season: Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady.

You can see where I'm about to go with this: Someone has calculated plus/minus for the NCAA this season. Guess who leads UNC in plus/minus? Well, actually Justin Watts, but set that aside for now and you get Will Graves. That's right, in an averaged pace game, having Will Graves on the court amounts to 7.4 extra points a game on offense and prevents the other team from scoring 4.0 extra points, giving him a plus/minus total edge of 11.4. Ed Davis, by contrast scores a 4.0.

So, some caveats: This data was only crunched up through late January. This is crude plus/minus (with a minor tempo adjustment), not the full-on mathematically-adjusted wizardry of the Rockets. Even if it was, there's still a looming question of how useful plus/minus data is due to noisiness of the data and the huge error bars. But bare with me for a second: is it possible that Will Graves of the ill-advised shots is potentially helping his team win in more ways than conventional statistics is letting on?

The short answer is that it seems plausible: Watching Will Graves play, he often makes the tough hustle plays and is often all over the place helping out his team. Less controversial advanced statistics also point to some hidden value in his game. For example, check out this. Did you realize that Will Graves turned the ball over so little? I didn't. He actually leads the ACC in lowest turnover rate and is one of the very best in the country! See how he also commits so few fouls. Remember how in the Michael Lewis article they talk about avoiding fouling as a hallmark of efficient defense? There is is: Hidden basketball value in Will Graves. Of course, looking at the Ken Pomeroy stats page, you can see it's not that hidden: Will Graves actually snuck past Ed Davis as the player on UNC with the highest offensive efficiency rating!

Now offensive efficiency rating is a stat developed by Dean Oliver and detailed in his book, Basketball on Paper, but, in short, the aim of the stat is to more thoroughly account for how well a player is scoring by taking into consideration the different values of three-pointers and free-throws, the players proficiency at each weighted into the equation. The one thing that this stat does, above and beyond what you get with True Shooting is take into account efficiency by possession rather than just shot. That is to say that, amongst other things, Offensive Rating adjusts for turnovers and offensive rebounding. So here's what this means: Because Will Graves rarely turns the ball over, he uses offensive possessions more reliably than players like Larry Drew who is a much better shooter, but turnover prone. A possession used by Will Graves results in a shot more often than other players who turn the ball over before they can even get off a shot. In the long run, Will's bad shooting and low turnovers are worth more on offense than Drew's good-shooting and high turnovers.

Long story short, it seems logical and likely that the plus/minus data is meaningful. Will Graves seems to be much better than the stats were giving him credit for.

What's this mean? Well, I still stand by much of what I said. The one thing that is truly different between Will Graves and Shane Battier is Shane's insistence on taking high efficiency shots. Will's proclivity for low-efficiency shots has been well-documented in this space before. And while technically a Will Graves possession is more offensively efficient than an Ed Davis one, I still stand by the idea that an active Ed Davis who gets a lot of touches makes our whole team play a lot better; not that there's anything revolutionary in suggesting a balanced attack.

In any case, my basic point remains: Will Graves isn't Trevor Ariza. He's Shane Battier and far better than many people (including and especially me) think.

UNC Needs to Shoot More Threes

First a note about some stats: Ken Pomeroy has flipped his magic switch so advanced player stats are available for all the college players and teams you could desire, meaning that you don't have to rely on my half-cocked analysis gleaned from downloaded box scores and haphazardly rigged spreadsheets. I highly recommend using this site for the majority of your college hoops stats needs. Now, back to the matter at hand.

The UNC men's basketball team needs to shoot more threes. We've suffered some tough losses and horrific halves due to an unwillingness, originating either by the players or the coaching staff, to shoot three pointers. Let me break it down, point by point.

1. We don't shoot a lot of threes.
2. We are a pretty good three point shooting team.
3. Shouldn't we should shoot more threes?

We don't shoot a lot of threes
UNC has a reputation for this. We are known for hammering it down low when we can, relying on the athleticism and talent of our players rather than hoisting up a lot of long bombs and praying for the best. This is a apparently a conscious stylistic decision by our coaching staff and one that has often served us well. There are 347 Division I NCAA teams that Ken Pomeroy tracks with his stats. UNC ranks 344th in percentage of shots that are threes. There are only three teams in all of Division I that shot less threes than us right now. Wow.

We are a pretty good three point shooting team
It's true. People don't want to believe this, but it's absolutely true. Think of it this way: Last season we shot the three pretty well right? Ty, Wayne, and Danny could all shoot pretty well. Ty Lawson almost led the ACC in three-point shooting last season, shooting a blistering 47.2% from beyond the arc. Larry Drew is shooting 47.1%. What about the shooting guard and the wing? Wayne Ellington and Danny Green shot 41.7% and 41.8% respectively. Marcus Ginyard is shooting 44.1% from beyond the arc (consistent with his 44.8% he shot in 2008 as a starter). Okay, so sure, Will Graves is "only" shooting 39.7%, but don't let that throw you too far off the trail: This team has the players to shoot the three as well as last year's team.

Shouldn't we shoot more threes?
Yes. Now, I'm not advocating a barrage of threes, I'm simply asking for Roy Williams to give Drew II and Marcus the go-ahead to shoot an open three point shot when available. Too often have I seen these two pass up three point shots for ill-fated, turn-over-prone drive and kicks or other mismanaged plays. The point of a drive-and-kick is to hit an open three point shooter for an easy shot- following that with another drive and kick is usually nonsensical. The open three is a good shot, and honestly, at the rate these two guys are hitting them, there really are few better shots we can get.

This strategy has other advantages that help us. Our team is astoundingly turnover prone: Shooting open threes usually means a shot earlier in the shot-clock and reduces the opportunities for turnovers. It means less putting the ball on the court and dribbling into traffic (another opportunity for turnovers). But isn't a miss really just a turnover too? It is, but fortunately, we are one of the absolute best at offensive rebounding: We get the ball back on an astounding 40.5 % of misses. For us, a miss is SIGNIFICANTLY better than a turnover.

Most importantly, our unwillingness to shoot the three is handicapping our offense. The best offensive option on this team is still Ed Davis in the low post. Without the threat of outside shooting, teams are feeling free to double team him and collapse into the point with impunity. If we can shoot just enough threes per game to stretch defenses, Ed Davis will become even more devastatingly effective.

Marcus and Drew need to shoot when they are open, otherwise a lot of games are going to look like the Clemson game.

The Small Forward Puzzle

It has occurred to me that perhaps I have been too hard on Will Graves. Early in the season, I was bewildered as to why Will Graves was starting over John Henson. Then, of course, very recently, I mentioned the relatively poor efficiency of Will Graves and unveiled his eponymous theory. While I did briefly try to give a little credit for Graves free-throw shooting (especially in comparison to the rest of the team), I don't think I've given Will the full benefit of the total comparison.

So, using percentage stats because they control for differing minutes and pace (as opposed to raw totals, or per-36 minutes or anything like that), let's have a side-by-side look at the players who have logged the major minutes so far this season at the small forward position. The two main contenders are Will Graves and John Henson, though at least one (and maybe both? I'm actually not sure if they both play the position or if it's just one of them, and if so, which one. More on this later.) of the Wear twins have put in the minutes here. This is also Marcus Ginyards natural position, but since he's been starting at shooting guard and playing back-up point guard as needed, it looks like he won't be playing much at the small forward. Technically I think Justin Watts or Leslie McDonald might've played a few minutes at this position too, but let's constrain the comparisons to Will Graves, John Henson, David Wear, and Travis Wear. It bears mentioning that since both of the Wears spend time some time at the power forward position, comparing their stats to Graves and Henson won't be as exact, but is worth a look anyway. First we'll look at scoring.

True shooting percentage
Will Graves 50.5%
John Henson 43.4%
David Wear 43.0%
Travis Wear 50.8%

Usage percentage
Will Graves 20.5%
John Henson 17.3%
David Wear 13.1%
Travis Wear 18.6%

As inefficient a scoring option as Will Graves is compared to his starting peers, he's actually a fairly good scorer compared with this motley lot. If you wanted to get points on the board from this position, it seems like Will Graves is a good way to go. Travis Wear actually appears to be a slightly better shooter, but his lower usage than Will Graves makes Graves the better option for putting points on the board.

Speaking of boards, let's look at rebounds:

Offensive rebounding percentage
Will Graves 6.2%
John Henson 8.6%
David Wear 1.4%
Travis Wear 12.8%

Defensive rebounding percentage
Will Graves 12.3%
John Henson 16.7%
David Wear 9.2%
Travis Wear 10.9%


The slight edge in rebounding goes to John Henson who dominates rebounding on the defensive end and has a slight edge over offensive rebounding leader Travis Wear in total rebounding (13.0% to 11.8%). It's useful, I think, to reflect on how impressive this is: a full-time small forward is out-rebounding guys who spend a big chunk of their time as power forwards. Those long, spindly arms know how to corral loose balls, even out on the perimeter. That's not all those long arms are good for either.

Block percentage
Will Graves 0.5%
John Henson 9.5%
David Wear 1.1%
Travis Wear 0.0%


Okay, so you probably already knew that Henson was a superior shot blocker to the other three candidates, but it's worth seeing the magnitude of his greatness. Also, here's another useful figure: 8.3%. What's that? That's monster shot-blocker Ed Davis's shot blocking percentage. Henson, so far this season, is an even better shot blocker than the supremely talented Ed Davis. Impressive, huh? Let's look at some of the more "guard-oriented" stats where we might expect Will Graves to have the edge.

Steal percentage
Will Graves 2.9%
John Henson 2.8%
David Wear 1.3%
Travis Wear 1.3%


Turnover percentage
Will Graves 10.5%
John Henson 11.0%
David Wear 20.2%
Travis Wear 14.9%


Assist percentage
Will Graves 6.2%
John Henson 13.7%
David Wear 9.1%
Travis Wear 1.6%

Looking at these numbers, you can see that Graves and Henson are nearly equal in steals and turning the ball over, though it bears mentioning that Will Graves does have the slightest of edges in both categories. It also bears mentioning that the two are both also amongst the best on the team in stealing and minimizing turnovers. When it comes to assists though, Henson is the clear favorite. He is far and away the best passer amongst all of the Carolina big men (Deon, Ed, and Tyler don't get any higher than Ed Davis's 6.5% assist rate).

So what's the verdict? Well, let's go ahead and disqualify the Wears. Despite Travis Wear's skillful shooting and rebounding, it seems pretty obvious that he does most of his work at the power forward position. Travis gets more offensive rebounds, draws more fouls, and shoots more accurately than David who has shot more threes and has a dramatically higher assist rate. Of the two, it seems more likely that David is playing the small forward more that Travis, who's statistical profile pretty much screams power forward. So if we disqualify Travis for mostly being a power forward and David for just not being better than the others at a single thing (exception: by virtue of his two out of three 3-point shooting, David is technically the best 3-point shooter on the team), we have a two man race between Will Graves and John Henson.

John Henson is a superior passer, rebounder, and shot-blocker. Will Graves is a better scorer. Who do you pick? Well, if you are me, and happen to believe that Will Graves very problem is that he is focused too much on scoring despite being an inefficient option, you might find that John Henson contributes more all around. At this point in his still young college career, Henson seems like the ultimate glue guy, facilitating the offense with his court-vision and great passing, terrorizing the perimeter on defense with his length, quick hands, and knack for shot-blockling, and creating a whole world of match-up Hell that most coaches are going to dread figuring out. He's like a bizzaro Kevin Durant, and I mean that in the best possible way: blessed with the same lanky frame, but instead of being a largely one-dimensional scoring machine, he lacks that polished shot but is a shot-blocking, quick-passing, ball-thief and a long-striding night terror on defense.

If the numbers (or at least my take on them) seem to point to Henson, why does Roy insist on Graves. Well, there are a couple clear reasons that don't show up on the stat sheet. As good as I think Henson looks out there most of the time, it's pretty obvious (and logically sound) that Will Graves simply knows the playbook better. He has a veteran's understanding of the offense and knows how to make his rotations properly on defense. He has experience under the bright lights and he knows Roy well-- this is Will's fourth year with the team. Henson is a freshman. There is a very good chance that these things matter.

Short of someone giving me the plus/minus numbers, I can't really prove one way or another who actually makes the more positive impact on the court. I get why Will Graves starts at small forward, and I think that Roy probably does in fact know what he's doing. I simply wanted to highlight an argument for John Henson getting some more playing time. The dude is genuinely gifted, would make good use of extra minutes, and is only going to get better. I also think that there's a real benefit to making Graves the leader of the second-unit and having him and Zeller provide a potent and balanced one-two punch while letting Henson serve as the glue guy facilitating the already ultra-efficient scoring of the starters. Just my opinion.

All that said, still can't figure a good reason to play the Wears extended minutes at small forward. That shit needs to stop. Numbers don't back support it, and somehow it almost always manages to make for the most cringe-worthy moments of the entire game (assuming Marcus hasn't blown a dunk yet).

The Easy Ones

I want to talk to you about free-throws. Specifically, I want to talk to you about how well the 2009-2010 UNC men's basketball team is shooting them. Last year, a large part of the success and efficiency of the UNC offense had to do with drawing fouls and turning those free throws into points. UNC was one of the very teams at getting to the line and was an excellent free throw shooting team. A lot of this had to do with Tyler Hansbrough, who basically made his living at the free throw line, but it was truly a team effort: Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington were also superb at getting to the line and even better at knocking down free throws. Danny Green shot 85%. As a team, UNC shot over 75%. Unfortunately, those who remained are significantly worse at shooting free throws. Deon, Ed Davis, and Larry Drew were all major liabilities on the line. Danny would often play power forward to finish games to prevent opponents from playing hack-a-Deon in close games.

Now that these three are the core of the team, what's the story? Well, it's a mixed one. Let's see the raw numbers:

Free throw shooting percentages
Travis Wear 87.5%
Deon Thomas 79.2%
Will Graves 75.0%
Tyler Zeller 70.8%
Larry Drew II 68.2%
Ed Davis 63.8%
Marcus Ginyard 57.9%
Dexter Strickland 44.4%
John Henson 41.7%
Justin Watts 40.0%
David Wear 25.0%
Leslie McDonald 16.7%

Team 64.2%

So, the bad news first: This is not a great free-throw shooting team. 64.2% overall is really bad. In particular, our guards and the freshmen are just shooting horribly. Aside from Travis Wear, who has only taken nine free throws so far, no one is shooting over 80%. There are five rotation players who are shooting under 50%. We can talk in greater depth about the bad stuff later, but let's touch on some sunshine first.

Here is the good news: Deon is shooting really well, as in nearly 80% well. I don't know what it is, but he's shooting way better than he did in his first three years where he shot 65% for two of those years and an abysmal 60% for his sophomore year. In fact, ignoring Travis Wear (, he's the best free throw shooter on the team. Would Deon shoot the technicals this year? The same clang-clang-groan-when-he-get's-fouled Deon? Yes. Wow. Great job, Deon.

Some more good news: Larry Drew and Ed Davis, while still not great, are both improving. Larry Drew shot an abysmal, Ben Wallace-like 41.2% last season and has now made an amazing improvement to 68.2%. Now, that's incredible, taken at face value, but a word of caution: Last year's number was based on 17 free throws and this year's number is based on 22. Due to the small sample size, Larry Drew's "actual skill level" could be anywhere in between (and really a good bit higher or lower). So, cautious optimism is the rule for Larry's free throw shooting. Ed Davis's progress looks a little less amazing, but is all the more important and is probably more concrete. Ed Davis shot 57.3% last year and is shooting 63.8% this year. This is nothing but good news. Ed Davis draws fouls at the highest rate of anyone on the team this year and his ability to shoot a higher percentage from the free throw line will turn his already insane scoring efficiency totally nuclear. This is good stuff.

Equally good, Tyler Zeller and Will Graves seem to be shooting pretty well, and this seems to be consistent with their past performance. Good job, guys.

Now, let's talk about the bad stuff: Marcus Ginyard is shooting 57.9%. This is bad, but fortunately, it's not typical. In his previous four years at Carolina, Marcus is a 73.6% free throw shooter. Hopefully, we can expect him to shoot closer to that as the season goes on. Justin Watts (admittedly, on only five shots) is shooting 40%. The bad news is that his first year at Carolina, he shot 42.9%, so don't expect the same upswing that we might expect for Marcus.

Now, Dexter Strickland, John Henson, David Wear, and Leslie McDonald: they need to practice some damn free throws. I get that they are freshmen playing on bigger stages that ever before, but jitters or not, they are all shooting worse than Shaq. Hell, some of them are shooting worse than Ben Wallace. Free throws are really easy to practice and not at all difficult to improve. I am willing to bet, however, that all of these guys usually do shoot a lot better than this, and as the season goes on, these numbers should all steadily climb towards reasonable and respectable values in the 60s-70s range. Likewise, sadly, we probably can't expect Travis Wear to shoot nearly 90% all season. But anyway, for now: Great job, Travis! Practice your free-throws, the rest of the freshmen class!

The message, overall, is a simple one: Yes, this is a bad free-throw shooting team, but so far, there has been improvement, and, fortunately, we can probably count on even more gains in the free-throw department.

Mercuriality and Rasheed to the Celtics

You may have heard the big news by now: Rasheed Wallace to the Celtics. This is frightening and awesome. Rasheed Wallace, Carolina alum, three-draining big man, and the one-man technical factory that referees across the league love to hate is joining forces with Kevin Garnett, who is, with the possible exception of Kobe (since he might be a sociopath and all), the scariest player in all of basketball, who is capable of making giant, grown, powerful men ON HIS OWN TEAM cry in the middle of games, and who may be the modern embodiment of barely controlled rage. This is absolutely frightening and awesome. Would you want to play against them? I mean, in the end, I might take Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis over these two, but for sheer intimidation and on-court psychopathy, it would be difficult to beat the KG and Sheed pairing.

Also, Rasheed Wallace is one of the current known leaders in the latest of my Google-based metrics, a simple one that we're going to just call Mercuriality. In the fine tradition of the Epithet Certainty Score and the Kobe Test, you arrive at this score by counting Google hits. To measure a player's Mercuriality (it's always going to be in caps, I think), you just search for "mercurial [player name]". Maybe, we can refine this later, but for now, here are some benchmarks.

Allen Iverson 10,300
Ron Artest 4,490
Rasheed Wallace 1,150
Stephon Marbury 359
Gilbert Arenas 188
Kobe Bryant 159
Lebron James 71
Kevin Garnett 1
Tim Duncan 1*
Yao Ming 0

*"Kobe is a little too impatient and mercurial. Tim Duncan is so calm and composed, he gets suspended for laughing." So maybe really, 0. It should be 0.

So, as near as I can tell, a lot of my favorite players have a high Mercurialty. AI is in a class of his own, while Ron Artest (of course) and Rasheed Wallace are the only ones even in the neighborhood. What does this mean? Well, Mercuriality, it's important to note, doesn't reflect anything actually about the player, but rather merely about how people on the Internet talk about the player. So looking at this list, let's try to suss out what exact sense of mercurial these writers are getting at.

1. Of or pertaining to the god or planet Mercury.
I wish that we talked about basketball players in more astrological or classical terms. I feel like we don't get to hear enough basketball players described as "saturnine," though if I had to bet on it Anthony Randolph probably will be the first. Anyway, a prize to the first person who writes the definitive treatise on astrology and the NBA.

2. Erratic, volatile.
This is probably it, especially if you, emphasize the pejorative sense. I like almost every player high on this list, but I know they are not beloved by all of basketball. I know some people find their pugnaciousness and swagger distracting and Not the Right Way to play basketball, but I think it has it's place and shouldn't be separated from their game. The erratic volatility of AI is what lets him dream up such ridiculous crossovers, the mind-bending drives to the hoop. Rasheed Wallace and particularly Ron Artest thrive on the threat of barely contained violence as a part of their intimidating defensive games. But, fine, you don't want the technicals and you don't want the distractions. I respect that, I just don't agree.

3.Lively, quick-witted, spry.
In an ideal world, this is what I wish people were saying when they were describing players as "mercurial". I think this sense is a factor in what players get described as mercurial, but it's clearly a secondary factor to the volatile sense: focused and predictable psychopaths aren't labeled this way, note Kevin Garnett's low Mercuriality. Using only this sense though, we would all dream of our favorite teams point guard to be mercurial. As people use it now, I still wouldn't mind.

The truth of the matter is pretty simple. Chris Littmann, who writes over at The Baseline (and does great work, incidentally), referred to Ron Artest as a "mercurial forward" this past week, and I got all excited about seeing the cliche at use in the wild. I called him on it and he admitted what I guess we all really knew deep down, "I suppose it's the nicest way of saying "This guy is *&#$ing crazy."" Which, when you get right down to it, is almost all I really want out of my favorite players.

A player or team with high Mercuriality is still, almost certainly, worth following and watching. Post your findings and Mercuriality ratings in the comments.

Ron Artest to Lakers and the Kobe Test

Well, my dreams of a super-posse to oppose the unstoppable Kobe Bryant that included mercurial forward Ron Artest have come to a swift end. Ron Artest has joined Kobe and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers. So what's the story now?

The story is now of two enemies, two rivals, two bitterly competitive and ruthless men joining forces to squash all competition. This is a more familiar super hero concept and is the plot of numerous comic book arcs. The other option was too interesting to be true. This is the way of the universe.

Now, Kobe and Ron Artest probably deserve each other as they are two of the only players in the NBA who can pass my newly invented Kobe Test. Using my highly scientific and revolutionary method of counting how many hits you get when you Google particular phrases, we can reach some pretty interesting conclusions. The Kobe Test is simple: Google the phrase "[player] is a sociopath". If you get any hits, then that player has passed the Kobe Test! In my brief, preliminary experiments, Kobe Bryant and Ron Artest are the ONLY players I could find that pass this test.

So there you go, the Lakers now have on their roster the two players that the Internet feels are most likely to be deeply and profoundly, mentally disturbed. Thanks for the insight, Internet!

UPDATE: Stephon Marbury passes the Kobe Test, albeit with a single hit. Hey, Lakers, he's available! Let me know who else passes.

Homeric Epithets and Mercurial Forward Ron Artest

I'm not sure whether this is simple lazy sportswriting or the emergence of mythic "tradition" in sportswriting, but considering the pre-occupations of this blog, let's go for the mythic.

In writing about the NBA, writers often refer to Ron Artest as "mercurial forward Ron Artest." And when I say often, I mean that whenever you read or hear the phrase "mercurial forward" you should assume the name "Ron Artest" will follow. This morning when I google the phrase, "mercurial forward", I get 9,980 hits. When I google the phrase, "mercurial forward ron artest", I get 7,760 hits. Do the math. This morning, on the Internet, the phrase "mercurial forward" refers to Ron Artest about 80% of the time. The phrase is so ingrained in the minds of basketball writers that it nearly reaches the level of Homeric epithet. This is the current culture of basketball writing. What does it mean? Does this justify a mythic approach to basketball? I, of course, say yes. The players aren't just self-mythologizing Big Shoguns or League-promoted X-Men. They are epic heroes in the classical tradition because that is the language with which we, or at least basketball writers (who are an inevitable filter on the season unless you somehow manage to watch every single game), discuss them. What I am trying to say here is that, at the very least, thinking of Ron Artest in the terms of a character in epic poetry isn't just a plausible mode, but is actually a rather common mode, cliche even. So Ron Artest is a Homeric hero? Sure. Now, what other players in the league are discussed in such formulaic and grandiose modes?

Here is the new project: try to find the epithets by which players are consistently and predictively referred to. A special prize if anyone can find an Epithet Certainty Score for an NBA player(JUST NOW INVENTED) that's higher than Ron Artest's 0.775. This is an important first step in developing a useful taxonomy of basketball writing's neo-Homeric traditions and cliches.

Epithet Certainty Score: Divide the Google hits for "[epithet] [player]" by the Google hits for "[epithet]". Leave the results in the comments.

HINT: Surprisingly, "bovine Tim Duncan" doesn't seem to get any hits