Many of the NBA’s brightest young stars, including reigning Most Improved Player Ja Morant and preseason MVP betting favorite Luka Doncic, play point guard. Is that enough to rethink the notion that point guards take longer to develop than other positions?
That’s a theory I’ve pushed in the past, highlighting late developing point guards Mike Conley and Kyle Lowry, as well as the most notable late development case in NBA history: Stephen Curry becoming an all-time great after not making his first All- Star Game until age 25. Let’s revisit the data to see whether my position still holds up.
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpeltontweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to [email protected].
This week’s mailbag also tackles the Milwaukee Bucks’ defense preventing 3s after conceding them at a high rate in past seasons, and the most recent NBA starting lineup where all five players are now out of the league.
“I know your team PGs-develop last, but they make All-Star Games & get Most Improved Player top-five finishes earlier (wings are last). Am I wrong to use this info as a way to assess player development?” — @overthinkingNBA
The metrics in the linked piece are useful, although incomplete. Players continue to develop after making an All-Star Game — an imperfect measure of player performance — and Most Improved can also be a product of a slower start in the NBA.
The way I’ve studied the issue is to look at player performance (as measured by the per-minute version of my wins above replacement player metric) relative to their peak single-year rating, so we evaluate how close players are to what they ‘ll eventually become.
For my sample, I took players who entered the league beginning in 2013-14, were at least 25 by the end of last season and had played a minimum of 250 minutes in at least four seasons. That yielded a group of 185 players, although it excludes both Doncic and Morant — still far too young to qualify.
Splitting up those players by primary position (per my tracking) in their most recent NBA season yields the following chart of performance by age.
From that data, it’s hard to conclude there are any unique development curves by position. Center is perhaps most interesting, with limited improvement on average between ages 23 and 25, but 5s have the oldest peak on average of this group at 26.
It’s certainly possible the late developing trend we saw at point guard was a product of the position evolving in response to the crackdown on hand checking in the mid-2000s, followed by the dramatic increase in 3-point rates in the early 2010s. Now that the game has stabilized a bit, it’s become more common for point guards to excel early in their careers and less common for them to break through in their late 20s.
“How good could the Milwaukee Bucks’ defense be if they suppress opponent 3-point attempts this season like they have done in the preseason and first game vs the Philadelphia 76ers?” — @rcon14
Given expectations for the Bucks (my preseason title pick), this is one of the most interesting strategic moves to watch early in the season. In past years, Milwaukee has successfully prioritized protecting the paint over preventing 3-point attempts, leading a trend I’ve highlighted, where the best defenses no longer limit opponents’ 3-point attempts as they did in the 2010s.
The Boston Celtics made 22 3s in 55 attempts in Game 7 of last year’s conference semifinals win over the Bucks — who weren’t as dominant defensively in the regular season as they had been in the past. So Mike Budenholzer and his staff have put more emphasis on staying at home on shooters.
As noted, Milwaukee allowed 3-point attempts at the third-lowest rate (as a percentage of all opponent shot attempts) during the preseason. And in the Bucks’ opening win at Philadelphia, the Sixers took just 24 3s in 83 attempts, 10 fewer than their season opener against Boston. Milwaukee allowed 3s at a lower rate just once in the entire 2021-22 regular season.
The key question for the Bucks is whether they can win the trade-off of weaker rim protection in exchange for better 3-point prevention. They gave up 25 shots to the Sixers marked in the restricted area by Second Spectrum tracking, which would have ranked just outside Milwaukee’s 10 highest defensive totals during 2021-22.
At the same time, Milwaukee still controlled the defensive glass (87% defensive rebound percentage) and did remarkably well keeping Philadelphia off the line (13 attempts). So, all in all, it was a promising debut for the Bucks’ defensive tweak.
“What was the most recent starting five that is now out of the league?” — u/GhostAteMyBreakfast
I came across this question on the NBA’s subreddit and thought it was ideal for the mailbag. It turns out this is a high standard. No starting fives from either 2020-21 or 2021-22 qualify, although the Portland Trail Blazers did start a lineup late in their season finale with only one player (Keon Johnson) on a roster to begin this campaign.
Even back to 2018-19, there’s only one starting lineup that has seen all five players exit the league, which came during the 2020 seeding games. With nothing at stake, the Brooklyn Nets started Justin Anderson, Chris Chiozza, Tyler Johnson, Rodions Kurucs and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot in their penultimate game before the playoffs.
Chiozza and Luwawu-Cabarrot were both waived last week, Johnson and Kurucs are playing overseas and Anderson was waived prior to camp.
If we go back to 2017-18, we find a number of qualifying units. The most common recent starting five without any remaining NBA players was the Charlotte Hornets’ group of Dwight Howard, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Jeremy Lamb, Kemba Walker and Marvin Williams, which started 11 games that season.
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