I thought we should have a thread dedicated to the supposed centerpiece of the Celtics' haul in the Rondo trade. It may be debatable as to whether Brandan Wright was the most important asset the Celtics received for Rondo, but there should be no argument that he is certainly the best player they got. So what type of player is Brandan Wright? I just spend a while scouring through some numbers and here are my impressions:
On Offense
This season Wright is posting some absurd efficiency numbers. He is your typical low-usage/high efficiency big man who uses his athleticism to take advantage of plays made largely by his teammates. His usage rate this season is 15% which is actually down from his career average of 17.4%. For some context this is in the ballpark of players like Ben McLemore, Joakim Noah, and Andrew Bogut this season. For some more context, Tyson Chandler's career usage rate is 13.8%.
When Wright uses a possession, he has been extraordinarily efficient, for three primary reasons which I list in no order:
1) He doesn't turn the ball over. His turnover rate this season is 7.7 TO/100 possessions. This places him in the upper echelon of Power Forward/Centers in this regard.
2) He takes good shots. A full 2/3's of his shot attempts this season have been either dunks (33% of his attempts) or layups (33% of his attempts).
3) He converts the shots he takes at an elite level. He is currently leading the NBA in FG% on shots within 5 feet, converting at a whopping 80% rate.
Since we are only a quarter through the season, it makes some sense to ask how these factors stack up to his career averages. His turnover rate for his career is 7.9, so this has always been a strength of Wright's. The major changes have come in his shot selection and in his conversion rate: The percentage of his attempts within 3 feet has gone up 10% as compared with last season, and his FG% on such shots has increased 6% over last year.
But these are not drastic changes - Wright has always kept his offensive game close to the hoop, and his FG% on shots within 3 feet have been the following since he joined Dallas in 2011: 78%, 72%, 79%, 85%. These are all very good rates.
So what explains the uptick this season? I haven't watched many Mav's games, but I have to believe it is related to the fact that the Mavericks lineup switch out Vince Carter with Chandler Parsons.
I doubt that Wright will see as many easy layup and dunk opportunities on the Celtics - we have no one with the playmaking ability of Monta Ellis, nor do we have players who can distract defenses like Dirk or Parsons. To make the argument more statisical seeming, Wright has played all of his minutes with either Monta Ellis, Dirk Nowitzki, or Chandler Parsons on the floor, whose usage rates are respectively 29%, 27%, and 22%. For comparison, the Celtics' highest usage player is Jeff Green at 24%. Clearly the two teams have quite different distributions of responsibility offensively, and it will be interesting to see how Wright is integrated into a more egalitarian Celtics offense. He certainly adds a dimension of athleticism and finishing ability around the hoop that the Celtics have not had in a very long while.
Rebounding
Wright is a fascinating player when it comes to the glassware, as his offensive rebounding rate of 12.5% is nearly equal to his defensive rebounding rate - 13.2%. For context, defensive rebounds are gained at approximately a 70% rate, so the generic player's defensive rebounding rate ought to be nearly three times his defensive rebound rate (I am ignoring some subtleties here, but still).
The fact that these two rates are nearly equal for Wright speak to two things about wright: One is that he is a very good offensive rebounder who spends nearly all his time in the paint. For context, his ORR Is right around that of Demarcus Cousins and Zach Randolph. The other is that he is a disaster of a defensive rebounder, especially for someone who plays a lot of center for Dallas. I would bet that this is related to Wright's gaudy block numbers. At only 6'9 and 200 lbs, Wright generally uses his freakish athleticism rather than a massive frame to generate the volume of blocks that he does, but it probably comes at the cost of good rebounding positioning.
(Maybe someone else can look into this: Dallas rebounds 50% of Wright's blocks. Is this above average or below?)
For the Celtics this presents an interesting set of choices. Rondo was amazingly the best defensive rebounder on the team, and surely some of the responsibility will be picked up by the other big men, but if you are Brad Stevens which big man do you pair Wright with to ensure that the team you put out is getting defensive boards? Sullinger and Zeller are both pretty good on the defensive glass, but playing them with Wright would potentially clog the paint area. But if you play Wright with Olynyk it will be a disaster on the defensive glass, assuming they even get stops in the first place.
Defense
Brandan Wright is an elite shot blocker. He is currently tied for 6th in the NBA in Blocks per 100 possessions (among players who actually play a decent number of minutes), and this from a man who is three inches shorter than everyone else ahead of him. One might ask whether these blocks are "empty", as people have argued is the case for Deandre Jordan. The idea being, ok he gets a lot of blocks but are they actually making the defense better? In the case of Jordan, opponents still shoot an excellent percentage at the rim against him inspite of his gaudy block numbers, suggesting that Deandre Jordan is perhaps maybe not the defensive presence you might expect him to be.
In the case of Wright, it appears that he is genuinely a positive defensive influence around the rim. Opponents are shooting 53.7% on shots within 5 feet of the hoop on Wright this season, which puts him around players like Serge Ibaka, Samuel Dalembert, and Tiago Splitter, all of whom have pretty good defensive reputations. Furthermore, his foul rate is very low for a big man.
On the other hand, looking at his plus minus numbers tell a different story. This season the Mavericks defense is nearly 6 points/100 possessions worse with Wright on the floor, and last season it was 2.5 points worse. But here context is crucial: Brandan Wright and Tyson Chandler almost never play together, having logged only 73 minutes together this season. Thus, the on/off numbers are in some sense isolating Wright's defense versus Chandler's defense, and it is no shame to be 6 points worse than the man widely regarded as the best rim-protector in the league (personally I would go for Bogut).
So what about last season? Here too the context is crucial. Wright usually came on for Samuel Dalembert, another defensive specialist. So it is no surprise that the defense suffered when it replaced the stout Dalembert with the 6'9 Wright.
Purely based on the numbers, I would tentatively say that Wright is a net positive defensive presence. The Maverick's defense has been fairly poor this season, but that is what you get when you are putting Dirk behind Wright.
In Sum
I am pretty pumped about Brandan Wright, which may seem strange considering the fact that he is averaging 8 points and 4 rebounds per game. But the stats love him: 82games, which primarily looks at on/off stuff, has him as the Mav's third best player each of the past two years. And over on APBR metrics they were saying that it was Wright, not Rondo, who was the best player in the deal. He certainly has a unique skillset and very definite limitations, but I am excited to see how Stevens puts him to use.
For the stats, I used a combination of basketballreference, nba.com, nbawowy!, and 82games.
On Offense
This season Wright is posting some absurd efficiency numbers. He is your typical low-usage/high efficiency big man who uses his athleticism to take advantage of plays made largely by his teammates. His usage rate this season is 15% which is actually down from his career average of 17.4%. For some context this is in the ballpark of players like Ben McLemore, Joakim Noah, and Andrew Bogut this season. For some more context, Tyson Chandler's career usage rate is 13.8%.
When Wright uses a possession, he has been extraordinarily efficient, for three primary reasons which I list in no order:
1) He doesn't turn the ball over. His turnover rate this season is 7.7 TO/100 possessions. This places him in the upper echelon of Power Forward/Centers in this regard.
2) He takes good shots. A full 2/3's of his shot attempts this season have been either dunks (33% of his attempts) or layups (33% of his attempts).
3) He converts the shots he takes at an elite level. He is currently leading the NBA in FG% on shots within 5 feet, converting at a whopping 80% rate.
Since we are only a quarter through the season, it makes some sense to ask how these factors stack up to his career averages. His turnover rate for his career is 7.9, so this has always been a strength of Wright's. The major changes have come in his shot selection and in his conversion rate: The percentage of his attempts within 3 feet has gone up 10% as compared with last season, and his FG% on such shots has increased 6% over last year.
But these are not drastic changes - Wright has always kept his offensive game close to the hoop, and his FG% on shots within 3 feet have been the following since he joined Dallas in 2011: 78%, 72%, 79%, 85%. These are all very good rates.
So what explains the uptick this season? I haven't watched many Mav's games, but I have to believe it is related to the fact that the Mavericks lineup switch out Vince Carter with Chandler Parsons.
I doubt that Wright will see as many easy layup and dunk opportunities on the Celtics - we have no one with the playmaking ability of Monta Ellis, nor do we have players who can distract defenses like Dirk or Parsons. To make the argument more statisical seeming, Wright has played all of his minutes with either Monta Ellis, Dirk Nowitzki, or Chandler Parsons on the floor, whose usage rates are respectively 29%, 27%, and 22%. For comparison, the Celtics' highest usage player is Jeff Green at 24%. Clearly the two teams have quite different distributions of responsibility offensively, and it will be interesting to see how Wright is integrated into a more egalitarian Celtics offense. He certainly adds a dimension of athleticism and finishing ability around the hoop that the Celtics have not had in a very long while.
Rebounding
Wright is a fascinating player when it comes to the glassware, as his offensive rebounding rate of 12.5% is nearly equal to his defensive rebounding rate - 13.2%. For context, defensive rebounds are gained at approximately a 70% rate, so the generic player's defensive rebounding rate ought to be nearly three times his defensive rebound rate (I am ignoring some subtleties here, but still).
The fact that these two rates are nearly equal for Wright speak to two things about wright: One is that he is a very good offensive rebounder who spends nearly all his time in the paint. For context, his ORR Is right around that of Demarcus Cousins and Zach Randolph. The other is that he is a disaster of a defensive rebounder, especially for someone who plays a lot of center for Dallas. I would bet that this is related to Wright's gaudy block numbers. At only 6'9 and 200 lbs, Wright generally uses his freakish athleticism rather than a massive frame to generate the volume of blocks that he does, but it probably comes at the cost of good rebounding positioning.
(Maybe someone else can look into this: Dallas rebounds 50% of Wright's blocks. Is this above average or below?)
For the Celtics this presents an interesting set of choices. Rondo was amazingly the best defensive rebounder on the team, and surely some of the responsibility will be picked up by the other big men, but if you are Brad Stevens which big man do you pair Wright with to ensure that the team you put out is getting defensive boards? Sullinger and Zeller are both pretty good on the defensive glass, but playing them with Wright would potentially clog the paint area. But if you play Wright with Olynyk it will be a disaster on the defensive glass, assuming they even get stops in the first place.
Defense
Brandan Wright is an elite shot blocker. He is currently tied for 6th in the NBA in Blocks per 100 possessions (among players who actually play a decent number of minutes), and this from a man who is three inches shorter than everyone else ahead of him. One might ask whether these blocks are "empty", as people have argued is the case for Deandre Jordan. The idea being, ok he gets a lot of blocks but are they actually making the defense better? In the case of Jordan, opponents still shoot an excellent percentage at the rim against him inspite of his gaudy block numbers, suggesting that Deandre Jordan is perhaps maybe not the defensive presence you might expect him to be.
In the case of Wright, it appears that he is genuinely a positive defensive influence around the rim. Opponents are shooting 53.7% on shots within 5 feet of the hoop on Wright this season, which puts him around players like Serge Ibaka, Samuel Dalembert, and Tiago Splitter, all of whom have pretty good defensive reputations. Furthermore, his foul rate is very low for a big man.
On the other hand, looking at his plus minus numbers tell a different story. This season the Mavericks defense is nearly 6 points/100 possessions worse with Wright on the floor, and last season it was 2.5 points worse. But here context is crucial: Brandan Wright and Tyson Chandler almost never play together, having logged only 73 minutes together this season. Thus, the on/off numbers are in some sense isolating Wright's defense versus Chandler's defense, and it is no shame to be 6 points worse than the man widely regarded as the best rim-protector in the league (personally I would go for Bogut).
So what about last season? Here too the context is crucial. Wright usually came on for Samuel Dalembert, another defensive specialist. So it is no surprise that the defense suffered when it replaced the stout Dalembert with the 6'9 Wright.
Purely based on the numbers, I would tentatively say that Wright is a net positive defensive presence. The Maverick's defense has been fairly poor this season, but that is what you get when you are putting Dirk behind Wright.
In Sum
I am pretty pumped about Brandan Wright, which may seem strange considering the fact that he is averaging 8 points and 4 rebounds per game. But the stats love him: 82games, which primarily looks at on/off stuff, has him as the Mav's third best player each of the past two years. And over on APBR metrics they were saying that it was Wright, not Rondo, who was the best player in the deal. He certainly has a unique skillset and very definite limitations, but I am excited to see how Stevens puts him to use.
For the stats, I used a combination of basketballreference, nba.com, nbawowy!, and 82games.
