Individual Brilliance Doesn't Always Carry Over To The Team for UK
Several Wildcats are putting up great stats...but is it helping the team?
Through ten games, UK has a number of players who rank in the top 150 or so nationally in some key advanced stats, as measured by KenPom.com :
Quade Green is 137th in Assist Rate (% of made baskets a player assists on, when in the game)
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 20th in Steal Rate (% of possessions ending in a player's steal)
Nick Richards ranks 10th in Offensive Rebound Rate (% of team misses rebounded)
Richards ranks 129th in Defensive Rebound Rate (% of opponent misses rebounded)
Richards ranks 42nd, and Wenyen Gabriel ranks 83rd, in Block Rate (% of opponent shots blocked by player)
With about 5,000 Division I players, it's very impressive for a player to rank this highly in these stats. Individual player stats only mean so much, however...the bigger accomplishment is helping the team get better. It's natural to assume that if a team has a player who is good at something, the team should be good at that too. But, is that always true? More importantly, is it true for UK in the cases of the players above?
Quade Green: a very good passer on a team full of them
First, let's look at Quade Green, and his impact on UK's assist rate. Green has the best assist rate on the team, but assists can be tricky. Getting credit for an assist has a lot to do with opportunity that's out of your hands; if a player doesn't touch the ball on an offensive possession, they can't get an assist. If a teammate doesn't take an open shot, or gets fouled, there's no assist. In general, however, players who make good passes should rack up assists, and having players with high assist rates should elevate the team's assist rate. But that's not exactly what's happening with Quade Green and UK:
With Quade Green in the game, UK assists on 52.5% of their made baskets
With Quade Green out of the game, UK assists on 58.6% of their made baskets
Despite Green's individual brilliance in recording assists, the team actually gets assists more often when Green is out of the game! How is that possible?
The answer is pretty simple, and a compliment for UK: they have so many good passers that it's not hard to replicate Green's assists. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ranks 251st nationally in assist rate, and Hamidou Diallo and PJ Washington are on pace to have the highest assist rates for non-point guards at UK under Calipari (as I wrote about before). So, Kentucky almost always has 2 or 3 great passers on the court, meaning there's very little drop-off at any time.
Gilgeous-Alexander is a difference maker on defense, although at a price
Gilgeous-Alexander has tremendous length and quickness at the guard position for a college player. This translates into a number of steals for him, as mentioned above. This also translates into a higher opponent turnover rate:
Opponents turn the ball over on 20% of possessions with SGA in the game
Opponents turn the ball over on 17% of possessions with SGA out
Steals are exactly the kind of statistic that should translate from the individual to the team level, for two reasons. First, steals are pretty rare...so one player can account for a lot of their team's steals. Second, it's generally true that only one player at a time really has a chance for a steal, so getting a steal isn't likely to take away a chance for another player to get one...it's almost always incremental to the team's total. Rebounds, for example, are usually up for grabs by a few players, so one player can take away rebounding opportunities from another. More on that in a bit...
The same aggressiveness that leads to steals, however, can also backfire. A missed attempt at a steal can result in a defender being out of position, forcing the entire defense to scramble. This leads to a higher likelihood for fouls. Indeed, UK fouls on 25% of the possessions with Gilgeous-Alexander in the game, compared to 22% with him out. This isn't all attributable to his aggressiveness in going for steals, but it does counteract some of the benefit of his steals. In fact. UK allows more points per possession with Gilgeous-Alexander in the game (0.96 pts/possession) than when he's out (0.90). The difference is entirely attributable to giving up free throws nearly twice as often with him in the game, despite the fact that Gilgeous-Alexander himself actually fouls pretty rarely.
Nick Richards gets rebounds, but at the expense of teammates
Richards has been a monster on the glass this year, putting up stellar rates of offensive and defensive rebounding. For as gaudy as his individual numbers are, however, Kentucky really isn't any better on the glass with him in the game:
With Richards in, UK gets 36% of their own misses and 65% of opponents'
With Richards out, UK gets 35% of their own misses and 74% of opponents'
Unlike Quade Green's impact on UK assists, this isn't a case of UK having great rebounders to fill in for Richards; of UK's players, only Wenyen Gabriel is in the top 500 nationally in defensive rebounding rate, and as a team UK ranks 221st. Furthermore, every UK rotation player has a higher defensive rebounding rate with Richards out of the game than when he's in:
Gabriel has a 12% DReb Rate with Richards in, and 19% with Richards out
PJ Washington is at 11% with Richards in, and 14% with him out
Kevin Knox is at 10% with Richards in, and 15% with him out
Even UK's guards see their DReb Rate rise by 2-3% when Richards sits
You could explain this by saying that his teammates have to pick up the slack with Richards out, but again: UK's team defensive rebounding is substantially better with Richards out, despite the fact that Richards himself is far and away UK's best defensive rebounder. It appears that Richards' physical gifts allow him to collect a lot of rebounds, but most of these are rebounds his teammates could have gotten. Richards also does not box out frequently; boxing out can sometimes have the effect of taking your opponent out of rebounding position, and making it easier for your teammates to crash the glass. Some NBA players who are poor rebounders themselves box out very well, enabling their team to rebound very well; Robin Lopez is a prime example. Richards seems to have the opposite effect.
It is notable that Richards' offensive rebounding prowess helps the team slightly. It's much less likely that an offensive rebound is an opportunity stolen from a teammate. It is a bit unusual, however, that the 10th best offensive rebounder in the nation has such a small impact on his team's offensive rebound rate. UK does have a pair of solid offensive rebounders in PJ Washington and Wenyen Gabriel, and ranks 12 nationally as a team, so that's more similar to the situation with Quade Green and assists; UK is just so good at offensive rebounding that they can maintain the strength even when Richards leaves the game.
Blocked shots look cool, but aren't all that helpful
Both Nick Richards and Wenyen Gabriel are among the top 100 shot blockers nationally, and UK ranks 8th nationally as a team. I have to inject some personal opinion, however, and let you know that I think blocked shots are possibly the most useless regularly measured statistic. A significant percentage of blocked shots end up out of bounds, so the shooting team retains possession, and most shot blockers miss at least as many block attempts as they make. In their zeal to block shots, many players leave offensive rebounding opportunities open as well. The bottom line is that blocking shots has virtually no impact on opponent 2 point shooting, as evidenced by UK this year:
With Richards in, opponents shoot 47% on twos; they shoot 45% with him out
With Gabriel in, opponents shoot 48% on twos; they shoot 45% with him out
With Richards and Gabriel both in, opponents shoot 47% on twos; they shoot 39% with both out
So, neither of UK's shot blocking aces manages to hold opponents to worse shooting. With both of their shot blockers in, opponents shoot much better on twos. Part of the issue is that opponents score more easily on putback attempts:
With Richards in, opponents are 6 for 7 on putbacks attempts; they are 4 for 8 with him out
With both Richards and Gabriel in, opponents are 2 for 2 on putback attempts
These putbacks are much easier for the other team when UK's big men are out of position because they went for a block and missed.
Individual player stats are tracked and discussed far more often than team stats. Furthermore, it's much easier to notice an individual player's impact than it is to notice the team's performance. Tat leads most fans, analysts, etc., to confuse a player's strengths with the team's strengths. I hope I've made the case today that it's not as simple as that; sometimes, a player is putting up his own stats, but the team overall is suffering because of it. I hope this helps you watch the game a bit differently from now on.
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