Deliberations of a Desert Rat

Going on a quick vacation – the search function on the right does work, so if you’re looking for something, please feel free to search!

[UPDATE 7/3/09: After some discussion with some readers from wildaboutazcats.com, I revisited the formula to account for positions played by players. While the numbers are different overall, and the order in which players are listed has changed, the results are basically still the same.]

Yesterday, I wrote about a comparison between Arizona NBA players and UConn players.

Today, let’s compare some other schools – UCLA, Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, and Kentucky. All of these schools are “basketball blue-bloods”, so one would think that they all should have their share of shining stars and impact players.

The criteria was simple, top 7 players from a specific school that have played in the NBA a minimum of 2 seasons. Rookies were left off because it’s too early to tell if their careers are boom or bust. After two full seasons, one should have a good idea of where the player is headed.

All stats listed are career stats. PERs listed are John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating. These are not counted in the calculation of the Player Impact Rating (PIR) but are listed to satisfy curiosity and as points of reference.

The PIR is a metric I created to summarize a player’s impact to the game based on the person’s stats over time – this takes into account the number of minutes played, so the career stats aren’t skewed by the longer careers of people like Mike Bibby, for example. Team PIRs are calculated two ways – one with 7 players, since empirical evidence suggest that the average school has at most 7 players in the NBA at any one point in time, and the other with 5 players, since you can only have 5 players on the court at any time. Obviously, the 5 player team PIR is calculated using the best five players.

Again, for comparison, I also did four other player PIRs. Unsurprisingly, none of the players calculated are even close to these four (one of which is a Hall of Famer, the other three will definitely be joining him).

Comparison PIRs

As a reminder, here’s Arizona’s players and their individual PIR’s

Arizona PIR

Now, let’s start with the UCLA Bruins. Nothing like a conference rivalry to get things started. Plus, with the history of UCLA in the NCAA Tournament, one might think that there are a plethora of former Bruins in the NBA that are major players…

UCLA PIR

Hmm… Ok, let’s go cross-country to another tradition-laden school in Kentucky. Those Wildcats have a pedigree in basketball, dontcha know! They MUST have some pretty good players that are lighting up scoreboards, right?

Kentucky PIR

OOPS! There are only 5 players from Kentucky currently in the NBA with more than 2 seasons under their belts. So, I guess Kentucky wasn’t as good a comparison after all, it seems. How about … North Carolina? Surely that would be a better comparison.

North Carolina PIR

Wow… now there’s some heavy hitters in this group. But still, something seems not quite right. Maybe a midwestern school holds the solution? Let’s look at Kansas.

Kansas PIR

Uh oh… only 6 players here. That’s not really good either. I guess it’s up to Duke.

Now, before I did this calculation, I fully expected the results to be similar to everything else I’ve been seeing so far. However, Duke actually has 8 players in the NBA currently right now that qualify, so I had to use their top 7. How scary is that??

Duke PIR

Notably, Shane Battier is NOT listed here for Duke. He was the 8th player and has a PIR of 43.62. If you include him and do a team PIR of 8 players, Duke would drop to a team PIR of 61.87. Ouch.

So what’s the verdict? Are any teams going to beat Arizona? Actually, the answer is “yes.”

Team PIRs (7 players)

How about just top 5’s?

Team PIRs (5 players)

As a side note, players with top 250 career PERs have been noted in the tables above and counted. Final tally: Arizona 5, North Carolina 4, Duke 3, UCLA 1, Kansas 1, Kentucky 0.

If any team was combined with Arizona players, Arizona players would outnumber the other team players except for Duke. Duke would have Hill, Boozer, and Brand, while Arizona would have Arenas and Bibby.

So, using this information, what have we learned? We already know that Arizona has the most draft picks of any school since the Lottery Era began. We know that of all the current NBA players, Arizona has more career PER players than any other school. We know that as a group, Arizona players have higher Player Impacts than any other school except Duke. And in head-to-heads against the “blue-blood” of college basketball, Arizona beats them all, again except for Duke.

For one last comparison, I’ll calculate the Arizona State’s NBA players’ individual PIRs (This one wasn’t even worth doing a table for – that’s how bad it is):

Ike Diogu 55.76
Eddie House 52.25

If combined with Arizona, Diogu makes the 6th spot out of top 7. I couldn’t calculate a team rating for ASU because they don’t have enough players in the NBA, and they won’t for next two years either with only 4 (add Pendergraph and Harden to the list).

Does Arizona belong now in the annals of college basketball as one of the “blue-bloods”? With 25 straight NCAA appearances, several Final Fours and a National Championship, the last measuring stick of “Players In The NBA” is still in review, but based on this evidence, I would argue that Arizona belongs now to that upper echelon of blue-bloods, the college basketball elite.

[UPDATE 7/3/09: After some discussion with some readers from wildaboutazcats.com, I revisited the formula to account for positions played by players. While the numbers are different overall, and the order in which players are listed has changed, the results are basically still the same.]

When it comes to NCAA basketball, no one can deny the fact that since the NBA shortened the draft to only two rounds in 1985, Arizona has had the most draft picks of any university (31) – more than Duke (29), UCLA (28), North Carolina (25), or Connecticut (23).

Some of those picks have been superstars (Gilbert Arenas), while others… not so much (Marcus Williams).

What would happen, then, if you had an all-Arizona NBA team vs. say an all-UConn NBA team?

Let’s take a look – for Arizona (all stats are career stats):
PG – Gilbert Arenas (22.8 PPG, 4.2 REB, 5.5 AST, 1.8 STL, 20.74 PER)
PG – Mike Bibby (16.4 PPG, 3.3 REB, 6.1 AST, 1.3 STL, 16.91 PER)
C – Channing Frye (8.2 PPG, 4.6 REB, 0.5 BLK, 0.4 STL)
SG – Andre Iguodala (15.6 PPG, 5.7 REB, 4.4 AST, 1.8 STL, 16.89 PER)
SF – Richard Jefferson (17.7 PPG, 5.3 REB, 3.0 AST, 0.9 STL, 16.56 PER)
PG – Jason Terry (16.2 PPG, 2.9 REB, 4.9 AST, 1.3 STL, 17.86 PER)
SF – Luke Walton (5.6 PPG, 3.2 REB, 2.5 AST, 0.6 STL)

for UConn (all stats are career stats):

SG – Ray Allen (20.9 PPG, 4.4 REB, 3.8 AST, 1.2 STL, 19.72 PER)
SF – Caron Butler (16.7 PPG, 6.0 REB, 3.0 AST, 1.7 STL, 16.72 PER)
SF – Rudy Gay (16.7 PPG, 5.4 REB, 1.7 AST, 1.2 STL)
SG – Ben Gordon (18.5 PPG, 3.0 REB, 3.0 AST, 0.8 STL)
SG – Richard Hamilton (17.9 PPG, 3.3 REB, 3.4 AST, 0.8 STL, 16.96 PER)
C – Emeka Okafor (14.0 PPG, 10.7 REB, 1.9 BLK, 0.8 STL)
PF – Charlie Villanueva (13.4 PPG, 6.3 REB, 1.2 AST, 0.6 STL)

If one went purely on PPG, UConn has the decided advantage at 118.1 PPG to Arizona’s 102.5. How about PER? Arizona has five career leaders versus UConn’s three.

However, I created another metric to summarize a player’s impact (PIR) based on the person’s stats over time – this takes into account the number of minutes played, so the career stats aren’t skewed by the longer careers of people like Bibby and Allen.

For comparison, I also did four other player PIRs. Unsurprisingly, none of the UConn or Arizona alums are even close to these four (one of which is a Hall of Famer, the other three will definitely be joining him).

Michael Jordan 96.87
LeBron James 89.92
Shaquille O’Neal 88.41
Steve Nash 79.03

Where do the UConn players rank?
Ray Allen 65.49
Emeka Okafor 61.28
Charlie Villanueva 61.16
Ben Gordon 60.42
Rip Hamilton 58.98
Caron Butler 58.87
Rudy Gay 54.46

Arizona … much, much better:
Gilbert Arenas 72.65
Mike Bibby 64.46
Jason Terry 62.48
Andre Iguodala 60.46
Richard Jefferson 58.88
Luke Walton 52.73
Channing Frye 50.24

Now, you have Arizona with three highly rated players along with Ray Allen and Emeka Okafor.

Also, if we drop all players who have not played 10000 minutes (which actually is 2 players from each side) and sum the PIRs, you get an average team (5 players) total of:

UConn: 61.01
Arizona: 63.79

(Even if you keep all 7 players and do the average PIRs, UConn ends up with 60.10, Arizona slightly higher with 60.27.)

In summary, UConn players may score more, but Arizona players have a little more impact in and on games than UConn players do. This is one of the many reasons why Arizona has more players drafted than any other school in the country.

Arizona’s much-maligned recruiting class, prior to Sean Miller taking the reins, is now complete with the addition of Derrick Williams.

Lance Stephenson and Jarrid Famous, we hardly knew ya.

With the committment of Jones and Williams, Miller rounds out a now-top 10 class for 2009 that includes:

Kyryl Natyazhko (C/PF)
Solomon Hill (SF/SG)
Kevin Parrom (PF/SF)
Lamont Jones (SG/PG)
Derrick Williams (PF/SF)

Every position is deep now. There are two options for PG after returner and All-American candidate Nic Wise in Garland Judkins and Jones. SG goes three deep with Kyle Fogg, then Brandon Lavender and Hill or Jones. SF has multiple options, starting with Hill, and then going through Parrom, Williams, and DJ Shumpert. PF is rock steady with Jamelle Horne, followed by Natyazhko, Parrom, and Williams, and the C position is anchored by Natyazhko and Alex Jacobson, with Horne being able to run the C if Miller goes small.

Miller will run, and run a lot, and his players will all see significant minutes – almost 20+ a game for everyone except Wise, who you can count on being around 30+ a game. This team will create matchup problems for everyone in the Pac-10 except UCLA, and even then the Bruins must be a little worried that this young Wildcat team somehow, some way, is now loaded and deep with talent at every position.

Wise and Horne will be the leaders on this team, and you know that these Wildcats will be a huge threat to win the conference now – a 26th straight run to the NCAA Tourney is almost a given, since a top-3 finish in the conference literally guarantees a berth.

Down at Tempe Normal, Herb Sendek and the rest of Sun Devil Nation must be wondering “How on earth could this have possibly happened?” They had four straight wins over Arizona – granted, they were over non-Lute Olson-coached teams – and it looked like they were going to become the new king of the hill in the state. Instead, Arizona turned the tables and now has not only the upper hand coaching-wise, but the talent to go with it. It’s a proven fact that Sendek is simply not an elite coach. He’s a good coach, maybe borderline great, but he’s not elite. Miller, however, has already proven he’s elite. In fact, Miller is already mentioned in several pundits’ top 30 coaching lists in the country.

All that’s left is now to look forward to the start of the basketball season. Jarrid Famous can stay at South Florida – hope he’s happy to be a bottom feeder for the remaining two years of his college career, because South Florida isn’t going to do anything in the Big East anytime soon. Lance Stephenson? Well, if he doesn’t sign with Memphis (and Josh Pastner could really use the help), then he will most likely end up in Europe. Good luck with that.

Either way, the 2009 Wildcats are complete!

Yesterday, I wrote about Eric Byrnes being a rally-killer. Well, in the second inning of the game the next day, Byrnes is hit by a pitch in his first at-bat and breaks his hand. His replacement was… Ryan Roberts. But that won’t be permanent… I figure the Dbacks will call up someone like Alex Romero ASAP and put Byrnes on the 30-day DL. (broken hand = 4 weeks to recover)

Yeah, I don’t think these Dbacks are going to get much better until they solve their bullpen issues and add at least one more slugger.