The Math on Matthews: Evaluating What Wesley Matthews Brings to the Table
Nathan Begley | Monday, July 12, 2010 at 6:00PM As I am sure you know, Portland has extended an offer sheet to restricted free agent Wesley Matthews of the Utah Jazz and now Utah has seven days to match the offer and keep Matthews or let Portland have him. Today I’d like to look at how the addition of Matthews would impact the Blazers offense and defense and how Matthews compares to the players whose minutes he would be taking: Martell Webster and Rudy Fernandez. Well, it just so happens that Brett Hainline over at TrueHoop Network sister site Queen City Hoops has created a Player Swap tool that takes a guess at how a team would have performed if one player was traded for another and accounts for little details like usage and such. Below you will find the results for exchanging Matthews for Rudy Fernandez and for Martell Webster.
Replacing Fernandez:
|
Portland Efficiency Stats With Wesley Matthews replacing Rudy Fernandez |
||||
|
Offensive |
Defensive |
Net Efficiency |
Pythagorean |
|
|
Portland with |
107.9 |
107.3 |
0.6 |
42.6 - 39.4 |
|
Portland with |
106.2 |
104.9 |
1.3 |
44.5 - 37.5 |
|
Change |
+1.7 |
-2.4 |
-0.7 |
-1.9 wins |
|
Projected Impact of Swap on Portland’s Final Record |
||||
|
Offensive |
Defensive |
Net Efficiency |
Actual/Pythagorean |
|
|
Portland Current |
109.3 |
105.8 |
3.5 |
49 - 31 |
|
Projected with |
109.5 |
106.9 |
2.6 |
1.2 - 0.8 |
|
Combined Results |
109.3 |
105.8 |
3.5 |
50.2 - 31.8 |
Replacing Webster:
|
Portland Efficiency Stats With Wesley Matthews replacing Martell Webster |
||||
|
Offensive |
Defensive |
Net Efficiency |
Pythagorean |
|
|
Portland with |
108.1 |
105.5 |
2.6 |
47.9 - 34.1 |
|
Portland with |
107.6 |
105.0 |
2.6 |
48 - 34 |
|
Change |
+0.5 |
-0.5 |
+0 |
+-0.1 wins |
|
Projected Impact of Swap on Portland’s Final Record |
||||
|
Offensive |
Defensive |
Net Efficiency |
Actual/Pythagorean |
|
|
Portland Current |
109.3 |
105.8 |
3.5 |
49 - 31 |
|
Projected with |
109.5 |
106 |
3.5 |
1.2 - 0.8 |
|
Combined Results |
109.3 |
105.8 |
3.5 |
50.2 - 31.8 |
As you can see, the swap tool predicts that Portland would be slightly worse if Matthews took Fernandez’s minutes and slightly better if Matthews took Webster’s time on the court. As a caveat, I am not sure whether the swap tool uses single season data or career data. If it uses career data, then it’s a small wonder that Fernandez would perform better since his fantastic rookie campaign offsets the comparative misery of last season. Anyhow, Aaron Levenstein once said “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” This maxim holds true for our little hypothetical as I will endeavor to demonstrate. Please, read on.
The first stop on our statistical guided tour is the ever-handy Basketball-Reference. Using the player comparison tool, the first thing you notice when comparing Matthews’ and Webster’s raw stats is the striking similarities across several categories, such as age, both 23 years old, games started (48/49), minutes per game (24.7/24.5), field goals made per game (3.3/3.2), three point %(38.2/37.3), free throw % (82.9/81.3), offensive boards (0.6 both), fouls (both 1.9) and finally, points (both 9.4).
I know what you’re thinking; “Oh crap, did Portland just extend a frontloaded MLE level contract to Martell Webster’s clone?” No, keep reading, it will be okay, I promise. Also, watch your mouth. Your mom reads this blog.
Matthews averages more assists and steals than Webster, and a bit fewer blocks and rebounds as well. However, more importantly, Matthews has a better field goal percentage, effective field goal percentage*, better true shooting percentage**, lower usage, and takes more trips to the free throw line as well. As compared to Rudy Fernandez’s 2009-10 season, Matthews generally is comparable or outperforms Rudy in most areas, save for rebounding, assists, and steals. Also Rudy topples him in replica jerseys sold. That is one stat where Rudy is unbeatable.
Turning to Synergy Sports and their awesome scouting tools, we find that as compared to Fernandez, Matthews is better in transition (1.27 points per possession vs. 1.08), roughly equal in spot up shooting (1.06-1.1), and adds a post up element that Rudy lacks. From his Synergy stats, Matthews didn’t contribute a whole lot as far as playmaking, though playing next to All-Star, Gold Medal Olympian playmaker Deron Williams may have a little something to do with that. Matthews isn’t the shooter coming off screens that Rudy is, though that’s to be expected, since running off screens is Rudy’s bread and butter (or his papas bravas, if you will). Neither Matthews nor Fernandez are the type of player that a coach would run an isolation for.
On defense, the first thing that stood out to me is that Matthews is much better at guarding the pick and roll ball handler (0.8 allowed vs. 1.1). Defense per possession is fairly similar across the board; however, this is one of those instances where statistics lie, because Matthews put up his defensive numbers in approximately double the defensive plays Fernandez did. Secondly, Wes was playing starter minutes and defending the other team’s best offensive wing player. Rudy was playing against backups while Nicolas Batum or Webster usually handled the more difficult defensive assignments. As a side note, Rudy is apparently very good at defending shots off screens, so either Rudy is very good at chasing people around screens, or since mobility is his strength, teams just choose to attack him in isolation instead.
Compared to Webster, basically Matthews brings everything to the table that Webster brought shooting wise, but is also able to get to the rim and draw fouls. Defensively, Matthews allowed a lower field goal percentage in every area except post-ups, which considering the size difference, is unsurprising.
Now, the real differential between Matthews and Webster or Fernandez is how Matthews gets his points. According to the invaluable 82games.com, 57% of Matthews shots were jump shots (hit at an effective field goal percentage of 48.8%) and 43% were “inside” shots (60.7%). In contrast, 89% of Rudy’s shots were jump shots (48%) only 11% were inside (60.9%), while 76% of Martell’s shots were jump shots (48.4%) with only 24% taken inside (56.2%). What this indicates is that unlike Fernandez and Webster, Matthews has the ability to put the ball on the floor and get to the rim. This difference is borne out in the disparity of fouls drawn. Matthews draws fouls on 13.1% of his possessions, which is more than double Fernandez’s rate of 6.2% and is significantly higher than Webster’s rate of 9.2%.
Basically, Matthews can adequately replace pretty much everything that Martell Webster and Rudy Fernandez provided last season with a bit better defense, more hustle, a more diverse offense, and the ability to put the ball on the deck and get to the free throw line. In addition, although their ages are similar, Matthews was a rookie last year and will presumably be able to improve on last season’s performance merely by virtue of adjusting to the NBA game.
So, the question at hand remians “is that level of production worth the full Mid Level Exception?” I think we can all agree that the roughly seven million dollars a year on average is a bit high, especially considering that Rudy Fernandez and Martell Webster combined will not make that much next year. However, if you look solely at assets and asset management, I think we can all agree that Matthews at the MLE, Luke Babbitt, and whomever Portland trades Rudy Fernandez for (assuming Fernandez gets traded) is a better long-term investment than Webster and Fernandez going forward. In the short term, Portland shouldn’t have a noticeable negative change in production and may in fact see a positive effect as Matthews gets acclimated to the NBA and Nic Batum gets the lion’s share of minutes at small forward. Assuming that Fernandez gets traded, the logjam on the wing gets cleared up a bit as Batum and Roy are the clear starters and Matthews and Babbitt are the reserves, with maybe just a bit of Dante Cunningham thrown in for good measure. In addition, having Matthews and/or Batum on the floor should help alleviate some of the pressure on Portland’s big men since better perimeter defense, and especially better pick-and-roll ball handler defense, will help prevent penetration into the paint.
Most importantly, this type of acquisition is made with the playoffs in mind. When the rotation gets cut down as the playoffs approach, a player like Matthews is very valuable because he brings most of the best of Fernandez and Webster, but requires fewer minutes; resulting in one player getting plenty of time rather than two players becoming disgruntled. Because let’s face it, in the playoffs Roy and Batum should soak up the majority of minutes on the wing. If Fernandez does get moved, then the long-awaited consolidation that many fans have sought will have taken place. Although expensive, the net result will be a clear rotation, and improved perimeter defense, hustle, and toughness.
John Hollinger agrees that if Fernandez is moved, then Matthews is a good, albeit expensive, fit.
This (offer) is a bit crazy for a player of Matthews’ caliber — a solid defender and a reliable outside shooter, but one with modest upside. The logic for Portland is one of fit — they want a shut-down wing defender against 2s and a floor spacer, elements that would allow him to play with Brandon Roy for long stretches and effectively replace the likely-to-be-traded Rudy Fernandez as Portland’s top wing reserve.
While it’s not terrible logic on Portland’s part — use the entire midlevel on the best fit they can find — it puts Utah in a bind. The Jazz have enough room under the luxury tax to match, but may find it more financially prudent to bring back their former starting shooting guard, Ronnie Brewer, on a less expensive deal and allocate some of the savings to rebuilding their frontcourt.
*Effective Field Goal Percentage; the formula is (FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA. This statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal. For example, suppose Player A goes 4 for 10 with 2 threes, while Player B goes 5 for 10 with 0 threes. Each player would have 10 points from field goals, and thus would have the same effective field goal percentage (50%).
**True Shooting Percentage; the formula is PTS / (2 * (FGA + 0.44 * FTA)). True shooting percentage is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.
eFG% and TS% definitions quoted directly from Basketball Reference.
Reader Comments (30)
Nice look at all of this. I would like to add a couple things:
1. Utah's offense is built around the idea of getting players layins, basically. They do that constantly and they do it very well. So it makes sense that Matthews gets a lot of easy short-range or at-the-rim shots. Also they fastbreak more than we do.
2. Using basketball-reference's splits (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/matthwe02/splits/2010/), it appears that Matthews improved at least somewhat pre-All Star Break to post-ASB. His 3pt%, FG% and FT% all increased significantly, and reb/min and ast/min increased somewhat as well. So that's good. (One could argue this was a result of him getting a starting role, but it's still good that he played better as time went on and against starters rather than reserves.)
@austinpwnz
Yeah, that's true, however, without the requisite ball handling ability Matthews could not make those plays. Also, Synergy treats cuts and hand-offs separate from other offense and Matthews still produced well close to the rim w/o those.
Regarding the splits, I looked at those earlier and it looks like he started, got good, teams adjusted to him as the scouting report on him got better, he hit the rookie wall in Feb, and then improved as he went into the post season. I didn't include it because I suspect that I had already surpassed my target audience's attention span. Maybe I should have made a TL;DR.
Oh, neat - I didn't know Synergy differentiated those - very cool.
Glad you were already on top of the splits (moreso than I was). Still, I think it's pretty important for a player at least presumed to be on an upward trajectory (which I hope that Born and Buchanan see in him, given the payday).
Getting Matthews could lead to an amazing defensive lineup of Matthews, Batum, Cunningham, Camby, and Oden. They would be terrible on offense, but who cares when the other team can not score!
Swap Bayless for Batum since he will be starting and there's your second unit. A 4 headed defensive monster with B-Rex coming off Oden screens to get to the cup or setup dante/camby for the 15 footers. I like it
I think it's too expensive to sign a player of such limited abilities to such a large contract. Other role players of similar caliber are getting 3-4 million dollar a year deals this off-season. The upside to Mathews over Webster and Rudy is that he probably won't pout about his assigned role and he seems to understand the game well. However, I don't know if that's worth 9 million dollars for the first season. Plus, without Williams feeding him easy buckets for cutting to the rim I don't know how well his offense will translate to the Blazers.
I think a better expenditure of a an unreasonable contract for a restricted free agent would have been to give that money to Scola. The Rockets are way over the cap so such a large offer likely wouldn't have been matched. The Blazers would finally get a post-up threat and someone who could perhaps teach Aldridge that there is more to the inside game than shooting contested fade aways. That would also give the Blazers a great scoring lineup where Aldridge could play the 5 as Scola played the 4.
Why is Martell Webster being compared to Wesley Matthews? Did you forget that he got traded on draft day? Otherwise solid analysis, but there aren't any minutes to steal if the guy's on a different team.
@Dustin
He will replace Martell Webster as a defender and shooter on the wing. I'm aware of the trade, Martell's minutes have to go somewhere, right?
Great post...I still think Matthews is a solid replacement for Webster, but this only increases my belief in giving Rudy at least the first part of next season to come around before giving up on him completely. While I won't try to say he had a good year last year, I really feel like his 09-10 season has been unfairly maligned to the point of irrationality, similar to the way Bayless' so-so year has been presented by some as the emergence of a future star. As far as the statements to the media goes, don't players say things like that all the time? It was a janky and off-balance year for everyone, and maybe Rudy needs to learn to deal with that better, but I still don't see any reason not to give him a little more time.
I wonder how much of Rudy's comments are translation issues, but you can not mask body language and at the end of last season you could tell he was not happy. Unless they really want to make room on the roster for Mills or Johnson I do not see anything happening with Rudy before the season, but I would not be surprised to see a trade deadline deal involving Rudy.
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