Mad Max for Big Baby, the return of smallball and 28 wins ?

Lets look at some recent links around the Pistons blogosphere and various media outlets...

-Yahoo! Sports reports that Boston offered the Pistons big man Glen Davis and guards J.R. Giddens and Gabe Pruitt for Jason Maxiell and a first-round pick. Evidently, the Pistons, Trail Blazers and Hornets have tried to work a sign-and-trade deal for Big Baby. All reports suggest that the Pistons turned down the first deal and for good reason. Even if one assumes that Davis is better than Maxiell, he is not worth a 1st round pick that could turn out to be a lottery pick. But, back to the Davis vs. Maxiell debate. Should there even be one?

• Based on nearly every advanced statistic, Davis was one of the worst big men in basketball last year and was an inferior player to Maxiell. Maxiell had a superior true shooting percentage (TS %), rebound percentage (both offensive and defensive rebounding), PER (15.8 to 10.7), win shares and WARP (3.5 to -0.3). As of today, it is not even close. Maxiell is a vastly superior player. Could that change in a few years? Sure. Davis is taller, younger and may have the potential to actually be a starter one day, while Max does not.
  

• But, I feel as if this hype for Davis is just that: hype and no substance. Even if you compared Davis' second year numbers to Max's and the numbers from his playoff run of this year to Max's 2nd trip to the playoffs (last postseason), Max still looks good in comparison to Davis. Other than win shares, Max would have a superior PER, TS%, TRB%, B% and defensive rating. Also, his playoff numbers in the 2008 playoffs are superior to what Davis had this year. PER is basically identical (15.1 to 15.2), but TS%, TRB%, B%, Stl%, offensive and defensive rating all favor Max and win shares is nearly identical (1.1 to 1.3). The Pistons still need a starting center but they are not in such a desperate need for a big man that they ship out a bench player for another inferior bench player.

-Kevin Sawyer at Detroit Bad Boys is in favor of the return of smallball. This would have Stuckey at PG, Gordon at SG, Hamilton at SF, Prince at PF and Villanueva at C. A lot has changed in the NBA in recent years. Centers are becoming less and less prominent and spacing the floor, being able to handle the ball, run up and down the court and to shoot it from the outside is a highly valued trait for big men. Villanueva and Prince both would cause matchup problems at the 4 and 5 spot. However, a team still needs to be able to defend, and that is one of the supposed downfalls of smallball. It is interesting to note, however, that our best 5 man defensive unit last year was a smallball unit which featured Iverson as the PG, Stuckey at SG, Hamilton at SF, Prince at PF and Rasheed Wallace at center. It is also interesting that the opposing players PER stayed the same for Hamilton at the 3 spot and Prince's opposing PF had a PER of 12.6 (15 is average). So, on paper, this might make some sense.

But, we have to be careful in evaluating these numbers and realize that while Prince's and Hamilton's defensive numbers did not suffer, it is hard to project these numbers for a lot of minutes. Would they hold up if given 30-35 minutes at those spots a night, every night? Also, did Rasheed's presence in the middle of the paint have a subtle effect that we may have missed? Villanueva played center in 11 % of Milwaukee's minutes and allowed an opposing PER of 27.4. Clearly, then, our defense would suffer with such a weak defensive player in that position. We could give Kwame Brown some minutes there in the smallball lineup b/c he is a superior defensive player, but then that would eliminate some of the mismatches we would be hoping to create with the smallball lineup. I do think, however, that it could be a potential wrinkle that Kuester will throw out every now and again against the Pistons opponents.

-The Wages of Wins Journal is a basketball site that attempts to predict the wins for a given NBA team based on the individual performances of each player and the number of wins a player can provide for that team. He generally is within +- 3 of his projected win total and a further explanation to this madness can be found at his site. Below is his take on the Pistons roster as currently constructed...

"First Team:

PG: Rodney Stuckey [4.0 Wins Produced, 0.077 WP48]

SG: Richard Hamilton [1.9 Wins Produced, 0.040 WP48]

SF: Tayshaun Prince [7.3 Wins Produced, 0.114 WP48]

PF: Charlie Villanueva [3.6 Wins Produced, 0.082 WP48]

C: Kwame Brown [2.4 Wins Produced, 0.117 WP48]

Second Team:

PG: Will Bynum [1.2 Wins Produced, 0.071 WP48]

SG: Ben Gordon [4.9 Wins Produced, 0.078 WP48]

SF: Austin Daye [Rookie]

PF: Jason Maxiell [2.9 Wins Produced, 0.098 WP48]

C: Chris Wilcox [0.2 Wins Produced, 0.008 WP48]

If you add up the 2008-09 Wins Produced by the veteran players all you get is 28.4. So unless Austin Daye is suddenly one of the top five players in the NBA – or these veterans become much more productive players — it looks like the Pistons are in trouble."

-Just for reference, an average player posts a 0.100 WP48. Also of note, since 1978 no team has won an NBA title without one regular player (minimum 41 games played, 24.0 minutes per game) posting at least a 0.200 WP48. Only one team (the 1978-79 Seattle Super Sonics) managed to win a title without a regular player crossing the 0.250 threshold. Based on that, we are a ways away from winning a title.

You can tell from that what he thinks of Rip Hamilton's overall game and Kwame Brown surprisingly graded out very well. In essence, he is projecting between 25 and 32 wins for the Pistons. Now, this is by no means a perfect statistic or predictor of what will happen. The schedule, a relatively weak East after the first 3 teams, injuries to key components on rival teams, and the development of guys like Stuckey, Gordon, Villanueva, etc. into better and more productive players would throw his projection for a loop. But, it is something to consider. Sadly, he may be on to something...