The Grizzlies won’t play on MLK Day, and the most predictitive Summer League stats

The Grizzlies won’t play on MLK Day, and the most predictitive Summer League stats

Mor with a running start. Element overdone. Gasol will turn his he is gone. Memphis on top. 17 remaining. And finally now a three. Count it. A 15-point lead for Memphis. And Blake Griffin gets into it on the floor with Randol. Hard to tell if there are any punches being thrown under there, but Griffin took except Adams going long. Mor insanity. You got to be kidding me. Welcome to Grits and Grinds, a Memphis Grizzlies podcast. My name is Keith Parish. The Grizzlies made a major announcement about playing their first ever regular season games in Europe. This announcement does come with some significant downside as that means they will not be hosting a game on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So on this episode, I’m going to talk about the Grizzlies losing their MLK Day game to be a part of the NBA Europe games. Also on this episode, and the bulk of this episode is an interview with Owen Phillips. He’s a numbers guy who has worked in an NBA front office. This is an interview I did for a Fastreak Breakfast episode. We talked about the usefulness of summer league stats and other NBA topics. It’s mainly general interest NBA stuff, but we managed to talk about Javon Small, Jamai Mhack, PJ Hall, and Jiren Jackson Jr. So, I figured I would include it here for the YouTube channel. So, before I get to the interview with Owen, let’s talk about the news of the Grizzlies being involved in these NBA Europe games. They’re going to play their first ever regular season games overseas. It’ll be the first ever NBA game in Berlin. So, they’re part of the NBA Berlin game where they will play the Orlando Magic. The Orlando Magic, of course, have some familiar faces in Desmond Bane and Taius Jones. The Grizzlies will also play the Magic in London. So, the Grizzlies play their two games against the Magic this year overseas in Europe. The London game is on Sunday, the Sunday before MLK day. And that of course means the Grizzlies, for the second time, I think since they’ve moved to Memphis, will not have a game on MLK Day. And of course, that’s been a big event in the Memphis community. They have the symposium. They honor civil rights activists. They do all kinds of social projects in the area. And of course, they anchor the NBA’s national TV broadcast. So, it makes sense. I think that Grizzy’s fans would have mixed feelings about this decision. The team released a statement from team president Jason Wexler about this, knowing that this would be a big talking point. He says, quote, “In order to undertake this rare opportunity to bring Memphis to an international audience, it will require the team to be away from home for MLK Day.” However, we remain committed to supporting the Memphis community over the MLK Day holiday while the team is traveling, and we look forward to the Grizzlies once again anchoring the NBA’s MLK Day schedule in 2027. So, whatever you think about the decision, I think you can be confident they didn’t make this move lightly. They fully considered all of the ramifications. I personally wonder how much of this is the team versus the league. like how much does the NBA say we want to include you guys in this and so how much was each party pushing for one of these things again it’s a great bit of exposure for the Grizzlies internationally bringing jaw to an international audience and of course the other Grizzlies players there’s the connection to Germany that Tomas Eelo has he was a coach in Germany he guided German club telecom baskets bond to the basketball champions league title in 2023 that I just took verbatim from the Grizzlies press release about this. The magic connection makes total sense. Of course, Fron Vagner, Mo Vagner, German citizens from Berlin, they get to play in front of a friendly crowd. I would assume the other negative to this decision or this announcement outside of losing the home game on Martin Luther King Day is that the Grizzlies aren’t going to be able to host Desmond Bane for a return trip to the FedEx Forum. Desmond Bane returning is kind of going to be a big game and now the Grizz are going to play both of the regular season games against the Magic in Europe. So, we missed that opportunity to play or to see Desmond Bane play back in front of the Grizzlies home crowd. I mean, there is a chance they could match up in the inseason tournament, maybe NBA Cup games, but even that it would have to be some kind of consolation game and that’s the only way it would be a home game for the Grizzlies. Maybe they could meet in the inseason tournament final, but of course that would be in Las Vegas and we would miss out on that. So, the Grizzlies playing overseas. It’s interesting. You could say it’s a good honor. You wonder, I personally wonder like how do you measure the exposure, the international exposure versus that national exposure just being part of the MLK day festivities, the marathon of NBA games on that Monday. Like the Europe games are going to be on in the middle of the day on a Sunday and then maybe a Thursday. Like no one’s watching those games. I assume they’re on NBA TV or whatever. I don’t even know if games are being broadcast this year. So maybe I could be wrong there. Um, but it is a bit of news that I think got a mixed reaction from Grizzlies fans. Now, in other Grizzlies news, John is actually overseas right now. He’s doing his promotional tour in Asia. He uh is doing stops in China. He’s been in China for a little bit. He’s also going to Japan and the Philippines. This is his first international tour as a Nike signature athlete. From their press release, they say he’s going to connect with hoopers, helping the next generation shape the game in their local communities and discover their sense of style and expression on the court. Perhaps you’ve seen many of the social media clips of John playing in China with campers there. Uh other Grizzlies news, they announced their full preseason schedule. The first preseason game is on October 6. They play three home games the week of October 6 and then they finish up the preseason with two road games. Uh, one against the Hornets and one against the Heat. And now let’s bring on Owen Phillips. He writes a substack called the F5 where he just covers all kinds of NBA topics. So here is Owen talking with me about all kinds of random summer league stats and we mention a lot of Grizzlies players. I hope you enjoy. Owen, you write a newsletter. It’s really I find it very informative, but also you seem to hit topics that specifically speak to me. A lot of times you have a lot of stuff about a referee database where it was I loved the referee database talking about you would post on social media something like people would be commenting like there’s a lot of fouls called in this game and you’d be like well actually not that not so much based on the history of Bill Kennedy or whoever is like calling the game. So that’s all that’s very super informative. But I wanted to get you on to talk about your post you made about summer league stats. So, you’re aching in Australia in the weather to watch some basketball. I’m in blazing hot Tennessee in the US of A. Um, I don’t know if I’m aching to watch basketball. I’m kind of aching for NBA news. It feels like the biggest NBA news desert that we’ve had in a while. I mean, technically, uh, Gilbert Arenas was just arrested, uh, hours ago as we recorded for maybe running a high stakes poker game, uh, in California, but like, as far as NBA transactions, there’s like nothing. So, I’m still kind of in my summer league glow. And you wrote a thing about summer league stats and about which summer league stats might be meaningful and which ones we can totally ignore. Is that a fair characterization? Yeah. No, that’s that’s right on point. I I feel like everything you hear about summer league in terms of like how players perform, everyone always says summer league doesn’t matter. It’s like don’t pay attention to summer league. And when someone usually has like these broad declarations of what you should and shouldn’t do, there’s typically like some nuance in there that people are disregarding. And so a couple years ago, I got really interested in in the idea of thinking about, well, maybe there’s some signal in these summer league stats that we can pull out that translate to a player’s rookie season, but it’s like which ones are they actually important to look at? And so what I did this year uh I’ve done in the past is uh I took a bunch of box score stats that you can find at summer league that you can find in a player’s rookie year and basically compared the two. So, how did a player who scored a bunch of points at summer league, did that translate to their rookie year? How about if they had a lot of assists at summer league and that did that translate to their, you know, their rookie year? And so I looked at that over like a pretty long time period, I think between 2007 and 2024 and sort of mapped out all the correlations of which stats tended to uh translate the most to a player’s rookie season. And I kind of refer to these as sticky stats, ones that tend to stick regardless of whether they’re playing in Vegas or whether they’re playing in the NBA. And what you find is actually like a pretty interesting like hierarchy of stats that uh once you see them kind of laid out like which ones tend to be most correlated, it’s like, oh, that’s why like that that totally makes sense. And the ones that aren’t correlated, you’re like, oh, okay, so that’s why people say summer league doesn’t matter. So I can kind of walk you through maybe which stats. Well, I would say one thing that’s I found interesting like there’s certain ones where I’m like, “Oh, of course there’s no correlation statistically between a player’s summer league plus minus and his NBA play.” You’re like, “Well, yeah, like that’s I mean, how are you supposed to do anything?” Although, I feel like Draymond Green maybe never lost a summer league game and that feels like maybe that that could have been useful, but it makes sense that like plus minus will have no correlation. There’s some where I’m like surprised. I’ll tell you one where it’s in the lower tier of relatable stats, the icky stats as you have uh labeled them. Like free throw percentage. I would have I would have guessed and I feel like I’ve gone through years where I’m like, “Oh, so and so was like 20 or 21 in summer league.” Like that’s a good sign for his ability. So I find that that was one that actually surprises me that there hasn’t been really any correlation. Yeah. You know, in that one in particular, I think it’s tricky to to measure across summer league in the NBA because you’re getting a lot of players at summer league who are probably only taking between like zero and three free throws. So, if they go say one for three, all of a sudden they’re shooting 33% and you know that might be not correlated at all to like them being a 70% free throw shooter. So, that one was a little trickier to model and I took a stab at it. Like it’s more correlated than say three-point percentage, but it’s still pretty poor correlation overall. And I think that’s largely just due to sample size, but I think just intuitively if someone goes 19 for 20 at summer league, they’re probably going to be a pretty good free throw shooter at the NBA as well though. So there maybe is some you get enough attempts, you could be like, “All right, that’s pretty solid.” I feel like the thing I’ve gotten into, it’s like because I don’t know anything about these college guys or, you know, even un the undrafted players and so I’ll go and look at like they’re on the Grizzlies and I’m trying to figure out more about them. I look at their summer league stats and then I’ll look at their G-League stats. So, I’m like, “Oh, this guy has consistently put up some of the same numbers.” So, I get maybe kind of excited. The one that I think maybe surprises people is the three-point shooting and how not only is it is it an icky stat, it’s like one of the worst where there’s absolutely maybe zero correlation. And I understand a little bit on this small sample size, but still, it’s weird to be like, it doesn’t matter that that guy made all his threes or that guy missed all his threes. There’s don’t draw any conclusions yet. Yeah. Yeah, and I I I think it’s just it’s probably along the same line is that three-point percentage is pretty low at summer league overall. I think it’s like the league average is below 30%. Um, you know, and players are taking very audacious threes at summer league, too. So, that’s probably part of it. Um, but I think again it’s probably just a more has to do with the lack of threes players probably take at summer league. And so it just gets that those like small sample size players drag down the like overall correlation and things like that. Um so that’s that’s that’s probably my best guess as to why it’s so uncorrelated. Um, you know, and again, like in the NBA, we’ve done a lot of like analysis on how long it takes for three-point percentage to stabilize. And that’s like takes almost half a season before you get to a I trust this player’s three-point percentage to be representative of what’s going to their three-point percentage is going to look like going forward. So, it makes sense to me that in a couple games, you’re just getting like no signal out of three-point percentage. Yeah. So what are the what are what are the best stats or is the ones do you think are the most correlated and also what um of what use is knowing that like how do you use that information? Sure. So the one that is the most correlated between a player’s summer league performance and rookie season performance is three-point attempt rate. And that’s just a metric for seeing what percentage of a player shot attempts come from beyond the arc. So, uh, a player who’s all of a sudden taking 85% of their shots from Beyond the Arc summer league, you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar like they’re going to be bombing threes as like their whole personality in this in their rookie season as well. So, um, and that makes sense. Someone’s not all of a sudden going to, you know, develop the willingness or confidence to start taking threes if they didn’t do it at summer league. They’re not going to all of a sudden time by the time October rolls around start bombing threes with reckless abandon, you know. So, um, I think that’s pretty interesting in the sense that it gives us a little bit of an idea of what a player’s role is going to be in the NBA. So, maybe they were someone in college who, you know, were largely an onball player who, you know, were doing one thing or another, but now they’re in the NBA and they’re kind of relegated to a more of an offball role and they’re bombing threes. So, what you saw, like one thing I thought was really interesting is one of the rookies who had the highest three-point attempt rate was um Igor uh Demen for the Brooklyn Nets and he had like 80s something% of his shots came from beyond the arc at summer league and that was like pretty interesting because at college it was only like 50%. So, and I remember reading something that basically the the Nets coaching staff told them, “Hey, we want you shooting it pretty much every time you’re out on the court.” And I think that’s probably because they’re imagining a role for him in the NBA that is more off ball, more bombing threes because they have so many players on their roster already that are like primary ball handlers. And they wanted to see maybe what is he going to look like as a, you know, floor spacing uh secondary player as opposed to someone who’s just running a million pick and rolls. So another one of your high correlated the sticky stats is blocks per 36. I was a little bit surprised that steals per 36 not as good. I thought it was one of those things because I know I look at, you know, whenever I’m like casually dipping into draft Twitter to try to and everyone’s talking about their steal and block percentages of these players. They filtered it by like who’s done this. So, I’m always watching summer league like all right, who get who gets steals and blocks? Let’s get excited. But I think it’s interesting that blocks it does seem to carry over. there is a correlation and not so much steals. Do you have theories for why that is? Yeah, I’m glad you actually mentioned it because I never got a chance to talk about it. And I think that like the biggest reason is in summer league there are just a ton of live ball turnovers that have maybe nothing to do with necessarily the defense’s ability to cause those turnovers, but rather the, you know, the player who’s dribbling the ball’s ability to actually keep possession of the basketball. Yeah. So I think turnovers are just like one of these stats that doesn’t seem to correlate at all between summer league and the NBA. So therefore steals themselves are not necessarily reflection of the players ability to generate steals. They’re just a ability more reflective of the other players inability to keep the ball. So I think that’s why steals don’t correlate. Blocks on the other hand is just like raw ability, right? Like you’re not not going to learn how to block a shot in between summer league and the NBA. like you either have that ability or you kind of don’t. You either have that willingness to go chase after blocks or you don’t. Um and I think the guy who led summer league this year in terms of just like blocks per 36 was Jean Ber uh the big center guy in the Minnesota Timberwolves who had like what was like seven blocks. He had a ton in one of those games. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think like a a pretty good you know rule of thumb is like okay I expect this guy to be a shot blocker once he gets to the NBA. like that’s going to be kind of his calling card. And um it’s just a little interesting to see also some of like the smaller players who were actually like not bad at, you know, blocking shots. Like Walter Clayton Jr. was like is like a very small guard. Uh that’s was drafted by Utah, but he actually like had pretty decent block numbers relative to his size. Um, so just like things like that and like Hansen Yang was another player who just like kind of popped up a block numbers and you’re thinking, okay, maybe like this size will actually translate to the NBA. He’ll offer some protection. Yeah, I’m seeing uh I’m seeing Grizzlies two-way signing PJ Hall maybe did pretty good on blocks for 36. Also pretty good on rebounding for 36. Another good But but PJ Hall is not a rookie, is he though? Is he like a second year player? Yeah. Yeah. Uh he’s like 24 maybe, but yeah, second year. No, I’m just I was looking at the just the general real GM. Totally. Totally. And it’s and it’s it’s worth pointing out like if we have like stats from a player’s GLeague season, those are probably going to translate more than these summer league ones. It’s just interesting with summer league because this is the only data we have on a lot of these rookies in some sort of, you know, NBA context. So, going back to the Steels thing and the fact that there are just so many turnovers. I was curious if you knew this. Do do NBA teams keep track of steals that are like you actually stole the ball or you generated that steel versus the ball came to you like you were standing there and the whoever lost his handle like I was like is there a super steel stat out there where it’s like you actually stole the ball uh you ripped the ball away from this person because of your long wingspan your deflection your instincts your movements or like so and so dribbling it off his foot and you picked the ball up. I actually don’t think anyone tracks. That was actually a pretty good idea. Someone mentioned that to me the other day actually. Uh it’s so such a good coincidence uh about like live ball turnovers are so important in basketball. Like they’re so much more powerful than a dead ball turnover because a live ball turnover turns into fast break points. But you know, not all live ball turnovers are caused by the defense. Just like you said, some of them are caused by the player dribbling the ball off their foot or something like that. And I think in most cases those still get registered as steals which is kind of interesting. Um and maybe there should be some sort of like unforced error turnover. I I know for a fact they’re counted as steals from playing fantasy basketball. So it’s like there steals. There’s other ones where it’s like they do credit it to the guy who knocks it away most of the time and then sometimes I’m like that was my guy, whatever. Um, yeah, that’s one I’d be I’d be interested to know what those stats look like because I was looking at the guys who have the most steals in a summer league game ever. Um, because uh Jir Watkins, I think uh the the Wizards guy, I think he picked up eight which tied the summer league record. Donovan Mitchell, that was a game I went to. He he took the ball away from Wade Baldwin the fourth like four times in that game and those were like but then I saw like Cam Whitmore had eight steals in a game and he’s not really known for um the defense. I also want to know, this is just unrelated to any of the summer league stuff, if we improve that stat, does anyone keep track of like like I need a rebounding stat that deducts the uncontested rebounds? I don’t I don’t care what like I need stats that say like if if Owen was on the court, he would have gotten that rebound. I need all those erased. You know, if I’m standing on the court and there’s no one near me and the ball comes right to me, that’s I’m more interested in like contested rebound rate or something like that and I I need to know if that if that’s available anywhere. Dude, that I think that actually is available on NBA.com. I think they have a category for contested rebounds and stuff like that. But yeah, that was like a big uh sticking point to me when I was when I was with the um with the Knicks. I would always remember Julius Randle would get a bunch of free throw defensive rebounds and it would just be like an like just an extra one or two there every every night to Well, I’m so sensitive as a as a Grizzlies fan and podcaster when everyone’s like I wish Jiren Jackson Jr. averaged nine rebounds per game. You’re like why? What is that like for him to stand four extra rebound? Like I wish he got contested rebounds. I got I wish he got more of that. I’m not saying he’s an excellent rebounder, but the general the whole like he’s 611, he should get eight rebounds. Like rebounds are the most funible stat in the NBA. Like just show me where where he’s at. Um are there any other players going back to summer league? Are there any other players or rookies that that jumped out based on this the sticky stats that you have? Yeah, so the ones that I thought were kind of interesting were Colin Murray Boils. He was second in offensive rebounds um per 36 at summer league and was just like kind of like a two-way force out there a little bit. Just a huge energy guy and like the knock on him is like this guy can’t shoot but he kind of does like literally everything else and that might be enough to kind of make up for the fact that he’s missing this one core skill. So if you’re like a big proponent of Colin Mary Boles who was drafted by the Raptors, you’re like really encouraged by the fact that he just like went out there and terrorized people on the offensive glass. Um, the other one that I thought was pretty interesting was um, uh, well, two of them. So, one was, uh, Curtis Jones was the two-way player for the Denver Nuggets who was unsigned. I mean, he was undrafted and then was signed after summer league because he was just like awesome. He was one of like the leaders. I think he actually averaged more points per 36 than any other rookie. Oh, wow. At summer league, he had a ton of assists and he was bombing threes and he was just making all his threes. So, uh, that’s like a really deep cut. Went to Iowa. uh Iowa State and uh he could be really good. Uh but who knows? The other guy that I thought like popped a lot was uh two guys in Charlotte like Liam McNeely and also Ryan Caulkrunner. I thought both of those guys were like awesome at summer league which was kind of funny that Khan Kipple won summer league MVP when I was like I think he might have been maybe the second or third best player on his team because also PJ Hall was on that team, right? Yeah, PJ Hall was uh wasn’t allowed to play in the championship game after he signed that 2A deal. Well, I was curious about Coniple cuz like he did pop at least like the assist for 36. They were I think they were they were pretty high for him. Also, I think he had maybe one of the higher three-point attempt rates. So, that maybe he was actually playing a similar role to what he might look like in the regular season. Totally. Yeah. I’m looking at him, it’s like him and Leah McNeely are like right next to each other on the leaderboard. Like uh Leam McNeely had five assists per 36. Khan had 4.9 three-point attempts had 9.1. Liam had 8.7. Yeah, like they’re just like they were like pretty much it’s just funny that Khan Kapple got a lot of shine. I feel like there were other players on Charlotte that were also very good. I was I admittedly was too heavily influenced by one game I saw where Cochrinter was getting blown by by Walter Clayton and Isaiah Collier over and over and over. So that that that left too strong of an impression on me um to to maybe I might I might go down with the ship on that one. But I was like buoyantly sitting on a hot take that I think Charlotte actually might be sneaky good next year and I kind of like the centers in Charlotte way better than I like the centers in Phoenix who you know they if you get if if you get the the the pick offer from the Suns might as well move on from Mark Williams. Try something new. um is it was only a couple of games, but my guy Javon Small jumping off the board. All his advanced stats looking great and he um really high assist for 36. So yeah, that’s he led all I think he led all drafted rookies in assist 36 was just uh kind of killing it out there. So was so was Mhack though. Mhach was so Mhach’s assist for 36 also very high. So yeah, that was kind of very good for the surprising find it seems like. Um, let’s move on for a couple other things um that I know are of particular interest to you and me. Um, at summer league, the NBA implemented this rule change they’re going to add to the regular season, which is heaves no longer count against your field goal percentage if you miss them as long as you fulfill a bunch of things like shoot it from behind. Um, what was it? It’s not even half court. It’s like the Yeah, it’s like the 40 foot line. The extended circle on the other side of the court basically. So once you cross half the logo basically cuts off or the center cuts off it where it doesn’t count against your own individual field goal attempts. But this is a this is a needed change. I’ve been a proponent of this for a long time. I’ve been using my position as small as it may be to shame players who do this. Like LeBron James has shot like two heaves in the last 16 years. Kevin Durant never takes heaves. And we’re talking guys doing it in the playoffs. Newest Atlanta Hawk Luke Canard preserving that precious field goal percentage like not doing like this is the this should eliminate the right after the dribble heave or shot you know like oh I tried to get it off but it did seem like I I don’t have the numbers. Do you have the numbers in summer league? So, I couldn’t find the sum of the So, it’s funny because like used to they used to record uh backcourt field goal attempts that you could find pretty easily, but because they made this change, those are no longer counted as back court field goal. They’re just gone. So, like uh there was there was way fewer of them this year effectively. So, you have to kind of actually go back and watch the tape or dig into the playby-play data to find out. It felt it felt like they were going up a little more frequently. I I felt like guys were launching them full court many many times. I I appreciated that. I mean, for me, there’s no downside. It’s like, what do we get? I mean, what are the numbers going to say? Are we going to get six more makes? I mean, we’re not going to get that many more makes, you know. No. Yeah, that was the interesting thing. So, like the G- League introduced this change last year after having the same problem as the NBA does. Players weren’t taking them. So, um 22 20 23 24 there was only 370 of these heaves attempted. Once they in instituted the rule, there was 565. So, like it went up 50%. But was interesting, just to your point, there was actually only two additional makes. So, because players were taking like increasingly audacious, why the hell not kind of shots because it’s like, well, it doesn’t cost me anything, so I might as well like throw a hook shot from 75 ft back. Uh, and I think we’re going to kind of see some of that in the NBA, like more of that stuff that, you know, like Joic was doing, which was just, you know, doing a euro step to a three-point shot from the opposite free throw. He named them. He He made some of the strangest shot put fullcourt things. Yeah. He’s the one guy cuz you wrote in in your newsletter how absurd it was that so many players didn’t take them because they don’t affect your they barely affect your stats at all. Yeah. Joic was so notable last year because he was the first guy who’s like it actually affected his stats because he took so many of them. Yeah. I mean, it’s that that was that’s been my whole bugaboo about these heaves is that players are always talking about preserving their three-point percentage or their field goal percentage. I’m like, it’s like five extra shots. Like, it’s not actually going to materially drag down your numbers, particularly if you’re taking like 300 threes in a season. But it was just it was to your point, it was very interesting that, you know, Jokic took 25 heaves last year. Uh that would have changed his three-point percentage. He was he shot 41.7% on the season, but if he removed those missed heaves and if it were you know the rule had counted last year he would have shot 45% from three. So, uh, that was just extremely interesting in the sense of he’s one of the first players who took enough heaves to where it would have like actually materially affected his topline numbers cuz like in the past you had guys like Andre Miller taking like 20 heaves which were which was effectively a third of his entire three-point attempts. And so, you know, he’s just getting like 20 extra misses on in his denominator. So, going from like a you know, a 37% three-point shooter to a 25% three-point shooter. I want to know if anyone in Denver has asked Nicola what happened this year. He never shied away from them, but I’m looking at his basketball reference page. He had 28 before this season in his career. Yeah. And then he just started launching them. Maybe he’s like, I don’t care anymore. I’m just going to put them up. I I think he’s just he’s just a guy that feels like he adds a new trick every year. There’s always one new thing. Like he’s doing these, you know, quick inbound passes one year. He’s doing like the trying to draw the fullcourt uh shooting foul, which I think is like his white whale where he’s always trying to, you know, trying to get someone to to call on that, which I think is going to be great whenever that happens. But yeah, I think he’s just always adding one little new trick to the book every year. It honestly feels like if I’m LeBron James, I still don’t take heeds cuz I feel like it looks worse if LeBron takes like 10 this year. It’s just proof that that guys like me sitting in a basement yelling at him were like, “You’re being selfish.” Like, you know, why would you pass up the chance at three points? I went I almost full sicko mode this year during a very slow period of the F5 and thought, I’m going to watch every end of period to see who has, you know, ignored the heave the most, who’s opted out of the heave the most. Um, and I got pretty far down the path and I was like, “This is stupid. This is going to be interesting to like two people.” But I was like, I don’t think this is worth it, but maybe I’ll revisit it this summer when there’s a little more time. That’s No, I I I’m one of the two people. So, I appreciate the effort that you have put into many of your things. Um, to wrap up, I do want to go back to one thing about your summer league stats. You did, it sounds like, expressed some reservations about Cooper Flack, and I’ve never heard anyone express reservations about Cooper flag. So, Owen, plant your flag. What what what negatives did you take away from uh the two games by Cooper? Look, I don’t want to sound any alarms. This is not to say Cooper flag is a bust or that he’s not going to be everything everyone hoped him to be. I just think there’s a after watching him at summer league, I am now tempering expectations in terms of the type of player he’s going to be in his rookie year. I was in my head had him as like this, you know, ultimate connector glue guy who is like AK-47 on steroids or something like that. You know, just like a guy who’s kind of at threat to do a 5×5 in a basketball game or something like that. Having watched him at summer league where he was kind of asked to initiate the offense a lot, sort of like be the primary playmaker, he sort of looked to me, this this I do not mean this as an insult. I mean this like as just a way of sort of describing who he is. He kind of looked more to me like Detroit era Jeremy Grant who was like finally thrusted into a role of like being a primary playmaker after playing years as sort of a secondary guy. And I it makes sense like it sounds like they’re going to be without Kyrie Irving next year. They only have like one other player on the roster who can dribble a basketball. So maybe the Mavs just kind of wanted to see what Cooper Flag would look like. But if you go look like he didn’t really have a lot of assists. He had no offensive rebounds, had very low block numbers. like those are things that I would have thought he would have really popped in based on sort of his play in college and sort of his general scouting profile of this guy who sort of does a little bit of everything. Instead, he was sort of just like poor man’s Jason Tatum at summer league, which is totally fine. Like maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s better for his development long term if you want him to be that kind of player. I guess in my mind I kind of thought he was going to be one type of player and then seeing him at summer league I’m like, “Oh, he’s just going to be like this other kind of player.” uh and that he might not be very good at it his rookie year which is to be expected. Yeah. So that’s what the that’s what the stats are telling us. So that’s uh that’s interesting. What about your Charlotte Hornets guy for your optimism? Because I know I noted this last year like Tjon Salon. No steals or blocks combined last year. He picked up two blocks this year. So um real GM has him tracked 131 summer league minutes. No steals yet. But yeah, I I’m not buying a lot of stock in Salon Island. I think that one that one might go down as a pick that the Charlotte lit on fire a little bit there. They regretted that one a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Owen, thank you so much uh for coming on and uh talking basketball with me. Tell everybody give everybody the elevator pitch for the F5 if I haven’t presented it uh well enough. No, you did a great job. It’s a weekly newsletter uh about data in the NBA where I kind of explore interesting trends and things that I that catch my eye and try to talk about them through charts and more accessible language when it comes to stats and numbers and stuff like that. So, uh if you like that kind of stuff, give it a shout. It’s free. Comes out once a week. Also, you just did a thing on the restricted free agent impass pointing out there’s been basically offer sheets have disappeared. No one even bothers with those anymore. and the restricted free agents. Uh, no one will sign them. So, uh, yeah, check that out. Poor Cam Thomas. John, poor Cam Thomas, man. Also, this goes back to my, uh, my my pet peeve of the NBA. Uh, it’s harder for these free agents when like a third of the teams don’t want to win or or only want to win in a specific way. And so, it becomes like really tough for the guys who like, I can actually score. They’re like, nah, we don’t want that. Oh, okay. Um, anyways, uh, Owen, thanks so much. You guys go check out Owen. Everybody, if you want more from me, patreon.com/fastbreak. Thanks for listening. You guys the best. And remember, breakfast is the most important thing.

The Grizzlies announced that they will play their first ever regular season game in Europe, as they will face the Orlando Magic in Berlin and London as part of the NBA’s Europe Games. This decision means that the Grizzlies will not host a nationally televised MLK Day game, which breaks from the longstanding tradition since the team moved to Memphis.

On this episode, Keith goes over that decision (0:50), and then he speaks with former NBA front office worker Owen Phillips about the most (and least) predictive stats from summer league, the new rule change about heaves, and some other general NBA topics (7:45).

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