Post-trade metrics in Springfield and Maine

Immediately following the All-Star break, the Springfield Armor and Maine Red Claws completed a surprising four-player deal, headlined by the move of the D-League’s then-leading scorer, Morris Almond, who went north to Portland.

As we learned from Red Claws President Jon Jennings, it was Springfield’s Dee Brown who initiated the weeks-long discussion between the two teams that eventually made the agreement. When Brown confirmed this, he told D-LeagueDigest he made the move in an attempt to bolster the last-place Armor’s chemistry and defense:

“Nothing against Morris or TJ, it really came down to just trying to get better team chemistry,” Brown said.  “The record that we have, having the leading scorer looks good on paper, but I thought we were missing something as a team. From the overall standpoint, we’re just a bad defensive team. We need to become a better defensive team. We wanted the identity of our basketball team to be more than trying to outscore people. You look at a lot of losses, those came on the defensive end, not on the offensive end. We had enough points to win late in the game, but we couldn’t make stops.”

With the final weekend of the D-League’s regular season upon us, the time seems right for a glance at how the team’s respective paths at each end of the floor have shifted since the move.

However, circumstances require the issuing of a disclaimer, particularly on the Springfield side, where the team has gone 2-19 post-trade: Both of the Armor’s acquisitions have missed time since the deal, more notably Tony Bobbitt, who was waived in early March after sustaining a season-ending injury. Expected to be a difference-maker at the defensive end, Bobbitt played just seven games with Springfield. He took Almond’s spot in the line-up, and though he may not have been around long enough to see a team defensive change through, Bobbitt contributed tangibly at the other end with 19.4 points per game on an efficient 60.2 percent true shooting (which included 45.5 percent accuracy from beyond the three-point line). His absence and the fact that big man Noel Felix has played in only 13 of the team’s 21 games since the deal (though he returned to the mix for most of March) prevent us from drawing any definitive conclusions about the deal at this point.

Still, with all that in mind, the team’s post-trade dip at the offensive end comes across as more palatable than a similar decline defensively. Take the league’s leading scorer off a team due to trade, then follow that by removing his replacement via injury, and it’s going to be tough to make much of a scoring improvement. As of Feb. 23 (two games after the trade and the time closest to the deal at which I have ample data charted), the Armor sat 15th in the league at 100.4 points per 100 possessions. Since then, the team has fallen to 99.7 points per 100 possessions on the season, 16th and league-worst but hardly a disastrous drop, all things considered. However, it bears noting that the drop-off is a bit worse relative to the rest of the league than the 0.7 points per possession indicates as offensive efficiency league-wide has improved by nearly a point over the last month and change. The league average jumped from 105.5 points per 100 possessions to 106.4 from Feb. 23 through yesterday.

The bigger problem is that the offensive figures referenced above constitute the good news as far as Springfield is concerned. The Armor’s defensive efficiency has fallen from 109.3 points per 100 possessions (worst in the league) in mid-February to 111.5 (still worst in the league) at present. On the flip side of what we saw offensively, this decline is not as bad as the raw difference would indicate since league average defensive rating is nearly a point worse than it was at the time of the trade. However, even with Bobbitt’s injury, it’s tough to merely dismiss that the team has played even poorer defense in the second half of the season than it did earlier in the year. Considering how much Almond (not to mention TJ Cummings) provided offensively, if the ostensible goal was to improve at the other end of the floor, it stands to reason that Springfield couldn’t have expected his absence in the lineup to be much of a loss at that end. Even without adding a possibly plus defender in Bobbitt, one would expect that other replacements could have at least helped the Armor maintain the defensive level they played at earlier in the year. The sample size still isn’t enormous, and there are other variables to consider (for example, JamesOn Curry got hurt as well), so I see little value in conjecturing further at this juncture, but those are the figures at this point. Make what you will of them.

On the Maine side, as detailed Wednesday, Almond has been mega-efficient, especially from the field, and the Claws have jumped from a 105.4 offensive rating to 107, moving from eighth to sixth in the league. At the defensive end, with Bobbitt and Felix out of the mix, the team has fallen from fourth to fifth, moving from a 102.8 defensive rating to 104. Still, the team’s net efficiency differential has remained relatively constant (moving from plus-2.6 points per 100 possessions to plus-3.0), which should be a consoling predictor to those frustrated with Maine’s 8-10 record since making the deal. Also of note with that record is that six of those games came against Iowa (two, both at home), Rio Grande Valley (two, both on the road), Sioux Falls (road) and Dakota (road), who possess four of the league’s top five records.

Considering the regularity of player movement in the D-League and particularly with these two teams this year, feel free to take all figures presented here with an entire tablespoon of salt. But it never hurts to take a look at the metrics. Here’s expecting the Red Claws to play better basketball in the playoffs than they have over the last month and the Armor to boast a roster that looks quite different come next fall.

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New D-League contest alert! As detailed on the official site, the league has a new playoff prediction contest for prizes such as an autographed basketball or NBA Store gift certificates. All you have to do is follow the instructions contained in the link above to tweet your picks for the D-League’s finalists, champion and total number of points scored in the postseason’s final game, and you’ll be entered to win. Time to go ponder my picks…