Colin Cowherd is wrong about Russel Westbrook

I listen to Colin's podcast most days of the week while I'm at work.  He's got a lot of insight, and does a good job with getting intriguing guests.  But on today's show Colin opined about how bad Russel Westbrook has been this year.  His shooting percentage is down to just 42%, and Colin asked why hasn't Russ been able to get a guy like Victor Oladipo going?  Colin then compared Westbrook and John Wall, a player Cowherd has been critical of (and myself as well) for years.  This year though,John is now shooting at 45%, and is seeing about a half an assist more per game.  The issue is though, continuing to use these traditional stats just doesn't do a good job of capturing what is going on in OKC. 

We'll start with a much better measure of shooting ability, in True Shooting.  Why is True Shooting better?  It accounts for the other valuable things that a player does, like drawing fouls (and making free throws) and shooting threes.  Russ has seen a slight dip in his numbers there, but its down from 54.2% to 53.2%.  This largely due to a much increased amount of threes, reflecting the fact that the Thunder really have lacked anyone that has that sort of range.  Alex Abrines, Jerami Grant and Victor Oladipo are the only other real threats on the team (Pre-trade deadline) players that you'd ask to shoot outside as well.  Abrines is a short minutes player, Grant is a liability at the foul line so his outside opportunities are limited as players know they can stay on him there, and Oladipo just isn't a great shooter.  His True Shooting rate has stayed the same this year despite no longer drawing a team's best defender.Westbrook is now also drawing fouls at a better rate, by about 5%.  This helps to open things up as it forces team's into holding back defensively.  Now what about the charge of Russ not getting his teammates involved more?  Well, he's now hitting a career high in assist rate, so his teammates are using his passing abilities to hit more shots.  It will also be interesting to see now with Taj Gibson and Doug Mcdermott, two good role players coming in to see if they can help take some of the offensive pressure off Westbrook.

The comparison between Wall and Westbrook shows the pair are both playing at a high level.  Westbrook has an *5 lead in assist rate, a nearly 1% lead in turnover rate, and basically identical True Shooting rates.  Wall also lags behind in free throw rate, by about 9%.  This doesn't take anything away from Wall, who is having a very good season.  It's just to state that Westbrook is doing some very impressive things, and that Colin is not taking everything into account.

Armada Campaign Narrative Round 4

“They’re firing at Halberd again sir; Captain Klon is taking evasive action,” the tactical officer reported.  Tiaan continued to stare ahead at the independent station at Center Point as it sat ahead of him.  His orders had been to capture the station intact, so that the ISB could make use of the large sensor arrays and well known monitoring equipment.  The fight in the Corellian zone had gone red hot and vicious, and the Empire needed every advantage it could get.  The occupants of the station though, did not see things that way.  Tiaan was preparing to use Obedience and Unforgiving as large shields to force the station to fire upon them, while his Gozanti cruisers would be able to land waves of troops at the docking point.  The beach head along with the ISB agents already aboard would quickly overwhelm the casual defenders, and the station would fall with little effort. 

“Sir, detecting several Rebel ships jumping out of hyperspace in front of us!” the tactical officer called out.  Tiaan snapped his attention to the incoming fleet.  The station must have decided to cast their lot with the Rebels, he thought.  Tiann knew that he couldn’t safely lands his troops while also taking fire from several heavily armed rebel ships.  “New course.  Turn us towards the rebel ships.  Launch fighters and prepare to engage the enemy”.  Unforgiving smoothly turned itself to head towards the new threat, with Khopesh coming up along its right flank.  Obedience, Halberd and the Gozantis were slightly out of position, and were still in danger of coming under fire from the station.  “Prepare for Grav. Shift Re-route, target the station and push it away” Tiaan ordered.  He hoped the push would not damage the equipment, but he couldn’t afford to allow it to fire into his ships flanks while they began to engage the Rebels.  As the station began to drift away, a nearby dust field was also pushed, obscuring the approach of his carrier completely.  The tactical display began to light up with the rebel ships, although a pair of shapes that were on the other side of the dust field were displayed as just hostile targets, with no information about them.  That could be troublesome if the rebels decide to stay on the side of that.  But at least if our scanners are having trouble penetrating them, the rebels won’t be able to target us either, Tiaan thought. 

Out of the dust field came the first wave came the first rebel fighters, looking to try to jump on the separated Imperial forces and delay them from getting into a firing position.  However, the Imperial pilots were positioned perfectly to intercept them, and the Rebel losses became staggering early into the battle.  As Halberd began to take more evasive action to avoid more harassing fire from the station, a CR-90 corvette burst from the dust cloud in front of it, and both ships let loose a volley of fire at close range.  That was where Halberd loved to fight though, to be able to bring to bear its impressive salvos of missiles which tore through the Corvette’s thin armor in quick order.  A great success early in the battle drove Tiaan to take a risk and continue to head straight into the teeth of the enemy.  He needed to win a true victory today, and being able to remove a well outfitted rebel task force would be just that.  His fighters continued to score kill after kill against the rebel pilots, and while it appeared that one squadron of Defenders had been nearly wiped out, the large amount of TIE Fighters were overwhelming the ever shrinking number of X-wings in the battlefield. 

In front of Tiaan a Nebulon B and several transports appeared out of the dust cloud, to stand next to the assault frigate and massive Mon Cal cruiser that he could already see clearly.  “Order Khopesh to coordinate fire on those transports” Tiaan called to the comms officer.  He needed to clear his firing lane to get a shot at the Assault frigate.  He had calculated Obedience’s distance, and it would be able to get into missile range of the frigate very soon, and he wanted to bring it down with coordinated fire quickly.  The transports withered under the fire, but it did give the other rebel ships an opening now to fire on the flagship.  “Reinforcing front shields,” came the Chief of Engineering’s update.  “We’re taking some light structural damage, but we have repair teams in place.”  As the Nebulon-B class Frigate began to fire on Unforgiving, fires sprouted up all across its narrow hull as Obedience’s guns were now clear of the dust field that had screened its approach.  The Victory class star destroyer did not slow down either, ramming through the burning frigate and continuing forward towards its next target.  The Nebulon shattered into two halves and continued to burn in space. The charging star destroyer had now captured the attention of the assault frigate, but both remaining rebel ships continued to maintain a steady barrage of fire at Unforgiving.  The damage had begun to pile up, even as the damage control officers worked magic to keep key systems online. 

“Sir, it looks like the Rebels are going to try to jump away, we’re reading their hyper drives are powering up.”  Tiaan needed to not let both ships get away to complete this victory today.  He ordered Khopesh into the direct path of the Assault Frigate, to make sure it could not make the jump.  The tactic worked, as the frigate had to come to a near stand still, opening it up to the guns of all three Imperial ships in range.  It exploded into a ball of fire.  However, in doing so, Khopesh now had come directly into the gun line of the Mon Cal ship, which fired a crippling shot into its hull before jumping away.  Tiaan surveyed the wreckage of rebel ships and fighters ahead of him.  The comms officer said "Sir, getting a transmission from the station.  They’re wanting to discuss terms of allowing Imperial forces aboard.”  Tiaan smiled, today he had already delivered terms once.  He'd relish doing so again.

Epilogue

The station at Centerpoint was now firmly under Imperial control, with all of the previous leadership having found itself a new home aboard some Imperial prison planet.  Tiaan had overseen the refitting of the station, making it more defensible than it had been previously.  The new intelligence that the ISB could pull from the station's equipment would be invaluable going forward.  This was good, because Admiral Motti had been forced to withdraw from his further defense of Corfai. The previously thought to be contained Admiral Sato had slipped past defensive screens at Selonia and had been able to take Corfai in a pitched battle that saw several Raiders defeated but a large blow struck to the rebel pilots. The fight for the Corellian sector was continuing forward in a pitched way, but the Imperial forces were now well positioned to begin digging out the Rebel infestation.

Imperial Assault: First Tournament List

Our FLGS is finally hosting an Imperial Assault event.  The owner has been talking to a group in a town about 30 minutes north of us that is doing well in terms of turnout, and the few of us here that play are pretty excited about it. The key question now is what to take?  I'm thinking a slight twist on my other lists.  This new one will be a mashup of the others, with a few twists.

Tournament Army (15/15/40)
========================
[6] Agent Blaise
[7] Captain Terro

[5] Dewback Rider
[7] Elite ISB Infiltrator
[9] Elite Stormtrooper

-[1] Cross Training
[2] Imperial Officer
[2] Imperial Officer
[1] Zillo Technique
-------------------
[3] Grenadier
[2] Call the Vanguard
[2] Comm Disruption
[2] Reinforcements
[1] Data Theft
[2] Size Advantage
[1] Intelligence Leak
[1] Hit and Run
[0] Element of Surprise
[0] Espionage Mastery
[0] Fleet Footed
[0] Planning
[0] Rally
[0] Take Initiative
[0] Urgency

 This list I think is fairly well balanced in terms of staying power and the ability to whittle down incoming hitters. The Dewbacks both can weaken figures who rely on innate anti surge to survive multiple attacks. The ISB agents can get potentially 3 attacks a round on a target, but also have access to deadly. This ability is huge with the number of white die characters running around( not to mention Cross Trained troopers).   Blaise can help as well by being a 3 dice hitter with minimum range of 4, who will likely get a couple of surges and can either get the ISB agents hidden to get extra surges or hide the Dewbacks to make them tougher to kill on approach. Troopers are just standard hitters to help out, and make sure I can comm disrupt Son of Skywalker or other big command cards with their cross training.

My own command cards I;m a little unsure of.  The 0 point cards I think are pretty standard.  Call the Vanguard is a new card I haven't used before, but it allows me to use it on either dewback or Blaise which is solid. I potentially could swap it out for a copy of Collect Intel to know if I need to use Blaise's Interrogate skill or if I can let it slide (or simply discard it with Zillo).  A single copy of Reinforcements I think can still help get a trooper back at a key time.

In the current map rotation, the two Dewbacks might be slightly too large, but Terro is a great area control piece with Flamethrower so the natural clumping that occurs will hurt this figures even more.  Overall though this list is solid in planning for the different missions.  It has 10 figures across 7 activations, which is fairly standard and gives me a little extra ability to keep up with high activation rebel lists.  Lair of the Dianoga I think I can score some points, but this mission is not the best for this list.  This list is meant to wear down opponents, not to deal big spikes of damage.  Both Dewbacks will average just 2 or so damage against it, with troopers doing a little better.  One Man's Trash this list is better suited for, because of the mounted trait for both dewbacks and the ability of the officers to order units carrying the tokens.  On the ISB headquarters, security stations I think is one I can do well with.  The area with two stations helps lead to dewback area control, and has areas for other units to drop out of easily.  The Recon mission is a little more of a mixed bag because of the larger sized units, but with so many figures I will have plenty of options for placing them.  The newest map, Anchorhead Cantina is probably the best for this list.  10 figures means there's a good chance for being able to interact with patrons, and the narrow confines will force units to get past the dewbacks to get to the extraction point. 

NBA Power Rankings February 15th

Another week and we see the NBA power rankings staying pretty much unchanged at the top.  The Clippers keep their playoff seeding by beating up on the Knicks and Hornets, and then winning an ugly affair against the Jazz in which both teams failed to break 90 points.

The Warriors continue to be far and above the best team in the league.  The Spurs and Rockets are the closest, but the distance between the two is more than the distance between number 10 Washington and number 22 Dallas.  Both teams have proven they can win against the Warriors, the Rockets having split their series so far and the Spurs wining the sole contest.  However, prediction models do not see either team taking them to more than 5 games in a potential Semi-Final matchup.  Nor does it see any of the lower seeded teams lasting more than a sweep against them.  The NBA might have a real power balance issue on their hands in this finals, especially if the Cavs are slowed due to Kevin Love's injury.  Their top two lineups without Love have been dreadful defenders, but its a super small sample size to try to extrapolate without him right now.

Correlian Conflict Round 3 Narrative

Unforgiving exited hyperspace at the edge of the Selonia system.  Grand Mofff Jerjerrod settled himself as he saw the oceanic world appear before him.  This would not be a repeat of his last failure, he told himself.  This mission was all about stalling the rebel fleet stationed here from being able to aid the raiding fleet at Corfai.  The ISB agents had truly hit on a bit of treasure this time, capturing a rebel sympathizer who just happened to have fleet movement details for the rebels in this sector, including the locations of several rebel encampments.  The information was not complete, but it did state that General Dodonna would be leading an assault against the system of Corfai, and that Commander Sato was holding a fleet at their newly built outpost at Selonia.  That bit of information Tiaan already knew, as he recalled that initial engagement.  The Imperial forces commanded by Admiral Motti had been diverted to set a trap for Dodonna at Corfai, while Tiaan’s Task Force Zekkog was being sent to keep the rebel reinforcements from being able to come to their aid.  

“Sir, the Ion cannon emplacements are just where the intelligence indicated they would be”, the tactical officer informed the bridge staff.  “Also, we have a positive sighting on the rebel forces.  Their fighters are staggered far away from us, with an MC80 liberty variant and two Nebulon B’s in support.  They’re firing engines, and coming around towards us.”

Tiaan was grateful the fighters were far out of their approach path.  Commander Sato was renowned for skillfully using fighters to open up ships to extra fire from his capital ships.  “Prepare for use of the Gravity Shift technology,” Tiaan said.  The device was amazing, and he had been having his crews train with its use extensively since it had been installed on the Interdictor class ship.  

“Fire.”  

The asteroids in front of his fleet suddenly stopped their current slight spin towards his fleet, and instead were moved into the path of the oncoming rebel force, causing them to have to slow and turn to avoid a dangerous collision.  

The flight commanders ushered forth the large squadron force Tiaan had built up especially for this mission.  Quickly, several Lambda class shuttles were ushered forward with elite strike teams of ISB agents to put down the Ion Cannon platforms.  It was essential that these teams carried out their work before the fleet moved into position, and give them a chance to wreak havoc on the ship's defenses.  

“Getting the all clear from all teams sir, they’ve been able to neutralize the crews,” the comm.’s officer informed Tiaan.  “We are clear to head in.”

The enemy fleet had slowed down to a near stand still on the far side of the asteroids.  Tiaan knew for his mission to be a success, he had to force an engagement.  “Order Khopesh and Obedience forward at best possible speeds.  Keep Halberd on our left flank to scare off any of those fighters,” Tiaan said.  Orders went out, and the ships all moved.  The rebel fighters were finally getting close enough to their main fleet that they might have become an issue, if not for the wall of TIE fighters blocking their path.  Khopesh’s movement to the flank of the MC80 must have worried the rebels, as they moved several squadrons of Xwings into range to protect it.  

Khopesh slowed its speed to be able to stay out of range of the bombers, and fired a small broadside into the MC80’s flank.  The tactical readout showed it was an excellent shot, knocking out the shields on that side.  Obedience moved forward to press the advantage on that side, and was able to do damage to the other shield sections.  That fast movement though had allowed a small flight of A-Wings to get close to Obedience, and Liberty took the opening to do severe damage to the shields on the Victory Star destroyer.  “Get the Shield generator going, and maneuver us into position to use the new targeting scramblers on that ship!” Tiaan ordered.  The targeting scramblers were a powerful piece of technology, temporarily blinding automated targeting computers and making so many turbolaser shots go wild.  Unforgiving’s unit though was a massive power drain, so it could only be used after a lengthy recharge period.  It also had a very minimal range effect, so the ship using it had to be close to the action.  As Obedience tried to slug it out with the larger star cruiser, one of the Nebulon Bs began firing as well, although to little effect since the MC80 was between them.  With the rebel fighters largely still out of position, the fighter wings began taking attack runs on the MC80, trying to help overload shield generators.  They were to almost no effect though as the Obedience closed on its quarry.  It was badly damaged, but finally was in range to fire its armament of missiles and torpedoes at its adversary.  The resulting damage could be seen from Unforgiving’s command deck clearly.  “Order all fighters and bombers not currently engaged to fire at that star cruiser,” Tiaan called out.  If he could bring down this star cruiser, possibly even killing Commander Sato, he’d likely be able to route the rebels from the sector.  

The Gozanti carriers that trailed the fleet helped pull the weight of coordinating all of the attack runs from Obedience, which was now suffering from sever damage.  Its engines had taken a severe amount of damage, and the ship was still receiving fire from the damaged Liberty, as well as a small corvette that had appeared.  However, nothing seemed to be getting through the thick armor of the enemy flagship, as nearly every bomb seemed a dud or ineffective.  

Obedience had ground to a halt and was being overtaken by the swarms of enemy fighters.  The captain informed Tiaan that the engines were still functioning enough to jump to hyperspace, and the Moff grudgingly obliged the request.  It would already take weeks in dry dock to get his carrier serviceable again, and letting it go down with all hands in what was supposed to be a diversionary raid would not look good.  

With the Victory now gone, the liberty turned its attention on Halberd, which had been continuing its course along the exposed flank.  The engineers running the targeting scrambler fired the unit again, and the shot that might have destroyed the small Raider went wild, doing some damage to the shields.  The Raider returned fire, and the Liberty sank to a crawl.  The guns from Tiaan’s ship added no effect as he entered into range.  Tiaan ordered one last bombing run at the damaged MC80, to try to put it down.  However, the shots missed the mark as all of the fighters were being recalled.  The enemy squadrons were now beginning to move into position to attack Khopesh and Unforgiving.  The Task Force pulled away as shots from the enemy frigates peppered them.  

“All fighters recovered sir, we’ve got everyone from Obedience aboard.  Even if it’s tight fit,” the wing commander informed Tiaan.  

The task force made a quick jump away to light speed, with Tiaan wishing he had been able to just get one more bombing run in to destroy that MC80.  However, he knew he had done his job holding the enemy fleet there.

Epilogue

The Imperial defense of Corfai had been a brilliant success, in which Admiral Motti was widely praised.  Tiaan’s own efforts at Selonia to aid it had elicited some faint praise, which had allowed the Moff to get Obedience into the shipyards right away and get it back to full strength ahead of schedule.  It had also allowed him to make a chance to recruit a fighter ace, one who was both adept at dogfighting and at strategic bombing runs.   “Ah, Tan Stele, it's good of you to join me.  We have some things to discuss prior to our next mission together” Tiaan said as the pilot walked into his office, and the doors shut behind him.

NBA Power Rankings February 8th

Zach Lavine's injury likely means the ed of any hope for TImberwolves fans fo the team being able to make the playoffs after a lot of offseason hype and talk.  They had not been playing well before his season ending injury, but the two losses afterwards have shuffled them to 21st in the power rankings and 13th in the West in the standings.  The Warriors meanwhile continue to maintain a stranglehold on the top spot, with a blistering 60% true shooting rate, and a league best 2.06 As/TO ratio.  The Clippers continue to hang on in the rankings, but some of that is still from early season matchups.  Since Chris Paul has been out, they've gone 2-7 and have not been competitive in almost any game. 

Super Bowl 51 Pick

On the eve of the Super Bowl, we have a great match up upon us.  The Falcons came up a hard road from the year prior, when they went just 8-8 after a very fast start.  Their offense was abysmal, ranking 23rd by DVOA according to Footballoutsiders.  This year, its the best in the league.  And the tape supports that, as the Falcons scored 30 or more points in eleven of their regular season games,and lit up the Seahawks and Packers for a combined 80 points in the playoffs.  This will press the Pats defense, who ranks just 20th when covering top wideouts, and 20th when trying cover running backs.  We could potentially see Freeman and Coleman have some big games.  The Pats will also have to be weary after allowing very poor numbers over the deep middle, a spot Julio Jones loves to attack.  The offense has had to be good though, since the defense has been just average at best for Atlanta.  The rushing totals against Atlanta have been rough, ranking 29th in DVOA.  They've allowed 4.5 yards per carry, and fifteen touchdowns on the ground.  This weakness might not be one that the Pats can exploit so readily, since they have had such struggles in their own rushing attack.  They ranked 17th in rushing DVOA, and in the playoffs have averaged under three yards per carry.  This has been against two very good defense, but its still disconcerting to see New England become so one dimensional. Tom Brady has been excellent this year, and the offense was able to exploit the zone scheme Pittsburgh ran last week.  Atlanta runs a lot more match up man, but third wideouts have really been able to test them due to the lack of depth in the secondary.  And much like the Pats, the Falcons have allowed running back to do quite well in the passing game.

This game is going to be a shootout.  Neither team is truly great at pressuring the passer, which is really the only way to slow down these offenses.  The program likes the Falcons by 2 points, giving them a 52% to win the game.  Its going to be a close one, and likely will come down to which defense can get one more stop than the other.  34-32 Atlanta is my call.

NBA Power Rankings February 1st

Not much change this week in the power rankings, although the bigger news is the narrowing of the field behind the Warriors.  The gap between the second and and ten is now smaller than the gap between 11 and 29 (The Nets are really, really bad).  The Clippers maintained their spot, but are now just ahead of the Jazz.  The Hornets really struggled this past week, precipitating their big drop out of the top 10.  They lost by double digits in three games, and fell to the Knicks, Kings and Blazers in that span.