Davis Bertans is tall and can sometimes throw a ball into a hoop from far away
And other sophisticated reflections
Most superhero stories have some plot line that involves the hero losing their powers. Usually this means they can’t fight bad guys and have to do whatever it is they do to pay the rent. Superman has to go back and be one of the few journalists with a stable career. The Flash is just a guy who likes running. Captain America without super serum just looks like a clean cut Kid Rock. And then there’s Davis Bertans.
The Latvian Laser has one power: he can throw a ball in a hoop from more than 24 feet away. He is not all that athletic. He makes some questionable choices on defense, if makes any choices at all. But he happens to be 6’10” and will chuck the ball up toward the basket without much hesitation. This season, though, has been rough for ol’ Davis.
I’ve seen this tweet mentioned multiple times. It’s notable that it’s not providing any special statistical analysis. Just the facts. And the facts aren’t great.
Is Bertans Good?
Wizards defenders (counting myself here) will often say stuff like, “it’s still early in the season” or “the shots will start falling soon, they just need to keep trying” or “what else am I going to do with my time? No, really, tell me, I have no idea.” With Bertans, I think there has been some sense that he is performing far below expectations, but will eventually regain his shooting powers. Sometimes, this is framed as a plan to get his numbers up so he can be traded. Other times, I think it’s sincere (or based on the fact that the Wizards paid the dude a ton of money).
Bertans has a 40.1% career three-point percentage. For those who are maybe less into the stats side of things, the general average for the NBA during Bertans’s time in the league is 35.9%. So, from when he joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2016 to today, he can still claim to be better than average. Each year of his career he has finished the season above the league average, with a 2018-2019 breakout season of 42.9% from beyond the arc.1 Still, from the figure below, you can see there’s a ton of variation in his three-point percentage.2
Over his career so far, Bertans is ranked 17th in three-point percentage among players with an average of at least four three-point attempts per game. Notably, he was ranked fifth in three-point percentage for both the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons among this same group, which helps explain why the Wizards offered him such a huge contract after shooting 42 percent.
How you answer the, “is Bertans good?” question depends on how you read the above figure. Bertans is a slightly above average three-point shooter, but not by much. He requires a lot of touches, too. In the 2019-2020 season he was making 8.7 three-point attempts each game. His average for 2018-2019 was lower at 4.5 attempts, which is not that high for a three-point specialist like Bertans. This season, which has, uh, not gone so well, he’s at 4.3 attempts per game. If you’ve watched him at all this season, you know what this looks like. It looks like every Wizards fan saying, “you’re passing to Bertans again?!?”
Numbers are tricky, but ball don’t lie
I recently heard someone say, “the data speak for themselves.” But I don’t think this is really the case. One the one hand, we have the figure above, which shows Bertans as a pretty good career shooter. On the other hand, there’s his net rating this season.3
This figure, which is inspired by the late, great F5, suggests that the Wizards are undoubtedly worse with Bertans on the court. The team has lower assist, rebound, block…and field goal percentage when Bertans laces up. It has been tough to watch. This is really the issue that anyone who has watched the Wizards understands. It’s not his three-point numbers. It’s that if he’s not hitting, the spacing he would create for other players disappears because opponents are less worried about him. Bertans’s poor showing from the field also means that his other liabilities, which were always there, are much more obvious. This season has not gone well for a lot of the team’s stars. If KCP, the current three-point leader, or the other starters except Harrell were doing better on both ends of the floor, fans might be more patient with Bertans.
I have really enjoyed watching Davis—especially during his first season in DC. His ability to hit much needed shots to push the team forward has led to some great moments. The new-to-me Binomial Basketball has a model that predicts three-point shooting. It’s possible that with more data and some model analysis, you’d find that Bertans should bounce back over the next few months. It could be that after 30 games in the wilderness, our hero deals with whatever leg issues he has had and regains his powers. Part of the fun of stories where heroes struggle is getting to see them come back better than before. For Bertans, that’s going to be a tall order.
Bertans has a career 3pt% standard deviation of .28 on his career average of .357 3pt%. Notably, though, the standard deviation is largely than the mean for all seasons except the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021 seasons. Bertans didn’t play all of the 2020-2021 season.
Net rating is points per 100 possession each player scores minus points opponents score while the player is on the court per 100. Higher numbers are better and suggest a player’s pros outweigh their cons. There are obvious issues with just looking at net rating. The top players in this figure have all had limited minutes, often at the end of games.
Great in-depth analysis. Love the plots. What do you use to make them?