Some love for Anthony Gill

And why we need players like him

Almost every movie has extras. You know, the people walking in the background while the main characters do what ever it is they are doing. Extras will occasionally have a line or two, like young Lin Manuel-Miranda showing off his acting chops in this scene from The Sopranos:

Without roles like “Fat Thug” and “Cop with Fat Thug” from The Dark Knight, Batman would just be running around in a mostly empty Gotham. Also, whoever names characters should really be more considerate.

To a certain extent, basketball teams also have extras. With apologies to TLC, we do want scrubs.¹ The guys who are on the roster, play limited minutes, and exist on a spectrum from rarely seen to occasional breakout game.² Every person on a basketball team has a role to play. The extras, the scrubs, the minimum salary/went to college for four years/used to be big in Eastern Europe guys are critical. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when one of the Wizards announcers made a comment (no, not that comment, sigh, or that one), but something along the lines of Anthony Gill being the best 15th man in the NBA.³

Top, “lowest ranked player on a team” is not, as far as I know, an award. But I think it’s a great idea. I like Anthony Gill. He is reportedly one of the hardest working players on the team. He’s not going to be the best player on this, or likely, any team. But at least he’s trying and it’s worth seeing if he really is the “Top 15th guy” compared to all of the other extras.

Anthony Gill vs. Everybody

If you follow the Wizards closely, you can probably skip the next paragraph or so. It’s worth just considering what being 15th in the Wizards line-up looks like. Anthony Gill is currently averaging 6.8 minutes per game over the 16 games he has played so far this season. Gill didn’t touch the court until the Wizards 12th game of the season. Of the Wizards 42 games so far, he has been listed as inactive for 12 games and did not play in in 14. Like a lot of players ranked 15th on their team, Gill is kind of hard to assess because he plays so few minutes. I mean, we have rate stats, which kind of make comparisons across players doable, but this is an area where I think what can be measured falls short. For example, Gill has a .667 field goal percentage per 36 minutes, while Bradley Beal has a .455 field goal percentage per 36.⁴ Of course, the difference is Beal is averaging 20 field goal attempt per 36, while Gill is averaging nine field goal attempts per 36 minutes. This type of comparison is not only a little misleading, but it mostly doesn’t make sense because, as I will get into soon, these two players have very different roles. So, to really understand how Gill stacks up, it’s worth comparing him to other “extras” across the league.

I took a look at the data for the 15th ranked player on every team. The ranking is based on their per game stats and the “Rk” column on basketball-reference.com. For simplicity, I filtered out players listed as being on two-way contracts with the G-league and players on 10-day contracts. For example, the 15th ranked player on the Hornets is two-way player Scottie Lewis, so I moved on to the 16th ranked player, Arnoldas Kulboka, who also happens to be on a two-way, so the final choice was Kai Jones, who is on a multi-year deal, but not playing much.

The table below shows all 30 15th ranked players. If anyone is on here who is actually on a 10-day or two-way, that’s on me. It’s also worth noting that I did the analysis for this post about a week ago, so some players may have moved up or down in their team’s ranking. I am ok with this because, 1. the 15th ranking slot is an arbitrary thing that I am leaning into for this post, and 2. the difference between the 14th guy and the 15th guy or whatever is something that might be worth digging into, but I’m going to assume for this post that it’s trivial. The table is sorted by box plus-minus.

There are a few old friends on the table and a few surprises. Our pal Anthony Gill comes in third place by box plus-minus, which provides some sense of a player’s contribution standardized over 100 possessions. There are lots of issues with BPM that I don’t think are worth getting into, but it’s an easy initial way to compare players. Notably, the first three players are averaging similar minutes per game, with Gill doing the best in points per 36 minutes. Gill also has the best assists per 36 minutes of the top three (when ranked by BPM), but comes in at 12th overall in assists. This is not that surprising given Gill’s role as a forward.

Box score stats per 36 minutes and a few advanced stats show that ol’ Gill is indeed at the top of the bottom tier. Each of these stats has their issues—indeed, even standardizing across 36 minutes or 100 possessions presents problems for low minute players. But taken together, and thinking about who within the league would potentially replace Gill in some hypothetical swap, Wiz fans should feel proud. At 29 years old, Gill is the second oldest player out of the 30 15th ranked players, and making the most of his appearances on the court.

There are any number of ways to look at how a player contributes. I like net rating, which, as I’ve written elsewhere, is a helpful way to see if a player’s pros outweigh their cons, and is standardized per 100 possessions. The figure below shows the 15th ranked players by the net rating inputs: offensive and defensive rating. Once again, Anthony Gill stands out as adding value on both ends of the court.

What is a team?

The sign of a good movie extra, generally, is you don’t even notice them. Sure, maybe the guy at the hot dog cart with the funny line gets mentioned as a nice directorial touch. With limited spots on the roster, every player on the Wizards counts. Each person on the bench has a role to play. They can’t just add texture to the background.

Anthony Gill was among the first people to run over to his teammate when Deni Avdija was injured last year against the Warriors.⁵ In pretty much every game, when someone hits a clutch three or comes off the court after a silly foul, Gill is on his feet to provide support. And, yeah, when the team has needed a bit more height, has minutes to kill, or the game is already decided, Gill will show up and is good for at least a couple of buckets. I think the first two points are as important as the last one. Every team needs the guy who stays ready. The guy who, if the worst happens, or, heck, if the best happens and the starting and second-string forwards need a break, can step up and keep up. That is Anthony Gill.

At a time when the Wizards (or at least Wizards fans) are debating who could or should be traded, it’s worth thinking about the 15th man. These are the players who often get “packaged” in deals to make the money work. Every person on a team plays a different role. Gill leans into his. Taking a look at the data, but also just watching glimpses of Gill over the past two years, it’s clear we actually do have one of the best of the rest.

1. I am not crazy about calling players “scrubs” since, 1. I don’t think they would refer to themselves this way, and 2. it’s too negative given that these players serve an important role.

2. Shoutout to Linsanity.

3. It’s worth noting that Gill is no longer ranked 15th for minutes played in the per game or per 36 stats according to basketball-reference due to the arrival of players on 10-day contracts and return of Rui Hachimura and Thomas Bryant. Still, I’m going to keep with the 15th place thing for simplicity.

4. Unless noted otherwise, all stats are from basketball-reference.com. You can find the code for this post here.

5. Jordan Bell, who was on a 10-day, also ran over. I’ll always appreciate the guy for it.