Spencer Dinwiddie: quiet hero or just quiet?
My first job, when I was 15, was at a little Italian cafe. One of my tasks was to fold paper napkins to set on the front counter near the cash register. To my 15-year old brain, this was an incredible waste of time given all of the other stuff there was to do.1 But I did it because the owner wanted me to and I figured she was aware that everyone just took napkins from the dispensers on each table. If you’ve ever had a boss or worked on a group project, you’ve probably had this feeling. Someone asks you to do some task, it makes no sense, but of all the hills to die on, stupid-workplace-task hill is really not the one I’d choose (it’s Girl-Scout-Cookies-are-overrated hill, btw).
In a recent Washington Post article Spencer Dinwiddie sounds like a guy clocking in and putting his head down to get his eight hours. As Ava Wallace reports,
Dinwiddie, given the chance, will shout his job description from the rooftops: He’s here to set Beal up for success. But more than once, Unseld has said he needs Dinwiddie to be more aggressive, get to the rim more and, when he does, head to the basket with purpose.
[…]
“I think we run an equal opportunity system, you know what I’m saying? So then people are like, ‘Spence, what’s going on?’ Look at our shot chart. Look at our play chart. Everybody’s got eight to 10 shots. Everybody’s got two to three assists, obviously outside of Brad, but that’s our primary guy. That’s who we go to — as we should. I want to make that very clear: as we should. But then if we’re going to be equal opportunity after Brad, then you’re going to see that even distribution.”
The first thing that stands out to me is that Coach Wes Unseld Jr. wants more from Dinwiddie, specifically more attempts to get to the rim. The second thing is that Dinwiddie sees his role differently and views himself as someone assigned a task—to pass the ball, make sure everyone gets their chance—and also give Bradley Beal his shots.
Dinwiddie on the floor
I like that Post quote because it highlights one of the things I like about Dinwiddie. He’s a low-key player—some would say, very, very average—who in his best moments this year has lifted the team up as a unit, and at his worst moments looks like he’s counting down the hours until the weekend. It is also a quote that can be checked with data.
There are a lot of ways to looks at ball distribution, but I thought I’d start with usage percentage, which is a measure of how much of a team’s offense a player used. Since the point guard position, which Dinwiddie theoretically plays, is supposed to direct and set up plays, I thought this might be a good place to start. As a reference point, last season, Russell Westbrook averaged 30.2%, meaning Russ used about a third of the team’s plays while on the court, which is on the lower end of his career. The key question is whether Dinwiddie’s pass-first approach changes his teammates’ usage.
The figure below shows each Wizards players usage percentage when Dinwiddie is on and off of the floor. The players are ordered based on how many minutes they have averaged with Dinwiddie. If the blue dot is more toward the right than the red dot, that means a player is getting higher usage with Dinwiddie—that Spencer really is making sure everyone gets theirs.
Dinwiddie has largely played with the first five names in the figure above. My read of this is that usage is more or less the same with and without Dinwiddie. Yeah, Beal is using more of the plays without Dinwiddie, but not meaningfully more. Even Montrezl, who kind of stands out, has a 22% to 18% usage with and without Dinwiddie.
I decided to take a look at every pass the team has made this year just to see where Dinwiddie is sending the ball. While the figure below is kind of a lot to take in, the red lines show where Dinwiddie is sending the ball, with a thicker line denoting more passes on average. This more or less aligns with the eye test—a lot of Beal (average of 12 passes per game), with some Harrell (7.9), Kuzma (6.6), KCP (5.9), and Gafford (5.8) in the mix.
So, beyond just looking at use, it is clear Dinwiddie’s description of doing his job is spot on. He is making sure Beal gets the ball and then everyone else among the core group of starters is in a tier below.
A good question, though, is whether this is working. I’ll go ahead and answer my own, mostly rhetorical question: no. Or at least, not really. There have been 70 different Dinwiddie line-ups per Cleaning the Glass. Of these, 26 have seen 10 or more possessions. I took a look at how these Dinwiddie-led line ups do overall using points per 100 possessions. This is a helpful measure because it’s pretty easy to understand: anything above 100 on offense is good, anything above 100 on defense is bad. If the difference between offense and defense is negative, that indicates the team is giving up more shots than they are making.
In the figure below, points are sized based on the number of possessions each line-up has had (for line-ups with 10 or more possessions). The biggest bubble in the middle is the Dinwiddie-Beal-KCP-Kuzma-Gafford line-up, which has seen 496 possessions. Notably, this line-up has scored an average of 96.4 points per 100 and given up 107.7 points per 100, which is, uh, not great. This is basically the same as when I go for a 15 minute walk and then eat a bunch of ice cream during lunch and think, “well, I exercised today!” Notably, the next most used line-up, which swaps in Montrezl Harrell for Gafford, is a net positive, scoring 116.2 points to opponents’ 102.
This figure speaks to the defensive drop-off the team has experienced over the past 15 or so games. It also highlights why the team isn’t doing so well with its main Dinwiddie-as-Point Guard line-up: they are well-below average on offense and giving up way too many shots on defense.
To me, the takeaway from these figures is that Dinwiddie’s attempt to distribute the ball is more or less taking place whether he is on or off the court. But more importantly, there are bigger issues here with the team’s ability to make use of those passes and stop opponents when they have the ball.
Dinwiddie goes for a drive
Beyond moving the ball around the team, the other part of that quote from the Washington Post article was about Dinwiddie being aggressive. Dinwiddie started the season off like a kid who, while the adults pause their conversation, casually drops some SAT-level word while asking for apple juice. Everyone is surprised and a little charmed. Over the past 15 games, though, Dinwiddie’s play has come back down to earth.
Before December, Dinwiddie was averaging 12.2 attempts from the field. Now, in this last month of the year, that average has dropped to 8.8 attempts. The red line in the figure shows a rolling average, but the bars are his game-by-game attempts.
What I see in this figure is that he had a few high-energy, high attempt games earlier on that made me miss some of the lower attempt games. It’s clear that he can be a presence in a game, but over the past month he seems to have levelled off closer to his career average of 11 attempts per game.
Spencer Dinwiddie is not a traditional point guard. He passes a lot, yes, but it’s not really clear that he is actually creating opportunities the way some of the best PGs in the league do. I would only put some of the Wizards recent woes on him. If his teammates are shooting well (and they generally aren’t) and aren’t doing much on defense (sigh), then a league-average rotation player like Dinwiddie can only do so much. Maybe more attempts will help. Maybe trying new rotations will spark something. It’s clear everyone has their work cut out for them.
As someone much older than 15, I see now that this was probably the lowest risk task to give someone with zero skills and less sense when there actually were tons of other things that needed to get done.
I love how you take a single player and really deep dive an aspect of their game statistically. Inspiring.