Sorry for the delay on the wrap up for this tournament. It ended up being a competitive tournament with the deciding game coming early on in the tournament with the Knights’ victory over the Gold Coast All-Stars. While the Australian squad was by far the deepest, the home court advantage, solid outside shooting, and stellar play of import Chris Commons were enough to get the Knights the pivotal ‘W’. So congratulations to the Knights on winning their own tournament.

Before the tournament fades too far into the haze that is the history of basketball in Indonesia I thought a quick recap of the performance of the imports would be worthwhile and may be of interest to a small number of people. While this may sound like an easy task, the only way to find this info is sifting through the articles in the Jawa Pos newspaper (in Indonesian).

Anthony Johnson – Johnson led the tournament in scoring while leading his team to a 3-2 record and 3rd place finish. He averaged 32.6 points over the five games and also grabbed over 10 boards a game (no rebound stats were reported for one game). While I’m sure he was happy to pick up the Top Scorer award, it is certain he was less happy to pick up dengue fever. Unfortunately, Johnson had to spend the week after the tournament in the hospital battling a high fever.

Chris Commons – Led his team to the championship with a 4-1 record. He averaged 26.4 points and 8 boards. He did so despite battling his own illness during the tournament. According to the Jawa Pos, Commons was dealing with a bout of diarrhea that also forced him to visit the hospital.  

Kyle Cuffe – No illness for Cuffe by all reports. Cuffe played extremely well. In the three games we have stats for he averaged 34.7 points per contest and 15.3 boards. It looks like he did not play in the final contest as Muba’s 4th place finish was set.

Marcus Morrison – Very little was said about Morrison over the five days of the tournament. This is either because he was playing on the weakest team, or he was playing on the Malaysian squad so the Indonesian media didn’t pay attention. The one mention he did receive was for getting ejected at the end of the first half against the Australian squad for an altercation (the Aussie was also ejected). Morrison is playing right now in the Philippines on the KL Westport Dragons squad.

The off-season in Asia is always fun as random little tournaments pop up all over the region. Many of the tournaments are practice for the FIBA-sanctioned events, but then some happen for no real reason then to provide a venue to play basketball. The LALWC (yes, they are using that acronym) is one such tournament. According to nblindonesia.com the tournament came about as the managers of the CLS Knights organization approached Azrul Ananda, President of the NBL and DBL, about a way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their club. They decided an off-season tournament would be perfect. Of particular note is that in the tournament the teams are allowed to hire one import, so the excitement and competition level are sure to increase.

The tournament is composed of six teams consisting of three squads from Indonesia, and one from China, Malaysia, and Australia respectively.

The biggest names playing in the tournament are of course the import players. Anthony Johnson (Dell ASPAC), Chris Commons (CLS Knights), and Marcus Morrison (Melaka Selection) should be familiar names to anyone who follows the ASEAN Basketball League. Kyle Cuffe (Muba Hangtuah) is making her first appearance in this region of the world. Cuffe played 10 games this past season in the D-League as a member of the Springfield Armor. The last big name suiting up in this tournament is James Harvey of the Gold Coast Scody All-Stars. Harvey is a long time NBL star in Australia and has been the captain of the Gold Coast Blaze for the past few years. From what I can tell the Sunlot Guang Tian Dui team from Xiamen, China is playing without an import.

After the first two nights of the tournament the standings are:
CLS Knights 2-0
Gold Coast 2-0
Muba 1-1
ASPAC 1-1
Melaka 0-2
Sunlot 0-2

So far the big names have been making a splash in the tournament. Chris Commons has put up two straight double-doubles while leading the Knights to victory. He is averaging 28 points and 10 rebounds. Anthony Johnson has put up similarly impressive numbers, averaging 31.5 points and 11.5 rebounds. Johnson single-handedly kept ASPAC in the game but the overall depth of the Gold Coast was too much to overcome in the end. Cuffe has taken advantage of his size and athletic advantage averaging 35 points and 17.5 rebounds. Even the Gold Coast team had trouble handling him on the boards and in the paint. Sunlot had no chance. Finally, Harvey has been putting on a scoring exhibition for the fans in Surabaya. Against ASPAC he was on fire, putting up 43 points. In the first two games he is averaging 34 points a game.

Today's big match up is between the CLS Knights and the Gold Coast squad. Whoever wins tonight will be the favorite to win the championship.

Seven months ago, when I first decided to follow Jeremy Tyler’s Japan adventure, I knew it would be interesting, but did not expect a season as wacky and turbulent as this one. As everyone knows, the Tokyo Apache ended their season prematurely as a result of the massive earthquakes and tsunami that rocked Japan in March.  This catastrophe ended a season that was different from the start. For instance, the Apache did not have a home floor for the first two and a half months of the season, so only played half the number of games as other teams as they played only their away games. But even stranger, in a land where interest in basketball is iffy at best, there was an ex-NBA coach (Bob Hill) with a team consisting of a former lottery pick (Robert Swift), a D-League veteran (Kendall Dartez), two big-time college ball players (Byron Eaton and Michael Chappell), an assortment of Japanese players, and Jeremy Tyler: the wild card.

The New York Times article about Tyler a few weeks ago was well done and analyzed the human side of Jeremy Tyler’s season in Japan. What they did not do was geek out and analyze his stats over the course of the season.  That is what I am going to do here.

This first table contains Tyler’s basic stats from this season.

The above stats do not really tell us that much regarding how Tyler’s season actually played out. We see that generally he scored and rebounded well but fouled and turned the ball over way too much. This is absolutely true; Bob Hill said as much in the Times article. But if we break things down a little further, the story of Tyler’s season becomes somewhat more interesting. In the two tables below you can see his season divided into three parts. This first table merely breaks the boxscore stats by the three time periods.

The following table shows his averages per 40 minutes, a statistic that gives a better understanding of how he was playing.

The first eight games were the honeymoon period for Tyler. Four of the games were against the Saitama Broncos and the Akita Northern Happinets, two of the worst teams in the league, both with relatively weak frontlines. The next 13 games were the low point of his year as Tyler struggled offensively and, as a result, saw increasingly less playing time. While the Times article mentions the February series against Akita as the turning point in the season, I think it is hard to ignore the sudden improvement in Tyler’s play that occurred the week before when Kendall Dartez left the Apache. Dartez’s departure coincided with an increase in Tyler’s efficiency and, ultimately, his minutes played. Watching the games, it is clear that Tyler thrived as Hill played him more at the 4 spot alongside Robert Swift at the 5. Tyler showed his versatility away from the basket, including a drastically improved outside shot. Tyler’s turnovers also dropped during this part of the season as he spent less time in the post getting double-teamed.

While seeing those statistics should give one a better impression of Tyler’s season, the stats are still relatively useless as we have no context to place them in. Tyler’s performance is best analyzed when compared to similar players in the bj-league. I defined “similar player” as an import player taller than 6’7” who played primarily an inside game (players with less than 1/3 of their shots from behind the arc). I then removed any player who had not played in at least 20 games or 400 minutes during the season. In the end, 37 players matched these criteria. Most of these men were at one point fringe NBA prospects, but have since made a living overseas. While only the most hardcore basketball fans will know players like Julius Ashby (Colorado ’06), George Leach (Indiana ’04), Jeff Newton (Indiana ’03), Gary Hamilton (Miami ’06), or Abdullahi Kuso (Gonzaga ’08), these are all experienced professional basketball players.

I chose to use Dave Berri’s Win Score per 40 minutes (WS40) as my metric of comparison as it is:  a) straight forward; b) did not require me to crunch league-wide statistics; and c) actually took personal fouls into account. It is shocking to me that so many of the efficiency ratings out there do not use personal fouls in the calculation. Anyone who watched Tyler this season could see how big an impact his foul trouble had on his and his team’s efficiency. WS40 is calculated through the following formula: (Points + Rebounds + Steals + ½Assists + ½Blocked Shots – Field Goal Attempts – Turnovers – ½Free Throw Attempts – ½Personal Fouls)/Total Minutes Played x 40.

Tyler ended the season with a WS40 of 10.1. His Position-Adjusted WS40 (PAWS40), though, is a meager -1.56, meaning that Tyler’s performance was below average for import post players in the bj-league. Looking at only the last 12 games of the season though shows Tyler with a PAWS40 of 3.08. This figure would place him in the top 20% of import post players in the league. As I mentioned earlier, while the other import players in the league are not household names, almost all of them played DI ball and have since played professionally all over the world. While the overall level of competition in the league may not be high, that is largely attributable to the Japanese players in the league, not the imports. Tyler had to earn hisstats playing against seasoned professional athletes, not other 18 year-olds.

Looking at the stats from various angles, it is obvious that Tyler learned a lot about basketball this year. As I mentioned before, he added an outside shot to his repertoire to go along with his spin moves in the post. It is clear that Tyler’s future is not as a back-to-the-basket post player, but more as an athletic 4 who can play out to 15-18 feet. He is most definitely a project, but at 6’10” and 245 pounds there are few prospects who can match his size and athleticism. His ceiling at this point is largely up to him. DeAndre Jordan, JaVale McGee, Amir Johnson, and Andrew Blatche have all become solid NBA players over the past few years. There is no reason to think that Tyler will not be able to at least progress to their level. Is a late 1st Round pick out of the question at this point? In a draft weak with big men I would not rule it out.   

With the SBL, ABL, KBL, JBL, and CBA wrapped up for the year we enter the more frustrating half of the year. It is not like there is not basketball being played around Asia during the late spring and summer, it is just a real bear to keep track of. For now we can at least enjoy the bj-league playoffs this weekend and Game 5 of the finals of the PBA Commisioner's Cup.

In the PBA Talk 'N Text is looking to close out the series tonight to secure the second cup needed for the Grand Slam. The Texters are lead by Paul Harris the former Syracuse star and Maine Red Claws player. While Harris has dominated the league he was beat out for "Best Import" during this conference by Ginebra's Nate Brumfield (Oklahoma Baptist). Personally I am hoping for Ginebra to make a comeback in the season as it means more basketball!

The next big event coming up in the region is the FIBA Asia Champions Cup. The event will take place in the Philippines this time around and will kick off on May 28th. The KL Westport Dragons will represent the ASEAN Basketball League. They announced today that they will bring Nakiea Miller back for the tournament and pair him up with former Satria Muda star Marcus Morrison. It will be interesting to see how KL and Smart Gilas will be able to handle the competition from the Middle East.