📖We Read “The Midrange Theory” So You Don’t Have To
A “thinking” fan’s guide to the NBA stat nerd bible. Plus, how worried should we be about Zion's weight? And more.
STL INVESTIGATES: THE MIDRANGE THEORY
You don’t need to watch basketball to know everything about it.1
That’s what spreadsheet boy author Seth Partnow would have you believe.
When we pre-ordered Partnow’s new book, The Midrange Theory, we braced ourselves for the worst. His fellow traveler MIT types began ruining baseball2 in the late 1990s, spreading out from their initial outpost in Oakland to infiltrate almost every front office around MLB, and have since done their best to ruin the NBA as well. From banishing the beautiful low-post artistry of the Knicks/Heat matchups from the mid 1990s, to installing their four-eyed ilk in NBA GM jobs from Houston to Philadelphia, to eliminating the beautiful 22-foot jumper with the spreadsheet derived corner three, the depravity of NBA nerds has known no bounds.3 Now, a true believer has written a paean to analytics. Would it be as bad as we expected?
In a word: yes.
Let’s start with Partnow’s attitude towards the in-game experience. On page 5 Partnow writes,
If it were up to me there would be no in-arena music or sound effects during live play, we’d be using the Elam Ending, and for god’s sake there would be no fucking T-shirt cannons.
We’ll ignore Partnow’s baffling ill will towards the most ingenious way yet derived to rapidly distribute in-stadium merch4, but what is his gripe with in-arena music?! What kind of data-slurping communist doesn’t want to listen to the 504 Boyz after an 18-point Pelicans home loss?
It gets worse. Partnow’s player evaluation skills leave something to be desired. First, while covering the idea of “playing to the drill,5” he has the temerity to suggest that Russell Westbrook’s triple-double season is anything less than the work of a magician. Partnow writes:
The Thunder were not just better but a much better defensive rebounding team with Adams on the floor, while Westbrook barely moved the needle.
But if Steven Adams was such a great rebounder, why did Chris Paul grab more defensive rebounds per 36 than Adams did in the same season that Russ grabbed over 10 rebounds per game? Partnow’s writing seems to suggest that Adams’ box outs made getting rebounds easier for Russ… but surely no NBA player could be so selfless.
Among the other baffling suggestions Partnow makes:
That Enes Kanter Freedom (+9.9 net rating) was not the 2019-2020 Celtics’ drink stirrer. They had a stingy 103.9 DRTG with him on the floor! (Pages 78-79)
That Heat living legend Udonis Haslem’s contributions from the bench aren’t valuable.6 (Page 85)
That Carlos Boozer wasn’t robbed of a potential NBA Finals MVP award by Derrick Rose’s untimely injury (most of Chapter 11).
While Partnow may not be fond of actual basketball players, one thing he does like: footnotes. Each chapter has anywhere from just under 20 to nearly 40 footnotes.7 Who does Partnow think he is, Matt Levine?8
Another thing Partnow loves: acronyms. A non-exhaustive sample:9
EPM MLE ATB GTO
PER EFG RAPM VR-5
BAE TS% BPM DTF
FGA P&R PIPM USG
Sorry Seth, NATO called and it wants its OPS manual back ASAP. LOL.
So is there anything redeemable about The Midrange Theory? Not really. While Partnow points out in Chapter 8 that midrange shots are still alive and well, and that what has been “lost” is really long 2s by guys who shouldn’t be taking them, those guys couldn’t make threes or get to the basket anyway. What were they supposed to do, let the better players shoot?10
And while Partnow insinuates that defenses have little influence over their opponents’ 3 point shooting, he’s apparently never met Tom Thibodeau. Thibs’ defensive schemes led the Knicks to be one of the best in the league at preventing opponent 3 point makes last season, propelling them to an NBA Championship a narrow11 first round exit. (The fact that they’re 18th in the league at 3 point defense this year is totally unrelated to this discussion. Shame on you for bringing it up).
So do we recommend The Midrange Theory? Hell no.12 Partnow may think he’s Prometheus, bringing fire down from Olympus, but Prometheus never saw what fire did to the California countryside. We’ll stick with ignorance. It’s gotten us this far.
TWEETS OF THE WEEK
Rumors have swirled this week that Zion entered the season at 330 lbs, which would be, ahh, hefty. This tweet did not quiet those rumors:
But it seems as if it may have just been a bad angle:
In all seriousness, we desperately hope Zion can make it back to the court soon. The NBA is better off with more stars in it, and Zion at times appeared to be one of the brightest.
AT THE BUZZER
The Pacers are leaning towards blowing it up. We’re about to see how much the League really values Sabonis and LeVert. (Athletic, $)
Unvaxxed players, be wary of traveling to Canada (ESPN)
Could an NBA team be the next target for a crypto DAO? (Spoiler alert: no) (NPR)
Zach Kram on the decline of “dunks and 3s” (The Ringer)
How to interview by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman (Substack)
In case it doesn’t become obvious, this review is not entirely 100% serious. Also, Partnow never says this, or anything remotely close.
This is meant as a (bad) joke, but MLB has eventually woken up to the fact that teams, searching for the last few points of winning percentage, have gradually made their game less and less watchable by emphasizing strikeouts and launch angle, and has changed the rules as a result. The NBA’s new foul rules are perhaps an example of a proactive attempt to improve watchability at the sake of “efficiency”
One of the core insights of Partnow’s book is that, despite what grumpy ex-players on Inside the NBA would have you believe, the game’s shot profile hasn’t changed that much. Players take as many jumpers as they always have; they’ve just realized that stepping back a few feet and sacrificing a few points of accuracy is well worth it for the 50% increase in points per shot. The midrange shots that remain are mostly taken by the very best players, who now have room to feast there due to the spacing introduced by modern offenses
This passage was actually meant to illustrate that Partnow understands his preferences aren’t the same as others, and that people can enjoy different things about the NBA game. While we aren’t diving for tee-shirts much these days, we appreciate the look of awe the tee-shirt Gatling gun inspired when we brought our kids to a game
In a chapter on Goodhart’s Law, which proclaims that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure.” The examples Partnow uses include Russ chasing triple doubles (and by doing so, hogging easy rebounds like the free throw above without truly impacting his team’s ability to rebound a ball) and Portland wing Moe Harkless refusing to shoot threes after finding himself narrowly “in the money” with a $500,000 bonus for shooting 35% from three late in the season
He actually suggests the opposite: per Partnow, veterans like Haslem lose influence with younger players the moment they transition from the bench to an assistant coaching role, based on his lived experience. Which likely explains why Haslem continues to occupy a Heat roster spot despite barely hitting the court
Or thereabouts. We got lazy and didn’t count every single chapter. But trust us, there are plenty of footnotes.
The Footnote God. As one of our inspirations, we can’t blame Partnow for emulating Levine’s style. But we did find the extensive use of footnotes more than a bit distracting.
We only made up one of these. Guess which.
This chapter inspired us to review Basketball Reference for the nadir of offense, the post-lockout 98/99 season. Leaguewide, teams scored just 91.6 points per game and 102.2 points per 100 possessions, both the lowest since the late 1970s. Perhaps not coincidentally, teams took way more long 2s: the Rockets, with the smallest share of long twos in the league at 14.7% of their shots, took more than this season’s league leaders (the Lakers, at 11.7%). Kendall Gill was the poster child for this bygone era. 45% of his shots were long twos, but he made fewer than 39% of them, resulting in a dreadful 40% EFG. Unfortunately for the Nets, he was hardly their only offender; the Nets had the 5th worst offense in the league, and finished with a 16-34 record.
We will point out that 4-1 is not a sweep.
Our real answer is more nuanced. The Midrange Theory is a great introduction to the world of NBA analysis for those with no prior background in the topic. Even grizzled vets of this world like us learned a lot from it. We dogeared pages on how team changes result in declining player performance, likely due to their moving away from optimized roles; the relative rarity of the three tiers of “Max” players; and the psychological reasons why teams are unwilling to trade players they “hit” on lower in the draft, among others. The book also got dense at times (particularly the chapter on plus/minus). For dyed-in-the-wool stat nerds like us, it’s a handy guide to what we mostly already knew, as opposed to a tome of hidden knowledge like the early Bill James abstracts felt like to baseball fans in the 80s. Buy the book for your stat-phobic NBA friend. He’ll thank you for it.