(February 12th) This week, we want to highlight the defensive end for John Blackwell; He’s in the 90th percentile for DBPM, an all-in-one stat that approximately captures total defensive contribution, but he is fairly low in both blocks (17th percentile for guards) and steals (26th percentile for guards).
There are two primary reasons this is the case: DBPM includes rebounds, at which Blackwell excels (85th percentile). Philosophies on the inclusion of rebounding as defense varies – some people treat it as a third phase of the game where others include it in the end it occurs on – but most of the statistics NBA teams use treat defensive rebounding as a defensive positive.
The other is that Wisconsin has been very good – 37th nationally per Ken Pomeroy – defensively, and Blackwell has more than a small part of the credit for that. BPM doesn’t recognize that as well as some other stats that the data doesn’t exist at the college level for, but it does at least reward him to some degree for his contribution to a top 10% defense.
(January 6th) John Blackwell’s profile this week is primarily a tale of two numbers. First, his three-point percentage has dropped from an acceptable 64th percentile down to the 29th percentile, a point at which we would be a bit concerned about presenting it to a team. Part of this is because this write-up is being produced before our data has updated to include the Iowa game, in which he went 6 for 10 and pulled his percentages up rather notably. But also, the sample has actually grown to a size that it is worth having one of our film guys take a look at whether the change in shooting percentages is a simple matter of shot difficulty due to expanded volume or not, something we will do over the next period.
However, Blackwell also resolved the previously discussed “no man’s land” problem in his assists, where his assist numbers were below average for a guard, but above average for a wing. He’s stepped it up, going from the 37th percentile for a guard to the 59th. This would be the 85th percentile for a wing, a number verging on elite.
(December 12th) While John Blackwell has been, as of yet, unable to replicate his three-point shooting success from last season, he has been much improved at taking the ball to the hoop. He ranks in the 78th percentile for Free throw Rate, but also in the 93rd, 91st, and 91st percentile for two-point makes, attempts, and percent respectively. Specifically at the rim, he has increased his percentage from 52.1% last year to 71.4% this year, a massive increase that takes him from “weak, but not a red flag” to elite.
It’s also worth noting that Blackwell falls into an awkward gap in the way we present things. Because he sits right on the borderline between wings and guards, we have to pick one group to compare him to. We selected guards, because that’s where we believe most NBA teams will view him, but that causes the strength of his passing to be understated. Where Blackwell ranks in the 37th percentile in assists relative to guards, he would have ranked in the 67th percentile relative to wings.