The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

39 games in the books, and how is Yi holding up? Is he getting better? Worse? Is he a future star?

I guess it’s too early to predict stardom, but we can safely say he’s a solid player. Compared to Andrea Bargnani , last year’s number one pick, who many predicted would bust out this season, but has instead fallen apart , Yi looks really good. Yi is having a superior season to Bargnani’s rookie year in every way. He shoots better, rebounds better, passes better, blocks more shots and turns the ball over less. Everyone touts Bargnani’s upside because of his age while denigrating Yi because everyone knows he isn’t 20, but even if Yi is 23 he is still only a year older than Bargnani. So that’s a positive , Yi is probably unlikely to have a second-year slip like Bargnani, as he is already better than Bargnani was.

Compared to Dirk Nowitzki, though, the comparison isn’t as rosy. While Yi has been much better than Dirk was at 20 years old, by 23 Dirk was playing in his first all-star game.

Probably the most interesting thing about Yi has actually been his consistency. He has had a couple of great games and a couple of stinkers, but overall everything balances out and he averages out to consistently averaging about a 0.65 IPM for every 5 games. I’d call this sort of consistency a very good sign for any rookie, regardless of his age. On the flipside, if you want the guy to be a future superstar, then you’d like to see more games where he takes over and dominates, with the idea that once he reduces the bad games he becomes a great player. I see Yi with more like an Andrew Bogut career trajectory — becoming fairly good at everything, but not really dominant.

To try and look at how he has performed at various aspects of the game, I’ve looked at every box score and assembled a few stats, which are available here. I used IPM, of course, to assess his overall game. I also calculated rebounds per minute (my research shows that the typical big man averages about 0.2 rebounds per minute, so my chart lists how he fared vs. the average , so it shows a positive number if he was over 0.2 rpm. A positive number is very good, a number below about -0.1 is really bad).

I also calculated Yi’s “Curry Ratio”, which was invented by a columnist for Yahoo Sports (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who). This is a basic, fun stat that doesn’t really mean much but is a rough approximation of how well-rounded a players’ game is. Basically, this columnist noticed that when you add a players’ assists, steals and blocks and divide by their turnovers, most players average about a 2:1 ratio while only the worst black holes averaged below a 1:1 ratio. Every year only a couple of guys would make it all year with a sub-1:1, but every single year Eddy Curry was well below that Mendoza Line. This year he is at 0.67:1. It’s a sort of “general laziness” indicator, asking “what does this guy do besides score and rebound?” Since the average Curry Ratio is 2:1, I set the data against the average so a positive Curry Ratio is very good, below -1.0 is bad.

Yi endured a little mini-slump on the West Coast trip last week, which was interesting because it seemed like he was getting the ball more and being more aggressive about putting it on the floor. However, the last several games have illustrated Yi’s biggest problem to no end , getting his own shots blocked. His percentage of shots blocked is down a little from the last time I wrote a post about this, but with 35% of his “in close” shots getting thrown back it is still ridiculously high. After the last time I lamented this stat, a commenter who has seen him play in China said that he was having a problem adjusting to the physicality of the NBA, and that in China the officiating is so tight that it’s pretty rare for shots to even be challenged aggressively since a foul is always called. While I kind of doubt that , I think it’s probably that the level of competition in the Chinese League is probably so low that nobody could challenge a Yi shot without fouling him , it’s still a valid point that a big part of the blocked shot issue is that he having a problem getting the officials to blow whistles for him. That’s something that will come with time.

What’s interesting about that explanation is how much it reminds me of Elton Brand’s rookie year with the Bulls. After being touted as an instant post scorer, Brand got his shots stuffed constantly in his rookie year. He was having 4 or 5 attempts rejected a game, and by midseason of his rookie year many people had written him off as a bust who wasn’t athletic enough to get his shot off at the next level. Obviously, those people were quite wrong, and once Brand figured out how to draw fouls he became unstoppable down low.

What does Brand have in common with Yi? If the previously mentioned commenter is correct, then Brand and Yi had the same relationship with the officials at the lower levels , other players couldn’t look at them funny without picking up a foul. Anybody who thinks that Duke and Coach K (or any college program with a highly influential coach) doesn’t get all the whistles is kidding themselves. My guess is that it took Brand a while to figure out how to jump properly and draw contact, and Yi is going through the same issue.

Moving on to the other stats I looked at, it’s safe to say that Yi has been a much better rebounder than I thought he would be. He’s averaging about 0.2 per minute, so right about average for a forward. That prorates out to only 8.5 per 40 minutes, which isn’t that great but is much better than Bargnani’s 6.5 per 40 last year. What is most interesting about these numbers is Yi’s consistency , he’s only had four 10+ rebound games, so it’s not like his stats are skewed by a couple of lucky 20 rebound games. He’s been very consistent, which I think bodes well for the future. If he consistently gets 0.2 RPM now, then maybe he consistently gets 0.27 in a year or two.

Yi’s Curry Ratio has also been okay, as he is slightly below average 1.71 (average for a forward being 2.0) but not significantly so. He has been a much better shot blocker than people thought, while maybe a slightly worse passer (averaging about 1 block and 1 assist per game). Almost all of his turnovers have come from ball handling errors and bad passes (50 out of 60) instead of offensive fouls and 3-second violations. It just doesn’t look to me like his future is at small forward , I don’t think he can handle the ball well enough to have smaller players slapping at it every night, and defensively that would take him away from the basket where his shotblocking has become a weapon.

It seems like Yi has struggled a little recently (6 subpar IPM games in the last 8), and I think that he is hitting the “rookie wall”. However, the numbers show that the main reason for his poor games has been a little shooting slump , his rebounding and Curry Ratio has held up okay. I feel that is a very good sign that he is rounding into a pretty solid player , one that can contribute when he isn’t at his best.

Is he a future superstar? I don’t really think so, mostly because I think he is closer to 24 years old than 20, so he may be closer to maximizing his talent right now than people may care to believe. But is he becoming a good, well rounded player who is going to help this team for years? Definitely.

I can’t want to see how he does once he starts using his body better when he jumps, drawing fouls instead of getting his shot blocked.