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Replacing the Irreplaceable

Livers' defense may prove as hard to replace as his offense [Campredon]

Michigan isn't going to make a couple minor tweaks to the rotation and come up with a way to replicate what the injured Isaiah Livers brought to this team. That doesn't mean the Wolverines are doomed for an early exit—far from it—but it does cut the team's margin for error. Today, I'm going to look at what Michigan loses with Livers on the bench. Tomorrow, I'll take a deeper dive into the ways they can best replace his production.

I went into the Hoop Lens on/off data and did my best to excise the bench mob from the numbers, and I'm only drawing from the Big Ten games and Toledo for opponent strength purposes. While the Wolverines, rather surprisingly, have been of near-equal quality on offense when Livers is on the bench by points per possession, the defense takes enough of a hit to move this from a dominant team to merely a very good one:

As usual, there's some noise to filter out. The lineups without Livers have shot worse on two-pointers and better on three-pointers; the former is more sustainable while the latter is concerning—it's hard to believe this is a better outside shooting team without its best shooter. This team isn't as powerful on offense without Livers available; they could still be very good, though, even if the ceiling isn't quite as high.

In more encouraging news, that three-point percentage gap also applies to the team's defense in much more extreme fashion, while two-point defense, turnovers, and rebounding stay level. After looking at who's played when Livers isn't on the floor, there isn't a personnel-specific reason to believe the team should be significantly worse at defending the arc without him—certainly not nearly ten percentage points worse. Again, it's hard to imagine the team being better at defense without Livers available; again, the dropoff may not be severe.

This is probably more of a two- or three-seed caliber team without Livers available. While that's disappointing in a certain context given the late-season visions of competing with Gonzaga for the top overall seed, it far from eliminates Michigan as a title contender, especially since they still get the advantage of a one-seed's path to the Final Four.

[Hit THE JUMP for the parts of Livers' game that will be hard to replace.]

What Michigan Loses: Offense

eye-popping shooting numbers [Campredon]

Let's start with some key numbers for Livers and the three players who'll fill most of his minutes: Chaundee Brown, Brandon Johns, and (to a lesser extent) Terrance Williams.

Let's dig in.

SHOOTING/SHOT CREATION. Livers is a true three-level scorer who can work off the ball or create his own shot. The shot creation aspect is what separates him from his replacements, who are more reliant on teammates to assist their buckets inside the arc. From Hoop-Math:

The unassisted makes at the rim come in different ways for Livers compared to Brown and Johns. Livers is more of a force in transition and off the dribble while Brown and Johns both get more putbacks. Still, Brown is solid at attacking closeouts and Johns is effective at posting up.

The difference comes in the midrange and beyond. While Livers is mostly a catch-and-shoot guy on three-pointers, he gets those up at a high volume with great accuracy; Brown has matched him this year in both regards but Johns is much less perimeter oriented, taking about a third as many threes. Johns has played enough minutes at center to explain some lack of three-point volume but scaling that rate up could still hurt his effectiveness—he's at 43% on a tiny 14-shot sample.

Livers' combination of efficiency and lack of help required on two-pointers away from the rim is unmatched on the team; his replacements need more assists, while Franz Wagner, Mike Smith, and (especially) Eli Brooks lag at least a few percentage points behind his accuracy. Michigan will no longer be able to dump the ball to Livers at the end of the clock and expect to get a decent look out of a midrange post-up. Farewell, Dirk fade:

Johns has enough of a low-post game to perhaps replicate some of that late-clock production. It's more likely the weight of those difficult possessions lands heavier on Wagner, Smith, and Brooks.

SPACING. Livers' high-volume marksmanship and quick release mean opposing defenses cannot leave him alone on the perimeter. They give Brown similar treatment. The same cannot be said for Johns and Williams.

The Ohio State game was Michigan's second-worst performance all season inside the arc and a lot of that can be blamed on a lack of ideal spacing. The Buckeyes were willing to sag off of Johns on the perimeter. Johns also spends much more time in the dunker spot than Livers, which helps offensive rebounding but also constricts the court for the defense:

Dickinson has to contend with up to three defenders. Johns' man (circled in green) is planted under the hoop and ready to take away any move to the baseline, which is where Dickinson wants to go to get to his left hand for the finish. Brooks' man (in purple) is in position to double Dickinson if he drives to his right hand or cover Johns if the double comes from there, yet he's still in position to contest a shot by Brooks if Dickinson makes the skip pass—which is indeed what happened and Brooks missed a contested three.

Johns has made enough of his threes that he could potentially earn the respect of the defense on the perimeter and open up some room when he's not hunting for boards. It's harder to see that happening for Williams, who's 1/12 from deep on mostly wide open looks this season. OSU all but ignored him and focused on blowing up M's initial action:

For reasons I cannot comprehend, Wagner's defender ducked under Dickinson's screen even though Dickinson had no chance of getting a clean look at the hoop with EJ Liddell in drop coverage and an extra defender halfway into the paint. Wagner missed a pull-up three and was fortunate to get that clean a look; his man should know he can aggressively run Wagner off the line with help waiting.

we don't have photos of the other three doing this [Campredon]

PASSING/BALL MOVEMENT. While Livers hasn't been asking to be one of the team's primary shot creators, he's quietly improved at both moving the ball to open shooters on the perimeter and creating good looks on the occasional set play. Livers averages 2.5 assists per 40 minutes; Johns is at 1.7, Brown 1.2, and Williams 0.9.

Michigan has a clear pick-and-roll ballhandler top two: Smith first, Wagner second. After those two, Livers has been right there with Eli Brooks as the other secondary ballscreen options. While he hasn't scored well on P&R opportunities, Livers has become a dangerous passer on those plays, generating 1.35 PPP on his 26 passes that led to the end of a possession—a 95th-percentile figure that boosts his overall P&R production, scoring included, into the 71st percentile.

Brown has run seven P&R possessions all season and generated only two points. It's not his game. Johns has only been on the other end of the ballhandler-screener setup. That puts a lot of pressure on Smith, who's been significantly more productive out of ballscreen situations (88th percentile when combining shots/turnovers and passes) than either Wagner (56th) or Brooks (47th). 

Livers has also been a good entry passer, showing the ability to lead Dickinson away from his defender, though both Johns and Williams have flashed some ability there. (More on that tomorrow.) He's also a terrific cutter, which may be a more difficult piece of Michigan's overall ball movement to replace—cutting with precise timing requires good instincts and comfort in the offense and it sure helps to be that respected as an outside shooter.

What Michigan Loses: Defense

part of three top-ten defenses in four seasons [Campredon]

THIS IS MUCH HARDER TO QUANTIFY. Even at the NBA level, which has much more data—including remarkably advanced player tracking—at their disposal, there are big divides in how players are regarded as individual defenders, and that's even more the case for college players. The all-in-one numbers at my disposal have Livers as somewhere between the second- and fourth-best defender among the top eight rotation players on the team:

While that doesn't seem like a huge range, there are significant differences in how these stats see Livers. Bart Torvik's D-PORPAGATU stat, which is derived from adjusted defensive rating, has Livers as the #40 defender in the country and fifth among Big Ten players (min. 40% of team's minutes). Synergy's play-by-play grading, meanwhile, has him barely above D-I average as an on-ball defender.

All of them, however, rank Livers ahead of Brown and Johns. (Williams doesn't have a big enough sample to trust at all.) Brown is a particularly odd case; despite his reputation, he ranks between above-average and middling in most of these stats, and Synergy is down on his on-ball defense (33rd percentile overall) despite his ability to shut down isolations (2 points allowed on 16 possessions). On/off numbers show zero dropoff with Brown in the game on defense, though he's benefiting from some apparent three-point luck. He doesn't rack up many steals. While he's allowed the occasional blow-by, though, it's hard to watch the defense when he's on the court and not believe he's a good defender.

By the same token, I suspect Livers functions within the team's scheme more as the higher end of his numbers would indicate. He's big, switchable, experienced, has now been a member of three top-ten defenses in four years, and is part of the reason Michigan communicates so well on that end of the floor. We may see a few more blown switches and more trouble changing schemes mid-game without one of the team's more reliable defenders.

Brown and Johns both have their own merits as defenders that should mitigate a lot of what Michigan loses without Livers. The primary concern may not be the one-for-one replacement but how the team has to adjust its lineups. No Livers means Johns has to play more at the four and Brown has to play more at the three next to the starting guards. While there are certain matchups where Johns at center or Brown at the two would be stronger defensively than the alternative, there'll be less flexibility to put those lineups on the floor for significant stretches.