The Statistical Doppelganger Machine rides again
When last seen, the Statistical Doppelganger Machine was sleuthing the statistical similarities between Bilal Coulibaly and basketball history and producing a list that included Metta World Peace, Brandon Ingram, and Shaedon Sharpe. This time, The Machine turns its algorithm on Alex Sarr.
And immediately runs into some…issues. First, Sarr is fairly unique in basketball history. In the doppelganger machine, an identical match across the 14 categories gets a score of 100. Scores drop from there as player seasons diverge from the reference season. Most players have a few “similars” who score in the 90s. For example, Coulibaly’s second season had four similars that scored in 90 or above.
For Sarr, the “most similar” player season scores an 84. For Coulibaly, that’s the score of the 50th “most similar” player season (which was Danny Granger at age 23). It seems the doppelganger algorithm doesn’t quite know what to do with a player who scored inefficiently while doing a decent job on the boards, and produced assists and blocked shots while also shooting lots of threes.
The second issue — the player seasons most similar to Sarr’s rookie year were posted last season. The problem? Part of the fun of this is getting names of barely remembered players from yesteryear and digging into the yellowing pages of Basketball-Reference for a history lesson.
The other “problem” raised by the second issue is that these comps are more interesting when we can see what happened next. We don’t get that when the most similar seasons are from the same year.
I’m going to solve this by filtering out player seasons from the last two years. For the record, the player seasons most similar to Sarr’s rookie year (including 2024-25 and 2023-24) were from Zaccharie Risacher, Atlanta Hawks; Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves, and GG Jackson, Memphis Grizzlies (2023-24 season).
Let’s turn now to The Statistical Doppelganger Machine. For those who haven’t read previous installments, The Machine crunches together 14 categories of information, including age, playing time, and an array of per possession box score stats. It spits out a list of player seasons from history “most similar” to the reference season. In this case, Coulibaly’s 2024-25 season is the reference, so The Machine gives me a list of player seasons most similar to his performance last season.
Here we go:
- Jaren Jackson Jr., Memphis Grizzlies, 2019-20 | PPA: 90— While my analysis suggests Jackson has been a bit overrated, he’s an excellent defender (though he has had a fouling problem) and his offensive efficiency has been subpar in most seasons of his career. All that said, Jackson is a two-time All-Star, won Defensive Player of the Year in 2022-23, and his peak PPA was 182, which is All-NBA level most years.
- Jabari Parker, Chicago Bulls, 2018-19 | PPA: 75 — This was a 23-year-old Parker who was on his third NBA team. His previous stop was Washington when the Wizards took him and Bobby Portis in exchange for Otto Porter. When in Washington, he stood out for giving the worst defensive effort I’ve ever seen, including when Isaiah Thomas was in a Wizards uniform. Despite considerable physical ability and real basketball skill, he was finished in the NBA at age 26. His career included stints with six franchises over his eight seasons. Sarr would have to make a serious heel turn to end up with this kind of career.
- Dario Saric, Philadelphia 76ers, 2016-17 | PPA: 70 — Saric was a 22-year-old rookie in this season. The following season, his PPA hit 140, which was the best production of his career. And then dropped pretty steadily. Sarr’s a better athlete and better defensive presence than Saric.
- Michael Beasley, Miami Heat, 2008-09 | PPA: 88 — Beasley is a cautionary tale. The second overall pick in 2008, he was blessed with good size and athleticism, and he’d shown considerable skill at Kansas State. His collegiate production was superb. His rookie season was fine, and he improved in year two to a 103 PPA. And then…his production cratered, the Miami Heat traded him to Minnesota, who let him leave in free agency to the Phoenix Suns, who waived him with a year remaining on his contract. He then bounced around on 10-day contracts and minimum salary deals until the league was done with him at age 30.
- Charlie Villanueva, Milwaukee Bucks, 2007-08 | PPA: 81 — This was third year Villanueva — age 23, and it was the worst of those three seasons. Villanueva’s career trajectory was…odd. A 104 rookie year, 96 in year two, 81 in year three, and then back up to 118 in year four. That was his peak — his PPA wouldn’t approach average again, and he was finished in the NBA at 31.
Others with seasons near the top of Sarr’s “most similar” list include: Bobby Portis, Jared Sullinger (who was good until his weight got out of control), 20-year-old Kristaps Porzingis, 23-year-old Andray Blatche, and 21-year-old Marvin Bagley III.
For Sarr, my biggest concern is his poor offensive efficiency. His relative offensive efficiency (individual offensive rating – league average offensive rating) was -16.3 points per 100 possessions last season. In that regard, his summer league was not encouraging — while his defensive performance was excellent, his offensive rating was still 7.9 points per 100 possessions below average.
To get his offense up to even average, he’ll have to do something he didn’t in Australia or in either summer league or in his rookie year: make shots. Last season, he shot 45.4% on twos and 30.8% on threes. He’s athletic and looks smooth and skilled to they eye. He has yet to figure out how to harness the size, athleticism and apparent skills into consistently getting the ball to go through the basket.
To reach his potential, that will need to change. Even if he can’t improve the shotmaking, he can probably have a successful NBA career based on his size, athleticism, and defense…if he’s also willing to reduce his offensive usage and become more of a specialist.
Like virtually all young players, Sarr’s future is heavily depending on how hard and smart he’s able to work. One advantage he’ll have is that Washington will give him every chance to succeed.