Blog Archives

Fun with NBA Offensive Stats

February 15, 2012
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James Harden's per game number may not grab the eye, but he's among the most efficient offensive players in the league

Recently, we’ve spilled a ton of ink on the Philadelphia 76ers, as they re-write NBA defensive efficiency record books, helmed by a historically great defensive year from Andre Igoudala. After pouring over diverse stats like opponent’s PER, and opponent’s expected FG%, we decided that the Sixers are the best team in the league at stopping teams from taking high-percentage shots, and that Igoudala was without peer on the defensive end.

One incontrovertible truth in the NBA is that, on offense, there are many ways to skin a cat. Looking at offensive numbers, the NBA has a slew of teams leading the league in offensive efficiency, nearly all for different reasons – for our purposes, we’ll take a look at the Denver Nuggets, Chicago Bulls, OKC Thunder, and the best offense in the NBA, the Miami Heat. All these teams have been extremely successful on the offensive end on the floor, and all for various reasons.

The Nuggets, despite being in the midst of losing seven times in their past eight games (having Timofey Mozgev, Danilo Gallinari, Aaron Afflalo, and Nene all miss time will do that), maintain one of the best offenses, while defensively, they’re a mess. For the Nuggets, the formula for success is simple – they’re the second best shooting team in the NBA. Part of that is Aaron Afflalo continuing to be one of the league’s elite three-point shooters, but the largest factor is shot location - only 59% of their shots are jumpers, and they attempt a whopping 5 more shots from the rim than anyone other team in the NBA. Nene and Chris Anderson take more than 63% of their shots from the rim, and even Ty Lawson, a point guard, attempts nearly half his shots at the rim. The Nuggets, without a premier scorer, manage to counter-act their lack of shot-making with getting solid looks – nine significant rotation pieces average over 14 points of offensive PER (player efficiency rating) per game. This club’s actual shooting performance is almost exactly the same as their “expected” performance given where they shoot from – they just excel at getting great looks. This focus also pays dividends with the refs – the Nuggets take more foul shots per possession than anyone in the NBA.

The Heat, on the other hand, make up for a relative inability to get easy shots (they’re 10th in the NBA in “expected” eFG%), with an overwhelming display of shot-making (they out-perform their expexted eFG% by 8% – more than anyone in the league), to lead the NBA in overall shooting. This isn’t a democratic attack as is found in Denver – James, Wade, and Bosh all post higher PER numbers than any member of the Nuggets, despite the team only being marginally better. Both James and Wade take jump-shots for nearly 70% of their shots, which is often a recipe for disaster in the NBA. With these two, clearly, it just doesn’t matter.

Oklahoma City excels in most offensive measurements save turnovers, with both Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook being rather cavalier with the basketball. They’re the third best shooting team, behind Miami and Denver, in the NBA, which is a combination of getting pretty good looks (6th in expected FG%) and converting a higher percentage than they should (their actual performance is 5% better than expected). Large portions of this are driven by the absurd shooting of Kevin Durant (who makes a mind-bending 52% of his jumpers) and James Harden (making 50% of his jumpers, equivalent to Lebron). The biggest thing the Thunder have is that Durant, Harden, and Westbrook, between them, have taken 370 foul shots so far this year – that’s over five attempts per player, per game, by far the most of any club. Overall, the Thunder shoot slightly fewer free throws than the Nuggets, but by shooting a league-leading 80% from the line, they make more per game. Read more »

NBA Notes: Jeremy Lin and a Little More on the Sixers

February 10, 2012
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In keeping with the tenor of his coverage, we tried to find the most ethnic picture of Jeremy Lin possible. Unfortunately, none exist of him doing math.

Over the past three days, it’s virtually impossible to read a piece of NBA coverage without being smacked in the face with Jeremy Lin. The Washington Post has already granted him Yao Ming’s ambassadorial mantle, and, in the ultimate sign of hype, has already made the British broadsheets. His past three games have given the undrafted Harvard graduate the only extended playing time of his NBA career – a stretch that has seen him average 26 points and 8.3 assists on 58% shooting. Lin is even leading the Knicks in appearances at the free-throw line during the stretch. As of now, the New York Daily News has taken to referring to Lin as the Knicks “starting point guard” on the regular.

The tidal wave of press undoubtedly has sprouted another cottage industry: columns advocated whether Lin is “for real” – and this is ours. So, is he?

The first order of business is to put his performance into some context – his NBA history is vanishingly small, only three times the size of his three-game sample-size, really, as 50 of his 141 career shot attempts have come this week. Prior to this, his career field goal percentage was 42.2%, but it’s such a tiny sample-size, and entirely, in the parlance of Marv Albert, “in extended garbage time”, that the number should be taken with an industrial sized container of salt. In college, Lin was a four-year starter, and shot 48.2% on his career, 52% his senior year. However, the offensive game on display in the NBA isn’t quite the same as in college – at Harvard, over 30% of his shot attempts came from behind the arc, while in the NBA, only 16% of his shots have come from three-point land (he’s made one). On two-point attempts, which Lin is heavily leaning towards thus far, he shot 54.7% on his college career, and 59.8% as a senior – an extremely high percentage for a guard. Now, this was the the Ivy League, not the NBA, so his current clip is almost certainly unsustainable – but there’s ample evidence that he can remain a successful shooter as long as he can avoid the siren call of the three-point line. Lin was only a 33.3% shooter from three in college despite the easier shot – he’s better off staying in mid-range.

So what about his passing? Thus far, Lin has racked up a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio, despite an 8 assist, 8 turnover game against the Jazz. Turnover stats only exist for Lin’s three final college years, and during that time, he struggled to accrue more assists than turnovers – a 1.2:1 ratio. He improved throughout his career, but at no point did he crack 2:1 – pretty much the litmus test for an effective ball-handler. Given the competition level (the Ivy League), there’s virtually no evidence to suggest Lin can be an efficient point guard in terms of balancing his play-making with his ball security. His brief NBA career shows a better (over 2:1) ratio, but tiny sample size caveats apply. It seems extremely unlikely that Lin is a viable full-time point guard. He’s clearly not going to keep hitting 60%+ from inside the arc, but you likely didn’t need a statistical analysis to tell you that – it seems plausible that he can remain a scoring threat inside the arc.

The next question is simply one of usage – two of Lin’s three games have come with no Carmelo Anthony or Amare Stoudemire, and the third came on a cold night for the pair. Simply – there likely won’t be this many shots for Lin in this offense. Stoudemire has already yielded nearly five shot attempts a game from last year to accomodate Carmelo Anthony, he’s unlikely to yield more (nor, really, should he at this point). Anthony is notorious for failing to adapt to other players, as he’s gone from being the main scorer to sharing loads with stars like Allen Iverson and Stoudemire, he’s pretty much constantly taken 19 to 20 shots a game. It seems unlikely that he’ll change for Lin if Iverson and Stoudemire couldn’t convince him. So, it would seem that even if Lin can remain an efficient scorer, the same opportunity will almost certainly not be there. Read more »

Sixers on the Rise

February 2, 2012
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Not everyone appreciates Andre Igoudala's defense

At the end of the 2010 season, Eddie Jordan was fired as the 76er head coach for taking a team prominently featuring Andre Igoudala, Elton Brand, Thaddeus Young, Jrue Holliday, and Louis Williams to a record of 27-55. Jordan, a disciple of the “Princeton Offense”, had famously bragged to a beat reported, when asked who the point guard is “that everyone on the floor is a point guard in this offense”. Never mind that players like Brand and Samuel Dalembert were odd picks for an offense that prized shooting and passing at every position, it leaned on Igoudala, an athletic wing known for his defense, to become the team’s dominant scorer. For those familiar with his work in Washington, the flip-side wasn’t much of a surprise: Philadelphia was the 8th worst defensive team in the league, allow three more points per 100 possessions than the average club.

Without any significant personnel changes, newly minted head coach Doug Collins was able to shave five points off that mark in his first season, landing the Sixers in the top ten in the NBA. In this season to date, the Sixers have shaved an whopping ten points per 100 possessions from last year – allowing eight points fewer than the average, and four less than the second-best Chicago Bulls. At their current pace, the Sixers would have the best defense since advanced stats have been kept (eight years), by a mind-shattering six points per possession over the next follower. Even adjusted for the overall decrease in offense this year, the Sixers allow 9% fewer points than an average team – the next best mark in the eight year span is 7%.

The change hasn’t come in personnel – all six of this season’s most frequently used players played on Jordan’s team, and five of them (all but Jodie Meeks) were on that team’s top six leading minute-getters. The Sixers are pretty average on the glass and forcing turnovers – where they’ve made their mark is opponents shooting percentage, where they lead the league.

It seems odd, as this seems, in many ways, to be a deficient team in terms of defensive talent. Elton Brand has never carried the reputation of being a stout defender, and an early injury to center Spencer Hawes has left them frequently deploying a front-court pairing of Brand and fellow defensive liability Thaddeus Young. Each standing 6’9″, it’s a grossly under-sized pairing that shouldn’t be able to stand up to better interior offenses.

Watching the team provides some clues – the Sixers are perhaps the best perimeter defense in the league (the fact that teams shoot under 30% from beyond the arc, best in the league is a hint), and excellent help defenders. The ball is nearly constantly pressured, and offenses frequently need to work in order to get into their offensive sets, often with half the shot clock expiring before they get into their set. Point-guard Jrue Holliday, built like a 6’4″ spider can prevent most opposing point guards from getting where they want to go (when properly motivated, he has a tendency to play down to his competition), and the next time Andre Igoudala gets taken to the basket will probably be the first. Read more »

Big Ten Hoops is All Cain and Abel

January 19, 2012
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Guys don't get carried off the floor on people's shoulders much these days. 43 points will do that.

Any recent fan of Big Ten athletics is undoubtedly familiar with the senseless pap that gets thrown around in the name of the conference. Something about the rust-belt Midwestern sprawl of the conference prompts senseless talking-heads to ascribe a slew of blue-collar sensibilities to the style of play in THE BIG TEN CONFERENCE (this should be said in your best Merrill Hoge “NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE” voice). The assertion is that the physical, brawny Big Ten will dissemble any newfangled wrinkle of innovation. Lately, in football, this has been a sop – the conference is down, not just compared to it’s SEC rivals, and it seems like a minimum level of competence in any scheme (TACKLING works in the BIG TEN CONFERENCE) is enough to warrant success. Further, it’s often a lie – the image of the conference is between the tackles old-school football which really only applied to Wisconsin this past year.

In basketball, however, this is close to law – the conference DOES play slower, it DOES play more physical (witness a “soft team like Michigan’s recent win over MSU for an example) and it DOES punish teams that can’t match these qualities (see: Northwestern’s significant difficulties in taking down more than one good team a year). What worse is that for the past few years, the conference has been brutally deep, with teams from the top echelon struggling to win on the road, anywhere.

Last week, the Big Ten had four teams ranked in the top 25, and every single team dropped a road game to an unranked opponent. Three of these losses came to Iowa, Nebraska, and Northwestern, and the combined conference record of the victors was an uninspiring 11-14. These games have been unforgiving, and it’s not just because the favorite plays poorly: Ohio State lost a game that saw them take 21 more shots than Illinois, Indiana out-shot Nebraska by 14 percentage points, and Michigan State posted their best eFG% of Big 10 play against Northwestern. The opposition has just found ways to win – from Illinois conference-worst shooting team hitting 60% from the floor, Nebraska’s 275th ranked offensive rebounding attacking winning the battle on the boards, and Northwestern’s porous defense forced turnovers on 25% of the Spartans possessions. It’s just a jungle out there.

What does it mean going forward? Since going to an 18-game conference slate, the conference has been won by a team that goes 15-3 or better in three of four years, with the lone exception being 2010, when three times tied at 14-4 and a fourth finished at 13-5 – the most top-heavy performance in league history. With every favorite sitting with at least two conference losses a mere third of the way through the season, this figures to be the lowest win figure to take the conference since the expanded conference slate. Illinois sits at the top with one loss, but with two to play against both Wisconsin and Michigan, road-trips to Indiana and Ohio State, and a game against Michigan State, some losses are coming. The bet here is that you see the conference’s first 13-win champion since the expanded conference slate.

Onto the power-rankings: Read more »

Big Ten Hoops Examines the Disappointments

January 9, 2012
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Come on, Big Ten! Make me stop posting Hoosier pictures! Next time it's a Crean-face.

At the start of the year, we pegged the Wisconsin Badgers and Purdue Boilermakers – two teams that had spent most of the past four years at the top of the conference, as second and third in the conference, respectively. It was clear they lost production – Purdue lost conference player-of-the-year JaJuan Johnson and running-mate E’Twaun Moore while Wisconsin lost senior star Jon Leuer in addition to sharp-shooter Keaton Nankivil. There was some reason for optimism – Purdue returned all-conference caliber Robbie Hummel, who had missed all of the previous year, while Wisconsin seemed to have some highly-rated players to fill Leuer’s shoes, and a daunting home-floor advantage to paper over some weaknesses.

But things don’t always work out – Wisconsin has lost three consecutive games, two at home, and one of those to…Iowa? Purdue, for their part, got blown out in hyperbole-inspiring fashion by Penn State after seemingly righting the ship at home against Illinois. What, if anything, did we get wrong about these teams? Are these aberrations, or these bad teams?

Wisconsin, for years, has been an elite offense hiding behind a snail’s pace. In five of the past six years, they’ve been, adjusted for tempo, one of the 25 best offensive teams in the nation, peaking out at 2nd last year. During this span, their shooting has ranged from “pretty good” to “mediocre”, but what’s always kept them intact has been ball-security – with four appearances in the top 10 in the category. The key, simply, is their shooting. On the year, they don’t appear to have taken a huge step backwards – their eFG% has only dropped one percent. However, in Big Ten play, the Badgers are shooting eight percent under that mark (43% eFG), and in their three losses, that number falls to 39.9% – twelve points under last year. The problem certainly exists at the top, where Jordan Taylor is shooting five points worse than last year, and failing to get to the line at nearly the same clip, but with five additional shot attempts a game, it seems like he’s trying to prop up a failing offense. Jarred Berggren has significantly increased his shot attempts in the past three games, but is only shooting 30.6% from the floor, making 1/12 three pointers. Ben Brust, a surprise at the start of the year, is shooting 31.8% (20% from three). Defensive star Ryan Evans is the next most frequent shooter, making 29.6%, and role players John Gasser and Mike Brusewitz have combined to shoot 38%. Simply, they have been the worst shooting team in college basketball over their streak.

Against Penn State, Purdue shot similarly to Wisconsin, but on a higher level, their shooting hasn’t been that poor – excepting that, they’ve rarely shot lower than the low-40′s. Purdue, oddly, is slipping significantly on the defensive side of the ball. Other than his first year in West Lafayette, Painter’s clubs have been top-ten in defensive efficiency every year, finishing 9th last year. This year, while solid, they’ve ballooned to 34th, and it’s largely come on the back of a lack of defensive rebounding as a result of losing JaJuan Johnson.

The other major factor is simple – Robbie Hummel isn’t the all-conference player he was. Hummel’s rebounding has stayed constant to the levels it was at when he shared the front-court with Johnson (with Johnson’s departure, you’d think his rate would improve), and his shooting is a dismal 36% against major-conference clubs. If Hummel can find his stroke again, the Boilermakers can look to improve. Read more »