Archive for the 'Analysis' Category

This is a question from Erik, who writes:

"I noticed the rather severe change in Josh Smith's 3-pt attempts from the last several seasons to the one that just wrapped up. After attempting 87 3's last year, 99 the year before and a cringe inducing 152 in '06-'07, Smith only attempted 7 3's in '09-'10. I was curious if you knew of any other players who had experienced such an attack in common sense? It seems like a huge drop off and a decision made for the betterment of the club. He played more games & minutes, had more shot attempts total, scored more points and did it all while basically eliminating the 3-pt shot from his game. Thoughts?"

From 2006 (his second NBA season) though 2009, Josh Smith attempted a 3-pointer on 12% of his field goal attempts -- despite the fact that he made just 27% of them, a rate 9 percentage points worse than the league average. And then, suddenly, he stopped shooting them: in 2010, threes didn't even make up 1% of his FGA (he went 0 for 7 on the year). In other words, apparently Smith finally got the message that he wasn't good at the 3-ball, and he abandoned it completely. How unprecedented is this? Here are the biggest single-year declines in 3-point tendency (3PA/FGA), relative to the league average, since 1981:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you missed Monday's post, I encourage you to go back and check it out -- I looked at player performance in 2009-10 (regular-season + playoffs) against above-average and below-average defenses to see if certain players thrived vs. weak defenses and/or wilted against strong ones. Today, I'm going to break it down even further by looking at performances against top-/bottom-10 and top-/bottom-5 defensive teams.

Read the rest of this entry »

See also: Part II

Last March, I wrote a piece that compared LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade's 2008-09 advanced stats against four groups of defenses: all 30 NBA teams, the top 15 in Defensive Efficiency, the top 10 in D.E., and the top 5 in D.E., to see if certain players thrived vs. weak defenses and/or wilted against strong ones. The results? James was the league's overall best against all teams, but his efficiency took a hit as the D got tougher. At the same time, Bryant was more immune to tougher defenses than James, and Wade was actually better than either Kobe or LeBron vs. the cream of the defensive crop.

Read the rest of this entry »

In preparation for the updated "Who Rules the Top Defenses?" post I'm planning to write next week, I had to run the advanced stats for every player-game of the 2010 season (all 26,488 of them, including the playoffs), in addition to SRS scores for defenses only. Since I now have that data completed, today I thought I might as well make a post out of it and list the best opponent-adjusted offensive games of the 2010 campaign (according to offensive SPM, at least).

Read the rest of this entry »

Just when you thought the offseason chatter was finally going to die down, the most recent salvo in the aftermath of LeBron James' controversial "Decision" was fired by the GOAT himself, Michael Jordan:

"There's no way, with hindsight, I would've ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, 'Hey, look, let's get together and play on one team,'" Jordan said after finishing tied for 22nd in the American Century Championship golf tournament in Stateline, Nev. "But that's ... things are different. I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys."

An interesting argument some have raised in response is that as great as Jordan was, his supporting cast was good enough that he didn't really need to "call for help" -- the Bulls actually won 55 games the year after he retired. Think about that: Chicago won 57 games in 1993, lost the greatest player ever (in the middle of his prime), and they declined by all of two wins the following season.

How was that possible?

Read the rest of this entry »

One common media refrain when criticizing LeBron James' decision to "take his talents to South Beach" has been the idea that he left behind unfinished business in Cleveland. He and the Cavs posted consecutive 60+ win seasons in 2009 & 2010, each time securing the #1 record (and top playoff seed) in the Eastern Conference, but in both years Cleveland flamed out early. Many have used this as supposed "proof" of some character flaw on the part of James and his teammates, but what was the probability that this could have simply happened due to random chance alone?

To answer this question, I set up a very basic Monte Carlo simulation using the regular-season winning percentages of all playoff teams since the Cavs' first playoff appearance of the James era (2006). 10,000 times, I simulated the playoffs for each season, taking into account the postseason bracket & home-court advantage effects, and I recorded the team that won the Finals in each simulation. Here's how it broke down for each season:

Read the rest of this entry »

Many commenters have asked for this, especially in light of the fact that 1/4 of the Redeem Team are "taking their talents to South Beach" next season, so I thought some stats from the 2008 Olympics were in order. All I have is the USA page right now, though hopefully I'll be able to add other teams from the Beijing games at some point in the near future.

2008 United States Men’s Basketball Statistics

Olympic Tournament Summary

If the Redeem Team numbers are informative about the LeBron James/Dwyane Wade dynamic, Wade will be the bigger possession user (he led James 27.7% to 23.6% in terms of possessions used on the floor in the Olympics), while James will have the ball in his hands and be a facilitator (he led Wade in touches/minute, 1.33 to 1.21, and his pass/shot breakdown on touches was 59%/28% vs. Wade's 43%/34%). This aligns with the commentators who predict James will become the 21st-century version of Magic Johnson alongside his new Heat teammates.

Of course, the Redeem Team used Wade off the bench while James started, so a portion of those stats were accumulated with only one of the two in the game. Still, the general trend could hold, since they did play at least a third of their minutes together.

"Miami Thrice," they're calling it, and it would be perhaps the most impressive collection of individual superstars ever assembled on a single team. What seemed incredibly unlikely at the start of the free agent period is actually looking more than possible now, as reports claim LeBron James is "leaning towards" joining Dwyane Wade and the newly-signed Chris Bosh in South Beach to create a megateam of historic proportions.

But here's the question: if this trio gets together, what kind of damage can we expect this wrecking crew to inflict on the rest of the NBA? ESPN's John Hollinger weighed in with a PER-based analysis a week ago (he said Wade + Bosh + James + 10 replacement level ballers = 61 wins), but his system also dramatically underrated what the 2008 Celtics would do (he said 51 wins -- and I said 48, btw, so he didn't have a monopoly on being wrong), and that's the most recent example of a similar 3-star amalgamation.

In fact, the only method that correctly ballparked the C's greatness? Adjusted and/or Statistical Plus-Minus. So let's see what those systems see in the cards for a team with James, Wade, Bosh, and a bunch of nobodies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I looked at the possibility of a LeBron James-Dwyane Wade "Big Two", as well as a James-Wade-Chris Bosh "Big Three", and now it looks like a Bosh-Wade combo is going to happen at the very least (whether it includes LeBron or not is still an open question). Wade & Bosh combined for 63.3 % of their teams' possessions last season, so let's look at other newly-formed Wing/Big combos from the past to see if they're the highest-usage inside-outside duo ever put together.

The rules:

• The combo must consist of 1 "Big" (C, PF) and 1 "Wing" (SG, SF).
• The combo had to play at least 500 minutes during both the season in question and the year before.
• The combo must include at least 1 player who wasn't on the team the year before.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I watched Byron Scott's introductory press conference as head coach of the Cavs, the spectre of LeBron James' free agency hung over the proceedings (and justifiably so). Scott is a fine coach and has been successful in New Jersey & New Orleans, but I wonder what he could possibly be getting himself into -- I mean, Brian Shaw was reportedly Cleveland's first choice, but in the end he couldn't commit to the team without knowing James would be back. That's looking like a smart move, because now the unenviable question facing Scott is this: if James is gone, can the Cavs even be close to competitive without The King?

Read the rest of this entry »