Archive for the 'History' Category

See also: #11-15, #16-20, #21-25, #26-31

With the 2010-11 season warming up, let's finish up our ranking of the 31 best NCAA teams from 1980-2010:

10. Louisville Cardinals (+14.76 SRS)

Record: 709-329 (.683)
Prominent Coaches: Denny Crum, Rick Pitino
Best NCAA Finish: Won NCAA Championship (1980, 1986)

Louisville has somewhat quietly amassed a dominant resume over the past 3 decades. With 2 national titles and 4 Final Fours, the Cardinals were probably the best program of the 1980s, while their "down" years of the 1990s consisted of 8 NCAA berths & 208 wins. And in the 2000s, Rick Pitino took them to a Final Four in 2005, seamlessly transitioning from the Crum era with 220 victories of his own. Pick any year since 1980, and chances are The Ville was one of the better college basketball teams in the country.

9. Syracuse Orange (+15.41 SRS)

Record: 755-279 (.730)
Prominent Coaches: Jim Boeheim
Best NCAA Finish: Won NCAA Championship (2003)

Under Jim Boeheim, the Orangemen won more games than all but four schools since 1980. He took a solid program and turned it into a perennial contender, produced a number of NBA prospects, won 14 Big East regular-season or tournament titles, and finally filled the gap in his resume when Carmelo Anthony carried 'Cuse to their elusive NCAA crown in 2003. Simply put, no Big East team has been better over the past 30 years.

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This is just extremely depressing news for Portland fans (and fans of gifted big men in general):

"Trail Blazers center Greg Oden, the former No. 1 draft pick whose short career has been marred by injuries, will have microfracture surgery on his left knee and will not play this season.

Oden hasn't played since last December because he needed surgery to repair a fractured left patella. The Blazers say this operation, announced Wednesday night and scheduled for Friday in Vail, Colo., will repair damaged cartilage and is unrelated to the patella injury.

Oden, the first name announced in the 2007 NBA draft, missed his rookie season because of microfracture surgery on his right knee. The procedure stimulates cartilage growth.

Blazers trainer Jay Jensen said the latest problem with Oden's left knee became apparent about two weeks ago when he experienced some pain and fluid in the joint. Soon thereafter, an MRI revealed the damage.

'We sat there and it was like we'd been kicked in the stomach,' Jensen said, choking up. "It felt like hearing someone close to us had died.'"

Criticize the Blazers all you want for picking him over Kevin Durant in that '07 Draft, but the fact remains that Oden is a talent. When he managed to find the floor in between the injuries and foul trouble, he has actually been a pretty productive NBA player -- in fact, Oden's career rate of Win Shares per 48 minutes (0.180) is actually higher than Durant's (0.140).

Even so, the Curse of Sam Bowie (or is it Bill Walton?) lives on in the City of Roses. Here are the fewest NBA games played by a #1 overall pick in the first four seasons after they were drafted (omitting David Robinson, who had to serve in the Navy before debuting):

Some interesting comments from the Zen Master about the 1996 Bulls, as well as the possible imprudence of going after the regular-season wins record:

"In '92, after the first championship (with the Bulls), I think we're 46-3 or 43-6, something like that around the All-Star break," Jackson recalled. "The owner called me up and said, 'I hope you're not trying to win the most games ever won in one season.'

"And I said, 'Well, we have a lot of depth. We have a young team. I'm not trying to wear them out. We're just trying to use momentum and win games.'

"That team ended up winning 67 games. They had a little letdown at the end of the season. You get a feel like teams know how to win games and know how to turn it on at the end. They know how to expend the right amount of energy to win a ballgame.

"That really happened with the team in '95-96. They knew how to blow teams out and put them away in the early part of the second period. Everything kind of fell into place for us, also.

"We went on a long road trip and three of the five teams or eight teams we played on that road trip had injuries to players who were important players. We won seven out of eight games on that road trip. Things like that happened."

Few teams in NBA history have had that ability. Right now, the Lakers and Heat are in that group, with SRS scores north of the 1971 Bucks' all-time record (remember, that team was arguably the most dominant ever). However, I doubt either will keep up that blistering pace over 82 games -- and like Jackson said, this may be a good thing. You'd much rather your team be at the top of this list than dominate the regular-season and not have any hardware to show for it.

(H/T: TrueHoop.)

On Saturday, Nathan wrote this to us:

"Through five games, James Posey has 20 FGA, 18 of which are 3PA, making for a staggering 90% rate of 3PA to FGA. Even though Posey went for a 70% clip last season, I see very little in his play (or being involved in a Jim O'Brien system) to suggest he shouldn't shatter that number this year. I was wondering either what the top 3PA to FGA ratios were..."

Among players who, like Posey, took at least 4 field-goal attempts per team game, here are the guys who saw the biggest proportion of their shots come from behind the 3-point arc:

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See also: #16-20, #21-25, #26-31

Note: This post was originally published at College Basketball at Sports-Reference, S-R's new College Hoops site, so when you're done reading, go over and check it out!

With the 2010-11 NCAA basketball season technically commencing this week, let's return to these rankings...

15. Connecticut Huskies (+14.16 SRS)

Record: 682-312 (.686)
Prominent Coaches: Jim Calhoun
Best NCAA Finish: Won NCAA Championship (1999, 2004)

Two national titles in the last 12 years makes up for a mediocre first half of the 1980s under Dom Perno, as the leadership of Calhoun has transformed Storrs into an unlikely national hoops hotbed. And to think that it all started with Scott Burrell & Tate George...

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Today's mailbag question comes in from my friend Jake, a Duke fan:

"Do you happen to know which players have the highest % of their career points coming from free throws? My friend and I were discussing where Corey Maggette would fall on that list."

Minimum 7,500 career points, here are all-time NBA players who had the highest percentage of their points come from the charity stripe:

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Here's a fun question: Which uniform number is the best in NBA history? As in, which number has seen the most production from the men wearing it?

For the answer, let's turn to our uniform number database and use Win Shares, which includes defense and does a good general job of separating out the good players from the bad ones. You may quibble with WS when it comes to individual players, but over huge samples of many different players, it's the perfect tool for a question like this.

Here are the most productive numbers in NBA history (not including 1950 or '51, since they didn't track minutes those years):

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I was watching a little of the Hawks-Grizzlies game last night before the World Series, and it sunk in just how much we've all written off the Hawks after last season's embarrassing sweep at the hands of the Magic. The prevailing logic is that Atlanta will still win their 45-50 games this year, finish with a decent seed in the East, and maybe even win another 1st-round series, but the sweep meant that they cannot truly contend with the conference's big guns.

Is one playoff sweep really that telling, though?

Here's the historical progression of all teams who were swept 4-0 from 1959-2007 (mouse over column headers for descriptions):

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This is a quick hit-n-run/data dump post, but I was listening to Mike Pesca's trivia question on the Hang Up & Listen podcast, and I was curious about the NBA equivalent...

The question was: "Among NFL receivers with more than 12 TDs in a season, who has the biggest difference between their best seasonal TD total and their 2nd-best seasonal TD total?" The NFL answers are, according to the Hang Up Facebook page, Elroy Hirsch, Braylon Edwards (for now), and Patrick Jeffers.

My NBA equivalent would be: "Among NBA players with 10 Win Shares in a season, who has the biggest difference between their best season and their 2nd-best season?" The answer, after the jump...

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As part of Friday's post about the 2011 Heat's possible '07 Patriots connection, I had to run a little query splitting up every team's per-game point differential by each quarter of their season, and I thought we could make some use of that data today as well. To win 60+ games in today's NBA, a team needs to win 73% of its games, and that typically requires an average PPG differential of +7. This doesn't necessarily mean they played like a +7 team all season long, though -- if we break the season down into fourths (including playoffs), we find that only six teams in NBA history have ever played like a +7 team at every stage of the campaign:

Even for a 60-win-caliber team, it's tough to maintain that level all season, especially given the fact that playoff games drag your 4th quarter differential down with their pesky increased opponent strength. Here's how the 60-win teams of recent vintage did it:

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