This is our old blog. It hasn't been active since 2011. Please see the link above for our current blog or click the logo above to see all of the great data and content on this site.
«
»

Layups: Do Players Try Harder In the Playoffs?

Posted by Neil Paine on May 8, 2009

Slate asked, so Bradford Doolittle of Basketball Prospectus went to work. The result is a stat that's sort of an homage to Kurt Rambis, intended to measure hustle and all of those other Rambis-y things that hard-working do...

Unfortunately, there's no evidence it goes up in the playoffs. But what does that mean? Teams don't seem to be trying as hard when they should be trying their hardest? That doesn't make sense.

Of course, I'm not sure if he adjusted for the fact that it's tougher to put up numbers -- gritty RAMBIS ones included -- against the better competition one inevitably faces in the playoffs than it is vs. the Grizzlies in January. Either way, it's still an interesting read.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 4:17 am and is filed under Layups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Layups: Do Players Try Harder In the Playoffs?”

  1. Jason J Says:
    May 8th, 2009 at 8:45 am

    I kind of like the idea that players are giving it their best all season long and don't have any wiggle room to play harder in the playoffs, but I suspect your reasoning is dead on. It's harder to produce any positives against the top 16 teams in the league who have so much prep time and so much familiarity with a player's strengths and tendencies.

  2. steve norris Says:
    May 8th, 2009 at 11:42 am

    i think teams try to focus more on defense in the playoffs and use offense to get in the playoffs.

«
»