Tag Archives: Josh Smith

When Josh Smith makes consecutive threes

2014 NBA Season, Detroit Pistons February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Over the last four months I’ve posted both optimistic words about Josh Smith’s shot selection and amazement of how bad it’s become. Hopefully this post is somewhere in the middle, both accepting of his jump shot and that I can’t…stop…writing about him.

Josh Smith can do many good things on an NBA court. Catering his game to what math says about it, well, that’s not one of them (though that’s also on Joe Dumars). He’s taken nearly as many shots within five feet, where he averages 1.282 points per attempt, as he does from 20 feet and beyond where he averages .705 points per attempt. It also feels mandatory to mention that because Smith’s a 23.6 percent shooter from the arc that he’s five attempts away from becoming the worst in league history, minimum 200 shots. He’ll be the worst even if he makes every one of those five attempts. Fun times.

Making five threes in a row is possible, by the way. The current chance of Smith accomplishing that is 0.0011 percent or basically the chances of making a straight flush in poker, but the former event actually happened over two games in the 2012-2013 season against Memphis and Miami, when the likelihood of such an occurrence back then was slightly higher at .0053 percent.

Smith’s a streaky three-point shooter, proven as recent as last night when he laughed in the face of math by making two threes in a row against the Spurs. He came into the game shooting 22.9 percent from three (again, on nearly 200 shots) which meant the chance of making his next two attempts was 5.2 percent. If we go by his accuracy since January 1, that percentage drops to 3.1.

That’s exactly what happened, though.

As his 3-point percentage might show, however, Smith will have cold spells where he misses, say, eight in a row. His longest drought this season is currently 11 threes from December 23 to January 7, according to Basketball-Reference, which is currently about as likely to happen again as making another pair of threes. The odds for each are 5.55 percent and 5.18, respectively.

Here are some other occurrences in the NBA about as likely to happen as Smith either making two threes in a row or missing 11 straight, going off his new three-point percentage that’s a shade under 23.6 percent:

  • Brandon Jennings missing seven straight threes from above the break. Don’t count this out. Judging by the distance of a lot of his threes, this has happened multiple times this season.
  • Chris Bosh missing five mid-range shots in a row. With the looks LeBron James and Dwyane Wade give him, that possibility seems, um, not possible.
  • Carmelo Anthony missing five straight threes from above the break. More likely is Anthony making five straight threes and the Knicks still losing.
  • Stephen Curry missing in general, which feels like never.
  • And for the poker players, making two-pair is slightly less likely, calculating to 4.75 percent.

Smith doesn’t care for math, though, as last night was far from the only time he’s made consecutive threes this season — he’s accomplished that eight other times. Smith’s made 46 threes at a 23.5 percent clip, which should mean on average he’d only make two threes in a row just twice and maybe three in a contract year. A similar thing happened in 2013 when Smith shot just 30.3 percent from the arc, making 61 of 201 attempts but he made consecutive threes at twice the average occurrence — 12 compared to 5.6. As usual, the downswings were rough as he once missed 15 straight threes. Earlier seasons show similar variance, though this might be common for several shooters.

Smith’s been a downright streaky three-point shooter, for better or for worse with last night showing both sides. After making two consecutive threes early against San Antonio, Smith attempted another in the fourth quarter in which he proceeded to miss everything. Order was restored, but he’s going to keep hoisting threes whether his shooting hand is hot or so cold it confirms my suspicion he shoots with mittens.

If my math is off, feel free to chime in.

Tables with shot location splits (from the Knicks post)

2014 NBA Season, Stats February 24, 2014 1 Comment

Below are some shot location splits I made to compare New York’s recent, excessive jump shooting with the rest of the league.

The first table looks at how many shots a team takes outside of the paint, according to NBA.com’s shooting stats. Here’s a link to it for maybe an easier view. This one should make it downloadable on Excel, where sorting columns are hopefully a possibility.

Anyway, here’s the posted table(s) from Google Sheets:

There isn’t anything too telling with how shots in the paint or out of it impacts offensive rating. The top 10 most efficient teams are scattered across the board. It’s worth noting, though, that only seven teams have taken more than half their shots in the paint.

Splits in wins and losses, found in the second sheet, also vary. In wins, the Nets, Pistons, Clippers, and Lakers all take a few less shots in the paint. The Bobcats, Cavaliers, Heat, and Magic have the opposite result. For Charlotte and Miami, maybe that’s from the impact of Al Jefferson and LeBron James, respectively.

Overall, though, I’m not sure it’s worth looking too into the stats because of, well, the difference in points from a mid-range jumper and a three-point shot not being specified (but will be in the second batch of tables). That doesn’t mean it’s not cool to post the splits, though, well hopefully.

But the next table’s a little more specific with where a team distributes their shots, sorting ones that often generate the most points (around the rim and from the arc) from the lowest (in the paint but not in the restricted area, and from mid-range). Here’s a link to the table for possibly easier viewing. This link should hopefully load in Excel.

This table has a more clear relation to both offensive rating and effective field goal percentage, though outliers like Philadelphia (poor Thaddeus Young, by the way) still remain. Detroit’s also one of the top teams to shoot around the rim or from three, though their efficiency takes a hit from Brandon Jennings and Josh Smith, among other players.

On the other side of the outliers is Oklahoma City, who’s in the middle of the pack with how many attempts they take around the rim and from three, though they’re sixth in offensive rating and EFG%. It helps to have nice mid-range shooters in Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka. Same goes for Dallas with Dirk Nowitzki and Portland with LaMarcus Aldridge.

No team takes less than half of their shots from the high-efficiency areas of the floor, though Memphis is tip-toeing that ground with a near 50-50 split. Related: they’re 20th in offensive rating and 21st in EFG%.

Win-loss splits still vary. Golden State, for example, attempts two to three more shots from either mid-range or the non-restricted area part of the paint (that part of the floor seriously needs a better, shorter name) in wins. Swinging the other way are the Mavericks, Clippers, Pelicans, and Jazz all taking a few less shots from those low-efficiency spots on the floor with the Clippers having the biggest decrease, taking over five less shots in wins. Unsurprisingly, their EFG% improves by 9.1 percent though every team’s percentage has increased in wins. There’s hardly a difference in shot distribution for some teams like the Lakers, Magic, and Blazers, all changing by less than a quarter of a percent.

Just for fun, I included an extra table featuring which teams take more mid-range shots than ones around the rim, something I included in the Knicks-related post this morning. Unsurprisingly, Portland’s both at the top of that table and the only team to be in the top 10 in scoring efficiency. The rest of the teams, save for the Knicks, are either at the bottom 10 or flirting with it.

I also wanted to include game-by-game logs but they’re so big that I didn’t want to make this post extremely slow to load. They can be found here on Google Sheets or a link to Excel.

Any other thoughts are certainly welcome, and as a reminder this was related to the Knicks column I posted earlier today about their overreliance on the jump shot, even by their standards.

Non-conference update: The West wins the most active week yet

2014 NBA Season, East vs West February 10, 2014 1 Comment

Two months ago, Basketball-Reference provided history of non-conference games in a really cool table, one that showed the West winning this year’s matchups at a frequency not seen in nearly 55 years, back when the league had “divisions”. A few weeks passed before I started a weekly update tracking the rest of the non-conference games.

The 15th week of the season featured the most active stretch of the East’s teams playing the West’s, 33 played total with each conference winning 10 at home. The West won eight on the road, though, while the East took just five. Below is the updated week-by-week breakdown:

The 45.5 percent win rate the East had last week would be solid over an entire season. That’s if they ever cared about non-conference statistics. It’s fine if they don’t, especially when the games have nowhere as much impact as they do for the West.

Indiana and Miami are still the only East teams to have 10 wins in non-conference play, but in Week 15 the conference as a whole blew some winnable games. The Cavs heard the thud that is rock-bottom after falling to the Lakers while the Heat sparked a search for a replacement to the term “coasting” after losing to Utah. Some suggestions: sailing, floating, drifting, and freewheeling. Heatwheeling?

As for the West, below is an updated breakdown of how many games each team has left against the East. It impacts both the playoff race and the lottery with the former benefiting from more non-conference games while the latter hopes for less. The more games the Jazz and Lakers play against West teams jousting for playoff seeding, the higher likelihood they’ll accumulate more lottery balls.

With DeMarcus Cousins, Rudy Gay and Isiah Thomas, it’s hard to believe Sacramento finishes as the worst team in the West. Recent injuries to the first two players hasn’t helped, but the Lakers are all sorts of banged up too. Utah’s wedged in between them with some nice pieces themselves.

As for the playoff teams and contenders, most are in that 9 to 12-game range against the East with Memphis and Golden State having some extras, which is huge when they’re both just trying to make the postseason versus deciding who they’d like to host in the first round. Meanwhile, the Clippers are running out of near-gimmes against the East but it’s right when Chris Paul is returning and Blake Griffin is making a case as the best power forward in the league. As usual, looking at non-conference games is helpful but remaining back-to-backs and home/away games are just as important too.

There’s also this thing called the trade deadline that’s creeping into front offices. Will a team out West grab Arron Afflalo? What about Greg Monroe, Josh Smith, or whatever else Detroit could look to trade? Cleveland’s another East team that could swap some players such as Dion Waiters or Anderson Varejao.

For the heck of it, though, below is Week 16’s non-conference schedule. There’s only three days of games but about as many will be played as any other random week:

The East has 10 home games compared to the West’s six. That’s also the amount of wins I think each conference could pull off, respectively, though a couple East teams always fail to win down the stretch.

Maybe this is the week they turn in a dominant performance, though slowly working towards a respectable winning percentage against the West is just as fine. It’s like I’ve felt that way all season about most of the East’s teams.

For the other non-conference posts, check this out.

Josh Smith’s shooting has reached it’s low point, or has it?

2014 NBA Season, Detroit Pistons, Follow ups February 4, 2014 Comments: 4
Keith Allison | Flickr

Keith Allison | Flickr

Three months ago I dedicated a post to Josh Smith’s shot selection, back when it wasn’t so rough on the eyes. The newly-signed Pistons forward hoisted 23 threes through the first three games of the season but the mid-range attempts were mostly absent. A long shot to be an above-average shooter, having Smith take a step behind the line instead of taking 20-foot two-pointers was a step in the right direction, one that would yield more points per attempt from jump shots he’d have to take when playing alongside Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond. It was a hopeful sign of efficiency.

Fast forward to now. Smith’s recording career-lows in PER, true shooting percentage, effective field goal percentage, and free throw rate. His threes and shots in the dead zone combine for about half his field goal attempts, most of them being bricks that create shot chart blood. However, the floor on Smith’s three-point percentage is most remarkable, possibly still untapped despite being on pace to be the worst three-point shooter of all time by a whole two percentage points, minimum 200 attempts. His 166 tries have dropped 23.5 percent of the time but the monthly splits worsen each month:

smithgraph1

Smith’s just 16-for-87 beyond the arc (18.4 percent) over his last 30 games. SportVU lists him as the worst three-point shooter in catch-and-shoot situations (24.7 percent) among the top 100 players in attempts, with teammate Charlie Villanueva second to last. His percentages are even worse in pull up attempts, though those shots have rarely occurred and it’s common for players to struggle shooting off the dribble versus a pass.

The good news is that Smith’s three-point rate is dropping. Here’s a table of those monthly splits with his mid-range rate and free throw rate included, via NBA.com. (I left out October and February because small sample size.)

smithgraph2

The three-point rates in December and January match up with Smith’s last season in Atlanta. Maybe they have to do with Detroit’s big three of Smith, Drummond, and Monroe playing together less frequently each month. According to NBA.com, the trio was together 18.7 minutes in November, 16.2 in December, and 15.0 in January. Neither monthly split yielded positive results, though that’s not 100 percent on Smith. The trio needs to be severely staggered, and Brandon Jennings at point guard hasn’t helped any.

The other evil in Smith’s game is the mid-range shot. The heater from that area of the floor last month, one that gave him a nice uptick in true shooting percentage was obvious, possibly even fatal fool’s gold after last night’s performance in Miami. Smith’s never shot better than 39 percent from mid-range in a single season, and there’s a chance if the three-point line was shortened like it was from 1995 to 1997 that he’d likely experience little to no improvement like players listed here.

As disappointing as Smith’s shooting has been, he’s not the sole reason for Detroit sitting in ninth place behind Charlotte and Washington. His shooting is costly but he would have more to offer if he wasn’t playing small forward over half the time, a position that helps neglect the skills he provides on both offense and defense. The Pistons, however, are going nowhere unless a third of its frontline is shipped out. Trading Smith would be impressive when he’s on the books until 2017 at $13.5 million a pop, but Monroe seems like the most moveable piece given his looming, steep raise next summer, one possibly not worth it given the holes in his defense.

Then again, the same could’ve been said about Smith’s contract and whether or not it’s worth paying him to play on the perimeter. Joe Dumars must’ve thought it was but the results, at least on offense, have been a three-month migraine. There’s plenty of room for improvement in Smith’s shooting with some of it bound to happen given how bad things have become, but the slight possibility that the worst-case scenario remains to be seen is amazing in itself.

Josh Smith nearly goes documentary, barely misses out on 30-for-30 performance

Detroit Pistons December 17, 2013 Comments: 3
Erik Drost | Flickr

Erik Drost | Flickr

What if I told you two days ago the Detroit Pistons had a 13-point fourth quarter lead against the 20-win Blazers, only to blow it and lose on a buzzer-beater by Damian Lillard? Not only that, but Josh Smith scored 31 points on only 17 shots.

We’ll probably never see that efficient of a performance again by Smith, who Detroit should’ve kept feeding the ball to while they had a double-digit lead. Unfortunately, he only took one shot in the fourth quarter and overtime combined. Detroit wouldn’t let that happen twice in a row, not even against the best defense in the league in Indiana.

For better or for worse, Smith was chucking all game last night against the Pacers, nearly mimicking the ESPN documentary series by finishing with 29 shots and 30 points. There were moments of brilliance that were overshadowed by frustrating shot selection: fade away jumpers, long twos with 12 seconds on the shot clock, isolations leading to more long twos. All three of those kind of shots by Smith resulted in barely grazing the rim when they didn’t go through the net. When the first long two swished, Indiana must’ve had an evil grin knowing Smith would continue flirting outside the paint.

And for the most part, he did:

Shotchart_1387306921333

Josh Smith’s shot chart versus Indiana

As you can see from the shot chart above, long jumpers accounted for over half (!!!) his attempts, bringing back memories of Rudy Gay‘s performance against Houston. Though Smith was effective from those spots percentage-wise, he was at his best when he scored by moving off the ball. Twice he took advantage of miscommunication between Paul George and whoever was guarding Greg Monroe.

Rather than showing Smith’s baskets from moving without the ball by pasting screenshots that take up a ton of space, I put them in a short video with captions up top:

Smith could’ve easily sat around the perimeter, hoping Brandon Jennings would feed him for, you know, a jumper he only makes 25 percent of the time on over 200 attempts, according to NBA.com. He produces just 0.68 points per spot-up shot, according to Synergy, ranking 205th in the league. That’s not good when 20 percent of his shots come from that situation. 

Good thing Smith cut to the rim instead, an area where he shoots nearly 67 percent from and produces 1.24 points per attempt (35th-best). He also showed off a lefty jump hook last night, one he doesn’t take anywhere near as often probably because of the cramped spacing between him, Monroe, and Andre Drummond. Not a lot of those hook shots dropped versus Luis Scola, Paul George or David West, but for the season he’s 24-of-44. Efficiency!

But those efficient shots were scattered between the long jumpers Smith chucked to varying degrees of success. Maybe he took more of them than usual because of Mount Hibbert lurking in the paint, but they’ve become a daily occurrence regardless of the opponent. It puts an earlier blog post praising his shot selection to waste, though it does make Detroit handing Indiana their first home loss of the season that much more impressive.