Tag Archives: Los Angeles Lakers

Solid final quarter of season a common trait among champions

2014 NBA Playoffs, 2014 NBA Season, Stats March 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Every team has a peak and valley during their season, even the 76ers who started the season 3-0 but are now dealing with a winless five-week stretch. For a team looking to grab a top-3 pick in this year’s draft, that’s probably the right time to find their high and really, really low points of the season. As for the title contenders it should be the opposite, though a few teams are going through some recent woes whether it’s from a difficult stretch of games (Miami dealing with Joakim Noah and Boris Diaw), adjusting after a trade (Indiana with Evan Turner and other problems) or whatever else factoring into a slump (it’s all Russell Westbrook’s fault!).

History has shown that it’s fine to experience those downswings as long as they don’t carry too deep into March or April. Over the past 30 years, 26 of the eventual champions played .600 ball or better in the final quarter of the season. Also worth noting is that, with the help of Basketball-Reference, 26 of the last 28 champions finished the same stretch of games with a positive net rating.

Below are the last 30 champions with their records, offensive and defensive efficiency, and net rating over the final fourth of the season. Highlighted are the outliers. All stats are according to Basketball-Reference:

The outliers:

1995 Houston Rockets

Hakeem Olajuwon missed eight of the final 20 games with the Rockets going 3-5 over that stretch. Clyde Drexler played out of his mind during Dream’s absence, averaging a stat line of 30.0/9.3/5.5/2.4/0.9. He also made over 30 percent of his threes, something not totally guaranteed throughout his career.

In the 12 games Olajuwon played, Houston squeaked out a positive net rating of 0.1. Also, Zan Tabak played in only eight of the last 20 games. Absolutely has to be noted.

Orlando finished 9-11 as well, though they had efficiency splits of 114.2/112.3/+1.9. Long live the mid-90s Magic jerseys and Penny Hardaway.

2006 Miami Heat

Dwyane Wade missed three games while Shaquille O’Neal missed five. Each sat out the last two games, paving the way for a Michael Doleac-Wayne Simien-Antoine Walker-Dorell Wright-Jason Williams starting lineup. Miami lost both. Fun times.

Dallas also finished 11-9 that season and Dirk Nowitzki played 81 games, so what might be their best excuse? Their schedule wasn’t the greatest as they played the Cavaliers, Clippers, and Kings each twice and the Jazz, Nets, Nuggets, Pistons, Spurs, Suns, and Wizards each once. That’s not exactly the most murderous row of opponents but a mix of title contenders and playoff-worthy teams jousting for seeding nonetheless. Also mixed in the final 20 games were the Hornets with a rookie Chris Paul, the Magic with a young Dwight Howard, and the Warriors who…they stunk down the stretch, sure, but we all know what happened next year. Regardless, that’s 19 of the final 20 games. Joe Johnson and the Atlanta Hawks were the other squad Dallas faced (and defeated).

2010 Los Angeles Lakers

Andrew Bynum missed the last 13 games of the season while Kobe Bryant missed four. Pau Gasol was awesome down the stretch, though, averaging a line of 24.2/12.9/3.8 with 2.2 blocks.

2012 Miami Heat

A lockout-shortened season where resting core players was rarely a bad move. LeBron James, Wade, and Chris Bosh made only 31 appearances out of a possible 48, making way for front courts of some combination of Eddy Curry, Dexter Pittman, Udonis Haslem, James Jones, and Shane Battier. Arguably more fun times than 2006.

It might seem standard for solid teams to play any fourth of the season with a positive net rating, but that’s not exactly true. Using the net ratings from NBA.com, below are 10 notable teams of the last 15 seasons that dipped into the negatives over the final quarter:

Sure, a lot of those teams were pseudo-contenders. The 2001 Sixers, for example, were never going to win four games against a Lakers squad that mowed over their first three opponents with an offense-defense efficiency line of 113.0/96.3/+16.7, but maybe sputtering down the stretch contributed to those teams not being among the league’s elite during their respective seasons. As for the 2010 Lakers and 2013 Spurs, they clearly stand above the eight other teams in terms of talent and confidence they’d make a deep run in the postseason.

Some team over the next five weeks is bound to hit a rough patch. Maybe they’ll right themselves in time for what should be a hell of a postseason, but they could also end up as a team to write off whether it’s in April, May, or possibly even June. Below is a breakdown of the remaining schedules for a mix of title contenders and ones I don’t think will go that far in the playoffs, but included them anyway just because. Each team also has their own sheet with their last 20 games, including the (color-filtered) difficulty of their opponents. It’s a fricken rainbow.

Every team seems to have a few games in a row against teams competing (or about to compete) for lottery balls, though teams out West appear to have more daunting schedules overall.

There’s always the chance for an outlier like four of the last 30 seasons, though, but the Clips at least look well on their way to fit the minimum requirements to be labeled as a contender. That’s at least in regards to finishing steady.

But to include one last table, ending the last quarter of the season over .600 and with a sexy net rating doesn’t always guarantee making the deepest of runs in the playoffs. Below is a table of the best nets in the final fourth of seasons since 1997, according to NBA.com:

If that final table makes a team finishing hot suddenly worrisome, it probably shouldn’t. When looking at net ratings provided by Basketball-Reference in the very first table, champions often had very respectable ones. Chicago’s from 1996 is unreal.

Anyway, a lot still needs to be addressed regarding quite a few playoff teams. Let’s see how the last five weeks play out. The next two days should especially be entertaining thanks to a ton of good matchups.

For related posts, check out drastic movements in the lottery over the last two months of the season and what 20 wins before Christmas means in the West.

Clippers’ shots near the rim last night among highest totals this season

2014 NBA Season, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers March 7, 2014 Leave a comment
shot chart

ESPN.com’s shot chart of last night’s Clips-Lakers whatever-that-was-we-watched.

If last night’s blowout between the Clippers and Lakers actually happened and wasn’t one of those bizarre dreams you have while napping, it can be clumped in the middle of a special group of games where a team (or sometimes both) absolutely feasted at the rim.

Unfortunately for the Lakers, the Clippers were responsible for over two-thirds of those (mostly) bunnies all while they gave the purple and gold their worst loss in franchise history.

40 of the Clippers’ points within the restricted area came from lobs finished by Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, baskets by Darren Collison, and whatever Danny Granger has left in him. The team as a whole totaled 60 points inside that half-circle that was like a landing pad after fast break opportunities. The production from that area of the floor ranked above 99.5 percent of all single-game shot location logs this season plucked from NBA.com.

Below is the other .5 percent, sorted by the season-high for most field goals made within the restricted area:

The Lakers lead the league in most field goals allowed inside the restricted area and most attempted there, and it’s not that close between them and second place in those stats. So maybe it’s not that big of a surprise to see them on that list twice as an opponent, especially when Detroit typically scores a ton of their points at the rim and the Clippers added some extra salt during the third quarter of last night’s game when it was over by halftime.

As for the field goals the Lakers allowed the Clippers to attempt around the rim, last night’s 44 shots weren’t that close to the league’s season high of 53. Unfortunately for the Lakers, that was set in their game against Detroit (which they ended up winning, though).

Going into the last five weeks of the season, we’re bound to see another outlier game or two allowed from any shot location not just by the Lakers but other teams limping to the finish line like the 76ers (poor Thaddeus Young), New Orleans (poor Anthony Davis?), and the New York Knicks (poor, poor Carmelo Anthony), among other teams.

But who knows? Maybe the Lakers will be on the good side of one of those outliers. After all, in their last 20 games they’ve been one of the best 3-point shooting teams both in volume and accuracy, so there’s that.

The least that could be asked out of them right now, however, is for last night to never happen again.

All stats are according to NBA.com.

A follow up on the Celtics, Lakers, and what only the 2007 Mavericks have done to them

2014 NBA Season, Boston Celtics, Follow ups, Los Angeles Lakers February 14, 2014 1 Comment
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I think I made my new Twitter avatar?

The first related post can be found here.

Nearly four months ago (!!!), both the Celtics and Lakers came into the season with very average expectations, even the possibility each could contend for a top-3 pick in this summer’s draft. Only in 1994 had both teams come close to such an occasion, when Larry Bird was two seasons into retirement and one season before a brief comeback by Magic Johnson.

But even during that season, no team accomplished the near-impossible feat of winning more games than the Celtics and Lakers combined. It’s only happened once, back in 2007 when the Dallas Mavericks won 67 games to Los Angeles’ (41-41) and Boston’s (24-58) combined 65.

It’s difficult enough to say one team could win more than any random two combined, let alone two of the most storied franchises, but right now the current chances are as good as ever. Below is table with teams with either more wins than the Celtics and Lakers combined or within reach.

 

The Lakers (18-35) are on their last legs with a depleted roster missing Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, and even Nick Young and others while Boston (19-35) has won four of their last six, but are 6-17 in 2014 overall. The trade deadline also looms with an outside chance each franchise parts with key players, either the Lakers with Pau Gasol or the Celtics with Rajon Rondo. They also have other tradable pieces and, of course, the chance to acquire more lottery balls.

Another similar, weird accomplishment came in 1997 when the Clippers won more than the Celtics and Spurs. Maybe one day we’ll look back at 2014 when a few teams won more than the Celtics and Lakers, which is incredible in itself as both are bound to reload through the draft and free agency, but we could also say the same about a team winning more than the collective total of two teams like the Pelicans and 76ers.

The Celtics, the Lakers, and what only the 2007 Mavericks have done to them

2007, Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers October 22, 2013 Comments: 2

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Mediocrity has been a rarity for two of the NBA’s most storied franchises: the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. Their accomplishments have been discussed several times such as the 33 championships, 52 Finals appearances overall, and over 6,000 regular season victories between the two.

Only once in over 60 years have both teams either missed the playoffs or finished below .500 in the same season. That was in 1994, just the second season since Larry Bird’s retirement and two seasons before a brief comeback by Magic Johnson. It’s a rude awakening when I normally think of that decade ending only yesterday.

The 2006-07 season was the last time both teams came in with average expectations. The Lakers, led by Kobe Bryant, Smush Parker, and Kwame Brown finished 41-41. Paul Pierce, Al Jefferson, a rookie named Rajon Rondo, and the Celtics limped to the finish line at 24-58, winning only 12 of their final 50 games. Their slump might’ve had something to do with Greg Oden and Kevin Durant being near-locks as 2007 NBA Draft participants. (For more 2007 nostalgia, check out a post I devoted to that entire year.)

2007 didn’t join 1994 where both teams missed the playoffs or finished below .500, but something else funky happened in the regular season and for the very first time in league history: A team won more games than the Celtics and Lakers combined.

That team was the Dallas Mavericks.

If not for the title run in 2011, mentioning the 2007 version of Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks might sting more than compliment. Even then, it’s worth noting there’s some degree of difficulty for a random team to win more than two other random ones, let alone the Celtics and Lakers. Last season, the two worst teams in the NBA last season, the Magic and Bobcats, combined for 41 wins. The 10th and 11th worst teams, Toronto and Portland, combined for 67. That 2007 Mavericks team is the last to match such an amount.

The likelihood of catching both the Celtics and the Lakers in underwhelming seasons and winning more than both of them combined speaks for itself. Dallas accomplished something nobody had done before despite opportunities for teams in the mid-90s, 2005, and 2006 to be the first to do so. Maybe Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of 1993 and 1994 would’ve been the first, but that’s just one of several coulda-shoulda-wouldas with Jordan’s first retirement.

The mid-2010s may bring another opportunity for a team to join the likes of the ’07 Mavericks for multiple reasons: injuries to the Celtics and Lakers’ franchise cornerstones in 2013, a haul of very average players for each team, both conferences being more beefed up at the top, and the tankapalooza that will lead up to 2014 NBA Draft. The window to win more than the Celtics and Lakers combined could close after this season if A) the Lakers make a huge splash in free agency like they intend and B) Boston rebuilds successfully through a loaded draft.

For now, the chance is there.

Hopefully joining the ’07 Mavericks in a rare regular season feat doesn’t come with their playoff disappointment as well. If anything crazy happens, however, teams that win more games than the Celtics and Lakers combined in a single season win a championship four years later. 100 percent of the time.