Tag Archives: NBA

Detroit’s domination and struggle inside the paint

2014 NBA Season, Detroit Pistons March 4, 2014 Leave a comment

Last night wasn’t exactly a spectacle between the Knicks and Pistons. I spent most of the first half staring at the box score as their combined made field goals, assists, and turnovers were all about the same. Eventually, with the help of Andre Drummond tying the league’s highest total for rebounds this season, Detroit pulled away and revived hopes of making the postseason. The Knicks, meanwhile…

http://twitter.com/netw3rk/status/440677686827298816

Neither team was an offensive masterpiece. Detroit was the only one to make over 40 percent of their shots, shooting 35-for-83 with 48 of their 96 points coming in the paint. That’s typical of Detroit. Their point distribution graph from last Friday can be found here, but it’s worth noting in this post that they lead the league in the percentage of their points coming around the rim.

But the other portion of the paint was a pain. The Pistons score at a bottom-10 rate inside the paint but outside the restricted area, and it only got worse last night when they put up a donut — 0-for-12. It’s the most attempts taken in the non-restricted area portion of the paint without making a single shot.

Last night’s looks against the Knicks from that area of the floor were probably what would be expected. Some were altered by Tyson Chandler, others were forced attempts like Kyle Singler slashing after being run off the three-point line, and a few were blown looks by Greg Monroe or Brandon Jennings. It happens, especially when over three-fifths of the Pistons’ attempts come from players anywhere from below-average to awful finishers from that area. It’s also not completely unheard of for a team to go scoreless from there when the league average for attempts per game is about 12.5, nearly half the average from mid-range and around the rim.

However, it’s still pretty impressive that Detroit’s 12 attempts resulted in no production. Variance is weird like that.

Below is a breakdown of games where a team went scoreless from a specific area of the floor:

As for a team neglecting an area of the floor:

  1. No team has completely ignored the non-restricted area portion of the paint in a game, but there have been games where only one attempt was taken – two of the occurrences coming from the Knicks and one from the Bulls. The Knicks love to shoot outside the paint in general while the Bulls, well, at least Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson, among others, have helped right their ship lately.
  2. Houston’s the only team to take less than five mid-range shots, which they’ve done in four games. Moreyball!
  3. 11 times has a team not taken a corner three. Detroit isn’t found in any of those games, but four games were from the Pelicans. I guess Anthony Davis can’t do everything.
  4. No team has not taken a three from above the break, but Memphis holds the season-low with three attempts on January 31.
  5. Around the rim, Sacramento’s the only team to take less than 10 attempts in a game, which they accomplished on January 24 all while nearly toppling the Pacers. That counts for a moral victory, right? Right?!

Around the rim is where Detroit thrives. The least amount of attempts they’ve taken within the restricted area is 22, which is Brooklyn’s average per game. They also hold the two season-highs for attempts at 53 and 51 on November 29 and January 10, respectively.

It’s that other portion of the paint that’s been tricky for the Pistons, as well as just about everywhere else. Things happen when a team’s composed of players whose ways of scoring overlap with each other’s.

But at least they got the touch around the rim…

Is that not what the Pistons would say to themselves? Long live Caddyshack.

All stats are according to NBA.com.

Non-conference update: The East continues to chip away in the standings

2014 NBA Season, East vs West March 3, 2014 Leave a comment

The non-conference update follows games pitting the Western Conference’s teams versus the East’s. This season, the West has often held a winning percentage so large it hasn’t been seen in over 50 years.

Last week the East continued a respectable winning percentage against the West, finishing 9-10. Among the teams bullied, though, was the New York Knicks thanks to Dirk Nowitzki and Stephen Curry. Detroit also didn’t win either of their games against the West. Over the past month, though, the East is 40-46 against the West. Not great, of course, but definitely fine.

Below is an updated week-by-week breakdown of non-conference play so far:

I mentioned in my last non-conference post that the West’s best season ever against the East was in 2004 when they finished with a winning percentage of 63.3. Last week put a dent in the possibility of 2014 surpassing that mark, though it’s still possible. The West would have to finish 71-35, which can be slimmed to 64-35 when taking into account Philadelphia playing seven non-conference games that should hardly be competitive. POOR THADDEUS YOUNG.

A pretty good chunk of non-conference games will take place this week, 28 total with each conference having 14 home games apiece. Indiana and Miami, far and away the best teams against the West, play five games while West playoff teams and their hopefuls play in 20 of them. A closer look at those games can be found here as well as bolded games I think the West will win, though I put little thought into it. Basically, the West was predicted to go 19-9 which is right on track to surpass 2004’s winning percentage.

The rest of March as a whole has a ton of non-conference games, 98 to be exact with 50 of the games hosted by West teams. After that, it slows down significantly with nine games over the 16 other days.

Below is a look at the league standings with non-conference games left. Conferences are separated by different sheets, so to view the West simply go to the bottom and click on sheet labeled after it.

Dallas having seven less non-conference games than Memphis and Minnesota looks pretty huge, though the Grizzlies still have to play Miami not once, not twice, not three times, not four, not five okay they play the Heat twice, but still. They’re actually a pretty interesting matchup with Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph playing against the smaller lineups of Chris Bosh and either LeBron James or Shane Battier.

Minnesota also faces an important stretch of non-conference games right when they need it most, all while Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Martin return to the lineup. They’ll host New York, Detroit and Toronto this week and Milwaukee in the following one. That’s a good reminder that while the East is holding its own as of late, a stretch against their teams is still seen as a way to beef up in the standings.

Until next week.

Shot locations and shooting efficiency in graphs

2014 NBA Season, Shot Charts, Stats February 28, 2014 Comments: 3
LeagueAvg

The percentage of a team’s points, sorted by location.

Sometimes I get bored and look for unusual topics to post about, which eventually leads to spending too much time on something like making graphs revolving around scoring and defense.

The graphs I made are pretty basic, I suppose. I might have fun with more over the weekend but I’ll just show what I fooled around with already. Basically, there are four different graphs for every team: team point distribution across six locations, team effective field goal percentage in five of those spots, and the same two for a team’s defense. All of the stats I used were from NBA.com.

The point distribution graphs show what percentage of a team’s points come from the restricted area, paint not in the restricted area, mid-range, the corner three, above the break three, and free throws. I experimented with field goal attempts per spot, but the graphs compared to point distribution looked about the same.

Below is a GIF of all 30 teams, sorted in alphabetical order. (The picture above the first paragraph was the league average for point distribution.)

Team points on Make A Gif

I can certainly post individual team graphs at another time, but I chose not to here for the sake of the amount of space it would take up.

That doesn’t mean we can’t compare some, though.

Portland and Houston are quite a contrast in styles, given one’s love for the mid-range jumper (and for a very legitimate reason) while the other neglects that part of the floor.

They both value the three equally, however:

Portland-Hou on Make A Gif

Philadelphia is somewhat similar to Houston except they rarely score from the corner three and their mid-range game is more prevalent. Also, they might have the right idea on offense but as we’ve seen recently they don’t score all that well and they struggle to defend. More on that in a bit. For now: POOR THADDEUS YOUNG.

Among other similarities are Atlanta, Brooklyn, Golden State, the Lakers, and Toronto all looking alike too.

Starting from the restricted area and going clockwise, the leader in points distributed to each category are: the Detroit Pistons (41.72%), Memphis (14.21%), Boston (22.62%), New York (21.41%), Miami (10.68%), and Houston (20.47%).

Below are graphs for where a team allows points:

Defense Distribute on Make A Gif

Among other teams, Indiana’s offense and defense are quite similar, for better or for worse.

The leaders in each category, starting at the restricted area and going clockwise are the Lakers (36.65%), Golden State (12.14%), Indiana (23.19%), Oklahoma City (18.98%), Miami (8.39%), and Phoenix (19.95%).

Effective field goal percentage from those areas of the floor — minus the free throw line — were another batch of charts I made for each team for the heck of it. You can really see where some offenses are great and others struggle from, though it won’t paint the clearest picture. The same goes for defense.

Below is offensive EFG%:

Team EFG% on Make A Gif

Miami’s efficiency is pretty freaky, especially when compared to Philadelphia’s. It helps when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh can score at the rim far above the average accuracy all while having shooters playing alongside them.

For Philadelphia, it doesn’t help when they’re a strong candidate to “Bobcat” and very few of their players can stretch the floor consistently, and Michael Carter-Williams isn’t one of them. Like mentioned earlier, the 76ers have a good idea on where to score on offense while playing at a frantic pace, but they don’t score anywhere near enough and their defense has fallen off a cliff.

Below is their contrast in their own EFG% and their opponents’:

philly on Make A Gif

Possibly noticeable in the GIF of offensive EFG% is Chicago, who also struggles mightily on offense but their defense holds its own.

Miami’s another interesting case. They can light teams up from the corners but that’s also a place opponents have shot well from.

Below is a GIF of the 30 teams and their defensive EFG% at certain spots on the floor:

Def EFG on Make A Gif

I also made GIFs of teams sorted by their offensive and defensive ratings, but overall there wasn’t a clear difference in those highly efficient in one area of the floor and those who struggle. Portland, for example, scores a bunch from mid-range with the help of LaMarcus Aldridge, but they’re also a top-5 team in offensive efficiency. On defense, the percentage they allow at the rim is quite good but they allow a ton of attempts from that area of the floor. Defense is weird.

In the future, I might fool around a little further with these kind of graphs for both teams and players. The ones listed here are pretty basic and obviously won’t paint a clear picture on offense and especially defense, but hopefully they were fun to look at and compare team by team. As (sort of) mentioned earlier, a page with every team’s graphs wouldn’t take long at all, though I chose not to include them here because of the amount of space it would take up when combined with GIFs.

Any thoughts, even if the graphs weren’t all that cool to look at, or requests on these are certainly welcome. Feel free to chime in.

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.

Non-conference update: The East ties and a breakdown of games left

2014 NBA Season, East vs West February 25, 2014 1 Comment

The non-conference update follows games pitting the Western Conference’s teams versus the East’s. This season, the West has often held a winning percentage so large it hasn’t been seen in over 50 years.

A day late because of my Monday post about the New York Knicks, the East and West tied last week in non-conference play. It’s the first time the East tied or won a week since the seven days before Christmas and only third time in the 17 weeks this season.

Below is the updated week-by-week breakdown:

The last three weeks have been respectable outcomes for the East with a combined winning percentage of 46.3 percent. That fits right in with the past 14 years against the West. As for the entire season, the West’s winning percentage has now fallen below 63.3 percent which was their highest mark ever, recorded in the 2003-04 season.

This week the West is currently 3-0, including Dirk Nowitzki’s unbelievable-yet-totally-believable buzzer-beater over Carmelo Anthony last night, but there’s still 16 games to go.

Below is a table of all the non-conference games remaining as well as a separate column for games featuring the Sixers (poor Thaddeus Young), Bucks (poor Caron Butler), Magic (poor Arron Afflalo), Celtics (poor Rajon Rondo?), Kings (poor DeMarcus Cousins???), Lakers (poor Kobe Bryant?????), and Jazz (poor Gordon Hayward???????):

Without taking into account back-to-backs and home and road games, Golden State has a small yet nice edge over a few West teams on the fringe by playing three games against East teams that, from here on out, might not win more than 15 games combined.

New York is worth mentioning too, even if there’s the possibility Raymond Felton misses significant time for, well, Sports Illustrated has a breakdown of what happened and what could happen next. They might even be better without him even if they just bought out Beno Udrih. Washington is also another team with a few winnable non-conference games, though they’re without Nene Hilario for at least a month after spraining his MCL.

Overall, there’s still over a month left in the NBA season and over 120 non-conference games left. The East could continue chipping away at what was once an embarrassing winning percentage, or the West could surpass their 2004 mark as their best non-conference record ever.