The NBA Stats Thread: The 15-year chain reaction that led to the NBA's current offensive explosion

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Can the Warriors keep Jack next year?

Because Steph, Klay and Barnes can still improve, mix in Jack, Lee, Bogut and Landry, that core will get even better next year, IF Jack stays that is. Ezel (sp) too is a nice find.

They've grown on me all year, I just always figured they'd fold without help down low. The way they shoot 3's, may not matter too much.
 
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Mark Jackson:
We've got guys that can knock down shots. You talk about Klay Thompson and Steph Curry, in my opinion, they're the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game.

@RoobCSN Most games this year shooting 40% or worse [at least 5 attempts]: Randy Foye 46, Evan Turner 43, Brandon Jennings 43, Klay Thompson 41.

Klay Thompson (playoffs on top, regular season on bottom):

Steph Curry:
 
Klay is an elite shooter with an ok shot selection. He's the exception to the guys he is listed with in regards to poor shooting nights
 
I agree with your post. I've seen him shoot threes at times where he was better off letting the clock run. But I guess that comes with the territory of a young, confident sharpshooter.

Anyways.

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Your 2012-2013 Defensive Player of the Year, Marc Gasol.

@nbastats Marc Gasol was a member of 4 of the @NBA's top-5 three-man lineups in terms of DefRtg (Points allowed per 100 possessions)

With Gasol on the floor, the Grizzlies' Defensive Rating was 95.4 points. Off the floor, the Grizzlies' Defensive Rating jumped to a league average 102.2 points.

Hasheem Thabeet weeps.
 
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CourtVision: The Year in Scoring

The below graphic shows every shot attempted in the NBA during the regular season.

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NBA players attempted 201,608 field goals this season; they made 91,282 of them. In other words, the league shot 45.3 percent from the floor. These are pretty standard numbers for a full 82-game season, but there were two noticeable trends in NBA shooting patterns. First, compared to last year’s shortened and condensed season, the league was more efficient on offense. The 45.3 field goal percentage was a slight increase from last year, when the league made 44.8 percent of its shots.

More noteworthy, however, is a league-wide increase in 3-point shooting. "The death of the midrange shot” continues to be wildly exaggerated, but it’s definitely decreasing in popularity. Led by teams like Houston, which hates 2-point jump shots, NBA offenses are shooting more 3s and close-range shots and forgoing the midrange shot.

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The overall shooting patterns of the league took on a familiar form. The most popular shots are still near the basket, but the league’s other most frequent shot locations are all beyond the arc. The ongoing emergence of the corner 3 is not complete, as many teams, such as Chicago, fail to attempt many. However, the corner 3 is slowly becoming more and more popular. Last season, corner 3s accounted for 6 percent of the league’s field goal attempts; this year that number was 7 percent.

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In terms of efficiency, the patterns are also familiar. League-wide, shooting away from the basket is essentially a 35–40 percent proposition. This graphic explains why many offenses are shying away from midrange shots; they go in at slightly higher rates than 3s, but they’re obviously only worth two points. In fact, corner 3s from the right side (graphic above) went in at higher rates than midrange shots along the right baseline this season. With this in mind, it’s hard to justify shooting much in the midrange.

Overall, the league continues to evolve and the biggest trend continues to be favoring those NBA Jam shots — lots of 3s and attempts near the basket.
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PMatic, do you know where I can find the stat on assist/scorer combos? I have heard it referenced many times and know the top 3 but wanted to see a listing of them
 
I can't find a specific list, but if you log on to the NBA's advanced stats site you can find out how many assists Player A gave to Player B.

Click on the players tab, then click on a player (say Kevin Durant). When you get to his page, click the drop down menu titled Category, then go down to Shooting. On the right side of the new page, it will say Russell Westbrook has assisted on 214 of his field goals.

I hope that helps.
 
It should be noted that the SportVU camera findings present a limited sample size since they are only installed in 15 arenas.
 
And that's after he cut way back on contested jumpers.
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I wonder what the numbers from last year look like.
 
PMatic, do you know where I can find the stat on assist/scorer combos? I have heard it referenced many times and know the top 3 but wanted to see a listing of them
I'm on my phone so mutli quoting is hard but I just wanted to say thanks to PMatic for that info. In regards to those Klay Thompson stats it's really a result of this guy not playing within his game. He takes some of the most ill advised shots I've seen in a whole and makes little to no effort to get to his spots. Wherever he gets it is where he's going to shoot it from even if it's somewhere that he's not comfortable shooting from. Which wouldn't be an issue if he didn't do it so much. He also doesn't post enough. His turn around fadeaway is great yet he hardly takes it. He's a player that needs to study the stats about his game he could trim plenty of the fat if he did so.
 
NBA Landscape Altered by Barrage of 3-Point Shots

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When Reggie Miller entered the NBA in 1987 as a skinny rookie with a high-arcing jump shot, about 1 of every 18 field-goal attempts in the league was a 3-pointer. This season, 3-pointers represented almost 1 of every 4 shots taken.

Miller broke Larry Bird’s rookie record for 3-pointers made, with 61. He laughs at that number now.

“Today, Steph Curry, he gets that in a month,” Miller said in a phone interview.

Evidence of the steadily rising influence of the 3-pointer can be seen across the basketball landscape. Teams averaged a record 20 attempts a game this season, and the trend is pushing steadily upward, or outward, really, far from the basket and beyond the line painted 23 feet 9 inches away.

Golden State’s Stephen Curry set a league record with 272 3-pointers this season. Two teams, the Knicks and the Houston Rockets, attempted more 3s than any other NBA teams in history.

All are in the playoffs, where the 3-point shot, a novelty when it began in the NBA in 1979, is the star attraction. Some see it as something like art.

“Did you see the Warriors and Denver the other night?” asked Chris Mullin, who, like Miller, began his career in the 1980s and is in the Hall of Fame. The Warriors tied their first-round series with the Nuggets on Tuesday, 1-1, while trying 25 3-pointers among 79 field-goal attempts. Golden State made 14 of them and cruised to a 131-117 win.

“That was beautiful,” Mullin said. “It was even more beautiful because they were making them. But, still, you’re playing, you’re getting up and down, you’re running and you’re passing. That’s the game, to me.”

Other parts of the postseason have been similarly punctuated by the exclamation point of the drained 3-pointer — as crowd-provoking as a dunk, but worth 50 percent more on the scoreboard. On Wednesday, the Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder both tried 35 3-pointers — 40 percent of the total shots — in Game 2 of their series. The Thunder made 11, the Rockets made 10, and Oklahoma City won by 3 points to take a 2-0 series lead.

The Knicks, who took more than a third of their shots in the regular season from behind the 3-point line — they established league records for made 3-pointers (891) and attempts (2,371) — took a 2-0 lead on Boston as nine Knicks attempted at least one 3-pointer. That sort of across-the-roster barrage was unheard-of only a few years ago.

“That’s pretty much what we do,” Knicks Coach Mike Woodson said this month. “They’re not bad shots. You’ve got guys who can make them. If I didn’t have players who could make them, trust me, I wouldn’t be shooting them. We’ve got a bunch of guys who can make the 3, and we’ve shot it with high percentages this year. When you’ve got them, you’ve got to take them.”

The 3-point line was borrowed from the American Basketball Association, the footloose ’70s-era rival to the staid NBA.

The league was an offense-happy one. In 1975-76, the last season before the two leagues merged, A.B.A. teams averaged 112.5 points per game. The NBA average was 104.3.

The NBA imported most of the A.B.A. stars and four of its franchises: the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the New York (later New Jersey) Nets. Also hoping to import some of the A.B.A.’s attitude, it added the 3-point line for the 1979-80 season.

It was largely a gimmick. Even in the freewheeling A.B.A.’s final season, 3-pointers represented only about 1 of every 25 field-goal attempts. They were used in desperation, not as inspiration.

In the NBA’s first season with a 3-point line, overall scoring actually dropped slightly. The average team attempted only 2.8 3-pointers per game, or about 1 of every 33 shots from the field.

When the Philadelphia 76ers won the 1982-83 NBA championship, they shot a total of 109 3-pointers (they made 25) during the 82-game regular season.

It was not until the 1986-87 season that NBA teams averaged more than one made 3-pointer per game.

“Probably my first 10 or 12 years, the whole thing for every team was that you had to pound it inside,” said Miller, who played 18 with the Pacers. “You had to get it to your center. You had to establish the paint first. And the center position really is gone in the NBA., and in college, really. Gone are the days of a David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, Rik Smits, Alonzo Mourning.”

Teams, historically built around the center, began to turn themselves inside out behind the shooting touch of big men like Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks. Slowly, power forwards within a couple of inches of 7 feet began to hover near the 3-point line, pulling defenders with them.

The rise of the “stretch 4,” as power forwards who play mostly far from the basket are called, may have propelled the proliferation of the 3-pointer more than anything. The defensive slogs of the 1990s gave way to persistent motion and more long jumpers. Defend too close, and the shooter has more room to drive past. Stay too far back, and he has room to shoot something that, in the case of Curry, he makes about 45 percent of the time.

“It’s an exciting brand of basketball,” said Mark Jackson, Golden State’s coach, who played point guard for 17 years in the NBA “ Who wants to see a point guard back down for 20 seconds? It’s a different game. It’s much more enjoyable — talking as someone who did that.”

It has helped raise scoring, which dropped to 91.6 points per game in 1998-99, to about 100 points per game — still 10 points shy of the averages in the 1980s.

A growing ratio of those points comes from 3-pointers. Making them was never the issue. While it took a few seasons to find the shooting form, success on 3-point attempts have been above 30 percent every season since 1986-87. For more than two decades, it has settled around 35 percent. This season, the field-goal percentage for 3-pointers was 35.9, typical of the past 10 years.

What has changed markedly is the number of attempts. They have risen steadily.

Coaches have found that the 3-pointer can be a more efficient way of scoring points — far more so than midrange 2-point jumpers. In the simplest terms, making one-third of your 3-point shots adds up the same as making half of your 2-point shots.

The Knicks made 37.6 percent of their 3-point shots, and 48.7 percent of their 2-point attempts. Their total output (minus free throws) would seem to rise when they shot more from behind the arc than within it.

But that can be a fickle way of scoring, undermined by streaky shooting — a potential downfall in a taut playoff series. But coaches worry about that less than ever, since rosters are filled with 3-point threats. The Rockets and the Knicks, for example, each had more than 10 players average more than one 3-point attempt a game in the regular season — and more than 10 who made more than 30 percent of them.

The two teams had a combined eight players with more 3-pointers made than what Miller had 25 years ago, when he broke the rookie record.

Miller retired in 2005 with an NBA-record 2,560 3-pointers. Ray Allen, now with Miami, has since moved into the top spot. Miller laughed when considering whether he was simply ahead of his time, now that the NBA seems to have fully adopted his long-range game.

“If I would have played in the last five years,” Miller said, “Ray would never have passed me.”
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I think over the next few years, we'll see the three being taken even more, like one of every three shots will be a three point attempt.
 
Disgruntled Knick fan circa 2009: YOU CAN'T WIN SHOOTING SO MANY 3's!!!!!!

:smh:. Buffoons.
 
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It's just the direction I see the league moving in, with smarter and more complex defenses. Will need the three ball to help spread the floor and create lanes to get to the basket.
 
Fair enough, I was watching ESPN thus morning and they were actually talking about the Ray Allen record. The first that came to mind is "Steph is gonna break the easy" not only because he's a better shooter, but simply because it's not that many 3s. If Steph starts making deep runs into the playoffs that record is his.
 
CourtVision: Just How Good Are Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson?

The first reason I like Steph Curry is that he's a relatively normally sized human being who has figured out a way to become an NBA superstar. When you look at guys like Dwight Howard, LeBron James, or Dirk Nowitzki, it’s easy to see why they might be incredible basketball players. Stephen Curry doesn't look like those guys; someone with his exact figure could walk into any pickup gym in America and few people would notice. Curry is skinny and shortish by NBA standards, but pound-for-pound he is probably the best scorer the league has seen since Allen Iverson.

It’s Curry’s tiny frame and the current NBA injury plague that make what happened the other night in Denver more bothersome. Kenneth “Manimal” Faried stuck out his foot, in what was possibly an attempt to trip Curry, who could easily be nicknamed “beanpole.” I love Faried as much as anyone but was repulsed to see him resort to that. To me it seemed out of character and dickish (or malicious), which is a word I would never use to describe Faried or his game. Why would he resort to tripping? Those saying fouls like that are part of the game neglect to mention that this exact move could easily start a fight at any level of basketball. Tripping is never part of the game and it never should be.

A lot of people have argued, “Well, this is playoff basketball and hard fouls are the norm.” They cite the Pistons beating up Michael Jordan as an example. They imply that there’s some old-school cred associated with this stuff. There’s not, and thank god the days of clotheslining are bygone. Hurting dudes who make the NBA fun to watch is not cool now, and it never really was. If you want to watch big guys fight each other, there’s a sport for you, but it’s not basketball. There is no dignity in “touching up”; there should be no pride in substituting brutality for skill. And though it’s an argument for another time, you’ll find many of the same people who embrace the notion of hard gymnasium fouls on Friday preaching about the importance of player safety in other sports on Sundays.

Imagine a parallel world in which Curry had fallen down and hurt one of his fragile ankles — I don't think that’s an implausible scenario. Imagine the backlash at Faried. Imagine the PTI segment; Kornheiser would be aghast. Imagine the First Take segments; Bayless would be apoplectic. My argument is that once Faried stuck that big yellow Adidas out in front of Curry, he chose to enter a realm where such an injury became a realistic possibility. He didn't know the outcome of his action, but he certainly knew the possibilities, and it's not a stretch to suggest he knows Curry's injury history as well.

On the long list of people who are thankful that Curry didn’t get hurt, Kenneth Faried should be very close to the top.

There's another reason I like Steph Curry: He’s an incredible shooter. In fact he may be the best in the world at converting jump shot opportunities into points. To borrow a concept from the legendary Bob Ryan, if the aliens came down and challenged humanity with a winner-take-all game of H-O-R-S-E, of all the current NBA players I would definitely nominate Stephen Curry to be our representative in that game. Curry’s shot chart reflects this greatness; he puts up stellar numbers virtually everywhere along the perimeter.

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Unsurprisingly, Curry outperforms NBA averages at every spot beyond the arc. He’s incredibly effective in the corners and along the right wing (graphic left); it’s probably safe to say that he’s the best 3-point shooter in the league. After all, he did break Ray Allen’s record for 3-point field goals made in a season this year. However, relative to league averages, Curry’s efficiency drops the closer he gets to the rim. That’s not to say he’s not very good in the midrange — he is, but he’s definitely not the best midrange shooter in the league. He hits long 2s at a lower rate than bigger guys like Chris Bosh. Both Bosh and Curry take about five shots between 16 and 23 feet each game, but Bosh makes 52 percent while Curry makes only 44 percent. Curry has a bit of trouble scoring around bigger defenders, and it’s this effect that exposes the biggest shortcoming in Curry’s offensive game.

If there’s a clear weakness in Curry’s offensive portfolio it’s scoring the basketball down low in the land of giants. In the era of so-called “attack guards” or “power guards,” Curry doesn’t quite fit in. He doesn’t get to the rim as much as the league’s other All-Star guards. With the exception of the pure point guard Chris Paul, all nine All-Star guards this year attempted at least four shots per game at the rim. Stephen Curry attempted only 2.1 shots per game at the rim. Relative to his elite peer group — which includes guys like James Harden and Russell Westbrook — he lacks the size and the power to effectively attack the basket. That said, he’s not Austin Rivers, and when he gets to the basket he’s not terrible. Regardless, nobody watches Steph Curry to see him attack; we watch him because he is one of the top jump shooters the league has ever seen, a fact not lost on Mark Jackson.

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Last week, after the Warriors hung 131 points on the Nuggets in Game 2, shooting 65 percent from the floor, Jackson hyped the shooting prowess of his backcourt. He went so far as to say his team possessed the best shooting backcourt ever. That’s obviously a bold claim, but might not be so outlandish. Together with Klay Thompson, the Warriors decorate the perimeter with a terrifying amount of efficiency. Although Thompson isn’t on the same level as Curry, he provides a suitable Robin to Curry’s Batman.

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Like Curry, Thompson is particularly good from the right corner, where he made more than 50 percent of his shots this year. However, away from the right corner, Thompson is a run-of-the-mill good 3-point shooter; he ranked 31st in 3-point shooting efficiency this season behind players like Nate Robinson, Randy Foye, and LeBron James. Don't get me wrong, he’s good, but he’s not Steph Curry. Either way, Jackson’s quote about his backcourt is emblematic of a larger problem in contemporary basketball discourse. Too often we let the “best ever” be the enemy of the “great” — there’s no question that along with Jarrett Jack, Thompson and Curry are freakishly great at shooting the basketball. However, when we throw around “best ever” — and we do a lot these days — we immediately provoke an argument. Instead of simply appreciating these guys for being great, we are thrust into pointless debates about Gail Goodrich, Jerry West, Raja Bell, and Steve Nash. Next thing you know we’re not appreciating greatness anymore and we find ourselves deep down in the Gail Goodrich YouTube rabbit hole. Don’t do it, you guys.

Digressions aside, the Warriors are really fun to watch, especially on offense, where Curry has evolved into the kind of elite scoring talent that many scouts doubted he could become. Further, the coaching staff has created sets that effectively provide their excellent shooting guards with excellent opportunities. Their "elevator doors" play for Curry is probably the best example of this, and a thrilling bit of playbook craftiness. Going forward, helping Curry get shots and keeping him healthy remain key to the Warriors' success. If the last few weeks of basketball have taught us anything, keeping guys healthy and on the floor is hard enough in this league, and the last thing we need are dirty little plays that only elevate the risk of losing another superstar.
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Tom Haberstroh:
Can Rockets, Celtics make history?

Are we about to watch history?

You've probably heard by now that no NBA team has ever come back to win a series after trailing 3-0 in the postseason in 103 tries. But that statement might not hold true this time next week as the Houston Rockets and Boston Celtics have both reversed momentum in their respective series, forcing a Game 6 on their home floors with huge wins Wednesday night.

No team has ever come back, but has any team ever come this close? Yes. Our friends at the Elias Sports Bureau inform us that, entering this postseason, 10 teams in NBA history had pushed a series to Game 6 after falling behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven series. The bad news: Only three reached a Game 7, and all 10 ended up losing the series outright. Six of those teams enjoyed home court in Game 6, just like the Rockets and the Celtics do.

Rockets shooting guard Carlos Delfino and Thunder shooting guard Thabo Sefolosha have been here before. After facing a 3-0 deficit against the Detroit Pistons (Delfino's then-team) in the 2007 Eastern Conference semifinals, the Chicago Bulls (Sefolosha's then-team) rallied back with two double-digit wins to force a Game 6. But momentum is a fickle thing. Despite winning the prior two games by a total of 31 points and having the home court in Game 6, the Bulls lost by 10 in front of their fans.
Oh, and word to the wise: Don't even mention the word "momentum" to Blazers fans. In 2003, they blew out the Dallas Mavericks by 22 in Game 6 after trailing 3-0 in the series. What happened in Game 7 with all those good vibes? They lost by double digits to Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki's crew.

Let these be lessons about the flimsy nature of momentum. Sure, it might feel like the Celtics and the Rockets have the upper hand right now, but history is on the side of the other guys. With that said, OKC and the Knicks shouldn't feel too comfortable about their 3-2 cushions. And here's why.

Why the Rockets can come back

If you're looking for a Cinderella, the shoe fits in Houston. That's because the Rockets employ the standard blueprint for upsets: offense with ultra-high variance. No one knew what to make of the Rockets this season because, thanks to their 3-point addiction, you didn't know what you were going to get from night to night. For an underdog in a seven-game series, that unpredictability can be a huge asset.

Among the 272 playoff teams since 1996-97, this Rockets squad posted the third-highest variance in their offensive rating during the regular season. In other words, they were either remarkably good or dreadfully awful. And that pretty much tells the tale of the series. In the first three games, the Rockets shot a miserable 27.8 percent from downtown on an average of 36 attempts -- all losses. In the most recent two games, they looked like a high-powered machine, shooting lights out from deep (41.9 percent). Surprise, surprise: They won those two games.

Eight-seeds that are consistently mediocre don't get very far, but throw some variance into the mix and David has the potential to beat Goliath -- especially when Goliath has suffered a gaping wound. The Russell Westbrook injury makes OKC extremely vulnerable, and there are signs that it has already maniacally smashed the panic button.

Look no further than coach Scott Brooks' dubious decision to play "Hack-a-Turk" -- as Houston coach Kevin McHale so put it -- down the stretch in Game 5 rather than relying on OKC's stingy defense, which ranked in the top three this season on a per-possession basis. As ESPN Stats & Information tells us, the Rockets scored just nine points on 17 possessions in the fourth quarter when Omer Asik wasn't at the line for an average of 0.53 points per possession. When Asik went to the line? The Rockets scored 1.38 points per possession, almost tripling the reward for Houston.

The "Hack-a-Turk" strategy would make sense if the Rockets' offense was overwhelmingly dominant in the series, but that's not the case. Heading into Game 5, the Rockets had scored just 0.99 points per possession. On the other hand, sending Asik -- a 52.7 percent career free throw shooter -- to the line generated 1.04 points per possession. While intentionally fouling can tighten the Rockets' wild variance, it doesn't make sense unless the free throw shooter is horrifically bad. Asik wasn't terrible enough to make it a sound strategy.

Houston can pull the comeback off, but it will depend on its 3-point shooting. For a team that shot 36.6 percent in the regular season from downtown, the previous two games are closer to what we would expect from Houston than the first three games. That's not good news for OKC.

Why the Celtics can come back
Variance is a good thing for underdogs like Houston, which needs risky strategies to overcome a talent disadvantage, but it can be the downfall for a favorite like New York. Why? If you're a good team, you want to be consistently good so you limit your risk of an upset. But you know who shot more 3-pointers than the Rockets this season? That's right, the Knicks.

However, the Knicks have cut down on their 3-point attempts a tad in exchange for long 2s by Carmelo Anthony. That's not good. Lately, they've reverted back to the notorious "give the ball to Melo and hope for the best" strategy of yesteryear, which would be OK if Anthony was a metronome of efficiency. Instead, he was the most volatile scorer in the NBA this season, according to his game-by-game variance in the points column. For a guy who relies so heavily on contested jumpers, the Knicks have been needlessly handcuffed to Anthony's brand of basketball.

Consider this: Anthony has shot an NBA-high 69 midrange jumpers in the playoffs, according to NBA.com/stats. The second-place guy? Carlos Boozer with 38. Yes, Anthony has almost doubled the number of midrange jumpers than the next-highest player. In fact, Anthony has taken more midrange jumpers than the Heat (67 in four games), Bucks (66 in four games) and Rockets (46 in five games).

This bears repeating: Anthony has taken 23 more midrange shots than the entire Rockets team. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that the stathead Rockets have been allergic to the most inefficient shot in the game. For a favorite like the Knicks, it's not a sustainable strategy to hang your hopes on whether a low-percentage shot goes in.

The result is that Anthony has posted the highest usage rate by far among any player in the playoffs (39.7 percent), but he ranks 106th among 150 players with a .494 true shooting percentage (a field goal percentage that accounts for 3-point shots and free throws). The Celtics, whose front office ranks as analytically savvy as they come, will gladly allow Anthony to take jumper after jumper if it means efficient scorers like Raymond Felton (who has been fantastic in this series), Tyson Chandler and Steve Novak have to watch from the periphery.

The Knicks' offense is unhealthy right now. For all the talk about how coach Mike Woodson revamped the offense this season with more passing, the Knicks are assisting on the second-lowest proportion of their field goals (43.6 percent) of any playoff team of the past five seasons. The only team worse than this one? Last season's Knicks (41.2 percent assist rate). If the ball-stopping continues, the Knicks will likely be same ol' Knicks with the same ol' first-round exit.
 
BREAKDOWN – Jazz big man pairs by month

One of the more interesting items for Jazz fans this past season and for the upcoming season is how the big men play together.

For the last two seasons the Jazz have been the 21st ranked defensive team in the NBA. That must change if the Jazz are going to be an elite level team. The top 4 EFG% defenses in the Western Conference are the 4 teams still playing today.

The year started with the Jazz believing they could use Favors with Jefferson as a way to mask the defensive deficiencies of Jefferson while still getting his offensive prowess. However, this turned out to not be the case.

In November the Jazz defensive rating with Favors and Jefferson on the floor together was a putrid 108.7. The worst in the NBA last year was Charlotte at 108.9 and Sacramento at 108.5. In December, the issue became a near crisis as the defensive rating with Favors and Jefferson on the floor was a 123.5.

In turn, the Jazz limited the minutes of Jefferson and Favors together to only 64 mins in December after playing 145 in November. Favors were also battling plantar during this month.

The problem was Favors and Millsap were not defending well together in November either allowing an unfathomable 123.2 pts per 100 possessions in the 98 minutes they spent on the floor together. League average is about 103.5.

The Jazz were left with playing Jefferson and Millsap for offense and Katner and Favors for defensive. Fortunately, Favors and Kanter were very strong defensively playing primarily against second teams. Holding opponents to 96.2 in November and 97.5 in December.

However, in January Favors and Kanter fell off the defensive wagon. After being stalwart for the 2012 portion of the season, January had the Jazz with a defensive rating of 114.8 per 100 possessions and the Jazz were outscored by 13 pts per 100 possessions with Kanter and Favors on the floor.

Elsewhere, Favors and Jefferson were still not working as a defensive combo so the Jazz returned a bit more to Millsap and Favors who defended well together after a disastrous start allowing just 89.7 pts per 100 possessions in January.

And so the dance went on all season. The unfortunate reality for the last two Jazz seasons is the combination of Jefferson and Millsap is not good enough defensively to be highly competitive. The Jazz searched for the answer to what other lineups to use and nothing jumped to the forefront and grabbed that lead. Leaving the Jazz with a defensively deficient combination of Millsap and Jefferson for most of the season.

Moving forward, Favors and Kanter were terrific together defensively for most of the season. The minutes primarily came against 2nd team bigs and next year they need to be this good defensively against top tier players. If they can the Jazz can finally move to the elite defensive level.

Once that is accomplished the focus goes to the offense.

See the graphs below for how each group played together.

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CourtVision: Manu Ginobili at 57

With the 56th pick in the 1999 NBA draft, the Golden State Warriors selected Tim Young, a 7-foot Bay Area kid who grew up in Santa Cruz and played college basketball at Stanford.

"Tim's a presence," said Warriors head coach P.J. Carlesimo. "He's got good size, he does a little bit of everything — passes the ball well, shoots the ball well, he can block some shots. He worked out very, very well for us. Obviously, we know him very well. He's absolutely a first-rate person."

During his brief 25-game NBA career, Young made 13 of his 39 shots and logged a total of 137 minutes. But this was not a horrible draft pick; many players taken at the bottom of the second round never see the light of an NBA court. However, the very next pick in that draft would prove to be one of the best second-round picks in NBA history.

As a weary Ernie Johnson was winding down the last few minutes of TNT’s draft coverage, there were only two picks remaining. Johnson said, “Let’s see who San Antonio’s gonna take.” Then the camera trained back upon the familiar podium, where NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik stood and spoke:





“With the 57th selection in the 1999 NBA draft, the San Antonio Spurs select Emanuel Ginobili (gee-no-bee-lee) from Argentina.”

Johnson: “He plays for Reggio Calabria in Italy. He’s 6-foot-6, a 2-guard. He is a native of Argentina.”

Rick Majerus (TNT analyst): “This kid understands coming off of a screen, and he understands moving off the ball to get his shot, and he’s very sound defensively, I’ll tell you that. I think that that’s a good pick at that point in the draft.”

Majerus was right, but it’s doubtful he had any idea how good of a pick that was. Maybe nobody knew. Even the Spurs, who had drafted Leon Smith with their first-round pick, would be fibbing if they said they knew. 5,060 days later, the kid from Bahia Blanca just reminded us again. Last night, he added another clip to his highlight reel and another bullet on his Hall of Fame application. Almost 14 years after that 1999 draft, the Warriors are wishing they had picked Manu at 56.

Ginobili’s career will likely leave behind four legacies. First, he’s one of the best second-rounders ever. Second, he's the only active NBA player to catch a flying bat, unwittingly igniting an animal-rights firestorm. Who can forget the Peta.org official statement:

“To bludgeon a 4-ounce animal to death, it takes either a small man or a totally unthinking one—with no respect or consideration for lives humbler than his own. This is a time when athletes in particular need to be on their best behavior around any animal and show that they have brains and a heart, not just reactionary brawn.

Bats always try to avoid contact with humans, and there are plenty of easy ways to keep bats out of a basketball arena (or your home). We hope that the next time someone's life is on the line, Manu Ginobili will take just a few seconds to think before he acts.”

Third, Manu will always be associated with the first group of truly influential international NBA players. Along with Dirk Nowitzki and the Gasol brothers, Manu has shown that you don’t have to be from America to be a great NBA player. In 2013, it’s easy to forget how American-centric the NBA used to be. Even the 1998-99 Spurs had little if any international flavor (depending on whether you count Tim Duncan). In contrast, the 2012-13 Spurs had eight international players on their opening-night roster, and many NBA rosters include guys from France, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Italy, and elsewhere. Now, virtually every team has at least one international scout, scouring countries like Ukraine and Greece in search of the next Manu or Dirk.

Manu’s fourth legacy is stylistic. He's a big, attacking guard who loves to shoot 3s, and his brand of play foreshadowed future NBA trends. Long before Jeremy Lin or James Harden, Ginobili’s shooting portfolio favored shots either very close to the rim or behind the 3-point line. If everybody played like Manu, there would be hardly any midrange shots in the NBA. In fact, this is the shooting profile that the league as a whole is currently trending toward. Both LeBron James and the Houston Rockets, for example, are taking markedly fewer midrange shots these days.

Ginobili’s shot chart from this season reveals a few things. Beyond the arc, he performs pretty much at league average, with the exception of the corners, where he's quite good. His chart reveals that he only hits 34 percent from the spot where he hit his huge game winner last night; he made 23 of his 67 attempts there this season, slightly below the league average of 35 percent.

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Manu's chart also shows that he’s still very effective near the basket, which remains central to his game. It's also a place where many of his backcourt peers around the league fail to score efficiently. As an attacker, Manu is fearless, and the enduring image of his game might be him careening into the restricted area, getting fouled, and falling to the court. Because of his fearlessness, it's no surprise that he gets hurt a lot. Still, few other players can match Ginobili's abilities to either score, get fouled, or make borderline insane passes that usually work out somehow.

Manu Ginobili is a treat to watch. He still provides the Spurs with a huge spark off the bench that enables them to frequently “win” the ends of quarters or outscore their opponents’ second units. But he’s far more than just a bench guy. And as he proved last night, Ginobili remains part of the Spurs’ crunch-time lineup that, although old, still has something left in the tank. In the next few weeks, we’ll see just how much.

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Tell ya what, I really like what Orlando is doin, but I was really, really off on what Golden State has been doin. We all knew Steph could shoot, but I did not know he could play this great. And having Klay shoot damn near as well, with Jack just being himself, and suddenly the Barnes we all expected from NC, with Bogut and Lee (tho out now) ......... damn. I did not see this coming.

Curry, Klay, and Barnes can still get better even. :smh:


Jerry West have anything to do with this team anymore? Who is getting the credit for the roster building?
 
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