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

Flip has done a great of getting Wiggins in positions where he doesn't have to put the ball on the ground to score. His play in the post as the season goes along has been something to marvel at. A 19 year old playing out of that position is something I love.

Said this in the NBA thead, JJ Reddick has quietly become the 2nd best shooter in the NBA this year after Kyle Korver. Take away his first four games in which he was uncharacteristic by his standars shooting the ball, he's Shooting over 46% from 3 on almost 6 attempts per game, and is posting a career high TS at over 62%.
 
KG was a pioneer to me. HS direct to the pros in 95, I remember everyone so up in arms about it at the time. As just a kid myself, I thought it was amazing.


I wish we could see an alternate reality where the Wolves don't trade Ray Allen for Marbury. Young KG plus young Ray during their athletic primes?!?!? :wow: :pimp:
 
JEWSEEJAY said:
Still completely confident saying Wiggins wont ever be a superstar.
Click to expand...

Hardly a prophecy.


CP1708 said:
KG was a pioneer to me. HS direct to the pros in 95, I remember everyone so up in arms about it at the time. As just a kid myself, I thought it was amazing.


I wish we could see an alternate reality where the Wolves don't trade Ray Allen for Marbury. Young KG plus young Ray during their athletic primes?!?!? :wow: :pimp:
Click to expand...

Yup, we shouldn't have had to wait until 2007.

How about this one:

Timberwolves keep Brandon Roy, who wins ROY in Minnesota instead of Portland
I
V

Instead of KG's last year in Minnesota being with Randy Foye it's with Roy, who he and the city is galvanized by
I
V

If KG leaving Minnesota is suddenly off the table, do the Celtics still go all in and make the trade for Ray Allen? Would it be worth it?
I
V

Thus, Seattle pairs Ray Allen with Kevin Durant for the 2007-08 season. They're never bad enough to score the No. 4 pick in 2008.
I
V

They never have Westbrook.
I
V

They're never bad enough to score the No. 3 pick in 2009, then.
I
V

They never have Harden.

I
V

The 2008/2010/2012 NBA Finals are all altered by the butterfly effect, only because Kevin McHale decided to not **** up by trading Roy for Foye.
 
Last edited:
Home-court advantage? Not so much

Remember the Grizzlies-Spurs thriller in December? An instant classic, thick with big men hitting buzzer-beating 3s for each team, 3-point specialists coming up big at the best times and one improbable make after another. It took three overtimes before Memphis prevailed 117-116, creating an unusual scene: a mighty celebration of screaming and hugging Grizzlies, drinking in the victory not before 20,000 elated fans but in front of stunned and bewildered Spurs supporters heading home dejected.

Because this game was in San Antonio.

It's no secret that the home team wins most NBA games -- in no small part what the NBA regular season is for: to earn home-court advantage in the playoffs.

Home court is valuable. Only, interestingly, it's not nearly as valuable as it once was.

Earlier this month, our statistics guru Dr. Steve Ilardi alerted us to this bizarre trend and we've been tracking it ever since.

That Memphis win wasn't a fluke. The hushed home crowd is becoming a thing this season. Home squads are losing all over the place -- including Tuesday night when they lost all six games.

Take a look at the standings. By win-loss record, the Nets, Bulls, Mavericks, Pistons, Rockets, Heat, Bucks, Timberwolves, Magic and 76ers are all performing better on the road than at home. In fact, home teams have won only 53.7 percent of their games this season, the lowest such rate in modern NBA history. And it's not even close.

Asked about the minimized home-court advantage, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said he was on board with a fairer game that doesn't see inherent advantages for either side.

"For the league, the closer the games, the better," Morey told ESPN.com in a phone interview. "More objective, the better."

This effect is real. And it's changing the NBA as we know it:

nba_HaberstrohHCAchart_576x324.jpg


In 1976-77, the home team won a startling 68.5 percent of games. In 2002-03, it was 62.8 percent. Over the past four seasons, the home team's win percentage has fallen steadily from 61.2 to an all-time low of 53.7 right now.

• In two years, home-court advantage has been sliced by nearly a third (28.5 percent), which represents the largest two-year drop in NBA history. From a points perspective, the home team has seen just a 2.2-point advantage this season. We've never seen it this small. Last season, it was plus-2.6. The season before that, plus-3.2.

• This carried over into the postseason. Last playoffs, the home team went 50-39, pulling out the victory in 56.2 percent of the games. That's significantly lower than the historical playoff average that hovers around 65 percent. The home team enjoyed just a 2.8-point cushion last postseason, down from 4.0 in 2012-13 and 4.7 in 2011-12. As recently as 2007-08, the home playoff team enjoyed an 8.1-point edge and won 74.4 percent of all games. Adjusting for pace, the home-court advantage last season was just a third of what it was when the Celtics won the title in 2008 (plus-9.0 vs. plus-3.0).
This isn't just a midseason blip. Last season, home-court advantage was plus-2.3 through each team's first 50 games, about the same as it is now. It had never been lower than plus-2.6 in the last 15 seasons at this juncture in the season.

• Most striking? In close games, home teams are losing more often than not. In clutch games, when the score is within five points in the final five minutes, the home team has won just 47.7 percent of the 354 games. Here's how crazy this is: Heading into the season, the average win percentage for the home team in clutch games since 1997 was 54.7 percent and never below 51.6 percent. Yes, it's the first time that the home team has not won more than half its close-and-late games. That Memphis game was the rule, not the exception.

• Ten teams have a better record on the road than at home. In the four seasons between 1997-98 and 2000-01, there were no such teams. In fact, the 10 teams this season matches the same total that we've seen in the previous eight seasons combined.

• This is unlikely to be random. The home-court advantage decline over the past two seasons is statistically significant, meaning that the math suggests there is a less than 5 percent chance, given the historical baseline of 3.5 points and 60 percent home win percentage, that this is anything other than a trend.

The question: Why? What the heck is going on?

The short answer: It's not clear. We'd like to hear your theories (see below).

There likely isn't one driving factor that explains the eroding home-court advantage, but a combination of ingredients. After talking around the league, here are three leading theories:

Theory 1: The NBA is more 3-point heavy, less dependent on referees

You may not have noticed, but the NBA has recently undergone a fundamental shift in play. For the first time in NBA history, there will be more 3-point attempts than free throw attempts this month. First time ever! The average NBA game sees 45 3-pointers compared to 44.7 freebies. Ten seasons ago, those figures were 32.1 and 53.2 in January, respectively. After much headway, teams have finally closed the gap.

Long shots from open players mean less contact, fewer fouls and, therefore, less chance for the humanity of referees to influence outcomes. Numerous studies have shown that referees may be involuntarily influenced by the home crowd.

In their book "Scorecasting," Toby Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim found that injury time is longer when the home team stands to benefit from the extra delay. Another published study found that the referee bias is larger if there is no running track around the stadium to separate the officials from screaming home fans in close proximity. In baseball, the home plate umpire does give the home pitcher the benefit of the doubt on close pitches.

The NBA league office, which declined to comment on the matter, has been overhauling officiating oversight in recent years. Under Adam Silver, a replay center has been established to review critical calls in the closing minutes at an off-site location. Furthermore, every whistled call is reviewed and graded "correct" or "incorrect" by the league office, and referees are given feedback on a regular basis. However, word is that there are no home-road splits in these detailed reports, so it's hard to connect those dots.

It's possible that referee bias has changed the equation, but it's also true that sea-change 3-point strategy could be removing the referee from the equation altogether.

Theory No. 2: Technology has allowed teams to handle the road better

"Teams are smarter about their travel habits and getting rest these days," Mark Cuban tells ESPN.com. "Guys aren't going out as often, so the road just isn't as hard as it used to be."

A bunch of execs we spoke with brought this one up. Maybe the road isn't having the effect it once had on players' bodies, in part because of technology.

By leveraging sport science and partnering with cutting-edge injury prevention companies, teams are trying to reduce the wear-and-tear on their players' bodies and raising awareness about recovery. Biometrics are invading the NBA. As we reported this summer, more and more players are treating their bodies like well-oiled machines.

Another team executive suggests a key difference is the embrace of video scouting technologies like Synergy Sports Technology. Chris Paul, for instance, says he is "in Synergy all day, every day."

With a press of a button, a scholarly big man can watch 500 pick-and-rolls by the upcoming point guard and analyze his most subtle tendencies. That simply wasn't possible even 10 years ago. Nowadays you may find a star player on the charter flight watching game film instead of playing Texas Hold 'em.

In the days of VCRs and editing suites, only home teams had their full scouting powers.

"Video technology," says one Eastern Conference general manager, "was an absolute game-changer."

There's also a claim from an executive that the long-term decline of home-court advantage can be attributed to the league-wide shift from flying commercial to flying charter in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By all accounts of early NBA travel, flying coach was brutal. We're talking about the largest humans on the planet packed like 7-foot sardines for hours. Home teams won 67.9 percent of games in 1987-88, but that slowly fell to 57.5 percent by 1994-95 as charters became more popular. Though this wouldn't explain the recent downturn, it helps to explain the massive decline in the 1990s.

Theory 3: Home crowds are no longer the sixth man
This is the Bill Simmons proposal, which he laid out on the B.S. Report talking to Grantland's Zach Lowe, who has also noticed the same trend. Look at the home crowd at any point in a game and chances are you'll find plenty of people too busy glancing at their phones to care about the game. Facebook and the guy at the free throw line are battling for your attention, and many believe Facebook is winning.

It's plausible. Furthermore, the widespread growth of corporate boxes may make the games less populated by the most rabid fans. Compounding that effect is that the HD television experience has improved so dramatically that hard-core fans may rather stay home and watch League Pass instead of ponying up the cash to go to the game.

Social media has a hand in this too. DVR and League Pass have allowed fans to Vine their own clips and share them across the world within seconds. Rather than cheering the latest dunk, they are switching the filters on it in Instagram.

This brings us back full circle to accountability for referees. Make a bad call 15 years ago and you just hope it didn't make it onto "SportsCenter." Now, you hope your boss or your nephew or your neighbor isn't texting you video of it.

It's not totally clear what is happening, but it's crystal clear that it matters. Home-court advantage isn't just one of the major points of the regular season. It's also often decisive in who wins the title. And it's going away.
Click to expand...
More and more threes...
 

This was very interesting to read. Didn't even realize it fully, although the eye test for me has shown a decrease in how imposing Home Court has been. Teams and officials just flat out don't look as scared on the road as they were, in say 2002.

I personally believe all of those things mentioned has played a part but really, the officiating since the Tim scandal has been under such a microscope, that officials now more than ever want to get the call right, regardless of if it's on the road or at home. This in turn has taken away one of the biggest advantages that comes with home court, and as a result winning on the road is just as feasible as winning at home. What they alluded to in regards to social media is also a factor, as bad calls in 2015 are blasted all over twitter, IG, (see the corey brewer travel vid(s) for example), FB and that's a terrible look for the league.

Another factor may be that with the advent of social media, the NBA is a much smaller community amongst it's players. So "fearing" the home team isn't in play nearly as much as it was 10, 15 years ago since they've been playing and knowing their opposition since before they got into the NBA.
 
Warriors chasing history -- fast

You can run and you can defend, but you can't do both. This has been one of the longest-held axioms in the NBA.

You can play high-octane hoops like the Phoenix Suns' Seven Seconds Or Less squads from the late 2000s, or you can play smashmouth, grind-it-out Indiana Pacers basketball. But trying to accomplish both? That's a fool's errand.

These Golden State Warriors beg to differ.

So far this season, they're rewriting the script by playing faster and defending better than every other team in the league. How rare is that? Led by first-time head coach Steve Kerr, the Warriors are on track to be the first and only team in the modern NBA -- since 1979 when the 3-point arc was introduced -- to rank No. 1 in both pace and defensive rating.

This is uncharted territory. How are they doing it? And what does it mean for the playoffs?

The Warriors stand alone

The Warriors' furious ascension into juggernaut status has been one of the most eye-opening storylines of the 2014-15 season. They've cruised to an NBA-best 38-8 record in a loaded Western Conference and outscored opponents by more than 500 points through 46 games, becoming one of eight teams in NBA history to trample opponents by such a wide margin at this point in the season. The last team to pull off such a feat? The 1996-97 Chicago Bulls.

But the Warriors have trampled opponents in an unprecedented way: by utilizing a run-and-gun offense and a suffocating defense. Traditionally, top defenses tend to grind out wins at a slow pace, but the Warriors are breaking the mold. They have held opponents to just 97 points per 100 possessions this season, which is easily the best rate in the NBA. And they rank first in pace, churning out 101.3 possessions every 48 minutes.

This is incredibly hard to pull off. Why? Because deploying elite-level defense burns so much energy that it's hard to do it exert such effort on both ends of the floor. It's no coincidence that the past five No. 1 defensive teams have ranked 20th, 25th, 26th, 22nd and 26th in pace factor. The recent Chicago and Indiana teams are prime examples of defensive monsters that lull teams into slow and painful deaths.

To illustrate exactly how rare it is to see the Warriors running and defending at an elite level, I've mapped out every team over the past 10 seasons (including 2014-15) by their rank in pace factor and defensive rating. Each dot represents an NBA team and its corresponding rank in both categories.

insider_warriorschart_md_576x324.jpg


See how the Warriors are all alone in that bottom left corner? No teams have been like them. They're in a class of their own, ranking first in both pace and defense. Though the graph shows only the past 10 seasons, no team has accomplished dual No. 1s in the same season in the modern era, according to NBA StatsCube and Basketball-Reference data.

Another thing: Notice how teams tend to cluster in the top left and bottom right quadrants of the chart? Over the past 10 seasons -- again, including 2014-15 -- there is a fairly strong negative correlation between pace and defensive rating. The clustering is that negative correlation being illustrated. The top-left teams have played fast, but they haven't defended. The bottom-right teams have defended well, but they've played at a snail's pace. One goes up, the other must come down. The 2014-15 New York Knicks are the worst of both worlds: They don't defend (29th) and they play at a snoozefest pace (28th). Hence the paper bags.

Interestingly enough, this season's Houston Rockets have come close to matching the Warriors by playing at the fourth-highest pace while boasting the third-best defense. But they're not on the Warriors' level in either category. And secondly, most of their defensive power hinges on one player: Dwight Howard. Not the case with the Warriors.

How do they do it?

Having a high-energy floor general like Stephen Curry helps. He is this generation's Steve Nash, except Nash didn't bring it defensively as well. Only the Phoenix Suns have more transition points than the Warriors this season, per Synergy tracking. The Warriors love to push the ball and create chaos in the open court, which wasn't always the case last season. Then, they hunted for mismatches; now, they create them with speed.

Curry spearheads the high-velocity attack, but the entire team has bought into moving the ball quickly, something that didn't happen last season. According to SportVU player tracking data, the Warriors rank in the top 10 in passes per game (313) this season. Last season, they ranked last with 245.8 passes per game. No other team finished with fewer than 260. Those extra 70 passes per game have made more efficient use of their energy and talent.

But the defense is where the magic happens. As Ethan Sherwood Strauss detailed in his recent feature story, the Warriors are a switching machine. Every team would love to play efficient defense the way the Dubs do, but not every team has the versatile personnel to pull it off.

"The Warriors have multiple Swiss Army knives on the roster," one longtime NBA scout told ESPN Insider. "Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson have no problem guarding three or four positions seamlessly. And it's brutal to go against."

While the Warriors may not have the height of some teams, they have rangy wingspan. With all the switching, they don't have to maniacally chase players around screens for 48 minutes. The strategy minimizes movement while preserving energy. The result: They rank first in effective field goal percentage defense and sixth in opponent turnover rate.

If Curry is the catalyst on offense, Green is the straw that stirs the drink on defense. Despite being undersized at the 4, he ranks fifth in defensive real plus-minus. He owns the seventh-highest steal rate in the league, and half of those steals have come against guards. You want versatility? He's blocked shots by Blake Griffin, Dirk Nowitzki, Zach Randolph, Russell Westbrook and Eric Bledsoe at least twice each this season.

What does it mean for the playoffs?

It's hard to say. We know the game slows down in the playoffs, but that doesn't mean the Warriors can't downshift and excel that way. To wit: They are 10-0 in their 10 slowest games this season, beating more methodical teams like Cleveland, Chicago and Toronto.

We can look to history to teach us about how up-tempo teams fare in the playoffs. According to Insider pal Kevin Pelton's research, the 15 slowest playoff teams since 1984 have ended up winning only one series below what we'd expect given their seeding. The top-15 fastest teams? They ended up winning only one series more than expected. Translation: Speed barely has an impact.

What matters most in the playoffs is not pace, but rather that the Warriors are elite on both ends of the floor. The Dubs are the only team to rank in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency this season. Plenty of teams have done that in history. But ranking first on defense while playing faster than anybody? We've never seen that before.

News and notes

• Speaking of defense, guess who owns the best D since the calendar flipped to 2015? It's the Charlotte Hornets. They've held opponents to just 92.7 points per 100 possessions since Jan. 1. Watch a Hornets game and it's bound to be a pitcher's duel; they own the fourth-worst offense over that time, as well. This season the Hornets have allowed a miniscule 89.8 points per 100 possessions in the 339 minutes when Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Bismack Biyombo have taken the floor, per NBA.com. Credit coach Steve Clifford for turning the season around and getting the Hornets into the seventh slot in the East.

• Your Hassan Whiteside update: After another double-double on Tuesday night, he is averaging 17.9 points, 15.2 rebounds and 4.9 blocks every 36 minutes this season. His PER is 27.7, which ranks third in the NBA among qualified players. His early foul trouble has stunted his playing time, but coach Erik Spoelstra has to be more forgiving. Whiteside has finished with just three fouls in his last three games, and the Heat have been outscored by 24 points with him on the bench. As scary as it sounds, the depleted Heat can't win without him.

• Nets trainer Tim Walsh deserves a standing ovation for his life-saving heroics at a recent Nets practice. Shout-out to Adrian Wojnarowski for the incredible story.

• Since taking over the starting role after Brandon Jennings' unfortunate Achilles injury, D.J. Augustin has averaged 21.8 points and 9.2 assists in the past five games. He won't keep shooting 52 percent from the floor or 46 percent from deep. But in Stan Van Gundy's extra-spacy system, there's plenty of real estate for Augustin to do his thing.

• What a story: Paul George is eyeing a return this season. Don't sleep on Indiana, y'all.

• Trivia time: Which team has been the recipient of only one technical foul this season? Last week's trivia answer: Markieff Morris with 17 kicked-ball violations this season. And he has the most technical fouls, too. I don't think that's a coincidence. No one likes the kicked-ball guy, right?
Click to expand...
If that's enough Warriors for you, read the article below.

How Warriors built NBA's top defense

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12273986/how-golden-state-warriors-built-nba-best-defense
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
The r-squared Podcast: Episode 15 with Tom Haberstroh

This week’s episode features a conversation with Tom Haberstroh, an NBA analyst and writer for ESPN. Tom walks us through a little bit of his background, including a behind-the-scenes look at his stint with ESPN Stats and Information. We also touch on his experiences in using analytics while writing for the enormous ESPN audience and examine some of his recent work including the dominance of the Golden State Warriors and the evaporating home court advantage in the NBA. You can find more of Tom’s work at ESPN and follow him on Twitter @TomHaberstroh.
Click to expand...
http://nyloncalculus.com/2015/02/06/the-r-squared-podcast-episode-15-tom-haberstroh/
 
Russell Westbrook is the ultimate eye deceiver.

From watching him play, you wouldn't be able to tell that he's a below average finisher at the rim, below average from 10 to 15 feet, and a below average 3 point shooter.
 
Kinda thinkin Russ goin with 48/11/9/4 can deceive whatever, that ****'s hard to do. :lol:

Anthony Davis, tho.....
 
Last edited:
shoeking2101 said:
Russell Westbrook is the ultimate eye deceiver.

From watching him play, you wouldn't be able to tell that he's a below average finisher at the rim, below average from 10 to 15 feet, and a below average 3 point shooter.
Click to expand...

Eh, when you factor in the types of shots that he takes because of Scott Brooks, then it's a lot less deceiving IMO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

The ultimate sneaker enthusiast community.

NikeTalk was created as a way of giving back to both the sneaker enthusiast community and to the greater global community of which we are all a part.

NikeTalk is NOT affiliated with Nike Inc. in any way, shape, or form. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Nike, Inc.

© 1999-2024 NikeTalk.com

Share this page

Back
Top Bottom