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

Kevin Love's return to the game. 27-14-5. Per Dan Patrick, that's been done a total of 5 times in history, two by Wilt, two by Kareem, and once by another old dude, I forget which one he said. Oscar maybe? Elgin? Someone like that.

Not sure he'll play that way all year, but he wants his money, that's clear. And he's healthy, even clearer.

Just looked, he leads league in PER as of right now also.


Please mess this up Minnesota. Please.
 
Not sure what the numbers say, but the Warriors have to be the best passing team in the league don't they?

Curry, Iggy, Lee, Bogut are all plus passers, only two I'm not sure of are Klay and Barnes. If they're even average, then I can't think of another team better.

Am I off?
 
^No I agree, Golden State is definitely the best passing team in the league. It just pops out at you when you watch them play. Not just their team concept but on an individual level, they have a lot of players who are great passers.

Bogut is an elite passing C (up there with the Gasol bros and Noah), Lee is an elite passing PF (up there with Love, KG, Blake), Iggy is an elite passing SF, and Curry is a great individual passer as well. And because of their shooting they have great spacing, so guys are always moving and always open.
 
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DT43 said:
^No I agree, Golden State is definitely the best passing team in the league. It just pops out at you when you watch them play. Not just their team concept but on an individual level, they have a lot of players who are great passers.

Bogut is an elite passing C (up there with the Gasol bros and Noah), Lee is an elite passing PF (up there with Love, KG, Blake), Iggy is an elite passing SF, and Curry is a great individual passer as well. And because of their shooting they have great spacing, so guys are always moving and always open.
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with how far you have to defend curry and klay, and them all being plus passers and most good shooters, they have to be a nightmare to guard. you're only chance has got to basically be switch every single screen, right?
 
do work son said:
with how far you have to defend curry and klay, and them all being plus passers and most good shooters, they have to be a nightmare to guard. you're only chance has got to basically be switch every single screen, right?
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They are not that difficult to guard for Memphis oddly. I would not use that one game from this season as an outlier, but the last 8-10 games have been all Memphis. I think its mainly due to their eltie perimeter defense, even though the defense has sucked this season. The combination of Conley, TA and Prince defending their wings makes it harder on them to be really effective.
 
I'll try an post Per Diems daily to keep this thread active.

As for today:

Beware of NBA's biggest ball hogs

It may be Black Friday for most folks, but here in the land of Per Diem, today is Black Hole Friday.

Yes, Black Hole Friday.

On Thanksgiving Day, I identified the players who should be giving thanks for their buckets and to whom they owe their gratitude. But we're going to look at the flip side on Black Hole Friday: where basketballs go but never come back. The ball hogs. The gunners.

We have a brand-spanking-new trove of numbers from SportVU that will help us expose those who monopolize the basketball and keep it from their teammates. No longer must we be shackled by the confines of the box score. Thanks to 3-D cameras in every arena, we can see exactly how many passes a player makes, how many seconds he possesses the ball, and how often he dribbles.

In other words, we can identify the biggest ball hogs in the game. For these purposes, we're going to go by the purest sense of the term: the player who hogs the ball and rarely passes. To identify those, we'll see how many seconds each player possesses the ball on average between passes. In the chart below, I've listed the player's average time of possession in seconds (TOP) and his average passes per game, which I'll use to arrive at his average hog rate, which is expressed in seconds.

Those names?

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As we can see here, Westbrook possesses the ball for 7.8 seconds between passes, which is the highest rate in the league by a healthy margin. That's not an indictment on only him. Thunder coach Scott Brooks doesn't escape blame, either, as his offensive system doesn't exactly predicate itself on ball movement. But it's worth noting that Westbrook's backup, Reggie Jackson, possesses the ball for 5.8 seconds on average between passes (although to be fair, more than a quarter of Jackson's minutes have come alongside Westbrook, where he's not bringing up the ball).

This certainly won't help Westbrook's reputation next to Kevin Durant, perhaps the best scoring weapon in the game. At this pace, Westbrook will have one of the least efficient high usage seasons ever, as he's using 33 percent of the Thunder's possessions on the floor while registering a pathetic 47.2 percent true shooting percentage (Durant is currently at 61.3 percent). Westbrook may want to defer to Durant more as the point guard struggles to return from his knee injury.

Elsewhere on the list, you may be surprised to find Curry, who's averaging a career-high 8.8 assists this season. But Curry makes his passes count; 18 percent of his passes turn into assists, which is the highest rate in the league, even above Chris Paul. Yes, it helps to have Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala and David Lee around. Also, it's hard to fault Curry for "hogging" the ball when he's one of the most efficient point guards in the game; Westbrook doesn't have that excuse.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jose Calderon holds the ball for just 4 seconds between passes, the lowest rate among point guards. Calderon wastes no time to get the ball moving to his teammates.

Who's the most selfless player in the league by this metric? Shane Battier, who was once dubbed by The New York Times as "The No Stats All-Star." Here's a Battier stat for you: the Heat veteran wing averages one pass per second of possession this season. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra emphasizes constant ball movement in his "pace-and-space" offense, and Battier represents the ideal. If Battier dribbles, something's gone horribly wrong.

All of the players on the above list are ball handlers, which makes sense if you're looking for a pure ball hog. But that's not typically what we imagine ball hogs to be. If you've ever played pickup ball, you know the Black Hole guy. He's the one who never gives the ball back. As soon as you pass him the ball, better run back on defense -- the shot's going up.

We didn't incorporate shots in that last metric, but how can we talk about ball hogging without shots? Let's correct that. Here's a list of players who have the lowest rates of passes per shot attempt, or what I like to call the Black Hole Rate. The passing and shooting numbers below are listed on a per-game basis.

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Well, if you can shoot it like Thompson, maybe you can get away with not sharing the ball. But the Golden State shooting guard fires up nearly as many shots as passes when he's out there, which is pretty remarkable. The Warriors probably don't care, as long as he continues shooting 50 percent from the floor and 46.8 percent from downtown.

We can't say the same for Gordon, Thornton or Gay, who have collectively shot 38.3 percent from the floor this season. These are the Black Hole guys you don't want to see on your team. For perspective, Gay fires up five more shots per game than James, but dishes out 14 fewer passes. Also, Gay is shooting 37.5 percent from the floor. In related news, Gay has banned his team from looking at the stat sheets in the locker room.

Another interesting player on this list is Redick, who has transformed his game since his Orlando days. Before he was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks last season, Redick averaged 4.4 assists per game as a primary playmaker for the talent-deprived Magic. Now playing for the Clippers, he has left the playmaking duties up to Paul, which is probably the smart move. As a result, Redick's dishing numbers have taken a dive.

Like Redick and Thompson, Martin is out there to shoot, and he does it well. The rest of the list features the usual suspects in Anthony, Waiters and DeRozan. Feel free to pass it to them, because their respective franchises have hinged their playoff hopes on their success. Just don't expect the ball back.
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^Not surprised at most of the names on those rankings
 
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Stats porn: What we learned with player tracking tools this week

- Current three-point shooting champion Kyrie Irving is making only 29.7 percent of his catch-and-shoot attempts from beyond the arc.

- Wolves forward Corey Brewer has taken 31 pull-up shots and missed all of them. JR Smith clearly beats him in this department with 15.7 percent of makes.

- Milwaukee's OJ Mayo is hitting only 40.8 percent of his shots so far this season, but he's making 60 percent of his pull-up three-point attempts.

- Warriors swingman Klay Thompson and Pelicans forward Ryan Anderson lead the league in points scored off catch-and-shoots with 10.1 and 10 per game, respectively.

- Magic guard Arron Afflalo is the only Top 10 scorer that's also a Top 10 catch-and-shoot scorer.

- It's all wing players at the Top 6 in terms of distance traveled (Chandler Parsons, Gordon Hayward, Nicolas Batum, Klay Thompson, Evan Turner and Monta Ellis). Only one big man in the Top 11: Portland's LaMarcus Aldridge.

- The Grizzlies really run the offense through their big men. Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph combine for 14.7 close touches (those that originate within 12 feet of the basket) per game, more than any other couple of bigs in the NBA. Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Love come second with 13.6 combined.

- Just one big man among the Top 16 in touches per game: Kevin Love. The other 15 players are point guards.

- On average, James Harden has the ball in his hands more time (4.5 minutes per game) than LeBron James (3.9). Of the Top 45 players in this category, they are the lone two not playing point guard.

- Thunder center Kendrick Perkins is putting up his worst scoring and rebounding numbers since 2005, but keeps making a defensive impact. Opponents are shooting a mere 30.8 percent at the rim when he's around. That's better than Roy Hibbert (36.4 percent), Joakim Noah (42.0 percent) or teammate Serge Ibaka (47.4 percent).

- Michael Beasley ends up with the ball three times for every four rebounding chances (76.1 percent of the times, actually) - which beats LeBron James' mark (72.1 percent). You didn't see that coming.
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Link

I'm too lazy to post the links within the article, but click the link to the article and you can get directed to the original sources.
 
- Just one big man among the Top 16 in touches per game: Kevin Love. The other 15 players are point guards.


Considering the greater efficiency of big men as scorers, I wonder how it would effect a team if they made a point of getting a talented big man (ex. Lopez) that many touches
 
How many offensively talented bigs are there really? Love, Brook, Marc, Boogie, Monroe, LaMarcus and who?
 
Dirk, David Lee... Maybe a Hibbert or even Dwight is decent enough. Not enough of them certainly.
 
Pau's game has faded but those championship Laker years he was putting in work and should have won a Finals MVP

Z-Bo is good too, Bynum could have been the best center in the league right now if it weren't for his knees and his lack of *****

Would love to see more dominant efficient big men, the game is moving so much more towards guard/wing play, miss Hakeem, Ewing level bigs
 
Per Diem 12/4
Which teams make postseason?

The problem with looking at which teams will at the playoffs "if the season ended today" isn't that -- spoiler alert! -- the season doesn't end today. The issue is treating a process in motion as a fixed outcome. Since teams can move around up through the last night of the season, it's better to view the playoff picture in terms of probabilities. That's what the Hollinger Playoff Odds do, simulating the season 5,000 times to estimate the likelihood of various outcomes.

With this year's ratings starting to settle down, it's time to look at some key NBA questions with the help of the Playoff Odds and my own simulations of the remainder of the season.

Will a below-.500 team win the Atlantic Division?

If the season ended today ... er, I mean so far, the Boston Celtics lead the lowly Atlantic with a 8-12 record. The Toronto Raptors' 38-44 average finish in the Playoff Odds is the division's best, and even when the concept of "true talent" -- as explained two weeks ago -- is introduced to my forecasts, none of the Atlantic teams has a projected win total better than 40 games.

So it's certainly reasonable that a below-.500 team could hang a division banner, though it's important to understand the difference between no individual team being likely to finish above .500 and all teams being likely to finish above .500.

In other words, someone in the Atlantic will probably outplay expectations, and that team will end up winning the division. Still, my simulations show a below-.500 team winning the Atlantic 43.7 percent of the time. So good news, 2010 Seattle Seahawks -- you could soon have company!

Will the Knicks miss the playoffs?

Nobody in the Atlantic has been more woeful than the New York Knicks, who have stumbled to a 3-13 start and are a half-game ahead of the basement-dwelling Milwaukee Bucks. The good news for the Knicks is the rest of the East hardly is pulling away -- New York still is just 3.5 games out of the eighth seed. Still, the Playoff Odds see them reaching the postseason less than one-third of the time.

The hope in New York is that the return of injured center Tyson Chandler will help right the ship defensively. Using true talent improves the Knicks' chances slightly, though they're still less than a 50-50 bet to make the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Cavaliers are in even worse shape. Their playoff chances have already tumbled below 10 percent in a season the Cavaliers wanted to use as a springboard to contention. The Brooklyn Nets, by contrast, have more favorable chances by true talent. Once their health improves, true talent still shows the Nets as the class of the Atlantic and overwhelmingly likely to make the playoffs.

Will the Thunder have to start the playoffs on the road?

Despite a 13-3 start, the Playoff Odds peg Oklahoma City barely ahead of the Los Angeles Clippers for the West's fourth-best record, introducing the possibility the Thunder might not have home-court advantage for the opening round of the playoffs. The Portland Trail Blazers have shaken up the top of the Western Conference with their fast start, and if they can maintain a top-four spot, one of the expected contenders -- the Clippers, Thunder, Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs -- would miss out on home-court advantage.

True talent regards the Blazers as likely to slip to the fifth or sixth seed. Still, only San Antonio (tops in the Hollinger Power Rankings) looks assured of home court. No one else has better than an 86 percent chance of home-court advantage by my simulations, whereas in the East, the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat are already nearly assured the top two seeds.

Will the Lakers make the playoffs?

Their 9-9 start has been fun, but "no" is the safe bet unless Kobe Bryant returns at full health immediately, which is unlikely given the history of Achilles injuries. In part, this is a simple math problem: 13 teams can't fit into eight playoff spots, so good teams are going to find themselves on the outside of the West playoff picture. My projection shows the typical eighth seed in the West winning 45.4 games, as compared to 36.2 for No. 8 in the East.

So teams like the Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans that have played .500 basketball or better thus far are still long shots to make the playoffs, with the Playoff Odds pegging their chances at about one in four. The most interesting case might be the Memphis Grizzlies, considered locks to make the playoffs a month ago. The Playoff Odds show them reaching the postseason just 24.9 percent of the time. Factoring in true talent, and Marc Gasol's eventual return from a sprained MCL, increases their chances to more than 35 percent of simulations, but still leaves the Grizzlies more likely than not to land in the lottery.

Will a team we expected in the lottery make the playoffs instead?

A handful of contenders have emerged, primarily in the Eastern Conference. The Playoff Odds show the Boston Celtics, Charlotte Bobcats and Orlando Magic all climbing over the low bar to make the East postseason better than 40 percent of the time, while the Phoenix Suns' hot start gives them a smaller chance of making it in the West.

This is a scenario in which true talent is particularly important. Not only are these teams likely to regress somewhat -- as the Philadelphia 76ers already have -- the East's underachievers figure to simultaneously improve. So none of those teams makes it in more than 20 percent of my simulations, while the Suns reach the playoffs just once in 1,000 runs. Rajon Rondo's potential return could lift the Celtics into the playoffs, but that assumes Boston keeps its current lineup intact instead of trading veterans for draft picks and young talent, a wild card none of the simulations can project.
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Goldsberry. :pimp:

Per Diem 12/5
The rebirth of Michael Beasley

Kevin Durant. Kevin Love. Anthony Davis. LaMarcus Aldridge. Blake Griffin. Brook Lopez. DeMarcus Cousins. Carmelo Anthony.

What do these eight players have in common? Each of them have played more than 200 minutes this season and average at least 20 points and seven rebounds on a per-36-minute basis. That represents a sample of the game's biggest star big men, and they're getting paid like it. The average salary of those franchise players? About $14 million. If we take out Cousins and Davis, who are still on their salary-depressed rookie scale contracts, that average price tag soars to $16.6 million.

Star players, star salaries.

Ah, but there's one more player who's putting up those types of numbers, averaging 23.1 points and 7.9 rebounds per 36 minutes.

That's Michael Beasley.

Guess how much the Miami Heat are paying him to play this season.

$1 million.

That's the bare minimum for a sixth-year player. While everyone turned a blind eye to Beasley this summer once he was waived by the Phoenix Suns, the capped-out, two-time defending champs signed him for almost nothing. So far he has posted a 22.0 player efficiency rating in 2013-14, the sixth-highest in the Eastern Conference. It appears the rich only got richer.

Welcome to the reconstruction of Michael Beasley.

Old role, new role model

The 24-year-old is entering his prime, five years removed from being selected No. 2 overall behind Derrick Rose in the 2008 draft. And in a bizarre twist of fate, it is Beasley, not Rose, who has a chance to contribute to a title run this season. The outrageous talent always has been there for Beasley, but the results? Not so much. In recent years, Beasley toiled away as an inefficient shot creator on the wing for Minnesota and Phoenix. Both teams couldn't wait to let him go; Phoenix even paid him millions to leave.

Even putting aside the off-court stuff, it's easy to see why those teams bailed. Over those three seasons outside of South Florida, Beasley fired up shots like a superstar, using a whopping 27.5 percent of his team's possessions while on the floor. But he didn't make them like a superstar. Of the 16 players who posted at least a 27 percent usage rate over that time, Beasley's true shooting percentage ranked dead last at 49.4 percent. And his spotty defense was equally as poisonous.

But the Heat spotted the problem: Beasley was miscast as a small forward. The Heat drafted him as a big man, groomed him as a big man and now they're rebuilding him as a big man. And that process takes time and a heavy dose of tough love. Everywhere from his contract to his minutes, the Heat made it clear to Beasley from the start that there would be no guarantees. Everything would be earned, not given.

To that end, Erik Spoelstra didn't give Beasley a single minute of in-game action over the Heat's first four games. But Beasley was working behind the scenes. The coaching staff used the practice time to refresh Beasley on the Heat's defensive principles and re-establish him as a scoring stretch 4 who'd also set picks and create for others without the ball.

"Five hundred screens a day," Spoelstra said while watching Beasley set screens over and over in the Heat's last practice. "We've been drilling ad nauseum on how we want him to play and to get other people the ball in other actions. He can make our team better, often times by screening much like LeBron [James] does. Those two guys can be arguably our two most talented screeners off the ball."

Over the last three seasons, Spoelstra already has sold LeBron James on embracing life as a big man, which meant consistently working out of the post and setting screens for other players. That life existed outside of his comfort zone until he moved to Miami. But Spoelstra won James over with championships. Nowadays Spoelstra continues to reap the benefits by giving Beasley an everyday role model.

"I'm just trying to imitate everything [James] does," Beasley said. "From the way he shoots his jump shot, to the way he's in here lifting weights, to the way he wears socks. He has a blueprint, and I'm just following him."

Beasley's transformation is startling. Last season in Phoenix, Beasley's third most frequent scoring play type put him as the ball handler in a pick-and-roll, according to Synergy tracking. Not the guy setting the screen, mind you, the guy running it. Synergy tells us that he tried to score as the pick-and-roll ball handler 120 times last season, or almost two times per game on average. But it was his least efficient action, spitting out a measly 0.708 points per play.

You know how many plays Beasley has finished as the pick-and-roll ball handler in Miami? Two. In 13 games.

"And those were by accident," Spoelstra said, laughing.

Beasley efficient?

Over the last few seasons, the ball was put in Beasley's hands and his job was to create off the dribble. That license yielded a host of pull-up long 2s and more headaches. Not so anymore. Watch a Heat game and you'll see Beasley setting multiple screens on any given trip down the floor. This helps to funnel Beasley into high-efficiency destinations either by rolling to the rim or flaring to the 3-point line. In Tuesday's game against the Detroit Pistons, Beasley shot 3-for-3 on corner 3-pointers and 6-for-10 inside the paint. That is the ideal.

Beasley's love affair with the midrange game is waning, too. For the season, just 29 percent of his shots come from midrange, according to NBA.com data, down from 40 percent last season. The Heat haven't specifically demanded Beasley to avoid the least profitable area on the floor, but they've emphasized the importance of getting to the money areas: at the rim, at the line and beyond the arc.

Like practically everyone else on the Heat roster, Beasley's having his most efficient season yet, shooting a LeBron-like 54.7 percent from the floor, 52.9 percent from downtown and 79.2 percent from the line. It's early, but Spoelstra has already trusted Beasley enough to have him anchor lineups without any of Miami's big three on the floor. And those Beasley lineups have been winning ones so far. Spoelstra has evidently believed in Beasley, but James' trust might be the biggest factor to his success.

"LeBron has a lot of confidence in me, and I don't really know where he gets it from," Beasley said. "Sometimes he has more confidence in me than I have for myself. That's good, just to have a group of people that genuinely believe that you can make it -- that you can make it on a good team. I'm just playing basketball the right way now."

Another diamond in the rough

Playing defense the right way will always be a concern with Beasley. If he's not dedicating himself on that end of the floor, Spoelstra has no problem leaving him on the bench, as he did at the beginning of the season.

But so far, the Heat haven't missed a step with him out there. According to NBA.com data, the Heat have held opponents to just 96.9 points per 100 possessions with Beasley on the floor, compared to 100.5 points per 100 possessions when he's riding the pine. For the most part, Beasley hasn't broken the hard-wired machine that is the Heat defense.

This is the power of a winning system and championship-tuned culture. By bringing in Beasley, the Heat took a gamble that no other team wanted to make. Facing a stiff luxury tax and limited flexibility, these free-agent reclamation projects are the Heat's draft picks, providing value for pennies on the dollar. It didn't work out with Ronny Turiaf, Mike Bibby, Eddy Curry or Erick Dampier in seasons past. But they struck gold with Chris Andersen last season after the Nuggets cut him using the amnesty provision. And so far, Beasley is on track to be another gem off the scrap heap.

Once again, one team's trash now appears to be the champs' treasure. But Beasley is different than those other free-agent pickups because Beasley's entering his prime, not on his way out of the NBA. This find has the potential to pay dividends over the long term. After Beasley's reconstruction seems to have given the Heat yet another weapon in their loaded arsenal, the league has to wonder: Is Greg Oden next?
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