Championship Usage Patterns II
After yesterday’s post about optimal championship usage patterns, I got a lot of good feedback about possible alternative versions of the same study that would better capture the effect I was going for. When setting up for the initial study, I struggled between sorting by minutes played and by raw modified shot attempts (MSA), each of which had unique advantages. But a nice compromise (suggested by reader Brian) would be to isolate the top 5 players on each team by minutes — thereby approximating their most frequent 5-man unit — and then sort by MSA%, the percentage of team MSA that each player took while on the floor:
Championship Usage Patterns and “The Secret”
In basketball perhaps more than any other sport, the concept of team-building — creating a cohesive group that fits together and may be greater than the sum of its parts — is phenomenally important. In baseball, a sport dominated by one-on-one matchups, not a whole lot of consideration has to be made for how teammates work together; to make a great team, you basically grab the 25 best players you can, throw them together, and watch them produce. But in basketball, teammates have to work together while simultaneously “competing” for touches & shots. Throw together a baseball lineup of 9 guys who each create 100 runs, you’ll probably score 900 runs; throw together a basketball lineup of 5 20 PPG scorers, you probably won’t score 100 PPG. There’s no upper limit on the number of runs the baseball lineup can produce, but there is an upper limit to the points the basketball lineup scores, because teams are limited by a finite number of minutes in a game, and as a result, lineups are limited by a finite number of touches & shots to be allocated to the individual players.
That’s why a stat like Possession% (the % of team possessions a player uses while on the floor) is important in looking at how the pieces of a team fit together. A lineup of All-Stars would be interesting, but perhaps a less-talented lineup with one 26% usage guy, two 20% guys, an 18% guy, and a 16% guy would be even better if the All-Stars are not happy with the way they fit together or are unable to operate at peak efficiency in lesser roles, while the less talented lineup features players who are all at their optimal usage levels. The whole of the latter would be greater than the sum of the former’s parts.
Poll: Vote for the Fantasy Basketball Hall of Fame
A select few in the annals of the game will be elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, but those who don’t make the cut shouldn’t despair. If you compiled great conventional stats on losing teams, or powered many a fantasy league championship despite never quite getting over the hump in the real NBA playoffs, this idea is for you…
The premise: create a Hall of Fame for the best fantasy basketball players of all time. The requirements:
- Only stats compiled from 1990 to the present are considered, because fantasy hoops was not really a mainstream activity until the nineties.
- Players must have played at least 5 years as a fantasy starter in a 12-team league (or similar) from 1990-present.
- The player must be retired and/or out of basketball in 2010 (no current players allowed).
- Only consider fantasy value in standard league setups — i.e., 12 teams, 8 categories, roto, head-to-head, or basic points. In other words, no super-shallow or deep leagues, and no exotic scoring systems.
- Players are ineligible if they have more than a remote chance of making the real Basketball Hall of Fame.
To be enshrined, players must receive at least 75% of the vote; those with 5% or fewer will be dropped from future elections. Here’s the inaugural ballot (voting will close in 1 week):
Optimizing the Rockets II
As if everyone isn’t already tired of this debate (one which will never be satisfactorily settled, I’m sure), here’s a final note on who contributed the most to the 1995 Rockets‘ offense during the playoffs, Hakeem Olajuwon (mega-high usage, average efficiency) or Clyde Drexler (mid-to-high usage, mega-high efficiency)…
My last post attempted to create a simple model of team offensive efficiency using Dean Oliver‘s Offensive Rating, Possession %, and what Dean called “Skill Curves”, or the relationship between changes in individual usage and efficiency rates. In general, both Oliver and Eli Witus found a quantifiable inverse relationship between increases in usage and predicted offensive efficiency — in other words, there’s diminishing returns to increasing your usage, and as you add more usage you become less and less efficient (which only makes sense to anyone who’s ever played basketball).
Optimizing the ’95 Rockets
Over in the comments of an earlier post about the 1990s Knicks, a discussion is raging about who the best player on the 1995 Houston Rockets was — Hakeem Olajuwon, or his old college teammate Clyde Drexler? At the core of the back-and-forth is whether Drexler’s 120.1 offensive rating (using 23.8% of Houston’s possessions when on the court) was more vital to the offense than Hakeem’s 109.8 ORtg (using 34.1% of possessions when in the game)… In other words, the old usage-efficiency debate. On one side, Drexler clearly contributed more points per possession to the Rockets’ effort than Olajuwon — but on the other side, Hakeem had to create offense on a significantly higher % of the Rockets’ possessions than Clyde, and if you subscribe to “skill curve” theory, this means Clyde’s ORtg was artificially enhanced by the extra defensive attention Hakeem drew — as well as the fact that his shot selection didn’t have to include the offense’s toughest shots, which were presumably going to Hakeem (at least in a larger proportion), in turn dragging down Hakeem’s ORtg.
BBR Mailbag: ’90s Knicks
It’s time for a very special edition of the Mailbag, since the questions come from my colleague Chase Stuart of the PFR Blog:
My memories of the ’90s Knicks is that they were a very good team that always just came up short. They were a defensive powerhouse. They probably should have won a championship or two.
But hey, I was a teenager who knew nothing about objective sports analysis. So I’m curious what an objective, intelligent view of those old Knicks would tell me. Maybe you can get a blog post out of this. But I’m thinking…
• How awesome was the Knicks D back then? It seemed to be pretty awesome in the postseason, too. I recall Miami being the A- defense to the Knicks having the A defense. Did the NYK actually have the #1 D? Where does their best D rank historically?
• How awesome was Ewing? Defensively and overall?
• Should the Knicks have won a championship in the ’90s? Were they ever the best team?
• Were any of the role players actually any good? Starks, Mason, Oakley, Ward, Childs, X-Man, etc. They all seemed like a bunch of gritty guys; they almost sound like the ’01 Patriots as I think back on them.
• Any other thoughts you can think of?
Okay Chase, let’s talk the 1990s Knicks…
Keltner List: Vince Carter
Recently, it’s come to my attention that the mere possibility of VC making the Hall of Fame apparently evokes an angry, violent, nauseous reaction on par with this. Then again, there’s no doubting he’s been one of the defining figures of the post-MJ era, for better or for worse. So what’s the verdict? Hall or no Hall for Mr. Carter? Let’s do this…
Vitals
Position: SG/SF
Height: 6-7 Weight: 215 lbs.
Born: January 26, 1977 in Daytona Beach, Florida
High School: Mainland in Daytona Beach, Florida
College: University of North Carolina
Draft: Selected by the Golden State Warriors in the 1st round (5th pick, 5th overall) of the 1998 NBA draft.
Player Audit: Adrian Dantley
As his prize for winning the 2010 Basketball-Reference NCAA Tournament Pool contest, reader Ian was able to request a post on a basketball-related subject of his choosing. The topic he went with:
“As for a subject of the blog, I’ll go with my childhood hero, who I feel has long been unheralded by the masses, although I’ll admit my bias. I’d love to see a blog dedicated to one Adrian Delano Dantley.”
Great choice, Ian! Let’s get our Player Audit on…
Cap’n Jack = MVP
On the streets of Anytown, U.S.A., people are always asking me, who’s the MVP? Well, some folks will tell you that the Most Valuable Player of the 2009-10 NBA season should be LeBron James or Kevin Durant. And there are even some people clinging to the so-2006 notion that Kobe Bryant has been the league’s most indispensable player.
But those people are wrong. The real MVP of the 2010 campaign is obviously Stephen Jackson.
Changing the Culture II
Note: This post was originally published at College Basketball Reference, S-R’s brand-new College Hoops site. All of the data used here can be found at S-R/CBB, so when you’re done reading, go over and check it out!
On Tuesday, I kicked off our CBB/BBR cross-posting series by looking at coaches who “changed the culture” of a program, guys whose winning percentages at a school far exceeded its mark before they arrived. The usual suspects were at the top of the list (John Wooden, Jim Calhoun, etc.), and so was John Calipari for his performance at UMass during the 90s. Trouble is, did Coach Cal really change the Minutemen forever? Or, as BBR reader “Downpuppy” put it:
“UMass is on the list twice, but both times the culture snapped back to mediocrity pretty quick.”
OK, so maybe a “culture change” has to extend beyond the coach’s actual tenure with the school, and also into the tenures of later coaches, who build on their successor’s changes to take the school to new heights. After all, it’s not really a true culture change if the program only loses the stench of mediocrity for 5 years while a coach uses the school as a stepping stone to his next gig.
Basketball History 