BullyBall

A counterpoint to the endless picks, rolls, drives and kicks of the modern NBA game has been the seemingly accelerating decline of post play as a viable form of offense. Bemoaned by old guard[1. #Goink.] as a lost or dying art, traditional back to the basket play struggles to compete in an environment where three is consistently greater than two. The Warriors thoroughly demonstrated that mismatches can and do go both ways. For all of Timo Mozgov’s success early in the Finals offensively, his inability to contain Andre Iguoudala at the other end made him almost unplayable once the Dubs went full smallball.

The reasons for the dearth of truly effective post players are voluminous and well beyond the purview of this post[2. Though in the process of advocating for the Timberwolves to select Karl-Anthony Towns over Jahlil Okafor first overall in this past draft, Key Dae of Canis Hoopus does a pretty masterful job laying out the rule, skill and style changes pushing the game towards the mobile big and away from the old-school post-up crusher. Even with the draft over and done, that historical section is worth reading and bookmarking.] Some of it is rule changes. Some is a decline in skill. Some is simple time efficiency. As Shane Battier recently discussed on Zach Lowe’s podcast, a straight post up play can be laborious to set up, relatively simple to defend[2. The ball isn’t going anywhere and the post player himself is usually not the most adroit of passers.], and frequently lead to shots that aren’t that great. A tightly contested 8-footer doesn’t magically become a good shot just because it was a jump hook preceded by a fundamentally sound drop step.

So while the opponent “going small” can act as a siren song to pound the ball inside, that apparent advantage can often turn to fool’s gold. A fact demonstrated by Golden State themselves under the regime of Mark Jackson, where the endless quest to “find the mismatch” led to a team with some of the best top-to-bottom passing talent in the league moving the ball less than any other squad in the NBA. Unless a player can find a way to consistently and efficiently exploit the size edge, it is of no benefit whatsoever, while the speed and quickness of the “mismatched” defender causes all sorts of problems on the other end. To put it another way, a big man who can’t punish a smaller player is giving up a mismatch without creating one in return.

Of course, there are other ways to utilize a size edge, the most obvious being the offensive backboard. If one of the main issues with picking on the little guy is entering the ball into the post in the first place, why not cut out the middle man and just have the big fella go get it himself? And some players thrive in this sort of manner – in the Finals, Tristan Thompson often excelled for just this reason with his relentless pursuit of the frequent Cavs misses.[5. Of course his inability to make a shot off of those second chances wasn’t great, Bob, but one issue at a time.]

Still, some players are quite effective at bullyball. One of the theoretical pluses of the Spurs acquiring LaMarcus Aldridge is his supposed ability to negate smallball by being an effective scorer when presented with a smaller defender. At least in 2014/15, this theory appears to hold up. I’ll get to the methodology in a moment, but Aldridge shot just under 72% from the floor from around the post area when the closest defender was undersized. Combine that efficiency with his minuscule turnover rate and the mobility and length to allow him to catch the ball in a variety of positions on the floor, and yes, it’s probably fair to say Aldridge is a weapon who can pick on the mouse in the house. So, which other players struggle or excel when confronted with a smaller defender? Which players in fact require the mismatch to be effective?

To answer these questions, I made use of some of the positional playing time data from earlier this week. I looked at shots taken by big men within 8 feet of the basket. A big problem with the post up game is that while it purports to get the ball nearer to the rim, it is far too easy for defenders to force a player to catch the ball at eight, ten or twelve feet from the basket, in the “Donut of Doom” between three point territory and the immediate rim area where shots are most efficient. So I wanted to broaden the view a little from just the immediate basket area because of course players are going to be very effective when all the shots are within arm’s length of the hoop.

I excluded shots taken with no defender within 5 feet of the shooter, for reasons which should be obvious. To determine when a player had a mismatch, I looked to those shots taken where the closest defender was at least 1 full position “smaller” on their seasonal position estimate than the shooter. I think this is better than just going with a height discrepancy or something of that nature. After all, the reason Draymond Green survived and thrived as a smallball four[1. And sometimes even five!] was his ability to hold his own on the interior defensively. Though almost surely aided greatly by the deterrent value of Andrew Bogut[2. As well as Festus Ezeli, a monster rim protector in short minute according to my numbers] playing alongside him, opposing bigs shot only 45.4% from 8 feet and in with Green as the closest defender. If he truly were giving up a mismatch, that number would surely be higher, as it was for a player like Luol Deng, who allowed[7. I use the term “allowed” advisedly with respect to individual shot defense, especially with shots taken around the rim, when multiple defenders are likely to have an impact on the play.] 61% shooting to bigs at the rim. Without delving more deeply into each shot[8. I could possibly control for lobs, tips and fast breaks to an extent if excluding such shots would better answer the question.], this remains an approximation, probably counting some shots which shouldn’t be included and missing others, such as a “failed” post up ending in a 10 foot turnaround, which probably should be. Still, it works for a first pass.

Overall, NBA bigs shot 53.8% within 8 feet when the closest defender was not giving up a size mismatch by the above definition. When there was such a mismatch, that percentage rose to a touch under 64%. Unsurprisingly, there was a decent advantage gained on average. But it was hardly uniform. Looking at the 76 bigs who put up at least 200 shots under these conditions yields the following results:

Looking at those players with the biggest differentials, one really sticks out. Though Tyson Chandler and Mason Plumlee crush smaller defenders, that is probably as much about the primary usage of those players as rim dive demolition experts in the pick-and-roll, the player the numbers seem to confirm an argument Nate has made repeatedly – Pau Gasol is great at scoring with an advantage, but struggles mightily when faced with credible resistance. Kenneth Faried similarly struggles to finish over length, again largely confirming conventional wisdom.

On the other hand, Aldridge does in fact obliterate smalls. He’s no slouch scoring over credible big defenders either, but a steady diet of Aldridge in the post[1. Probably closer to the true post, rather than his more preferred quasi-midrange midpost office.] could easily give teams some pause before they decide to try to outquick San Antonio with small lineups, especially with Tim Duncan also excelling (71.1% vs. mismatches.)

There are the players who simply couldn’t score over size – Jo Noah, Zaza Pachulia, Nikola Pekovic, and Jusuf Nurkic making up quite the ground bound quartet at 44% FG% and below versus size. And finally, DeAndre Jordan, who simply doesn’t care and scores with equal abandon given the chance[5. i.e. within touching distance of the rim and able to elevate before being fouled.] over bigs and smalls alike.

Again, this shouldn’t be taken as gospel as the parameters represent a somewhat rough proxy for post play, but I think it is illustrative of real and demonstrable skill differences among NBA big men.