Inside The Numbers: BullyBall

The team at Nylon Calculus is excited to introduce a new video series, tentatively titled Inside The Numbers.  The aim of the series is to provide short, meaningful analytics based insights that is both interesting and entertaining.  While the scope of these videos will often only skim the surface of a topic, we hope that you find the content and format enjoyable.

In today’s episode, Adam Mares and Seth Partnow discuss the issue of small ball vs. bully ball and how some bigs are better than others and posting up smaller defenders.  From there, we discuss why that might be, how teams can better take advantage of bully ball, and discuss interesting cases such as Jonas Valanciunas, Kenneth Faried, and LaMarcus Aldridge.  Some of the major points are:

• Why small ball is effective
• Why it can be difficult and time consuming to try and exploit post-up mismatches
• How smaller defenders guard the post differently than bigger defenders
• Whether there are different types of moves for attacking smaller defenders in the post
• How smaller defenders get the benefit of the doubt when there is low-post contact
• A theory on one-legged post moves
• How larger, stronger, post players can be effective against smaller post defenders by getting the ball in good spots, rather than just throwing it in for isolation post ups
• How LaMarcus Aldridge presents an interesting counter to Golden State’s small ball lineups
• The continuing evolution of the league and small ball