Jump Ball Tidbits: 12/21-12/27
By Matt Femrite
This is somehow the third post devoted to only jump balls, a part of the basketball game that almost always has no major impact on the outcome. That doesn’t mean they should go unnoticed, though. You can find win-loss records back to 1997 over at our Stats page while these posts look at more notable ones from the past week. Some jump balls are mildly[1. Or wildly?!] interesting, like ones that alter the win probability somewhat or a super small pairing like what happened on Sunday, while other times certain milestones are reached. A few players will also take part in a jump ball for the first time in quite a while, possibly by design, for better or for worse as we saw with a couple players last week.
Let’s get started.
Notable Wins and Losses
Below are the 10 jump balls with the highest change in win probability, according to Inpredictable, a site that logs win probability in some fancy, interactive graphs[1. Sometimes the win probability in the late-3rd or early-4th is higher than in overtime or later in a game. I’m just assuming this is dependent on the combo of score, possessions left, and which team won the tip.] [2. I would include leverage, but some jump balls do not have this listed with their win probability change.].
Another notable took place between Tim Frazier (6’1”, according to DraftExpress) and Darren Collison (also 6’1”), who combined to tie for the shortest jump ball pairing of the season at 146 inches, but it doesn’t come close to the smallest since 1998 at 136 inches which took place in 1999 between Muggsy Bogues and Troy Hudson[1. Usually I would go back to 1997 with these stats, but I don’t have height listings for all players who had jump balls that season.]. The other pairings this season to total 146 inches are Trey Burke-Mike Conley on November 7 and Cory Joseph-Ish Smith on November 13.
Milestones
600 career jump ball wins for Dwight Howard, the seventh player to win that many. Howard still has a long way to go to reach Shaquille O’Neal, who leads with 815. His health may not allow him to get there, but he should pass Zydrunas Ilgauskas (604 wins), Marcus Camby (606), and Kevin Garnett (615) by the end of the season and in time Ben Wallace (650) to move up to third place.
Tim Duncan, with 493 open tip wins, passed Kevin Garnett (492 wins) to move into sixth place in total open tip wins since 1997.
100 career wins for Timofey Mozgov, who appeared in the first post when he reached 200 total jump balls. He became the 100th player to have 100 career wins.
100 career losses for Anthony Davis, the 102nd player to lose that amount or more. After last week, he was 85-90 in ‘open’ tips but 23-12 in ‘live’ jump balls.
Notable Firsts
David Lee had his first opening tip of the season. He’s only had nine of those since 2011 and hasn’t won any of them, continuing to be the worst at jump balls (now at 20.9 percent) over a career, minimum 100 attempts. Second worse is Luis Scola who lost last week to…
… Jabari Parker, his first jump ball of the year.
JaVale McGee, a jump ball great unlike Lee and Scola, won his first of the season during an overtime on Wednesday. He is currently sixth since 1997 in career jump ball winning percentage, minimum 100 attempts, at 68.3 percent.
Thaddeus Young and Ramon Sessions had their first and second jump balls of the season against each other on Saturday. Young won both times, but Washington got the win. Decent tradeoff, in my opinion.
First open tip of the season for Chris Bosh, which happened in overtime on Christmas. With Hassan Whiteside starting, Bosh usually hasn’t had to participate in these. He currently ranks 11th in total jump balls since 1997 with 833 and 11th in opening tips with 737.
Jared Sullinger’s first opening tip for real, unlike last week when an error in the play-by-play listed him in the opening tip instead of Amir Johnson, but he lost to Cody Zeller. Welp.
Until next week. Have a wonderful last few days of 2015 and have a great start to 2016.
Jump ball stats are compiled from play-by-play data at NBA.com. You can view win-loss records here.