Jump Ball Tidbits: 12/28-1/3

A good resolution for 2016 would be to win more jump balls in the game of life, but in this blog post I will only look at jump balls in the NBA from last week. I cannot mention enough how most of those are likely meaningless, but a small percentage of them are at least interesting. They deserve some attention whether it’s because they actually helped affect the outcome of the game or a player involved reached some jump ball milestone we didn’t know existed until I grabbed wins and losses from NBA.com back to 1997. You can find those here, usually updated nightly.

Let’s get started.

Notable Wins and Losses

Below are the 10 jump balls last week with the highest change in win probability, according to Inpredictable, a site that logs win probability in some fancy, interactive graphs.[1. I’m going to play with the change in win probability by also including pre-game odds. This way the start of the first quarter and overtimes are not 50/50.]

Aaron Gordon’s jump ball looks to be the most meaningful, by far, winning the tip with 1:06 left in their game against Brooklyn and down 92-93. The Magic scored on the possession they won the tip with and held on for a 100-93 victory.

Marvin Williams beating Steven Adams in a jump ball was something of an upset. Adams, with the third-best winning percentage over a career at 71.1 percent[2. Minimum 100 jump balls.], is just 14-11 in ‘live’ situations like the one against Williams.

Not pictured was Josh Smith, a jump ball great, losing to T.J. McConnell last week. Smith simply tipped the ball to a 76er, but the game was out of hand by then with the Clips ahead 123-89. Philadelphia got a nice dunk by Richaun Holmes out of it, though.

Milestones

400 total losses for Pau Gasol, third-most since 1997. That would sound a lot worse if he didn’t have 488 wins to go with it. I guess it depends on how long Pau sticks around when wondering if he’ll move up even further, but the most losses right now go to Kevin Garnett at 516 and the second-most to Tim Duncan at 438.

300 total wins for Brook Lopez, now 26th in that category since 1997. He should pass Brad Miller (303 wins), Vlade Divac (305), and Emeka Okafor (315) by the end of the season. Amar’e Stoudemire (324) is also possible.

Notable Firsts

Paul Pierce, shown in the win probability table above, didn’t have much of a chance against Anthony Davis. Not many do. Pierce is decent for his career, though, 64-44 with about a third of those losses coming since 2011. Not too bad for a wing. I plucked the top 10 win percentages, minimum 100 attempts, from players who have logged a bunch of minutes at that type of position:

Shaun Livingston got his first jump ball since 2014 on Monday and won against Ben McLemore, also his first of the season. In the same game, Quincy Acy had his first, too. So much excitement. I really cannot handle it. Really, though, Livingston is just the best.

Kelly Olynyk lost in what was his first jump ball of the season, now 7-19 for his career. It might be best for Boston to trade the Brooklyn Nets pick and all of their bigs who are mediocre to bad at jump balls for a player who is elite at them.

Until next week. Have a fantastic start to 2016.