NBA Week 10 in Review: New Year, Same Season

As most sane people celebrate and anticipate a new year, the NBA trudges along closer to the midway point of the season. In our world, 2016 started back in October; nevertheless, I imagine a few teams want to start over and have a few resolutions of their own. At this point, a handful of teams who had playoff aspirations are scrambling now while blame is being thrown around, and a few surprising teams are hoping their fortune doesn’t end. I don’t know how everything will shake out, and in this universe there’s only one true determination: let’s make it to the end of the season and watch the actual games. And with that, let’s look back at the past week in the NBA.

Gravity’s Rainbow

While SportVU data can be used to synthesize a variety of basketball stats that were before impossible to create objectively, it can also answer a few age-old questions fans have discussed for decades. With that sort of optical tracking information you can study how players move and how the ball travels. For instance, which players have the highest arcs on their jump shots? Thankfully, SportVU can answer this with reasonable accuracy as long as you can create the right queries.

For a test, I’ll compare one legend who’s well-known for his rainbow jump shots to his teammate Chandler Parsons, who was the most common answer on Twitter when I asked who had the flattest shot. Looking through a few shots, I found a pair of examples, and I’ve plotted them below. Dirk’s shot reaches an impressive 17.2 feet before its downward trajectory[1. You may have noticed the odd kink in his arc. I don’t know how that happened. The height of the ball is measured with a high degree of precision, so it’s not just a simple rounding error. I imagine how the ball spins can have an effect, but probably not to that degree. There might be an interesting physics explanation here or it’s a boring error.]; Parsons’ was just a hair under 14 feet[2. Technically, he was roughly five hair widths under 14 feet, but I think that’s close enough.]. Some of their other shots I saw had similar results, but those two were the best examples. Here’s video for both attempts.

For some more context, according to STATS LLC back in early 2014 three-pointers reached an average of 15.77 feet. Those differences may seem small, but imagine how they compare to a ten foot rim. Reaching four feet above the rim is quite different from seven feet. With some better methods at sifting through this data, it’s possible to compare more players, but for now some conventional wisdom is confirmed: Dirk throws in sky-high shots, and Parsons is out there skipping stones over the water.

Obi-Wan Ginobili

Usually assists you see in highlight reels are ones you can imagine physically happening but require a great deal of skill; Manu’s assists, however, doesn’t really seem possible without 360 degree vision or clairvoyance. In the clip below, he converts an assist while sitting down by passing off to his side to hit a running Kawhi Leonard with a perfect bounce. That’s like the popular HORSE shot where you sit down to shoot, which can throw off even great shooters. Ginobili often makes these types of magical plays no one practices, and it’s going to be a shame when he retires.

Supernova: Catastrophe in Phoenix

Phoenix just lost Eric Bledsoe, who was having a borderline all-star season again, for the rest of the year. The team ended last week with another loss — nine in a row. They lost to the 76ers and the Lakers, who are by a fair margin the two worst teams in the league. Without his twin brother’s half of their magical power ring, Markieff Morris has lost his basketball talent. Jeff Hornacek could be fired a couple years after being the runner-up in the Coach of the Year voting. It’s been a miserable season with things getting worse — and hopefully this is rock bottom.

Unlike team owner Robert Sarver, I would not blame millennial culture, which is a specious and bizarre argument. First of all, I would not name Markieff Morris as an ideal representative of his generation, given his wealth and his locked-at-the-hip lifestyle with his brother — everyone knew before this season that they played better together and were nearly inseparable. Also, it’s a terrible excuse for Sarver given that the Suns are playing against other millennials, many of whom have experienced set-backs as well, and they’re getting killed. One could additionally argue that he’s being hypocritical in that he’s not dealing well with a set-back either.

But if this season is truly a lost cause, the organization should move quickly and sell some of their veterans while the price doesn’t fall any further — Tyson Chandler is still useful for his defense and finishing skills, most playoff teams could use a guy like P.J. Tucker, and Mirza Teletovic could be given to someone who really needs shooting. Plus, Morris might need to be sold to Detroit to join his brother, as Stan Van Gundy malevolently orchestrated last summer. There’s no shame in hitting the reset button as long as you have a plan. They’re not good enough to do anything now, and they can rebuild around Brandon Knight, Alex Len, and others while the powers of the Spurs and Warriors are peaking.

SRS Does Not Include Homecourt Advantage

I’m including this here as a gentle warning. Basketball-Reference’s SRS is an extremely popular measure for team strength. It’s simple partly because it can be used historically and compare teams from different decades. But during a season, it can be a bit inaccurate, and one factor is that home-court advantage is not a variable it considers, much less things like back-to-back games. For example, Miami has had 22 home games versus 12 away, and they’ve been better than this site expected with an SRS of 2.56. If they had five more games on the road, given the average home-court advantage this year at 2.63, then it translates to an inflation of roughly 0.4 points in SRS. That might not seem significant, but it would drop them behind three other teams and every inch is needed in the Eastern cCnference’s tight seeding race. And that doesn’t include back-to-back’s or added wear-and-tear.

40 and 42

Jimmy Butler just broke Michael Jordan’s record for points in a single half with 40 against the Raptors. That was actually a game wherein Jordan only scored 50; when he scored 69, his personal best, he scored 31 points in the first half and 30 in the second, with the remaining 8 in overtime. But Butler scored a mere 42 points in what’s one of the greatest half-to-half turnarounds we’ve seen in a single game.

You can see all his made field goals here. The first one comes from an alley-oop in the first quarter, and then he goes crazy in the third. At his best, Butler combines a penchant for driving inside (he drew a lot of fouls that game) with a nice jumper that comes after his high hop — it’s tough to block that shot. As seen here in the driving details section, Butler is a fairly heavy driver but he’s not a spectacular one, and he turns the ball over too frequently compared to how often he passes. It’s that lack of a true playmaking force that keeps him from the upper echelon of wing players since he’s not the same caliber scorer, but for one game it all came together.

Old Standards

It’s 2016, and as of the end of last week Duncan was first in defensive RPM and Kevin Garnett was eighth overall and second among power forwards. This is, to use a statistical term, ridiculous. San Antonio’s defense is performing like one of the best in NBA history, and Duncan’s a vital component. Garnett can only play light minutes, but Minnesota defends at its best with him on the court — not Rubio, not Towns, and not Wiggins. I’m not exactly sure what to do with this information — it may be more evidence for the hypothesis that defense peaks later, especially for big men — but it’s definitely noteworthy since it’s rare for a player to even be in the league when he’s 40 years-old.

The Endangered Pelicans

After making the playoffs last season with a monumental season from Anthony Davis, many expected a similar, or better, performance this year. But the Pelicans have played themselves out of the playoff race already and it’s early January. They’re still an awful defensive team, and Alvin Gentry hasn’t been able to do anything with their mediocre offense. But Anthony’s regression shouldn’t actually be surprising. After a player has a substantial improvement, you expect them to actually perform a little worse next season. It’s not accurate to look at only one season and project from there; you can project using his past three seasons and find a point that’s somewhere below what he did in 2015.

More specifically, Anthony Davis has seen his stats fall in most categories where his historic efficiency has plummeted. Few big men who take a lot of long jumpers can muster a 59 true shooting percentage like he did last season, and his turnover rate was ridiculously low. It’s hard to improve there and a regression to the mean is quite likely. Team-wide, their numbers have fallen across the board, and it doesn’t look like some shooting percentage fluke. There is one oddity, however: they’ve gone from fourth in offensive rebounding percentage to 30th. It’s been a system-wide drop including all their returning big men, and even Alvin Gentry’s Phoenix teams rebounded better. But it partially explains why they’ve giving up so few transition opportunities, although the opportunities they have allowed have been efficient — their defense is still broken. The Pelicans need a major make-over because this version is clearly not working and they need not waste the prime years of Anthony Davis.

One Man Fast Breaks

After last week’s debacle with sifting through SportVU data, I thought I’d try something that goes with the grain, not against it: taking the rebound and scoring quickly, or attempting to, at the other end of the court at the basket. That’s a specialty of today’s guys like human wrecking balls Russell Westbrook and LeBron James. But there’s a long history of other stars doing the same, from Charles Barkley to Magic Johnson to Dr. J. It’s a purely descriptive stat and not entirely useful, but statistical curiosity is usually healthy.

Through play-by-play logs, I have defined this as a player who grabs a defensive rebound and within five seconds has attempted a layup or dunk without being assisted — that last qualifier hopefully filters out most instances where a player gives up the ball while on the fast break but gets it back at the end[3. I want to include attempts so one can see efficiency, but you can’t tell which attempts were potential assists, which skews the sample by only including assisted attempts that are missed. I’ll try to find a solution.]. I chose five seconds after careful consideration, which included watching a lot of video. Five seconds is roughly around the mark where a play has to hustle down the court and not slow too much — at around six seconds you see a lot of semi-transition attempts. I thought about including free throws, but the data source does not have free throw location and, well, drawing free throws isn’t as exciting. This is more in the spirit of a runaway train that can’t be stopped while going to the rim. Finally, I had to come up with a name for the stat. After cycling through various legends to name it after them, I came up with something simple and descriptive: a coaster, as in a one-man “coast-to-coast” attempt.

It’s also a surprisingly rare event, at least with my constraints. The leaders so far this season are listed below. It’s a three-way tie with the attempts, but Danilo Gallinari actually has the most successful baskets with four. I’d wager no one would guess that. Big, athletic point guards make up the bulk of this list, but there are a few surprising names like Julius Randle, who’s undersized for the frontcourt but makes up for it with energy and leaping ability. And remember, these aren’t typical fast breaks: these are after defensive rebounds, and it’s tougher to start a break then compared to a steal when the opposing team isn’t ready.

Table: Total coasters (rebound+FGA within 5 seconds), 2016

For another recent snapshot, I’ve included the leaders from 2015 as well. John Wall led the league in successful conversions — he’s a spark plug, so that’s no surprise — and Westbrook was right behind him even though he missed a few games. Tyreke Evans had the most attempts. He’s not known as a fast break machine, and he’s lost a lot of athleticism, but he has a tendency to take the rebound and aggressively charge up the court. The list is mostly populated by big, athletic guards, naturally, with LeBron James thrown in as well[4. I was curious about how younger LeBron fared, but looking back at his MVP Cleveland seasons he was on the leaderboard but he was still pretty low. Those Cleveland teams, however, were pretty slow.]. Corey “turbo button is stuck” Brewer shows up as well, but he’s unique. Langston Galloway is an odd result, however; and he missed all five of his shots.

Total coasters (rebound+FGA within 5 seconds), 2015

One guy who’s an League Pass legend for his coast-to-coasters is Antetokounmpo since he can grab the rebound with one of his Condor-like arms and run the full length of the court in 3 to 4 dribbles. Famously, he needed only two dribbles after a steal to make it to the rim for a dunk as seen in the video below. But my favorite are the coasters from big men, like this one from Andrew Bogut in one of the slowest fast breaks you’ll see in the modern NBA — sadly, he took too long for it to count officially as a coaster. DeMarcus Cousins is probably today’s best representative of a huge, lumbering coaster you don’t want to get in front of.

Once I pull more miscellaneous stats from the play-by-play logs, I’ll post the full totals for “coasters” on this site season-by-season going back to 1997. I doubt it’s an entirely useful stat, but unexamined basketball is not worth following.