Guest Post: Mapping Ball Movement in the 2016 NBA Finals
By Guest Post
This guest post on the offensive networks on display in the 2016 NBA Finals comes to us from Senthil Natarajan. Senthil (@SENTH1S) is an Electrical Engineering student at Rice University with a passion for startups. A variety of his writings can be found on his blog My3Senths and sometimes over at the Houston Chronicle. Originally from New Orleans, one of his more prized possessions are a pair of Anthony Davis socks. 60% of the time, his jump shot works 100% of the time.
With the draft and free agency following quickly after, it’s hard to believe the 2016 NBA Finals ended less than a month ago. Now that most of the NBA’s summer business is behind us, there is some time to take a breath and examine the Finals in some detail.
As the Finals progressed, I tracked the assists in each game and visualized them as undirected network graphs, as a way to chart the offensive flow for each team. By compiling these graphs I hope to examine how they help tell the story of the Finals for both Cleveland and Golden State.
More from Nylon Calculus
- Nylon Calculus: Reviewing preseason predictions for the Western Conference
- Nylon Calculus: Reviewing preseason predictions for the Eastern Conference
- Nylon Calculus: LeBron James and the slam dunk aging curve
- The Whiteboard: Why has the NBA seen so many 50 point games this season?
- Nylon Calculus: 15 early season predictions for the NBA Western Conference
In each graph below, the size of the node represents how often that player was involved directly in scoring ball movement (assist/was assisted), and the thickness of edge represents how often two players assisted to each other. What follows is my running diary from each game.
Game 1:
The Cavs got almost no flow of the ball outside their big 3.
The Warriors, meanwhile, had 10 different players involved with no one person just dominating (polar opposite of Cleveland).
This is the type of diverse interplay that fans have come to expect from Golden State, even if Steph didn’t quite go off. It should also be noted that this is how Cleveland was ideally constructed to play, with the big 3 controlling the majority of their offense; they just didn’t get it done this game.
Game 2:
LeBron was THE fulcrum of basically anything the Cavs did.
For Golden State, the story was of course Draymond’s all-consuming devastation.
However it was surprising to see such heavy interplay between Klay and Green, which I definitely did not get a sense of watching the game. We even got Mo Williams and Ian Clark sightings (!!) thanks to extended garbage time.
Game 3:
With Golden State getting wrecked as hard as they did, I expected their map to be much sparser.
The Cavs offense, on the other hand, started to revolve more around their two best players.
Look at the weight of that Kyrie-LeBron connection. And even if it was not quite peak GSW-level ball movement, Cleveland’s role players were the most involved they’ve been all series.
Game 4:
This game was Iguodala at his Finals MVP best, tearing down the Cavs to their worst, aided by Curry putting them on ice.
Interestingly, Kerr shortened his rotation in this game, though he was still able to extract meaningful minutes out of McAdoo. Even though from the Cavs side, the Irving-LeBron connection was strong again (a trend to note, with the phasing out of Love from the offense), the Warriors reduced every other Cleveland player to bystander status with a ridiculous defensive game in the second half.
Game 5:
For the Warriors, this was easily their worst map of the entire series, as without Draymond, both their offense and defense fell into disarray.
Not so coincidentally, the Cavaliers thrived.
For the third straight game, the Irving-LeBron connection was strong, but the map was unexpectedly relatively bare considering that those two accounted (via score or assist) for 97 of the Cavs 112 points, suggesting (correctly) a lot of isolation.
Game 6:
In retrospect, it became pretty easy to see the Warriors were starting to come apart at the seams, as their assist maps became consistently sparse, and Steph couldn’t rescue them.
The Cavaliers though? Sitting pretty with LeBron James leading the way.
JR Smith and Tristan Thompson bossed this game next to James and Kyrie, as Thompson staked his claim to be Love’s replacement in the Big 3. At this point, it’s clear that Cleveland is willing to win with its own brand of isolation basketball centered around LeBron.
Game 7:
Believeland. Draymond Green’s excellence is the only reason this game was as intensely close as it was.
Golden State’s assist map looked eerily similar to that of Cleveland:
but that map only matches one team’s identity, and it’s the one with LeBron James. Both teams left it all out on the court, but Love had the biggest defensive stand of his career (in the most engaged game he had in this series), Irving hit the biggest shot of his career, and LeBron had the supernova all-around impact that defines his game, and which no other player in the league, not even Draymond, can touch at his best. Game, set, match.