Offensive style breakdown: The speed of ball movement
“Pace and Space” vs. “Grit and Grind” — two phrases that represent two starkly contrasting playing styles. While the modern NBA has become obsessed with the quick twitch ball movement and free flowing effectiveness popularized by teams like the Spurs and Warriors, there are also many teams on the opposite end of the spectrum, teams that would much rather pound the opponent (and the basketball) into submission.
Earlier in the year, Ian Levy did some incredible work on charting offensive styles, and one of the metrics he mapped was ball movement. Ball movement has always been one of the most fascinating parts of offense to me, if only because recently we’ve become conditioned that you must have Spurs-ian passing to thrive, but on the flip side there are players like LeBron James who are still brutally effective while controlling the ball for the majority of the time. In fact, the Cavaliers’ iso-heavy strategy with LeBron as the lead battering ram was the winning formula for the most recent NBA Finals.
A really interesting way to look at ball movement, using data available from NBA Stats, is to analyze the average seconds per touch, how quickly the ball switches hands on offense. Of course, style is not the same as effectiveness, so in the graph below, I’ve charted each team’s average seconds per touch against their offensive rating.
First off, it’s pretty clear that there are four different quadrants of teams in the NBA. There are teams that have killer ball movement and killer efficiency (Golden State), teams that have an iso-heavy offense but are still efficient (Cleveland, Oklahoma City), teams that move the ball quickly, but not to great results (Philadelphia), and teams that are just upsetting to watch, that slog along on offense while still being ineffective (Brooklyn, LA Lakers).
Interestingly, of the nine teams with an offensive rating above 105, only three of them had an average seconds/touch lower than 2.7 seconds (Warriors, Spurs, Rockets). There could be a variety of reasons for this, but one thing is apparent: it’s hard to play like the Warriors. You don’t just get to wake up and decide that you’re going to have an intricately designed offense where the ball moves around at warp speed.
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Of those three teams in the top left quadrant, the Spurs were closer to the middle of the pack – not quite the passing wizards they’ve been in recent seasons. In fact, across the past three years, San Antonio’s average time per touch has steadily increased, from 2.48 seconds to 2.52 to 2.64 this past season. This shift was actually pretty apparent as the 2016 Playoffs went on, as the Spurs’ usually egalitarian offense moved towards one centered around letting Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge just try to be better than the defense, usually from inefficient spots on the court.
The NBA stats trove provides us the data to dig even deeper though. It allows us to examine the shooting efficiency classified by time spent per touch, broken into three distinct bins: less than two seconds, between two and six seconds, and greater than six seconds. In the graphs below, for each touch time bin, I’ve charted the frequency of shots versus the effective field goal percentage (eFG%). Essentially, how much of a team’s shots come after a certain amount of time on the ball, and how good are they at those shots? The longer the touch time, the more indicative it is of a shot coming from isolation play.
Again, it should come as no surprise that the Warriors were off-the-charts good at shots taken with touch time under two seconds, and that those shots constituted more of their looks than for any other team. On the flip side, despite all the initial promise that came with Alvin Gentry’s arrival, the Pelicans were near the bottom of the league for shots taken with touch time under two seconds.
Teams are just far more efficient on shots that are taken quicker and in rhythm than for shots taken after spending longer time on the ball. The only team that topped 50% eFG% for touch time longer than six seconds was the Warriors, thanks mostly to Steph Curry being able to do whatever he wants and defying all norms of basketball. And as suspected, iso-heavy teams like the Cavaliers led the NBA in frequency of shots taken after more than 6 seconds on the ball. Unexpectedly, despite all the flak that Carmelo Anthony takes for being a ball-stopper, the Knicks were actually one of the faster teams in the league when it came to average touch time. They were the fourth-fastest team in terms of average seconds per touch, and 57 percent of their shots came with less than two seconds touch time. Only nine percent of their shots came after more than six seconds spent on the ball (for comparison, the Warriors came in at eight percent).
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Finally, I also looked at how individual players performed based on touch time as well. I took a sample of about 15 players that are considered good shooters (basically, Westbrook isn’t here because he shot under 30 percent from deep) and compared their eFG% for shots taken under two seconds, shots taken after two to six seconds on the ball, and shots taken after more than six seconds.
Some players like Kyle Korver and J.J. Redick who are spot-up specialists simply don’t even take shots after six seconds. For the most part, shooting efficiency declines with more time spent on the ball. Isolation is hard. That’s why people start cringing whenever someone as talented as James Harden rears back and gets ready to dribble out the shot clock before firing away. More often than not, the shot isn’t going to go in. Chris Paul and Steph Curry were the only players with an eFG% higher than 50 percent after holding the ball for more than six seconds. And that’s what sets them apart from other good shooters. Most good scorers are great at spotting up. But it takes another level of excellence to be efficient at creating your own shot and pulling up off the dribble. A level of excellence like being the Point God or the Greatest Shooter in NBA History.