Nylon Calculus: Raptors-Warriors win probabilities, assist maps, style charts and more

Previewing the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors with shot charts, assist maps, offensive style charts and expected win probabilities.

Shot charts

No Kevin Durant, no problem. Even without the services of the all-everything wing, the Golden State Warriors easily took care of business against the Portland Trail Blazers, winning the series 4-0. It is somewhat understandable that Stephen Curry’s offensive genius is expected to hold up regardless of the presence of Durant, but the improved offensive play of the lease offensively gifted members of the Hampton’s Five (Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala) has been a major bonus.

Green had a true shooting percentage of 52.6 in the regular season on 13.1 percent usage, which has increased to 56.8 percent and 17.5 percent respectively in the postseason. Iguodala has a similar story of improvement, going from a 58.7 to a 59.3 true shooting percentage and 10.4 percent to 13.6 percent usage. These improvements have helped propel the Warriors into the Finals, despite the absence of Durant and the up and down play of Klay Thompson. The figures below shows the points per shot surfaces for Green, Thompson, and Iguodala for when Durant was on the floor vs. off the floor.

After an extremely physical and draining seven-game series against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Toronto Raptors dropped their first two against the Milwaukee Bucks and then neatly ran off four wins in a row. In the pivotal Games 5 and 6, the Raptors put the clamps on the Bucks, holding them to 99 and 94 points. As was the case against the Sixers, the Raptors relied on a crushing defense and the individual brilliance of Kawhi Leonard to carry them.

With the Golden State Warriors looming, it’s unlikely that the Raptors will deviate from that plan and attempt to outshoot the Warriors in a run-and-gun series. Without Durant to draw the obvious Kawhi matchup on defense, who he covers (and subsequently erases) will be a huge storyline. Further, the ability of the Warriors 4s and 5s to pull the Raptors out of the paint with deep shooting will theoretically alleviate some of the interior pressure the Raptors can create, as seen in the decreased efficiency of the Bucks in the paint and around the basket in the chart below.

— Andrew Patton (@anpatt7)

Offensive style chart

These charts are not meant to evaluate whether an offense is good or bad. They are designed to help illustrate how teams go about the goal of trying to put the ball in the basket. Each team’s offense is evaluated on four stylistic spectrums.

Ball movement is measured with the average touch time for each team, from the NBA’s player tracking statistics. A lower average touch time means the ball is moving from player to player more quickly.

Player movement is measured with a combination of different NBA.com tracking statistics and works out to average distance traveled per 24 seconds of offensive possession.

Pace is measured with the average length of an offensive possession from Inpredictable, a more accurate representation for how quickly a team is working than traditional pace.

Shot selection is measured with MoreyBall percentage — in this case the percentage of a team’s true shooting opportunities that came at the rim, from the free throw line, or on a 3-pointer. It’s a generalized measure but captures something about how much each team hews to the shots that are, on average, the most efficient.

— Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)

Assist maps: Kawhi Leonard

They don’t give out an MVP Award for the postseason, but if they did, Kawhi Leonard would be a very solid pick. He’s at the top of the leaderboards for Win-Probability Added, Player-Impact Plus-Minus, Win Shares, you name it. And he’s already hit one of the biggest game-winning shots in the history of the NBA playoffs. Amazingly, his impact has only grown since he dropped in that crazy buzzer beater a few weeks ago and he appears to be peaking at the perfect time.

During the regular season, the Raptors managed Leonard’s load, playing him in just 60 of the team’s 82 contests. And even when Leonard was on the court, he shared the offensive burden with his teammates. At just 4.1 minutes of possession per game, Leonard had the ball in his hands less often than Raptors Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet and just a bit more than backup guard Jeremy Lin. During the playoffs. however, Leonard’s time of possession has ramped up from 3.9 minutes per game against the Magic, to 5.4 against the Sixers, to 6.0 during the first four games against the Bucks. And in the last two games of the Eastern Conference Finals, Leonard pounded the ball to a Hardenian degree — reaching a mark of 7.4 minutes of possession per game. Leonard’s assist averages have followed the same curve, climbing from 3.3 per night during the first 16 playoff games to 8.0 over the last two. And it’s been more than just a matter of Leonard having more opportunities; he has also been increasingly assertive when the ball finds him. His drive rate has ballooned from 14 per night in the regular season, to 18 during his first 16 postseason games, to 27 in his last two games.

Contrasting Leonard’s assist charts from the first 16 playoff games vs. the last two playoff games reflect his shift to a more ball-dominant, aggressive style.

Over his first 16 postseason games, Leonard managed only 16 kick-out assists (those assists that are passed from near the paint to outside the 3-point line). Whereas, in closing-out the Bucks in Games 5 and 6, Leonard racked up nearly the same number of kick-out assists (13) in just two games.

Per PBPstats, Leonard’s 53 assists during the first 16 postseason games were nearly perfectly divided between passes that led to 2-pointers (26) and passes that led to 3-pointers (27). In contrast, during the last two games, 14 of Leonard’s 16 assists were converted behind the 3-point line.

Keeping Kawhi out of the lane will be a priority for the Warriors. If he can penetrate, he’ll be able to get to his favored shooting spots and set up his teammates with open shots. The challenges posed by Leonard will be amplified by the absence of Kevin Durant, who guarded the Raptors star for more possessions than any other Warrior during the teams’ regular-season matchup. Klay Thompson is another potential Leonard-deterrent, but Golden State’s defense did not fare well in the 26 possessions that the pair were matched up during the regular season.

There may be no such things as a postseason MVP — but if the Warriors can’t find a way to keep Kawhi out of the lane — he will find himself in position to win his second Finals MVP, as part of the Raptors first championship.

— Todd Whitehead (@CrumpledJumper)

Win probabilities

To project the series, I am using my in-season game projection model. The model is trained off historical game data and accounts for rest, travel, team strength, and matchup. Since I began using the model to predict outcomes, I have been able to correctly identify the winner in about 70 percent of games and has correctly identified the winner in 78 percent of games in these playoffs.

The Raptors come into the series as the smallest of favorites, winning in just 56 percent of the 10,000 simulations. The average length of the series was 5.8 games, with just over a 30 percent chance for the series to go seven games. The big questions for the series will be the availability of Kevin Durant for the Warriors. For these projections, I have treated him as out for the first two games, and fully healthy for the rest of the series. Durant playing in more or less of the series could drastically shift the series outlook — for instance, the healthy Warriors would be favorites despite not having home court advantage. However his health eventually shakes out, this series could be a real treat to watch with both teams having the talent to win it all.

— Jacob Goldstein (@JacobEGoldstein)