Nylon Calculus: Categorizing NBA teams by offensive style for 2020-21
By Ian Levy
Here is a look at how each NBA team uses shot selection, ball movement, player movement and pace to try and create offensive efficiency.
Every team has the same goal on offense — score as many points as possible. But every team goes about that in a different way, using different patterns of movement, different rhythms of passing and shot distribution. The Clippers and the Jazz are the third- and fourth-most efficient offenses in the league this season, separated by just two-tenths of a point per 100 possessions. And yet they couldn’t be any more different in how they approach the challenge of scoring.
For the past few seasons, we’ve used offensive style charts as a way of visualizing those different approaches and it’s time to check in on what each has been doing this season. 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 of 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.
On the graphs below you’ll see a line for each team’s offense. As the line moves away from the center of the graph on each axis you’re seeing more of that stylistic trait. For example, shot selection shows a (hypothetically) more efficient shot selection the further you are from the center. Here are the subjective groups I’ve identified so far this season.
NBA offensive style: A lot of everything
This grouping is teams that rank in the 50th percentile or higher in all four stylistic traits. These teams are heavily focused on a specific shot profile — shots at the rim and from beyond the arc and they utilize plenty of movement, both of players and the ball to get there. For many, this is an idealized form of offensive efficiency. But you can see from the results that it takes more than a system — the Jazz and Pelicans are the only two of the eight teams in this group to rank in the top 10 in offensive efficiency.
NBA offensive style: The (new) Warriors model
The early-dynasty Warriors were the initial, defining template for the first group but when Kevin Durant and his deadly mid-range jumper arrived their shot selection became more balanced and they split off into this new group. Here you will generally find teams that use a lot of pace and movement but have a high-usage scorer whose personal shot-selection bends the team towards the mid-range — Russell Westbrook and Bradley Beal, Chris Paul and Devin Booker, De’Aaron Fox and Joel Embiid.
NBA offensive style: We’re fine with it
This group is similar to the previous, with a strong offensive presence who bends the team’s shot selection towards the mid-range — Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, Collin Sexton and Darius Garland. But in both cases, they try to squeeze extra efficiency out of lots of ball movement. Obviously, this strategy works a lot better when Jokic is the one doing the passing.
NBA offensive style: It’s the shots, stupid
The teams in this group all emphasize shot selection — lots of 3-pointers and shots at the rim — and don’t seem to pay much attention to other elements. In the case of the Mavericks and Trail Blazers, it’s because of the dominant ball-handling and creation abilities of Damian Lillard and Luka Doncic. In the case of the Detroit Pistons, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
NBA offensive style: Run and spot-up
The teams in this group play an up-tempo game, generally with a high degree of ball movement and use an idealized shot selection. It’s interesting to see the Lakers and Rockets moving the ball a bit more to share creation responsibilities but otherwise staying fairly stationary. The Nets use a bit more ball movement around their creators but obviously, the structure for all three teams has been heavily warped by injuries and roster changes. Things might look very different if we focused in, for example, on just the rest of the season for the Nets.
NBA offensive style: Everyone else
All of the teams in this group are like faint echoes of one of the other stylistic groups. The Celtics, Heat and Bulls play with balance between the stylistic traits but don’t lean on any of them dramatically enough to make it into the “A lot of everything group.” The Clippers, Hawks, Knicks and Magic are tightly constricted around the center, each with a primary creator (or creators) who are comfortable in the mid-range and don’t inspire much notable structure around them. The Spurs and the Bucks are very much doing their own thing.
Again, the most important takeaway here is that playing a particular style is less correlated with success than having talent and skill and designing a system that highlights that talent and skill.