NBA season preview: One crucial stat for every NBA team
Boston Celtics: Backcourt scoring
Boston made some semi-substantial changes in the offseason bringing in a new head coach and fortifying their backcourt with the additions of Josh Richardson and Dennis Schroder to fill the opening left by Kemba Walker.
Celtics fans are largely ambivalent about the Walker experience — he dealt with injuries throughout his time with the team and was never able to match the ceiling from his latter years with the Charlotte Hornets.
Last season, Walker’s efficiency on long mid-range jumpers dropped to 38 percent from All-NBA rates of 49 and 50 percent in 2018-19 and 2019-20, respectively. His mid-range shooting struggles were amplified by his league-average 3-point accuracy, and due to 64 percent of his shots coming from 14-feet plus, his overall efficiency deteriorated.
Both Richardson and Schroder shot an above-average efficiency from the mid-range and long-mid range for the Mavericks and Lakers last season, and the Celtics will be hoping they can replicate those performances in Boston.
The bad news for the Celtics? Both guards shot below league average from beyond the arc, Richardson at 33 percent on 634 attempts and Schroder at 34 percent on more than 800 attempts.
To compete for their first conference championship since 2010, Boston will need moderate offensive impact from players other than Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. If Richardson and Schroder should provide the additional outside stroke, the Celtics could contend in the postseason.
Brooklyn Nets: Games missed
The Nets are a rather simple team to understand: They have three of the ten best offensive players in the world and win often when the trio are in uniform. But, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, and Kevin Durant were all available for a mere seven of 72 regular-season games a year ago, which may well be the single defining statistic of the 2020-21 season.
Brooklyn is the league’s 2022 championship favorite, both in Vegas and in the opinion of the majority of unbiased fans. Combined Irving, Durant, and Harden missed eighty-three games last season, and for Brooklyn to win the championship, that number will have to drop below fifty.
New York Knicks: Opponent shooting luck
The Knicks may have been the single biggest surprise across the NBA last season, ascending from a 21-45 lottery team to 41-31 and fourth in the Eastern Conference. The biggest change came on the defensive end, with new head coach Tom Thibodeau revamping the playbook to fit his old-school style.
But, there’s also evidence that suggests what the Knicks accomplished last year was partly, or even largely, due to luck.
The Knicks held opponents to a 51 percent effective field-goal rate — an elite figure, and the second-best rate league-wide last season. New York also limited opponent efficiency across the floor, with the league’s best defensive efficiency at the rim and from beyond the arc, and the third-best rate from the mid-range.
What was concerning is that the Knicks allowed opponents to take the highest-efficiency shots, with top-10 opponent attempt rates both at the rim and from beyond the arc. Using Cleaning the Glass’s location effective field-goal metric, which calculates the field goal percentage for a league-average player on the same shot profile, the Knicks would have been the league’s second-worst shot efficiency defense.
So it will be worth following these Knicks early on to see what, if anything, they change about their defensive scheme. And if they keep the same principles, do opponents regress to the mean and shoot the ball better?
Philadelphia 76ers: Efficiency without Ben Simmons
The 76ers are the league’s most difficult team to project this upcoming season, for one obvious reason. Depending on the status of Ben Simmons and his feelings towards the organization, we could either see: Ben Simmons play for the 76ers, Ben Simmons sit out the entire season and the 76ers lose an All-Star talent completely, or Ben Simmons shipped out for an unknown return.
Given the reporting around Simmons’s latest decision to return to Philadelphia, and the rather tepid trade market for his services, the former seems like the Sixers’ best chance of competing.
Per NBA Stats, the Sixers offense and defense was elite with Ben Simmons on the court last season, with offensive and defensive ratings of 118 and 103, respectively. With Simmons off the court, those figures drop to 105 and 109 — a sign of disaster if the Sixers cannot resolve their dispute with him.
For the talk about Simmons and Embiid’s contrasting styles, Simmons’s presence did little to negatively impact the team and Embiid’s offensive efficacy. With Simmons on the court, the Sixers took the same number of shots at the rim and increased their 3-point attempts while scaling back on mid-range shots.
Luck or not, in Simmons’s nearly 1,900 minutes last season, Philadelphia shot better from every area of the floor, per Cleaning the Glass.
If the Sixers cannot find a way to amicably resolve the situation with their second-best player or get a return of 60 cents or better on the dollar, they should find themselves struggling to compete in the East.
Toronto Raptors: Free-throw rate
The Raptors are back in Canada and can resume playing games in front of their home crowd, which was undoubtedly a factor in their bizarro 27-45 record last season. With Kyle Lowry staying in Florida permanently, the Raptors will have big shoes to fill in their return to Toronto.
Without a doubt, these Raptors have defensive contributors that will make opponents’ lives a living hell during the winter slog stretch of the season as minutes pile up and rest is infrequent. Toronto could field a five-man group that could damn well be elected to the NBA’s All-Defense team; an amalgamation equal parts length and versatility.
The question for this group will be how effectively they can score the ball, even if it means relying on manufactured points from the line. The Raptors were an average offense last season, even with a top-10 rate at the free-throw line.
Toronto will have to focus on replicating that advantage this season, or generating easy points through other means like forcing opponent turnovers — they were the best in the league at it last season — or crashing the offensive glass.
With their defensive proficiency alone this team should be competitive in the second and third-tier race for the Eastern Conference playoffs. If they can figure out an offensive identity to pair with it, they could make some serious noise.