NBA season preview: One crucial stat for every NBA team
Cleveland Cavaliers: Starting defense
The Cavaliers were delighted when USC’s Evan Mobley, a 7-foot defensive stalwart, fell to them with the third overall pick back in July. Mobley projects to have the skill set of the modern big man with the intangibles that are standard for the league’s best centers.
He’s long, can shoot from outside, and defended the paint stoutly for the Trojans, blocking 8.8 percent of attempts while on the court; one of the NCAA’s best all-time marks.
Mobley will play a pivotal role for a reeling Cavaliers team in many facets, but none more important than interior defense. The Cavaliers’ starting group — which included Larry Nance and returner Jarret Allen in the middle — allowed a 117-point defensive rating on a rather large sample of 276 possessions last season, per Cleaning the Glass.
The Cavaliers’ first step out of mediocrity is building a stable defensive foundation, which looks promising when centered around Allen and Mobley. If the starters can hold the opponents’ most-lethal lineups to a league-average offensive efficiency, then it’s time to pontificate on the next era of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Detroit Pistons: 3-point shot differential
While the Pistons were one of the league’s worst teams last year, Dwayne Casey utilized some gambits to maximize his team’s lackluster ability to win games. One such tactic was to take more 3-pointers than the opponent, and hope that such shots went in.
Piston opponents took a mere 33 percent of their shots from beyond the arc last season, which ranked fourth overall according to Cleaning the Glass. Detroit took a roughly league-average 35 percent of their shots from 3-point range.
While seemingly marginal, a two percent differential from outside on 7,100 possessions assuming the Pistons’ season-long percentage of 35 percent on 3-point attempts would result in 60 additional points for the home team. Again, this sounds nominal but it translates to at least a win or two for the Pistons, a substantial percentage of their twenty wins last season.
While Detroit did add number one overall pick, Cade Cunningham, expectations for the upcoming season are largely unchanged for the Pistons. As a result, Casey will likely employ a similar strategy to juice the Pistons’ win total again this year.
Indiana Pacers: Rebound percentage
The Indiana Pacers will have something to prove this year after missing the play-in tournament entirely last season. Some of their struggles were due to injuries to key rotational players, but the on-court performance, even at full health, felt uninspiring.
The Pacers were an average team last season, according to the numbers, ranking 14th overall in both defense and offense. The Pacers would point out that their expected win total was slightly higher than their realized record of 34-38, a consolation that doesn’t absolve them of an underwhelming regular season.
The most surprising deficiency, especially given their frontcourt depth, was Indiana’s inability to control the glass on both sides of the ball. Opponents rebounded 28.5 percent of their misses last season against the Pacers, the league’s worst mark by a full percentage point, per Cleaning the Glass.
Indiana rebounded only 23 percent of its misses, translating to 400 more possessions for its opponents last season. At the highest level of basketball, it’s difficult to overcome that wide of a gap in scoring opportunities.
These Pacers, whether they decide to make a long-prognosticated roster change or not, will need to focus on controlling the glass if they expect to make a run for the postseason.
Milwaukee Bucks: Opponent 3-point Attempts
Not a typo — the 2021 NBA Champions have a similar profile to a Miami Heat team that should prove to be a worthy foe in the battle for supremacy over the Eastern Conference. But there was one stark difference between how the Bucks, who gave up the fifth-most 3-point attempts last year, and the Heat defended the 3-pointer.
Miami, who again allowed the second-most corner threes last season, was willing to concede even the most valuable of 3-point opportunities. Milwaukee tactically limited these attempts, allowing the 18th-most attempts from the corners, which signaled a clear dictation to differentiate between “good” and “bad” 3-point opportunities.
When the Bucks allowed opponents to shoot more than 40 percent of their attempts from beyond the arc, which occurred 33 times in the regular season and playoffs last season, they were still a strong 18-16 overall. (They were 6-2 in games where they allowed more than 40 percent of opponent attempts from above-the-break.)
There is undoubtedly some luck included in these data — Milwaukee opponents simply missed shots that Miami opponents happened to make. Such is the NBA, at the mercy of the basketball gods who mercilessly dictate outcomes as they please.
Superstitions aside, we can also be probabilistic in assuming that players make shorter corner 3-pointers at a greater rate than those that come farther away from the basket (we have data, and common sense, that concludes this).
If Milwaukee allows the “right” shots again this year — with some help from the gods of course — they should be an elite defense and title contender once again.