NBA 2013-2014

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

I don't pray for sports stuff, sorry. But if not LBJ there will be other stars eventually. No worries.

At church basketball you don't even pray for everyone to have a good time and remain healthy?

[TripletDaddy]

At church basketball you don't even pray for everyone to have a good time and remain healthy?

Never.im fine if harm AND accident befall others.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Klay Thompson came off the bench tonight, with Iggy and Barnes getting the start on the perimeter for the Warriors. Certainly makes for a solid defensive lineup with Bogut/Barnes/Iggy, to help cover for Curry and Lee.

[Surfah]

Klay Thompson came off the bench tonight, with Iggy and Barnes getting the start on the perimeter for the Warriors. Certainly makes for a solid defensive lineup with Bogut/Barnes/Iggy, to help cover for Curry and Lee.

Jimmer is going to record a DNP. Isaiah Thomas is going to lead the Kings in shot attempts this year.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Apparently he's pretty much ambidextrous and the Cavs have been anticipating potentially forcing him to be more one-hand dominant since they drafted him.

Since switching to right-handed FTs this summer, Tristan Thompson is now 78.4% in FIBA/NBA games, up from 60.8% last season as lefty. Crazy.

- Tom Haberstroh

[MarkGrace]

The new common sense.

Open shooters should get the ball
Here's another: Open shots are good. Really good. Way better than covered shots, as a group. The evidence is anywhere you look for it. A couple of years ago Ryan Feldman of ESPN Stats & Info. charted a bunch of crunch-time performances for TrueHoop, and found open role players vastly outperformed covered superstars. That was an honest, but simple look. Any number of more intense analyses have found similarly. There are great players and so-so players in the NBA, but the differences between them are seldom vast enough that you'd ever pick a covered guy over a wide open one. At this level, an open shooter is gold. And here's some recent affirmation, with a peek into the Rockets' famously private team of analysts. What is that geeky team obsessing over? Assistant coach Kelvin Sampson just answered a question about that from Rockets.com's Jason Friedman:
I’ll give you a good example: challenging shots -- we like to be around 70 percent shot challenges per game. I’ll get updated stats during the game about where we are in that category. Usually when you don't contest a shot they go in. When (Golden State head coach) Mark Jackson used to do games on TV, he would always say, "Hand down, man down." There’s a reason why you get a hand up. Well, we chart that.

"Usually when you don't contest a shot they go in." That's a big thing to say, and a big thing to know. It makes surprisingly clear what matters at both ends, and it means given a choice you'd sure like to shoot those uncontested ones.

We got confused for a while there. Every high-school coach knows all about the value of open shots, but I think we all kind of wondered is that true even if it means taking shots away from the best scorers on the planet, guys like Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant? And the answer is, yes, it's true even then. If a shooter is in position and open, that's almost always a better option than a covered guy.

That used to be something we theorized, but it's getting, now, to be something we know.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...l-common-sense

Still floors me how many morans would rather see a star jack up a shot no matter what in certain situations instead of move the ball to the open man (which is, and always has been, the correct and most beneficial play).

[Indy Coug]

The new common sense.


http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...l-common-sense

Still floors me how many morans would rather see a star jack up a shot no matter what in certain situations instead of move the ball to the open man (which is, and always has been, the correct and most beneficial play).

IMO, this is the essence of the Dave Rose offensive system.

[MarkGrace]

IMO, this is the essence of the Dave Rose offensive system.

It's the essence of any well coached offense. Phil Jackson stated very clearly how frustrated he'd get with Kobe for not obeying the principle and his frustration was not misplaced given how many articles / reports have been written the last couple years about how much the production of an offense decreases when one player goes into hero mode.

The other common sense fact from the article is that shooting 3's a lot is a good thing.

Shoot more 3s
3s help a ton. The research started as a curio from John Hollinger that just attempting lots of 3s predicted wins. Now it's coming from any number of clever analyses. Shoot more 3s, win more. This theory has even passed a test in the field: The Rockets coached their team that way, and their offense got better. If you're not convinced yet, wait until SportVu optical tracking data makes it exceptionally clear over the next few years. It's not that every possession should end in a 3. But it's that NBA teams have been too careful with them, and that any coach who talks about "good shots" as distinct from 3s is wrong. Those are great shots.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...l-common-sense

I don't watch BYU, but I seem to recall they get a lot of 3's up as well. There's a link in there to a study from last year's Sloan conference that I'm hoping to read when I get the chance: http://www.sloansportsconference.com...0the%20NBA.pdf

[smokymountainrain]

Anthony Davis looks like the early favorite for pre-season MVP. In all seriousness, however, I imagine he's going to take a big leap this season if he can stay healthy and I like the the combo of Morrow and Jrue Holliday in the backcourt. New Orleans could surprise some people this year.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

The new common sense.


http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...l-common-sense

Still floors me how many morans would rather see a star jack up a shot no matter what in certain situations instead of move the ball to the open man (which is, and always has been, the correct and most beneficial play).

I disagree. I think LeBron should be more selfish and take the fadeaway jumpers over 2 defenders from 22 ft instead of passing to a teammate for an open shot near the hoop. Everyone knows that is what the real superstars do.

[MarkGrace]

Abbott got some tweets from Phil Jackson following his last common sense entry. Some good stuff.

Just read a link to H Abbot’s ESPN article about new ideas in NBA thru the advent of stats. 2 thing Henry: Red Holzman had 2 rules: “Hit the open man” and “see the ball on defense”…nothing new about getting ball to open man.

Which prompted this:

Great to hear from you, coach. And first off: When Red Holzman and SportVU agree, that's a beautiful thing. That's as good a definition as any of what interests me. What an endorsement that you, the winningest coach, have long been inspired by principles I'm calling timeless.

As for it not being new ... naturally. We agree there, too. The example I offered, remember, was eating vegetables. Your grandma always knew it was good for you and your doctor always suspected the same.

But there were all kinds of health theories back then. My grandma didn't just believe in vegetables. She also believed heartily in the long-term health benefits of butter. What's new is that medical science has dug in and the vegetable thing has ascended from one of many theories to a bright shining fact. Some age-old lessons look smarter than ever, glowing in a hail of affirmations.

And butter for health? Well, time has been a little rougher on that one.

This new basketball common sense business is about identifying those last theories standing, those happy conclusions that are here for the long haul. I assume neither the coaches nor the stat geeks are correct on every point. They should and do test each other. But here and there the conclusions overlap and agree in interesting ways.

Hit the open man
This open man thing is a wonder. Red knew to hit the open man. You knew to hit the open man. The video says to hit the open man. The stats scream to hit the open man. For all these reasons, I call hitting the open man common sense.

And yet the interesting part is how many plays don't, even when old and new signs alike point that way. Some, in fact, including the Thunder with Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, and even your own Lakers in crunch time, run plays that are designed to get a covered guy a shot.

Call it analytics if you want, or just watch the video, see who's open and count the makes and misses, wins and losses. Count enough plays and the argument for the open man is killer.

Of course you know this; you tell us in books you battled Kobe on this for years.

Indeed, the selflessness of great teamwork is the theme of your excellent "Eleven Rings," in ways I found truly inspiring -- right down to reading and writing about the phenomenal Sebastian Junger "War" book you recommend. Junger calls combat "a series of quick decisions and rather precise actions carried out in concert with ten or twelve other men." Then he writes: "The choreography always requires that each man make decisions based not on what's best for him, but on what's best for the group. If everyone does that, most of the group survives. If no one does, most of the group dies. That, in essence, is combat."

The most obvious hoops equivalent, of course, is giving up the rock. You hurt your box score stats, highlights and endorsements. You help your team. You've been making this case all career long. I'm here with some good news: the deeper the stat geekery, the more it has your back.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...l-common-sense

[MarkGrace]

The other part of the last common sense entry was related to 3pt shooting.

Shoot more 3s
3s help a ton. The research started as a curio from John Hollinger that just attempting lots of 3s predicted wins. Now it's coming from any number of clever analyses. Shoot more 3s, win more. This theory has even passed a test in the field: The Rockets coached their team that way, and their offense got better. If you're not convinced yet, wait until SportVu optical tracking data makes it exceptionally clear over the next few years. It's not that every possession should end in a 3. But it's that NBA teams have been too careful with them, and that any coach who talks about "good shots" as distinct from 3s is wrong. Those are great shots.

Relatively brief, and mostly a reference to this study from the last Sloan conference (did I already post this? I feel like I have): http://www.sloansportsconference.com...0the%20NBA.pdf

This also prompted some comments from Phil:

Two, Utah Jazz was perennially the best in West

The Jazz also were the team with fewest 3pt attempts yearly. Basketball is played to strengths of individuals. 3pters are not always the key

And more good stuff from Abbott in the response:

The Jazz make an extra point
Then there's this point about the Jazz. For starters: This team is a total outlier, an oddity, a cherry-picked example. You can't find three more like it; nearly all the best offenses are 3-focused these days. Of course a team with John Stockton and Karl Malone, probably the best pick-and-roll combination ever, was efficient. They both had conservative shot selection. The whole squad carefully worked Sloan's system to find easy looks. And boy did they ever know how to draw fouls -- those teams got a mind-blowing percentage of their points from the free throw line. Those are enough ingredients to make a great offense whether you shoot a lot of 3s or not.

This is like my grandma. She ate tons of healthy stuff and walked her dogs hours a day, seven days a week. That she lived to a ripe old age -- it probably wasn't the butter, you know? It was the other stuff.

Despite all that, as I'll explain, even your handpicked example still demonstrates my point that an uptick in 3s can help almost any offense.

In the first five years Jerry Sloan coached Stockton and Malone, the Jazz offense typically ended the season as the league's eighth-best. They were good.

Then things went crazy.

The Jazz went on a four-year run starting in 1994-95 when they averaged almost 114 points per 100 possessions, a big improvement. In this period they never had an offense worse than fourth. In the final year of that run, before age caught up to them, they didn't have their best offense ever, but they did have the very best offense in the league. This production carried Stockton and Malone to their only two Finals appearances, in 1997 and 1998.

What made the Jazz offense so special in those four years? The most obvious innovation, to my eyes, was the arrival of marvelous shooter Jeff Hornacek. He came from the Sixers at the end of the 1993-1994 season, and by the time they worked him into the offense the next fall, the Jazz started scoring like water.

Now opponents would pay for crowding Stockton and Malone.

And, importantly: Now the Jazz, at long last, whether in deference to Hornacek or the league's three-year dalliance with a shorter 3-point line, dramatically increased the number of 3s they shot. In Sloan's first five years, when the offense was merely good, his Jazz attempted an average of 504 a season. In the four seasons the offense peaked, they nearly doubled that number, averaging 847 a season. They went from an average of 505 points a season from 3s, to 946.

Today, teams shoot twice as much as that, and even then the Jazz lagged the league.

But nevertheless the truth is their offense took off when they did exactly what I'm prescribing: embrace the 3.

Which is common, and probably could have happened a lot more. You say it's about personnel, and of course you're right. But the Jazz had the shooters. In 1997-98 Hornacek made 44 percent of his 3s. Stockton was at 43 percent, with Howard Eisley at 41. Wonderful numbers! This is a team that led the league with 113 points per 100 possessions, but on plays when they attempted a 3 their rate soared up around 130. I don't know why they were so conservative with them, but I know those were almost certainly the team's best plays, and it's a cinch to suggest the Jazz could have scored more by doing more of that. Assume diminishing returns from tougher looks and you can still pencil in a few more points per game, not to mention more space in the paint for Malone to operate.

In the Finals that year, the Jazz lost games to your Bulls by one, four and five points.

That teams have been too conservative with 3s is not just an idea of analysts. Coaches have ever so slowly, three-and-a-half decades after the shot arrived, come to the same conclusion. Seven 3s per game was typical in the 1980s. Now that number is around 20 and rising. The green light is coming on.

What took those coaches so long?

One big part of it, I believe, is that people in the NBA, like everywhere, just don't have much of an appetite for change. You've written about this as much as anyone. Even your blatantly effective triangle, bedrock of 11 title teams, hasn't become mainstream.

But blending the right lessons of the past with the right innovations from the future can come with big rewards. And that's why some of today's basketball wisdom sounds old, and some of it sounds new.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...l-common-sense

Then you have this from Brad Stevens and Celtics camp:

According to Celtics.com reporter Marc D'Amico, Brad Stevens has been running three-point shooting drills in recent practices -- with the entire team shooting from beyond the arc. That's right, every player on the team is focusing on his three-point shooting, including Boston big men Jared Sullinger, Kris Humphries, Brandon Bass and Vitor Faverani.
You may be thinking that's not a big deal; it is, after all, just practice. But looking at the box scores of Boston's first four preseason games reveals a surprising trend: Almost everyone on the roster is attempting three-point shots.

In the first four preseason games, the Celtics have attempted 96 three-point shots, 30 more than their opponents, and it's not just the usual suspects either. The 6-foot-11-inch rookie Vitor Faverani has taken 4 three-point attempts, center Kelly Olynyk has 7 attempts and forward Jeff Green has an incredible 20 three-point attempts.

Even second-year player Jared Sullinger, who weighs in at 6-9 and 260 pounds, has taken 7 attempts from deep, which is truly remarkable given that he only managed to attempt 5 three-pointers in 45 regular season games in 2012-2013.

While it's true coach Brad Stevens was quick to point out in D'Amico's story that fans shouldn't "read too much" into the three-point "contests" the team is holding in practices, it's hard not to notice that virtually every player on the roster is capable of hitting a three-pointer and is spending valuable practice time working on it.

Given the struggles the Celtics are likely to go through in 2013-2014 scoring points without Rajon Rondo to start the season, anything at this point is conceivable -- even the possibility of an offense that utilizes the three-point shooting ability of every player on the floor

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/boston-...0205--nba.html

It will be interesting to see what the C's do once the regular season starts, and I'd also like to know how much of this philosophy is connected to the analytics. My guess is there's a strong connection.

[cougjunkie]

Did anyone catch Open Court on NBAtv last night about basketball in the 90s? Could have been an old episode but Isiah Thomas spent the majority of the show calling Karl Maloen the weak link on the Jazz for his free throw shooting. Ernie Johnson gave him a chance to change his words and he said "No weak link is the right word to use" they also talked about how the Jazz lacked that player that could beat you off the dribble in crunch time.

[The_Douger]

Like Isiah Thomas is qualified to make any objective commentary on Karl Malone. Isiah Thomas is still mad that Michael Jordan kept his washed up ass off the dream team and he thinks John Stockton "stole" his spot.

[MarkGrace]

There were some articles on this a week or two ago. He basically talked about his FT shooting, despite the fact that his own FT% was about the same as where Malone ended his career and he was a point guard.