Bam's Q by Q usage last night:
1: 52%
2: 49%
3: 45%
4: 56%
His highest usage in any Q (7+ minutes) all year was 42% before last night.
No one else this year had 4 Qs in a game with 45+% usage. Jaylen Brown had 3 Qs in a game, several guys had 2.
Other notes
- Nuggets being 3rd to worst vs 5s is suggestive
- Toronto is 5th worst vs 1s, 2nd best vs 3s, 3rd best vs 5s
- UTA among worst vs all positions. Effort maybe?
Inspired by how the Celtics' bigs were shut down last night vs the Spurs, here are the team defenses best against different positions.
- The Spurs force opposing 5s to -1.0 net pts/100 poss, 2nd behind OKC
- D vs 1s has the widest variation and strong correlation to overall D
Charlotte's magical starting lineup - their individual offensive and defensive Net Pts per 100 possession when part of it and when not.
- Everyone's offense is significantly better, Diabate the least
- On defense, each individual is better, but not by so much to be significant
Since the 2023 Championship season, here's how some of the Nuggets' mainstays have done on offense with and without Jokic.
- Braun and Murray have declined quite a bit
- Gordon has been about equally good. His assists go up without Jokic, though shooting declines
How to do the accounting is from Basketball beyond Paper, www.amazon.com/Basketball-b...
Yesterday's GSW-UTA game is an example of why 4 Factors *Accounting* is useful. The Ws shot 16/52 (31%) from 3, the Jazz 12/34 (35%). Who got more from their 3s? The Ws made more. The Jazz shot it better.
Accounting has -0.5 Net Pts for GSW, +4.0 for UTA
espnanalytics.com/nba-box?id=2...
The race for #2 in the East: NYK's chances have declined from 56% to 28% in two games in LA
The race for #5/#6 in the East: TOR, MIA w/best chances
The race for #3/#4 in the West: Really tight
Most inconsistent players, Lakers bad fit, ++
www.espn.com/nba/story/_/...
Third are the game logs for players. This is Hannah Hidalgo's, for instance, just for 3pt shooting.
Second on the list are the Awards Leaders.
Because Net Pts is granular and captures both efficiency and volume, it can do that for a player overall or on defense or on rebounds or passing or forcing turnovers. This page shows leaders in those things.
espnanalytics.com/wcbb-award-l...
Women's college basketball has a new source of data. ESPN Analytics now has this, a site with the Net Points player metric that is accurate and granular. It paints a broad analytics picture around teams and players, starting with the Daily Summary:
espnanalytics.com/wcbb-daily-s...
You can see that Jalen Brunson's defense has actually been good since about mid-January. It was quite bad before then. You know what happened then? Brunson called a players-only meeting. Numbers align with the story well here.
espnanalytics.com/nba-player-g...
Next was a fantastic panel on how organizations compete as their analytics increasingly converge at the SSAC with @sethwalder.bsky.social, @deanolytics.bsky.social, Brian Burke, Phil Orlins, & @johnpark52.bsky.social. Highly recommend www.youtube.com/live/SSBw-lY... (3/7)
If you're going to watch the ACC Men's Tournament, here are some of the players, their prospect ranks (consensus), and how Net Pts values them (in college, not projecting to the NBA).
espnanalytics.com/mcbb-award-l...
Top rookies
- Knueppel is going to have the best numbers. But historically, Flagg would win ROY because people are still projecting him as having the best future.
- Several positive rookies is a good sign
- Queen and Richard were solid/good to around Christmas, then fell
Tonight's Cleveland-Detroit game is critical for the Cavs if they want a top 2 seed, but not particularly so to maintain a top 4 seed.
They face each other next Tuesday and the Cavs would help themselves a lot to win both.
Of the critical games over the last two days, the only team that won was Phoenix last night (and it was critical for the Lakers, too).
- PHO has improved chance to 27% for top 6
- LAL at 54%, MIA at 21%, LAC 5% for top 6
- CLE still has a 97% chance at top 4
The Spurs have done pretty well without Wemby this year. Better with him, but still good without.
It looks like it's De'Aaron Fox and Keldon Johnson who have done better on offense with Wemby out. Castle has actually done a little better on D.
Got to join the Wharton Moneyball podcast yesterday to talk about the state of the NBA and why @deanolytics.bsky.social belongs in the basketball hall of fame. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
What this basically says is that one of Denver's top 5 critical games the rest of the way to maintaining a top 4 seed is on Sunday @ GSW.
They win that game 58% of the time when they stay in the top 4. They win it just 42% when they don't.
You can explain ~60% of the variation on prospect ranks among our top 30 in net pts per game just using that metric and their age. (ValueExp - is a quick transformation of Rank)
This is just a quick tell on why best college players aren't best prospects.
espnanalytics.com/mcbb-award-l...
These are the records that teams need to have to make the play-in or to achieve a top 6 seed with 90% confidence.
Here are some significant players who have changed teams this and how well they are doing relative to before the trade. Not a lot of games yet, so things haven't stabilized.
This came out.
Visual storytelling using Net Points.
Here's some quick/dirty numbers from the NBA/MCBB. There is good consistency, but not perfect consistency across leagues.
I'll have to dig it up. Sorry for the delay.
Not sure what you mean.
Put in values of eFG, tov%, FTr, and OR% and spit out a team Rating?
Looking at our top 10 NBA prospects in the Draft Simulator, this is how well they've done *against BPI Top 25 opponents*
- Best offense is Flemings, Boozer, Lendeborg
- Peterson and Lendeborg are high on defense
- Wagler, Dybantsa, Brown below avg on D
espnanalytics.com/nba-draft-si...
There were 27 college men's games yesterday and the top two players across all of them both came from Louisville.
Combining for +41.6 total net points, it was easily the best teammate-game of the year.
espnanalytics.com/mcbb-box?id=...
The relationship between possession use, efficiency, and overall productivity, which comes from the book Basketball beyond Paper
- Don't have to be as efficient at high usage to be productive.
- But small efficiency differences at high usage can lead to large differences in productivity
