[Calling out larsv8]James Harden's Turnovers

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My favorite by far is the end of the quarter, top of the key, ISO play with lazy street ball style handles. A half court press comes or his defender just fronts hard and it ends up with a buzzer beating clear lane lay up for the opponent. It happens like 1/2 the time he does his stupid "hey check me out Swaaag" end of quarter routine.

 

My favourite Harden turnover is when he passes to one of his teammates.

 

He almost has as many turnovers as his season total 2 years ago.


And it's the WORST kind of turnovers, leading to fast breaks and easy baskets.

Nylon Calculus wrote a great article about these turnovers:

http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/02/15/we-know-better-now-a-note-on-outdated-statistics/

Points Off of Turnovers

For as long as I can remember, this has been a stat commentators have pointed to as a demonstration of how sloppy offense is compromising a team’s defense. Which is an important thing to know – a weak point of possession-based analysis is ignoring the degree to which the end of one play affects how the next might play out. But all turnovers are not created equal, in large part because all ensuing possessions are not equal. In fact, the difference could not be starker between a live ball turnover1 and a travel, or pass thrown out of bounds. As one of my high school coaches liked to thunder after a lazy ball reversal was intercepted in practice: “if you’re going to throw that pass, just throw the ball into the stands. At least then we can get back on D!”

Possessions after steals are some of the highest expectation plays in possible – hence the high value assigned to steals in many player projection and valuation systems. By contrast, deadball turnovers do not lead to any greater likelihood of scoring than other stoppages of play.

This isn’t to say forcing deadball turnovers is a bad thing, ever. There are certain advantages in terms of fast break opportunities to gaining possession via defensive rebound, on the order of about about a quarter of a point per possession on aggregate. That bump pales in comparison to the edge gained by not allowing a shot at all – with offensive rebound chances factored in, even the very worst shot attempt an opponent may throw up has a much higher expectation than the extra chance of transition play from a miss, so ensuring a zero point possession is a great outcome for a defense.

But in terms of describing how defending well can lead to good offense, steals and deadball turnovers are apples and rutabagas. Points on plays following steals can at least conceivably flow from the now-defense being scrambled as a result of the sudden and disorganized end of the previous offensive possession. By contrast points which occur on the possession following a turnover resulting in a stoppage are simply the points scored on the next possession and could easily have come following a made basket, or a trip to the free throw line or even out of a timeout.

Just as teams aren’t uniform in how often they turn the ball over, there is a sizable variation in terms of how those turnovers occur. Thru Tuesday, here is a comparison of all 30 teams in terms of total turnovers versus opponents’ steals:

Dashboard 1 (77)

One of the few criticisms leveled at the Warriors this year is their propensity to throw the ball around at times on offense. And it’s true, they do turn the ball over, with a higher than average proportion as a result of steals. As the chart above shows, the Celtics have a similar number of total turnovers, but significantly fewer as a result of steals. Thus Golden State is compromising their own defense a little more often, possibly indicating an area where their looseness (or profligacy, depending on how critical one wishes to be of a historically stupendous offensive unit) might hurt them slightly.

All of this is basically demonstrating that ‘points off of turnovers” isn’t telling quite the story commentators are intending, and that perhaps “points allowed off of steals” would better illustrate that specific point.

 

Can you let the game at least get the halftime before making a thread about three turnovers

 

You will be ignored and listed!

 

Just wait until the great savior Donatas gets back. Then it will all turn around.

 

He just threw a behind the back pass to the other team.

Seriously wtf

 

I knew this thread was going to happen. Lol

He's done it like 4 times this half. He looks 1 step slower than everyone else.

 

He does have 4 turnovers so far

 

SO what? Other high usage players have high TO's too

 

It doesn't really make sense how you can increase your TO ratio when this is James' 4th year in the Rockets system and 6th year overall in the league. His workload did not increase this year and he did not sustain an injury worth noting. Then again, this whole season doesn't make sense so this fits right in.

 

Oh it was quite bad. Gave me quite the chuckle.

I'm at the laughing stage.

 

He's the MVP of the NBA last year.

If you look at the Turnover leaders, they are all NBA type players like Harden, Westbrook, and Curry.

Harden needs help. It's not his fault his role players suck

 

He just had another one lmao