Synergy Stats - Individual Offensive Plays, 2013-14 Regular Season Findings

I love this stuff. Thanks.

 

Great stuff!!

Any synergy stats on Asik and the rest of the bench?
(Garcia, DMo, Casspi & JHam)

 

so basically what they have been doing mostly are wrong. another solid prove they've been pursuing the wrong direction since the beginning of the season.

 

Best thread ive seen all day!

 

We need to look at the splits of these numbers based on the strength of the defense played. The numbers against strong regular season defenses are probably more indicative of what we need to do. As presented now, I think the numbers are too skewed to draw anything from them.

I'd be surprised if the data against strong defenses are very different from what the results look like at the end of the playoffs.

 

You can't draw sweeping conclusions like this from simple Synergy numbers. The game isn't played in a vacuum.

A quick example, which would be one of many given your conclusions:

Jones is effective in the post because he almost exclusively goes into the post when he has a mismatch after a rotation.

 

great stats!

the OP mentioned that Harden's effectiveness centers a lot on his ability to draw fouls but his iso efficiency is quite poor. when he is cutting or receiving the ball on spot ups, his efficiency soars. logically, a lot of ball movement and movement away from the ball with Harden as the finisher takes advantage of his strengths. Harden as the finisher can also draw a lot of fouls. Much better than using iso just to take advantage of his ability to draw fouls with the caveat of being error prone and inefficient. As a receiver, you eliminate that. Forget the iso, make all the Rockets offensive players learn to keep moving without the ball. There were very few isos with Harden when he was quite successful at OKC.

 

Terrence Jones is going to be an absolute monster soon.

 

And um, don't get too ahead of yourself Mr.Synergy. This is judging pure scoring. Harden is by far the best passer on the team and in any case, the most dangerous player on the team with the ball in his hands because of it.

 

I noticed the stats don't take into account assists or further passes that result in points. That's huge, no? Jeremy Lin is a good spot up shooter, but Harden is awful at iso's. I wonder how Jeremy is getting those open looks? Could it be from the attention Harden gets on an ISO or other play? Man, I thought Synergy stats were better than that. They don't really tell me enough without the passing info.

 

You are going to be extremely dissapointed in how the next 2 - 3 years play out.

 

1. One issue with the way these plays are categorized is that a lot of times what is coded an "iso" happens when a team did run a play set, but it didn't generate an open shot so the team is left to go one-on-one as the clock runs down.

Given this, "isos" are going to be a comparatively low value play for almost every player. Moreover, the issue may not be that a team chooses to go with "iso" too often, it may be that the way it runs the other plays isn't crisp enough to generate an easy shot (like a pass to a cutter for a dunk or an open spot up corner 3) often enough.

A piece of info that may be interesting to see is how the Rockets' frequency and efficiency for "iso" and various other kinds of plays compare to that of other teams.

2. The "pick and roll ball handler" play may be similar to "iso" in that it's what happened when the other better options didn't materialize-- the defense didn't leave the roll man or another player open for a layup or a spot up J, so the ball handler puts up a shot with various degree of difficulty.

A team also tends to go to a random quick pick and roll at times when the clock is running down either as a result of nothing becoming open or as a result of a team deliberately running the clock down on offense.

Anyhow, the info is interesting but must be read within the context of how a game often happens.

 

Don't forget 2 for 1's. they're by design lower percentage but for a reason, and almost always come off isos or quick pnrs

But if you look at the numbers, the solution would be put the ball in Harden's hands, he sees the lowest increase from on ball to off ball whilst simultaneously having the best on ball performance, which is umm, what we did.

There is no player in the nba who is better on ball than off ball, the closest are Lebron, Durant and CP3 (shocked i bet).

The other issue I have is that there's a difference between recognising when the defense makes a mistake, and creating the play, basket cuts are a perfect example, Dwight's pick and rolls, Harden's hand offs etc are another, watch the videos, the 3 hand-off freebies they have is Matthews getting himself stuck on a screen.

High % plays that occur infrequently are almost always the result of a defensive lapse (Harden isn't the only one who does these....)

 

We need to post up Dwight, because he needs to be able to do it when the playoffs roll around. He carried us in a few of those Portland games with his low post game.