I would imagine its a little like boxing, always having to remember that you are faced up with will tend to do EVERYTHING the exact opposite of what you are normally accustomed to. That's dumbing it down I know, but it's something that I never hear about much in basketball. Baseball and football (QB at least) both seem to value lefties differently and give players priority based on being left or right handed.
This would be an interesting topic to bring up with Daryl Morey. Is there an advantage to having left-handed players on the floor. They seem to investigate anything and everything, so he may have some insight on it (whether or not he'd want to share it is another matter, of course).
This is a deep topic and a deep thread. I've found myself thinking about this from time to time. Being left handed with lots of talent is a legit advantage in this league because its outside the norm and naturally deceives a defender. Mentally a defender has to continually tell himself to guard a left handed player stronger the opposite way and most times lefty type guys are strong going both ways right and left.
Left-handers have an advantage in almost every sport, because of their rarity. Only in situations where the game inherently favor right-handedness do they lose this advantage (e.g. playing shortstop, third, or second base in baseball). This advantage is typically built into their stats: a left-hander that is a 38% 3pt shooter is not better than a right-hander that is a 38% 3pt shooter, though the lefty may typically be more open than the righty because defenders misplay him. This rarity effect can be amplified when two lefties play on the same team, as almost no defense ever encounters a PnR involving two lefties. The team with lefties will itself also have to get used to this odd combination, but they have the advantage of getting to practice with them. Having more lefties on the team is also positive because it gives your players more diverse strengths. This allows the coach more options in game planning. On the other hand, players are also a little less interchangeable, so the coach needs to work harder to tailor his plays.
Left-handedness is good for playing in the post. Remember when Dream, Barkley, and Kevin Willis would all fight to set up on the left block?
For all those folks who play pick up bball. The disadvantage of playing a lefty is your natural anticipation of defending the right hand especially when you have to make a split decision. Most of the people you play are right handed so for the most part, you position yourself to defend that way. It takes some adjustment to get used to playing a lefty.
The issue as RockingRox alluded to is most people are used to guarding right handed players, or basically doing everything in life right handed. When it's clutch time, your instinct can betray you resulting in improperly defending a lefty who can easily take advantage of the situation. What's more, lefties are used to guarding right too, so they don't have the same difficulty. I got wrecked by a left handed friend in racquetball until we played regularly enough for me to get used to not serving the ball right into his sweet spot. Once I could play to his off hand things got better, but at first everything I did was right where he wanted it, and everything he did was backwards for me.
Thanks for all the insight. Me always destroying my right-handed friends in ping-pong has always made me wonder what advantage being a lefty has in other sports.
Morey is a value buyer, meaning that he likes anyone whose production is worth more than their cost in terms of contract, flexibility, etc. So to the extent that we have or don't have a statistically significantly higher proportion of lefties on the roster (and I am not sure we do), it would imply that there is something related to being a lefty that causes the player to be undervalued. Perhaps they look odd and so GM's relying on the eye test tend to undervalue them. Or they draw more fouls. Who knows. I don't think that Morey targets these type of attributes (lefthandedness) but rather he targets production above cost (e.g., value) which may be correlated to these traits. Another example of what I mean by value is how we made a number of moves to get guys who draw a lot of fouls (and convert), e.g., Martin, Harden. Its is easy to see how this could be undervalued -- the externalities from drawing a foul (i.e., getting your team closer to the bonus and causing their defense to soften either because the fouler hesitates or because he is subbed out for a weaker defender, or because players that get to the line a lot drive into the defense which opens up the 3pt shot more often directly or by hockey assist) don't show up in the individuals stat line.
One more -- As has been noted / implied elsewhere, say by CH in a(nother, groan) recent thread, we have a lot of non-black players in the starting line up. I tread carefully here because we are speaking of race, but I suspect that for equal production, the non-black players tend to be paid less / drafted lower because of an eye-test bias that other teams / GM's have, making them better valued contracts of the type that Morey targets. Like lefthandedness may be, race may also be a trait that causes certain type of players to be undervalued.
southpaws always give rightys athletes trouble. Its like that in boxing, tennis, and basketball. Southpaws do have an advantage because they are used to playing right handed athletes all the time as oppose to rightys who dont often see leftys.
I was going to say the same thing. If you don't get a lot of time in the ring with lefties, they are hard to deal with and their tendencies are completely different than a righty. Imagine having a guy in the post and leaning into defend the right side, but he wants to go left. Even if it's a split second thing, it's an advantage.
Muscle memory of a defender is to react towards opponents right arm when he shoots.? So it might give an extra split second or a couple of inches for a leftie, until his defender is left to decide to mentally commit to the lefties right arm which is his left right when he's shooting or dribbling to the right with his left or left with his right on top of forcing him to go left with his right arm, not his wrong arm or go right with the arm that's left after his right one is guarded, and if positioning is right which on the ball handlers left side, going the right or wrong way shouldn't matter cuz all that's left he can do is go left, right?
I'm pretty sure having a guy who can drive left strong and then another guy who can drive right strong makes it harder for the opposing team because they have to be aware on both sides of the court.
