Originally I was looking for a thread to stick this in since I couldn't make threads for the longest time, but then I realized that I finally did have permission when I wasn't looking. :grin: To celebrate, have a graph. Spoiler This is the League's Points Differential charted against their returning players. Upper Right are good teams with lots of returning players, Lower Left are bad times with high roster turnover. I'm sure there's flaws as I only had energy for this season and I counted by hand (using Basketball Reference) so I might be off. Also, since it's Basketball Reference and I only did a simple count, it doesn't take into account a team's pct before and after in-season trades. But because most in-game trades happen pre-break and there's a decent amount of games under a team's belt, that it'll be a quick and dirty simple reference. Outliers are Houston, Clippers, OKC. But it's worth comparing to this chart (originally posted at SBNation: How the best and worst NBA teams stack up in terms of age): Spoiler Clippers and Knicks are both older teams with high roster turnover, but that didn't seem to help Boston and Dallas. Charlotte probably got screwed over by it's age (and how much it plays it's youth, something that I wish I had the numbers for). OKC and Denver's youth was probably helped by the fact that there was a lot of returning players. Houston is, apparently, just ridiculous by any measure.
Go for it! I would actually love to see points differential pre and post trades, or maybe across 10 years. Graphs make me happy, what can I say?
Without research, one could say that teams without TO do better because teams stay intact when they're good. But they turn over their roster when they're bad. So there should be some adjustment to compare, say teams that are roughly .500 that stayed course(like the Jazz), vs .500 teams that turned over(like Rockets and Suns). And so forth. To far removed from my college statistics class, so I don't know how to quantify that clearly. Also probably could use higher sample size with data over the years. Probably beyond the means of a simple fan, but I think we can all agree that this team has really, really overachieved to this point. No matter the metrics. Only a collosal meltdown will prevent this entire season from being a rousing success.
Would agree with all this! And, if I'm understanding you right, you'd like a comparison of previous year's quality v. current years? I mean, I think I can pull up last years's points diff. Hold up...
ooo now this is interesting. Horizontal is Returning players, Vert is Change in Points Diff. (sorry my labeling's off) Spoiler Upper right are teams that have improved since last year and maintained rosters (many teams). Lower right are teams that haven't improved and maintained rosters (Utah and Milwaukee). Lower left are teams that haven't improved and changed rosters (also many teams). Upper left are teams that have improved and changed rosters (Houston, Clippers, Toronto, Nets). Considering how much money was thrown at the Nets, that makes sense. Don't know what to make of Toronto, but Clippers I'm thinking it's the vet leadership. For the record, Knicks is the team that's hiding beneath Portland. I figure Chicago is the lack of DRose and a cheap ownership. And Charlotte and Golden State have also improved over their turnover, while Cleveland, Washington, Memphis, and OKC have held steady.
So I read this as you return 8 players or more, expect a 2 point increase in point differential. Less than that, you have chance to improve more if you get established players, but more than likely get worse.
Google comes through. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=144639 Looks to be about 5 wins per 2pt increase. So in theory if Rockets keep 8 players (no matter if they trade a couple come deadline) through their training camp, they might be at 49~50 wins next year.
Nice graphs! There was a link in another thread to an article about Toronto being one of the most advanced with the on-court imaging data used by 15 teams in the league. Maybe their advanced metric stuff is showing results.
This is interesting. I think the effect of roster turnover depends on how good the team was to start with, and the sort of players you're adding. A bad team with significant roster turnover maybe means they should get better. Particular if the turnover is due to add more vets to the team. The Rockets are interesting because they've simultaneously gotten younger and better. I imagine that's very unusual.
Very interesting discussion. And the idea that experience (both individually and more so as a team) reduces turnovers makes sense. I also believe that the type of offense also effects how many turnovers and whether those turnovers are worse than those committed within other types of offenses. Watching the college tournament (both men's and women's) and my AAU select team in her tournament (two wins... championship game today , it is seemed apparent that for teams that push the ball offensively (fast breaks, motion offenses), turnovers may have happened more often but were less detrimental than teams that walk the ball down the court, run set plays, etc. You almost expect that a team pushing the ball will make more bad passes. And teams that slow the ball down, each possession seems much more important, so TO's they made seem much harder for them to overcome. getting back to the OPs original point... once the players have a better sense as to who likes the pass where, and who can even handle certain types of passes, the fewer TOs. Eg, not making bounce passes to Asik while he is moving (though he has improved in this area), or not passing to Lin with fewer than 5 seconds on the shot clock (since his first instinct is to make the next pass).
Oops, um. Probably bad choice of terminology on my part, but it's ROSTER turnover, as in how many players left or returned from a particular roster. Too much corporate-speak, I guess. Apologies. For instance, the Spurs (despite it's draftees) have 12 returning players from the previous year, the highest of all the teams.
