First, you have to ask the question how much of that percentage is attributable to the players vs the system. Let's break down your 5 players... Austin Daye (super small sample size on the Spurs as traded mid-season) Career - 3pt .360 Spurs - 3pt .611 Memphis 3pt .345 Detroit 3pt ..358 http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/dayeau01.html Marco Belinelli Career - 3pt .397 Spurs - 3pt .441 Chicago - 3pt .357 NOH - 3pt .396 http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/belinma01.html Patty Mills Career - 3pt .404 Spurs - 3pt .417 Portland - 3pt .358 http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/millspa02.html Matt Bonner (Has spent the last 8 seasons with the Spurs) Career - 3pt .417 Spurs - 3pt .416 Toronto - 3pt .421 http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/bonnema01.html Danny Green Career - 3pt .422 Spurs - 3pt .425 Cleveland - 3pt .273 http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/greenda02.html You can keep going down the entire roster, but you'll notice the same trend over and over. As soon as a player moves to the Spurs, the majority of the time their 3pt shooting increases around 5%. So how much are you going to put this on the roster of shooters vs the players? Or do you believe that the Spurs shooting coaches are THAT much better than everyone else in the league? Granted, our players miss open looks... however I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of those is the difference between being contested and not contested. And our "great offensive efficiency" is inflated by our transition offense. We have arguably the #1 transition offense in the NBA. We're #2 in fast break PPG, and #1 in fast break efficiency according to Teamrankings. And quite frankly, I don't think we can rely on our transition offense against every team in the NBA, especially those teams that are highly athletic and fast like the Clippers and OKC. In the half court (where the Spurs excel), our offense isn't nearly as good. And guess which offense the play offs typically favor? And what makes you so sure that Harden couldn't excel under a coach like Popovich and his system? Just because he's highly effective at what he's doing now doesn't mean he couldn't be MORE effective if there was more off ball movement. More cutting and spacing is rarely a bad thing...
In the last game, against the Raptors the +/- spread between when Lin was on the court and when his was off the court was more than 30 points in his favor.
That's absolutely the fact, but it also doesn't cover the fact that more than often in the last couple months our second unit constantly struggling without Harden on the floor.
I think you are right that the Spurs system helps shooters, but a 5% increase is a huge number. Austin Daye is 11-18. That sample is way too small to be meaningful. Daye has shot 21% to 42% in his career. He could go 0 for his next 10 and nobody would be surprised. Mils has improved, but a lot of guys improve at 3pt shooting from their first 2 years at 21-22 years old. How much of a factor is that? Danny Green took 22 3s while in Cleveland. Can't really say he wouldn't have been a good shooter regardless. Belinelli is having a career year, but he has shot 41% in the past. Bonner has always like he does with the spurs. Again, I agree with your general point, I just think throwing out a number like 5% is an exaggeration. Nobody on our roster has ever shot 40% from 3. You can only "coach up" those kind of guys so much.
I would be more inclined to believe you if I did not see us repeatedly missing open shots. Feels like all I see a glorious play made where we get a wide open shooter and CLANK. This is more of a personnel issue than a movement issue, IMO. But that is okay, we just need time for Morey to get the right supporting pieces in here.
In mathematical terms, the differential really isn't that out of whack with confirmed statistical data. The difference between a contested and uncontested shot is confirmed through SportsVu data to be approximately 12%. http://www.stats.com/media/espn3411.pdf Analysis by Vantage Sports also indicates a 10-12% shot variation when a shot is completely open vs contested. http://blog.cacvantage.com/2014/01/defending-three.html So, to get a 5% improvement, you would have to provide more open looks a significant portion of the time. Keep in mind, the Spurs philosophy is built heavily upon the idea of passing up "good" shots for "great" shots. In other words, they will pass on a shot unless it is basically completely WIDE open. http://blog.mysanantonio.com/spursnation/2014/03/05/good-to-great/ So, for an example let's compare two games this season for Houston and for the Spurs -- Houston vs the Clippers and the Spurs vs the Clippers. In our last game against the Clippers, 51.1% of our shots were contested. http://stats.nba.com/gameDetail.html?GameID=0021301088&tabView=playertracking In the last game the Spurs played against the Clippers (Feb 18), 49% of the Spurs' shots were contested. http://stats.nba.com/gameDetail.html?GameID=0021300800&tabView=playertracking Now, that raw data doesn't tell us a lot. It doesn't look like much of a difference, but it's a blended mix of attempts at the rim and jump shots. However, we CAN pull some of it out. Let's extract out at the defended rim shots. That would leave us exclusively with jumpers. Houston Rockets 45 CFGA 34 UFGA Total FGA - 79 DFGA - 25 Total FGA - DFGA = 54 UFGA/54 = 62.9% Spurs 49 CFGA 39 UFGA Total FGA - 88 DFGA - 39 Total FGA - DFGA = 49 UFGA/49 = 79.6% Now, keep in mind the data is still a bit "dirty" due to there being no way to extract completely undefended shots at the rim (as the article above shows more precise data... ie, a 4% differential), however since SportsVu defines "contested" as a player within 4 feet of the shooter, it's not going to be a ton of shots that are completely uncontested at the rim. That's a 16.7% absolute differential in UFGA. However, in relative terms that's a 21% relative differential in shot selection. In other words, on 1/5 of their shots, the Spurs are uncontested away from the rim when we would normally be contested. 21% of 12% = 2.52% absolute increase in shooting. Clearly not 5%. Now I don't think we can draw the conclusion that we would see a 5% differential going from the Rockets to the Spurs... we are after all one of the most efficient scoring teams in the NBA. However, NONE of the players from the Spurs came from the Rockets (teams with less efficient offenses), and our transition offense distorts the numbers somewhat (the Spurs run more half court than us). However, I don't think 3-4% improvement in our half court game would be out of the realm of reason. And for a less efficient team (like Most of the NBA), I don't think going from those teams to the Spurs increasing by 4-5% would be too far out of the ballpark. Anyway, just some stuff to chew on...
As an addendum, I realize it's a single game sample size, however I'm more concerned with our ability to get uncontested shots versus specific opponents in the half court setting where it's impossible to get a large sample size, and the shot differentials are SO large between the Spurs and the Rockets that it's hard to discount. In general our offense is actually very good. However I do believe a significant part of that is inflated by our superior transition offense.
If the difference between contested and uncontested jumper is 12 percent, then we should calculate the league average for contested vs. uncontested 3 pointers. The league average is 36%. 69.1% are uncontested, and 30.9% are contested. If you put that in the form of an equation, you get the following: 0.691x+0.309y=0.36 where x=uncontested 3pt%, and y=contested 3pt%. we also know that: x-y=0.12 which is the 12% difference. solving for x and y you come up with the following estimates for league averages. Uncontested 3pt%=39.7% Contested 3pt%=27.7% If you use these percentages and the Spurs open shot percentage of 73.9%, you get the following: (0.397x0.739)+(0.277x0.261)=0.366 or 36.6% So, the Spurs higher percentage of open shots accounts for a 0.6% increase in shooting percentage.
That would make sense (and what I thought initially), except the Vantage data specifically addresses 3 pointers. And they came up with 8-10%. Honestly, I'm not sure why the data comes out that way as you have a fairly static curve of miss rate as you go further out from the basket (x%/y feet). That's a question that's still unanswered. However, IF I were to hazard a guess, it might be that there's a disproportionate impact from the loss of line of sight as the distance increases. IE, when you see the basket you mentally compensate in terms of precision more, but once you lose that line of sight your accuracy declines at a different rate. I wouldn't be totally shocked if that were true. I know that when I was playing competitive 9-ball, one of my earlier teachers taught me that one way to increase shot accuracy was to shoot for a very fine point several feet beyond your actual target. For some odd reason, he said for virtually all his students they were actually More accurate than when aiming for the contact point itself. Anyway, just some more stuff to chew on.
Lol at LOFs writing novels that nobody reads and spending hours on posts in a feeble attempt to justify his poor performance. Pathetic
When you do not have the capability to join a discussion, the very best thing to do is keep quiet. Nobody wants that pathetic post here now. I am stopping myself from calling you pathetic r****d.
The Rockets are +7.3 points/100 possession with Harden on the court, and -1.4 with Harden on the bench. That -1.4 includes the +7.5/game for the Rockets in the 8 games Harden missed. If you take that out, my math says the bench is -6.6 points/100 possessions when Harden sits down. I will let you decide for yourself if they are clear.
Wow man, that one "Numbers are clear, Bev starts over Lin" thread blew heaps of sand up some people's vaginas. Try some vinegar and water, folks!
