Defense vs Offense, JVG vs Adelman (with facts for once)

A 15-15 team is more balanced by the very metric that is being proposed here.

This data does not prove that "balance" wins championships - it proves that good teams win championships - a thoroughly unremarkable proposition.

 

This doesn't make sense. Shooting is included in defensive efficiency, along with many other things that FG% doesn't account for, such as turnovers, offensive rebounding, extra points from 3pt shots, and FTs.

Let's use a hypothetical game between Team A and Team B, limited to 5 possessions each for simplicity.

Team A
1. Misses shot, grabs offensive rebound, misses another shot, grabs the off. reb. again, and makes its 3rd shot (2 points).
2. Misses shot, doesn't get the rebound.
3. Makes a 3pt shot.
4. Misses shot, no rebound.
5. Makes a 3pt shot.

Team B
1. Makes a 2pt shot.
2. Makes a 2pt shot.
3. Turnover.
4. Makes a 2pt shot.
5. Misses shot, no rebound.

Team A shot 3-7 from the field (0.4286 FG%), while Team B shot 3-4 (0.75 FG%). Yet Team A scored 8 points, while TEam B only scored 6.

Off/Def efficiency, or points per possession, would say that Team A scored 1.6 points per possession, while Team B scored 1.2 points per possession.

 

It's pretty clear from the stats that JVG is a mediocre offensive coach. Maybe that has to do with the emphasis he places on defense and the players he prefers to play.

But it also seems to me that JVG's offenses never have very good spacing and that perimiter players don't get very easy shots in his sets. In the UTAH series, I felt the spacing for Yao was awful and that TMac wasn't allowed to do what he does best- score.

 

TMac's scoring was up from the regular season and he had the second highest scoring average in the playoffs behind only Kobe Bryant.

 

JVG's offense scored about 1.5 ppg less than the Spurs. Viva la sucky offense!

What JVG lacked is people that could score and score consistently. After Yao and TMac, there was nothing, yet somehow we still managed to score about the same as the Spurs all season.

Interestingly enough, we shot far worse than the Spurs, but still managed to score almost as much. Now imagine if Rafer either stopped shooting so much or hit a few more shots, or if we actually had a 3rd scorer... ah well, it's all history now.

 

Are you averaging the ranks together? If so, that's a flawed analysis. You need to average the raw numbers. For example, if the #1 defends to 0.80 points per possession and #2 is 0.79 you are weighting too far against second when they are virtually tied.

Also, I agree with the other poster that efficiency may not have the strongest correlation. Look at all correlations and choose the best one. Maybe plot different stats against playoff wins looking for those unexpected correlations. Obviously something like point differential probably correlates strongly to playoff wins. But, does FG% or opp. FG% correlate more strongly, or the same? TO? FT%? FTM? etc.

If you want to post any raw data links, I can help with the analysis.

 

Sorry to pick on this, but watching him play I have to completely disagree. He often gets outmactched by whomever he is guarding. Sometimes athleticism does not equal good defense. See Stromile Swift for reference.(or Battier for the other side of the coin)

 

Kobe burned him to a crisp. It was embarrassing.

 

What about offensive efficiency? That was what I was looking at.

Also, as has been pointed out by Clutch, JVG had a hand in selecting this roster. He wanted Rafer Alston here. He declined the James trade because of the trade kicker. He got rid of Nachbar. He didn't let Bonzi out of the doghouse.

I think we will see an offense with easier shots and much better spacing. It was true that Yao did not play well, but it was also true that he had very little space to operate and JVG did not adjust.

 

say what? tmac's offense is no where near his best. though kobe does take a lot of shots, but the triangle offense allows him to get into HIS spots and then the ball rotates to him. he rarely isos at the top fo the key like tmac does.

JVG uses tmac to create moreso than to score => to draw defenders and pass. though tmac is arguably the best playmaker in the game in terms of dominant scorers, but we over-use the pick and roll too much for a guy of his skill. when we do that, tmac always has to pass b/c he always gets trapped.

sure a lot of it has to do w/ tmac's poor shooting, but tmac is RARELY in a position to finish. he either has to create for himself or others.

in orlando, doc was not a smart coach but he always pushes for a faster offense b/c then tmac has more space to finish, rather than create.

 

There is a distinct problem with just looking at efficiency ratings and I discussed it in the related thread but I will repeat it here.

Off and def efficiency ... pts per 100 possessions. Les and many fans here want a more uptempo offense. PPG incorporates this attribute, but pts per 100 possessions does not.

Similarly on the defensive side, PPG Allowed incorporates both defensive efficiency and speed of your own team's offense (since the other squad either has more or less total possessions to score).

When it comes right down to it, the point differential is about that best stat to indicate a winning team and PPG and Allowed are all that is needed to calculate it, whereas efficiency is lost in the equation.

 

Problem is, you don't win games with 'efficiency', you win with more points.

 

I am going to wholeheartedly disagree. As someone who hated the Battier trade from Day One I made an extra effort to watch. Battiers BB IQ allows him to play excellent TEAM defensive. He is at best slightly above average on 1on1. Case in point.

VG's defense is based on soft traps to protect the paint. It makes "good" defenders out of less athletic players. Where it is weak is mid-range shots and perimeter rotations. These is precisely what Jerry Sloan exploited with the Deron Williams mismatch and Boozer having a decent shooting touch out to ~14'. If Battier was such a great 1on1 defender, VG could have easily stopped the Alston abuse by switching over Battier to Williams. He didn't.

The triangle offense further exphasizes this weakness in Van Gundy's defensive philosophy because it's not entirely predicated on dribble penetration. If you'll take the time to watch, Luke freakin' Walton abused Battier 1on1 because the triangle was able to get Walton an ISO in the mid-block.

My excitement over originally acquiring Swift was envisioning him coming over from the weakside and blocking the shots of someone taking on Yao either 1on1 or off of dribble penetration. This never materialized to any significance. Swift (as probably was the case with Snyder) spent all of his timing trying to figure out where he was supposed to be in the VG defense. IOW, VG's defensive schemes forced them to be reactive instead of instinctive. And situations like that extremely favor Battier...but they are abnormal in the larger picture.

I'm 100% sure you'll disagree so I'll leave you and all the other Battier fans with a final fact. Battier has NEVER cracked the NBA All Defensive 1st or 2nd team. His highest finish? Under VG. Now, wouldn't a great 1on1 defender be able to crack this list once? Or, are the defenders on the list just more athletic?

And before you poo-poo this? The All Defensive team is voting is a panel consisting of the league's 30 coaches.

EDIT: Since this appears so off-topic...VG's "style" of paint protecting and soft trapping (and tempo) probably helps the defensive stats. A really true and accurate analysis should exclude the bad teams of the NBA. If we're concerned about competing with the Spurs, Mavs, Suns, and Jazz of the league...throw out the bad teams. VG's defense (and TMac or Yao offensively 1on1) feasts on the bad teams skewing the results IMHO.

 

oh, it does make sense. i never said that defensive efficiency is useless or opponent fg % is the ultimate stat. defensive efficiency IS a very valuable stat. BUT it doesn't account for the ability to control the tempo which i think is a very, very important thing for a contending team. in fact i think that's what separates average teams from the good ones.

 

This data is to expel the myth "defense wins championships." Defense alone doesn't win championships. It also indirectly points out that the so-called defensive minded coaches aren't better than offensive minded coaches in terms of winning championships.

 

What is your definition of "controlling tempo?" Can you explain how that's supposed to produce a win?

In a basketball game, both teams have the same exact number of possessions, because of the very definition being used for "possession" (each one of your possessions MUST end with the other team getting the ball). The only exception is if a team wins the jump ball then ends the game with the ball; in that case the jump ball winner will have a mere one extra possession. Because possessions are basically equal between a team and its opponents, your points per possession compared to your opponent's points per possession is very meaningful.

Points per possession has a VERY strong correlation to winning. An "expected" winning % can be calculated using the offensive and defensive efficiencies of a team; I believe someone at the APBRmetrics forum stated that this expected win % has a 95% correlation with real winning percentages. The cause of the difference is if a team loses close games or gets a blowout win, causing differences between the real record and the expected one. However, this effect is still very small over the course of a season; a mediocre team that barely loses or wins most of its games is unlikely to be very good or very bad. You can even look up team's past expected and real life records at basketball-reference.com, and you'll see that they're very close.

FG% has already been shown to leave out large parts of the game (rebounding, 3pt shooting, FTs, turnovers), so I don't know how you can argue that it's better.

 

Speed is not good for anything unless you're efficient with your possessions (which, at ANY speed, will be equal to your opponents' give or take 1).

ppg is an extremely shallow stat. If a team like the Mavs, Spurs, Rockets, and Pistons (all good teams) plays slowly, the number of possessions and possible points will be limited. A 6 point differential in a slow game is therefore much more meaningful than a 6 point differential in a run and gun game. ppg doesn't account for this at all.

 

People forget that when Adelman had the horses he produced a stellar defensive team. 02-03!

 

This doesn't mean anything, and any attempt to explain how All-Defensive team selections actually mean good defense will lead into circular logic. Just because the coaches pick them doesn't mean that they're perfect either, for the following reasons:

1) If you're a coach, you're going to be busy managing your own team, not worrying that you made the right vote on some award.

2) Offensive performance stands out far more than defense. A guy can work his ass off on D and not even get noticed.

3) Guys who are stars are often fallaciously assumed to be dominant on both ends of the court (see Kobe Bryant).

4) Players who make a name for themselves through other means (Raja Bell clotheslining Kobe, injury scares constantly occuring near Bruce Bowen, both players being on prominent teams) stand a better chance of being picked simply because they're known.

5) There is such a thing as a bad coach, or a coach who doesn't care to examine the evidence.

6) Coaches might see an opposing player 4 times at most during the course of the regular season, as low as once or twice, or not even at all (playing in different conferences, the player might even have been injured during some of the scheduled games). He doesn't see what the opposing player does day in and day out, and what that player does in one, or a couple of games against that coach's team could skew the coach's perception of him.

Defense is harder to measure than offense, but there are some stats available fore it. Looking at 82games.com, Battier has consistently held his direct opponent to low production (poor effective FG% allowed, low PER), and his teams' (Grizzlies and Rockets) defense have been better with him on the floor than without.

 

And efficiency is better?

All number short of the final score have their weaknesses, but PPG is much closer to the final equation (win or loss) than efficiency.

Shallow stat? PPG + Allowed PPG = Point Differential. Of the teams with the top PD, all 16 playoff teams are in the top 17 PD. It's really simple.

Efficiency just fails to capture critical elements of a game and who will ultimately win games. It's useful for analysis, but don't get carried away with it. It just doesn't trump points in the end.