Game Thread GAME# 33: LAKERS @ BLAZERS - DECEMBER 28, 2019 - SATURDAY, 7:00PM, NBCSNW

Points Per Shot has been a popular stat since the days of defending Jordan (limit him to a point per shot attempt), but it misses something that I've never seen discussed: Upping the ratio via freethrows is still taking offensive possessions away from teammates. It's false efficiency.

Dame had a below average shooting night tonight but got nearly half his points at the line on a very high percentage. Those freethrows basically account for seven fewer possessions for the rest of the players. Looked at that way, it's 31 points on 24 shots which is a more mundane 1.29 pps.

I know you'll disagree with the essence of this, because it lets CJ off the hook for not padding his ratio with gaudy freethrow numbers.

 

My gift. Kids found it at an antique store that had quite a bit of Blazer stuff.

 

Other stuff they had....

The jerseys in the background were not that great. I think they were Oden and Leonard.....





@Orion Bailey

 

Does CJ even shoot free throws? I'm having a hard time picturing it in my mind.

 

A few seasons ago, he led the NBA in FT%.

 

Those refs sucked horse dick.

Fuck the Lakers

 

That’s why they invented TS% which counts points from FT’s and tries to count possessions used by FT’s too though that part of the formula is an estimate, not exact.

 

Here are the effects of various types of missed shots on your subsequent defense.

Code:

9,532 games

Shot Distance   Pts/100  Miss/Game
Layups           112.6       6.2
1-5 feet         111.6       6.5
6-14 feet        108.7      10.3
15-22 feet       108.3      14.0
ALL 2-PT         109.7      37.1

Corner 3         110.5       3.0
Other 3          109.3      18.5
ALL 3-PT         109.4      21.5

ALL SHOTS        109.6      58.6

So if a team takes 100 layups and misses half of them that would be 50 missed-layup possessions for your defense and cost you about 2 PPG compared to taking all mid-range. So if PPP on a layup is 1.12 then it's really more like 1.10.

But now that I think about this, it's very incomplete. Only accounts for the effect of misses. Not makes. Layups make or get fouled more often than 3's. So more often a set defense.

 

You're right there should be another layer added in to tell a more accurate story, but massive props to you for putting this together.

A lot of us repeat the things we heard from our coaches or hear on TV, like "missed 3's lead to easy buckets on the other end." Love finding out if these theories that seem to make sense are actually backed up. In this case, not so much, so thank you!

 

yeah, I disagree and do so strongly.

the ability to draw fouls is an important skill and a point from the FT line counts just as much as a point off a shot. It doesn't get discounted because of style and it's not false efficiency. More than that is the ability to draw fouls impacts the other team in ways that don't show up in individual boxscores. It gets individual opponents in foul trouble, and it puts opposing teams in the penalty quicker, which is turn can create FT opportunities for teammates. Both of those components are significant advantages

your calculation of possessions is off-base too. Dame was fouled on a three point attempt. He also shot 4 FT's on personal fouls, early in shot clocks when the Lakers were in the penalty, and that's not taking possessions away from any teammate, especially considering he was one of the reasons the Lakers were in the penalty. He shot a T too, a privilege he has earned by being Portland's best FT shooter. That's 8 of his 14 FT's coming off essentially one possession. In other words, using your 'possession' arguments, he scored 13 points off of 4 possessions, not 7...

which leads to your assumption that Dame shooting FT's takes "possessions" away from teammates. Dame shoots 90% from the FT line, and he often gets fouled on a three. So basically, Dame scores close to 2 points on one of those FT possessions; call it 1.9 if you want more refined accuracy. Ok then, subtract Dame's points and shots from the Blazer totals and you're left with Dame's teammates having scored 2875 points on 2468 shots. That works out to 1.165 points/shot. So then, you have Dame scoring 1.9 points on his FT possessions, and the rest of the team scoring 1.16 points on their possessions....and you're bitching about Dame taking those 1.16 point possessions away so he can have 1.9 point possessions? Talk about false efficiency....

let's take you argument and actually apply it to the Blazers. Dame averages 7.6 FT's a game; by your logic that's 3.8 possessions he takes from teammates. Dame scores about 1.9 points/possession and his teammates score about 1.17 (rounding up). If Dame gave all his FT possessions to teammates, Portland would score 2.8 fewer points a game. Put that in perspective: Portland's MOV is -1.2 points/game. Add your possession argument to that number and Portland's MOV drops to around -3.9...about Minny level and they are 11-20

so yeah, that's a lot of words to get back to the first sentence of this post...I disagree.

 

Very solid. To go to the next level, when you draw a foul are also building team fouls on the other team which may likely lead to more non-shooting foul free throws for teammates in the future. Those additional team fouls may also decrease how aggressive a team on defense or on the offensive glass. The fouls may also remove an opponent from the floor or decrease their individual aggressiveness as well.

I'm still waiting to see team data filtered based on how many team fouls a team has to see how valid all those theories are.

 

this season, his FT rate is .120. That ranks 377th in the NBA; and it's 14th on the Blazers. Only Gary Trent has a lower rate

CJ's FT/FGA ratio is 0.098. The NBA average is .198.

 

Yeah, you can't trust these theories even if they have been around for ages. It took umpteen years for the NBA to realize how good the 3 is. Remember "Don't settle for the 3"? Ha ha!

One of the problem is that the NBA event data is not very good. For example, I get shot distance on a made or missed shot. But if a player is fouled it doesn't give the shot distance he was fouled on. So there is no way to completely do this. For the same reason, I can't even calculate PPP for a player by shot distance which is sad. I can only estimate it by trying to divy up a player's FTA by shot distance according to some rule.

Here is a question I posted back in 1992 on whatever Blazer forum we had back then. Maybe you've seen it. It points out something kind of interesting that many people don't realize.
Team A shoots all 2's and makes 1/2 of them.
Team B shoots all 3's and makes 1/3 of them.
Each team gets 50% of rebounds.
No fouls, no turnovers. Nothing but makes & misses & rebounds.
Which team on average wins the game?

 

Here is the same data for made shots. Fairly equal by distance and much lower PPP than after a missed shot as expected.
Shows how much making shots helps your defense.

Code:

Shot Distance   Pts/100  Made/Game
Layups           105.1      11.4
1-5 feet         105.1      15.7
6-14 feet        104.5       8.8
15-22 feet       104.2      11.1
ALL 2-PT         104.8      47.0

Corner 3         105.2       2.2
Other 3          105.4      11.8
ALL 3-PT         105.4      14.0

ALL SHOTS        104.9      61.0

Here is combined. Seems it all mostly cancels. Missed layups are worse than missed 3's, but you make more layups.

Code:

Shot Distance   Pts/100  Shots/Game
Layups           107.7      17.6
1-5 feet         107.0      22.2
6-14 feet        106.8      19.1
15-22 feet       106.5      25.1
ALL 2-PT         106.9      84.1

Corner 3         108.3       5.3
Other 3          107.7      30.3
ALL 3-PT         107.8      35.6

ALL SHOTS        107.2     119.6

 

Without running the numbers, my gut is that the team that shoots all 3's would beat the team who shoots all 2's based off the rebound rate. The team that shoots more 3's threes at a lower percentage will get more offensive rebounds, therefore get more 2nd and 3rd chance opportunties. But you really have me questioning myself!

 

Yes, you are correct. The first time I asked that many years ago, everyone said it's 50/50. Which makes common sense. But the 3 pt team will win due to missing more shots and getting more offensive rebounds and taking more shots per game. Real b-ball o-rebounding on 3's is much lower, maybe 10-15%, but it still "helps" the 3 a bit.

 

Crazy I sent you a PM about this before I saw this post. I will repost here...

I was trying to estimate the cost of a foul i.e the value of drawing a foul. The value of a foul has two parts: What I call the tangible value and the intangible value. The tangible value is the value derived from actually shooting foul shots on a given foul. The intangible value is the value due to moving closer to the team penalty and it's affect on the defense having to play softer.
A shooting foul has both tangible and intangible value.
A non-shooting foul has only intangible value.
I was trying to estimate the intangible value only. The first thing I did was get PPP given up grouped by # of team fouls on the defense. This table shows that as a team has more fouls, it gives up more PPP.

Code:

Fouls  Poss/G     PPP
  0    23.812   1.015
  1    18.232   1.077
  2    14.471   1.080
  3    15.799   1.084
  4    19.570   1.129
  P     4.962   0.826
TOT   96.846   1.061
Fouls = # of team fouls on the defense.
Poss/G = # of possessions that occur with that many team fouls.
PPP = points per possession with a given # of team fouls on the defense.
P = extra category for partial possession (end of period possessions with < 24 seconds on the clock) as these were otherwise skewing results.

From there I did a messy calculation that basically it goes like this:
(1) Divide the above possessions per game by 4 to make them possessions per quarter.
(2) Assume an "extra" foul occurs randomly on one of the possessions.
(3) bump all future possessions up into the next higher category.
(4) compute the point differential due to the foul bumping future possessions for the quarter into a higher PPP.
(5) repeat this many times to get an average
Turns out if you do that, the intangible value of a foul is about 0.2 points.
Some of that may be correlation rather than causation.

 

Well, that Laker game was tough to swallow. I’ve watched a lot of basketball over the years, and totally understand refs blow calls. Over the course of most games, it probably evens out. I usually like to have the mentality ‘don’t blame the refs.’ So I figured I’d sleep on that one and not vent right after the game when emotions are high.

I rarely agree with Dwight Jaynes, but I must say, he nailed this one -

https://www.nbcsports.com/northwest...s-king-all-calls-and-referees-are-his-minions

 

1) I said "basically account for seven fewer possessions," so countering 7 with mathematical presiscion is pretty silly.

2) Like hell those freethrows from personal fouls don't take away possessions from teammates. It doesn't matter when in the shot clock it occurred. That's the end of the possession.

 

Which store? Ill head there tomorrow and buy some glasses!