Interesting theory I read on Deng

For the life of me I can't find the thread now, but the other day I saw a really interesting theory about Deng on RealGM. A guy named Grand.Champ (I think) said Deng really benefited from the NBA's short-lived "new" ball back in the 2006-2007 season. His theory was that based on Deng's release, the different grips on the new ball helped him, and when the league went back to the old ball he suffered.

Sounds crazy, but damn if he doesn't look right.

Code:

Year	Month	G	FG%
2004	Nov	11	0.442
2004	Dec	15	0.404
2005	Jan	16	0.444
2005	Feb	11	0.465
2005	Mar	8	0.408
2005	Nov	13	0.428
2005	Dec	15	0.495
2006	Jan	15	0.469
2006	Feb	12	0.434
2006	Mar	16	0.446
2006	Apr	7	0.525
2006	Oct	1	0.444
[B]2006	Nov	13	0.549
2006	Dec	17	0.532[/B]
2007	Jan	15	0.493
2007	Feb	14	0.517
2007	Mar	14	0.506
2007	Apr	8	0.508
2007	Oct	1	0.529
2007	Nov	9	0.444
2007	Dec	16	0.487
2008	Jan	7	0.495
2008	Feb	6	0.47
2008	Mar	15	0.456
2008	Apr	9	0.533
2008	Oct	2	0.435
2008	Nov	12	0.39
2008	Dec	12	0.479

In the short-lived new ball period, Deng posted his best numbers over a significant stretch by a pretty large margin.

Of course, it's not that large, if he'd shot at his average for the next few months (still about .500), he'd only have scored about half a point a game less. So it's interesting; the fact those two months are obvious outliers at least gives the impression that the equipment may have mattered a bit, but at the end of the day it doesn't seem like it made a very big difference.

 

Very interesting. I'd want to check his opponents and number of shot attempts to make sure those were similarly average, too, but the ball could very well have been the difference. I've used the new balls and they are great if you have any difficulty at all palming the ball. Stern was dumb, too, for trying to just force the new ball on the league...