Looking at some of the splits for various players on this team a couple of really interesting things started to jump out at me. 1). Players whos performances don't seem to change much in wins versus losses: Brandon scores under 20 and assists more in (12) wins, and scores north of 25 per game and assists slightly less in (8) losses but his shooting percentages are close enough in either case that it isn't appreciably different. Greg differs in his shooting percentages (lower in losses, higher in wins) but the difference is between good and superb and his minutes and numbers and shot attempts are nearly identical. The same pretty much holds for LaMarcus except that he plays quite a bit fewer minutes in wins and rebounds better in wins. Brandon Roy Greg Oden LaMarcus Aldridge 2). Miller and Webster are far more effective on offense when they start and are pretty horrible when they come off the bench (something we all sort of knew). But neither good or bad offensive performances seem completely correlated with winning and losing (though Miller's strong play has seemed to coincide more with starting and winning). Andre Miller Martell Webster 3) Players whose games seem to vary most with respect to playing well and the team winning or losing are Blake, Joel and Rudy. In wins both guards are shooting north of 43% from three and about 44% overall and in losses both players are sub 31% from behind the arc (Blake in particular shows a huge gap between playing well in wins and horribly in losses. For Joel his rebounding numbers in losses are terrible and he's an absolute non factor on offense Rudy Fernandez Steve Blake Joel Przybilla What does all of this mean? I don't know I just thought it would be an interesting exercise to see where wins and losses might be happening and if there was any correlation between certain players and what they are doing on the court. I know I left certain players out, but I wanted to focus on guys who've been the biggest minute getters and who've been in enough games to where the sample size would be more statistically significant. Anybody else want to take a look and see if anything jumps out?
LMA gets to the line more frequently in wins, and as you said he rebounds much better as well. Roy not pressing so much and sharing the load in wins. With Greg, outside of the obvious shooting percentage difference he also picks up a lot more blocks (2.8bpg) and significantly fewer fouls (3.75fpg) in wins compared to losses (1.75bpg, 4.75fpg).
So the question is, is it because of Blake/Joel/Rudy we win or is it because they are used incorrectly (when we could have someone who averages +43FG typically instead) that we lose.. Nice analysis, Nik!
My inclination is that when they show up two things happen. In the case of Rudy and Blake they spread the defense and open the lane for Roy and Aldridge. When Joel is on there's no appreciable drop-off in interior defense when Greg is out and teams are probably not getting many offensive rebounds and second chance points. Bottom line our rotation players would be well served to play a little more consistently.
My gut reaction, is that the numbers suggest that the "big 3" can't actually carry the team. They have to rely on the role-players to bail them out. Given that the Blazer role-players are either inconsistent, mediocre, or both - that has "trainwreck" written all over it.
