Hollinger's Interesting "Pace" Stat...

As many of you know, former oregonlive.com writer, John Hollinger rates teams on lots of different metrics - some of them quite meaningful, some of them are just weird twists on stats we already know.

"Pace" is an interesting one. It basically judges how many possessions a team tends to have in a given game.

Here's the ranking. I'll bet you can't guess who ranks dead last.

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats/_/sort/paceFactor/order/false

Now I haven't been a big Nate basher - in fact, I haven't really bashed Nate at all. But after watching how the Blazers got their lead against Memphis, and how the Blazers lost leads against the likes of Utah, Chicago, and almost the Grizzlies, I'm convinced that the Blazers get way too conservative and don't push the ball enough late in games. This stat bears that out, or at least highlights that the Blazers play slower than any other team in the NBA.

 

Pace adjusted stats sort of form the backbone of most advanced statistics (efficiency, PER, etc.) and it's been common knowledge that we play with the slowest pace in the league for some time now.

In any case pace isn't the issue in my opinion -- the Spurs played quite effectively at a glacial pace for a decade -- it's a slow offense that doesn't get many points in the paint, nor many easy baskets in general that I take issue with; I hate seeing the team work the clock for an eighteen footer off of a pick and pop or the heavy diet of isolation plays into the teeth of a set defense.

 

Sorry, it obviously has to be "uncommon knowledge" for it catch my attention.

And I'd agree with you. The problem isn't "pace" per se - it's that the Blazers don't run effective plays in that slow-paced offense in a way that translates into points. I sort of figured that went without saying, but now we've gone and said it.

 

Last year the Blazers were also among the slowest paced teams, yet had a much more effective offense. Since the system (as much as it is a system) hasn't really changed, and it seems unlikely opposing defenses only got smarter over the summer (rather than, say, last February), I'd think it's the players that are different. Some guys, including Roy, were just much better last year than this, even though the pace didn't change.

 

Pace adjusted, the Blazers had one of the most efficient offenses in the NBA last year, and that was with a true post presence. I have a hard time criticizing Nate for his pace considering the success of the team the past two years. Bring Oden back, and the slow pace will lead to more wins and less whining (I hope).

 

Oh, if I could ratchet something up from "common knowledge" to "universal" with a simple, but ingeniously written post, I'd be prattling on here constantly. But thanks for the ego boost, PP.

And FT, I see your point, and while I think you're generally correct - I wonder if part of the solution should've been adjusting the Blazers' pace, rather than trying to make the same system work with an injury-depleted roster?

 

Seems as if the same system is working for an injury-depleted roster, though. I remember how fun the team was to watch when Pritchard coached the last third of a season. Lots of points; 2 wins in 25-odd games.

Fun times.

 

More wins - Yes
Less whining - Doubtful

 

The offense is still mighty efficient - 6th best in the league.

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats

It's the defense that went down - understandable because the centers went down. For a brief moment there, before Greg went down - we were #2 in the league in defensive efficiency.

 

6th isn't good enough for some people.

Having your two best defensive big men go down, on top of your best all-around defender (Batum) being out 2/3 season would typically lead to a slip in defense.

Good post!

 

What? Isn't good enough? What does that even mean?

Having the "6th most effective offense" doesn't mean anything. It's just one of like 10,456 stats available about this game.

 

I still think offensive efficiency is a bit of an overrated stat.


As I pointed out last night, Brandon Roy's stumble and double pass to Nic for a layup increased our offensive efficiency.

Marcus Camby's great put back off an errant shot increased our offensive efficiency.

Jerryd Bayless' put back of Rudy's 30 footer increased our offensive efficiency.

Brandon Roy's missed wide open layup at the beginiing of the game, which was a great play, decreased our offensive efficiency.

 

Offensive efficiency is not an overrated stat - it (and defensive efficiency) are much better indicators of teams success than raw numbers - you listen to all the NBA announcers and hear they say how the Blazers are a low-scoring team but a good defensive team because they hold teams to low-numbers - that's just bullcrap. What the Blazers do is dictate pace because they have one of the best half-court offense schemes and execution in the league. The Blazers play bad defense this year - and the reason is clear - the loss of Oden/Pryzbilla and the long absence of Batum, but at the end of the day, all the crying about how "one dimensional" the offense is - are just nonsense.

The Blazers run a deceptively good execution of their offense - even when they do not have the great offensive rebounding that helped them so much last year.

The calls about the fumbles and tip-ins are irrelevant as well - that happens in every game for every team - and the efficiency numbers allow us to compress all of it to get an idea of where the team is. It allows us to ignore the "noise" and get a real understanding of where the team is - and the offense, consistently - is just very good. When you get enough data (and we have it at this point of the season) - all these things around are just not relevant anymore - the mean, margin of error and confidence level are pretty well set - and the facts are in - the Blazers are an offensive machine.

The fact is that in every game each team has at most 1 more possession than the other team - so efficiency really tells how the games are going to come out - pace is secondary It matters not if you score 107 or 92 points per game - if you are more efficient and control the pace - you put yourself in position to win - which is exactly what Nate's team do. The easiest places to see it is to notice the games against the fast teams and notice how the Blazers do - the first GSW game - GSW dictated pace, there were 96 possessions which is a lot more than the Blazers are comfortable with - and they won. In the 2nd game, the Blazers had it their way - forcing the Warriors to execute - there were only 90 possessions - and the Blazers won.

 

That isn't a good criticism of offensive efficiency over the course of a number of games, unless you're saying that the Blazers are much luckier than the average team (which you'd need to show evidence for). All teams are benefited by lucky plays and unlucky plays over the course of the season...they're not frequent enough and not skewed enough to certain teams to distort the numbers.

 

Here we go again.

The new era of sports banter.

Not arguing over the actual sport, but instead, which stats are the best.

 

Brandon Roy missing 2 free throws late in the 4th quarter hurts our efficiency.

LMA missing wide open 12 footers hurts our offensive efficiency.

There is good luck and bad luck all the time in NBA games. I certainly haven't seen anything that leads me to believe we have more good luck than the rest of the teams in the league.

The Jazz are another team that get a lot of offensive put backs, and it appears to be because they get defenses scrambling, allowing others the opportunity to put back the basketball. That's a good thing in my opinion.

 

Right On. The Utah game was a killer. Once we started to slip in the offensive movement and scoring we got conservative and just gave the ball to a less than healthy B-Roy every time down the floor. It just killed the confidence in the rest of the team, the ball movement, and in turn the offense.

 

Our efficiency is 6th in the league. I don't care how slow we play.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2010.html

 

I would be very curious to see what our offensive efficiency looks like when it's disaggregated and only looks at our offense's performance against the top ten defenses in the league, particularly against teams which are very good at defending the jump shot or taking away the three point line.

Overall offensive efficiency is important, but I suspect that there's a stronger correlation between most championship level offenses that focus on an inside out oriented approach, or generating points in the paint verus one like Nate's which seems to generate very few points in the paint, and very little inside-out action.