As an accountant and math enthusiast, I love looking at box scores. For every game, you can examine the box score and quantify how one team outscored the other. More possessions than the opponent due to offensive rebounding or turnovers? More efficient use of possessions through high FG% or low FG% allowed? "Extra" points per possession through 3-pointers and free throws? Invariably, every loss comes down to a combination of those six aspects. The conventional wisdom is that we will be 15-30 wins worse this year. Not looking at personnel specifically, but more in regard to team performance as a whole, to which statistical aspects do you expect our drop-off to be most attributable, and why?
I think as a result of diminished 3pt shooting our effective fg% will suffer causing a drop in offensive efficiency. Looking at the roster at this point I am guessing 30 wins +/- 3.
It's so hard to say because I'm not sure who the starters will be or what types of adjustments to the offense Stotts will make. I would say our offense will struggle at first, but maybe Stotts will go with a running offense and we'll get some easy looks. One thing that I'm REALLY hoping for is an improved defense.
Those that say offensive efficiency should think again. You don't have to be shooting 3s to be efficient. I remember a year where Denver rarely shot the three and was extremely efficient offensively. I think the major drop off will be the three point differential because we won't use it as our #1 scoring option. I think we take it hard to the paint and work on that mid range game. I think Stotts sees that all the teams are now allowing that mid range shot because of the general "least efficient shot" rule. We will have Dynamo games where Dame goes unconscious from 3, but I believe it won't happen frequently. This is a good thing until we get more players that have the shooting ability.
This, and I would like to add Free Throws though. With all of the driving around the rim scoring, we are bound to draw more fouls, however our new guys are no where near what we had last year. I see team FT% dropping at least 10% Cool, Another post telling us nothing we don't already know about how you feel.... Blazer suck. Everything sucks. The world sucks....
Is our 3 point percentage going to drop off that drastically? It's weird, I'm looking at last years stats and we were 8th in the league at 36%....but we really didn't have that many good shooters. Obviously Matthews was the best one, 40% at high volume, amazing shooter. But he missed the last 22 games. Dame shot a ton of threes, but he actually dragged our % down at 34%. I expect him to shoot better this year. Batum shot 32% on a good amount of attempts, dragged our % down. LMA shot 35%, dragged our % down. Afflalo was pretty good, but only played 25 games and didn't shoot much. CJ and Meyers were good, they're still here. Crabbe was OK, he's still here. Blake shot 35%, dragged our % down. I think we can replace Matthews and Afflalo's role with more volume shooting by Crabbe/CJ/Meyers. The issue I guess is the amount of open threes generated by LMA.
Since this was my thread, I figure I should answer my own question. Basically, I'm going to address all six categories: Offensive efficiency: It's been discussed many times how inefficient LA's mid-range jumpers were. We'll see significantly fewer of these, and more shots at the rim. Our team FG% was 17th in the league at 45%. I think we'll be right around there again; if it drops, it won't be much. Defensive efficiency: Despite Tlong's brilliant analysis, our FG% allowed was 7th in the league at under 44%. I think chemistry had a lot to do with that. We'll need months to develop something similar, so even though we've added several good defensive players, I expect we'll take little a bit of a dip here. 3-point differential: This is the first spot I expect a significant decrease, simply because we don't have very many players on the roster who will be shooting a lot from deep. Lillard, Leonard, CJ...and that's about it. I think we'll both shoot fewer 3's and make a lower percentage. Free-throw differential: I echo Orion Bailey here--we'll shoot more, but make a lower percentage. The total will shake out pretty similarly to last year. Rebounding differential: I think it was Schilly who detailed a few days ago that our additions put up better reb/36 figures than our subtractions. We may actually be even better on the boards this year than last, and we were already pretty good. I think that will be the key to half the wins we do get. Turnover differential: I think we'll see a big hit here. Last year, we were top-10 in not turning the ball over; this year, I expect us to be bottom 5. Of course, we were also the worst in the league in forcing turnovers, so we could mitigate this issue, but I don't see it happening. So, I'd say that 3-point shooting and turnovers will be our biggest deficiencies, with defensive efficiency being a close 3rd. If we end up better than expected in any of those areas, we might be surprised by this team.
I was talking about differential. Meaning other teams will shoot way more threes than we will. Even though our percentage made may be close, I don't think we will take +20 a game like we've done in previous years.
I don't think Defense is going to suffer as much as you might think. Yes, there is an issue with new players learning to work together. OTOH, we have added guys in Aminu, Davis, and Plumlee who will give a more consistent effort than we saw from LMA and Batum. Outside of Dame, defense is the one thing I feel good about!
