Adjusted Shooting by Player (Is CJ a good scorer?)

https://cleaningtheglass.com/

Anyone have access? I’m thinking about shelling the 5 dollars. It’s funny that one of the testimonials is Neil Olshey lmao.

 

Except for the VAST majority of CJ's career, he has been a poor efficiency shooter. So to continue to do that, doesn't seem the wisest course. Now this year is different so far.....finally.

 

That's a distortion of the truth, using things like TS%. CJ has been an elite shooter much of his career. He just doesn't get to the rim or FT line to pad the efficiency stats.

 

But maybe Dame's 35+ shots are actually good shots. Here are his percentages at various distances for the past 2+ seasons. Not enough sample at 35+ but judging from the 30-34 category they might well be high percentage. Also Dame's bombs bypass the turnover % of our half-court offense so their efficiency is understated. On the flip side there are intangible negatives. Like who wants to run all-out down the floor only to watch Dame jack up a shot.

Distance | Made - Attempts | Percentage
0-99 | 531 of 1375| 0.386*
24-25 | 136 of 366| 0.372
26-29 | 283 of 728| 0.389
30-34 | 84 of 206| 0.408
35-39 | 10 of 21| 0.476
40+ | 1 of 8 | 0.125
Unkown | 17 of 46| 0.370**

*I'm missing 5 three-pointers compared to BB Reference. I believe these are blocked shot events which lose shot type and distance so they get categorized as twos.
**Unfortunately some 3-pointer events don't provide a distance.

 

Thanks, Im more concerned about when its a critical possession in a tight game. Id like to know how many of the 35-39 were critical possessions in a tight game.
I realize its his trademark like Curry.

 

it's not a "distortion of the truth". TS% is an actual gauge of the value of possessions CJ uses relative to the rest of the league. He's average...that's the truth.

and getting to the rim or FT line is not "padding stats". That's just distorting reality in order to prop CJ up. Getting to the rim and FT line is called winning basketball. It's the gauge of good-to-elite scorers and CJ doesn't qualify

Kyle Korver was a better "shooter" than CJ. So was Steve Kerr. But their teams didn't want either player to burn up possessions going one-on-one. Portland has allowed CJ to go one-on-one and dribble away gobs of shot clocks, but the reality is he's just not efficient when he's doing that. Lats year, as a team, Portland averaged 1.26 points/shot. CJ averaged less than 1.15. Yet, if you look at CJ's possession break down, you see that CJ is in a high percentile on spot-up shots, and he's nearly elite at catch-&-shoot. That means he's even worse than 1.15 points/shot when he's creating his own offense

look at this:



now, this isn't really surprising. Most players will have higher efficiency when the team creates offensive opportunities for them. But the contrast with CJ is extreme. And it's important to keep in mind he's off to an incredibly hot start. It's very unlikely he can sustain these shooting numbers. But what is clear is that CJ is significantly worse when he's creating his own offense. CJ's assisted FG% should be close to 60% instead of his career mark of around 35%. His one-on-one ability is overrated

 

Here you go. Dame's efficiency has dropped significantly here. Sample sizes are getting small.
0-99 | 55 of 174| 0.316
24-25 | 16 of 43| 0.372
26-29 | 25 of 83| 0.301
30-34 | 11 of 36| 0.306
35-39 | 3 of 4| 0.750
Unknown | 0 of 5| 0.000
(4th quarter or OT with 5 minutes or less and score within 5 points).

 

Thanks, interesting. Maybe he should take more 35-39'.

 

CJ has a good assist to turnover. .07 pg, steals are decent too.

 

You're great at using statistics to "prove" a point, but not so great at capturing actual basketball play. Those are absolutely horrible examples. Neither Korver or Kerr was capable of creating for themselves. They were (are) specialist role players.

 

or got paid what CJ does.

 

The alternative to heroball is for the coach to create a system for offense. Since Stotts is incapable, the "players' coach by necessity" allows "freedom" to any great dribbler to create almost all shots, i.e. Lillard and McCollum.

If McCollum didn't hog the ball, his shots would become even crazier shots by teammates who can't dribble, or turnovers.

The Stotts system creates the monsters within it. In a conventional system, many apparently player-caused deficiencies would disappear.

 

I agree with your overall point but using points/shot exaggerates CJ's inefficiency beyond what it is. Taking into account possessions used up on FTA's it's more like 126 to 120 ratio.

Here is 2+ years PPP (points/possession) that I calculated from play-by-play event data

Blazers 1.20
CJ: overall 1.15, mid-range 1.07 (41% of his shots)
Carmelo: overall 1.09, mid-range 0.96 (46% of his shots)
Dame: overall 1.27, mid-range 1.02 (19% of his shots - high IQ)

The above PPP is similar to TS% but also adds in:
(1) Continuation points - Some player's missed shots generate way more offensive rebounds and follow-up buckets than others. For example we score after a CJ missed mid-range more than 2x as often as after a Melo missed mid-range. I suppose that is because a CJ mid-range involves him first breaking-down defense while a Melo missed mid-range, the defense is just sitting there all packed in waiting for the shot.
(2) Bonus value for drawing fouls even if non-shooting.

 

I'm not disputing your numbers but I'm curious how they were derived

also, you say you've analyzed for follow-up offensive rebounds. I wonder if you've analyzed for added FT's, including the value of FT points added to Blazer totals because of Dame's ability to draw fouls and get teams in the penalty earlier

 

the point is that you don't want some very good shooters creating for themselves because when they do their efficiency drops significantly

that's the case with CJ even though he has much better handles than those guys. The biggest issue he has is he doesn't get to the FT line. That's mainly why, last season, Dame scored 8 more points a game on 1 more shot. Calling a CJ a great shooter is true if you're talking about his catch-and-shoot possessions and his spot-up possessions. But he's been just a little better than an average scorer, and this thread's OP asks about that rather than raw shooting percentages

 

It's really early in the season but if CJ sustained what he's doing right now, he would likely have a better season than Dame. If that happened, I think we would be a really scary team because I think Nurk will get his head on at least a little straighter, both DJJ and RoCo are going to get a rhythm with the rest of the team, Gary should have a really good season and the rest of the bench would just have to show up and be normal bench players at that point.

 

I'm using the NBA API that lets me download play-by-play event data. A play-by-play event looks something like this:
"MISS Curry 27' 3PT Pullup Jump Shot". It has a bunch other fields like the Period (1-4 plus OT values), Time, PlayerID, TeamID, etc.

From this I can calculate something equivalent to TS% except I can break down by shot distance instead of just overall. TS% is points / possessions-used but it has to estimate possessions-used from the box-score (FGA + 0.44xFTA). I don't have to estimate possessions-used, it's exact.

From the event data I can track for each shot distance:
Possessions used.
Points from the shot.
Points from FTA on the shot
Follow-up points on a missed shot
Then I just calculate points / possessions similar to TS%.

I do also track fouls drawn and add a bonus value for that. I did some analysis that says each foul drawn produces about 0.2 points above and beyond any immediate FTA.

Here is the detailed output for CJ for the past 2+ years:

Code:

                            Points/Possession
                ----------------------------------------
Shot Type       Shots   And1    FTs   Cont  Bonus    PPP     %POSS    PTS
0-3 feet        0.912  0.023  0.175  0.050  0.027  1.187 |   22.7%    733
4-10 feet       0.832  0.013  0.089  0.053  0.015  1.002 |   13.0%    353
11-15 feet      1.001  0.006  0.074  0.023  0.010  1.114 |   11.8%    369
16-23 feet      0.981  0.007  0.067  0.035  0.009  1.099 |   15.7%    481
Mid-range       0.939  0.009  0.076  0.037  0.011  1.072 |   40.5%  1,203
Twos            0.929  0.014  0.112  0.042  0.017  1.113 |   63.3%  1,936
Threes          1.136  0.002  0.022  0.044  0.002  1.206 |   35.5%  1,195
Total Shooting  1.003  0.009  0.080  0.043  0.012  1.147 |   98.8%  3,131
Non-Shooting    0.000  0.000  1.549  0.000  0.190  1.739 |    1.2%     55
Total           0.991  0.009  0.098  0.042  0.014  1.154 |  100.0%  3,186

Shots = points from the shot itself (per possession)
And1 = points from made FT on a made shot (per possession)
FTS = points from FT's on a non-made shot (2 or 3) (per possession)
Cont = continuation points from the team after a missed shot (per possession)
Bonus = extra points just for drawing a foul (per possession)
PPP = sum of above - similar to TS% except includes continuation and bonus.