“Get good looks” is a common phrase in basketball Coach Speak. It means: try and break down the defense to create good, open shots. Generally speaking, open shots are higher percentage.…| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
10 posts published by ElGee during February 2011| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
I’m a big fan of On/Off data, which compares a team’s point differential with a player on the court versus when he’s off the court. I’ve referenced it frequently in the past and think it’s one of the more telling reflections of a player’s value to his team in the advanced stat family. The nice part […]| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
When the playoffs roll around (April 16, 2011) NBA teams typically shorten their rotations and bank on core units to play heavy minutes. I thought it would be worth examining the top 5-man units in the league this year, since (in theory) they will be logging more minutes in the postseason than they have throughout […]| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
In the last post, we looked at the leaders in Expected Value (EV) on the defensive side of the ball for the 2010 playoffs. Not surprisingly, Dwight Howard was the winner there. Now let’s look at the offensive leaders in EV from the 2010 playoffs. There are three notable additions to the classic box score […]| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
In a post last week debunking the nuclear overreaction to Miami’s late-game failures, I alluded to the Heat’s lack of depth and size. Which led me to thinking, just how little is Miami …| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
Besides scoring, the major contribution to a basketball offense is playmaking. Or, more specifically, the ability to draw extra defenders away from their assignments. As a measure of how well a pla…| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
Unless something drastic happens in the final weeks of the NBA season, Derrick Rose is going to win the MVP. He’s not a horrible choice — he’s in the top-5 on my ballot — bu…| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
If you missed the last post, it was an overview of Expected Value (EV). And while that approach is not a novel concept — check out this similar method — from what I gather, incorporatin…| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
I’ve talked about “guarded situations” before, but never from the perspective of an individual defender. We can use a “guarding situation” as a quick and dirty operati…| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
There are a few ways offenses end up with unguarded shots, either in transition, off of screens and when defenses make errors. The thinking here is (deliberately) quite simple: defenders should be …| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
In 1974, the NBA started tracking steals. And apparently, they thought that was a sufficient measure of forcing turnovers on defense, because they haven’t added anything related in their box …| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
Some time ago, I began wondering what the value of certain actions in a game were. How did they translate to points, since points determine who wins based on the rules of the game? So much goes in …| Back Picks: Fleeting Sports Thoughts
