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For the tl;dr crowd: 25% through the season, stats show that losing LMA and replacing him with Leonard/Davis/Plumlee/Vonleh has increased offensive efficiency among the bigs and kept the Blazers as a top-10 offense (currently #8), even with a poor shooting start to the season from Dame/CJ/Aminu, most probably because the distribution of the shots away from mid-range to more paint-and-3's.
One of the many things that was brought up this summer was that the loss of LMA may be mitigated somewhat by the fact that the bigs that were brought in to take the place of his (and, to a lesser extent, RoLo's) offense were going to be useful in large part because they don't take bad shots--defined as those 10-23' or those that are contested.
I disregarded LMA's stats this year--he's in a different offense, different usage, etc. I placed them on the graph just for reference. But I compared the 4 primary bigs (Davis/Plumlee/Leonard/Vonleh) against LMA's production last year. At first, I was going to use RoLo and Kaman with LMA to do a frontcourt v. frontcourt comparison (and maybe I will later), but it's lined up so far that the 4 Bigs are making as many shots and scoring slightly more ppg than LMA last year, so it makes for an interesting comparison.
The frontcourt this year (even with the horrible, terrible, no-good, very-bad shooting by Leonard and Vonleh at the start of the year and only marginally getting better) is more efficient and is replicating LMA's ppg. The bigs average 9.3/18.3 per game (a 51% FG%) and add 60% shooting on 8FTA/g for a total of 24.1 ppg. (By the way, on the Forensic Fan efficiency meter, that's 1.31 points per shot) LMA last year gave us 9.8/21.5 per game (45.5% FG%) with 85% FT on 5 FTA/g, for a total of 23.4 ppg and 1.09 points every time he hoisted a shot. In other words, the Big 4 score about as efficiently as having DeMarcus Cousins on the court for 48 minutes, while last year LMA was less efficient with every shot than Carmelo and CJ McCollum are this year.
It's even more stark when you look at how the shots have gone up. Of those 18 shots per game that the 4 Bigs put up, 13 of them are in the paint and 3 are from 3pt. Only 2.7 shots per game come between 10 and 23 feet, (most of them from Leonard) and they shoot 48% on them. Conversely, LMA last year shot 8 shots per game in the paint, 1.6 per game from 3 and 12.1 shots per game between 10 and 23 feet. (He averaged 40% on them)
Even in a down start to the year for Lillard/McCollum/Aminu (in terms of percentages and efficiency), moving those 10 of those 12 mid-range shots per game to 5 more from the bigs in the paint and 5 more 3s has increased efficiency from the bigs and kept the Blazers as a top-1o offensive team.
One of the many things that was brought up this summer was that the loss of LMA may be mitigated somewhat by the fact that the bigs that were brought in to take the place of his (and, to a lesser extent, RoLo's) offense were going to be useful in large part because they don't take bad shots--defined as those 10-23' or those that are contested.
I disregarded LMA's stats this year--he's in a different offense, different usage, etc. I placed them on the graph just for reference. But I compared the 4 primary bigs (Davis/Plumlee/Leonard/Vonleh) against LMA's production last year. At first, I was going to use RoLo and Kaman with LMA to do a frontcourt v. frontcourt comparison (and maybe I will later), but it's lined up so far that the 4 Bigs are making as many shots and scoring slightly more ppg than LMA last year, so it makes for an interesting comparison.
The frontcourt this year (even with the horrible, terrible, no-good, very-bad shooting by Leonard and Vonleh at the start of the year and only marginally getting better) is more efficient and is replicating LMA's ppg. The bigs average 9.3/18.3 per game (a 51% FG%) and add 60% shooting on 8FTA/g for a total of 24.1 ppg. (By the way, on the Forensic Fan efficiency meter, that's 1.31 points per shot) LMA last year gave us 9.8/21.5 per game (45.5% FG%) with 85% FT on 5 FTA/g, for a total of 23.4 ppg and 1.09 points every time he hoisted a shot. In other words, the Big 4 score about as efficiently as having DeMarcus Cousins on the court for 48 minutes, while last year LMA was less efficient with every shot than Carmelo and CJ McCollum are this year.
It's even more stark when you look at how the shots have gone up. Of those 18 shots per game that the 4 Bigs put up, 13 of them are in the paint and 3 are from 3pt. Only 2.7 shots per game come between 10 and 23 feet, (most of them from Leonard) and they shoot 48% on them. Conversely, LMA last year shot 8 shots per game in the paint, 1.6 per game from 3 and 12.1 shots per game between 10 and 23 feet. (He averaged 40% on them)
Even in a down start to the year for Lillard/McCollum/Aminu (in terms of percentages and efficiency), moving those 10 of those 12 mid-range shots per game to 5 more from the bigs in the paint and 5 more 3s has increased efficiency from the bigs and kept the Blazers as a top-1o offensive team.
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