Game Thread GAME# 14: SPURS @ BLAZERS - JANUARY 18, 2021 - MONDAY, 12:00, NBCSNW

[Tince]

I'm not saying he's a bad coach, but the shine comes off real quick when he doesn't have a generational talent on his team anymore.

I fully agree with you on both accounts.

 

[Natebishop3]

I fully agree with you on both accounts.

Unlike someone like Phil Jackson though, we have seen Pop with some very mediocre teams.

Phil wouldn't coach a team unless they had 2+ HOFer caliber players on them lol

 

[Jon]

 

[Tince]

Unlike someone like Phil Jackson though, we have seen Pop with some very mediocre teams.

Phil wouldn't coach a team unless they had 2+ HOFer caliber players on them lol

Well put... Phil knew how to land the right gig, very smart of him.

Would have loved to have seen him coach a small market team without a HOF player to put him to the test.

 

[B-Roy]

I've made multiple posts showing the data, but I will be happy to provide it again.

http://thebrooklyngame.com/nba-correlate-offensive-efficiency-winning/

• Assist ratio. This is a surprising one, but the ratio between points created by assists and points actually had a minimally negative correlation (-6.8) to offensive rating. It seems to run counter to basketball wisdom that ball movement makes an offense good, but three of the top eight offenses ranked in the bottom 10 of the percentage of their points created by an assist, and three of the worst seven offenses ranked among the best.
  
  More than anything else, a team needs scorers; it doesn’t matter what offense you run if you don’t have players that can finish the play. If you pass the ball around in a well-run offense, you get an open look a la the Spurs. If you throw it around until someone takes a bad shot, you get the Bucks.

This is from basketball-datascience.com:

"Assists and assists percentage alone are not good indicators of win-loss records because there are many other factors that can contribute to wins other than good movement." Citing assists as a measure of good/bad coaching is a lazy argument and the data backs that up.

Again, I'm open to you showing me otherwise, I would actually prefer your narrative be true. Please share your data now.

That article was written in 2014. Curious what the data says in recent years with the rise of the 3 point shot. That article cites a strong correlation between "drive and kicks" and winning - and that has probably gone up as teams are taking more threes. I don't know where I can find the number of drive and kicks per team in a public data set, but my intuition says the Blazers don't do enough of that. Only Dame does it on a consistent basis. CJ has been doing it more this year. But when one or both are out of the game we don't have anyone to initiate drive and kicks.

 

[Tince]

That article was written in 2014. Curious what the data says in recent years with the rise of the 3 point shot. That article cites a strong correlation between "drive and kicks" and winning - and that has probably gone up as teams are taking more threes. I don't know where I can find the number of drive and kicks per team in a public data set, but my intuition says the Blazers don't do enough of that. Only Dame does it on a consistent basis. CJ has been doing it more this year. But when one or both are out of the game we don't have anyone to initiate drive and kicks.

I think you raise a great point and I would like that question answered too!

I was unable to find a data set on drive & kicks, so I won't even try and guess where we would rank in comparison to the rest of the league.

 

[Sheldon Shape]

but three of the top eight offenses ranked in the bottom 10 of the percentage of their points created by an assist, and three of the worst seven offenses ranked among the best.

So you still have 5 offenses that aren't in the bottom 10. So, we're just cherry-picking it seems. And, you have 4 of the worst seven offenses not ranked among the best. There's a lot of random cherry-picking here. Nobody is suggesting that getting the most assists is going to solve all your problems and make you the best but there seems to be a correlation that it helps.

Let's take a look at the top 10 teams in assists.

1 Charlotte 28.7 28.0 26.0 27.7 29.5 23.8
2 Washington 27.3 25.3 29.0 26.8 27.8 25.0
3 Denver 27.2 27.3 25.0 26.6 28.0 25.9
4 Memphis 26.8 30.7 27.0 25.3 29.0 27.0
5 Miami 26.7 26.7 25.0 27.0 26.4 25.7
6 Indiana 26.7 27.7 28.0 24.6 29.2 25.7
7 Milwaukee 26.2 26.0 22.0 26.3 26.2 25.7
8 Brooklyn 26.0 28.0 24.0 26.5 24.8 24.5
9 Phoenix 25.9 26.0 21.0 24.5 26.7 27.2
10 LA Lakers 25.7 27.7 31.0 25.7 25.7 25.4

Out of the top 10, more than half are championship contenders.

Not seeing what you're argument is here. Teams that are better in assists are certainly in better position to win.

Anyone saying otherwise doesn't know basketball.

 

[Terry Stotts]

Anybody still think I'm anywhere close to being in the upper half of NBA coaches?

 

[UKRAINEFAN]

that's what everyone does when dame has the ball. but our problem is not offense.

That's my concern, that he is emulating dame rather than really learning how to run an offense. Dame has such great 3 point skills and ability to get to the basket and finish. These skills also enable Dame to run an effective pick and roll. I think Simons needs an entirely different kind of offense to be effective and I think the coaching staff is not providing that.

 

[Sheldon Shape]

Anybody still think I'm anywhere close to being in the upper half of NBA coaches?

Some people don't have to think.

They've convinced themselves that an adequate coach doesn't matter to the success of an NBA team.

 

[Terry Stotts]

Nobody in their right mind thinks less ball movement = more success.

Nobody.

I do.

 

[Sheldon Shape]

I do.

God dammit, Terry! I know you don't.

 

[Terry Stotts]

An open shot by anyone, from anywhere, is a great shot. Even if you don't have a single teammate anywhere near the rim to get on o-board.

Unless is the other team - then you want to leave anyone open from mid-range. And 3-point range. And there's no point in rotating to protect the paint.

 

[Tince]

So you still have 5 offenses that aren't in the bottom 10. So, we're just cherry-picking it seems. And, you have 4 of the worst seven offenses not ranked among the best. There's a lot of random cherry-picking here. Nobody is suggesting that getting the most assists is going to solve all your problems and make you the best but there seems to be a correlation that it helps.

Let's take a look at the top 10 teams in assists.

1 Charlotte 28.7 28.0 26.0 27.7 29.5 23.8
2 Washington 27.3 25.3 29.0 26.8 27.8 25.0
3 Denver 27.2 27.3 25.0 26.6 28.0 25.9
4 Memphis 26.8 30.7 27.0 25.3 29.0 27.0
5 Miami 26.7 26.7 25.0 27.0 26.4 25.7
6 Indiana 26.7 27.7 28.0 24.6 29.2 25.7
7 Milwaukee 26.2 26.0 22.0 26.3 26.2 25.7
8 Brooklyn 26.0 28.0 24.0 26.5 24.8 24.5
9 Phoenix 25.9 26.0 21.0 24.5 26.7 27.2
10 LA Lakers 25.7 27.7 31.0 25.7 25.7 25.4

Out of the top 10, more than half are championship contenders.

Not seeing what you're argument is here. Teams that are better in assists are certainly in better position to win.

Anyone saying otherwise doesn't know basketball.

Picking 10 teams, 15 games into a season, then saying half are "championship contenders" is:

1) A really small sample size
2) "Championship Contender" is subjective. You would need to use win/loss percentage as a non-bias measure.

The top 5 teams in assists on your list have a combined winning percentage of .419. Your claim is the teams with more assists win, but the data I provided says there is no correlation. The data you provided, would imply that if you are tops in the league in assists, you are likely to win less games than an average team.

Despite the data you provided, you came to a conclusion you wanted, then cite that anyone who doesn't agree, doesn't know basketball.

If your theory is as obvious as you imply it is, you should have no trouble finding data to refute the 3 sources I provided for you saying that there is no correlation.

 

[kjironman1]

So. How was the game? I had to work. Should i read the thread?

 

[Natebishop3]

So. How was the game? I had to work. Should i read the thread?

We didn't play bad for three quarters and then we fell apart in the 4th.

 

[Tince]

Here's a chart for assists and winning percentage for this season. A positive correlation would see the data points go from the bottom left to the top right. A negative correlation would see the data points go from the top left to the bottom right.

Absolute value of r Strength of relationship
r < 0.25 No relationship
0.25 < r < 0.5 Weak relationship
0.5 < r < 0.75 Moderate relationship
r > 0.75 Strong relationship

R value of this chart is 0.012087695

 

[Tince]

Here's a chart for assists and winning percentage for this season. A positive correlation would see the data points go from the bottom left to the top right. A negative correlation would see the data points go from the top left to the bottom right.

Absolute value of r Strength of relationship
r < 0.25 No relationship
0.25 < r < 0.5 Weak relationship
0.5 < r < 0.75 Moderate relationship
r > 0.75 Strong relationship

R value of this chart is 0.012087695


View attachment 36180

Here's a better look at the chart to remove a lot of the empty space. Assists per game on the left, winning percentage on the bottom. The early data this year would back up previous claims that there is no correlation.

 

[James lamphear]

Why do you think this hardass mentally hasn't worked as of late? Why did Kawhi leave? Why isn't Aldridge any better for the Spurs than he was for Portland? Why hasn't he had more success in the last 6 years than Dame in the playoffs? Why hasn't DaRozen quality of play changed drastically in the positive favor since coming from Toronto?

Why did they beat by 20 points today that's probably the only thing that's matter at this moment.

 

[Tince]

Why did they beat by 20 points today that's probably the only thing that's matter at this moment.

They were the better team today, no doubt about it. We were better than the Lakers the day we played them as well, but I'm not ready to draw major conclusions from one game.

I don't think Pop became a way worse coach over the last 6 years, but I do think his talent level change. Maybe you think he's a bad coach now and he was great then?

 

[KingSpeed]

So. How was the game? I had to work. Should i read the thread?

We were making some pretty good plays on both sides of the court and Hood was great. We started the 4th qtr strong with 3 straight 3s and then collapsed and the Spurs couldn’t miss from 3. It got out of hand. Dame and GTJ didn’t shoot as well as usual. DJJ had the block of the year. Def missed CJ’s scoring. Spurs might be good this year.

 

[Sheldon Shape]

Picking 10 teams, 15 games into a season, then saying half are "championship contenders" is:

1) A really small sample size

The 2019 season is listed there as well. Is the whole last season a small sample size too?

2) "Championship Contender" is subjective. You would need to use win/loss percentage as a non-bias measure.

I'm looking at the teams who had the most success in the post season of 2019. That's not subjective since most of my complaints have been made regarding Stotts in the post-season.

The top 5 teams in assists on your list have a combined winning percentage of .419. Your claim is the teams with more assists win, but the data I provided says there is no correlation. The data you provided, would imply that if you are tops in the league in assists, you are likely to win less games than an average team.

Nonsense per usual, sir. 2019 as well as the early part of this season. You're translating the data incorrectly. Nothing I can do for you but provide the evidence. It's your choice to skew it. What I said was correct. More than half of the top 10 teams in assists are contenders.

Despite the data you provided, you came to a conclusion you wanted, then cite that anyone who doesn't agree, doesn't know basketball.

Or, that's the conclusion of anyone who is reading the data correctly rather than posting a quote off a website from 2014.

If your theory is as obvious as you imply it is, you should have no trouble finding data to refute the 3 sources I provided for you saying that there is no correlation.

I already proved that most of the teams in the top 10 in assists are contenders. Look it up and read slowly this time.

 

[Sheldon Shape]

Seems like in the first the Blazers were running the pick and roll with Dame and Enes with Enes rolling to the hoop and getting easy baskets. Wonder why they never went back to that in the 2nd? 3rd? 4th? quarters

It takes discipline and drilling to have consistency. Our coach shows no interest in that. It's "whatever you're feeling at the moment" and go.

 

[TBpup]

The offense was hurting but then Hood chipped in with more points in one game than he had the whole rest of the season combined. He wouldn't have had that if CJ was playing so that made up for a lot of it.

But on defense, my goodness they were bad. The Spurs 38 points in the 4th was their highest scoring quarter of the entire year so far. They shot 46% from '3' and their lowest scoring quarter was only 1 point less than our highest scoring quarter.

These 15-20 point deficits so often (and now something like 5 games in a row) are unacceptable.

 

[e_blazer]

The offense was hurting but then Hood chipped in with more points in one game than he had the whole rest of the season combined. He wouldn't have had that if CJ was playing so that made up for a lot of it.

But on defense, my goodness they were bad. The Spurs 38 points in the 4th was their highest scoring quarter of the entire year so far. They shot 46% from '3' and their lowest scoring quarter was only 1 point less than our highest scoring quarter.

These 15-20 point deficits so often (and now something like 5 games in a row) are unacceptable.

I would be interested to see a tally of the open looks from 3 that both teams got. It seemed like the Blazers were open as much as the Spurs, but they just couldn’t hit their shots. Trent was 1 for 9 and it seemed like most of them were open looks.

 

[Tince]

The 2019 season is listed there as well. Is the whole last season a small sample size too?

I'm looking at the teams who had the most success in the post season of 2019. That's not subjective since most of my complaints have been made regarding Stotts in the post-season.

Nonsense per usual, sir. 2019 as well as the early part of this season. You're translating the data incorrectly. Nothing I can do for you but provide the evidence. It's your choice to skew it. What I said was correct. More than half of the top 10 teams in assists are contenders.

Or, that's the conclusion of anyone who is reading the data correctly rather than posting a quote off a website from 2014.

I already proved that most of the teams in the top 10 in assists are contenders. Look it up and read slowly this time.

No offense, but you don't seem to understand how correlation works.

You are picking a random sample of teams (should include all the teams), then saying because more than 50% (random number again) are/were contenders (subjective), that you can come to a reasonable conclusion. That's not how correlation works.

If you are mixing last years assists numbers with this years, but not assigning win/losses to them, that would totally invalidate the data.

You should get at least 2000 games in your sample. So if you want to cherry pick on the the top 10, you should look at a total of 3 seasons.

Looking forward to you providing a complete data set that even has a correlation of over 0.5.

 

[Tince]

I would be interested to see a tally of the open looks from 3 that both teams got. It seemed like the Blazers were open as much as the Spurs, but they just couldn’t hit their shots. Trent was 1 for 9 and it seemed like most of them were open looks.

I don't know when they update the data, but I'm guessing fairly soon you could use this link and filter out the team, data range (include today only), and then compare Portland and San Antonio.

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/s...0612757&DateFrom=01/17/2021&DateTo=01/18/2021

On the season, here's how closely defended our 3 attempts are:

Wide Open - 33.4%
Open - 43.4%
Tight - 21.5%
Very Tight - 1.7%

 

[Sheldon Shape]

No offense, but you don't seem to understand how correlation works.

You are picking a random sample of teams (should include all the teams), then saying because more than 50% (random number again) are/were contenders (subjective), that you can come to a reasonable conclusion. That's not how correlation works.

If you are mixing last years assists numbers with this years, but not assigning win/losses to them, that would totally invalidate the data.

You should get at least 2000 games in your sample. So if you want to cherry pick on the the top 10, you should look at a total of 3 seasons.

Looking forward to you providing a complete data set that even has a correlation of over 0.5.

I'm only using your logic. No amount of evidence will tell you otherwise. We've seen the amount of bootlicking you've done for Stotts no matter the personnel changes. Despite almost every major mainstream publication having the Blazers winning the off-season, you would have us believe that Stotts can't possibly do any better because the additions aren't good?

You're again evading the fact that most of the league's contenders are in the top 10 for assists. You bring up this talking point to protect Stotts.

Give it up already.

 

[Tince]

I'm only using your logic. No amount of evidence will tell you otherwise. We've seen the amount of bootlicking you've done for Stotts no matter the personnel changes. Despite almost every major mainstream publication having the Blazers winning the off-season, you would have us believe that Stotts can't possibly do any better because the additions aren't good?

You're again evading the fact that most of the league's contenders are in the top 10 for assists. You bring up this talking point to protect Stotts.

Give it up already.

Who are the "leagues contenders"? How do you define that?
Are you talking about this year or multiple years?

Correlation data is not bootlicking, it's fairly simple. You just don't want to provide a 2000 game sample with full data. I've done it for you. I've done it using data from this season (no correlation). Old data says no correlation, this year says no correlation.

You asked me to provide real data, and I did. You provided a story. I haven't even brought up Stotts in this debate, this is about numbers not people.

 

[Tince]

I'm only using your logic. No amount of evidence will tell you otherwise. We've seen the amount of bootlicking you've done for Stotts no matter the personnel changes. Despite almost every major mainstream publication having the Blazers winning the off-season, you would have us believe that Stotts can't possibly do any better because the additions aren't good?

You're again evading the fact that most of the league's contenders are in the top 10 for assists. You bring up this talking point to protect Stotts.

Give it up already.

Here's the 2019-2020 data: Correlation 0.12 (VERY WEAK).

6 out of the top 10 had a winning record. 1 out of the top 4 had a winning record. That is not a strong correlation either.

The team with the lowest assist average had more wins than the team with the most assists.