Game Thread GAME# 33: LAKERS @ BLAZERS - DECEMBER 28, 2019 - SATURDAY, 7:00PM, NBCSNW

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I blame stotts for the majority of it. Olshey the rest. Only reason we went far is because the team got smart and stopped listening to him.

He has and never will be a good coach.
 
I didn't make up the criteria, I just applied it to other coaches to see if it was valid.

If the criteria was a coach is only good if they have won multiple championships, we could have the discussion on which coach with multiple championships is available for us to hire.

I think Pop and Kerr are better coaches than Stotts.

I generally stay out of the Stotts debate. For the most part, I think the argument that Portland shouldn't fire Stotts because the replacement could be worse is a hollow argument. I think it was a mistake to extend his contract, but it didn't bother me much. He's played the hands he's been dealt, and some of them have been bad hands....like this season. But the way he's played the hands haven't impressed me either. I think he's a weak defensive coach and his offense is kind of remedial

but I do think the roster has major holes and weaknesses and those aren't the fault of Stotts. And making CJ a featured player is one of those weaknesses

personally, I'd really like to see the house cleaned. Olshey, Stotts and CJ all gone. Get some new thinking while rebuilding the roster and the offense
 
I thought you were saying the Blazer's ISO is not good, but Houston's (with Harden) is. The data available does not seem to point to that.

If you can find opponent’s scoring rate when our ISO drive to the rim fails and compare it to the rest of the league, that might help gain some traction on your theory. I'd love to find out.

Hardens PPP on ISO is 1.18 vs Dame 1.14. Not sure if that refers to those player’s individual PPP or the team’s PPP when that player is ISOing. Hopefully the latter. Don’t know what gives but last year Dames ISO PPP was a horrid 0.87 which seems too low to be right.

I have the data to back up the scoring rates after a missed shot from various distances. I always suspected that “3pt shot is bad for your D due to long rebound” was BS just from watching since your team has added seconds to get back when the shot is in the air. And watching 5 on 4s after missed layups and player on his back under the basket. So I got the raw data from NBA play by play and tested it out. I forget the actual numbers but missed near the basket are the worst. By how much, I don’t remember. But I could dig it up.
 
I don't like eFG% as a gauge. It does not account for FT's and a shooting stat that doesn't account for FT's is fatally flawed

Agreed! Point per possession would be the most ideal stat, but it would require a lot of math on my end. Dame has a free throw frequency of 15.9% on ISO compared to CJ's 9.1%, so that would up Dame's effectiveness even more considering he shoots 90% from the line.
 
Hardens PPP on ISO is 1.18 vs Dame 1.14. Not sure if that refers to those player’s individual PPP or the team’s PPP when that player is ISOing. Hopefully the latter. Don’t know what gives but last year Dames ISO PPP was a horrid 0.87 which seems too low to be right.

I have the data to back up the scoring rates after a missed shot from various distances. I always suspected that “3pt shot is bad for your D due to long rebound” was BS just from watching since your team has added seconds to get back when the shot is in the air. And watching 5 on 4s after missed layups and player on his back under the basket. So I got the raw data from NBA play by play and tested it out. I forget the actual numbers but missed near the basket are the worst. By how much, I don’t remember. But I could dig it up.

I couldn't find PPP on the site I was using, if you don't mind sharing the link I'd love to see it. Great find, I love this stuff!

I'm assuming 1.14 PPP is higher than our team average?
 
Hardens PPP on ISO is 1.18 vs Dame 1.14. Not sure if that refers to those player’s individual PPP or the team’s PPP when that player is ISOing. Hopefully the latter. Don’t know what gives but last year Dames ISO PPP was a horrid 0.87 which seems too low to be right.

I have the data to back up the scoring rates after a missed shot from various distances. I always suspected that “3pt shot is bad for your D due to long rebound” was BS just from watching since your team has added seconds to get back when the shot is in the air. And watching 5 on 4s after missed layups and player on his back under the basket. So I got the raw data from NBA play by play and tested it out. I forget the actual numbers but missed near the basket are the worst. By how much, I don’t remember. But I could dig it up.

So ideally we'd find this shot chart for Dame's ISOs and his misses in the paint would be more of a negative than a three? When you ran these numbers, was this league wide or just for Portland? Some teams are much more aggressive on the O-boards which I assume would impact that number as well.
 
So ideally we'd find this shot chart for Dame's ISOs and his misses in the paint would be more of a negative than a three? When you ran these numbers, was this league wide or just for Portland? Some teams are much more aggressive on the O-boards which I assume would impact that number as well.

I ran league wide for multiple seasons. Running one player or one team won’t be a big enough sample size.
 
This is a CRAZY difference for Dame. He's not under 1.00 PPP on ISOs in any other season (only goes back to 2015).
Yeah I figured it out. That stat and link I gave you I think is useless. It’s Dames and Hardens individual scoring on that play type. What it should be is teams scoring in that play type run by Dame. What if Dame kicks out for a 3 every time.
 
I couldn't find PPP on the site I was using, if you don't mind sharing the link I'd love to see it. Great find, I love this stuff!

I'm assuming 1.14 PPP is higher than our team average?

https://stats.nba.com/players/isolation/?sort=TEAM_ABBREVIATION&dir=1

NBA.com breaks down different play types and tallies PPP. You can sort by team to get to Portland.

Hood is actually the best Blazer at 1.42 ppp which is in the 99th percentile. I'm assuming those numbers account for FT's. Now Hood only has 11% of his possession as iso, and he was low usage so there's a little bit of a sample size issue with that crazy number of his. I think you also have to somehow gauge for defensive attention. I see it every game that Dame has much more defensive resistance than CJ does. CJ often will drive around screens and picks and see an open lane. It might not extend all the way to the hoop but it's regularly open into the mid-range. But in the same games against the same teams when Dame rolls around a screen there's almost always another defender waiting. Defenses are stacked against Dame and CJ often drafts off of the attention paid Dame. That will skew some numbers

I also question how NBA.com's data is categorized into play types. Some of the play types they track are iso, PnR ball-handler, off-screen, hand-off, and cut. Those types of plays can look like distinctions without a difference for a team like Portland that runs so much one-on-one action
 
Yeah I figured it out. That stat and link I gave you I think is useless. It’s Dames and Hardens individual scoring on that play type. What it should be is teams scoring in that play type run by Dame. What if Dame kicks out for a 3 every time.

Absolutely... I was actually wondering if last year was so low because Aminu/Harkless were bricking so many thress. So much for that theory!
 
https://stats.nba.com/players/isolation/?sort=TEAM_ABBREVIATION&dir=1

NBA.com breaks down different play types and tallies PPP. You can sort by team to get to Portland.

Hood is actually the best Blazer at 1.42 ppp which is in the 99th percentile. I'm assuming those numbers account for FT's. Now Hood only has 11% of his possession as iso, and he was low usage so there's a little bit of a sample size issue with that crazy number of his. I think you also have to somehow gauge for defensive attention. I see it every game that Dame has much more defensive resistance than CJ does. CJ often will drive around screens and picks and see an open lane. It might not extend all the way to the hoop but it's regularly open into the mid-range. But in the same games against the same teams when Dame rolls around a screen there's almost always another defender waiting. Defenses are stacked against Dame and CJ often drafts off of the attention paid Dame. That will skew some numbers

I also question how NBA.com's data is categorized into play types. Some of the play types they track are iso, PnR ball-handler, off-screen, hand-off, and cut. Those types of plays can look like distinctions without a difference for a team like Portland that runs so much one-on-one action

I spent a couple years logging games for Synergy Sports and as you proved your ability to accurately log games, your level would move up. Level 1 would just identify when a possession started/ended. Next guy would do who was on the floor, next guy outcome, result, and eventually play type. While you have to watch a lot of film to get to the play identification level, it certainly isn't an exact science. Even knowing the play call wouldn't promise you would log the action right and sometimes knowing the play call would create a bias in your ability to make a determination.
 
https://stats.nba.com/players/isolation/?sort=TEAM_ABBREVIATION&dir=1

NBA.com breaks down different play types and tallies PPP. You can sort by team to get to Portland.

Hood is actually the best Blazer at 1.42 ppp which is in the 99th percentile. I'm assuming those numbers account for FT's. Now Hood only has 11% of his possession as iso, and he was low usage so there's a little bit of a sample size issue with that crazy number of his. I think you also have to somehow gauge for defensive attention. I see it every game that Dame has much more defensive resistance than CJ does. CJ often will drive around screens and picks and see an open lane. It might not extend all the way to the hoop but it's regularly open into the mid-range. But in the same games against the same teams when Dame rolls around a screen there's almost always another defender waiting. Defenses are stacked against Dame and CJ often drafts off of the attention paid Dame. That will skew some numbers

I also question how NBA.com's data is categorized into play types. Some of the play types they track are iso, PnR ball-handler, off-screen, hand-off, and cut. Those types of plays can look like distinctions without a difference for a team like Portland that runs so much one-on-one action

Yeah welll teams probably know what they are doing. Dame is much more efficient than CJ so they pay way more attention to him.

Yes, if they don’t categorize consistently that would skew the data. I’m gonna look at that page some more to see if there is any way to get better numbers. Maybe the raw data I have has play type. I’ll check. NBA data is a pain in the ass to deal with. It’s kind of a mess and some voodoo is needed to even break the plays down into minor and major possessions.
 
I spent a couple years logging games for Synergy Sports and as you proved your ability to accurately log games, your level would move up. Level 1 would just identify when a possession started/ended. Next guy would do who was on the floor, next guy outcome, result, and eventually play type. While you have to watch a lot of film to get to the play identification level, it certainly isn't an exact science. Even knowing the play call wouldn't promise you would log the action right and sometimes knowing the play call would create a bias in your ability to make a determination.
Cool sounds like a fun job!
 
Cool sounds like a fun job!

It didn't take too long for it to start to feel like work! What was cool is you would have access to the film library and all the games.

For example you could query all Dame/LMA PnR on the left side of the court where the defense jumps and results in a turnover. One click and there's a list of every clip what that exact outcome happened. It's no wonder NBA and college teams loved it. Advanced scouts probably hate it though!
 
It didn't take too long for it to start to feel like work! What was cool is you would have access to the film library and all the games.

For example you could query all Dame/LMA PnR on the left side of the court where the defense jumps and results in a turnover. One click and there's a list of every clip what that exact outcome happened. It's no wonder NBA and college teams loved it. Advanced scouts probably hate it though!

Yeah that’s the case with all jobs I guess. That sounds really cool though. The stuff I got was all from NBA stats site and I had to write a .Net program to download, parse and query it. I just checked NBA Stuffer which has similar data but more cleansed and morphed into possessions. They don’t have play type so that means I don’t either since both are based on the same event data.
 
Skal is getting better.
But I'm still seeing multiple times each game when the ball comes to him and he has no clue what to do.
You can practically sense him weighing his options...
It's almost like he lacks confidence because he's not being used correctly. Terry should be encouraging him to shoot 3s, he's a good shooter, but I've never audibly heard him do so (remember how we'd hear him yell at Meyers to shoot?). A lot of times, Skal gets the ball up top with space and immediately looks for a guard to get the ball to, just like a Whiteside or Steven Adams type would.
 
doesn't really matter...he scored 31 points on 17 shots...that's 1.82 points a shot which is outstanding. He also had 9 of Portland's 18 assists

Points Per Shot has been a popular stat since the days of defending Jordan (limit him to a point per shot attempt), but it misses something that I've never seen discussed: Upping the ratio via freethrows is still taking offensive possessions away from teammates. It's false efficiency.

Dame had a below average shooting night tonight but got nearly half his points at the line on a very high percentage. Those freethrows basically account for seven fewer possessions for the rest of the players. Looked at that way, it's 31 points on 24 shots which is a more mundane 1.29 pps.

I know you'll disagree with the essence of this, because it lets CJ off the hook for not padding his ratio with gaudy freethrow numbers.
 
Points Per Shot has been a popular stat since the days of defending Jordan (limit him to a point per shot attempt), but it misses something that I've never seen discussed: Upping the ratio via freethrows is still taking offensive possessions away from teammates. It's false efficiency.

Dame had a below average shooting night tonight but got nearly half his points at the line on a very high percentage. Those freethrows basically account for seven fewer possessions for the rest of the players. Looked at that way, it's 31 points on 24 shots which is a more mundane 1.29 pps.

I know you'll disagree with the essence of this, because it lets CJ off the hook for not padding his ratio with gaudy freethrow numbers.

That’s why they invented TS% which counts points from FT’s and tries to count possessions used by FT’s too though that part of the formula is an estimate, not exact.
 
So ideally we'd find this shot chart for Dame's ISOs and his misses in the paint would be more of a negative than a three? When you ran these numbers, was this league wide or just for Portland? Some teams are much more aggressive on the O-boards which I assume would impact that number as well.

Here are the effects of various types of missed shots on your subsequent defense.

Code:
9,532 games

Shot Distance   Pts/100  Miss/Game
Layups           112.6       6.2
1-5 feet         111.6       6.5
6-14 feet        108.7      10.3
15-22 feet       108.3      14.0
ALL 2-PT         109.7      37.1

Corner 3         110.5       3.0
Other 3          109.3      18.5
ALL 3-PT         109.4      21.5

ALL SHOTS        109.6      58.6

So if a team takes 100 layups and misses half of them that would be 50 missed-layup possessions for your defense and cost you about 2 PPG compared to taking all mid-range. So if PPP on a layup is 1.12 then it's really more like 1.10.

But now that I think about this, it's very incomplete. Only accounts for the effect of misses. Not makes. Layups make or get fouled more often than 3's. So more often a set defense.
 
Here are the effects of various types of missed shots on your subsequent defense.

Code:
9,532 games

Shot Distance   Pts/100  Miss/Game
Layups           112.6       6.2
1-5 feet         111.6       6.5
6-14 feet        108.7      10.3
15-22 feet       108.3      14.0
ALL 2-PT         109.7      37.1

Corner 3         110.5       3.0
Other 3          109.3      18.5
ALL 3-PT         109.4      21.5

ALL SHOTS        109.6      58.6

So if a team takes 100 layups and misses half of them that would be 50 missed-layup possessions for your defense and cost you about 2 PPG compared to taking all mid-range. So if PPP on a layup is 1.12 then it's really more like 1.10.

But now that I think about this, it's very incomplete. Only accounts for the effect of misses. Not makes. Layups make or get fouled more often than 3's. So more often a set defense.

You're right there should be another layer added in to tell a more accurate story, but massive props to you for putting this together.

A lot of us repeat the things we heard from our coaches or hear on TV, like "missed 3's lead to easy buckets on the other end." Love finding out if these theories that seem to make sense are actually backed up. In this case, not so much, so thank you!
 
Points Per Shot has been a popular stat since the days of defending Jordan (limit him to a point per shot attempt), but it misses something that I've never seen discussed: Upping the ratio via freethrows is still taking offensive possessions away from teammates. It's false efficiency.

Dame had a below average shooting night tonight but got nearly half his points at the line on a very high percentage. Those freethrows basically account for seven fewer possessions for the rest of the players. Looked at that way, it's 31 points on 24 shots which is a more mundane 1.29 pps.

I know you'll disagree with the essence of this, because it lets CJ off the hook for not padding his ratio with gaudy freethrow numbers.

yeah, I disagree and do so strongly.

the ability to draw fouls is an important skill and a point from the FT line counts just as much as a point off a shot. It doesn't get discounted because of style and it's not false efficiency. More than that is the ability to draw fouls impacts the other team in ways that don't show up in individual boxscores. It gets individual opponents in foul trouble, and it puts opposing teams in the penalty quicker, which is turn can create FT opportunities for teammates. Both of those components are significant advantages

your calculation of possessions is off-base too. Dame was fouled on a three point attempt. He also shot 4 FT's on personal fouls, early in shot clocks when the Lakers were in the penalty, and that's not taking possessions away from any teammate, especially considering he was one of the reasons the Lakers were in the penalty. He shot a T too, a privilege he has earned by being Portland's best FT shooter. That's 8 of his 14 FT's coming off essentially one possession. In other words, using your 'possession' arguments, he scored 13 points off of 4 possessions, not 7...

which leads to your assumption that Dame shooting FT's takes "possessions" away from teammates. Dame shoots 90% from the FT line, and he often gets fouled on a three. So basically, Dame scores close to 2 points on one of those FT possessions; call it 1.9 if you want more refined accuracy. Ok then, subtract Dame's points and shots from the Blazer totals and you're left with Dame's teammates having scored 2875 points on 2468 shots. That works out to 1.165 points/shot. So then, you have Dame scoring 1.9 points on his FT possessions, and the rest of the team scoring 1.16 points on their possessions....and you're bitching about Dame taking those 1.16 point possessions away so he can have 1.9 point possessions? Talk about false efficiency....

let's take you argument and actually apply it to the Blazers. Dame averages 7.6 FT's a game; by your logic that's 3.8 possessions he takes from teammates. Dame scores about 1.9 points/possession and his teammates score about 1.17 (rounding up). If Dame gave all his FT possessions to teammates, Portland would score 2.8 fewer points a game. Put that in perspective: Portland's MOV is -1.2 points/game. Add your possession argument to that number and Portland's MOV drops to around -3.9...about Minny level and they are 11-20

so yeah, that's a lot of words to get back to the first sentence of this post...I disagree.
 
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