SB Nation User Blog: jksnake99

Blazer Player Stats of Interest Through 17 Games

jksnake99 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:16:26 -0000

The Rip City Project did a good team stat post and included some individual stats, but I thought I'd run through each player and list some stats of interest, relying on basketball-reference.com, 82games.com and basketballvalue.com.

PER is John Hollinger's catch-all metric. Cue Timbo's rant.

Usage% is a measure of the percentage of a team's posessions a player is involved in.

TS% is True Shooting Percentage (50*points scored/(FG Attempts+ 0.44 * FT Attempts), a metric intended to capture a player's scoring efficiency.

See the bbr glossary for info on these stats plus the other rate stats (reb rate, ast%, stl rate, etc.)

Jump Shot % is what I'm calling 82games' stat on the percentage of a player's shots that are jumpers.

Foul draw rate is 82games' stat on the percentage of shots in which a player draws a foul.

I'll go in order of minutes played. This year's stats are in bold, last year's stats are in parentheses. I'm focusing on stats that are significantly different from last year.

Brandon Roy:

PER 18.4 (24.0), Usage: 25.1 (27.4), TS% .556 (.573), Rebound rate 6.9 (7.9), Steal % 0.4 (1.7), Jump Shot % 78 (66)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -8.23 (2-year adjusted plus minus +4.04)

Roy is shooting more jump shots this year and is not scoring at as high an efficiency, despite being fouled on almost an identical percentage of his shots. His lower PER is explained largely by decreases in both usage and efficiency, but the lower rebound and steal rates don't help either. Roy has not played at all-star level this year. He's going to need to be a lot better for the Blazers to go deep into the playoffs. I expect him to pick it up, but there's a chance this could be a "down year" for Roy.

LaMarcus Aldridge:

PER 17.7 (19.1), Usage: 21.9 (23.7), TS% .538 (.529), Rebound rate 14.5 (12.5), Ast% 10.1 (9.3), Steal% 0.8 (1.4), Block % 1.1 (2.0), Turnover % 6.7 (8.0)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -0.42 (2-year adjusted plus minus +3.84)

LaMarcus is an interesting case. In the past, his rank in PER has been more different than his rank in WP48 (a metric by David Berri of the Wages of Wins Journal) than all but a very few players. In short, stat geeks have disagreed about him. This year, due to his increased rebounding and slightly higher TS%, Berri's metric finally likes him (Berri's system had him as a below average PF before this year), while the lower usage and defensive numbers explain the reduced PER. LaMarcus deserves a lot of credit for the improved rebounding and for having an extremely low TO rate. You'd still like to see him draw a foul (his foul drawing rate is up, but only slightly) or block a shot every now and then.

Steve Blake:

PER 10.4 (14.4), Usage 14.7 (17.0), TS% .525 (.557), Ast % 22.0 (25.1), TO% 16.4 (13.7), Rebound Rate 5.5 (4.9).

1 year adjusted plus minus: +17.87 (2-year adjusted plus minus -1.88)

Steve Blake is another interesting case. By virtually any boxscore stat, he's been really, really bad this year. Everything that makes him good-- shooting and good decision making-- he's not done nearly as well this year. In terms of plus minus (raw or adjusted), though, he's been killing it. Adjusted plus minus didn't like him much at all last year, but this year it thinks he's playing at superstar level. Worth noting here that APM is notoriously noisy eve over entire seasons. Argue amongst yourselves.

Andre Miller:

PER 15.1 (18.6), Usage 21.2 (21.8), Ast% 30.8 (30.2), TO% 17.0 (14.0), TS% .520 (.548), Rebound Rate 6.4 (7.4)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +15.70 (2-year adjusted plus minus 0.44)

Yet another interesting case. Andre is still getting assists at his usual impressive rate, but all his other boxscore stats are down. APM thinks he's been amazing. Again, argue amongst yourselves.

Greg Oden:

PER 23.5 (18.1), Usage 20.5 (19.3), Blk% 7.4 (4.2), Ast % 6.4 (3.9), TO% 18.9 (16.2), Drating 94 (104), TS% .678 (.599), Fouls/36 minutes 6.0 (6.5)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -1.35 (2-year adjusted plus minus +4.31)

By most advanced metrics, Oden has been the best Blazer player while he's been out there. He's absolutely all over the basketball-reference leaders page. Its interesting that he's in negative territory in 1 year APM-- a week ago he was leading the team in this category. Fouls, turnovers. Those are the only two bad things you can say about Greg's year so far. He's been great.

Rudy Fernandez:

PER 17.0 (15.5), TS% .628 (.588), Steal % 4.0 (1.9), TO% 20.1 (11.0), Ast % 16.3 (12.7), rebound rate 7.1 (6.4), D-rating 97 (109), Jump shot % 92 (84), foul draw rate 4.9 (6.0)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -9.04 (2-year adjusted plus minus +1.58)

After a slow start, Rudy's been shooting the ball extremely well of late. He's also leading the entire NBA in steal rate. Any time you can bring a steal machine who's an excellent shooter off the bench, that's a positive thing. The TOs are a bit alarming (worse TO% than Oden) and he's penetrating and getting fouled even less than last year, but other than that the numbers look great for Rudy. I'm not even going to try to explain the APM numbers.

Martell Webster:

Numbers in parentheses are from 2007-2008.

PER 12.2. (12.0), Usage 18.6 (18.0), TS% .512 (.548), Ast % 5.7 (7.0), TO% 10.9 (10.2), Steal % 2.3 (1.1), rebound rate 8.3 (8.2), D-rating 99 (110)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +0.49 (2-year adjusted plus minus +N/A)

Compared with 2007-2008, Martell is shooting worse and has a much worse ast/to rating. I think its pretty clear his defense has been better though, and the stats bear that out. He's rebounding at about the same rate as before. Solid role player.

Joel Przybilla

PER 12.9 (15.4), TS% .532 (.652), Usage 12.0 (10.2), Rebound rate 23.2 (22.8), block % 5.7 (3.9), TO% 23.8 (18.5), O-rating 105 (124), D-rating 94 (105).

1 year adjusted plus minus: +2.47 (2-year adjusted plus minus +4.20)

Joel had a fluky, unsustainably good offensive year last year, as the offensive stats indicate. There was nothing fluky about his Rebound rate (his O-rebs are way up and D-rebs are down a bit but still excellent) or his defense. The defensive rating improvement is likely due as much to team improvement as his own-- Joel's been excellent on D the last couple years.

Travis Outlaw

PER 15.0 (15.1), TS% .489 (.541), Usage 25.3 (22.0), Rebound rate 9.8 (9.1), block % 2.6 (2.0), TO% 9.7 (8.9), O-rating 102 (111), D-rating 100 (109).

1 year adjusted plus minus: -0.59 (2-year adjusted plus minus -0.87)

Before the injury, Travis was being relied on for offense even more than usual, as seen in the usage, but was not producing very efficiently at all. He was rebounding and blocking shots quite a bit more though.

Juwon Howard

Has not been good. At all.

Jerryd Bayless

PER 15.7 (8.9), TS% .595 (.497), Usage 24.6 (20.9), Ast % 19.9 (18.2), TO% 13.7 (19.3), O-rating 114 (97), D-rating 105 (111), fouls/36 min 7.7 (4.5), efg% on jump shots .318 (.270), jump shot % 46 (52), foul draw rate 22.6 (18.2)

1 year adjusted plus minus: N/A-- not enough data according to basketballvalue.

Lots of interesting stats for Jerryd. He's still not an efficient jump shooter, but he's making more of them, taking less of them and getting to the line more. As a result, he's got a very good TS%. His assists are up a tick, his TOs down quite a bit. Jerryd looks like he can be a useful combo guard off the bench at least. Not clear yet if he can be more or not. We'll have to see more before we can judge that.

Dante Cunningham

PER 20.4, TS% .583, Usage 17.4, Ast % 7.2, TO% 5.0, rebound rate 13.2, O-rating 123, D-rating 100

1 year adjusted plus minus: N/A-- not enough data according to basketballvalue.

Dante is doing a nice job-- making the shots he knows he can make. He isn't likely to be a great rebounding 4, but he's rebounding more than an any of LMA's seasons except the current one. All we know so far is that he's done a nice job in his first few stints as the backup 4. He could be a good fit in that spot should Travis move on.

Fun With Small Sample Sizes (A Look at Some Early Season Stats of Interest)

jksnake99 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:00:40 -0000

A week into the NBA season, let's take a look at some stats. This is not meant as any kind of analysis (sample sizes are way too small), merely for kicks. I'm using basketball-reference.com and ESPN's Hollinger stats.

* Portland is playing slightly faster this season so far, but is still 27th out of 30 teams in pace factor. The fastest teams thus far are Golden State, Phoenix, Atlanta (should be an interesting contrast in styles tonight), the Lakers and Philly. The slowest teams are Boston, Portland, OKC, Charlotte and slowest of all, Detroit.

* Portland is not up at the top in offensive efficiency like last year. The Blazers are right in the middle, at 15th. Orlando, Denver, Philly, Phoenix and Toronto have been the most efficient; Indy, Chicago, Milwaukee, New Jersey and Chicago the least.

* The Blazers have been statistically decent on D so far, ranking 10th in D-eff. The most successful Ds have been Boston, Miami, Charlotte, Dallas and Oklahoma City; the least: Sacramento, Indy, New York, Toronto and (worst of all) Memphis.

* The top PGs by Hollinger's PER so far: CP3, Arenas, George Hill, Billups and Parker. Aaron Brooks is 6th, thanks to us. Andre is 38th and Blake is 43rd.

* Top SGs: Vince, Rip, Lou Williams, Kobe and Ben Gordon. Roy is 6th. Rudy is 20th.

* Top SFs: 'Melo (leads everyone in PER), Pierce, LeBron, Azubuike and Grant Hill. Outlaw (lists as an SF) is 19th and Webster is for some reason listed as an SG (Hollinger fail) but would be 20th among SFs.

* Top PFs: Marreese Speights (2nd overall), Blatche, Bosh, Ryan Anderson and Zbo. LOL. Bargnani is 6th. Josh Smith is 8th. Aldridge is 36th. Juwon is 70th with a PER of 0.88. I really hope we don't have to play him tonight.

*Top Cs: Dwight, Duncan, Blatche (listed here as well as PF), Rasho Nesterovic and Marc Gasol. Frye is 9th. Oden is 28th and Joel is 56th.

More fun facts after the jump.

* Gilbert, Kobe, Wade, Melo, Bosh, LeBron and Roy have the highest usage% so far, but none are on track to threaten Kobe's alltime record of 38.7% in 2005-2006.

* Your top 5 overall rebounders so far? Dwight Howard, Tim Duncan, Joel Przybilla, Greg Oden and some guy named DeJuan Blair.

* Rasho Nesterovic is leading everyone in Offensive Rebound %. Joel is 2nd and Oden is 9th.

* Danilo Gallinari is averaging 10.5 three point attempts per game, hitting 19 of 42 (45.2%). Since 1946-1947, the most 3PA/Game for a full season was 8.7, set by Baron Davis, then of the Hornets, in 2003-2004.

* Channing Frye has made 13 threes in 3 games, after having 20 made threes in his entire career up to this point.

*Your early leaders in True Shooting %-- a metric for overall scoring efficiency, calculated as 50*points/(fga+0.44*fta):

1) Mario Chalmers, .835

2) Marreese Speights, .794

3) Channing Frye, .763

The TS% of these three players last season: .548, .543, .465, respectively.

If you relax the requirements so everyone qualifies (regardless of how few shots they've taken), your TS% leaders are Jeff Foster (1.136), Amir Johnson (1.064) and Kurt Thomas (1.000).

The alltime season record for TS%- at least since 1946-1947-- (among players who scored at least 500 points) is held by Artis Gilmore in 1981-1982, with a mark of .702.

* Tim Duncan has a defensive rebound percentage of 43.5. This means he's secured 43.5% of all the possible defensive rebounds while he's been in the game. Oden is 8th. The season record for this since '46-'47 among players with at least 100 defensive rebounds rebounds? Its held by none other than Joel Przybilla, with a mark of 33.1%, blowing away the previous record held by David Lee in 2006-2007 (27.6%).

* Steve Nash has an impressive AST% (percentage of possessions he's involved with that end in an assist) of 54.6, similar to Chris Paul's league leading mark of 54.5% last year. Jeff Foster laughs at this. His ast% is 61.5. John Stockton's all-time record of 57.5% looks safe though. The top 10 marks in this stat are held by Stockton, Stockton, Stockton, Paul, Stockton, Stockton, Stockton, Stockton, Paul and Nash. 11th best ever? Andre Miller for the Cavs in 2001-2002.

* Chris Kaman is leading the league in minutes played and field goals (yes, I know the Clips have played 5 games already, but still.

* Chuck Hayes has a steal % of 4.8%. Impressive, but a certain Nate McMillan was able to maintain a stl% of 5.8% throughout the entire 1993-1994 season, to set the record.

* Big men Rasho Nesterovic, Kyrylo Fesenko, JaVale Mcgee and Nick Collison have yet to commit a TO this year. Kwame Brown has turned it over on 44% of his touches.

Look for a more serious and meaningful stat geek update from me around 15-20 games into the season.

Statistical Plus/Minus: Portland the favorite out West?

jksnake99 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:27:31 -0000

Statistical Plus/Minus: Portland the favorite out West?

Basketball Reference did some automated (ie no human bias) projections of the upcoming season using Statistical Plus Minus. Interesting to say the least.

They later used a slightly different method, also favorable to the Blazers, here:

NBA Locks Out Refs

jksnake99 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:07:21 -0000

NBA Locks Out Refs

Not new news, but bad news just the same. NBA reffing's not great but anyone who's watched Summer League or low-major college ball knows it could get a lot worse...

Coach Lucas to return next year, per Jason Quick

jksnake99 — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:58:01 -0000

Coach Lucas to return next year, per Jason Quick

Nice to hear.

Dwight Jaynes rounds up some Oden quotes

jksnake99 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:08:20 -0000

Dwight Jaynes rounds up some Oden quotes

"What I got was pretty predictable. Everybody thinks he’s improved and that he’s moving "better" — not to say he’s moving great, but better. But I will say this, nobody — and I mean NOBODY — is seeing him as anything close to a major contributor on offense."

Follow the link to see the quotes from Dwight's sources.

Credit to Planet29 for noticing this: "In Odens last 400 minutes of playing time (23 games) he had...

jksnake99 — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:15:10 -0000

Credit to Planet29 for noticing this:

"In Odens last 400 minutes of playing time (23 games) he had ONE assist"

Think about that. After he returned from the Maggette knee bump injury, Oden totaled 1 assist. Including the playoffs. In the same period of time, he had 29 turnovers. This is kind of scary.

Epic Conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons

jksnake99 — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:16:22 -0000

Epic Conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons

fun read.

Malcolm Gladwell on How Underdogs Win

jksnake99 — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:03:35 -0000

Malcolm Gladwell on How Underdogs Win

Very interesting article by the author of "The Tipping Point" and "Outliers."

What Happened to Portland's Offense In the Playoffs? Help me add Observations to Explain the Ugly Numbers.

jksnake99 — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:00:24 -0000

We've all heard it and talked about it nearly ad nauseum. Depending on which stat geek's numbers you look at, Portland had either the #1 or the #2 offense in the NBA this year. Defense was the primary issue with the Blazers all year long.

As we've discussed, offensive rebounding and Brandon Roy's 1v1 brilliance were both big parts of that. During the season, a number of posters expressed the concern that this made Portland's offense less bankable for the playoffs. I was skeptical. I expected our offense to be just fine in the playoffs.

It wasn't.

Houston made one of the NBA's most efficient offenses look like its one of its worst. According to John Hollinger, Portland averaged 103.0 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs, down from 110.7 in the regular season. The 103.0 mark was good for 9th best in the playoffs, and would have ranked the Blazers 23rd in the regular season. *aside: Houston's playoff efficiency was 106.3, compared to their regular season mark of 105.4, so while Portland's D didn't get killed, they did allow the Rockets to do better than their season average, though the D was a lot better after game 1.*

So, now we have to ask ourselves what happened to the Blazer offense. Of course, we expect the effeiciency to drop against the Rockets, who sported the league's 4th best defense this year... but should it have dropped as far as it did? Is the Blazer offense not built for the playoffs? Was Houston just a really bad matchup? Did the players just not produce? All of the above?

---

Going a little deeper, we can look at Portland's offensive "4 factors" for the regular season and the playoffs (thanks Royster)

eFG%: .511 to .484
TOV%: .125 to .120
ORb%: .326 to .237
FTA/FGA: .234 to .201

The first thing that jumps out here is that Portland's offensive rebound rate dropped by nearly 30%. Looking at the 2 late regular season games Portland played in Houston (the Rockets were a totally different team with TMac in the early season Blazer win), the Blazers O-reb rate was .241, so here it appears that the matchup limited Portland's offensive rebounding advantage-- the Rockets are a good defensive rebounding team.

As far as efg% goes, Portland's efg% in those two late season games vs. Houston was 0.481, again very similar to the playoff numbers. Yet again, we appear to be looking at something matchup dependent rather than playoff dependent. Small sample size caveats apply to any numbers here-- we're dealing with 2 regular season games and 6 playoff games.

What about individual players? I'll just point out a few notable things.

Brandon Roy was outstanding in the playoffs, accumulating a PER of over 26 (two points higher than his regular season mark), good for 8th in the playoffs. He scored the ball nearly as effeciently as he did in the regular season, which is remarkable given the defenders he was facing. Notable, however, is that his usage rate climbed from 27.5 in the regular season to 33.1 in the playoffs-- Portland relied on him even more. Despite this, Roy saw his assist rate cut by about 40%. In those two late season games against Houston, Roy had 5 and 6 assists. In the playoffs, Roy reached the 5 assist plateau just once, in game 4. Help me out-- was this primarily due to Roy passing less or teammates just missing shots?

By far the most striking difference in a player's true shooting % numbers from regular season to the playoffs was Travis Outlaw's .379 mark, compared to .541 in the regular season.

Greg Oden's rebound rate was 15% lower than in the regular season. Joel Przybilla's was 25% lower. LaMarcus Aldridge's was 5% lower. I think we can all agree that Houston winning the rebound battle was a huge factor in the series.

Collecting a few opinions:

Kevin "KP2" Pelton answered my question in one of his chats:

Jacob (CA): Kevin, what's your diagnosis for Portland's awful offensive showing in these playoffs? Too much 1v1 play? Relying on offensive rebounding too much? Just a great job by Houston? Where does Portland go from here?

Kevin Pelton (Basketball): The thing is, the Blazers' offense should in theory be much easier to translate into the playoffs than teams that rely on transition offense or something like that. That was the premise of a piece I wrote for Sports Northwest Magazine earlier this year. Dependence on outside shooting did make them somewhat vulnerable, but end games in the playoffs are all about 1-on-1 play (as one person remarked during Boston-Chicago Game 5, "We play a team game for six months. Then it's all about the individuals in the playoffs."), so ... . I think a lot of the credit has to go to the Rockets, who made the Blazers really like discombobulated at times in the series.

John Hollinger touched on this in his insider gems piece on May 1. Since its insider, I won't paste the whole thing (link here), but here's an exerpt:

Portland's elimination in the first round was a disappointment to anyone who saw how well they played in the regular season, and what stood out was the total no-show by the Blazers' secondary players.

Throughout the season, Portland leaned on Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, just as they did in the playoffs. But the Blazers also got a lot of production from players like Travis Outlaw, Steve Blake, Rudy Fernandez, Joel Przybilla, Nicolas Batum and Greg Oden -- production that completely dried up against Houston.

There's a need for more players who can get their own shot instead of having Roy get it for them.

Jksnake99's two cents: I still feel Portland's offense is excellent, albeit far from perfect. Against most playoff opponents, defense still would have been our biggest concern. However, against teams like Houston-- teams that don't have to double team Roy and have the horses to limit Aldridge and neutralize Portland's rebound advantage, the Blazers are still vulnerable. Possible solutions include running more, establishing Oden as a legit option, or getting someone else who can create his own shot (Outlaw wasn't that guy in these playoffs-- could Rudy be that guy next year?). I do think this series was still very winnable, despite the clear matchup problems presented by Houston-- the Blazers needed a better effort on the glass, more consistent production from Aldridge and a lot more out of Outlaw. Rudy shot the ball well, but his ast/to ratio (better than 1 during the regular season) was a woeful 0.32-- that didn't help either. There was plenty of blame to go around.

Your turn:

- What happened to Portland's Offense?

- Why did Roy's ast % drop so much?

- How was Houston able to neutralize Portland's offensive rebounding? Would this have happened against a different matchup?

- What needs to change against teams like Houston?

- What needs to change in general?

- Other thoughts?