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

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.