FanPost

Team "Synergy"



Most statistical analysis in basketball is direct toward the assessment of individuals and this is fine if one is trying to identify talent to acquire for a team.

These analyses are not very good for analyzing team performance. Hollinger's stats and Pelton's + - are fine but they aren't easy to derive unless you want to use a calculator.

To simplify evaluation of team performance from box scores, that is identify stats that indicate how well a team is playing and are easily accessible then we need to realize that:

a. To score means only to put the ball through the hoop and

b. a team needs to do it more often than the other team

Shooting % is not much good if you shoot less than the other guy, so I claim that a better way to measure performance is how many 2 pt baskets a team makes a game. In order to score 100 points a game, for arguments sake, then a team needs to make 50 baskets. Ah, but what about free throws? The league avg ftm is about 19. So the total points a team needs to make from made baskets is about 40. The league avg number of two pt field goals is just over 30 a game. Thus, as I've pointed out before on this blog, the closer one gets to 40 made shots the higher the probability of a win.

To reduce the number of baskets the other team makes is best accomplished through defensive rebounding. The magic number here is 30: 30 or more def rebounds yields an even higher probability of winning when combined with the number of two point baskets made. Guess what? Yeah you guessed it: the league def rebounds per game is 31.

The blazer's are avg 30.55 two point baskets and 26 def rebounds a game. This means the blazer's are a very inconsistent def rebounding team and hence our mediocre record.

When a team score 35 2 pt baskets and 30+ def rebounds the probability of winning reaches nearly 80%.

The blazer's need to, obviously, increase the number of 2 pt shots made. This can come only from running good offensive sets--perhaps running plays for camby and miller more often in order to increase the number of baskets from our most game to game inconsistent scorers.

The addition of Pryzbila should help the defensive rebounds as well. He should add at least 7 to 8 a game and that would bring the blazer's over that 30 def rebound threshold every game.

The three point shot is not a good indicator of team success. Off rebounds only indicate a bad shooting team (if you made the basket initially you wouldn't need to off reb. !)

So if you want to tell how well we did (as a team) then just look a the 2fgm and def rebound stats.