Blazers Receive Mixed Reviews In NBA Power Rankings, Bust John Hollinger's Computer
by Ben Golliver on Feb 6, 2012 11:02 AM PST
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PrintThe 14-10 Portland Trail Blazers went 2-2 last week, remaining No. 4 in the Northwest Division while improving to No. 6 in the Western Conference. The strong play at home, weak play on the road formula earned split results among the NBA Power Rankings, although Portland's recent home blowout wins over the Denver Nuggets, Phoenix Suns, Charlotte Bobcats, Memphis Grizzlies and Sacramento Kings have apparently sent John Hollinger's statistical system into a tizzy.
Here's the round-up. Last week's rankings, if available, appear in parentheses.
Marc Stein, ESPN.com: Blazers are No. 10 (No. 14)
It's not just road games troubling the Blazers. Since a tight home win over Philly on opening night, Portland has lost seven straight games decided by five or fewer points, including visits to Utah and Sac-Town last week. Repetitive crunch-time failures can be random, true, but also can seriously dent a team's confidence.
John Hollinger, ESPN.com: Blazers are No. 2 (7)
John Schuhmann, NBA.com: Blazers are No. 14 (No. 14)
LaMarcus Aldridge, averaging 25.4 points on 61 percent shooting in his last five games, has to be a lock for his first All-Star appearance. After an ugly loss in Sacramento, the Blazers began a huge three-game homestand with a nice win over the Nuggets. The Thunder (Monday) and Rockets (Wednesday) visit next.
David Aldridge, NBA.com: Blazers are No. 14 (No. 12)
Dominating at home is important, but until the Blazers figure out how to compete better away from the Rose Garden, they're not for real in the West.
Chris Sheridan, SheridanHoops.com: Blazers are No. 13 (No. 9)
Losing to Kings on second-night of back-to-back is inexcusable when you are coming off a 44-point victory over Charlotte. Also lost to Jazz, and victory over Denver tainted by Nuggets' travel and tiredness issues (see above). Outstanding home record will be put to test Mon vs. OKC and Wed. vs Houston. Home fans booed Greg Oden when he was shown on video board. Another ouch for the big fella.
Kurt Helin, ProBasketballTalk.com: Blazers are No. 13 (13)
Beat Utah at home, lost to the Kings on the road. This is just a Jekyll and Hyde team inside or outside the Rose Garden - 11-1 at home, 3-9 on the road.
Tom Ziller, SBNation.com: Blazers are No. 9
The past week was a perfect view into the Blazers' season to date: they are good enough to beat Charlotte and Denver in Portland by a combined 64 points, and just bad enough on the road to lose to both the Jazz and the Kings. LaMarcus Aldridge is a sure-bet All-Star, though, and the No. 4 seed in the West is within range. That'd get the Blazers a real opportunity to make it to the second round of the playoffs for the first time in a long time.
Jeff Sagarin, USA Today: Blazers are No. 10 (No. 7)
John Hollinger of ESPN.com's advanced stat rankings...
- No. 12 in Offensive Efficiency (same as last week)
- No. 4 in Defensive Efficiency (up from No. 7)
- No. 6 in Pace (same as last week)
- No. 9 in Rebound Rate (down from No. 4)
Blazers forward LaMarcus Aldridge is currently No. 18 in the NBA in dunks with 25, according to the CBSSports.com Dunk-O-Meter.
-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter
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#2?
This is a great example of why hollinger stats mean nothing
by blazers12 on Feb 6, 2012 11:11 AM PST via mobile reply actions
No actually, this is the whole reason for statistical modeling in the 1st place.
Hollinger’s formulas take point differential into account in a way that nobody else does. He built it this way believing that point differential spoke to the true capacity of a team in a way that other measures do not.
When you look at the Blazers, it’s easy to say that we win at home and lose on the road, which is true. But that obvious eyeball observation hides another, statistical truth. When we lose, we lose by a small margin. When we win, we MIGHTILY CRUSH OUR OPPONENTS UNDER OUR BOOTHEELS. That is what Hollinger’s formulas are highlighting.
If you go back and look at all the road games we lost, you can easily envision a parallel universe where we went 6-6 on the road instead of 3-9. Keep the point differentials the same and people would be talking about us as a dominant team that does exactly what contenders are supposed to do: Win home and split the road.
One thing about Hollinger’s methodology is his stuff gets progressively more accurate as the sample size increases, i.e. the season progresses. We can look at this as a case of Hollinger’s methods being wacked, sure. But what I see is that his statistical model is highlighting the hidden truth that the Blazers are still only a couple steps away from being the monsters we thought they were after the first seven games.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they're not.
by conspirator5 on Feb 6, 2012 11:48 AM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Completely agree
- may seem like a stretch but there is something to take from it. A bit of luck and we’d be top 2 in the west. We probably aren’t as bad as we seem.
in another alternate universe though Portland’s opponents shoot somewhere around the league average from the three point arc (opp 3pt% is something teams don’t really control) which would make the Blazers nearly two points per 100 possessions worse. Lucky in some ways, unlucky in others.
i keep dancing on my own.
Amen!
well said conspirator!
I didn’t run a test but the margin by which we’ve been losing on the road could easily indicate that we could be anywhere from 3-9 to 7-5 on the road… We may just be suffering from natural variance and a little bad luck on the road.
Portland is -3.5 on the road, 14th in the league, but our road record is 8th worst in the league. Realistically we should probably be 4-8 or 5-7 on the road just from glancing at the away %s and away scoring margins of the league as a whole.
Last year, Portland was -3.1 on the road
and had a 18-23 record on the road.
It's why
they mean less early in the season. The recent blowouts are driving this but they’re landing on a support that’s too thin to hold them. I’m moderately encouraged about Portland’s victory margin, traditionally a good barometer of which teams are for real and not, but I’m also waiting until at least 50% of the season is done before allowing myself to think they’re indicative. With the weird schedule this year even more waiting might be in order. Usually by the All-Star break you’ve been around the league once. Not as much this season.
—Dave
I agree that the rankings are on thin support this early in the season.
Also, his ranking system weighs the last 10 games much more heavily, so if we don’t have another big blowout in the next 9 games we could easily fall a lot in the rankings.
However, let’s not discount the fact that the odds that we can place that high in the rankings while not being a pretty good team is very very low.
Oden got booed?
Come on guys we’re better than that.
You can hate the fact that we extended him or even the fact that we drafted him but you can’t boo a guy for being injured. Classless
yeah..there were those who kept booing Rudy also..weird crowd @ the RG for that game.
Couldn’t really understand either.
you can't understand why Rudy was booed?
lol. I feel little need to explain it then.
"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
by thankyouforblaze on Feb 6, 2012 11:37 AM PST up reply actions
I totally understand booing Rudy
but booing ODEN! Somehow I missed that. I boo refs, and hated enemies of our team like Kobe when hes waaay overly complaining or something. But boooing Oden is the worst thing they could do. WTH were they thinking on that 1? Usually our fans are pretty classy and knowledgeable, thats so frickin weird. Also, im gonna boooooo Kevin Love forever after the Luis Scola face stomp, what a real jerk.
by cavejunctionblazer on Feb 6, 2012 12:17 PM PST up reply actions
Rudy was fun and flashy for awhile
and he was great when he was setting NBA records his rookie season…but the last two years he was a diva that couldn’t hit the ocean from a boat
"If I had a dime for every basket I made today, you'd still suck!" - from the book 'John Dies @ the End'
sure you can,
like this : “Booooooo Odennnnn! Way to be injured!…. Boooooooooo”
"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
by thankyouforblaze on Feb 6, 2012 11:36 AM PST up reply actions
Agreed, booing Oden is lack of class, destructive
If we want the big man available to us when/if he recovers, booing him in the Rose Garden is not the way to make it so.
My personal novice opinion
Blazers have an absolutely stellar defense that can improve with more focus on consistent effort, a little less fouling, and better shooting on offense. Despite having great efficiency on defense our opponent free throw rate is still too high. Here are a few weaknesses I’ve been observing:
1) Our offense is rather mediocre. Specifically our effective fg%. The two things that save our offensive efficiency are low turnovers and high offensive rebounding rate.
2) After about 7 or 8 games into the season we took 41% of our shots in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock. That rate is now down to 36%. This is an indication of how much our Felton-led early offense has slowed down in the last 12 games and how much other teams have tried to slow down our early offense too.
3) Our second unit front line is still a little small against opposing benches. We have the frontcourt width and brawn but we struggle to get defensive rebounds against opposing second unit bigmen who are strong and athletic (i.e. against Utah’s big man factory of Jefferson/Millsap/Kanter/Favors/Evans).
4) If our offense improves, our defense will improve even more… I know this might not make sense, but more made baskets for us = less transition opportunities for them. Two or three less transition opportunities, two or three more “late in the shot clock” possessions for the other team after a few more made baskets for our team will improve our defense to yet another level. We do a great job (when we’re focused) of being physical and forcing other teams off of their “go-to” spots and making them initiate offense from unfamiliar spots on the floor. We just need to allow a few less transition opportunities per game which I think would happen naturally if we just make some more shots and rely a little less on offensive rebounding.
Conclusion:
WE ARE ONLY A SMALL OFFENSIVE IMPROVEMENT FROM BEING A SERIOUS ELITE TEAM!
by jukelike20 on Feb 6, 2012 11:37 AM PST reply actions 1 recs
That improvement is an obvious one...
Raymond’s production is questionable at best. If we upgrade to a pass orientated, scoring pg, than we would be up there with OKC and Denver. I hate to do it, but I’m just saying that trading Raymond is a must in my mind.
by Kra3m3r on Feb 6, 2012 12:07 PM PST via mobile up reply actions
always elusve
“Pass-First, Scoring Point Guard”
I’d argue those only 1in the entire NBA right now.
M, period. Fresh, comma.
So
Deron Williams and Chris Paul are the same person?
These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others. -Groucho Marx
Deron no longer exists
He’s an off-season of Big Mac’s away from playing in Turkey in 2014.
M, period. Fresh, comma.
I would add
5) We need a closer. We have lost almost all our close games. We will not be able to blow people out of that water in the playoffs. We need to learn how to win the close one or find someone who knows how.
Good point.
I agree totally that we need to find a closer… If not a closer, then some go-to halfcourt play…
Seems like right now our go-to play at the end of games might be Crawford/Aldridge pick and pop… or gasp the Crawford 1-4 set…
According to hollingers playoff odds
The Blazers have a 25.8 chance to go to the finals and a 13.6. Chanceof winning the championship. Those numbers are second only to Chicago (34.2, 22.5). Denver is second in the west at 16.4 and 7.5. Hollinger stats make my heart so happy
does defenisve efficiency
account for level of competition?
I get frustrated with our D consistently (slow rotations, LMA as poor help defender), but #4 is pretty darn good.
M, period. Fresh, comma.
probably inflated by some of the beat downs we've put on teams in the RG
As weird as this season has been we’ve been able to enjoy some nice blowouts.
Most of the rankings seem accurate-not to high not to low.
Hollingers #2 seems a little exaggerated but after reading a few comments above it makes more sense. I hate that we lost some of these “easy” games, if we could only change these road woes, we ARE one of the best teams then. Alot can happen between now and the playoffs, were still in good shape and we still have about as much of a shot as weve ever had in the last few years. Especially based on other teams poor play, we arent the only ones who have suffered road woes. I think this years champion wont necessarily be the team that plays the best all season, it will be the team that gets real hot in the playoffs. Alot of teams get the best record dont win a championship, they get tired come playoffs and lose. If we end up in the right spot come playoffs we could be that hot team.
Also,
I have to say that when we reach 33 games if Ray hasnt picked up his FG%, 3ptFG%, Points, Reb, AST, AST/TO basically his whole entire game, im jumping on the trade Ray get Nash bandwagon.
by cavejunctionblazer on Feb 6, 2012 12:39 PM PST reply actions
For everyone going off on Hollinger:
we actually slipped in his overall rating, from 107.154 to 107.088. The season is just catching up to everyone else, so we’re improving in relative terms, but we’re still the same team in absolute terms.
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
We'll never be able to be great on the road
Looking at the NBA on a map, our home/away split is obvious- we’re by far the most remote outpost the league has, which makes travel hell. It works the same way for the mediocre Seahawks in the NFL. I’m not sure if there’s much we can do to fix that or help it.
The one thing that is correctable (though only through use of a particular talent or better conditioning) is the stat Marc Stein mentions about losing 7 straight (!!) games by 5 or fewer points. Hello Brandon Roy? That’s 70% of our losses this year! Insanity. If we were able to hang on and win even half of those (Detroit, Houston, Utah, Sacramento come to mind) we’d be talking about how tonight’s a first-place in the NW division showdown. Really wish we had a guy who could hit those crunch-time shots.
it would be nice if wes and wallace
Showed up for away games so we weren’t in crunch time situation if the first place
by jt$ on Feb 6, 2012 1:40 PM PST up reply actions
but in the NBA
and really any major level pro sport, you need guys who can step up in clutch situations and come through. We’ve lost that and I don’t see a guy on the roster who can replace that.
Paging Steve Nash…
meeeh
http://www.hardwoodparoxysm.com/2012/01/why-clutch-is-dumb-isnt-why-you-think/
i keep dancing on my own.
by atomiccafe on Feb 6, 2012 2:39 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
thank you.
Coaching, toughness, talent and resilience are the qualities that make for a great offense, whether it’s down the stretch or in the first quarter. The fact that players appear to recede at the end of games simply means one or more of these qualities is absent. Or the other team had more of them. The notion that a single player (Blazers’ fans like to call him a “closer”) is what’s needed to remedy this just shows a lack of understanding of the game.
"The only 'Advanced Metric' that matters is what you see with your eyes." -Timbo, Nov., 2009.
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