On a purely basketball note, the great Curry 2015-16 season is only the 14th highest in terms of PER in NBA history. The most efficient players are high volume 2-point scorers who take high value shots. Top 10 seasons are: 3 x Jokic, 3 x Wilt, 2 x Giannis, MJ 87-88 and LeBron 2008-09 (who couldn't shoot for love nor money).
Thanks for reading, and for joining the conversation!
Yeah no doubt layups are always best if you can get them, and some Warriors wannabes have gone astray losing sight of that.
Not the Celtics though, at least not as mindless chuckers? Maybe it's not a great show, but being second in offensive efficiency this season without their best player and top 4 in all 4 seasons of Mazzullaball (per Cleaning the Glass) surely absolves him and his strategy of too much blame? My guess is there's some room for improvement at the margin if you're second in rim accuracy and dead last in volume - they could probably stand to take some more contested shots - but that would likely trade off against some of the other things making them so efficient overall (offensive rebounding and especially never turning it over). I wonder, would you pay a point or two per possession to make it more watchable?!
The beauty of the Warriors was you didn't have to choose! They didn’t lose sight of the rim either, it’s just that Steph was typically the one generating the layups rather than making them! In 2016 they shot more often and more accurately within 3 feet of the rim than LeBron’s Cavs, landing in the middle of the pack for volume and fourth in accuracy. They were second in rim accuracy in 2015, and first-second-first in the 3 following seasons with KD. And they were top 2 in overall offensive efficiency all 5 of those seasons.
Steph broke the statsheet so many ways. My favourite is the one from the footnote: Steph’s gravity got his team mates wide open, and in 2017 (for example) their true shooting was 7.3 percentage points lower when he was off the court, compared to 3.9 for LeBron’s team mates, and the rest even further back. (I bet Joker beasts by this metric too.) PER and other individual-box-score-based stats have no way to account for all the times multiple defenders run at Steph even though he doesn’t have the ball and some mere mortal trundles down the lane for an uncontested dunk: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOXVovdDViu/
I agree that Steph has leveraged his shooting into a magnet for defensive attention that is great for getting teammates open. He is truly the hardest working superstar.
I think Mazulla has done an amazing job getting the Cs winning and this season has been outstanding from a coaching perspective. I just don’t like watching a 3 first offence. I dislike the 3 like I dislike penalty kicks in football. It’s an arbitrary rule, which incentivises behaviours that ruin the spectical, made up decades ago that we haven’t got the courage to reform. Where football has diving, the NBA had the scourge of drawing the 3 point foul shot, which most statheads rightly call the best shot in basketball. Give me the 2013-14 Spurs of over James Harden’s Rockets any day!
Love this - it also feels a lesson in culture and homogenising of thinking. People tend towards the mean in their behaviour/strategy in part because it’s where everyone else is. But, when one person sees an insight and proves that they can zig in a world of zaggers, then suddenly they become the fashion to follow.
I wonder whether someone’s looking at the chart chart about how many shooters have been drafted since curry and coming up with a strategy to win with loads of big dunking dudes who’ll just kill you with possession and close-basket 2 pointers? (I know nothing about basketball)
It already happened! All the space inside and the league learning how to take advantage of it means two-point efficiency has finally caught up with 3-point efficiency.
Great way to compare two worlds Oscar.
On a purely basketball note, the great Curry 2015-16 season is only the 14th highest in terms of PER in NBA history. The most efficient players are high volume 2-point scorers who take high value shots. Top 10 seasons are: 3 x Jokic, 3 x Wilt, 2 x Giannis, MJ 87-88 and LeBron 2008-09 (who couldn't shoot for love nor money).
Source: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/per_season.html
Steph did a great job hacking the game, but it's still best to get lay-ups.
Yours, Tortured Celtics fan who doesn't like watching his own team 'jack it up'.
Thanks for reading, and for joining the conversation!
Yeah no doubt layups are always best if you can get them, and some Warriors wannabes have gone astray losing sight of that.
Not the Celtics though, at least not as mindless chuckers? Maybe it's not a great show, but being second in offensive efficiency this season without their best player and top 4 in all 4 seasons of Mazzullaball (per Cleaning the Glass) surely absolves him and his strategy of too much blame? My guess is there's some room for improvement at the margin if you're second in rim accuracy and dead last in volume - they could probably stand to take some more contested shots - but that would likely trade off against some of the other things making them so efficient overall (offensive rebounding and especially never turning it over). I wonder, would you pay a point or two per possession to make it more watchable?!
The beauty of the Warriors was you didn't have to choose! They didn’t lose sight of the rim either, it’s just that Steph was typically the one generating the layups rather than making them! In 2016 they shot more often and more accurately within 3 feet of the rim than LeBron’s Cavs, landing in the middle of the pack for volume and fourth in accuracy. They were second in rim accuracy in 2015, and first-second-first in the 3 following seasons with KD. And they were top 2 in overall offensive efficiency all 5 of those seasons.
Steph broke the statsheet so many ways. My favourite is the one from the footnote: Steph’s gravity got his team mates wide open, and in 2017 (for example) their true shooting was 7.3 percentage points lower when he was off the court, compared to 3.9 for LeBron’s team mates, and the rest even further back. (I bet Joker beasts by this metric too.) PER and other individual-box-score-based stats have no way to account for all the times multiple defenders run at Steph even though he doesn’t have the ball and some mere mortal trundles down the lane for an uncontested dunk: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOXVovdDViu/
I agree that Steph has leveraged his shooting into a magnet for defensive attention that is great for getting teammates open. He is truly the hardest working superstar.
I think Mazulla has done an amazing job getting the Cs winning and this season has been outstanding from a coaching perspective. I just don’t like watching a 3 first offence. I dislike the 3 like I dislike penalty kicks in football. It’s an arbitrary rule, which incentivises behaviours that ruin the spectical, made up decades ago that we haven’t got the courage to reform. Where football has diving, the NBA had the scourge of drawing the 3 point foul shot, which most statheads rightly call the best shot in basketball. Give me the 2013-14 Spurs of over James Harden’s Rockets any day!
Love this - it also feels a lesson in culture and homogenising of thinking. People tend towards the mean in their behaviour/strategy in part because it’s where everyone else is. But, when one person sees an insight and proves that they can zig in a world of zaggers, then suddenly they become the fashion to follow.
I wonder whether someone’s looking at the chart chart about how many shooters have been drafted since curry and coming up with a strategy to win with loads of big dunking dudes who’ll just kill you with possession and close-basket 2 pointers? (I know nothing about basketball)
It already happened! All the space inside and the league learning how to take advantage of it means two-point efficiency has finally caught up with 3-point efficiency.
This video breaks it down: https://youtu.be/SdBFIL_f8LM?si=bdBhiHePizW6m2-q
Next question: how to zag out of the 2=3 equilibrium..