Archive for the 'General' Category

There's a surprising name atop the Southeast Division these days, and it's the Miami Heat, winners of 3 straight and 6 of their first 7 games. How have they been doing it? Well, with Dwyane Wade powering the attack (via 31.8 pace-adjusted P/40) you might think they were an offensive team, but it's actually been their 3rd-ranked defense that's staking Miami to the hot start. After the jump, check out the box score-based defensive stats for the Heat so far (league average pts/possession = 105.9):

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Today at ESPN, J.A. Adande wondered if Kobe Bryant is playing better now than ever before, ultimately concluding that if not, then he's doing a pretty darned good approximation of his peak. Well, that's a sentiment I can agree with -- Kobe Bryant is nothing if not mega-consistent, and this year he's defying both the aging curve and the natural complacency you'd expect from someone who just won his 4th title. Take a look at his career numbers, adjusted for pace (after the jump):

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The b-ball blogosphere has been full of Kevin Durant chatter this weekend, after Wayne Winston criticized the young Thunder star for his poor adjusted plus/minus numbers. TrueHoop's Henry Abbott called Durant's rather pitiful APM performance to date (it was -8.62 last year, which is just ridiculously awful) a "conundrum", and there's really no other way to frame the situation than to say that apparently Durant's on-court impact is not matching that which you'd expect from his gaudy box score stats or his considerable basketball talent. In other words, he should have a better APM than he does.

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Chris Paul's new children's book, "Long Shot: Never Too Small to Dream Big," is about how a young CP3 was able to overcome his short stature to become an NBA superstar. It's a feel-good story for the whole family, I'm sure, but it also begs the question: where does Paul stand among the great small guards of all time?

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Here's a fun Friday data dump: Since 1968 (the advent of the modern 82-game schedule), which team assembled the most experienced roster? How about the least experienced roster?

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Last time around, we ran a study using a system of estimating Win Shares in seasons prior to 1978, and I wanted to touch a little on how that was done. Basically, I ran an OLS regression on all pre-1978 players, based on player stats (plus age & height) from 1978-2007, that estimated their "missing" totals -- turnovers prior to '78, TO/BLK/STL prior to 1974, etc. Whenever team stats were available, I scaled up/down the individual numbers to match team totals. When team numbers weren't available, I had to estimate them as well using the same method, and then makle sure the individuals matched the teams. In other words, the team numbers always superceded the individual totals.

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No, that title shouldn't be interpreted as a particularly butchered way of writing "The 223 Club"... It's about guys who made at least 220 3-point field goals in a single season.

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ESPN's Outside the Lines (for my money, probably the best program on the network) showed a very thought-provoking piece today about former NBA guard Cuttino Mobley, who was forced to retire this year shortly after an early-season trade sent him from the Clippers to the Knicks for salary-cap purposes. In the trade physical, it was supposedly discovered that Mobley had a life-threatening heart condition, but new reports have surfaced indicating that Mobley's condition was known to teams as far back as his Houston days (for instance, each of his 4 teams had a clause written into his contract absolving them of liability in the event of on-court death). The report raises questions about the commodification of players as "walking contracts" under the current CBA, an unsettling circumstance particularly heightened by the battle for who gets the cap and/or luxury tax benefits out of Mobley's very serious health condition.

When the league announced the All-NBA Teams this week, there were relatively few surprises. For those who haven't seen them already, the selections looked like this:

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As someone who has dabbled (very minorly) in basketball uniform design as a hobby, I can definitely appreciate this: a graduating senior at the University of Tennessee (alias "conradburry") recently put together a final design project called "NBA Europa," an 8-team European NBA spinoff complete with crests, shields, logos, jerseys, and more. He even documented the entire process of creating the league with a blog. Pretty cool, if you ask me (then again, I'm the kind of nerd that used to create imaginary dice baseball leagues when I was a kid)...

Besides, with David Stern making noise from time to time about actually expanding league operations to Europe, don't be surprised if you see something like this in real life at some point in our lifetime.

(H/T: UniWatch.)