Archive for the 'Layups' Category

Courtesy of Jon Nichols and Basketball-Statistics.com, here's an interesting piece on the influence of star players on teammate 3-point shooting frequencies when they're on the court. For instance, last year's Magic shot a three-pointer 43% of the time when Dwight Howard was in the game -- and only 32% of the time when he wasn't -- despite Howard obviously being a non-3-point shooter. Intuitively, we notice that all the attention on Howard opened up the perimeter shot for his teammates, and it's cool to see the stats back up that particular observation.

Thanks to Kevin Pelton, Brad Doolittle, and the rest of the team that makes Basketball Prospectus great, there's a new NBA annual that should be gracing your (digital or real-world) bookshelves as soon as possible: Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10 is now officially available via download today, and will be ready in hard copy form soon as well. We've already gotten a chance to look at it, and I can say that it's a truly awesome effort that very much raises the bar for the rest of us. Check it out, and I think you'll be as impressed as I am.

Via Ball Don't Lie: Mark Cuban is excited about this year's Dallas Mavericks squad, to such a degree that he's calling their roster "much better" than the one that came oh-so-close to the championship in 2006. So what do you think? Is he right? Did the additions of Shawn Marion, Drew Gooden, Tim Thomas, Kris Humphries, Nathan Jawai, and Quinton Ross really make Dallas a Finals-worthy team again? Or is the West so much stronger than it was 4 years ago that Dallas could theoretically be more talented and still have a worse record and/or postseason finish?

Over at Celtics Hub, Zach Lowe has some thoughts on Rajon Rondo's high ranking in the NBA's annual GM poll:

"Has Rondo really progressed to the point that he should be considered one of the 10 best overall defensive players? Frankly, this seemed at first glance premature. Rondo is undoubtedly a good defensive player. He’s long, smart and annoying as hell on the ball. But he’s also a gambler, and we’ve seen him compromise our defensive structure going for those reach-around steals. [...] My naked-eye impression is that he is overrated as a screen/roll defender.

Of course, ranking players based on their defense is fraught with problems. The NBA is a team game, and different teams use different schemes. Some switch on screen-rolls; some don’t. Some help more aggressively than others. Trying to evaluate a single player outside of his team defensive scheme is a little like ripping a few pages out of a book and judging the author based on those pages.

That said, there are some metrics that at least attempt to measure a player’s defensive ability. I checked them all to see if Rajon really does deserve to be mentioned among the league’s elite defenders.

And you know what? We might be that point with him already."

We've been big Rondo backers for a while now, and the projections for this season see him as -- shocker alert! -- Boston's most valuable player (mainly for his defense) if Kevin Garnett loses a step after missing most of the 2nd half of last season due to injury. So it's nice to see that the league's top personnel evaluators are also starting to take note of Rondo's D as well.

ESPN is rolling out a new encyclopedia -- this time for college hoops -- and they preview it with page 1196: Jeff Sagarin's all-time NCAA program ratings... Oh, and it turns out UCLA isn't number one, a fact that has some people angry (the coaches' reactions are more subdued, though).

Ball Don't Lie kicks off its NBA Preview today, with the Boston Celtics. Enjoy!

This weekend, Gutsy Goldberg of Back Seat Drivers took an interesting look at the NBA seasons in which the best teams were the strongest, using our very own SRS formula. The challenge to this year's Lakers, Cavs, Celtics, Magic, and (maybe) Spurs? Beat the 1995-96 crop of Chicago, Seattle, Utah, San Antonio, and Orlando.

No, not Gilbert Arenas... Sporcle wants to know: Can you name every team's arena?

I'd be remiss if I didn't link to BBR Blog fave Kelly Dwyer's ongoing series at Ball Don't Lie, highlighting the top 10 players of the Oughts by position:

• Point Guards
• Shooting Guards
• Small Forwards
• Power Forwards
• Centers

As always, they're fun reads even though I don't agree with everything in there. And besides, it's nice to see somebody getting more Kobe-related hate mail than me.

The equivalent of Christmas morning amongst hoops stat-wonks, it's the annual unveiling of John Hollinger's NBA previews over at ESPN. And I'm sure the player comments are not far behind, either... Unfortunately, people who aren't ESPN "Insiders" don't seem to be able to access JH's stuff, which is sad -- but I guess the man has to make a living, just like the rest of us. And for those lucky enough to have Insider, enjoy.