Archive for the 'Layups' Category

In the style of this hilarious piece he did a few summers back, ESPN's always-entertaining Bill Simmons brings us his takes on the offseason's biggest storylines using quotes from "Almost Famous". From a statistical perspective I don't always agree with what he writes, but it's still always worth reading, if not simply for the humor and the references.

I just realized I've been derelict in my linking duties recently, because I haven't thrown any love to the Basketball Geek, Mr. Ryan Parker, for some of his posts this week on multilevel modeling. Basically, MLM is a type of regression technique that you'd use in real-world situations where contextual effects occur on several levels (hence the name) and make it difficult to assume that the errors for each coefficient are uncorrelated. And basketball, as we know too well, is a game where performance is often heavily context-driven, so MLM is certainly a method that deserves more investigation as APBRmetrics becomes more and more sophisticated. This past week, Ryan used this type of random-effects model to predict 3-point shooting ability and offensive rebounding ability based on age and past performance. Essentially it's a really fancy way of regressing to the mean, but this method also has the potential to do a lot more than that because you can theoretically control for some of those pesky contextual effects that we analysts often run into when trying to unravel a game as complex as basketball.

Over at Basketball-Statistics.com, Jon Nichols has a very interesting study on the impact a point guard's 3-point shooting ability has on his offense's efficiency. The data shows a very clear pattern -- the better the long-range ability of the PG on the floor, the better the offense performs. Obviously the arrow of causality can run the opposite direction as well (the PG could be shooting better because better offensive teammates could be getting him clearer looks at the basket from downtown), but I think it's still cool to see the data affirm that having a PG you can't sag off of makes your offense more dangerous.

Sporcle wants to test your knowledge about the NBA's all-time ASG appearance leaders. Are you up to the task?

From ESPN and John Hollinger, some key free agent moves over the past few weeks:

• UPDATE: Hedo Turkoglu spurns Portland, opts for Toronto
• Ron Artest to the Champs -- and Trevor Ariza to fill his shoes in Houston
• Clippers trade Zach Randolph to Memphis for Quentin Richardson (who was traded by NY to the Grizz just last week for Darko Milicic)
  
• Ben Gordon to the Pistons, and the Bulls didn't even try to stop him
• Charlie Villanueva moves to the division-rival Pistons
• Old news, but Cleveland shipped Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, & other goodies to PHX for the Shaq Daddy
• On draft night, Orlando picked up Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson from Jersey in exchange for Tony Battie, Rafer Alston and Courtney Lee.
• Ex-Buck Richard Jefferson to the Spurs for Kurt Thomas, Fabricio Oberto and Bruce Bowen
• Jamal Crawford from Golden State to Atlanta for Acie Law IV and Speedy Claxton
• Mike Miller and Randy Foye from Minnesota to Washington for the No. 5 pick (Ricky Rubio), Etan Thomas, Darius Songaila and Oleksiy Pecherov

Following up on his excellent draft previews, Ed Weiland of HoopsAnalyst offers up his grades on last Thursday's draft, including an interesting comparison between the bevy of point guards in this year's draft class and the iconic group of quarterbacks taken in the 1983 NFL draft. (Ty Lawson = Dan Marino!)

Laughs (at poor Luke Walton's expense) courtesy of The Onion:

"While coach Phil Jackson said losing to the Celtics by 39 points in Game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals motivated Bryant to succeed, he acknowledged that Kobe could not overcome Walton's utter lack of talent alone.

'Kobe certainly put up big numbers, but he also rallied this young group of players and took their play to another level with him,' Jackson said. 'Winning in the Luke Walton era took a total team effort. They should be proud of what they accomplished. You have to be at the very pinnacle of your game to rise above a player of Walton's caliber.'"

Here's the final part of Ed Weiland's draft coverage over at HoopsAnalyst:

NBA Draft 2009: Centers
NBA Draft 2009: Power Forwards
NBA Draft 2009: Combo Forwards

Hate how the NBA's age limit creates automatic "one and done" situations for colleges? Here is ESPN's Steve Delsohn's report from Monday's Outside the Lines, regarding the impact of the rule on the NCAA game, focusing on how exactly coaches are supposed to deal with players who have great talent but are not in the program for the long haul. Meanwhile, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett -- two of the more notable preps-to-pros of the past 15 years -- have led their teams to NBA titles in back-to-back seasons. So does the one-and-done rule make sense for the pros or college? What do you think?

Continuing his series on the draft, Ed Weiland of HoopsAnalyst breaks down the incoming small forwards in this summer's draft class. It's a hard group to get a read on, but it doesn't exactly look like there are any potential superstars this year.