NBA 2013-14 Season - Page 122

On December 17 2013 11:34 iamho wrote:
Pistons just beat the Pacers in Indianapolis..

Carmelo Anthony misses 25-foot three point running jumper

On December 11 2013 03:13 MassHysteria wrote:

That is just wrong. Their offense has definitely changed since their first year but it is not as simple as you want to make it sound. And I can actually make an argument that it is more highly evolved than the Triangle and the Princeton offense because they feature the 3-point shot in their offense more. It is not that you can't tweak the Triangle or Princeton to use the 3-pointer more (which is a modern concept due to better shooters and efficiency per shot), it is just that there aren't teams doing it better than the Heat the last two or so years.

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About 34.7 percent of the Rockets' field goal attempts this season have been 3-pointers, putting Houston just behind the record-setting 35.4 percent share the Knicks put up last season. Threes have accounted for 25.3 percent of all field goal attempts league-wide, above last year's all-time record share (24.3 percent) — and well above the 16 to 18 percent shares the league averaged for most of the mid-2000s. The average team jacks just shy of 21 3-pointers per game, another record rate, up from about 19.9 last season. The Vipers and Rockets might be outliers, but the larger basketball landscape is trending in their direction. All of which raises the question: Are we nearing the point at which the 3-point shot will become too dominant a part of basketball? Is all the long-range chucking good for the game?

As Smith notes, there has always been grumbling among old-school types about the 3-pointer — our dads and grandpas lamenting how those impudent youngsters only care about 3s and dunks, since those highlight plays get them on SportsCenter. But new, more nuanced concerns are starting to bubble up about the dominance of the 3-pointer. One strain centers on the consequences of the idea that math has basically solved basketball. Analytics has won out in shot selection. Just about everyone in the NBA, from scouts to head coaches to GMs, understands that long 2-point shots are bad and 3s are good. There is a strong correlation between 3-point attempts and team scoring efficiency, and an even more specific correlation between the number of short corner 3s a team attempts and its overall points per possession.

The debate on this stuff is over. Math has won, though team-by-team personnel obviously still plays a huge role in a team's shot-selection profile. The triumph of math has produced a fear of standardization among some NBA observers. "We shoot too many 3s now," says Jeff Van Gundy, perhaps the closest thing the NBA has to a populist ombudsman. "We are out of whack. The numbers people have analyzed the game correctly, but we are eliminating a certain segment of NBA players."

In this view, the game is tilting toward uniformity, in both team strategy and the types of players each team will seek to execute that strategy. "As analytics people take control of more teams, you'd think there will be more and more of this," says Rod Thorn, the NBA's president of basketball operations. "Obviously, there are more 3s being taken now. But we're still in the infancy of this, in terms of deciding whether it is good or bad for the game. Remember, we've had people pontificating that the 3-point arc is bad for the game for as long as the 3 has been around."

On December 17 2013 09:40 MassHysteria wrote:
I agree with all four Freedom. I couldn't actually say he has improved and your #1 b/c had not seen enough of him/them to confidently say it.

To add to your point of great ball movement; is that they are one of the lowest turnover teams in the league. The execution of their plays by their heavy-minute guys is pretty damn good, which is usually a sign of good coaching. Stotts will probably be mentioned for COTY if this keeps up for them (Batum is probably the only guy that you can reasonably expect to improve on his TO's still --maybe Mo although he plays PG--).

Thorn is right; it's too early to do anything but watch for potential issues. There is no real evidence that an increase in 3-pointers leads to unappealing play. It might lead to a quicker overall pace, but fans seem to like a fast-paced game. A Grantland analysis of the last three seasons showed basically no correlation between the number of 3-pointers a team attempts and its turnover rate — an indicator of sloppiness. The 3-happy Rockets are the most turnover-prone team in the league, but last year's chucktastic Knicks recorded one of the lowest turnover rates in league history. This season's Blazers and Clippers both launch a ton of 3s while ranking among the league's half-dozen best at turnover avoidance, per NBA.com.

Coaches and analytics experts agree that NBA teams are not close to reaching the optimum upper limit on 3-point attempts, with the success of the Vipers perhaps serving as evidence. In strict mathematical terms, not even Houston is taking enough 3s. We're still in a place where the huge majority of 3-pointers are the product of the kind of fun ball movement the league sought to unleash by banning the handcheck, scrapping the old illegal-defense rule, and replacing it with the defensive three-seconds rule in the early 2000s. Those tweaks combined to give ball handlers more freedom of movement on the perimeter, and to declutter the lane of both interior defenders and post-up players.

Parsons is smart, and you can see his mental calculator working. Matthews's scorching start notwithstanding, Parsons gets that a Batum corner 3 is worth more than a Matthews above-the-breaker. And so he only stunts softly at Matthews — enough to at least make Matthews think for a beat, but not enough to lose contact with Batum.

2. Watching the Suns

Apologies to the Blazers, but this is the best story in the league — the team too good to tank. No one in the organization dreamed these guys would be 14-9, with the no. 9 overall point differential (per 100 possessions) and a borderline top-five offense. Goran Dragic has never been better, and I'm not sure there are five craftier players in the league. He's not fast enough to just blow by opposing point guards, but he makes up for it with guile — shoulder fakes, hesitation dribbles, crossovers, head fakes, behind-the-back step-backs, whirling finishes in the lane. Just a delight.

Eric Bledsoe still has turnover issues and his defense has slipped a tad under a larger scoring burden, but the dude is a beast. Miles Plumlee is hurting basketballs with his shot blocks, the Morris twins are making tough shots, and Channing Frye's shooting is forcing defenses into all sorts of painful contortions.

This also raises perhaps the most intriguing question in the league right now: Does Phoenix just ride this and go for a shocking playoff berth? Or will we see some questionable injuries, suddenly shaky coaching from the excellent Jeff Hornacek, and other chicanery? I hope not.

On December 18 2013 09:01 Vindicare605 wrote:
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/12/17/5208554/pau-gasol-analysis-la-lakers-mike-dantoni

More on Pau Gasol.

Summing up the article's conclusions, Gasol needs to stop popping out to the perimeter on Pick and Rolls and instead needs to be rolling hard to the basket like D'Antoni's been saying he hasn't been.