Pacers vs. Bulls Spiderwebs – Game 1 | 8 Points, 9 Seconds

Pacers vs. Bulls Spiderwebs – Game 1

by on April 17, 2011 at 12:03 am

As a supplement to the Playoff Game Recaps, we’re going to post Synergy “spiderwebs.”  This will show the offensive distribution in plays and points for each team.  The data is provided by the fantastic site – mySynergySports.com.  Hopefully, it will help us understand each team’s approach, as well as what worked and what didn’t.

Click here for others in the series.

Bulls Offense


The Pacers did a better job at defending isolations than you’d expect the team ranked second-to-last in defending them.  Unfortunately, they were hurt badly by Derrick Rose in the PnR (1.20 PPP).

Chicago also was pretty effective in Spot Ups, Cuts, and Transition.  However, the other area that really hurt the Pacers’ defense was offensive rebounding.  The Bulls didn’t have a high conversion rate (0.67 PPP), but the sheer number of opportunities  is damaging.  Chicago grabbed as many offensive rebounds (21) as defensive rebounds collected by the Pacers.

As encouraging as today’s performance was for Indiana, failing to control their defensive glass, in concert with letting Chicago get to the line too often, will only lead to a sweep.

Pacers Offense

The Pacer spiderweb really manifests as a testament as to how well their point guards – especially Darren Collison – played today.  The 1.18 PPP out of  PnR’s was well above their 0.77 full year average.  Indy’s performance in transition was even more impressive, scoring on all nine their plays classified by Synergy in this category.

They were considerably less successful in isolations, and perhaps more disturbingly, only got seven plays out of post action.  The Pacers were outscored 16-1 in the final 3-1/2 minutes,  which is largely indicative of their lack of  a “go-to” play.

We’ve highlighted the post as necessary to any chance of success, and seven plays is simply not enough.  It’s even more concerning when you look at the distribution.  Four were in the first quarter and one in the second.  This patterns Roy Hibbert’s day.  At the end of the first period, Roy Hibbert had 8 points and 5 rebounds.  Over the final three quarters, he added only 3 points and 3 rebounds.

Please see Jared’s recap for a full discussion of Game 1.

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  • LP

    Thanks for the Spiderwebs; they are a very interesting tool for baskeball analysis. Next time though would you use the same scale for the percentages? The way they are currently designed one might easily decipher the gestalt and flavor of each individual team. However, comparisons across these webs are much more difficult to make based on the differences in scale on the percentage axes. Regardless of the change being made or not… these web things are cool. Go Pacers!! (so much for my dream of Pacers sweeping Bulls in 4)

  • mellifluous

    First impression: Pacers ran way too many isos.

  • http://www.eightpointsnineseconds.com Tim Donahue

    LP – thanks for the feedback. It’s a good note that I just didn’t think of, so I’ve replaced the picture with the adjusted scale.

    melli – It’s a fair concern, particularly when you consider the fact that they only scored on 4 of the 14 times they ran iso’s, that might not be their best path.

  • mellifluous

    The thing with the isos is that, even before the series started, you could have asked anybody with knowledge of both teams to name one match-up in the starting five that would lend itself well for the Pacers to run an iso and they wouldn’t have been able to find one. Boozer guarding Hansbrough is the closest thing to a mismatch we’ve got, but Hansbrough doesn’t have any physical advantages and Boozer’s only a bad defender because he doesn’t care most of the time. That sort of thing tends to change during the playoffs.

  • Antwain

    R u serious? Were u some kinda geek in high school or something. No one cares about all your stupid little graphs and stuff. We care about the final score. Visit a sports bar for once in your life. U r by far the worst sports writer ever.

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