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Advanced Stat Talk

Advanced Stat Talk: What XeFG% from the Bulls Game Tells Us About Indy’s Offensive Futility

by Tim Donahue on December 30, 2009 at 8:14 pm · 2 comments

Good Will Hunting Equation

When is it hot shooting and when is it bad defense?

Overall last night, the Bulls shot 53% from the floor with an eFG% of about 57%. But, as I tweeted last night, I wanted to look at the XeFG% for the teams, because I thought there was a whole lot of settling.

(Explanatory note: XeFG% is short for “expected effective field goal percentage,” which measures the “expected effectiveness of a team’s shot distribution, assuming they shoot league average percentages from every area on the floor.” Basically, different areas of the floor have different levels of effectiveness. For example, dunks/layups are the best to take, corner threes are the second best and midrange jumpers from 16-23 feet are the worst. So if you look at, say, the XeFG% of the Bulls 3PT% last night and see that they shot way better than league average from that distance, they likely either (a) got and made a lot of open threes, or (b) were extra hot from long-range and made a lot of well-contested threes. Also, you can look around on HoopData.com for more fun with XeFG%.)

For the Pacers, it wasn’t all that bad. Their XeFG% was 49.0%, and the league average is 49.5%, so it’s not like they were jacking up an abnormal amount of bad shots (leaving aside the fact that almost all Pacer shots are bad). But they ended up at shooting 46.6% for the game, so they were pretty inaccurate. Every team has bad shooting nights, so this in and of itself isn’t revelatory.

However, last night they weren’t any more inaccurate than usual, unfortunately. Using their YTD numbers, their XeFG% was .469, which will tell you how far below average they are as a shooting team.

Meanwhile, the Bulls took an insane 53% of their shots from 16-23 feet, which is the least effective range.  Using league averages, their XeFG% was 45.3%. Using Chicago’s YTD shooting averages, their XeFG% was 41.9%. Meaning they shot about 12 percentage points above the expected league average, and 15 percentage points above what even they would normally do.

So, in a game decided by 9 points, the Pacers submitted their typical shooting performance from the floor on pretty reasonable shot selection, and gave away 4 points to the league average.  Meanwhile, Chicago’s shot selection was an opposing coach’s wet dream, but they managed to pick up 21 points against the league average (and 25 against their own standard) simply by hitting shots.

So, is this a function of “Pretty much everybody in the NBA can shoot, so if you give them uncontested jumpers, they’ll hit them,” or “As poorly as the Pacers played, Chicago would lose with that shot selection way more often than they win?”  Hard to tell, but probably some of both.

More importantly, it underscores the crucial nature of being able to hit shots.

For all of the “there’s no hustle” and “the team has quit” and “Jim O’Brien is evil” stuff we hear from fans, what’s really making this team bad-to-hopeless instead the marginally mediocre squad that we all expected them to be is painfully simple.

They.

Just.

Can’t.

Shoot.

To be a top team, you need to be able to do more than just shoot, but it is next to impossible to even compete if you can’t shoot.

Consider the following chart:

wpctvsefg

I took all of the teams since 1980, and ranked them based on their eFG%, put them into “rank buckets” where all the Top 5 eFG% teams get Bucket One, the 6th-10th eFG% teams are in Bucket Two, etc. (The earlier years when the NBA had fewer than 30 teams were prorated to match a 30-team rank scale). Then I charted the calculated the combined winning percentage of all the teams in each bucket and plotted them on the graph above.

The 2009-10 Pacers currently rank 26th in the NBA in eFG%, which puts them in the lowest group. Since 1980, there were 140 teams that finished in this “bottom bucket” during this time period, and that collective of poor eFG% shooting teams posted a combined winning percentage of only .315. This is the rough equivalent of 26 wins over an 82-game season.  Only 11 (8%) of these teams managed to post a winning record.  Meanwhile, 95 (68%) finished with 30 wins or fewer, and 75 (53%) finished with 25 wins or fewer.

A healthy, vintage ’08-09 Danny would help, but not enough to get them to the playoffs. Even before the season, I was afraid that the offense would drop off this year, but I never could have imagined how bad it has become.

Now, granted, even if they could shoot, they still wouldn’t be athletic enough to deal with teams like the Hawks. But if this team could just match last year’s shooting (which wasn’t outlandish with an eFG% of 50.1%, which was just above the league average of 50.0%), they would score 5.2 more PPG. Add in the fact that they’re down from 81% to 76% at the line, and that’s another 1.2 points.

OK … So their shot selection is poor and their XeFG% overall is only about 48.6%. Thus, let’s bring ‘em back to earth and say that it would be more like a total uptick of 4-5 points per game. That doesn’t make them contenders, but it probably gets them closer to .500 — maybe 13-17 or 14-16.

The problem is, what the hell do you do to fix it?

Even if they had better shot selection, that would probably only account for 1/3 of their scoring problem. What do you do when you’re players can’t hit shots (and the opponent knows it)?

Change the offense? Trade for a play-maker? Have more shootarounds? Don’t play players battling injury? Just bite down on the stick and grit it out until 2011?

Leftovers:

  • The Pacers rank 25th in FG% at the rim, and 22nd in eFG% from beyond the arc.  These are the two most important and most productive areas of the floor.
  • Tyler Hansbrough shoots only 52.0% at the rim, which is well below the league average of 60.4%.  Unfortunately, Mike Dunleavy (51.0%) and Brandon Rush (49.0%) are worse. (So’s McBob, but he’s only had 4 attempts).  (Yes…that’s right.  If Brandon has a dunk or a layup, it’s less than a 50-50 proposition.)
  • The ’09-10 Pacers have improved their defensive efficiency by about 3.5% since last year, which is roughly twice the league-wide improvement. And they’ve improved their defensive eFG% over last season by 3.2%, which is about 3 times the league-wide improvement. Unfortunately, their offensive efficiency in ’09-10 has dropped by a staggering 7.7% — or more than 4 times the league average. This is also more than twice the team’s defensive improvement. The shooting is also predictably worse, and accounts for the bulk of the overall decline in offensive efficiency. Their eFG% got worse by 6.5%, which would be 6 times the league-wide decline.
  • As I type this, I’m watching the Pacers fall behind 66-47 to the Griz on at Conseco.  The shooting hasn’t been horrible, but dry spells have led to the Memphis spurts.  More to the point, it reminds me that I should probably do one of these things on Turnovers.  But I’m going to need to get drunk first.

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Hey Everybody – Listen to Me Talk

by Jared Wade on November 30, 2009 at 4:03 pm · 3 comments

I did a few podcasts last week that may be worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing.

The first one, Episode 3 of my podcast Talking About Practice, is actually not Pacer-related at all, per se, but it does get into some subject matter that we have been and will continue talking about around these parts. Essentially, what it comes down to is efficiency.

See, basketball is a simple sport. On each possession, the offense tries to score. And the defense tries to stop them for doing that. The more times the offense succeeds, the better chances they have to win. So they are trying to maximize those possessions and use them as, wait for it, efficiently as possible. The defense’s goal would thus be the inverse.

Basically, we're talking about a whole new level of looking at the game and trying to figure out things like when (in the shot clock), where (specifically on the floor) and why (players do what they do to make) offenses succeed.

No team has embraced this concept as much as the Houston Rockets and they have gone to great lengths to determine how NBA offenses can become more efficient and, conversely, how defenses can prevent them from doing this. Shane Battier is the poster child for this concept, and he has used the vast array of film, game charting data and advanced statistical analysis that the Rockets franchise — and most NBA franchises these days — now rigorously gather and crunch to significantly enhance the way he plays defense.

Basically, we’re talking about a whole new level of looking at the game and trying to figure out things like when (in the shot clock), where (specifically on the floor) and why (players do what they do to make) offenses succeed. Only it’s all much, much more complex than that and is so advanced that private game-charting/video companies like Synergy Sports and even teams like the Rockets really won’t even tell the outside world about everything they are doing. It’s too proprietary and too confidential.

Us mere mortals discuss this efficiency stuff in terms of eFG% and Defensive Ratings. And that’s what we do around here to some degree — while also fully realizing that these new stats are just tools to help us explain some of the stuff that happens on the court and not some sort of Holy Grail. In the grand scheme of things, even these more-refined resources are still too-blunt tools incapable of replacing the softer analysis that can only come from actually watching the game in depth.

So, all that was a long way of saying that me and Chris Ballard, who is a columnist for Sports Illustrated columnist and wrote the wonderful book The Art of a Beautiful Game talked a lot about this stuff. We start off talking about some of the other stuff in his book, but get into all that Rocket/Battier stuff about 20ish minutes in.

(You can also subscribe to Talking About Practice via iTunes and listen that way. Ratings/reviews appreciated.)

Talking About Practice

The second podcast was the latest edition of The 8th Seed. This is something me and seven other NBA bloggers have been doing since this summer. Most of it is irreverent jokes and genuine potty-mouth tomfoolery. But there is some actual basketball insight in there. The Pacers-relevant part about comes at the 64-minute mark and while I’d love for you to listen to the whole thing, that 5 minutes of me talking Pacers is pretty much my current feelings on the team. And I’m planning to explore the whole Dahntay Jones dynamic I get into there more in-depth in a column here whenever I find the time.

Related Links

If you’re into the Rockets/Battier/Ballard stuff, here’s a few other things you should familiarize yourself with. I’m still trying to figure out how to and to what degree we should include some of this stuff into the Pacers discussion at 8p9s. I mean, I don’t want to lose you guys who think all this stuff is stupid. But some of it is definitely valuable. So I suggest you check out a few of these things below. (Although Ballard’s book is just about the game in general aside from one chapter.)

  • First up is Ballard’s book. The Art of the a Beautiful Game is really, really good and is probably the best, cheap present you could buy for yourself or any hoops head you know this holiday season. I did an extended review you can read here. Also, here’s an excerpt from his chapter on rebounding about Jeff Foster that you might like.

Jeff Foster, the Pacers’ relentless (and offensively challenged) center, had an unusual incentive. As a teenager at Madison High in San Antonio, his coach told the then thin and tall Foster that he wasn’t getting enough rebounds. So Jeff’s father, Stephen, made a deal with him. Instead of an allowance, he’d be paid for his board work: $1 for every rebound he got in a game, $2 for each one above 10 and $3 after 15. Soon enough, he was cleaning his dad out. Though, considering Jeff’s future, it was a bargain: In 2008-09, Foster made $6.175 million playing for the Pacers, or $12,156 for each of his 508 boards.

  • The one article you need to read about advanced game charting/stats is Moneyball author Michael Lewis’ New York Times Magazine piece on Battier from last Spring. This article essentially took this whole discussion and exposed an underground world of hoops analysis to the common fan. I actually preferred Ballard’s chapter, but that is kind of like saying I prefer ice cream to birthday cake — both are excellent.
  • Next up comes this NBA.com piece about how things like Synergy Sports, 82games.com, Basketball-Reference and all the other, similarly ambitioned endeavors are changing the sport. This stuff just gets crazier and more advanced by the day.

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