Stat Central: Playing With New Toys

Over the past few seasons, several teams decided to invest in high tech cameras that would track the the horizontal and vertical positions of every item on the court — a.k.a. the ten players, three referees, and the ball. There was infinitely many uses for the data collected by the cameras and the team’s hired really smart people to do some interesting things with the data. They have been used to track the speed at which a player is running, the distance players travel during the games, how often a player accelerates, and with all that information, determine whether players were “giving it their all” for entire games. Teams also tracked other basketball things as well, like a players’ tendency to drive to the basket and the team’s success when doing so, or how often a player grabbed rebounds that were within a reachable distance. During the off-season the NBA decided to install these cameras — Sports VU cameras — into every NBA arena and have decided to provide some of the more general statistical data to the public via NBA.com’s stats page. I have been scouring these stats for close to a week now and decided to delve into some of my initial observations for this week’s edition of Stat Central:

No Pace Accounted For Stats. Every stat NBA.com has provided on its player tracking pages are either per game, per 48 minutes, total, or percentage stats. I talked about the short coming of per game numbers in depth a couple of weeks ago and it is somewhat frustrating that NBA.com did not give us any per possession, per play, or per attempt type numbers. It is cool that James Harden is one of the most frequent per game “drivers” in basketball, but we do not know how much Houston’s pace is factoring into to Harden’s high drive count. It would be nice to know how many drives per 100 possessions a player has or how many points a team averages per a player drive. It is not difficult to calculate these stats — well in the case of the per 100 possessions stats, it is moderately difficult — but even in calculating them ourselves we really do not have a context to put it in, since calculating more than two or three players stats at a time becomes irrationally time consuming. If the NBA provided us downloadable stats their would be more convenient workarounds — we would be able to manipulate the numbers and create our per possession type of stats — but the NBA will not release the data for any personal or academic uses. Okay, that is my personal criticism; now on to the good stuff…

John Wall, The Second Best Passer In Basketball. Chris Paul is the best at everything and I will not waste my time being the one millionth voice singing his praises. As far as passing goes, though, John Wall has clearly been the second best in the game behind Chris Paul. Not only is John Wall third in the league in assists — with 8.8, tied with Jeff Teague and behind Curry and Paul — he is also second, behind Paul, in points created by assists per game. Wall is assisting on 22.3 of Washington’s 103.3 points per game (21.6 percent) and has been the center piece to the Wizard offense. Wall is also second in the league in secondary assists (commonly called hockey assists) behind Nate Wolters — cut to Nathan Geise and the five other people in the Nate Wolters fan club cheering euphorically. In short, Wall has been the best passer in the game not named Chris Paul, and seems poised to keep it that way throughout the season (we’ll come back to crush the Wizards fans in a moment).

Nobody Scores On Roy Hibber…or Brook Lopez. Wait, what? One of the needed stats provided by these cameras involves a player’s effectiveness defending the rim. Specifically, the cameras record the times a player contests a shot at the rim and how often that play results in a made or missed field goal. The top ten player in opposing field goal percentage of shots contested at the rim — of players that contest at least five shots per game — has a lot of the faces you would assume. Joakim Noah, Omer Asik, and Tim Duncan are all in the top ten, while Roy Hibbert has been an absolutely on fire defending the paint so far this season — opponents are only shooting 29.8 percent on the just over 11.4 shots per game they are taking against Hibbert at the rim (ranked 5th). Their are a few surprises in the top ten to kick off the season also, though. Specifically, the Plumlee brothers both are in the top ten — though Mason has only logged 21 minutes of playing time with the Nets — and Brook Lopez, a notoriously average defender, ranks fourth on the list just ahead of Hibbert. Lopez is only allowing opponents to shoot 28.9 percent on shots he contests at the rim and it seems like playing next to Kevin Garnett may be helping Lopez take his defense to the next level. It is also worth noting that Anthony Davis is ranked third, only allowing 26.9 percent on shots at the rim, though he is barely contesting five shots a game at the rim. Wait, there’s more…

Anti Defensive Player of the Year. The worst paint defenders are also mostly made up of the expected names, but has a few surprises as well. Al Jefferson and Jared Sullinger are both in the bottom five, along with Jonas Valancuinas (disappointingly) and number one and two as far as bad paint defense goes, Marcin Gortat and Nene — both players are allowing opponents to shoot over 70 percent on shots at the rim they contest so far this year; sorry Wizards fans. But it is the sixth spot that has, at least, a mild surprise. DeAndre Jordan was supposed to be a legitimate force on the defensive end this year, with Doc Rives and the Clippers building Defensive Player of the Year buzz for Jordan. Jordan has responded by relenting big games to Nikola Vucevic, DeMarcus Cousins, and the combination of Pau Gasol and Jordan Hill and by being an absolute sieve defending the basket. Teams are shooting 60 percent at the rim when Jordan contests — the 6th worst figure in basketball amongst players that have contested at least five shots — and by no coincidence the Clippers have had one of the NBA’s worst defenses so far this year.

Take That Nerds. Monta Ellis has taken a beating at the hands of stat nerds and efficiency geeks over the last few seasons — and rightfully so for the most part. However, a change in scenery — that came with very compatible personnel and an offensive that resembles the one he had success in with Don Nelson — has revived Monta’s career to start this season. His success in large part is due to Monta doing what he has been successful doing over the course of his career. That is, even at his worst Ellis always had one redeemable quality. He has always been very good at attacking the rim and creating good shots for himself and his teammates of of his drives. So far, in Dallas, he is continuing his success in this regard. Monta leads the league in drives per game (11.8), points off of drives per game (10.4) — by a full 3.4 points per game over the 2nd place guy — and team points of drives per game (14.8). Monta is shooting 58.3 percent on drives — the 6th highest percentage in basketball — and Dallas is scoring 1.25 points per Ellis drive to the basket. He has quite clearly been the best driver in the NBA so far and Dallas’s offense is benefiting from his proficiency.

You Guys Can Drool Over Chris Paul. I will continue to drool over the only guy who has come close to challenging Paul at the point guard position over the past few seasons. Tony Parker continues to be — along with Paul — the most efficient in front of the three point line scorer perimeter not named LeBron James. Parker ranks just below Ellis on field goal percentage on drives (57.9 percent), while ranking 9th in drives per game and 11th in team point off of drives — all amongst players who have at least 5 drives per game. Parker extends that efficiency level to his mid-range game as well. Parker leads the league in field goal percentage on pull up jumpers — on players that take at least 5 pull ups per game — shooting 57.7 percent on those difficult pull up shots. That is 4.1 percent higher than the next highest player (Klay Thompson) and Parker has quite clearly been the best pull up shooter in basketball so far this year. Chris Paul will always be number one to most, but Parker is definitely the not so distant second right now.

Surprisingly enough, the advanced stats provided by the new player tracking cameras have highlighted Monta Ellis’ strengths this year.

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