Chasing Perfection: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion by Andy Glockner
Authors: Andy Glockner
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designed to entertain more than inform, but even by those modest standards, his riff was woefully short on truth. There is ample documentation on how the Miami Heat used analytics to try to figure out how best to deploy LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, specifically in relation to Bosh’s usage, where he became a crucial pick-and-roll and perimeter-defending presence when the Heat reached their pinnacle. Likewise, the San Antonio Spurs are among the smartest teams in the league in every facet, and use heavy doses of analytics to their continuing advantage. The Rockets were also able to sniff out Harden’s star potential through his performance levels as a sixth man with the Thunder. Barkley’s riff also ignores that Synergy’s Garrick Barr is a former NBA assistant coach, and other third-party analytics providers also have numerous former basketball players on their staffs.
Anyway, a funny thing happened to the Lakers on the way to being a leaguewide joke for their horrible shot selection: while they ended up taking the most mid-range 2-point attempts in the league while finishing a ghastly twenty-eighth in success rate from that range, they actually ended up right on the league’s 3-point trend line. The Lakers took a below-average but not irregular number of threes for the season and made a below-average but normal rate of them (and then, somewhat surprisingly, moved advance scout Clay Moser into a liaison role to try to better connect the team’s analytics efforts with the coaching staff that doesn’t seem to care for them).
The outliers in terms of the number of 3-point attempts per game versus the percentage made were the aforementioned 76ers, who took a lot of threes and didn’t make many; the Warriors, who led the league at 39.8 percent and attempted 2,217 of them (fourth-most in the league) and . . . the Rockets, who shattered league 3-point records while shooting a mediocre-enough percentage to suggest that maybe they should dial things back just a touch:
The only two good teams that were near the bottom of the league were the Grizzlies, who put a scare in the Warriors in the second round of the playoffs before getting figured out, and those curious Wizards, who actually went to a heavy dose of small ball once they got into the playoffs, shot a lot more threes, and had a good chance to make the Eastern Conference Finals had injuries not hindered them against the Atlanta Hawks. One other notable team in that grouping was the long, young, and interesting Milwaukee Bucks, who also have built a roster around disruption rather than marksmanship, but it’s a bit too early to say that’s their distinct style.
As January 2015 was the NBA’s first month ever with more 3-point attempts than free throw attempts, this trend—and this debate on how many is enough—will continue to roll on. The league will never completely conform to one style, nor should it, but it’s worth noting that the seven teams with the highest percentage of 3-point attempts at season’s end all finished in the top nine in offensive efficiency, and the last five teams alive in the 2015 playoffs were the five most frequent 3-point shooting teams. In today’s NBA, the 3-point shot, ever increasingly, is king, and if you don’t shoot enough of them, you’re going to need to do a heck of a lot of other things well in order to compete for the championship.
CHAPTER 4
The Hunt for Future Perfected Players
There was only one thing I was trying to do—put numbers in front of our team to get them to understand that what we were doing is in their best interests, and that their efficiency numbers would be off the charts if they did this right . . . And that no one would be hurt by less minutes; you would be more efficient.
—John Calipari, head coach, University of Kentucky
W hen the University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball team is expected to be good, there’s no bigger story in college basketball,
Anyway, a funny thing happened to the Lakers on the way to being a leaguewide joke for their horrible shot selection: while they ended up taking the most mid-range 2-point attempts in the league while finishing a ghastly twenty-eighth in success rate from that range, they actually ended up right on the league’s 3-point trend line. The Lakers took a below-average but not irregular number of threes for the season and made a below-average but normal rate of them (and then, somewhat surprisingly, moved advance scout Clay Moser into a liaison role to try to better connect the team’s analytics efforts with the coaching staff that doesn’t seem to care for them).
The outliers in terms of the number of 3-point attempts per game versus the percentage made were the aforementioned 76ers, who took a lot of threes and didn’t make many; the Warriors, who led the league at 39.8 percent and attempted 2,217 of them (fourth-most in the league) and . . . the Rockets, who shattered league 3-point records while shooting a mediocre-enough percentage to suggest that maybe they should dial things back just a touch:
The only two good teams that were near the bottom of the league were the Grizzlies, who put a scare in the Warriors in the second round of the playoffs before getting figured out, and those curious Wizards, who actually went to a heavy dose of small ball once they got into the playoffs, shot a lot more threes, and had a good chance to make the Eastern Conference Finals had injuries not hindered them against the Atlanta Hawks. One other notable team in that grouping was the long, young, and interesting Milwaukee Bucks, who also have built a roster around disruption rather than marksmanship, but it’s a bit too early to say that’s their distinct style.
As January 2015 was the NBA’s first month ever with more 3-point attempts than free throw attempts, this trend—and this debate on how many is enough—will continue to roll on. The league will never completely conform to one style, nor should it, but it’s worth noting that the seven teams with the highest percentage of 3-point attempts at season’s end all finished in the top nine in offensive efficiency, and the last five teams alive in the 2015 playoffs were the five most frequent 3-point shooting teams. In today’s NBA, the 3-point shot, ever increasingly, is king, and if you don’t shoot enough of them, you’re going to need to do a heck of a lot of other things well in order to compete for the championship.
CHAPTER 4
The Hunt for Future Perfected Players
There was only one thing I was trying to do—put numbers in front of our team to get them to understand that what we were doing is in their best interests, and that their efficiency numbers would be off the charts if they did this right . . . And that no one would be hurt by less minutes; you would be more efficient.
—John Calipari, head coach, University of Kentucky
W hen the University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball team is expected to be good, there’s no bigger story in college basketball,
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