Hello all, I’m back to bring you more basketball goodness. Over the next month, I’m going to be posting individual team previews for each NBA team, as well as general overviews of the league and Eastern and Western conferences.
Some of you may have read my previews last year and remember that I like to make use of some advanced statistical measures. Now, by no means is it required that you know all these statistics in order to get something from these previews. However, if you want to follow along completely, you’re going to need some general knowledge of what these stats mean. That’s what this post is for. I’m going to tell you, in general, what each of these stats mean and how I like to make use of them. Feel free to just skip it or skim through it, but I want it to be here as a reference, and I’ll be linking back to it in my previews so you can check back if you want to look up what a stat means.
Team Statistics
Possessions: A possession begins when a team gains control of the ball, and ends when the opposing team gains possession of the ball. Possessions allow us to quantify the pace at which a team plays. So, instead of just telling you that Denver plays very fast, I can tell you quantitatively how many possessions they averaged per game. I’ll actually be listing possessions per 48 minutes, to account for teams that played more overtime games.
League Average for 07-08: 92.4
Offensive Rating: This is the real reason why counting possessions is important. Offensive Rating is a measure of how many points a team scored per 100 possessions. It is a more accurate measure of offensive effectiveness because it takes into account the pace at which a team plays.
League Average: 107.5
Defensive Rating: This is the same as Offensive Rating, but for points allowed. It measures points allowed per 100 possessions.
League Average: 107.5 (of course)
Pythagorean W-L: This is the Win-Loss record that you would expect a team to have based on their points scored and points allowed. A team that wins significantly more games than Pythagorean W-L projects probably won a large percentage of their close games, in other words, they got lucky. For example, Cleveland last year actually allowed more points than they scored, so their Pythagorean W-L was 40-42 while their actual W-L was 45-37. Pythagorean W-L is a significantly better predictor of future success than actual W-L.
Min%: This is a measure of roster continuity, it tells you what percentage of minutes played a team returns. I took all the returning players from a team, added up all the minutes they played for the team last year, and divided that by the total minutes played by the team last year. You’ve probably heard people say a team returns X percent of their scoring, this is the same thing, just with minutes instead of points.
League Average: 74.9
Offensive Four Factors: This method of analysis was advanced by statistician Dean Oliver (one of the leaders in advanced statistical analysis of basketball). Basically, it says that there are 4 main factors that are statistically significant to a team’s offensive success. These are those four factors (listed in order of importance).
eFG%: This is becoming a more and more popular measure to use. It’s basically the same as FG%, but it gives extra credit for 3PT shots. The formula is simply (FG + .5(3FG))/FGA.
League Average: 49.7
TOV%: An estimate of how many times a team turns the ball over per 100 possessions.
League Average: .132
OReb%: Just what it looks like. The percentage of available offensive rebounds a team grabs. This is a better measure than just counting rebounds because it not only accounts for pace, it also accounts for the fact that a team shooting a lower percentage will have more offensive rebounding opportunities.
League Average: .267
FT/FGA: How many free throws a team makes per field goal attempt. Takes into account both how often a team gets to the line and how well they shoot their free throws.
League Average: .231
Defensive Four Factors: Three guesses to what this is. Yeah, same as the offensive factors, just for defense.
eFG%: The effective shooting percentage a team allows.
League Average: 49.7
TOV%: Same as before, only it’s how many turnovers you force.
League Average: .132
DReb%: The percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs.
League Average: .733
FT/FGA: What do you think?
League Average: .231
Individual Statistics
Offensive Rating (ORtg): Similar principle to a team Offensive Rating, this is an estimate of how many points a player would produce if he used 100 possessions. Basically, it is a measure of efficiency, that takes into account an absurd amount of factors, and is , in general, the best measure of efficiency that we have.
Defensive Rating (DRtg): Same principal as above, but in this case it is a much less accurate measure due to the lack of good defensive box score statistics. It is, in general, a fairly good measure for big men, and a fairly bad one for perimeter players. I won’t use this a lot, but I like to provide it.
Usage Rate (Usg%): An estimate of what percentage of his team’s possessions a player uses while he’s on the court (confused yet?). Basically, tells us if a player is a high volume guy or more of a role player. Combined with Offensive Rating, gives a pretty complete picture of what a player brings offensively. In general, as Usage Rate goes up, efficiency (ORtg) goes down.
Rebound Rate (RbR): An estimate of the percentage of available rebounds a player pulled down while he was on the floor. A better measure than just RPG for all the reasons listed under team rebounding percentage.
AST%: An estimate of the percentage of your teammates’ field goals you assist while on the floor.
If you want to read a bit more in-depth, Hoops Addict has some good articles on shooting percentages, offensive and defensive ratings, and rebounding percentages. In addition, if you really want to know more, go out and grab Basketball on Paper, by Dean Oliver. It’s not a hard read, and it’s the best book on basketball analysis I’ve ever read.
A few final notes before we move on to the preview.
- I rank teams in tiers. For a very general example, I might rank 4 Western Conference teams as legit title contenders, 6 more as playoff hopefuls, and the rest as bottom-feeders. The actual numerical ranking of the team is less important than the tier.
- I rank teams in order of how likely I think they are to win a title, not necessarily how I think they will finish during the regular season. For example, while I don’t necessarily think the Pistons will finish with the 6th best record in the East, I don’t consider them a valid championship contender as currently built.
- I’m not here to sugar coat things for your favorite team. I don’t particularly care that you’ve watched them closely and think they’re better than they look on paper. Maybe you’re right, but odds are that your opinion is biased and mine isn’t. Deal with it.
Lastly, thanks to the many sites I’ve grabbed my information from, primarily Basketball-Reference, 82games, ESPN and DraftExpress.
