Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News found a very interesting similarity between the firings of Minnesota’s Randy Wittman, Washington’s Eddie Jordan, Toronto’s Sam Mitchell and Oklahoma City’s P.J. Carlesimo. And it involves field goal percentage defense.
FG% defense is a major stat. Big, big stat.
In NBA circles, FG% def is a sign of effort and chemistry–you’re supposed to play hard, and if you have NBA talent and you play hard, you’re supposed to hold opponents to a palatable shooting %. That’d be in the low 46s or middle 45s or something like that.
If you don’t play hard and don’t have chemistry, usually, the first thing to go is defensive effort, which is best, most quickly identified by FG% defense.
The Warriors are headed towards horrid 47 to 49% with their current manifestation and current effort level. And that speaks to a lack of coaching, generally, at least as it is deduced in most NBA quarters.
So FG def Nos. 28, 27, 26 and 25 have been fired. No. 29 (Theus) might drop in a matter of days or weeks.
I think Kawakami is on to something here. I’d like to see this type of analysis applied to every in-season head coaching change in NBA history.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Excellent post, hoff. I too would like to what the oFG%’s were any time a coach got axed.
I guess that makes Mike Brown the most secure coach in the NBA haha.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Not a bad metric to use, but by that standard…Mike D & Reggie Theus need to go, too.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
[...] do NBA coaches get the axe? Apparently, for allowing opposing teams to post a gaudy field percentage. So far the Raptors, Timberwolves, Wizards and Thunder have changed coaches. Incidentally, those [...]
May 30th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I remember when everyone called Kobe a ball hog,well I see that Labron is the same way.My question is did Kobe get MVP when that was going on?