Teams without "the man" are better on offense.

[rockmanslim]

I mean, how many times if ever this season has a single player on the Spurs attempted 20+ shot attempts?

It has happened 13 times in 11 games (one two occasions both TD and Parker had 20+ FGA in the same game)

link: http://bit.ly/Wfkbsv

not trying to make a point, just answering the question you posed.

god i love basketball-reference

Here it is for all teams, in descending order (number of times a player on each team has had 20+ FGA), along with ORtg ranking and PTS/G ranking:

Code: Select all

          ORtg   PTS/G   
          rank   rank   
NYK   36    2      8
OKC   36    1      1
LAL   28    8      5
MIL   25   25     14
MIA   24    3      6
CLE   19   22     21
GSW   16   11      9
POR   16   15     15
PHI   13   28     27
SAS   13    5      3
CHI   12   20     25

Code: Select all

MEM   12   19     28
BRK   11    7     16
CHA   11   26     22
HOU   11    9      2
NOH   10   14     26
ORL   10   21     20
ATL   8    18     17
BOS   8    27     23
IND   8    29     29
TOR   8    12     12
DEN   7     6      4
MIN   7    23     24
DAL   6    17     10

Code: Select all

LAC   6     4      7
SAC   6    13     13
WAS   6    30     30
DET   5    16     19
UTA   5    10     11
PHO   4    24     18



20+ FGA games source: http://bit.ly/10Rg9uN
ORtg source: http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... ml#misc::8
PTS/G source: http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... l#team::22

[TwentyOne920]

New York, Oklahoma City, and the Lakers topping that list makes sense, they all have high volume scorers.

Miami having fewer 20 FGA games makes sense considering they're better when Wade and Bosh play as 1a and 1b. Milwaukee starts two chuckers in the backcourt.

[Sasaki]

Houston's offense without Harden would be a total disaster.

[peja_the_legend]

This is very simple:

In order to win it all, you need to have a superstar player. Without one, you can't win it all.

A team without a star player that can move the ball well will always do better than a team with a star player who's also a chucker (see Kobe Bryant). None of those teams will win the chip, though.

Easy. You're welcome.

who exactly was 2004 Pistons superstar?

[Shot Clock]

Baiting LA fans.

[MitchellUK]

I could also argue that Clippers don't have a "the man" as none of their players average over 18ppg and they have 8 players averaging 7 ppg or better.

Same thing for golden state, they have 5 guys in double figures.

Is it possible you are confusing "good role players" (per your OP) with great players, "the man" quality players, who are willing to work as a team?

Chris Paul and Blake Griffin could both score 20+, maybe 25+ a game if they wanted to. The Spurs' big three could all look to dominate the shots and score more, but they don't.

Being willing to share the load with your team-mates does not negate your talent and reduce you to role player status.

Also, given that the Nuggets are your shining example of role players equaling great offense, compare the DRTG of OKC, LAC, MIA, NYK and SAS with that of Denver. The Nuggets have the lowest DRTG of all those teams, suggesting that they above the other 5 sacrifice their defense in for a good offense.

[branny]

Houston's offense without Harden would be a total disaster.

[GrandTheftRondo]

They also don't win championships.

[hamek]

This is very simple:

In order to win it all, you need to have a superstar player. Without one, you can't win it all.

A team without a star player that can move the ball well will always do better than a team with a star player who's also a chucker (see Kobe Bryant). None of those teams will win the chip, though.

Easy. You're welcome.

who exactly was 2004 Pistons superstar?

Ben Wallace was their superstar. Not the offensive superstar that get talked about, but he still played like a superstar that year. They won with defense and he was the best defender in the NBA.
http://wagesofwins.com/2013/01/02/the-m ... 4-pistons/

[mysticbb]

Ben Wallace was their superstar. Not the offensive superstar that get talked about, but he still played like a superstar that year. They won with defense and he was the best defender in the NBA.
http://wagesofwins.com/2013/01/02/the-m ... 4-pistons/

Stupid metric and stupid article. Not saying that Ben Wallace wasn't a great defensive player, but what enabled the Pistons to be such a great team in 2004 was actually the trade for Rasheed Wallace. In the 21 games R. Wallace started, the Pistons had a scoring margin of +13.3. In the 60 games with Ben Wallace starting and without Rasheed Wallace they had +3.3. Rasheed Wallace was also the better 1on1 defender in the post, making it possible for Ben Wallace to play more often to his strength (help and weakside defense). RAPM has Rasheed Wallace better than Ben Wallace over the whole decade, having constantly between +3 and +4.5, while Wallace hovered 0.5 to 1 point below that.
When the Pistons in 2006 let Ben Wallace walk and then aquired Chris Webber, they played as strong in the games with Webber as they played with Ben Wallace the season before. The thing is that it is not as simple as WOW makes it out to believe. The talent must fit together, otherwise it is not working well.

Anyway, regarding the thread topic:

If we look at the highest usage players on the respective team and compare their usage with the respective team ORtg, we get a correlation coefficient of 0.3, meaning, if the "man" has a higher usage rate, the team is finishing with a higher ORtg. When we add in the efficiency of that "man", the correlation coefficient goes up to 0.5. Which is just showing that "common sense" doesn't fail, because a high usage player with high efficiency is leading to a better overall team offense rating.
The numbers are based on a dataset from 2004 to 2013. The highest usage player on the respective team was determined by multiplying the usage rate of the player with his minutes played. As determination of the player's efficiency individual offensive rating adjusted for the team and league average was used. The team ORTG was adjusted for the yearly different league average ORtg as well.

Conclusion: Teams with "the man" are better on offense. Teams with "the efficient man" are even better offensively.

[DatD-Wade3]

Chris Webber was the "man" on those Kings teams. Their offense wasn't too shabby. Magic was the "man"...and they were called Showtime for a reason. Obviously who's around them makes a huge difference.

[rockmanslim]

This is very simple:

In order to win it all, you need to have a superstar player. Without one, you can't win it all.

A team without a star player that can move the ball well will always do better than a team with a star player who's also a chucker (see Kobe Bryant). None of those teams will win the chip, though.

Easy. You're welcome.

who exactly was 2004 Pistons superstar?

Ben Wallace was their superstar. Not the offensive superstar that get talked about, but he still played like a superstar that year. They won with defense and he was the best defender in the NBA.
http://wagesofwins.com/2013/01/02/the-m ... 4-pistons/

Interesting. This backs it up, too:

http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ratings/2004.html

Disclaimer: I know jack squat about this metric. Maybe someone else here can shed some light on it.

[mysticbb]

Interesting. This backs it up, too:

http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ratings/2004.html

Disclaimer: I know jack squat about this metric. Maybe someone else here can shed some light on it.

That metric has a flawed integrated by using a boxscore-based prior with height, rebounding, blocked shots and steals having a huge impact. When you look through the data, you will find a heavy bias towards bigs. If the boxscore prior is replaced by a RAPM based prior, the bias is nearly gone. That points to a flawed boxscore metric, because if the boxscore metric is correct, at least the distribution shouldn't change.

We can look at the 90's for that. The calculation is based on a fake matchup file. The whole dataset without a boxscore-based prior has Michael Jordan as the #1, David Robinson as #5. Now we go through the individual years, which are based on the same fake matchup file just with the added boxscore-based prior. And all of the sudden Jordan comes not even close to Robinson, who is leading the league in all years in the 90's except for the one he was out with the injury.

Both, the boxscore-based prior and WP48 are suffering from the same problem. The coefficients were determined by examining team results. On the team level an offensive rebound is extending the possession and gets subtracted while the FGA is considered the end of a possession. That works on the team level, because players know the rule and know that not taking a shot is resulting into a shotclock violation. The team based regression does not know about that at all, and in the end basically assumes that a missed shot could have been replaced by a better shot from a teammate. That the replacement could also be a worse shot or a turnover is not considered. That ends with the funny result in both cases that a missed field goal is worse than a turnover for the individual player. Given the fact that late shot clock shots have a rather low conversation rate (well below league average) and in order to contribute as scorer in a positive fashion, he player has to score above league average efficiency, in would be beneficial for the player's individual rating to not take shot, but let the shotclock expire. That is obviously bogus, because even a bad shot has a higher probability to result into points than a turnover, thus a turnover is ALWAYS worse than a shot attempt, no matter whether the shot is missed or not.

Also, an offensive rebound is just possible, if someone missed a shot, thus, giving full credit for the offensive rebound to the rebounder is not in agreement with the specific circumstances of the game. The shooter has to get credit for not turning the ball over, no matter whether that results into a miss and a defensive rebound or a miss and an offensive rebound. Otherwise we get the insane result that scoring points of a putback is actually scoring points without using a possession on the individual player level. Which is obviously rather impossible. Berri didn't get that point in over 15 years now, unfortunately Jerry doesn't get it either, because his "new" metric ended up with a slight increase in predictive power over a non-boxscore informed version.

[Spurtatcus]

Chris Webber was the "man" on those Kings teams. Their offense wasn't too shabby. Magic was the "man"...and they were called Showtime for a reason. Obviously who's around them makes a huge difference.

Not sure I agree with Magic being "the man" on those Laker teams, especially when he played with KAJ who is considered the GOAT by many and definitely has a case for it. I hate Kobe but he routinely gets penalized for playing with Shaq but Magic doesn't seem to get that

[realball]

The Nuggets and Spurs are great offensive teams because they have great offensive players at every position, not because they don't have "the man". Indiana and Chicago don't have "the man" and they struggle to score.