SMTBSI wrote:Texas Chuck wrote:ropjhk wrote:I wonder how the Lakers performed over the same stretch.
Well sounds like .500 or worse considering Boston was the 2nd most effective team and they were a shade over .500.
Not necessarily. The tweet says Dallas and Boston had the 1st and 2nd most
wins, not the 1st and 2nd best
winning percentage.
If 96-91, or .513, was good enough for the 2nd best percentage, it would imply almost everyone was at or below .500 in close games. Obviously that's not possible. Dallas alone didn't soak up enough close wins to render the entire league at or below .500 for 6 straight seasons.
Lakers, or any other team, could have been something like 60-40 and not contradict that tweet.
So, the more I think about this, there's some interesting implications here. First of all, this tweet heavily implies that Dallas was near the top not only in close games win percentage, but also in total number of close games played in that timeframe. Per this tweet, Boston played 187, and Dallas 164. The absolute most any team that went over .500 in close games could have played without contradicting the tweet, is 189, going 95-94.
Second of all, it's worth noting that Dallas, by going 110-54, won close games at a .671 clip, in a timeframe where they went 340-152, or .691, overall. So, they actually won close games
less frequently than overall, though not significantly so.
Boston, by going 96-91, won close games at a .513 clip, in a timeframe where they went 291-202, or .591, overall. So, also performing worse in close games than otherwise, and a bit more significantly so.
But, there's no in-principle reason to believe that any random team's close-game win percentage would be much different than their overall win percentage. It wouldn't be surprising to hear that a .300 team won close games at about a .300 clip, or that a .700 team won close games at about a .700 clip. If you're .300, you're .300 for a reason, and same when you're .700.
Now, some teams will be a bit more or less clutch, but it's probably going to be a nice normal distribution, with (I'm guessing) not many teams off by more than .100 or so. And, the clutch/unclutch teams don't necessary have to map to the good/bad teams - there will certainly be bad teams that have a couple clutch shot-makers surrounded by a bad supporting cast, who are therefore able to eek out close games at a better rate than their overall record, and there will be good teams, like we see here with Boston, that win close games at a worse rate than their overall record, for whatever reason. And then there will be teams like Dallas, who's close-game win percentage is almost exactly the same as their overall win percentage.
So, if you took a look at other teams with solidly winning records over that timeframe, at least some of them likely also have solidly winning records in close games. But, all of those teams must have played no more than 189 close (as defined here) games, and won no more than 95 of them. So, for example, if there's another team out there that played .650 ball, and also exactly met expectations and played .650 ball in close games, they can, in order to not contradict this tweet, have played no more than 146 close games in that timeframe, going 95-51.
So the picture that's kind of being painted here, to me, is one of a team that played basically .700 ball over a 6 year time frame, but found themselves in tight games more often than almost any other team in the league. I'm not sure exactly what to make of that.
When I first started writing this post, my working hypothesis was "Team was probably not quite as good as its record indicated, but was clutch as heck." But that's not really supported, since Dallas' record in close games was basically exactly the same as their overall record - they weren't picking up extra wins every season just by being clutch in close games. This must be a playstyle thing. Something about their brand of basketball was causing a lot of games to come down to the wire. Were they a notably low-scoring, low-pace team during that timeframe?
