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With all the recent discourse about creation quality, I'm curious what people think about how this applies to scoring. If it holds that passes which take out more defenders are more valuable, then shouldn't buckets that are made with more defenders impeding you also have greater value?

Kobe is considered by many the best tough-shot maker ever and had an infamously tough shot diet in the triangle post illegal d(his effeciency is much higher sorting by playtype than overall) so I'm curious if you guys think there is a valude advantage to a Kobe made basket and how big of an advantage that is/

I think I may also try and do some tracking for this when the 2000 poys come around so maybe we can figure out what we should be counting and how we should define it.

Depends on the roster around him. When he had Shaq on the roster and it wasn't a late-clock thing, then probably lower.

If we're talking about what he was doing post-Shaq and pre-Pau, then he was generally bootstrapping the offense. So I imagine it's context-dependent.

Kobe often made his life far more difficult than he needed to, though, so I imagine that a lot of the time, the answer will be "this was unnecessary and could have been easier."

At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

Do you have some variables of assessment in mind? Like, the stuff that separates a shot against multiple defenders which was necessary versus unnecessary, or some kind of shot quality assessment? Clock remaining, teammates on the floor, etc?

tsherkin wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

Do you have some variables of assessment in mind? Like, the stuff that separates a shot against multiple defenders which was necessary versus unnecessary, or some kind of shot quality assessment? Clock remaining, teammates on the floor, etc?

I was thinking of using a similar approach to dto and just counting defenders they either get past or score facing.

Teammate on the floor and clock remaining are defintiely things to consider. I could count "late-shot clock" vs "early shot-clock shots.

OhayoKD wrote:I was thinking of using a similar approach to dto and just counting defenders they either get past or score facing.

Teammate on the floor and clock remaining are defintiely things to consider. I could count "late-shot clock" vs "early shot-clock shots.

Right on, that seems like a good start. And yeah, I'd lean on the clock a reasonable amount. Obviously, transition/secondary break type stuff is one thing, but early-clock shots against a set defense vs multiple defenders, much less ideal.

And I guess, how many open teammates there were while the shot was being taken.

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

They're only more valuable if you're shooting above league average. Today Kobe would take mostly the same shots at or below league average, so in some ways they'd actually hurt the offence.

One_and_Done wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

They're only more valuable if you're shooting above league average. Today Kobe would take mostly the same shots at or below league average, so in some ways they'd actually hurt the offence.

Uh, no. lol

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

OK that definitely makes more sense.

Doesn't it matter that Kobe would attempt shots that no replacement would even try? What do the odds of a theoretical replacement player pulling up from 30 ft have to do with the value of Steph taking that shot for example?

OhayoKD wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

They're only more valuable if you're shooting above league average. Today Kobe would take mostly the same shots at or below league average, so in some ways they'd actually hurt the offence.

Uh, no. lol

Indeed.

Offensive value depends on offensive context. The difference between a bleh-efficiency scorer on a crap team to a bleh-efficiency scorer on a good team comes in the difference between floor-raising and ceiling-raising. This is part of why Jordan had the 02 Wizards at .500 while he played and why AI was able to do anything with the defensively-minded Sixers despite being unremarkable in terms of efficiency himself (at/below league average).

Sometimes, you need someone who can generate shots. The worse your team offensive talent and structure is, the more value you get from even low-efficiency shots, which is I think Ohayo's notion in looking at this.

So someone like Kobe on the 05 Lakers was probably quite valuable. They were the 7th-ranked O with him as a 28/6/6 guy on +3.4% rTS, but he surely took a whole bunch of very difficult shots because he wasn't surrounded by high-end offensive talent. Odom, Butler, Atkins and Mihm were the only non-Kobe guys scoring over 7.6 ppg. Butler was below league average efficiency (despite a draw rate north of .300), Atkins was at +2.9% and Odom at +1%. They had no bench. They had no frontcourt. They had no one else better than +1 OBPM (for what value that brings). They were 3rd in the league in 3PA and 23rd in FG%, 15th in 3P%. 10th in ORB%, 15th in offensive TOV%. Kobe was doing WORK in that offense, though not as much as he would a year later. Oh yeah, and they were the worst D in the league, worst at generating turnovers and 20th in DRB%.


So the idea of value ONLY extending from league-average (or better) shots isn't quite there. Because if your other guys would shoot it worse than you, then you're improving over whatever else would have happened had you not shot.

parsnips33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

OK that definitely makes more sense.

Doesn't it matter that Kobe would attempt shots that no replacement would even try? What do the odds of a theoretical replacement player pulling up from 30 ft have to do with the value of Steph taking that shot for example?

good point. looking at shot-clock and open defenders is pretty important i guess. also the openess of the lanes. This might be tricker than creatoin-tracking actually

OhayoKD wrote:good point. looking at shot-clock and open defenders is pretty important i guess. also the openess of the lanes. This might be tricker than creatoin-tracking actually

This is what I was getting at earlier, heh.

Shot creation is a real thing, but how useful is it when the shot you're creating is the most difficult and goes in less frequently than an average shot. Most players can create difficult shots.

Now would Kobe misses be more damaging than other team misses when the Lakers were good and had the option of the more efficient Shaq (or possibly Pau/Odom/Bynum) so that they had good scoring options if Kobe wasn't taking high degree of difficulty heat check shots?

If you are Iverson playing with a bunch of defensive specialists, I can see it being a stronger effect . . . though the reason he was playing with a bunch of defensive specialists is because Philly (rightly or wrongly) apparently decided that they didn't play as well with offensive players around him.

penbeast0 wrote:Now would Kobe misses be more damaging than other team misses when the Lakers were good and had the option of the more efficient Shaq (or possibly Pau/Odom/Bynum) so that they had good scoring options if Kobe wasn't taking high degree of difficulty heat check shots?

Or was he getting Iverson assists off of quality offensive rebounding?

Again, just looking at the flip side of the equation. If you have a team that can't create for itself efficiently, then a Kobe shot might be more of a positive option than it would be for an average team. But, if you have a team that can generate more high quality shots than an average team, then a less efficient Kobe shot would be even more of a bad thing, correct?

penbeast0 wrote:Again, just looking at the flip side of the equation. If you have a team that can't create for itself efficiently, then a Kobe shot might be more of a positive option than it would be for an average team. But, if you have a team that can generate more high quality shots than an average team, then a less efficient Kobe shot would be even more of a bad thing, correct?

Yeah, if you have a team which has the capacity to generate good shots, and the opportunity to do so instead of that specific shot, then it's different. One presumes that opportunity cost would be part of what we were discussing earlier about specific teammates, open teammates, clock remaining and so forth.

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

Only if you reach the conclusion that bad shot is the best shot available that possession. Something we know from watching the Kobe Lakers was not all the often the case.

Its a valuable skill to be able to make tough shots at end of game/end of shot clock situations, but Kobe took a lot of tough shots he didn't have to take.

So I would guess the average Kobe basket is probably neutral value, and in the Shaq/Pau years likely worse than that.

Texas Chuck wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

parsnips33 wrote:At risk of looking stupid, aren't all made baskets worth either 2 or 3 points exactly? I'm sure I'm missing something

They are worth 2 or 3, but that's if they go in. Theoretically baskets which are harder to make are more valuable because your teammates or a replacement is less likely to make them

Only if you reach the conclusion that bad shot is the best shot available that possession. Something we know from watching the Kobe Lakers was not all the often the case.

Its a valuable skill to be able to make tough shots at end of game/end of shot clock situations, but Kobe took a lot of tough shots he didn't have to take.

So I would guess the average Kobe basket is probably neutral value, and in the Shaq/Pau years likely worse than that.

Worth seeing what turns up, though. And even if it is the expected conclusion, maybe the methodology turns out to be useful.