Why BALL HOGS never win a chamionchip?

[prophet_of_rage]

It shows exactly what I think. Whole offence goes through these players only to one direction. There is no feedback in these situations.

If that's what you think it shows, then you're interpreting the data incorrectly.

Let's have a look at their assist rates:

1. Paul .453
2. Doncic .417
3. Nash .415
4. Westbrook .419
5. Harden .334 (.427 since he started playing PG full-time in 2016-17)

6. Wade .304
7. Lebron .364
8. Kobe .242
9. Curry .314
10. Kidd .385

So who's really the "ballhog"?

Klay has an 11% career assist percentage. What a selfish POS.

And how many rings?

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[prophet_of_rage]

I disagree with the list, but I think its really hard to win when your best player needs the ball on his hands ALL THE TIME(LeBron, Doncic, Trae, WB, Harden)...you must be a transcendental player to win a lot of tittles this way(LeBron). Kobe shooted a lot, but his Lakers team had good ball moviment and he was a treat playing offball.

Doncic is young and in his early career he already showed he can play offball when needed (Madrid and Slovenia), I hope he doesnt got too in love with his numbers, and can adapt his game to contribute more when he doesnt have the ball on his hands, well, If Mavs someday/someway land another ALL star.

If you want to win tittles you need more than one player able to create on the offensive end.

Lebron has 4 rings

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[Bad Gatorade]

I leave here % of FG Ast'd per PO career for TOP perimeter players. You can draw your own conclusions.

1. Paul .135
2. Doncic .135
3. Nash .204
4. Westbrook .213
5. Harden .229

6. Wade .291
7. Lebron .326
8. Kobe .349
9. Curry .409
10. Kidd .447

A few points of commentary -

1. Doncic has been in the league for 4 seasons, and so he shouldn't be here.

2. This post is a commentary on how "ball dominant" guys haven't been winning titles in the postseason, but it's also a commentary on how an offensive trait is apparently indicative of overall quality. I'm pretty sure that if we look at relative ORTGs, for example, Nash would be right at the top of the list.

3. Ignoring Doncic (because once again, he's only been in the league for 4 seasons, otherwise we might as well be including guys like Jayson Tatum too), Paul/Nash/Westbrook/Harden also spent their careers playing in the west vs very hard opponents. Wade/LeBron/Kidd played in the east (and Kidd made the finals twice in a row playing ZERO teams winning 51+ games) and Curry has had a lot of "easier" opponents on account of peaking as the west dominance was diminishing, as well as lots of high seeds (which is, to an extent, to his credit). Kobe's had a murderers row of opponents too, to be fair. This doesn't mean that the eastern guys had zero tough opponents, but winning basically any series for the western guys is quite an accomplishment. Don't forget, we had seasons in the west where 55 win teams would play each other in the first round!

4. So I don't really get why Kidd is here either, because he won a title when he was clearly not a top perimeter star anymore. Still a good player, but he averaged 8PPG during the regular season.

5. Mitigating circumstances exist - see Chris Paul's entire career (this affects Harden too), OKC had basically two healthy postseasons and were fantastic in both, and Nash had the suspension fiasco of 2007.

6. Teammates also make a difference - for example, Kobe played alongside Shaq, and the Lakers went 25-7 without Kobe in the first three peat. Curry's team comfortably won first round series without him in both 2016 and 2018 (the former before the Warriors had Durant on their squad). Or, even better, perhaps we should observe the difference in seasons like 2021 and 2022 for Curry, where he still had Draymond and Wiggins in 2021, but the role players around him changed drastically?

7. Seasons before the play-by-play era exist, and we've got examples of guys like Magic, Isiah, Cousy as offensive spearheads. Jerry West won a ring AND broke the single season win record back in 1972 in a season where he led the league in assists as a high volume scorer too.

8. The data is "smoothed" and ignores that, say, Kobe was only assisted on around 25% of his shots in 2009 (closer to list A than list B), and yet was still able to achieve a championship. Ditto for Wade in 2006 (25%), and Wade's percentage was lower in the two "tougher" series he played vs Detroit and Dallas (22.7%).

9. Sometimes, team strategy and lineups make a difference too. For example, from 2011-2014 in the playoffs, Wade was assisted on 39% of his 2 point attempts with LeBron on and 17% of his 2 point attempts with LeBron off. With a better on-ball creator, Wade played more off-ball.

I don't actually disagree with the idea that a bit of extra ball movement wouldn't hurt some guys, but I don't think that the extremist approach is necessarily the downfall of these teams. In the case of, say, the Clippers and the Suns, the team may have benefitted from having a more defensive lineup, since we've seen Nash and CP3 have very good offensive results in the absence of other offensive stars (see: Nash in 2011/12, CP3 when Blake got injured). Harden did very well with what he had, IMO. Westbrook did great alongside Durant in the years where OKC didn't face any injuries, but they were very young in 2012 when they lost in the finals, Westbrook injured in 2013, they lost in 6 to the champs in 2014 (Ibaka injured), Durant was injured in 2015, and they lost in 7 to the 73-win Warriors in 2016. That's a really impressive track record and shouldn't go against him.

We've seen that when a high-volume PG has a good defence (Isiah), or other solid two way players (Magic) around them, they can still yield excellent results, and whilst Magic is arguably better than everybody in the first list above (and I would argue that, as would most people), I don't think Isiah is, and he had tremendous team results. So, perhaps it's not the approach that these players are taking, but also the approach to team building? The Rockets in 2018 are quite arguably the best team to never win a title, and were the greatest challenge to the best core of all time, and their approach wielded two ball dominant guys and a bunch of switchable 3 point shooters (not even elite guys, just "solid" guys), and it worked pretty dang well, IMO.

[Ein Sof]

If that's what you think it shows, then you're interpreting the data incorrectly.

Let's have a look at their assist rates:

1. Paul .453
2. Doncic .417
3. Nash .415
4. Westbrook .419
5. Harden .334 (.427 since he started playing PG full-time in 2016-17)

6. Wade .304
7. Lebron .364
8. Kobe .242
9. Curry .314
10. Kidd .385

So who's really the "ballhog"?

Klay has an 11% career assist percentage. What a selfish POS.

And how many rings?

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4

[Hoop Heavy]

Regardless of the lack of perfect statistics provided ...


Regardless that the statistics don't accurately identify Nash as a "non ball hog" (factor in how few shots he took next to other guys on this list ... and you'll probably see why) ...


I think we all know this.

Ball movement produces movement from the defense which creates more opportunity for the offense and better looks ... period. Yes, if your primary scorer is a "ball hog" and scores mostly through his own effort .... most likely your team offense will be more static ... and hence most likely less efficient ... and you probably don't win the chip.

[JRoy]

I leave here % of FG Ast'd per PO career for TOP perimeter players. You can draw your own conclusions.

1. Paul .135
2. Doncic .135
3. Nash .204
4. Westbrook .213
5. Harden .229

6. Wade .291
7. Lebron .326
8. Kobe .349
9. Curry .409
10. Kidd .447

What is this saying again? Kobe is the biggest ball hog on the list and he won multiple champion shops.

None of the others got to ride Shaq’s coattails

[LukaTheGOAT]

When Nash was on the Mavericks, they had a four-year run of offense that was the best in NBA history, averaging +7 points better than league average in offensive rating. The second best stretch ever was Nash’s Suns, from 05-08.

The best four-year stretch of playoff offense is by those 05-08 Suns, who were +10.7 in 51 PS games (Dallas was top 10 again here as well).
All this info is out there on Backpicks too.

But I guess what Nash did, didn't work.

[Ein Sof]

As others have noted, FGs assisted % is not a good way to measure being a ballhog. The best simple statistical method (ie can be easily calculated just by looking at BBRef) I think is USG + AST%.

Your post is almost the opposite of what's true lol

USG% & AST% have nothing to do with ballhogging

OTOH, a low FG assisted% means you're taking your sweet time putting up shots

A low FG assisted% doesn't capture the volume of shots you're putting up, or the possessions you're consuming trying to create a shot for a teammate. It's a measurement of how independent your scoring is, not how often you're using the ball. Which of those two better characterize being a "ballhog"?

"ballhogging" has nothing to do with volume, unless you think MJ was a ballhog, or that Curry was a ballhog in 2016 and 2021

And assisted FGs are obviously much better for ball movement and offensive fluidity than Harden isos, regardless of whether they are "independent" or not.

[Swish1906]

Just look at the initial list.

Kobe couldnt do crap post Shaq/pre Pau.
Curry drafted by Portland and he turns basically into Lillard (and Lillards legacy). Put any of the "ballhogs" into the Warriors team instead of Curry and they win at least one time. Same with the stacked Lakers team etc.

At the end you need a great team around you too.

[rand]

Your post is almost the opposite of what's true lol

USG% & AST% have nothing to do with ballhogging

OTOH, a low FG assisted% means you're taking your sweet time putting up shots

A low FG assisted% doesn't capture the volume of shots you're putting up, or the possessions you're consuming trying to create a shot for a teammate. It's a measurement of how independent your scoring is, not how often you're using the ball. Which of those two better characterize being a "ballhog"?

"ballhogging" has nothing to do with volume, unless you think MJ was a ballhog, or that Curry was a ballhog in 2016 and 2021

And assisted FGs are obviously much better for ball movement and offensive fluidity than Harden isos, regardless of whether they are "independent" or not.

Ballhogging has nothing to do with how many shots you're taking, just whether or not the shots you're taking come off assisting passes? No.

A far better measurement for being a ballhog is the proportion of the team's offensive possessions that a player is consuming through taking a scoring opportunity (whether it came off a pass or not) or trying to manufacture a scoring opportunity for another player.

[Ein Sof]

A low FG assisted% doesn't capture the volume of shots you're putting up, or the possessions you're consuming trying to create a shot for a teammate. It's a measurement of how independent your scoring is, not how often you're using the ball. Which of those two better characterize being a "ballhog"?

"ballhogging" has nothing to do with volume, unless you think MJ was a ballhog, or that Curry was a ballhog in 2016 and 2021

And assisted FGs are obviously much better for ball movement and offensive fluidity than Harden isos, regardless of whether they are "independent" or not.

Ballhogging has nothing to do with how many shots you're taking, just whether or not the shots you're taking come off assisting passes? No.

A far better measurement for being a ballhog is the proportion of the team's offensive possessions that a player is consuming through taking a scoring opportunity (whether it came off a pass or not) or trying to manufacture a scoring opportunity for another player.

Again, do you think MJ or Curry (back when he was nearly leading the league in FGs) were ballhogs?

If no, then there's clearly something more to it.

[picc]

Kobe won 5 of them as a ball hog. He was an elite passer when he wanted to be or an elite ISO scorer when he wanted to be, but rarely ever balanced both

Its interesting that despite balancing his game being exactly what he did en route to those five titles, you’re still racking up and-1’s.

Imagine thinking a player with multiple titles/mvp/universally recognized as top 15 had that little grasp of how to play a complete game. The logic defeats itself.

[rand]

"ballhogging" has nothing to do with volume, unless you think MJ was a ballhog, or that Curry was a ballhog in 2016 and 2021

And assisted FGs are obviously much better for ball movement and offensive fluidity than Harden isos, regardless of whether they are "independent" or not.

Ballhogging has nothing to do with how many shots you're taking, just whether or not the shots you're taking come off assisting passes? No.

A far better measurement for being a ballhog is the proportion of the team's offensive possessions that a player is consuming through taking a scoring opportunity (whether it came off a pass or not) or trying to manufacture a scoring opportunity for another player.

Again, do you think MJ or Curry (back when he was nearly leading the league in FGs) were ballhogs?

If no, then there's clearly something more to it.

Imagine a pickup game where you have these two teammates:

Spencer, who takes 1/5 of your team's shots but when he does shoot it's usually off his own creation.

Michael, who takes 2/5 of your team's shots. Michael's scores come off passes twice as often as Spencer's but passing to him isn't optional since he's the best player and dictates when and where he wants the ball.

This is Spencer Dinwiddie and Michael Jordan.

2022 Dinwiddie was only assisted on 32.6% of his FGAs, but he only shot 18.5 FGAs per 100 possessions.

1998 Jordan was assisted on 59.6% of his FGAs, but he took 32.1 FGAs per 100 possessions.

Are you telling me that 2022 Dinwiddie was really the bigger ballhog over 1998 Jordan?

[cupcakesnake]

When Nash was on the Mavericks, they had a four-year run of offense that was the best in NBA history, averaging +7 points better than league average in offensive rating. The second best stretch ever was Nash’s Suns, from 05-08.

The best four-year stretch of playoff offense is by those 05-08 Suns, who were +10.7 in 51 PS games (Dallas was top 10 again here as well).
All this info is out there on Backpicks too.

But I guess what Nash did, didn't work.

There's a lot of silly examples in this topic but the idea that Nash-led teams had some kind of offensive problem is hilarious. It would be one thing if those offenses failed in the playoffs, but they didn't.

[Forbes]

I leave here % of FG Ast'd per PO career for TOP perimeter players. You can draw your own conclusions.

1. Paul .135
2. Doncic .135
3. Nash .204
4. Westbrook .213
5. Harden .229

6. Wade .291
7. Lebron .326
8. Kobe .349
9. Curry .409
10. Kidd .447

I have been saying since the beginning of their stardom that Paul, Westbrook, and Harden will never win a chip because of how they play. Last season I doubled down on bets I had of Paul not winning a chip during the playoffs.

Their teams become way too dependent on them. Ofcourse if they ring chase it’s a different story because they aren’t the main guy anymore.

So as a Mavs fan, seeing Luka dominate the ball definitely kills me because I have been screaming about these other guy not playing championship ball for years. I’m just hoping in Lukas case he gets another star and becomes less dominant. Clearly we’ll only find out if the Mavs actually do get another star.

Steve Nash became dominant on the Suns because of D’Antoni’s offense and it’s unfortunate. It benefitted his personal accolades but Ofcourse never led to a chip. He wasn’t like that on the Mavericks.

I also wouldnt call it ball hog. The offense typically runs through these guys and they tend to have the ball in their hand majority of the possession before they make a decision.

[Ein Sof]

Ballhogging has nothing to do with how many shots you're taking, just whether or not the shots you're taking come off assisting passes? No.

A far better measurement for being a ballhog is the proportion of the team's offensive possessions that a player is consuming through taking a scoring opportunity (whether it came off a pass or not) or trying to manufacture a scoring opportunity for another player.

Again, do you think MJ or Curry (back when he was nearly leading the league in FGs) were ballhogs?

If no, then there's clearly something more to it.

Imagine a pickup game where you have these two teammates:

Spencer, who takes 1/5 of your team's shots but when he does shoot it's usually off his own creation.

Michael, who takes 2/5 of your team's shots. Michael's scores come off passes twice as often as Spencer's but passing to him isn't optional since he's the best player and dictates when and where he wants the ball.

This is Spencer Dinwiddie and Michael Jordan.

2022 Dinwiddie was only assisted on 32.6% of his FGAs, but he only shot 18.5 FGAs per 100 possessions.

1998 Jordan was assisted on 59.6% of his FGAs, but he took 32.1 FGAs per 100 possessions.

Are you telling me that 2022 Dinwiddie was really the bigger ballhog over 1998 Jordan?

lol

Yeah man. That's exactly how it works.

MJ was such a cancerous ballhog, unlike Dimwiddie. And so was 2016 Curry:

28.6 FGA/100
46.9% assisted rate

In fact, every first option in NBA history was a ballhog.

Who says words have to mean things?

[Ein Sof]

For his career, Klay takes 24 shots per 100 possessions.

So I guess he, too, is a me-first ball dominator. He should try playing like Dinwiddie instead.

[Wammy Giveaway]

I leave here % of FG Ast'd per PO career for TOP perimeter players. You can draw your own conclusions.

1. Paul .135
2. Doncic .135
3. Nash .204
4. Westbrook .213
5. Harden .229

6. Wade .291
7. Lebron .326
8. Kobe .349
9. Curry .409
10. Kidd .447

After reading the replies on this thread, I think there are a few other stat ideas which could help your argument. Percentage of field goals assisted only tells part of the story. Here's some others:

1. Player Shot Ratio: Number of total shot attempts a player took divided by total number of attempted shots the team took. If the player took at least one third or greater than the rest of the team, and there is a discernible gap between team leader and second best (say 20% distance), you have a ball hog of the shooter variety.

2. Assist Seeker: This is when a player is hunting for assist stats. Number of total assists a player attempted (successful assists plus passes that resulted in misses plus theoretical assists) divided by total number of assists the team attempted. A theoretical assist is a pass to a player that was prevented by a turnover (usually a steal, offensive foul, or violation - shot clock, traveling, offensive three seconds A.K.A. paint). This stat would require use of Preventions, a metric I created many years ago that makes tangibles out of stats that don't show up on the box score, a metric which requires devotion as you'd have to watch the games from start to finish. Just like with Player Shot Ratio, if the player has one third or greater of attempted assists against the rest of the team and the gap between team leader and second best is wide, you have an assist seeker.

These are just two examples of how you could classify a player as ball hog, but the description of a ball hog is very subjective. Sometimes a player protects the ball for fear that his teammates will cough it up either by design or because one of the teammates isn't that decent of a ball handler. Sometimes a player needs the ball in his hands to maintain control of his shooting percentage: perhaps getting assisted hurts his shooting prowess, or his shooting powers increase tenfold under his exclusive watch.

I was also originally going to go through the players you listed and provide context of their playoff visits, but it would take too long and detract from the scope of the replies on this thread. While I have my own reservations of the term, I do feel that there are ways to prove their existence statistically. But I will bring this up, and maybe that can be discussed elsewhere:

History has shown that the primary pieces of building a championship start with superstar small forwards and centers.

[GreatWhiteStiff]

Steve Nash the ball hog. Now I’ve seriously heard EVERYTHING. Good lord.

He's not on Chris Paul's level, but he tries.

[AmIWrongDude]

Not sure how you can give a player flack for “dominating the ball” when that’s usually the best option.

If you’re on a stacked team it’s different but someone like Luka should have the ball as much as possible. Cavs took 2 games from the Warriors in the 2015 Finals by having LeBron ball hog the whole time. It was the only viable strategy with that roster and I think they woulda had a shot at taking the series if they didn’t gas out. Delly literally had to go to the hospital lol.