How much more valuable than a typical made basket is a prime kobe made basket?

[rrravenred]

I've got a preference for players who are able to create high percentage looks for themselves more than I do players who are able to create difficult shots and make them at higher-than-average-but-still-poor percentages. High percentage is absolutely going to vary based on the individual player's capabilities (e.g. Lebron's athleticism or Jokic's size or Steph's offball weaving and range, give them opportunity for easier shots than their peers have access to).

Question for me is always going to be whether or not a player's ability to hit a tough shot is going to result in better team offence. So, if Kobe can hit a triple-teamed offbalance fadeaway, is that threat genuine enough to cause that shot to be over-guarded, opening opportunities for the rest of the team, which both Kobe and the team are able to exploit (passing out of the triple-team, a back-cut from someone being loosely guarded, enough attention for a single-covered deep post shot. etc).

[OhayoKD]

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?

Yeah, that checks out to me. At some point i need to track the negative flipsides but that would about double the time/effort

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.

Yeah personnel matters too

[OhayoKD]

I've got a preference for players who are able to create high percentage looks for themselves more than I do players who are able to create difficult shots and make them at higher-than-average-but-still-poor percentages.

In theory that distinction would be rendered moot because we wouldn't only be looking at whose facing the shot, but all the defenders the player had to bypass, regardless of method, to score

[rrravenred]

I've got a preference for players who are able to create high percentage looks for themselves more than I do players who are able to create difficult shots and make them at higher-than-average-but-still-poor percentages.

In theory that distinction would be rendered moot because we wouldn't only be looking at whose facing the shot, but all the defenders the player had to bypass, regardless of method, to score

Ideally, you bypass all the defenders, because it's uncontested on a fastbreak, but I digress.

[ceoofkobefans]

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

he's talking about from expected value and actual efficiency on said shots. like hoe much more efficient would kobe be on his average shot or on contested shots compared to an average player

[ceoofkobefans]

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?

yea but in that type of offensive context there will be less chances for those types of shots and theres a higher chance that kobe passes out of those contested shots over doubles because the guys being left open are better players

[Ancalagon]

Weren’t the Pau-Bynum-Odom Lakers fairly dominant from an offensive rebounding standpoint, too? It seemed like some of Phil’s strategy was to let Kobe cook and then crash the boards, so some of those low-efficiency shots which drew a double team resulted in a high-percentage outback from a big.

[SNPA]

Weren’t the Pau-Bynum-Odom Lakers fairly dominant from an offensive rebounding standpoint, too? It seemed like some of Phil’s strategy was to let Kobe cook and then crash the boards, so some of those low-efficiency shots which drew a double team resulted in a high-percentage outback from a big.

This is the only real advantage, outside of last second shots the defense knows is coming.

[SilentA]

I've got a preference for players who are able to create high percentage looks for themselves more than I do players who are able to create difficult shots and make them at higher-than-average-but-still-poor percentages. High percentage is absolutely going to vary based on the individual player's capabilities (e.g. Lebron's athleticism or Jokic's size or Steph's offball weaving and range, give them opportunity for easier shots than their peers have access to).

Question for me is always going to be whether or not a player's ability to hit a tough shot is going to result in better team offence. So, if Kobe can hit a triple-teamed offbalance fadeaway, is that threat genuine enough to cause that shot to be over-guarded, opening opportunities for the rest of the team, which both Kobe and the team are able to exploit (passing out of the triple-team, a back-cut from someone being loosely guarded, enough attention for a single-covered deep post shot. etc).

The term I've seen Thinking Basketball use and like is "resilience".

I.e. if we accept that every team will inevitably end up in situations where they are forced into taking bad shots through X's and O's/good defensive gameplanning (which will happen in high level competition), how much does that kill the offense?

Some teams will fall apart and need to call a timeout, some lose and can't make shots, but in those situations you go to Kobe and it's like "well **** we did everything right and he made it anyway".

So to me the value of Kobe tough shot is less "does his triple guarded fadeaway draw defense/create offense", and more "if we accept as a premise that good teams can get forced into tough shots roughly XX% of the time, how much does Kobe taking them keep the Lakers in the game?"

Oversimplification:

- Team A and Team B have equally good defenses and scorers when they get a good look (I guess like 60% from 2, 40% from 3).
- They get good looks half the time. The other half of the time, they are forced into tough shots due to good defensive planning or personnel limitations.
- In this situation, Team A has Kobe taking those shots and he still scores close to league average %, but Team B's offense collapses.
- Team A wins.

Of course that has to be weighed vs missed opportunities (taking a tough shot when a good look was available), his own decisionmaking (e.g. stepping on the 3 point line), and physical aspects (e g. lacking KD's height or MJ's speed/vertical to create space)... So it's complicated. But in general I think that's the idea of "resilience". A lot of people look purely at efficiency or shot creation and do not accept the premise that teams will "necessarily" be forced into tough shots (they will simply penalize players for taking it), but I don't think that's rooted in reality or a practical way to look at the game.

[lessthanjake]

You can isolate out the value of difficult-shotmaking by looking at how many points a player scored above the expected amount based on the shot quality (ideally using as sophisticated a shot-quality metric as possible). However, that would generate a number that isn’t all that useful IMO, because it doesn’t tell you if the player took difficult shots because they had to, or if they took difficult shots because they make bad decisions and/or are unable to create easier shots for themselves. If a player gets the ball with 1 second left on the shot clock and hoists the ball up with defenders in his face and makes it, then that’s really high-value shotmaking, because the expected chance of making that shot is really low. But if that player simply chooses to take a really difficult shot for no particular reason (i.e. not some end-of-shot-clock situation or something), then I wouldn’t really say it’s high-value shotmaking if the shot goes in, because the team’s expected points in that possession just before the shot was taken wasn’t actually low, even if the expected points from the shot the player took was low. The difference between the team’s expected points in that possession just before the shot was taken and the expected points from the shot itself basically reflects the player’s bad decision-making.

So the best way to measure this is probably to have some sort of model that tells you a team’s expected points in a possession at any given moment, and then take what that value is right before a player’s shots were taken (or perhaps right when the player received the ball, if we wanted to account for shot-creation ability too), and compare to the number of points the player actually scored on those shots. That’d theoretically get you the value of the player’s difficult shot-making, adjusted for the quality of their decision-making and shot-creation ability. There’s similar measures like this in soccer (using goals scored minus expected assists received, for instance). The problem here is that we probably don’t have a particularly accurate way of figuring out the expected points a team will score at any given time in a possession. There’s just so many variables there, such that I don’t think we can really measure it in any rigorous way. Of course, another issue is that measuring value based on the expected points scored when a player received the ball ignores that some players are better off the ball and therefore produce higher-value chances before they receive the ball and that value would not get counted at all in this measure. I’d be troubled by that if such a measure were used as an overarching measure of the value of scoring contribution, but if we are just trying to isolate out the value of difficult-shot-making in particular then maybe that doesn’t matter, since off-ball movement is a different skill.

[penbeast0]

(a) The offensive rebounding idea is only valid if the percentage of extra offensive rebounds you wouldn't get anyway with a different shot is significant. If your team would get the equivalent offensive rebounds on a Derek Fisher bail out shot (or more because Kobe is a more capable offensive rebounder than Fisher), then there is no real advantage there. We are talking about a Kobe shot v. a teammate's shot.
(b) Bail out shots are a legit bonus; how often are his shots bail outs and how often are they heat check shots because Kobe is feeling it. I know we used to yell "Kobe" at the TV when Kobe would start feeling like he could make anything and he would take those bad shots he's known for. If he's losing the team more points with heat check shots than he's gaining them with bail out shots, then the whole premise is bad and he's hurting the team with the degree of difficulty shots.

Maybe there's some additional value to the franchise for the entertainment value of the shot attracting fans but I will assume we are only talking about on court value at the moment.

[rrravenred]

The term I've seen Thinking Basketball use and like is "resilience".

I.e. if we accept that every team will inevitably end up in situations where they are forced into taking bad shots through X's and O's/good defensive gameplanning (which will happen in high level competition), how much does that kill the offense?

Good concept. We do have to distinguish (I think) between Team bad shots and Player bad shots. 2001 Iverson is perhaps the king of that concept. Offensively, his team lacked post play, athleticism shooting, passing and slashing (outside Iverson). Therefore most of the team's shots following an offensive set were going to be medium-to-bad. Iverson was also short, with a streaky jumper and not a strong inside finisher.

In this team circumstance, the best (or medium-to-bad) shot was a bad shot, and Iverson was (in a general sense) NOT MAKING HIS TEAM MARKEDLY WORSE by gunning like there was no tomorrow from poor positions when there were at best equivalent shots available elsewhere.

The Lakers during Kobe's stints had a decent-to-good offensive spread of players (with the inter-Phil years being the obvious exception). Would the average shot after an offensive set be likely to be medium-to-bad? I'm less sure. The idea that Kobe was a late clock bailout-shot-specialist who made team-bad shots into average player-shots is worth investigating (really wish BBR hadn't gone subscription model with its PbP data).

The question for me would be: how much do you want to plan for having poor offensive sets by having a difficult shotmaker who will sometimes raise the quality of shot from team median by taking a difficult FG, and will sometimes lower the quality of shot from team median by taking a difficult FG.

What's useful for the Rudy T Lakers may not be as useful for the Phil Lakers.

Of course that has to be weighed vs missed opportunities (taking a tough shot when a good look was available), his own decisionmaking (e.g. stepping on the 3 point line), and physical aspects (e g. lacking KD's height or MJ's speed/vertical to create space)... So it's complicated. But in general I think that's the idea of "resilience". A lot of people look purely at efficiency or shot creation and do not accept the premise that teams will "necessarily" be forced into tough shots (they will simply penalize players for taking it), but I don't think that's rooted in reality or a practical way to look at the game.

All solid points. Yeah, we're conflating team shot selection with player shot selection, although there's not a great way (IMO) to disentangle them.

The complicating noise here (IMO) is that Kobe could and did create easy scoring opportunities with his footwork and athleticism and did that with volume. We're talking about where the difficulty of shot is within a pretty big data set of a volume shooter. A dumb shot that went in is still a dumb shot wheras a late-clock heave that goes in is acclaimed as heroism.