Fun with Stats!!!

[wilson115]

I like Lee stealing the concept from the Celtics of having Mark guarding a non-center non-shooter and just having him roam and protect the paint in drop. Helps force favorable cross matches in transition and also helps with rim protection. Extremely rare that bigs just go to the block and get fed post ISOs and they often struggle with swarming defenses. Seemed like that got to Gaffford in the second half.

Really wanted to see Mark next to Grant, think Mark's best served next to a 4 able to stay home on bruisers like Gafford and just let him roam like AD did when the Lakers had Dwight.

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[Braggins]

Mark Williams bbref page is fun. Here are some highlights.

28.5 PER
66.2% true shooting
+6.2 BPM
+26 net rating (136 ORtg!)
.434 FTr

His assist% has also basically quadrupled compared to his first two season.

[fatlever]

Basketball reference is notoriously bad for their net rating stuff. I never quite understood why it's such a mess. I don't know if they just calculate it completely differently than the official nba com stuff. On Nba.com he's got a 105 offensive rating a 114.7 defensive rating and a negative 9.7 net rating. And that lines up with the first couple of weeks he was back his on off plus minus stuff was pretty bad. We were getting trucked when he was on the court there for a minute.

105.0 114.7 -9.7

[Rich4114]

Mark's defense has not been very good but he is making the most out of possessions and can help win the 50/50's that don't really get tracked in the stat sheets. Diabate has continued to be solid on D when given mins too. It was laughable how much more effective he was than Taj last night.

Mark absolutely needs to put on muscle in the off-season though. His length will help him with blocks and stuff but thicker bigs will push him around until he adds strength.

[Braggins]

Basketball reference is notoriously bad for their net rating stuff.

I wasn't aware of this. I use NBA.com for team stats and BBRef for individual stats, so I guess I never noticed. Im thinking I maybe should stop including ORtg/DRtg when I post stats for college prospects since I assume its the same calculation on sportsreference.

[yosemiteben]

As a team, we are currently ranked 14th in DRTG on the season. Extremely encouraged by this.

I care less about the offense being in the dumps, I feel like that is solvable given the offensive talent on the roster when healthy. We know this team can perform offensively, but I actually was not sure this team could ever be a plus defensively with guys like Melo and Miles logging big minutes. Very encouraging.

Some random stats I learned from my trial for cleaning the glass that I just signed up for:

(1) As a team we allow the 7th fewest corner threes this season. Since the 2018-19 season, we've only been ranked higher than 20th in that stat once, which was in 2022-23 when we ranked 13th. We are doing a very good job closing out on corner 3s and discouraging the shot.

(2) As a team we allow the most non-corner threes this season. So while we are closing out on corner 3s, we are very much not running non-corner 3s off the line. With that said, we are allowing the 3rd lowest 3PT% on non-corner 3s (33.2%).

[HornetJail]

Mark's defense has not been very good but he is making the most out of possessions and can help win the 50/50's that don't really get tracked in the stat sheets. Diabate has continued to be solid on D when given mins too. It was laughable how much more effective he was than Taj last night.

Mark absolutely needs to put on muscle in the off-season though. His length will help him with blocks and stuff but thicker bigs will push him around until he adds strength.

Mark's 1v1 defense has been rough but I think his sheer presence back there is a game changer anyway.

100% agree on the fact he's getting pushed around more than he should. how much of the offseason was he just trying to recover from his back injury? I don't think it was ever reported when he was actually back to full strength

[HornetJail]

As a team, we are currently ranked 14th in DRTG on the season. Extremely encouraged by this.

I care less about the offense being in the dumps, I feel like that is solvable given the offensive talent on the roster when healthy. We know this team can perform offensively, but I actually was not sure this team could ever be a plus defensively with guys like Melo and Miles logging big minutes. Very encouraging.

Some random stats I learned from my trial for cleaning the glass that I just signed up for:

(1) As a team we allow the 7th fewest corner threes this season. Since the 2018-19 season, we've only been ranked higher than 20th in that stat once, which was in 2022-23 when we ranked 13th. We are doing a very good job closing out on corner 3s and discouraging the shot.

(2) As a team we allow the most non-corner threes this season. So while we are closing out on corner 3s, we are very much not running non-corner 3s off the line. With that said, we are allowing the 3rd lowest 3PT% on non-corner 3s (33.2%).

Glad to see the numbers match up with what I've been seeing. Both Clifford and Borrego just let themselves get destroyed by the 3-ball by design to [attempt to] seal off the paint which has driven me insane every year since 2016, while Lee actually has our perimeter players contesting shots instead of digging into the paint, and allowing the bigs to do their thing in the paint (with varying results depending on who's in there). It's the one area of the game that I actually like what Lee is doing.

14th is roughly where I'd hope we'd be with defensively inclined bigs, and a bench made up largely of low to mid level 3&D-ish hustle guys eating a lot of minutes. I expect that will continue to climb with Richards gone, Mark getting healthier, Moose getting sustained bench minutes, Salaun out of the rotation, and Miller's minutes being eaten by the hustle quartet of Okogie/Green/Martin/Jeffries. I just don't have any faith in our offense raising above the cellar of the league with that many offensive liabilities, and I'm thoroughly unimpressed with our offensive game plans.

[yosemiteben]

Mark's defense has not been very good but he is making the most out of possessions and can help win the 50/50's that don't really get tracked in the stat sheets. Diabate has continued to be solid on D when given mins too. It was laughable how much more effective he was than Taj last night.

Mark absolutely needs to put on muscle in the off-season though. His length will help him with blocks and stuff but thicker bigs will push him around until he adds strength.

Mark's 1v1 defense has been rough but I think his sheer presence back there is a game changer anyway.

Per my cleaning the glass trial, when Mark is on the floor opponents % of shots at the rim drops by 7.1%, 5th best in the league. Coincidentally, he's behind Nick Richards who is 2nd best in the league at that stat.



Baring out what you're saying, we actually give up 5.4% more in FG% around the rim with Mark on the floor vs. off. In case anyone is curious, Nick Richards has a much bigger positive on that front this season compared to Mark - teams shoot -3.5% around the rim when he's on the floor vs. off.

[HornetJail]

Mark's defense has not been very good but he is making the most out of possessions and can help win the 50/50's that don't really get tracked in the stat sheets. Diabate has continued to be solid on D when given mins too. It was laughable how much more effective he was than Taj last night.

Mark absolutely needs to put on muscle in the off-season though. His length will help him with blocks and stuff but thicker bigs will push him around until he adds strength.

Mark's 1v1 defense has been rough but I think his sheer presence back there is a game changer anyway.

Per my cleaning the glass trial, when Mark is on the floor opponents % of shots at the rim drops by 7.1%, 5th best in the league. Coincidentally, he's behind Nick Richards who is 2nd best in the league at that stat.



Baring out what you're saying, we actually give up 5.4% more in FG% around the rim with Mark on the floor vs. off. In case anyone is curious, Nick Richards has a much bigger positive on that front this season compared to Mark - teams shoot -3.5% around the rim when he's on the floor vs. off.

That appears to be just Richards' 4 games in Phoenix... what's his numbers for Charlotte look like?

[KembaWalker]

I'm skeptical about reading too much into the DRTG until they show it can at least be somewhat maintained with us playing at the pace our personnel would thrive in to have a functional offense. So I agree that I'm not as concerned with our awful ORTG because it seems like we're (and this has been trending better at least eye test wise) playing almost by design dumb offense for our roster. But I'm also a bit skeptical that this will be a good defensive team when they start trying to crank the pace up

[Rich4114]

Mark's defense has not been very good but he is making the most out of possessions and can help win the 50/50's that don't really get tracked in the stat sheets. Diabate has continued to be solid on D when given mins too. It was laughable how much more effective he was than Taj last night.

Mark absolutely needs to put on muscle in the off-season though. His length will help him with blocks and stuff but thicker bigs will push him around until he adds strength.

Mark's 1v1 defense has been rough but I think his sheer presence back there is a game changer anyway.

100% agree on the fact he's getting pushed around more than he should. how much of the offseason was he just trying to recover from his back injury? I don't think it was ever reported when he was actually back to full strength

Yeah I am not worried long term, I think Mark just recently eclipsed his 82nd game in the NBA and like you said, rehabbing a back injury probably limited him in the weight room too. He's still so young which is easy to forget given his size, so he's got room to fill out a bit more and add muscle. If he does add more muscle and strength, he could be even better than he is right now and it will help him not just on defense but offense too.

[HornetJail]

he's actually still at 81, so still a rookie lol

[yosemiteben]

I'm skeptical about reading too much into the DRTG until they show it can at least be somewhat maintained with us playing at the pace our personnel would thrive in to have a functional offense. So I agree that I'm not as concerned with our awful ORTG because it seems like we're (and this has been trending better at least eye test wise) playing almost by design dumb offense for our roster. But I'm also a bit skeptical that this will be a good defensive team when they start trying to crank the pace up

Recently they have both dramatically increased pace and DRTG.

Month - DRTG rank - Pace rank
October - 29 - 16
November - 13 - 28
December - 22 - 22
January - 5 - 9

[yosemiteben]

Mark's 1v1 defense has been rough but I think his sheer presence back there is a game changer anyway.

Per my cleaning the glass trial, when Mark is on the floor opponents % of shots at the rim drops by 7.1%, 5th best in the league. Coincidentally, he's behind Nick Richards who is 2nd best in the league at that stat.



Baring out what you're saying, we actually give up 5.4% more in FG% around the rim with Mark on the floor vs. off. In case anyone is curious, Nick Richards has a much bigger positive on that front this season compared to Mark - teams shoot -3.5% around the rim when he's on the floor vs. off.

That appears to be just Richards' 4 games in Phoenix... what's his numbers for Charlotte look like?

Oh good catch, didn't notice that. Looking closer, looks like they include him as two players so there's a separate stat line for his CHA play.

Frequency:


Accuracy:

[yosemiteben]

Interesting stat - we allow the most non-corner 3s as a percentage of opponents' total field goal attempts at 31.2%, but we rank 2nd in opponents' non-corner 3PT% at just 32.3%. League average is 35.6%.

[yosemiteben]

Was curious how on/off stats might play in to our offensive performance historically. Interesting that in this latest slump, we've been playing without 4 of our top 5 guys in positive on/off impact with regard to points per possession. When Melo sits out, we actually are missing all 5.



Shouldn't be too surprising that in games where Melo is out and Seth doesn't play, meaning we are missing 6 of our top 7 guys in offensive impact this season...we suck offensively.

Was also looking at lineup data, and offensively we had an ORTG of 119.3 in the 161 possessions when our projected starting lineup played together (Melo - Green - Miller - Miles - Mark). That would rank second in the league.

It's actually our second best offensive lineup, and if you swap Mark for Grant Williams then we had an ORTG of 130.6, which is extremely good.

Coincidentally, our best defensive lineup is also our projected starting lineup, which had a DRTG of 113.1, pretty much league average.