85 Shots

[monchief]

That's an overly simplistic model for predicting offensive efficiency. I'm actually far less concerned with the shot distribution than I am the quality of shots created, but Payton has received the overwhelming majority of criticism from the current over-emphasis on shooting percentages. Payton is a liability on offense whenever he doesn't have possession, but he is far and away the most creative player on the team when in possession.

Skiles' offense catered to Vucevic, Fournier, and Smith. Oladipo's force of will was the only reason he was as heavily involved as he was, but he is gone now.

Two important parts of your post that not enough people seem to understand.

The other thing people neglect to acknowledge is that Payton is a 58% shooter within 3 feet. Vuc is a 61% shooter from that range, but 75% of his offense came from ranges where he was shooting 50%, 43% and 48%. That's elite in the minds of many, but Elf's 58% doesn't land on their radars. Most people want to see Vuc get back in the paint where he's taking higher % shots, but not many people talk about generating more opportunities for Elf in the paint, which is odd since he's only 3% worse than our 'best scorer'.

If 2 points is 2 points and it doesn't matter how we get it, give me Elf's 58% chance at hitting that over a 50% attempt or less.

And yes, I'm aware this is a very simple interpretation of how an offense works and you can't get by on shots at the rim alone. But if the offense were designed to prioritise those shots instead of mid-range and long 2's, we might see more of them, and concerns about Elf being a liability might start to quieten down.

Elf isn't going to get shots in the paint if nobody has to guard him from outside of the paint. The entire game of playing against the Magic has and will be, go way under the Payton screen and force the long 2 from Vuc, or a pass to Evan Fournier and make him make a play.

[Cosmic_Backlash]

I think it's because of the usage curve. Since efficiency is expected to drop as usage goes up and the guys you named should all have bigger roles.

For a baseline, I used the efg and shot distributions from last year except for Meeks.

I think expecting efficiency to drop with usage makes sense in theory but not in practice. In practice, your usage should be going up if you exceeding expectations and going down if you are below expectations.

No.

Really it's exactly this. Are you saying everyone that gets more shot attempts because they are shooting better is a fluke? Players get a bigger offensive load for the sole and only reason that they can handle it. If you start seeing sharp diminishing returns with increased usage, you should expect to distribute that usage somewhere else.

Building a model that assumes that increase usage = efficiency decline by default will result what he predicted - the worst offensive team in the NBA.

[Xatticus]

I couldn't disagree any more about Biyombo/Payton together. Who exactly is going to challenge a PnR? Defenses are going to go so far under a screen that they'll get called for a defensive 3 seconds. Those two do not work together at all considering you don't have to guard either them outside of around the rim.

I think the reason it apeared the offense revolved around smith and Vuc was because it was the only available shot when we had no other shooters and no guard capable of driving to the paint. And with Elfrid and Oladipo being poor jump shooters, there was nowhere for them to go because teams were sagging so deep.

Shooting matters. It really does. GSW isn't great just because Curry is a pretty good passer. It's because he and Klay and now KD have to be guarded closely further than 30 ft from the basket.

It doesn't really matter if the defender goes over or under on the screen, it still strains the defense. The only reason to go over is to contest the 3-point shot, which only really matters if the screen is at the 3-point line. This is why bigs have to hedge and recover on screens, because a good ball-handler can use the space to get some momentum going towards the basket if he isn't hedged out wide. If he is, that gives the roll man space enough to dive to the basket for a lob. DeAndre Jordan and many others have made a career out of this. The Payton/Dedmon two-man game has always looked better than the Payton/Vucevic version, despite Vucevic's ability to shoot. Conversely, Jennings was far more effective with Vucevic.

I'm not at all arguing that shooting isn't important, but the evolution of the NBA offense has people forgetting the role of the traditional point guard. Steph Curry is the exception, not the norm. Payton has demonstrated an ability to get to the rim throughout his career despite his shooting, not at all unlike Rajon Rondo (or even LeBron). Having a mobile and athletic big there with him will make him much more effective around the basket.

[Xatticus]

I think expecting efficiency to drop with usage makes sense in theory but not in practice. In practice, your usage should be going up if you exceeding expectations and going down if you are below expectations.

No.

Really it's exactly this. Are you saying everyone that gets more shot attempts because they are shooting better is a fluke? Players get a bigger offensive load for the sole and only reason that they can handle it. If you start seeing sharp diminishing returns with increased usage, you should expect to distribute that usage somewhere else.

Building a model that assumes that increase usage = efficiency decline by default will result what he predicted - the worst offensive team in the NBA.

There are so many assumptions built into this though. We are basically assuming that the shots that are getting cut out are the lower efficiency shots that they are given free reign to take otherwise, but this really isn't the case. This might be true in a pure isolation offense, but Chris Bosh and Kevin Love didn't see a bump in efficiency when their usages declined while playing next to LeBron James. This is because they were previously the focal points in their respective offenses and were each afforded the luxury of taking the shots that they wanted, as opposed to complementary roles for another player.

There is no question that if everything else was equal, an increase in usage would yield a lower efficiency at some point, but that is a massive assumption that never really holds true. The offensive structure and hierarchy play much bigger roles in the quality of shots each player gets.

[monchief]

I couldn't disagree any more about Biyombo/Payton together. Who exactly is going to challenge a PnR? Defenses are going to go so far under a screen that they'll get called for a defensive 3 seconds. Those two do not work together at all considering you don't have to guard either them outside of around the rim.

I think the reason it apeared the offense revolved around smith and Vuc was because it was the only available shot when we had no other shooters and no guard capable of driving to the paint. And with Elfrid and Oladipo being poor jump shooters, there was nowhere for them to go because teams were sagging so deep.

Shooting matters. It really does. GSW isn't great just because Curry is a pretty good passer. It's because he and Klay and now KD have to be guarded closely further than 30 ft from the basket.

It doesn't really matter if the defender goes over or under on the screen, it still strains the defense. The only reason to go over is to contest the 3-point shot, which only really matters if the screen is at the 3-point line. This is why bigs have to hedge and recover on screens, because a good ball-handler can use the space to get some momentum going towards the basket if he isn't hedged out wide. If he is, that gives the roll man space enough to dive to the basket for a lob. DeAndre Jordan and many others have made a career out of this. The Payton/Dedmon two-man game has always looked better than the Payton/Vucevic version, despite Vucevic's ability to shoot. Conversely, Jennings was far more effective with Vucevic.

I'm not at all arguing that shooting isn't important, but the evolution of the NBA offense has people forgetting the role of the traditional point guard. Steph Curry is the exception, not the norm. Payton has demonstrated an ability to get to the rim throughout his career despite his shooting, not at all unlike Rajon Rondo (or even LeBron). Having a mobile and athletic big there with him will make him much more effective around the basket.

I think it should be pretty clear these days that the traditional PG like Rondo is far more of the exception. Rondo has been a disaster since the Boston big three left. Guards like him have been completely marginalized by defenses in this analytics era.

[KingRobb02]

No.

Really it's exactly this. Are you saying everyone that gets more shot attempts because they are shooting better is a fluke? Players get a bigger offensive load for the sole and only reason that they can handle it. If you start seeing sharp diminishing returns with increased usage, you should expect to distribute that usage somewhere else.

Building a model that assumes that increase usage = efficiency decline by default will result what he predicted - the worst offensive team in the NBA.

There are so many assumptions built into this though. We are basically assuming that the shots that are getting cut out are the lower efficiency shots that they are given free reign to take otherwise, but this really isn't the case. This might be true in a pure isolation offense, but Chris Bosh and Kevin Love didn't see a bump in efficiency when their usages declined while playing next to LeBron James. This is because they were previously the focal points in their respective offenses and were each afforded the luxury of taking the shots that they wanted, as opposed to complementary roles for another player.

There is no question that if everything else was equal, an increase in usage would yield a lower efficiency at some point, but that is a massive assumption that never really holds true. The offensive structure and hierarchy play much bigger roles in the quality of shots each player gets.

Bosh efg in Toronto: .495
Bosh efg in Miami: .520

Love efg in Minnesota: .494
Love efg in Cleveland: .504

This is clearly false. Just because Lebron/Wade/Kyrie turned these guys into complimentary jump shooters doesn't equate to them being less efficient.

[Xatticus]

Really it's exactly this. Are you saying everyone that gets more shot attempts because they are shooting better is a fluke? Players get a bigger offensive load for the sole and only reason that they can handle it. If you start seeing sharp diminishing returns with increased usage, you should expect to distribute that usage somewhere else.

Building a model that assumes that increase usage = efficiency decline by default will result what he predicted - the worst offensive team in the NBA.

There are so many assumptions built into this though. We are basically assuming that the shots that are getting cut out are the lower efficiency shots that they are given free reign to take otherwise, but this really isn't the case. This might be true in a pure isolation offense, but Chris Bosh and Kevin Love didn't see a bump in efficiency when their usages declined while playing next to LeBron James. This is because they were previously the focal points in their respective offenses and were each afforded the luxury of taking the shots that they wanted, as opposed to complementary roles for another player.

There is no question that if everything else was equal, an increase in usage would yield a lower efficiency at some point, but that is a massive assumption that never really holds true. The offensive structure and hierarchy play much bigger roles in the quality of shots each player gets.

Bosh efg in Toronto: .495
Bosh efg in Miami: .520

Love efg in Minnesota: .494
Love efg in Cleveland: .504

This is clearly false. Just because Lebron/Wade/Kyrie turned these guys into complimentary jump shooters doesn't equate to them being less efficient.

I didn't actually say they were less efficient. I said that they didn't enjoy a bump from their decline in usage, which they didn't. Surely you recognize that you are being disingenuous (as politely as I can state it) in your presentation of these figures? Both players' eFG% and TS% (Love: -.015/-.029, Bosh: -.023/-.023) declined after teaming up with LeBron, the point at which their usage also declined substantially (Love: -7.1, Bosh: -5.2). According to this theory, each player should've demonstrated a bump, which they obviously didn't.

[KingRobb02]

There are so many assumptions built into this though. We are basically assuming that the shots that are getting cut out are the lower efficiency shots that they are given free reign to take otherwise, but this really isn't the case. This might be true in a pure isolation offense, but Chris Bosh and Kevin Love didn't see a bump in efficiency when their usages declined while playing next to LeBron James. This is because they were previously the focal points in their respective offenses and were each afforded the luxury of taking the shots that they wanted, as opposed to complementary roles for another player.

There is no question that if everything else was equal, an increase in usage would yield a lower efficiency at some point, but that is a massive assumption that never really holds true. The offensive structure and hierarchy play much bigger roles in the quality of shots each player gets.

Bosh efg in Toronto: .495
Bosh efg in Miami: .520

Love efg in Minnesota: .494
Love efg in Cleveland: .504

This is clearly false. Just because Lebron/Wade/Kyrie turned these guys into complimentary jump shooters doesn't equate to them being less efficient.

I didn't actually say they were less efficient. I said that they didn't enjoy a bump from their decline in usage, which they didn't. Surely you recognize that you are being disingenuous (as politely as I can state it) in your presentation of these figures? Both players' eFG% and TS% (Love: -.015/-.029, Bosh: -.023/-.023) declined after teaming up with LeBron, the point at which their usage also declined substantially (Love: -7.1, Bosh: -5.2). According to this theory, each player should've demonstrated a bump, which they obviously didn't.

TS declining while efg goes up is not a loss in efficiency. It is a loss in free throws. Free throws are a component of having the ball in your hands. I already stated that I used last year's numbers for everyone. Do you have a better idea for FTr that I can use to reflect the change in roles you are projecting? Are any of our guys going to go from spot up shooter to creator all of a sudden?

//Edit//
I guess I see what you are saying. Both Bosh and Love played like MVPs in their final years being a #1 option, and then moving to a #3 option seemed to tank them a bit. I wasn't trying to be disingenuous... Let me start a new post to try to explain how I feel about usage.

[Xatticus]

TS declining while efg goes up is not a loss in efficiency. It is a loss in free throws. Free throws are a component of having the ball in your hands. I already stated that I used last year's numbers for everyone. Do you have a better idea for FTr that I can use to reflect the change in roles you are projecting? Are any of our guys going to go from spot up shooter to creator all of a sudden?

I didn't actually make any projections. The comment you responded to was directed specifically at someone else's assertion that there is a direct inverse relationship between usage and efficiency.

In my post responding specifically to your projections, I simply found it curious that this was the explanation for your lower efficiency projections given that the player in question (Hezonja) wasn't actually seeing a bump in FGA. There is nothing more to it than that.

[KingRobb02]

Usage Percentage (The percentage of a teams plays a player uses while he’s on the floor) = 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm FGA + 0.44 * Tm FTA + Tm TOV))

Usage Curves is an idea that comes from Dean Oliver and his book Basketball on Paper. In the book (Chapter 19), he tries to show that players who take fewer shots become more efficient and as they take more shots their efficiency drops. The two main points are these:

*There are diminishing returns on shooting. Taking lots of shots is not easy, the more shots you take the harder it gets.
*Each player has an optimal range of shooting and superstars can be good with 20+ shots a game but other players wouldn’t be.

He basically says that teams need to have high usage guys to take shots that would otherwise be over lesser player's optimal range. We don't quite have that guy who can make a contested 20 foot fadeaway with the shot clock winding down. Which is why "bad shot makers/chuckers" have some intrinsic value to winning teams.

The counter to this would be that there is always someone available to take a shot if the ball moves enough and finds the open guy.

Since the book came out in 2004, it has pretty much been found that points per posession is pretty constant regardless of usage. But it is also know that you can't simply give a guy more shots and expect him to keep his average. Basically if JJ Redick suddenly became a 20 shot per game guy, teams would adjust, his shots would become more difficult, and his efficiency would go down. Lower usage has a higher average rate of return but a higher variability (or risk). Basically the reason Steph broke the league last season was because he spiked his usage above 30 while having an insane shooting season.

I feel like the argument that some people are making is for the Invisible Hand. Where the market will allow things to settle at a naturally optimised point, but sports just don't seem to work that way.

[KingRobb02]

TS declining while efg goes up is not a loss in efficiency. It is a loss in free throws. Free throws are a component of having the ball in your hands. I already stated that I used last year's numbers for everyone. Do you have a better idea for FTr that I can use to reflect the change in roles you are projecting? Are any of our guys going to go from spot up shooter to creator all of a sudden?

I didn't actually make any projections. The comment you responded to was directed specifically at someone else's assertion that there is a direct inverse relationship between usage and efficiency.

In my post responding specifically to your projections, I simply found it curious that this was the explanation for your lower efficiency projections given that the player in question (Hezonja) wasn't actually seeing a bump in FGA. There is nothing more to it than that.

I didn't really tweak anything for the inputs. Mario's efg, FTr, 3Pr, TOV% were all from the previous season. I'm assuming that if I did 60,000 runs instead of 60, the number would be a lot closer to last year's. I mean, the simulations do see a spike in his 3P%, but he doesn't take enough of them so his efg doesn't really see the expected bump. I'm sure that would differ in reality.

[KingRobb02]

Cool idea - some things I noticed was that you have several key players likely shooting near or at career lows in True Shooting %. Ibaka, Gordon, Hezonja are all career lows. Bismack is at the lowest since his first 2 seasons - his last 3 have all been much higher. You also have all the wing players at very average or below average for career True Shooting %. Averaging out 60 simulations should help even out the predictions, but many of yours still end up very low.

Your averages have us coming at 4 points less than last year, and that had us 18th in the league. You're simulations basically put the magic as the worst offensive team in the league.

I think it's because of the usage curve. Since efficiency is expected to drop as usage goes up and the guys you named should all have bigger roles.

For a baseline, I used the efg and shot distributions from last year except for Meeks.

I think expecting efficiency to drop with usage makes sense in theory but not in practice. In practice, your usage should be going up if you exceeding expectations and going down if you are below expectations.

Let's use Evan Fournier for example. Excluding his 38 game 400 minute rookie season last season was career highs in usage, field goal attempts, and true shooting percentage. His usage and field goal attempts went up because he was being more efficient with the ball.

I'd argue that for good offensive teams, there is a positive correlation between usage/fga and true shooting percentage. That optimizes them on the offensive end - you don't want to increase your usage if you are having huge negative diminishing returns. That is is a sign the team force feeding someone because nothing is working.

Overall I think the magic will be better offensively - we'll have better spacing and many core players are a year older.

Just as an FYI, I looked up your prediction of .511 TS% - that would have put the magic at 29th, just above the 76ers. I think this should be a signal that you need to tweak your predictions,because you're basically saying the Magic will be historically bad. Unless you actually do think the Magic will in fact be historically bad.

I just calculated our Off Rating and it comes out to be 102.7312 which would have bumped us up to 19th this past season. If people really want, I have rebound, TO, and assist estimates to go along with this (Gordon simmed out with a 9.3P-7.9R-1.5A stat line, for example)

[KingRobb02]

[Skin]

That's an overly simplistic model for predicting offensive efficiency. I'm actually far less concerned with the shot distribution than I am the quality of shots created, but Payton has received the overwhelming majority of criticism from the current over-emphasis on shooting percentages. Payton is a liability on offense whenever he doesn't have possession, but he is far and away the most creative player on the team when in possession.

Skiles' offense catered to Vucevic, Fournier, and Smith. Oladipo's force of will was the only reason he was as heavily involved as he was, but he is gone now.

Two important parts of your post that not enough people seem to understand.

The other thing people neglect to acknowledge is that Payton is a 58% shooter within 3 feet. Vuc is a 61% shooter from that range, but 75% of his offense came from ranges where he was shooting 50%, 43% and 48%. That's elite in the minds of many, but Elf's 58% doesn't land on their radars. Most people want to see Vuc get back in the paint where he's taking higher % shots, but not many people talk about generating more opportunities for Elf in the paint, which is odd since he's only 3% worse than our 'best scorer'.

If 2 points is 2 points and it doesn't matter how we get it, give me Elf's 58% chance at hitting that over a 50% attempt or less.

And yes, I'm aware this is a very simple interpretation of how an offense works and you can't get by on shots at the rim alone. But if the offense were designed to prioritise those shots instead of mid-range and long 2's, we might see more of them, and concerns about Elf being a liability might start to quieten down.

Every time I refer to Payton needing to be more aggressive, attacking the rim and getting shots close to the rim is exactly what I mean. We NEED that from him. He has to find that balance of loving to be a playmaker and needing to attack on his own. Good stuff!

[Skin]

Loving the conversation in here! And1s all around!

[Skin]

There's a lot of talk about our roster and about who will start/sit and how the minutes will be broken down or how there isn't going to be enough scoring, we need a go to scorer, Vuc needs to be in the starting line up because of our lack of scorers, etc etc.

85 Shots/Game is roughly the league average for FGs attempted per game across the NBA.

Last year the Magic averaged 86.8 FGAs/g. Under Vogel, the Pacers averaged 85.2.

When we break it down by the players on our current roster and how we expect them to expand or contract in their roles, I think looking at it from the viewpoint of FGA could give us better answers to questions we seek answers for. Feel free to express how you think the FGAs will be split among the players on our team.

Here is my first stab at it:



This is not a player to player comparison chart. It's simply FGA to PPG... and what should be within the realm of possibility.

There is no way we are close to a team that can put up an average of 110 ppg, but...if our guys can reach those types of levels which doesn't seem too impossible (to me), then it just goes to show what kind of games we might be able to get during the season. Plus, we may not need to score that much if we get the kind of defensive effort that we are all banking on.

I also think it weighs heavily on what most of us are hoping for... A big season from Elfrid and Aaron. Without them breaking out, we could easily be a lottery team. Those 2 are our make or breaks to our upcoming season. It will be their 3rd year, so this is the time we need it to happen.

Wanted to take an early season review based on my offseason projection of our team. The results were interesting.



Some take aways: What's going on here...

- Evan is taking his game up to another level. Looks like we made the right decision in keeping him over Oladipo (at least offensively speaking)



- Ibaka has broken out a little from his OKC days, but if we can squeeze a little more out of him, he'll be close to projection. A mild bump in +1 PPG would be great!

- Bismack is on par with last year. Not sure if my projection for him was a little too high or if he's still figuring out his role, but he is what he is so far.

- Augustin is producing out more than I expected, but that is to be expected with Meeks being out.

- Jeff "what the hell was Henny thinking" Green has been much better than the critics who bashed Henny. Taking less shots and nearly producing the same as last year means his efficiency is UP!

- Vucevic taking a much expected dip in FGA is right about where I thought. Which means he's taken to his new role very well. I didn't expect his scoring to dip as much as it did, but I think he'll get it up. Would be nice if he were a little more efficient in draining his shots though this is not a big outlier on why our Team PPG is so low.

Key take aways: The biggest reasons why we are not meeting expectations.

- Elfrid is being more aggressive. An increase in +2.3 FGA per game should produce more than a +1.1 PPG output. Efficiency issue. This is very difficult to wrap my head around. I was a Jameer hater because he wasn't a pure passer and he didn't play defense. Now we have a guy in Elf who is a pure passer who plays defense, who I fell in love with as a rookie... but he isn't the scorer we need him to be and his warts are starting to be worrisome. Wish we could combine them both into one guy. lol

- Next is Gordon. Dude is showing growth by raising both his FGA and PPG; but at this point it's not quite at the projection rate that I hope he gets to. Still early, but the growth signs are good. ie. .389 3P% from the SF spot? Hell yes! Let's see where it normalizes by the end of the season, but the signs are good! He just needs to be a more aggressive shot taker because his efficiency is still excellent. If he can increase his shots by 1.5 more per game, and also raise his average up from 11 to 14 PPG (yeah I know definitely, easier to say than do), but if he did, then he'd be right on par with the LOFTY expectations that I had pegged for him this year. That's only like adding one more 3 pointer per game consistently. He can do it!

- Hezonja is struggling at the moment. Hoping for bigger improvement as the season progresses. He's not seizing the opportunity with Meeks being hurt. I was hoping to see a jump from 6 PPG to 10 PPG... and maybe that was asking too much. Right now he's averaging 5 PPG. So those missing 5 PPG lowers our Total Team PPG the most dramatically compared to the other player's projections. But he's just a 2nd year player, so the pressure is not on him to carry the burden of our record.

So what does this mean? It goes back to what I said in my OP. There's no way I see us being a 110 PPG team because that would put us in the Top 5 of the NBA today. But right now we are ranked 29th out of 30 in PPG, so there is a lot of room for improvement. Where could we expect the biggest improvements to come from? FROM OUR 3 YOUNG DEVELOPING PROSPECTS. We go as Elf, Gordon and Mario improve. It takes patience. Let's take our hands off the panic button at the moment and watch the year unfold. Hopefully, by the end we see our young guys make strides. Elf and Gordon are our players who will MAKE or BREAK our season.