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@  cointurtlemoose : (03 January 2015 - 03:24 AM) I'm just glad Papa/Johnson/Canaan got some time? Silver lining??
@  cointurtlemoose : (03 January 2015 - 03:16 AM) Whoof...
@  Mario Peña : (03 January 2015 - 02:43 AM) I'm guessing the team flew in to NOLA yesterday, watched bowl games, hit Temptations and Hustler Club and now are more hungover than hell. Damn them!
@  08huangj : (03 January 2015 - 02:30 AM) Riduculous
@  08huangj : (03 January 2015 - 02:29 AM) LOSING BY 22 POINTS
@  08huangj : (01 January 2015 - 05:54 AM) Happy 2015 to all rockets fans
@  08huangj : (01 January 2015 - 05:52 AM) James played like a MVP last night
@  Cooper : (29 December 2014 - 02:30 AM) tough game for harden and bev
@  bboley24 : (29 December 2014 - 01:55 AM) This team is ridiculously talented
@  bboley24 : (29 December 2014 - 01:55 AM) In Morey We Trust.
@  jorgeaam : (29 December 2014 - 01:05 AM) Corey Brewer beasting tonight
@  jorgeaam : (28 December 2014 - 10:56 PM) And Josh Smith starting tonight
@  jorgeaam : (28 December 2014 - 10:56 PM) The Lakers claiming Tarik of waivers
@  BenQueens : (27 December 2014 - 04:14 AM) Some nice moves to the basket as well. It seemed like he was more comfortable passing as the game went on; hope that keeps up. Lot of potential with this roster.
@  cointurtlemoose : (27 December 2014 - 04:11 AM) He definitely helped us in winning that game. Those two offensive rebounds and at the end of OT were massive. Some really great passes as well.
@  BenQueens : (27 December 2014 - 04:05 AM) No, not the only one. But we saw a lot of what Smith brings to the table, too.
@  jorgeaam : (27 December 2014 - 01:37 AM) Am I the only one who cringed while watching Smith pulling up for a last-second 3 Pointer?
@  Cooper : (27 December 2014 - 01:31 AM) Smith getting good looks at the rim.
@  Cooper : (27 December 2014 - 01:06 AM) took the clips to 7 in the playoffs last year without him. I think they will adjust but they clearly have taken a step back.
@  Mario Peña : (26 December 2014 - 11:44 PM) I am just finishing up the GS Clips game and the Warriors look pretty weak without Bogut. It's just one game but I'm not impressed by their attempt to circle the wagons.

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Hogging the Ball During Crunch Time is Not Effective


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#1 Red94

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    Posted 14 December 2014 - 12:07 AM

    New post: Hogging the Ball During Crunch Time is Not Effective
    By: Richard Li

    Last year, I took some extended looks at crunch time performance (here and here). I'm going to continue doing so this year, starting with this article. Moreover, I'm going to examine it from a very macro perspective to better capture and criticize the heroball phenomenon.

     

    In economics, there's a measurement you may have heard of called the Gini Coefficient. It measures how equitably something is distributed in something else (e.g., how equitably is income distributed in a country). Borrowing the Gini Coefficient, I've created a measurement I call the Ballhog Coefficient. It measures how equitably shot attempts are distributed in the NBA. To illustrate this measurement, consider this graph.

     

    onecurve

     

    This graph represents the distribution of all shot attempts in the NBA from the 2013-14 season. On the x-axis is the cumulative percentage of all NBA players. On the y-axis is the cumulative percentage of all NBA shots. To read the graph, simply pick a point and find the x-y intersection. For example, on the red curve, which represents all data from last year, the first 20%, aka the bottom 20%, of the population barely registers any shots. Moving right along the x-axis, we eventually reach the dashed grey line, which represents where the top 10% of NBA shot takers begin. To the left of this is 90% of all NBA players, who collectively take around 70% of all shots. That means the top 10% of NBA players take roughly 30% of all shots (27.7% to be exact). The straight black line represents what the graph would look like if shot distribution were perfectly equal (i.e., every player takes the same number of shots).

     

    How far apart the straight black line and the red curve are is represented by the Ballhog Coefficient. Its range is from zero to one, with zero representing perfect equality (the black line), and one representing perfect inequality (one player takes all the shots). Last year, the NBA's Ballhog Coefficient was 0.48.

     

    [Before continuing, I want to emphasize that perfectly equitable shot distribution is definitely not an ideal scenario, unless you want Joey Dorsey taking as many shots as James Harden. The perfect equality line is only there for reference. It is not a recommendation.]

     

    On an individual team level, here was every team's Ballhog Coefficient last year.

     

    regtable

     

    Shot distribution during crunch time, defined as 3 minutes or less down by 5 points or less or tied, however, is different. It looks like this.

     

    curvesCompared to the total curve, the crunch time curve is even farther away from the perfect equality line, meaning shot distribution during crunch time was much less equitably distributed than it was in total. No one should be surprised. The top 10% of players, who shot 27.7% of all shots in total, shot 42.0% of all shots during crunch time. The Ballhog Coefficient during crunch time last year was 0.64, compared to 0.48 in total. That's a pretty dramatic change. Here's how each team, represented by a dot, shifted in its Ballhog Coefficient from total time to crunch time.

     

    ladder

     

    Again, the change is immediately perceptible. Only two teams did not increase their Ballhog Coefficient (Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers). Here's the team list, sorted by their crunch time Ballhog Coefficient.

     

    clutable

     

    Expectedly, teams with the highest crunch time Ballhog Coefficients are also the teams with glamorous individual superstars (Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, and OKC Thunder). At the bottom are the starless teams (Denver Nuggets, Chicago Bulls), and the annoyingly platonic San Antonio Spurs.

     

    Let's now analyze how this less equitable distribution of shots correlates with offensive production. First, we have this.

    Ballhog Coefficient Offensive Rating
    Total 0.48 104.0
    Crunch Time 0.64 99.2

     

    League-wide, offensive rating drops during crunch time as Ballhog Coefficient rises. In other words, as shot distribution becomes less equitable, offensive production becomes less efficient. This is, however, only one way of looking at it. Since different teams had different amounts of crunch time minutes played, league-wide results are skewed by teams who played a lot of close games. At a team level, here's what the results look like.

     

    plotThis graph plots change in Ballhog Coefficient against change in offensive rating, from total to crunch time, for each team, represented by a dot. Just counting the dots reveals that only 10 teams increased their offensive efficiency during crunch time, meaning 2/3 of the league decreased in efficiency as their number of shot takers dwindled. And while not as dramatic as the league-wide results, there is still a weak negative correlation, represented by the blue trend line. On a team level, this suggests that the less equitably shots are distributed (relative to the team's average), the less offensively efficient the team becomes (relative to the team's average).

     

    So while we might focus on Nick Young's crunch time shot going in, what we should focus on is that his 30-foot 3-point heave while he was unbalanced on all three axes of his body and Manu Ginobili was close enough to count his neck hairs was actually a horrific shot to take. But that's what happens during crunch time.


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    #2 UBK

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      Posted 14 December 2014 - 02:15 AM

       There are a lot of alternative explanations for this data other than that a team's strategy changes towards more ballhoggery in crunch time and that the strategy is poor.

       

       1) It is not a fair comparison to compare the crunch time coefficient to the overall coefficient since the players who are taking only a few shots

      per game will not being playing then. Imagine that a team always played its 5 best players in crunch time and they took an equal number of shots. That is the exact opposite of ballhoggery strategy but your measure says that the top 33% of players took all of those shots for a high coefficient.

       

       2) "Shot distribution during crunch time, defined as 3 minutes or less down by 5 points or less or tied,"  That is a strange definition. Did you really mean to not also include up by only a few points as also being in crunch time?  Note that your definition means there will be a greater %age of

      desperation shots included where a team must score very quickly or will be taking more threes than is good for maximizing expected points per possession in an attempt to catch up.

       

      3) There are other differences at the end of a game. I think two important ones are that players will be the most fatigued then which may influence shooting and that dialing up the intensity may be a bigger factor for defense than for offense.


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      #3 thejohnnygold

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      Posted 14 December 2014 - 05:22 PM

      Not to diminish the hard work Richard has done here, but this graphic is certainly relevant for us Rockets fans.

       

       

      I don't know the source (found this on Reddit), but I assume the person did their research.  I will say, Harden only having 20 shots of this variety surprises me a little.


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      #4 Steven

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        Posted 14 December 2014 - 07:12 PM

        Gotta remember two of those years Durant would have taken the final shot.
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        #5 thejohnnygold

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        Posted 15 December 2014 - 12:05 AM

        Gotta remember two of those years Durant would have taken the final shot.

         

        Fair enough.  Also, that first year we didn't have a ton of close games--we seemed to either lose big or win big.  Loooking at basketball reference, last year was similar, but not as extreme.


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        #6 Willk

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          Posted 15 December 2014 - 01:14 AM

          Not to diminish the hard work Richard has done here, but this graphic is certainly relevant for us Rockets fans.



          I don't know the source (found this on Reddit), but I assume the person did their research. I will say, Harden only having 20 shots of this variety surprises me a little.

          Even more impressive is that Harden is 7 for his last 12. I also think part of the "ball-hogging" factor for teams is that not every player wants to take the last second shot. Sometimes you can see how quickly a player passes the ball & feel he did not want the ball late in the game. Harden is the exact opposite.
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          #7 thejohnnygold

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          Posted 15 December 2014 - 03:55 PM

          Even more impressive is that Harden is 7 for his last 12. I also think part of the "ball-hogging" factor for teams is that not every player wants to take the last second shot. Sometimes you can see how quickly a player passes the ball & feel he did not want the ball late in the game. Harden is the exact opposite.

           

          Yeah, there are lots of factors in play here.  How many of these possessions are the variety where a team has less than 5 seconds to inbound and get a shot off?  That happens often.  I have always felt like sometimes a team doesn't want to risk a turnover so they eliminate that risk by putting the ball in one guy's hands knowing he is at least going to get a shot off which is better than nothing.

           

          I'm not saying heroball isn't a thing--we all know it is.  I'm not convinced it is a black and white issue when looking at end game possessions.


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