0 comments by justinwillard on 8/9/2014
Note: This assumes the league will not veto the trade, as the rumors indicate. Cleveland’s management is hard to read. In a world where information is leaked at a high rate, they shocked the world by drafting Anthony Bennett first overall. I wasn’t sure what they would do with Andrew Wiggins and Kevin Love, but […]
0 comments by @Adam_Mares on 8/8/2014
Over the last 10 seasons, the NBA has evolved. The game of basketball is always evolving, but in 2004, the NBA made a couple of seemingly small rule changes that have had an enormous impact on how teams were allowed to defend. After years of some excessively physical defense, stagnant, isolation-heavy offenses and a steady […]
0 comments by Evan Sidery on 8/5/2014
In today’s NBA, when drafting or looking to sign a big man, rim protection is one of the key factors looked at by team executives. If a player has freakish measureables, too, then many teams will be even more intrigued. That’s why I decided to look and see if there is truly a correlation between […]
0 comments by Evan Sidery on 8/4/2014
Just when you think the Indiana Pacers summer couldn’t have gotten any worse after letting Lance Stephenson — one of their main offensive playmakers — walk and sign with the Charlotte Hornets, it just did, by an even wider margin. In a freak accident during the USA basketball intra-squad scrimmage in Las Vegas on Friday […]
0 comments by dariussimmons on 8/3/2014
The San Antonio Spurs won their 5th championship in 15 years, but there are those who don’t consider their 15-year run a dynasty, because during this stretch they have never won back-to-back championships. Is this assessment really fair? The Spurs have been playing some of the best basketball of recent memory, but its hard to […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 7/25/2014
The Black Arts of Hakeem the Dream in the Post-season When I saw Hakeem Olajuwon’s playoff success, I assumed his complex post-game — full of counters — was the driving factor as his offensive game suffered little against better defenses. Coupled with Houston’s cadre of shooters around him, and Olajuwon was free to put players […]
0 comments by @Adam_Mares on 7/20/2014
Throughout the big-3 era in Miami, the two-man combination of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade gave us some of the league’s most unforgettable highlights. From full-court alley-oops, to combining to score 70 points against the Indiana Pacers in a must-win Game 4 in the 2012 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. When those two worked in sync, we […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 7/18/2014
When people cite how players do against the top teams or top defense, they typically use a box score summary of their stats versus teams rated X or above. This is not an accurate method, however, as a player can go against several defenses barely over the threshold and another can go up against two […]
0 comments by chrisgonzalez
In today’s world of advanced metrics, SportVU player tracking data — and just the general opinions of many regarding the NBA — there are too many instances where players talents are evaluated, compared, and debated based on arbitrary claims and confusion (I’m looking at you, Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith). While I too am […]
0 comments by halbrown
Since Dean Oliver first published Basketball on Paper in 2004 (and probably before), basketball analysts have been pushing the belief that a team’s offense should be built around shooting three pointers and taking shots at the rim — the two most efficient shots in basketball by a wide margin. That philosophy has on a macro level been […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 7/15/2014
If there’s any test for whether or not a player is a superstar that bridges the gap between the analytics crowd and conventional analysis, it’s how well his former team does when he leaves either via free agency, a trade, or retirement. It’s in some ways a version of plus/minus, but it’s simple enough for […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 7/14/2014
Adding content to the bottomless pit of the web seems like a fruitless effort sometimes, but with some creativity and insight you can provide information previously not available. For example, every so often the media will discuss players with long consecutive strings of games played, but no one provides a comprehensive list of the current […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 6/27/2014
Thanks to the internet, there’s a plethora of information available about the NBA draft. We have more observers than ever — more prognosticators who say they can predict the future. Some NBA writers are defined by the draft itself, but which ones perform the best? Which mock drafts are the most accurate? Tabulating the predictions […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 6/26/2014
As we near the 2014 draft, potentially one of the most unpredictable ever, people are searching for answers, objective truths visible in the haze. A number of prospects have question marks about their ultimate NBA position. For instance, Jabari Parker’s future position has led to some discussion, and it’s unclear from glancing at his measurements […]
0 comments by justinwillard on 6/20/2014
With the Finals over, now is the time for reflection and historical queries. The NBA Finals date back to 1947 when the league was called the Basketball Association of America. Kawhi Leonard etched his name into history, but the Finals MVP has only existed since 1969. Fortunately, I built a Finals MVP model to predict […]
