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Major announcement: the Predictions section got discontinued indefinitely for ‘undisclosable reasons’. Let’s just say that my rivalry with Reignman over at djod.co.uk got out of hand and the quality of my predictions suffered as a result. Perhaps one day I will find it in myself to resume my quest to beat Vegas.In its place will be a non-basketball section where I’ll post, wait for it….anything non basketball related! I know its a small area to work with, but I’m my sure I’ll come up with something. It is widely acknowledged that basketball is life and the rest is just details – but someone needs to pay attention to the details too right.

(photo by www.joelkimmel.com)

We are already 1/5^th of the way into the season and there are so many things to talk about and think about. Here are 21 NBA thoughts that have occupied my brain recently.

  

1 – It seems like the number 1 unwritten rule of every NBA team is to immediately rush over to your teammate when they’ve fallen to the floor and help them back up. This makes every bit of sense as you want to show support for your teammate who has just sacrificed his body to take a charge, but you see young players follow this rule as if their life depended on it. In fact I was thinking about this during a recent game, and was trying to think of the last time a player fell down on the floor and actually got up by himself. Well, funnily enough, I saw it at least twice that game with the Los Angeles Lakers…but then again they aren’t exactly the model team in terms of camaraderie.

 

2 – Watching the Golden State Warriors destroy the Suns in the run ‘n gun game was a pleasure to watch. 47 points in the first quarter! I think the Knicks could use a dose of whatever they smoking in Oakland. D’Antoni even became desperate enough to try to go‘big’ with Skinner and Amare at one point which proved, in my book, that The Don is the true king of chaos basketball.

 

3 – The Don also managed to ridicule Yao Ming and Rockets coach Rick Adelman several nights later. At one point in the game, Yao was starting to dominate the paint, and even the Warriors’ big man Bierdins couldn’t do anything about it. Nelson’s response? Take out his center Bierdins and replace him with guard/forward Matt Barnes who is one full feet smaller than Yao. It worked out great as Yao had no shot of keeping up with any of the Warriors players which led to open three pointers. Moments later Yao was taken out. Nelson’s response? Put Bierdins back in. Nelson 100000, Adelman 0. 

 

4 – The Orlando Magic will most likely have the 2^nd best record in the East going into All-Star weekend, which begs the questions who will be the 2^nd All-Star chosen from the team…if any? You certainly can’t choose Orlando’s summer signing Rashard Lewis despite his max contract since Hidayet Turkoglu has been outplaying him in every aspect. We shall see how objective the coaches can stay when selecting All-Star reserves, and whether they will give the pass to a better known and certainly better paid player rather than the more deserving one.

 

5 – Say what you want about how great LeBron is playing despite his lack of support, but I still think he might be on one of the most underrated teams in NBA history. His team, perhaps lacking in flair and household names, is in fact the perfect team for a superstar. You have Ilgauskus which is a legit top 5 center who will not only do everything you want on the defensive end but can also hit open mid range jumpshots. Drew Gooden is a hard working power forward who’s also effective from mid-range, and can also chase offensive rebounds as effectively as Rodman chases…skirts. Hughes, Pavlovic, and Gibson can hold their own defensively while being able to make the most out of the opportunities that come with having a superstar (open looks, taking advantage of ball rotation when LeBron is double teamed etc). The Lakers, on the other hand, look very fragile on the defensive end at times, and they aren’t as efficient in taking advantage of having a constant double team demanding superstar (they seem to watch Kobe do his thing often rather than make cuts or move without the ball). I’d trade Lamar Odom for Drew Gooden in a heartbeat or three.

 

6 – The New York Knicks continue to entertain anyone not remotely associated with them. Most entertaining this week for me was seeing the last few seconds of the Milwaukee game. New York were up 1, and Michael Redd missed a shot in the final seconds to take the lead. Fred Jones got the rebound sprinted to the other side of the floor and found himself all alone near the Milwaukee basket with a couple of seconds left. All he had to do was just stand there and the game would be theirs. Instead, he went full speed and emphatically dunked the ball as if to reminisce his days as a slam dunk champion. Isiah Thomas was celebrating like a coach would when they win the championship, and completely oblivious to the fact that what his player did was incredibly stupid. The Bucks had 0.4 seconds to send the game into overtime, but let’s just say the Knicks should be happy Milwaukee didn’t have a Derek Fisher that night, because that low IQ move by Fred Jones could have easily cost them. It might be a little thing, but its those sort of small details that show who’s a good coach, who’s a smart player, and which teams will win if two teams are equally skilled.

 

7 – Speaking of low IQ. Go back a couple days to the Boston vs Charlotte game. Charlotte up 2, ball in hand, 4 seconds left, at home, about to defeat the hottest team in the NBA…and they throw the ball away and Jesus Shuttlesworth makes them pay with an off balance triple at the buzzer. The Bobcats did their part-owner and VP of Basketball Operations Michael Jordan real proud. If you look up Michael Jordan in the antonym section of a thesaurus, you’d get a YouTube video of those exact 4 seconds.

 

8 – There seems to be a trend where if things aren’t working out for a team, the remedy is to send one or more of your star players to the bench. Barbosa and Ginobili have been used as such for years now and this year the cases are increasingly exponentially. We have seen Terry relegated to the bench in Dallas, and recently Miami has used Ricky Davis and Jason Williams to bring some energy off the bench. It all seems to be working which leads to the question – has the age old undeniable fact that ‘the starting 5 should be your best players’, come to an end?

 

9 – Phil Jackson seems to have another philosophy whereby he has two complete teams that he uses. This was a big nono a couple of years back as anyone involved in coaching would tell you that you can’t just have 5 fresh players come in at the same time. However, PJ’s method seems to be working as the Lakers bench has improved tremendously compared to earlier years. I guess without the Black Mamba, they feel more sense of responsibility and even act like a team of their own.

 

10 – Rumor had it that the East would get stronger this year, and would be on the way to closing the gap it had with the Western Conference. 16 games in, it seems like the opposite has happened. There is no Eastern Conference team that anyone in the West fears outside of Boston, Orlando, and Detroit. The East in fact has 4 teams above .500, while out in the West the Houston Rockets would fail to make the playoffs if the season ended today (they stand at .500). We’ve all heard about the NBA’s ambitions to expand outside of the US..but before global expansion, shouldn’t there be order at home?

 

11 – Wow, did anyone else see Emeka Okafor block The Big Aristotle back a couple of millennium?

 

12 – I’ve always said Dwayne Wade was hugely overrated. Yes, he somehow carried his team to a championship so whatever he does will forever overshadow what he wont be able to do. However, let me just say that I think the league has seen all that Wade can do and has adjusted accordingly. Simply put all Wade does is use his first step to blow by defenders and tries to draw contact or finish with some circus shot. His midrange shot is ‘average’ at best, and his three point shot is ‘bad’ at best. He isn’t the best passer so he can’t really run the point, and when his shot is not falling in response to the defense backing up, he’s completely ineffective. In the international stage, we’ve already seen how useless he is and he should definitely not be heading to Beijing this summer unless its for an early holiday post regular season.

 

13 – I’ve had the opportunity to see Steve Francis play recently and somehow he always seems to end up on the floor in pain after what looks to be a failure of his muscles to obey his brain. Gone is the flashy, always a pleasure to watch, and the silky smooth game we have grown accustomed to seeing and ‘in’ is this scrappy streetball player who seems to just be back to playing sports after a 5 year absence. Rafer and Steve would do all of us a favour if they played at the Rucker rather than spend their talent post-feeding Chairman Yao.

 

14 – I had Phoenix to win it all this year, but now I’m not sure. It seems they are lacking…dare I say…outside shooting! In the past they had Quentin Richardson, Joe Johnson, Eddie House, Tim Thomas, James Jones, but now Raja is the only one in the starting 5 that Steve “Turnover” Nash will be happy to pass to beyond the 3 point line. I’ve seen Eric Piatowski exclusively on the bench, and have yet to find out whether he’s a hired shooting coach or an actual player.

 

15 – AK 47 was straight killer on the boxscore the other day when he posted a triple double and came cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise to his second 5×5 and a never before seen quintuple (?) double with a line of: 20 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists, 6 steals, 4 blocks, 0 turnovers. Ironically it was, in Boston coach Doc Rivers’ words, ‘the best defender in the league today’ (KB24) that was guarding him when this all happened. Similar to a snooker player getting a 147 break, or a bowling player bowling a perfect 300, I think any player to record a quintuple double should be awarded by the NBA a large sum of money, lets say a 100,000 dollars.. The NBA has fined players and coaches for that sort of amount in the past so why not do the opposite as well?   

 

16 – If Yi Jianlin makes the All-Star starters this year, the NBA needs to seriously reconsider its democratic voting system. The People’s Republic of China is Communist for a reason, it can’t possibly let its people decide important decisions yet! So if China doesn’t let its own citizens decide why should the NBA? One idea is to set voting ‘multipliers’ for each country, and hence the number of votes is adjusted for China’s large population. Another idea is to go Commie on our asses and limit the options of who you can vote for and just have a ballot with those that actually deserve to be an All-Star.

 

17 – A lot of people were questioning whether Boston could be successful with just three players this year – not me. My belief has always been that NBA players can be separated into 4 different echelons: superstar, star, smart veterans/role players, and the rest. Boston had acquired the most difficult parts with 1 superstar, and 2 stars. Side Note: For me, superstar means that the player single handedly gives a team championship hope, so this means: Duncan, Kobe, KG, Nowitzki, LeBron, Nash, and Dwight Howard. Veterans are easier to acquire, especially if your team has a shot at a championship then you can contract them as easily as NBA players contract syphilis. So all Boston had to do was find 4^th echelon players who I believe are numerous and widespread. You can find some in the NBDL, some in Europe and in other international leagues, and there’s always the catalogue of players who get shopped around season to season like shares of Microsoft. For example an Austin Croshere in Golden State, or a Brian Skinner in Phoenix, or a Francisco Elson in San Antonio – these are all decent players that can fill the last remaining spots on your team and still be useful. Therefore I don’t believe that gutting your team to get superstars and stars in the NBA is such a bad thing. That is why I still think someone out there should make a push for Kobe and why I was scoffing anyone who thought Boston wouldn’t be good this year. 

 

18 – The number of great NBA point guards has reached an all time high. Commentators have already used every single adjective known in the English language to praise the likes of Steve Nash and Jason Kidd. Chris Paul and Deron Williams are having outstanding seasons as well and have captured all the headlines this season. Even Baron Davis is getting MVP talk in some areas of the country (probably mostly in California, but still..). Two point guards that the media seems to have forgotten about is the only two current point guards with NBA Finals MVP’s….Yea, Tony Parker and Chauncey Billups – they are still alive you know? Parker is averaging 20points 7assists 4 rebounds on 52% from the field leading his team to the best record in the West, while Chauncey is averaging 17points, 8 assists, 3 rebounds and is 3^rd in the East behind impressive starts from Boston and Orlando. While I don’t deny Nash and Kidd’s abilities as team leaders, I have to say that Parker and Billups are the ones who got the job done. I see no reason why these players who have taken their team to the Finals multiple times don’t deserve AT LEAST as much credit as the likes of Nash and Kidd.

 

19 – New York, Chicago, and Miami have the three worst record in the abysmal Eastern Conference. Somewhere, David Stern is sending a memo to his referees highlighting discreetly the importance of big market teams to the NBA. Out West, Seattle and Portland are also in the bottom 3 of the conference. Somewhere, David Stern is sending a memo to the Seattle and Portland team owners that they can relocate if they wish.

 

20 – I’ve already mentioned my admiration of the run ‘n gun style of play, but I would actually like to see more styles of play being played by NBA teams. Especially those teams who are locked in for a lottery finish should definitely try to innovate. How about a team with a 6’7 backcourt and 7 footers in the front court. All the players should be able to hit threes, and as a result every time down the floor there will be a mismatch, followed by a double team, kick out to three point land for a wide open three. There will also be more offensive rebounds due the height of the players, and on defense they can play a zone that can be particularly effective in hindering opponents with their long reach and command of the defensive rebounds. You can even go all 7 footers if you wish as follows: Hedo Turkoglu at point, Rashard Lewis at the two, Al Harrington at the three, Jamison at the four, and Bargniani at the 5. This would be the opposite of small ball, but can be even more effective.

 

21 – My final thought is that this is the time for almost all the top players in basketball to define who they truly are. Kobe will have a chance to become a legend if he leads his Lakers far enough, a cry baby if doesnt. LeBron is in the process of defining what sort of legacy he will leave behind. Kevin Garnett has got a final chance to prove whether he’s top 5 or top 50 of all time. Tim Duncan can be the most dominating player ever with another title. Wade will either take back his place of best young player or hide into obscurity. Carmelo and AI have a chance together to finally take center stage after years of playing second or third fiddle. Steve Nash can either lead his team to the promise land or it might be the end of the running style of basketball. The Detroit and Dallas ‘Dynasties’ can end with a bang or bust. In short there are lots of basketball stories that are being decided as we speak, and this season especially will be full of revelations.   

As I look around the basketball blogosphere, read journalist evaluations, and listen to fan opinions – it seems to me that we are really lacking an understanding of what it takes to win basketball games, and as a result we Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise focus of which stats we should really pay attention to.  As far as I’m concerned, basketball is a game of possessions and opportunity cost. I don’t care if a team scores 75 points or 125 points, of if it concedes 80 points or 120 points. We all know that different styles of play can be successful, from San Antonio’s grueling half court sets to Phoenix’s lightning paced tempo. But what is important is how efficient teams and players are with the amount of possessions they do have. Essentially, if you have more ‘successful possessions’ on offense than your opponent does, then you win the game. It doesn’t matter if you beat your opponent 4-2 or 133-131 right?

Therefore through offense and defense the key is to make the most of your possessions while denying your opponent of successful possessions. Today I will evaluate the offensive side of the game and rate the players according to their stats in the 06-07 season. To do this I have created a unique formula that will calculate in detail how each player uses up their respective possessions. Practically all statistics that we use today have some sort of contribution to the analysis of possessions – its just that they have never been put into the right formula before.

 

So before I reveal my findings, let me explain a bit more about this business of ‘possessions’.

 

In basketball the goal IS actually to have more points than your opponent, but while points is the end product we are looking for, it is possessions that is the scarce resource that makes it happen. In other words, possessions are what creates points. Since a team has a limited amount per game, then it makes every bit of sense that teams and players should try turn as many possessions into successful possessions. For example a player giving you 4/5 from three point land is far far better than another player shooting 6/13 from the field, because he gets you the same points in 8 less possessions. With the first player, those 8 extra possessions instead of missed shots, can be turned into more points. Therefore we should analyze a player’s possession use efficiency to determine his offensive worth to a team. To calculate the efficiency we simply need to consider potential possessions and successful possessions:

 

One made shot is one potential possession, turned into one successful possession. Similarly, a missed shot is 0 successful possessions out of 1 potential possession. With an assist you are responsible for half of the successful possession with half the potential. Free throws similarly count as 1/1 in terms of possession use when making both, 0.5/1 when making 1 of 2, and 0/1 when missing both. Turnovers count as 0/1 in terms of possession success obviously.

 

After adding some modifications to take into account: free-throws that come as a result of and 1’s, giving scoring players half the credit when they score off of assists, and giving 3 point baskets 1.5/1 in terms of possession success, we can calculate a players’ possession success percentage. This is calculated by dividing all the successful possessions by potential possessions. (It is important to understand that by possession we mean that the player in question did something that led to the change in possession of the ball to the other team – either good or bad).

 

This percentage tells us simply what percentage of the time the player in question will help create two points when he uses the teams’ possession. So if someone has 80% successful possession ratio, it means that 4 out of 5 times the player will help the team secure two points – this could be a made shot, an assist, or freethrows made, the important thing is that the team ends up with 2 points. It obviously would make sense for teams to highly value players with good possession success % because they make the most out of a teams’ limited possessions.

 

So after some complex calculations that I won’t bore you with at this moment, here are the top 50 most efficient offensive players for the 06-07 season (500 minutes had to be played in order to be eligible): 

 

TOP 50: MOST EFFICIENT OFFENSIVE PLAYERS

 

Now, we should be careful when looking at this table to not make quick conclusions. The ranking does not suggest that Brent Barry is a better scoring shooting guard than Kobe and Wade…absolutely not. However, it does statistically prove that he was more efficient with his possessions than those superstars. You can see on the list that Steve Nash is number 1, and this should be no surprise to most as he always seems to make good things happen on offense. We can also see through this list that role players that are valued highly in coaches minds such as Battier, Lee, Najera, Hermmann, Barry etc all justify their worth as they manage to be more efficient than their superstar counterparts.

 

With that said, this ranking doesn’t do justice to those superstars that have so much more responsibility and have to keep producing despite fatigue and double teams, and are expected to produce on a consistent basis. Therefore, we should also see which players create the most useful possessions per game:

 

TOP 50: USEFUL OFFENSIVE POSSESIONS PER GAME

 

 

This is essentially a Top 50 of who creates the most on offense for his team. It is no surprise that the list is made up of the top offensive players in the league. The top 23 in fact are all in different teams (if we ignore that Iverson went to Denver in the middle of the season). This list on the other hand discriminates against players who don’t ‘ballhog’ and don’t get as many minutes. Therefore a better representation of a player’s offensive worth would be if we calculate the offensive successful possession surplus. This means, how many successful possessions does the player create after we subtract his unsuccessful possessions. This is a much better representation since superstars are still rewarded for having that burden to consistently contribute, whilst efficient players are still rewarded over ‘ballhogs’ for their more efficient performance. Since every successful possession in our calculations translates into two points, here is the ranking of top 50 players who contribute the most NET points to his team.

 

TOP 50: Net Points Gained aka “The Oytun Offensive Efficiency Rating” (OOER)

 

 

We should make it clear when looking at these numbers that the league average % chance of creating a successful possession is 51%. For conveniences sake if we assume that it is 50%, then we can understand that that average point surplus of the league is 0. This means that an average player will use half his possessions to create two points, and the other half will lead to nothing. Our list shows how many NET points these elite players contribute to their teams. Keep in mind that even if a player averages 50 points and 20 assists per game, he won’t be more useful than an average player unless his efficiency is above that of an average player. Having said that the above is a good representation of how many points the team would Lose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercise if that player was injured to be replaced by an average player. Of course there are flaws with this assumption, but it is still as good an understanding we will get of how much value a player has to his team on offense.  Therefore if the MVP chase was based solely on offensive contributions the above list should serve to rank them.

 

TOP 20: OOER per 40 minutes

Moving on to some more ‘fun’ stats. I don’t like ‘per 40 minute’ stats because it is highly misleading, but for those who believe in it, here are the top 20 offensive contributors if everyone in the league played 40 minutes.

 

 

TOP 20: Ball Hogs

Which players are most ‘active’ on the offensive end of the floor? Below are the top 20 biggest Ballhogs. (most possessions used per minute played)

 

 

 

So those Kobe fans who keep hearing how much of a ballhog Kobe is, they can now respond by saying that there are three other players who are bigger ballhogs than him, and also less efficient at the same time.

 

 

TOP 10: Worst Offensive Players

It is also useful to know who you do not want on the floor when you crucially need a basket. Here are the top 10 players who harm their team the most on a per 40 minute basis:

 

 

 

So keeping Bonzi on the floor for 40 minutes will lead to 9 less points for your team per game than the average NBA player. Minnesota fans might be concerned to see two of their key players on this list. (Sorry ‘Toine!)

 

 

End of Part 1 

 

Well that wraps up the offensive side of things. We’ve seen that in the 06-07 season, while Kobe created the most ‘good’ for his team, he doesn’t do it nearly as efficiently as Steve Nash. In fact, the 2 time MVP is way ahead of the competition when it comes to offensive performance. Some might point to the fact that the Suns play a much higher tempo game, but Nash is not even in the top 15 in terms of possessions per game. Furthermore, any advantage that higher tempo teams might seem to receive gets negated when we consider that successful possession percentage is on average 50% meaning that it shouldn’t lead to more surplus possessions. For the players that are over 50%, then a slight advantage arises but this is no different than players who are ballhogs, or play more minutes. We assume that players who play a faster tempo deal with lower quality shots, and apparent ballhogs are in fact so, due to their teams reliance on them – therefore at the end of the day, more possessions come at a price, and we can safely discard these discrepancies while still retaining a true view of the top offensive players.  

  

As most of us know (well most of us outside of the Golden State Warriors), in basketball offense is only half of the game. Therefore defense will take center stage in part 2 as we similarly rank the top players who help prevent opponents from creating sucessful possessions.  

Where Amazing Doesn’t Happen is a regular section which parodies the official NBA ad campaign running at the moment.

Denied! is a regular special feature that will see me take an article/action/story and let the culprit in question know exactly why they are wrong.

This week I will be targeting all-mighty journalist Chris McCosky from the Detroit News and his recent elitist article condemning (practically) all bloggers around the world. Essentially what he says is annoying him is that bloggers are discrediting the media, but personally I believe his discontent runs deeper than that.

His opening argument criticizing the legitimacy of bloggers is as follows:

“Journalism employs trained professionals. We actually have to go to school for this stuff.”

Truth be told, I completely sympathize with this statement. Not because it’s a valid argument towards his case, but because I felt the exact same way as a Business graduate looking for a marketing job. I realized that anyone and everyone is encouraged to apply for these positions and that my Business degree with a focus on Marketing gave me no edge at all. At first I was bitter and ranted on and on just like Chris did here in his article. After stopping to think about it for a second, I realized that perhaps my degree didn’t really give me an edge and in fact there could be countless non ‘marketers’ that would be much better at the job than I. The first step to recovery in this situation of feeling a decline in the value of your degree and profession is admitting the problem.

Which leads me to step number two: doing something about the problem. Besides perhaps having a linguistic edge over us non-journalist, you must realize that your sole added value as a writer is as you point out, “We actually talk to, in person, the people we write about.” So that’s what you should stick to, and sleep safe knowing that us bloggers will probably never have access to these sources. Journalists provide factual data, and bloggers take it and play with it how they like. That’s how the game works, welcome to the 21st century. If people weren’t interested in sports enough to share their opinions and blog about them, there would certainly be a decrease in the amount of newspapers bought or sites visited. This would essentially lead to a decrease in revenue of media entities, and would lead to some fully trained journalists such as Chris to be out of work. It is in nobody’s interest to mess with the fragile ecosystem in place.

What ecosystem do I speak of? Let’s make it very clear that the majority of bloggers do not make a living out of blogging. I would say it’s on the other side of the spectrum if you consider ‘journalists’. Hence it is completely wrong to look at the two as rival products, in fact they are complementary to each other’s success. As I mentioned, bloggers rely on journalists to do all the ‘hard work’ for them. If there was no hard work for bloggers to ‘copy and paste’, it is then that the journalists should feel threatened. But to take the current situation and publicly belittle bloggers who just blog as hobby is very irresponsible. You are biting the hand that feeds you.

I don’t know what kind of insecurities has rattled Chris’ cage but it is clear that he would like professional journalists such as himself to be given much more credit – and this I can’t say I support. Since journalists rely on constant stories and a readerbase to make a living, their‘work’ ends up being far less reliable than Chris makes it out to be. As Chris brought up himself, ESPN and every other news company of some sort will generate story after story just to keep readers coming to their site. You will have: made up trade rumours, stories that are misleading, reporting news that should be left personal, over dramatizing events, and making more out of a story than what you must have been taught in ‘Journalism Ethics 101′. I think anyone who follows sports cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercisely will know what I am talking about. Furthermore, every story needs to have a catch or keep readers interested, which results in twisting the real story for their personal point. Imagine a tabloid magazine reporting dull news – this is a recipe for disaster. Sports media similarly needs to keep filling the headlines that will sell papers and make web surfers click the story. A blogger on the other hand has no quota to fill and no credentials to make up a story, so at least what he reports is what he genuinely feels. No bosses to worry about, no sportstars he has to keep happy to get more interviews, and no readerbase that he has to keep hooked. Yes, there will be instances where an irresponsible blogger will try to draw all eyes on him, but it is not the standard that should be applied to the other millions of bloggers out there. Much like there are bad journalists, there are bad bloggers.

You must also try to understand that just because you have a journalism degree, it doesn’t mean that you know more about sports than us bloggers sitting at home in the basement in their pijamas. In fact, those who end up blogging about sports for no revenue must be die-hard sports fans – wouldn’t you agree?

It is time to get off your high horse and accept bloggers and blogging, because it is not a phenomenon that will pass with time. People from the dawn of time have enjoyed communication, sharing thoughts and ideas and feeling part of a community. So get use to us, and if anything step up your journalism work so us bloggers won’t have a chance to ‘discredit’ your reporting – as I have just done here today.