Saturday Morning Cartoons: Deo-Durant

Make that... a few other elite teams manage "to do much better at that, reducing their mid-range shots from the norm of 45% down into the 30-35% range".

You'd want to do that without losing the current push to drive the ball and the current volume of success in doing so. That would take wisdom and efficiency to eliminate pretty much just the drives that aren't going to make it inside. But a few other elite teams manage that. With systems / good plays and experience.

A lot of their inside game gain came at the expense of the 3 point game. Phase two should be replace mid-rangers with 3s.

Another way to look at it / spin it is that they really wanted the Thunder to learn to take the ball inside more. In 06-07 the sonics were a bit below average on inside shots and near the bottom on free throw attempts. They started to climb up on one, then both. A lot more bail-out mid-range shots along the way but they achieved their FTA goal (3rd best) and improved their inside shots (Last season was 11th best. They actually slipped back from 7th best in 08-09 though). Need to keep the gains but also still need to shed more of the mid-range baggage that came with it.

Thanks Ian.

As for the mid-range reliance, I checked the history. Before the new ownership, management, first coach and Durant & Green arrived the Sonics were just a tick below league average on mid-range attempts per game at 36.8 per game.

What happened from there? In 07-08 hey up to 49.1 mid-range shots per game! 5 more than anybody else and 11 more than average. Was that because PJ & they didn't know better or couldn't do better? I don't know.

they eventually caught on with the new coach sharply reducing mid-rangers in 2008-09 to 41.7 but that was still noticeably above average. Last season they bumped it down to 38.4. So it took 3 seasons to undo the unusual variance / damage and get back to near league average on this. Makes me wonder some about the quality of the strategy / instruction / control systems that it was allowed to happen at all (though I guess it got better draft picks) and that it took this long to correct but at least they got back to average.

League average was hardly changed from 07-08 and is 36.8. So they are still slightly above average. Orlando is at 26.5 and is probably the best on this. Houston and New York are at just a bit above 30.

Do the Thunder settle for being just slightly higher (worse) than average on this or do they push to be elite and lower than average on mid-range frequency? I'd hope it will be the latter but we will see. Maybe the new acquisitions play some and take some more 3s and fewer mid-rangers. Maybe guys will get pulled out for taking unwise or just too frequent mid-rangers. Hopefully maybe.

That's great work Crow. It can be frustrating sometimes that teams keep what they know so close to the chest. With all the strong basketball minds in their organization it seems likely that they have an awareness of this and factor it in when making lineup adjustments.

I do think their reliance on jumpshots is going to be somewhat of a limiting factor this season. It might be what makes them a very good team as opposed to a great one.

Wandering into the stats I found more than I expected. My version of common sense and judgment from watching were applied as needed and as I could bring them to bear. I doubt I'd have gotten this much without using the stats to open the door, but that's just works best for me.

There is more here. 5 of the top 6 had Harden. The very best offensive efficiency had both in the small ball lineup with Green at PF and Durant at C. Though who you try specialty lineups against obviously matters and can be limiting.

The use of Westbrook, Durant and Ibaka together with somebody not in the top 7 could be inefficiency, "necessity", "testing" or something else.

If somebody had the chance to ask Brooks and Presti about that lineup issue that would be pretty hard-core. It is not trivial. It will be an issue for the future to be avoided, fixed or not. Might be interesting to hear the answer given. Of course they might just select to blow it off or give a general fairly non-responsive answer to avoid the scrutiny or revelation of too much of their thinking.

Did the Thunder 1) just use eyes & common sense or 2) stats or 3) both or 4) were they just lucky? Don't know.

There are a number of ways you can field 5 of the top 7 on % of their shots being from these high percentage locations together.

And guess what? The 2 best lineups on offensive efficiency used over 50 minutes both had 5 of the top 7 on the court. 3rd and 4th best had 4 of the top 7 and Krstic. 5th thru 7th had 5 of the 7. 8th had 4 and Maynor. 9th and 11th had 4 and Krstic again. 10th and 12th had 4 and somebody else. That is pretty solid selection, but you might be able to up it some.

If the players stay near the same on % of good shots should you try to avoid putting more than 2 of Westbrook, Durant and Ibaka on the court together, or especially with somebody not in the top 7? Probably at least on the latter scenario. How often did they play the 3 together? About 35% of Ibaka's minutes or about 11% of all minutes but they did alright overall. How did they do on offense when the 3 were out there with somebody not in the top 7? 8th, 11th and 12th out of 12. I'd avoid that and put out a better lineup.

But that is the crazy stats talking. Probably somebody can figure this out just by watching and using common sense.

Harden is top dog on both.

I don't know if Durant can get more inside shots but I'd think he surely can get more 3 point shots over mid-rangers.

The bottom 4 guys are the same on the two lists. Your role and longevity with the team probably ought to be reviewed carefully in you are in that group, specially on the 2nd list.

How do they compare of % of their shots being from these high percentage locations?

James Harden 76%
Thabo Sefolosha 65%
Nick Collison 65%
Jeff Green 62%
Russ Westbrook 49%
Serge Ibaka 47%
Kevin Durant 47%
Eric Maynor 40%
B.J. Mullens 32%
Nenad Krstic 31%
D.J. White 29%

How do the Thunder players rank on frequency of high percentage inside or 3 pt shots per 40 minutes? (Frequency is different than % of their shots)

James Harden 10
Kevin Durant 9.6
Jeff Green 8.7
Russ Westbrook 8.1
Serge Ibaka 5.3
Nick Collison 5.2
Thabo Sefolosha 4.9
D.J. White 4.8
B.J. Mullens 4.3
Eric Maynor 4.2
Nenad Krstic 4

Houston, Orlando (and NY) have close to the best shot distributions considering 2 perspectives. Phoenix, Denver and Utah weren't far behind. The Clippers were more rationale in shot selection than you might think. Several "elite" western teams were merely slightly above average to average on this. If you want to beat them, I'd say passing them on wise shot selection will be one of the main ways.

The flip side being the Thunder is a bit above average on mid-range shots. They get more fouls shots.

Plenty of room for improving the shot distribution. And I'd say they need to, if they are to be top contenders in a tough west.

Thunder get one more shot than average inside mainly from drives.

6 teams in the west got more, though 2 were playoff teams.
The Griz lead the league. Surprising the Lakers were only 0.1 shots higher than average on inside shots. Last season Portland and Dallas were bottom 5 in the league.

Add the higher percentage inside shots to 3 point shots and Houston was 2nd to NY. Phoneix 4th, Denver 6th, New Orleand 9th, Utah was 10th, Lakers 12th. OKC 22nd. Portland 28th.

I'm sure most of you have seen this, but I had to post this for those who haven't. KD's part at the :38 second mark is too funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrLpOFXLmdE

A new Susan Bible article at Hoopsworld says Brooks and Green are tight.

Presti is in charge though.

As for inside shots Westbrook, Durant and Green account for a bit over half the team total.

Collison, Ibaka, Kristic for a quarter; Harden, Thabo, and Maynor for about a quarter.

A sprinkle from the rest.

Collison was in 4th place, Harden 5th, Ibaka 6th.

Harden will surely move up, Ibaka might.

I'm still not giving up my Mitchum.

Vegas expects 7 teams in the West at or over 47 wins and then a bit of a dropoff but not much to 43-44. Another metric has 8 at or over 46. There is a reasonable chance it could fall anywhere between 6 and 10. 7 or 8 are probably most likely.

Ahh... So it's a "low-post skorara" that we need. I feel like I'm reading Beowulf here.

Hang in there, Iceland. And please tell Bjork to start making intelligible music again.

@Gunnar Þór
Sweet! Good stuff.

Not a really difficult find, I wrote the article =)

@Gunnar Þór
Nice find! Viva Iceland!

Since I'm not a real journalist hence I have no job credibility to lose when it comes to my articles I am going to put OKC second. You might not think it's such a ridiciluous prediction, heck, even 93 "specialists" from espn had the thunder finishing second. Me putting OKC second on the other hand goes against everything I believe about winning basketball. Durant is a great scorer and will likely lead the league in scoring and even win the MVP since lebron and wade are sharing the spotlight in miami and kobe has reached the tim duncan stage of his career. But how the fuck can you put this team second when it has no low post scorer, a team which a 57 kg men by the name of durant leads in rebounding, a team which has no real efficient second go to guy, a team which wasn't a really good 3 point team and a team which technically should still be in school. These kind of things happen though when teams exceed all expectations and then gives the defending and soon to be champs all they can handle. The truth is though that the team is much more likely to finish somewhere between 4-8 but fuck it, this is my team and I would have put them in the first place if the owner of the website wasn't a die hard lakers fan and had promised me some possible money for my next article

This is the piece about OKC loosely translated

@Gunnar Þór
I just know why Hornet is 8th

Google Chrome translator made parts of that article sound pretty funny

@Royce

http://vol.is/?p=902

I can't believe you missed this in your friday bolts, OKC predicted second in an Icelandic news article :D