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The NBA's Championship standard: Crunching the numbers

Nebo Franich new author
Roar Rookie
27th April, 2016
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Kawhi Leonard is off to Canada. (AP Photo/Darren Abate)
Nebo Franich new author
Roar Rookie
27th April, 2016
14

With the NBA Playoffs heating up, what better way to get into the playoff spirit than some good old fashioned data trawling.

Specifically, data trawling to give us an indication of which teams are wasting their time, and which teams have a realistic shot of winning the Championship. Obviously, the San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors are the hot favourites, but can any other team challenge them? Let’s find out.

According to the 2015-16 regular season stats, three teams fit the mould of a Championship team; the Spurs, the Warriors, and one other. This mould is the championship criteria that 13 of the past 15 NBA Champions have met.

First of all, the criteria is simple, but complicated enough to make me think it is something that you couldn’t have… been bothered discovering (or that you couldn’t be bothered replicating the analysis that Champion Data does for AFL teams on the NBA).

It relies on the basic premise that to win basketball games (and championships) you have to score a reasonable amount more than your opponent scores. But you have to do this on a consistent basis with a proven track record.

Luckily the NBA regular season, which, in terms of total games’ minutes, actually runs ten times longer than the total sum of minutes in Seinfeld’s nine seasons, provides the opportunity for NBA teams to demonstrate this proven track record.

When you trawl through the data: boom!

1. 13 out of the 15 most recent NBA Champions have a net offensive adjusted rating above 108 points per 100 possessions. (2012 Miami was 107.97, I’m including them for simplicity)

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2. All 15 of the most recent NBA Champions have a net defensive adjusted rating below 105.5 points per 100 possessions. (2013 Miami was 105.53, I’m including them for simplicity)

Combining these two statistics into one image delivers a matrix that shows the competitive positioning of the past 15 NBA champions. More importantly, however, a ‘Championship Standard’ appears, which shows that 13 out of the 15 previous NBA champions appear in the top left hand quadrant of the matrix.

The only two teams that don’t feature in the ‘Championship Standard’ quadrant are the 2003 Spurs who recorded the third best adjusted defensive rating of all 15 previous NBA champions, and the defensive juggernaut 2004 Detroit Pistons who had Ben Wallace, a man who would probably try and play D in the all-star game dunk competition and three point shootout.

I know you are thinking that all of this is pretty obvious and that of course to win basketball games you have to play a combination of good defence and good offence. You are 100 per cent correct. However, a few more questions need to be explored. I want to know (and I’m hoping you also want to know) how the previous 15 NBA Finals’ runner ups have performed on the above matrix, and even how the previous 15 Conference Finals’ runner ups have performed.

Data trawwwwlllll time…

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In terms of the NBA Finals runner ups, just five out of the last 15 runner ups have met the Championship Standard. The statistics are similar for the Conference Finals’ runner ups, with just 12 out of 30 meeting the Championship Standard. Two things are now clear. Firstly, you achieve the standard and you have a good chance of winning the NBA Championship, and secondly, this is not an easy feat to achieve.

When studying the matrix in closer detail, a third point becomes clear: there is an inverse relationship between the offensive and defensive ratings of the NBA teams we have mapped so far. The dotted line below shows this relationship.

Generally, if the mapped NBA teams have a higher defensive rating, their offensive rating is lower; and if they have a higher offensive rating, their defensive rating is lower. In essence, it means that teams build on their competitive advantages and trade-off between having either effective offensive or defensive systems. The only NBA team mapped that could be considered to have an equally effective Championship Standard both defensively and offensively is the 2015 Golden State Warriors, being the only team close to the centre of the Championship Standard quadrant of the matrix.

Explaining why teams specialise in either offence or defence is pretty simple: there aren’t too many effective two-way players in the NBA. If you are an NBA General Manager you can either draft or trade for a number of average, or just above average, two-way players or you can build your team around your key personnel and be either offensively or defensively focused. The two extreme examples of this are the 2010 Phoenix Suns and the 2004 Detroit Pistons, the best offensive and defensive teams (respectively) of those mapped in the above matrices so far.

The 2010 Phoenix Suns had athleticism and speed with Jason Richardson and Amare Stoudamire; three point shooting with Channing Frye, Grant Hill and Jared Dudley; and the offensive maestro to run it all, Steven Nash. With this personnel, it’s only logical that their offensive game plan would focus on taking early shots in transition, and either open threes or layups in the half court, with Nash’s pick and rolls providing the basis for this.

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Something they couldn’t do with this personnel and offensive structure, however, was effectively defend and lockdown on their opposition. Their game style didn’t allow it and neither did their personnel. Sometimes it seemed as if those high octane Phoenix teams preferred it when the opposition team scored just so they could get the ball back and go down the other end.

Oh, it also doesn’t help when your starting four-man, Amare Stoudamire – a man who has been playing in the NBA since 2004, has had access to the best resources available in the world for every single one of his years in the Association – says this in his 11th NBA season when he was 30 years of age….

“I’ve never been taught defence in my whole career. To now have a coach that actually teaches defence and teaches strategies and knows positioning and posture and how to guard different plays is going to be helpful. I’m going to take it as a challenge, accept the challenge and try to improve as a player.”

For the 2004 Detroit Pistons it’s a similar story, they capitalised on their strength; suffocating their opponent with their bruising defence, which ranked first in three point percentage allowed, third in field goal percentage allowed, and sixth in turnovers forced. Their offensive structures also revolved around restricting their opponent through their offensive game play, with the Pistons rarely taking quick shots or three pointers (26th in three point attempts and field goal attempts), and limiting opponents’ easy buckets in transition. Also Ben Wallace, while one of the best defensive players in his generation, was just awful on offence, averaging under six points per game and shooting just 41per cent from the free throw line over his 17 season NBA career.

Recap time.

1. 13 of the 15 most recent NBA Champions have met a Championship Standard represented by the top left quadrant of our matrix.

2. This Standard is not easily achieved.

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3. Teams who have finished the NBA season as a Conference Final runner up or above generally specialise in either restricting their opponents with their defence, or punishing them with their offence.

Let’s now apply what we know to this season’s NBA teams.

The San Antonio Spurs, Golden State Warriors and the LA Clippers are the three teams that, from their play during the 2015-16 NBA season, meet the NBA Championship Standard. A few interesting points on this matrix:

1. Whether it’s because of Kobe Bryant’s farewell season, Steph Curry’s unbelievable year or NBA legends coming out and saying that the 1996 Chicago Bulls team would sweep the current Golden State team in a four game series, we don’t fully appreciate what San Antonio and Golden State have achieved this year. Out of all the teams in the past 15 years that have finished the NBA season as a Conference Finals’ runner up or above, San Antonio’s adjusted defensive rating ranks sixth; while Golden State’s adjusted offensive rating ranks third (behind only the 2005 and 2010 Phoenix teams).

2. The LA Clippers having had the year they have had without Blake Griffin speaks volumes of Chris Paul’s play. It also confirms for me that Blake Griffin will get shipped this offseason.

3. The relationship we found, where NBA teams specialise and build on their strength of either defence or offence, does not apply to all NBA teams. The bad teams are just plain bad in all facets of the game e.g. all teams in the bottom right quadrant of the above matrix. This is likely due to the fact that these teams either don’t have:
– General Managers who recognise the need to specialise, and hence, have not drafted or traded players who have skill sets that complement their teammates’;
– coaches who recognise the need to specialise or the skill sets of their players; or
– players with above NBA average skill sets.

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In terms of this season, the interesting (and devastating) scenario exists where two of the Championship Standard teams are missing their best players. The Golden State Warriors have lost Stephen Curry to a knee injury for a minimum of two weeks, while the LA Clippers have lost Chris Paul to a fractured hand for three to six weeks and Blake Griffin for the rest of the Playoffs. Golden State are deep enough to get through the second round without Curry (IMO they still would have won 50 regular season games this season if they didn’t have Curry); though the same can’t be said for Clippers. A Paul-less and Griffin-less Clippers team will stink. With the Clips gone, I can’t see Portland challenging the Warriors enough to even force six games. This leaves us with the dream match-up of the boring but fundamentally strong, defensively minded Spurs versus the offensively brilliant but just brilliant Warriors in the Western Conference Finals.

My tip for the dream match-up: I have absolutely no idea. My tip for the Spurs or the Warriors versus anyone in the NBA Finals: four or five game EASY series win for either. Why? Because the data, and more importantly the matrix, said so.

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