11/26 - vs Hawks - Trae Young has stupid hair
- Thread starter mikeford
- Start date
We are gonna finally sign a Bogdanovic some day after their legs are gone and I’m gonna spend an offseason dreaming on how he will help
If defensive rotations leave him as the guy who needs to contest the corner, he probably needs to get out and do that. If this were Timelord and he was making a traditional contest would you feel the same way (that he should just stay home for rebounding)? My understanding is that the stats support his approach working as a form of contesting shots, so your position is either aesthetically motivated, or you should be against bigs ever contesting threes via close outs, not just Kornet doing it via his unorthodox but effective approach.
Tatum’s ability to finish when he has no offensive advantage is pretty extraordinary. He might be the best player in the current game at that (AI is the first player who comes to mind as clearly better than Tatum at this specific offensive skill). Obviously, generating advantages consistently would be better and Tatum remains only good at that rather than elite.
If you could share the data I would love to see it. Anything I find has such a small sample size, 36 shots at most, that it is probably not significant. Of the 36 shots the contest saved about 1.5 makes. I can’t find anything on a change in offensive rebound percentage so it is mostly the eye test I am using.
I’m not aware of any sufficient data set to say it works with confidence but there’s various small sample tracking sets available on Google from different points in time that all point in the direction of it being effective. Saving 1.5 makes in 36 shots is like a 5% reduction in percentage, which is significant. But I think the ESPN article probably understates the admittedly small sample size effect because the comparison set should be wide open threes and probably mostly wide open corner threes, if the alternative option is not contesting at all v. is it better than a traditional closeout. I don’t have league stats for that handy, but it probably moves the SSS effect to closer to a 10% reduction, which is very significant. If you assume it’s not more effective that a normal closeout, which I think is reasonable, my original question stands, which is are you against bigs closing out generally to contest shots because you’d rather they stay home to rebound? I should be clear that while that position would be unorthodox, I’m not in a position to say it’s wrong, but it seems targeting Kornet on this makes little sense.
As an aside, the Celtics are surely tracking the effectiveness of this and have a much bigger than 36 shot sample at this point (probably several hundred shots across levels and seasons). That he continues to do it indicates their data shows it is sufficiently effective to support using it, since this isn’t an old habits are hard to break scenario.
If the Celtics were in a horror movie, they’d spend the third quarter of it deciding to split up and investigate the basement and the attic.
I am always amazed when NBA players complain after obviously correct calls against them that are called essentially 100% of the time. Like, you hack the forearms during a gather for a layup/dunk, NBA refs almost never miss that. Just accept the correct call and save the complaint at least for contact that sometimes isn’t called.