WHERE'S THE BEEF?
-VS-
Game Time Start: 8:00 PM EST
Where: The Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN
Officials: J. Crawford, L. Richardson, J. Tiven
Media Notes: Indiana Notes, Chicago Notes
Television: ESPN / WCIU (Chicago) / NBAC (Canada)
Radio: WFNI 1070 AM / WMVP 1000 AM
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PACERS None BULLS Taj Gibson - left knee (out) Richard Hamilton - lower back (day-to-day) Derrick Rose - left knee (out) |
Isaac Rauch: Four Things You Can Learn About The NBA By Skimming Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Research Papers The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is under way in Boston and, though we sent no intrepid reporters to Dorkapalooza this year, the conference happily made its research paper finalists publicly available on its website. Let's blearily page through and see if we can't learn a few things. (We're focused on the SSAC's primary muse, the NBA, but this year they also have football, baseball, tennis and soccer papers, for those interested.) Some of it is conventional wisdom backed up by new metrics, some of it is new wisdom backed up by new metrics, but all of it is far more mathematically supported than any argument you've ever had about NBA players or basketball strategy. Let's get to it. A good defensive big man doesn't block shots, he reduces the efficiency of the opposing offense. Eric Weiss of Sports Aptitude, LLC and Kirk Goldsberry of Harvard (whose work has been featured here and on Grantland) wanted to develop metrics for evaluating defense, a portion of the game that's often ignored even by supposedly comprehensive statistics. The duo doesn't think that tallying blocks and steals says much about a defensive performance: The NBA's most prominent defensive metrics can be misleading, but this is not a problem unique to basketball. Until very recently, the dominant conventional defensive metrics in baseball were "errors" and "fielding percentage," which do not frequently correlate with a player's true defensive value. In the NFL, the best cornerbacks never lead the league in any conventional stats because quarterbacks are too afraid to even throw in their direction; they don't even get chances to defend passes. Basketball exhibits similar issues; our conventional defensive metrics fail to accurately reveal the NBA's most dominant defenders. As with a cornerback that's frequently the focal point of a play, blocking a lot of shots isn't always positive; it means the opposing team is testing you, which isn't a particularly flattering game-plan. A guy like Serge Ibaka may rack up blocks but, the paper notes, "coming out of nowhere" means that the other team doesn't have a consistent sense for where you are. In all probability, that's because it doesn't much care. So who are the good defensive big men? Weiss and Goldsberry used tracking data to determine the efficiency of the opposing team while a given defender is in their area, and the disparity between an opposing team's normal shot selection and its shot selection when it faces a given big man. It turns out that Larry Sanders and Roy Hibbert are excellent at disrupting a team's shots in the paint, while Dwight Howard is good at deterring shots in the paint from even happening. Conversely, teams shoot a great percentage in the paint against David Lee, and Serge Ibaka is a magnet for players driving and posting up. Overall, NBA shooters make 49.7% of their field goal attempts when qualifying interior defender is within 5 feet of the basket; however, this number drops to 38% when either Hibbert or Sanders are within 5 feet. In contrast, we found that Phoenix's Luis Scola and Golden State's David Lee were the worst defenders in these situations [...] When Howard is protecting the basket, opponents shoot many fewer close range shots than average, and settle for many more midrange shots, which are the least productive shots in the NBA. Furthermore, out of centers who have faced at least 100 total shots in the basket proximity study, Serge Ibaka ranked last; when he is within 5 feet of the basket, opponents shot 74% of their shots in the close range area. Weiss and Goldsberry also looked at who tends to get near shots (within five feet), and who tends to affect shots when they're close by—for all his pugnacious posturing, Tyler Hansbrough has a habit of getting out of the way, while Larry Sanders again proves good at inserting himself into the play. Click over for full tables, some pretty pictures, and a first look at defensive metrics that will likely be standard on advanced stat sheets soon. (The strangest finding...CONTINUE READING AT HOOP CHALK |
Ricky O'Donnell: Bulls slump brings out varying media rationalizations The Bulls have lost seven of their last 10 games. The local media has varying ideas on what's causing the team's recent struggles. This fair site would seem to take little-to-zero satisfaction in the non-Bulls related basketball happenings around the league on any given night, but it feels important to point out that Wednesday really was fun in the Association. Stephen Curry hit 11 three -pointers and hung 54 points on the Knicks in a close loss, Monta Ellis drained a crazy buzzer-beater, Wes Johnson drained a crazy buzzer-beater, Trevor Ariza air-balled a potential buzzer-beater that caused one of the funniest reactions you'll ever see on a broadcast. There were sweet behind-the-back passes and killer dunks. Wednesday night in the NBA had it all. Now the Bulls and 76ers are here to ruin your life. It isn't hard to see why TNT pegged Bulls-76ers for its prime Thursday night slot during the time when such things are decided. Calendar math said Derrick Rose would have been back by now, and putting a national spotlight on a game versus Philadelphia would have allowed plenty of time for all of those ready-made TV talking points. This could have been full circle for Rose's recovery, in the same arena, against the same team that he tore his ACL. Instead, the country will be left watching two immensely banged up squads at the low point of their existence. More: The anatomy of a skid Doug Collins' rant drew plenty of headlines earlier this week, but it only happened because his team is playing so poorly. The 76ers are missing center Andrew Bynum almost as much as the Bulls are missing Rose. Philly has lost six straight, with Tuesday night's loss to the lowly Magic triggering Collins' delightful screed. While the 76ers are 12th in defensive efficiency, they're 27th in offense. Sound familiar? The Bulls -- fourth in defensive efficiency, 25th in offensive efficiency -- aren't much different. The similarities here are striking, though the win-loss records are quite the opposite. It's enough to make one very thankful the Bulls selected the correct big man in the 2007 draft. The point remains: these are two teams that have seen better days. Following what might be Chicago's worst loss of the season, 101-98 home defeat to the Kyrie Irving -less Cavs, the local media finally started to kick dirt. What's interesting to me is how the Bulls' struggles were framed by the different beat writers. We'll just focus on two of them right now: the Tribune's K.C. Johnson and ESPN Chicago's Nick Friedell. Each took a very different approach to describing the Bulls' recent woes. The Chicago Bulls are exhausted. That's not the type of excuse that coach Tom Thibodeau loathes -- it is a fact. These are Friedell's opening words, and they aren't exactly incorrect. Remember when the Bulls blitzed the Cavs in Cleveland in the second game of the season? Or the 26 -point thumping the Bulls gave Cleveland at the United Center in early January? Friedell's reasoning for the Bulls' struggles are surface-level: the heavy-minutes burden Tom Thibodeau places on Luol Deng and Joakim Noah has started to take its toll; injuries to Noah, Taj Gibson and Kirk Hinrich haven't helped, either. Friedell paints a picture of...CONTINUE READING AT BLOG A BULL |
Pacers Mike Wells @MikeWellsNBA Jared Wade @8pts9secs Tim Donahue @TimDonahue8p9s Tom Lewis @indycornrows |
Bulls K.C. Johnson @KCJHoop BullsBlogger @BullsBlogger Kelly Dwyer @KDonhoops Mark Deeks @MarkDeeksNBA |
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