WITNESS THIS!
-VS-
Game Time Start: 7:00 PM ET
Where: The Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN
Officials: T. Washington, O. Poole, Z. Zarba
Media Notes: Indiana Notes, Miami Notes
Television: FOX Sports Indiana / Sun Sports / ESPN
Radio: WFNI 1070 AM / WAXY 790 AM
NBA Feeds:
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*NBA League Pass Broadband (subscription req'd)
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PACERS Danny Granger - left knee tendinosis (out) HEAT Nada |
Fill in the blank: ESPN doubleheader What do we make of the four teams heading into Friday night's national spotlight (ESPN, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ET)? Our team thinks deep about the Heat, Lakers, Pacers and Timberwolves, as well as the league at large. 1. The Miami Heat are __________. Danny Chau, Hardwood Paroxysm: Counting down the days until April. If there is any team with a legitimate on/off switch, it's the Heat. The team has the fourth-best record in the league, but it feels like a disappointment. But when the playoffs arrive -- when the team will be able to devise team-specific strategies and matchups -- we'll start seeing the genius of last season emerge again. Aaron McGuire, Gothic Ginobili: Coasting. Some defending champions emerge from their championship primed to obliterate the league in their title defense. Miami is emphatically not one such team; they prefer the Phil Jackson route. Of course, it barely matters. They're still great enough to take half the nights off and stay healthily atop a poor Eastern Conference. Still coasting, though. Benjamin Polk, A Wolf Among Wolves: Biding their time. The season is long; the Eastern Conference is soft; the champs know this. As these Heat jaunt through the playoffs, I would not be the least bit surprised to see their defense slowly become the suffocation machine that it was last season. Jared Wade, 8 Points, 9 Seconds: The only team in the East worth taking seriously. The Knicks were great early, the Nets have been riding a wave since they canned Avery Johnson, the Pacers have a world-class defense, and the Bulls could beat anyone if Derrick Rose comes back healthy. But all these "contenders" are a clear tier below the reigning champs. Michael Wallace, ESPN.com: Right on schedule. What other team that has been in first place in either conference this season has been as criticized as much as the Heat? Yes, the defending champs will have bouts of boredom, stints of less-than-stellar play and a few mind-boggling losses. But as long as they remain relatively healthy through the rigorous regular season, they're fine. 2. The Los Angeles Lakers are __________. Chau: Making some riveting television. Kobe has assumed a new character, and things were going remarkably well with the increased ball movement. But like any good drama, it never lasts, and the last few minutes are never predictable. Every game has become a matter of life or death in the standings and it's must-see TV, no matter where your allegiance lies. McGuire: Blundering. What else do you call a team that thoroughly outplays the West's best team one night and gives up a 21-4 run to squander a 13-point 4th-quarter lead against one of the worst teams in the league not two days later? Inconsistent, incoherent and tough to crack. Polk: Really hoping that Dwight Howard's shoulder is OK. It's true that Howard is nowhere near the MVP-caliber destroyer he was before his back surgery and also that he hasn't exactly assimilated into the cutthroat, grim-faced culture of Kobe Bryant. But its also true that, without Howard, the Lakers' defense goes from mediocre to nightmarishly bad. Wade: Toast. If they weren't in the West, they might have a chance to turn this around, limp into the playoffs and advance to the conference finals. But even if the Lakers do play a postseason series in April, it will be against a heavyweight team they can't beat. Wallace: Disjointed. Disappointing. Disturbing. Pick a word that starts with "d" and it probably applies. Well, with the exception of "defense." At this pace, the Lakers will produce the most disappointing season in recent pro sports history, based on expectations. When Michael Beasley is lighting you up, all hope is gone. 3. The Indiana Pacers are __________. Chau: Ready for Danny Granger to return. There's no guarantee his incorporation will be a smooth one, but the team needs him. Whether it means Lance Stephenson -- a pleasant surprise for Indiana this season -- being demoted to sixth man, or Granger assuming that role himself, the Pacers are in dire need of a boost in their weak second unit. McGuire: Plodding, above all else. The Pacers have been many things this season. Disappointing to shocking. A punching bag to an elite unit. Dominant to docile. Through it all? They've been one of the slowest-paced teams in the entire league, a plodding bunch that grinds out tough wins and kills their opponents' spirit. Polk: In desperate need of...CONTINUE READING 5-ON-5 AT ESPN |
Kyle Soppe: Correlation Between NetRtg and Quarter What quarter deserves the most attention when trying to draw a link between NetRtg (points scored per 100 possessions minus points allowed per 100 possessions) and dwinning? What does it take to be number one? In each season, beginning with the 2007-2008 campaign, the most linked quarterly Rtg (offensive or defensive) was the first quarter. A poor DefRtg in the first 12 minutes resulted in the highest Loss Correlation in each of the past five seasons. Also, fans like to obsess over the fourth quarter scoring (How often have you heard, “Kobe is the most clutch player of all time” or early in his career “LeBron freezes up down the stretch and couldn’t finish a game is his life depended on it”?), but is that really all that important? The average Win Correlation for OffRtg (how directly tied the game result is to the number of points scored per 100 possessions) is lower in the fourth quarter than the average of quarters one through three in every single season since 2007. This stat indicates that the offensive efficiency prior to the fourth quarter is consistently more crucial to winning that what a team does in the final 12 minutes. In fact, if you’re still going to look at the fourth quarter as the most crucial of quarters, you’re better off looking at the defensive efficiency. In three of the five seasons studied, the average Loss Correlation for DefRtg was higher in the fourth quarter than the average of the first three quarters three times. When analyzing the data from the past five seasons, it becomes obvious that games are won in the early going, as opposed to the final few minutes. Success is ultimately determined by victories and the wins leader (Lakers with 277) has the greatest cumulative first quarter NetRtg (48.2) over the last five seasons. Coincidence? I think not. The total number of wins by the quarterly NetRtg leader decreases as you progress through the game. But this trend isn’t only true for the elite teams, it holds true for the NBA as a whole. The top 17 teams in terms of wins over the last five seasons are the exact same 17 teams that lead the way in cumulative first quarter NetRtg. Here is a look at how each team stacked up in total wins and cumulative NetRtg by quarter since 2007. Further disproving the myth of fourth quarter efficiency and its overall importance is the overall trend of the top teams in NetRtg and the bottom teams in NetRtg . Now, one must acknowledge the fact that blowouts do play a role in the late game data and not the early game stats, but with five years of games (394 games per team), the vast majority of games are competitive throughout. Even during a game which has for all intensive purposes been decided with considerable time left on the clock, both teams will turn to their reserves, thus not skewing the data a whole lot. Take a glance at the trend of the best team/worst team in terms of cumulative NetRtg by quarter. As you can see, the worst team in the league (in terms of cumulative NetRtg) improves as the game progresses while the best team gets worse. The gap from the best team to the worst team shrinks from 94.5 in the first quarter to 59.4 in the fourth stanza, a 37.1% drop off. With all of this data surrounding...CONTINUE READING AT HARDWOOD PAROXYSM |
Pacers Mike Wells @MikeWellsNBA Jared Wade @8pts9secs Tim Donahue @TimDonahue8p9s Tom Lewis @indycornrows |
Heat Brian Windhorst @windhorstESPN Tom Haberstroh @tomhaberstroh Ira Winderman @iraheatbeat Joseph Goodman @miamiheraldheat |
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