# All-NBA Predict #6 – Exploration of Historical NBA Team Offenses

Now that we’ve kinda realized that basketball is more than just a few numbers, let’s continue to use numbers to understand basketball. Bahah. Okay, I mean my realization now is along the lines of you can’t just be pitting one number against another. I can’t look at ORB and expect it to explain something about ORtg or W/L%. Rather, we have to look at numbers collectively to understand why they are the way they are. A lower ORB team, as we figured with the warriors, might be doing other things to help them win. Or, rather, their style of play just doesn’t lend to much offensive rebounds!

Anyways, these are all just guesses for now but, again, numbers must be looked at as an ensemble.

## The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I think I’ve essentially took a step back. I thought I knew which numbers to look at, I don’t even anymore. I’m stepping back to a 10000 ft. view and I basically think I don’t even know what a good team looks like. What do they do well? What don’t they do well? What do they need to do well? Which things that they do well dictate the style of their play?

I know that, for winning, ORtg > DRtg. But even in terms of offense, how are good teams good? The scoring? The rebounding? The accuracy of shooting? I can already see 2 posts into the future where I’m just as dumbfounded as I am now because I don’t have all the data / the right data, but I will have to start somewhere.

Let’s try to get some sense of what kind of patterns good teams exhibit, okay teams exhibit, and bad teams exhibit:

In [288]:
%load_ext rpy2.ipython

The rpy2.ipython extension is already loaded. To reload it, use:

In [289]:
%%R
# Load libraries & initial config
library(ggplot2)
library(gridExtra)
library(scales)

In [290]:
# Load libraries & initial config
%matplotlib nbagg
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import boto3
from StringIO import StringIO

Warning: Cannot change to a different GUI toolkit: nbagg. Using notebook instead.

In [291]:
# Retrieve team stats from S3
teamAggDfToAnalyze = pd.read_csv('https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/2017edmfasatb/fas_boto/data/teamAggDfToAnalyze.csv', index_col = 0)
print teamAggDfToAnalyze.dtypes

baseStats_Season                object
perGameStats_Tm                 object
baseStats_W                      int64
baseStats_L                      int64
baseStats_WLPerc               float64
baseStats_SRS                  float64
baseStats_Pace                 float64
baseStats_Rel_Pace             float64
baseStats_ORtg                 float64
baseStats_Rel_ORtg             float64
baseStats_DRtg                 float64
baseStats_Rel_DRtg             float64
perGameStats_Age               float64
perGameStats_MP                float64
perGameStats_FG                float64
perGameStats_FGA               float64
perGameStats_FGPerc            float64
perGameStats_2P                float64
perGameStats_2PA               float64
perGameStats_2PPerc            float64
perGameStats_3P                float64
perGameStats_3PA               float64
perGameStats_3PPerc            float64
perGameStats_FT                float64
perGameStats_FTA               float64
perGameStats_FTPerc            float64
perGameStats_ORB               float64
perGameStats_DRB               float64
perGameStats_TRB               float64
perGameStats_AST               float64
perGameStats_STL               float64
perGameStats_BLK               float64
perGameStats_TOV               float64
perGameStats_PF                float64
perGameStats_PTS               float64
opponentPerGameStats_FG        float64
opponentPerGameStats_FGA       float64
opponentPerGameStats_FGPerc    float64
opponentPerGameStats_3P        float64
opponentPerGameStats_3PA       float64
opponentPerGameStats_3PPerc    float64
opponentPerGameStats_FT        float64
opponentPerGameStats_FTA       float64
opponentPerGameStats_FTPerc    float64
opponentPerGameStats_ORB       float64
opponentPerGameStats_DRB       float64
opponentPerGameStats_TRB       float64
opponentPerGameStats_AST       float64
opponentPerGameStats_STL       float64
opponentPerGameStats_BLK       float64
opponentPerGameStats_TOV       float64
opponentPerGameStats_PF        float64
opponentPerGameStats_PTS       float64
season_start_year                int64
rtg_diff                       float64
dtype: object


Let’s run the function we wrote last post to adjust the main stats for pace again.

In [292]:
# This function adjusts the input stats for pace and outputs per 100 possession metrics
def paceConversion(df, listOfFields):
for field in listOfFields:
df['{}_per_100_poss'.format(field)] = (100/df['baseStats_Pace'])*(48/(df['perGameStats_MP']/5))*df[field]

return df

# Select a subset of columns to manage size of dataframe
teamAggDfToAnalyzeSelectedColumns = teamAggDfToAnalyze[[
'season_start_year',
'perGameStats_Tm',
'baseStats_W',
'baseStats_WLPerc',
'perGameStats_MP',
'baseStats_Pace',
'baseStats_Rel_Pace',
'baseStats_ORtg',
'baseStats_Rel_ORtg',
'baseStats_DRtg',
'baseStats_Rel_DRtg',
'perGameStats_PTS',
'perGameStats_2PA',
'perGameStats_2PPerc',
'perGameStats_3PA',
'perGameStats_3PPerc',
'perGameStats_FTA',
'perGameStats_FTPerc',
'perGameStats_ORB',
'perGameStats_DRB',
'perGameStats_AST',
'perGameStats_STL',
'perGameStats_BLK',
'perGameStats_TOV'
]]

# Pace adjust the following metrics
teamAggDfToAnalyzeSelectedColumns,
[
'perGameStats_PTS',
'perGameStats_2PA',
'perGameStats_3PA',
'perGameStats_FTA',
'perGameStats_ORB',
'perGameStats_DRB',
'perGameStats_AST',
'perGameStats_STL',
'perGameStats_BLK',
'perGameStats_TOV'
]
)

C:\Users\chixwang\AppData\Local\Continuum\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\__main__.py:4: SettingWithCopyWarning:
A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame.
Try using .loc[row_indexer,col_indexer] = value instead

See the caveats in the documentation: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy

In [293]:
# Check number of teams in history
print 'There have been {} teams in NBA history'.format(teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted.shape[0])

There have been 1453 teams in NBA history


Okay, so we have 1453 teams to work with. Let’s just take the top 10 teams, middle 10 teams, and worst 10 teams in NBA offence history and see if we can find any patterns.

First, I just want to refresh my memory and see if ORtg and W/L% correlate at all:

In [294]:
# Just trying out some quick pandas matplotlib plotting methods... pretty simple one liner!
teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted.plot(kind = 'scatter', x = 'baseStats_ORtg', y = 'baseStats_WLPerc', title = 'League Historical ORtg vs W/L%')

Out[294]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x12002e48>

The answer, again, kinda! Anyways, that was just so I can keep in the back of my mind if I can expect the top few ORtg teams to be winning teams and the bottom few ORtg teams to be losing teams. The answer is roughly yes.

In [295]:
# Define a dictionary in which we'll hold the top, middle, and bottom teams
teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiers = {}

# Define the number of teams to take in each "tier"
topN = 10

# First sort by ORtg and reset index
teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted.sort_values('baseStats_ORtg', ascending = False, inplace = True)

# Extract top 10 teams

# Extract bottom 10 teams

print teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiers['bottom']

      season_start_year perGameStats_Tm  baseStats_W  baseStats_WLPerc  \
1443               1949             FTW           40             0.588
1444               1948             FTW           22             0.367
1445               1949             PHW           26             0.382
1446               1948             PHW           28             0.467
1447               1947             PHW           27             0.563
1448               1946             PHW           35             0.583
1449               1949             ROC           51             0.750
1450               1948             ROC           45             0.750
1451               1949             MNL           51             0.750
1452               1948             MNL           44             0.733

perGameStats_MP  baseStats_Pace  baseStats_Rel_Pace  baseStats_ORtg  \
1443              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1444              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1445              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1446              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1447              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1448              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1449              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1450              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1451              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN
1452              NaN             NaN                 NaN             NaN

baseStats_Rel_ORtg  baseStats_DRtg              ...                \
1443                 NaN             NaN              ...
1444                 NaN             NaN              ...
1445                 NaN             NaN              ...
1446                 NaN             NaN              ...
1447                 NaN             NaN              ...
1448                 NaN             NaN              ...
1449                 NaN             NaN              ...
1450                 NaN             NaN              ...
1451                 NaN             NaN              ...
1452                 NaN             NaN              ...

perGameStats_PTS_per_100_poss  perGameStats_2PA_per_100_poss  \
1443                            NaN                            NaN
1444                            NaN                            NaN
1445                            NaN                            NaN
1446                            NaN                            NaN
1447                            NaN                            NaN
1448                            NaN                            NaN
1449                            NaN                            NaN
1450                            NaN                            NaN
1451                            NaN                            NaN
1452                            NaN                            NaN

perGameStats_3PA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_FTA_per_100_poss  \
1443                            NaN                            NaN
1444                            NaN                            NaN
1445                            NaN                            NaN
1446                            NaN                            NaN
1447                            NaN                            NaN
1448                            NaN                            NaN
1449                            NaN                            NaN
1450                            NaN                            NaN
1451                            NaN                            NaN
1452                            NaN                            NaN

perGameStats_ORB_per_100_poss  perGameStats_DRB_per_100_poss  \
1443                            NaN                            NaN
1444                            NaN                            NaN
1445                            NaN                            NaN
1446                            NaN                            NaN
1447                            NaN                            NaN
1448                            NaN                            NaN
1449                            NaN                            NaN
1450                            NaN                            NaN
1451                            NaN                            NaN
1452                            NaN                            NaN

perGameStats_AST_per_100_poss  perGameStats_STL_per_100_poss  \
1443                            NaN                            NaN
1444                            NaN                            NaN
1445                            NaN                            NaN
1446                            NaN                            NaN
1447                            NaN                            NaN
1448                            NaN                            NaN
1449                            NaN                            NaN
1450                            NaN                            NaN
1451                            NaN                            NaN
1452                            NaN                            NaN

perGameStats_BLK_per_100_poss  perGameStats_TOV_per_100_poss
1443                            NaN                            NaN
1444                            NaN                            NaN
1445                            NaN                            NaN
1446                            NaN                            NaN
1447                            NaN                            NaN
1448                            NaN                            NaN
1449                            NaN                            NaN
1450                            NaN                            NaN
1451                            NaN                            NaN
1452                            NaN                            NaN

[10 rows x 34 columns]

C:\Users\chixwang\AppData\Local\Continuum\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\__main__.py:8: SettingWithCopyWarning:
A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame

See the caveats in the documentation: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy
C:\Users\chixwang\AppData\Local\Continuum\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\__main__.py:10: SettingWithCopyWarning:
A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame

See the caveats in the documentation: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy


Oooooookay, I failed to realize that there seems to be some teams missing pace and minutes played metrics. First thought, these are probably older teams where these types of stats weren’t recorded?

In [296]:
# Plot years that don't have pace recorded
ax = teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted[np.isnan(teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted['perGameStats_MP'])][['season_start_year']].plot(kind = 'hist', title = 'Years with no Pace Recorded')

# Years come up as scientific notation by default, turn off
ax.ticklabel_format(useOffset=False)

# Years ticks are separated by 0.5 by default (e.g. 2001, 2001.5, 2002, 2002.5)... some black magic to make labels whole numbers
from matplotlib.ticker import MaxNLocator
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(integer=True))


Fortunately, our guess was correct. Looks like teams before 1964-ish doesn’t have pace recorded on basketball-reference. We’ve got about… 150 teams here. We can live without these, so let’s drop these rows.

In [297]:
# Drop rows without pace
teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted.dropna(subset = ['perGameStats_MP'], inplace = True)
print 'There have been {} teams in NBA history after dropping those which don\'t have recorded minutes played'.format(teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted.shape[0])

There have been 1318 teams in NBA history after dropping those which don't have recorded minutes played

C:\Users\chixwang\AppData\Local\Continuum\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\__main__.py:2: SettingWithCopyWarning:
A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame

See the caveats in the documentation: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy
from ipykernel import kernelapp as app


Awesome, let’s check the bottom 10 again.

In [298]:
# Extract top 10 teams

# Extract bottom 10 teams

print teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiers['bottom']

      season_start_year perGameStats_Tm  baseStats_W  baseStats_WLPerc  \
1345               1976             NYN           22             0.268
1346               2002             DEN           17             0.207
1349               1968             CHI           33             0.402
1351               1967             SDR           15             0.183
1362               1966             DET           30             0.370
1363               1964             BOS           62             0.775
1370               1964             DET           31             0.388
1374               1972             PHI            9             0.110
1386               1965             DET           22             0.275
1407               1964             SFW           17             0.213

perGameStats_MP  baseStats_Pace  baseStats_Rel_Pace  baseStats_ORtg  \
1345            240.6           103.7                -2.8            92.2
1346            240.6            91.0                 0.0            92.2
1349            240.9           113.4                -3.5            92.0
1351            240.9           121.9                 2.1            91.8
1362            241.9           121.5                -0.1            90.9
1363            240.9           123.6                 6.3            90.9
1370            241.6           119.2                 1.9            90.5
1374            240.6           115.2                 4.5            90.2
1386            240.0           123.4                 2.0            89.4
1407            241.9           119.7                 2.4            87.7

baseStats_Rel_ORtg  baseStats_DRtg              ...                \
1345                -7.3            98.7              ...
1346               -11.4           101.3              ...
1349                -3.5            94.0              ...
1351                -5.0            98.8              ...
1362                -5.2            95.4              ...
1363                -2.7            84.2              ...
1370                -3.1            93.3              ...
1374                -6.6           100.6              ...
1386                -5.5            94.9              ...
1407                -5.9            92.8              ...

perGameStats_PTS_per_100_poss  perGameStats_2PA_per_100_poss  \
1345                      92.247684                      84.744744
1346                      92.296731                      76.512017
1349                      91.983106                      85.921182
1351                      91.862243                      85.160549
1362                      90.885429                      86.149261
1363                      90.921181                      86.729780
1370                      90.420685                      86.420508
1374                      90.139235                      87.281796
1386                      89.384117                      86.142626
1407                      87.693396                      85.455474

perGameStats_3PA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_FTA_per_100_poss  \
1345                            NaN                      26.645056
1346                      10.961607                      24.773232
1349                            NaN                      27.586146
1351                            NaN                      29.176887
1362                            NaN                      27.437111
1363                            NaN                      26.035055
1370                            NaN                      26.417841
1374                            NaN                      22.513162
1386                            NaN                      27.714749
1407                            NaN                      29.507419

perGameStats_ORB_per_100_poss  perGameStats_DRB_per_100_poss  \
1345                      13.563007                      29.915568
1346                      14.907785                      31.569428
1349                            NaN                            NaN
1351                            NaN                            NaN
1362                            NaN                            NaN
1363                            NaN                            NaN
1370                            NaN                            NaN
1374                            NaN                            NaN
1386                            NaN                            NaN
1407                            NaN                            NaN

perGameStats_AST_per_100_poss  perGameStats_STL_per_100_poss  \
1345                      16.641136                       9.426771
1346                      23.238607                       9.536598
1349                      17.131524                            NaN
1351                      18.307066                            NaN
1362                      14.780110                            NaN
1363                      17.894062                            NaN
1370                      16.750744                            NaN
1374                      17.837351                            NaN
1386                      15.883306                            NaN
1407                      17.157404                            NaN

perGameStats_BLK_per_100_poss  perGameStats_TOV_per_100_poss
1345                       5.098151                      19.142116
1346                       5.590420                      20.278973
1349                            NaN                            NaN
1351                            NaN                            NaN
1362                            NaN                            NaN
1363                            NaN                            NaN
1370                            NaN                            NaN
1374                            NaN                            NaN
1386                            NaN                            NaN
1407                            NaN                            NaN

[10 rows x 34 columns]


Ooooooook, we’re still missing a bunch of values. Looks like it’s time to google here. A bunch of stats weren’t recorded before a specific period. Brb, googling…

Blah, couldn’t find a basketball gif. WHATEVER.

Some milestones I found:

• NBA started recording blocks in 1973
• NBA introduced the 3 point shot in 1979

I can’t really find anything about the missing rebounds, steals, and turnovers though… let’s just take everything after 1979.

In [299]:
teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted1979 = teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted[teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted['season_start_year'] >= 1979]
print 'There have been {} teams in NBA history starting from the 79-80 season'.format(teamAggDfToAnalyzePaceAdjusted1979.shape[0])

There have been 1044 teams in NBA history starting from the 79-80 season


Cool, we just eliminated a third of our sample. That can’t be great, but in a world where I don’t know anything about basketball, pretty much everything is fair game. But seriously, this is probably still an okay way to go because I’d imagine the game was so different back then (even in the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s). I don’t think many videos even exist in the Wilt era so it may be difficult to gauge those teams without highlights OR stats.

In [300]:
# We'll give each team a unique identifier based on the year and team because some teams repeat (CHI)

# Extract top 10 teams

# Extract bottom 10 teams

print teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersBottom

      season_start_year perGameStats_Tm  baseStats_W  baseStats_WLPerc  \
1238               1982             HOU           14             0.171
1248               2002             MIA           25             0.305
1250               2003             CHI           23             0.280
1252               2002             CLE           17             0.207
1267               1997             GSW           19             0.232
1275               2014             PHI           18             0.220
1287               2011             CHA            7             0.106
1302               1999             CHI           17             0.207
1339               1998             CHI           13             0.260
1346               2002             DEN           17             0.207

perGameStats_MP  baseStats_Pace  baseStats_Rel_Pace  baseStats_ORtg  \
1238            240.6           102.2                -0.9            97.0
1248            241.8            87.8                -3.2            96.7
1250            241.8            92.2                 2.1            96.6
1252            241.8            94.0                 3.0            96.5
1267            241.8            91.4                 1.1            95.8
1275            241.5            95.7                 1.8            95.5
1287            240.8            91.1                -0.2            95.2
1302            241.5            89.4                -3.7            94.2
1339            241.5            88.1                -0.8            92.4
1346            240.6            91.0                 0.0            92.2

baseStats_Rel_ORtg  baseStats_DRtg       ...        \
1238                -7.7           108.3       ...
1248                -6.9           102.4       ...
1250                -6.3           103.4       ...
1252                -7.1           106.7       ...
1267                -9.2           105.7       ...
1275               -10.1           104.8       ...
1287                -9.4           110.4       ...
1302                -9.9           104.6       ...
1339                -9.8           103.0       ...
1346               -11.4           101.3       ...

perGameStats_2PA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_3PA_per_100_poss  \
1238                      85.402931                       3.220911
1248                      74.724306                      15.148346
1250                      72.127159                      16.470829
1252                      75.286416                      11.509424
1267                      81.989021                       9.230552
1275                      58.464274                      27.311020
1287                      72.973003                      14.769648
1302                      69.809774                      14.006420
1339                      72.757524                      13.761888
1346                      76.512017                      10.961607

perGameStats_FTA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_ORB_per_100_poss  \
1238                      23.034391                      14.347692
1248                      23.287756                      13.113494
1250                      24.114155                      13.779517
1252                      25.869806                      14.360382
1267                      25.302572                      17.049373
1275                      24.714915                      12.357458
1287                      24.287866                      11.268695
1302                      28.346325                      14.006420
1339                      26.734160                      12.972272
1346                      24.773232                      14.907785

perGameStats_DRB_per_100_poss  perGameStats_AST_per_100_poss  \
1238                      26.938525                      22.936787
1248                      33.914208                      20.687667
1250                      33.049310                      23.575892
1252                      32.733224                      22.068529
1267                      32.795608                      22.587704
1275                      32.087852                      21.288057
1287                      31.399178                      21.990365
1302                      31.458863                      22.343574
1339                      31.471859                      22.898880
1346                      31.569428                      23.238607

perGameStats_STL_per_100_poss  perGameStats_BLK_per_100_poss  \
1238                       7.710665                       4.977771
1248                       8.139410                       4.521894
1250                       8.612198                       5.167319
1252                       8.236102                       6.757827
1267                       8.253199                       5.972710
1275                       9.969041                       6.126807
1287                       6.564288                       6.017264
1302                       8.781803                       5.224617
1339                       9.813806                       3.835280
1346                       9.536598                       5.590420

perGameStats_TOV_per_100_poss  unique_team_id
1238                      18.739843        1982-HOU
1248                      16.052725        2002-MIA
1250                      17.332049        2003-CHI
1252                      19.323161        2002-CLE
1267                      18.135320        1997-GSW
1275                      18.380420        2014-PHI
1287                      15.863696        2011-CHA
1302                      21.120791        1999-CHI
1339                      17.484366        1998-CHI
1346                      20.278973        2002-DEN

[10 rows x 35 columns]

C:\Users\chixwang\AppData\Local\Continuum\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\__main__.py:2: SettingWithCopyWarning:
A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame.
Try using .loc[row_indexer,col_indexer] = value instead

See the caveats in the documentation: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy
from ipykernel import kernelapp as app


Thank the lord. The things you go through just to do put together a few graphs… Not yet though.

## The Good

Let’s take a look at some of the best teams alongside the “Blew a 3-1 Lead’ warriors and Jordan’s bulls.

In [301]:
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', len(teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersTop.columns))
print(teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersTop)
pd.reset_option('display.max_columns')

   season_start_year perGameStats_Tm  baseStats_W  baseStats_WLPerc  \
0               2016             GSW           64             0.821
1               1986             LAL           65             0.793
2               1991             CHI           67             0.817
3               1987             BOS           57             0.695
4               2009             PHO           54             0.659
5               1995             CHI           72             0.878
6               1994             ORL           57             0.695
7               1986             DAL           55             0.671
8               2016             HOU           52             0.675
9               1994             SEA           57             0.695

perGameStats_MP  baseStats_Pace  baseStats_Rel_Pace  baseStats_ORtg  \
0            241.3            99.8                 3.4           115.7
1            240.6           101.6                 0.8           115.6
2            241.8            94.4                -2.2           115.5
3            241.2            97.9                -1.7           115.4
4            240.6            95.3                 2.6           115.3
5            240.6            91.1                -0.7           115.2
6            243.0            95.1                 2.2           115.1
7            242.4           100.5                -0.3           114.9
8            241.3            99.9                 3.5           114.9
9            241.8            95.5                 2.6           114.8

baseStats_Rel_ORtg  baseStats_DRtg  baseStats_Rel_DRtg  perGameStats_PTS  \
0                 6.9           104.0                -4.8             116.1
1                 7.3           106.5                -1.8             117.8
2                 7.3           104.5                -3.7             109.9
3                 7.4           109.4                 1.4             113.6
4                 7.7           110.2                 2.6             110.2
5                 7.6           101.8                -5.8             105.2
6                 6.8           107.8                -0.5             110.9
7                 6.6           108.7                 0.4             116.7
8                 6.1           108.6                -0.2             115.4
9                 6.5           106.3                -2.0             110.4

perGameStats_2PA  perGameStats_2PPerc  perGameStats_3PA  \
0              55.7                0.557              31.3
1              82.9                0.526               5.5
2              81.9                0.522               5.5
3              75.6                0.537               8.6
4              61.2                0.520              21.6
5              67.6                0.496              16.5
6              66.9                0.535              17.2
7              82.0                0.500               8.0
8              47.2                0.550              40.0
9              66.3                0.519              15.9

perGameStats_3PPerc  perGameStats_FTA  perGameStats_FTPerc  \
0                0.385              22.7                0.789
1                0.367              31.1                0.789
2                0.304              26.0                0.744
3                0.384              28.0                0.803
4                0.412              25.8                0.770
5                0.403              24.4                0.746
6                0.370              30.1                0.669
7                0.354              33.1                0.791
8                0.360              26.4                0.767
9                0.376              31.3                0.758

perGameStats_ORB  perGameStats_DRB  perGameStats_AST  perGameStats_STL  \
0               9.3              35.0              30.5               9.6
1              13.7              30.7              29.6               8.9
2              14.3              29.7              27.8               8.2
3              11.3              29.8              29.9               7.6
4              11.1              31.9              23.3               5.8
5              15.2              29.4              24.8               9.1
6              14.0              30.0              27.8               8.2
7              14.9              30.4              24.6               8.4
8              10.9              33.3              25.2               8.3
9              13.0              28.5              25.8              11.2

perGameStats_BLK  perGameStats_TOV  perGameStats_PTS_per_100_poss  \
0               6.8              14.8                     115.705925
1               5.9              16.6                     115.655743
2               5.9              13.3                     115.552845
3               5.1              15.9                     115.459475
4               5.1              14.8                     115.346471
5               4.2              14.3                     115.189523
6               6.0              15.8                     115.174410
7               5.2              14.7                     114.969706
8               4.3              15.2                     114.893177
9               4.8              15.8                     114.741533

perGameStats_2PA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_3PA_per_100_poss  \
0                      55.510939                      31.193759
1                      81.391011                       5.399886
2                      86.112630                       5.782899
3                      76.837467                       8.740770
4                      64.058113                      22.608746
5                      74.019123                      18.066798
6                      69.478522                      17.862938
7                      80.784198                       7.881385
8                      46.992703                      39.824325
9                      68.907279                      16.525275

perGameStats_FTA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_ORB_per_100_poss  \
0                      22.622950                       9.268433
1                      30.533901                      13.450625
2                      27.337343                      15.035539
3                      28.458321                      11.484965
4                      27.004891                      11.618383
5                      26.716962                      16.643353
6                      31.260142                      14.539601
7                      32.609231                      14.679080
8                      26.284054                      10.852129
9                      32.530887                      13.511231

perGameStats_DRB_per_100_poss  perGameStats_AST_per_100_poss  \
0                      34.881200                      30.396475
1                      30.141182                      29.061205
2                      31.227657                      29.229928
3                      30.287785                      30.389422
4                      33.389768                      24.388138
5                      32.191749                      27.154945
6                      31.156288                      28.871493
7                      29.949264                      24.235259
8                      33.153751                      25.089325
9                      29.620776                      26.814597

perGameStats_STL_per_100_poss  perGameStats_BLK_per_100_poss  \
0                       9.567415                       6.776919
1                       8.737998                       5.792605
2                       8.621777                       6.203474
3                       7.724401                       5.183480
4                       6.070867                       5.338176
5                       9.964113                       4.598821
6                       8.516052                       6.231258
7                       8.275454                       5.122900
8                       8.263547                       4.281115
9                      11.640445                       4.988762

perGameStats_TOV_per_100_poss unique_team_id
0                      14.749765       2016-GSW
1                      16.297838       1986-LAL
2                      13.984102       1991-CHI
3                      16.160261       1987-BOS
4                      15.491178       2009-PHO
5                      15.657891       1995-CHI
6                      16.408978       1994-ORL
7                      14.482045       1986-DAL
8                      15.133243       2016-HOU
9                      16.421343       1994-SEA


Oops, my bad, the 3-1 warriors aren’t even on this list. Instead the current warriors are… hmm ok. And not only that, they are #1. WHATEVER WORKS.

Let’s look at a few metrics based on pace.

In [302]:
%%R -i teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersTop -w 1000 -h 800 -u px

leagueNTeamsPlot <- function(tiersDf, tier){
# 2PA Scatter
leagueNTeams2PShooting = ggplot(
tiersDf,
aes(
x = perGameStats_2PA_per_100_poss,
y = perGameStats_2PPerc,
color = unique_team_id,
label = unique_team_id
)
) +
geom_point(size = 7) +
geom_text(hjust = -0.3) +
ggtitle(sprintf("%s Team Historical 2P Shooting", tier)) +
scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0, 7)) +
theme(legend.position="none")

# 3PA Scatter
leagueNTeams3PShooting = ggplot(
tiersDf,
aes(
x = perGameStats_3PA_per_100_poss,
y = perGameStats_3PPerc,
color = unique_team_id,
label = unique_team_id
)
) +
geom_point(size = 7) +
geom_text(hjust = -0.3) +
ggtitle(sprintf("%s Team Historical 3P Shooting", tier)) +
scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0, 7)) +
theme(legend.position="none")

# FTA Scatter
leagueNTeamsFTShooting = ggplot(
tiersDf,
aes(
x = perGameStats_FTA_per_100_poss,
y = perGameStats_FTPerc,
color = unique_team_id,
label = unique_team_id
)
) +
geom_point(size = 7) +
geom_text(hjust = -0.3) +
ggtitle(sprintf("%s Team Historical FT Shooting", tier)) +
scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0, 3)) +
theme(legend.position="none")

# ORB / TOV Scatter
leagueNTeamsORBTOVShooting = ggplot(
tiersDf,
aes(
x = perGameStats_ORB_per_100_poss,
y = perGameStats_TOV_per_100_poss,
color = unique_team_id,
label = unique_team_id
)
) +
geom_point(size = 7) +
geom_text(hjust = -0.3) +
ggtitle(sprintf("%s Team Historical ORB / TOV Stats", tier)) +
scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0, 2)) +
theme(legend.position="none")

grid.arrange(leagueNTeams2PShooting, leagueNTeams3PShooting, leagueNTeamsFTShooting, leagueNTeamsORBTOVShooting, ncol = 2)
}

leagueNTeamsPlot(teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersTop, 'Top')


Observations in no particular order

• Turnovers aren’t a huge factor among all these teams. Largest gap is 2.5 turnovers which, to me, is negligible
• Offensive rebounds, on the other hand, give 8-9 extra possessions to the best rebounding team vs the worst (today’s GS warriors!)
• The GSW, HOU, and PHO teams are all quite close to one another in all of the charts… I think they can be summed up as high volume 3-point shooting teams who don’t shoot too many free throws or grab too many boards, but they are all assassins when it comes to shooting from anywhere on the floor almost
• In fact, the GSW and HOU teams are also among the best 2P and FT shooting teams on the list!
• Basically, these guys can just shoot the lights out
• The DAL and LAL teams made a lot of good, high percentage shots from inside the 3, got to the line a ton, and grabbed a considerable amount of boards (which we can presume led to some high percentage shots / FT opportunities)
• The 95 bulls looked like a hybrid, they hit a lot of 2’s, they hit a considerable amount of 3’s (at a greater percentage than today’s HOU and GSW teams), and they grabbed a ton of boards

A few different styles here… I mean, these teams are the 10 best offensive teams of all time, nitpicking amongst some of these stats (other than some obvious ones like 94-ORL FT% or 91-CHI 3P%) seems irrelevant.

## The Ugly

Let’s see what the worst teams look like

In [303]:
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', len(teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersBottom.columns))
print(teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersBottom)
pd.reset_option('display.max_columns')

      season_start_year perGameStats_Tm  baseStats_W  baseStats_WLPerc  \
1238               1982             HOU           14             0.171
1248               2002             MIA           25             0.305
1250               2003             CHI           23             0.280
1252               2002             CLE           17             0.207
1267               1997             GSW           19             0.232
1275               2014             PHI           18             0.220
1287               2011             CHA            7             0.106
1302               1999             CHI           17             0.207
1339               1998             CHI           13             0.260
1346               2002             DEN           17             0.207

perGameStats_MP  baseStats_Pace  baseStats_Rel_Pace  baseStats_ORtg  \
1238            240.6           102.2                -0.9            97.0
1248            241.8            87.8                -3.2            96.7
1250            241.8            92.2                 2.1            96.6
1252            241.8            94.0                 3.0            96.5
1267            241.8            91.4                 1.1            95.8
1275            241.5            95.7                 1.8            95.5
1287            240.8            91.1                -0.2            95.2
1302            241.5            89.4                -3.7            94.2
1339            241.5            88.1                -0.8            92.4
1346            240.6            91.0                 0.0            92.2

baseStats_Rel_ORtg  baseStats_DRtg  baseStats_Rel_DRtg  \
1238                -7.7           108.3                 3.6
1248                -6.9           102.4                -1.2
1250                -6.3           103.4                 0.5
1252                -7.1           106.7                 3.1
1267                -9.2           105.7                 0.7
1275               -10.1           104.8                -0.8
1287                -9.4           110.4                 5.8
1302                -9.9           104.6                 0.5
1339                -9.8           103.0                 0.8
1346               -11.4           101.3                -2.3

perGameStats_PTS  perGameStats_2PA  perGameStats_2PPerc  \
1238              99.3              87.5                0.456
1248              85.6              66.1                0.432
1250              89.7              67.0                0.431
1252              91.4              71.3                0.437
1267              88.3              75.5                0.429
1275              92.0              56.3                0.449
1287              87.0              66.7                0.439
1302              84.8              62.8                0.432
1339              81.9              64.5                0.422
1346              84.2              69.8                0.430

perGameStats_3PA  perGameStats_3PPerc  perGameStats_FTA  \
1238               3.3                0.247              23.6
1248              13.4                0.316              20.6
1250              15.3                0.342              22.4
1252              10.9                0.327              24.5
1267               8.5                0.272              23.3
1275              26.3                0.320              23.8
1287              13.5                0.295              22.2
1302              12.6                0.329              25.5
1339              12.2                0.289              23.7
1346              10.0                0.278              22.6

perGameStats_FTPerc  perGameStats_ORB  perGameStats_DRB  \
1238                0.725              14.7              27.6
1248                0.765              11.6              30.0
1250                0.725              12.8              30.7
1252                0.747              13.6              31.0
1267                0.710              15.7              30.2
1275                0.676              11.9              30.9
1287                0.746              10.3              28.7
1302                0.709              12.6              28.3
1339                0.709              11.5              27.9
1346                0.699              13.6              28.8

perGameStats_AST  perGameStats_STL  perGameStats_BLK  perGameStats_TOV  \
1238              23.5               7.9               5.1              19.2
1248              18.3               7.2               4.0              14.2
1250              21.9               8.0               4.8              16.1
1252              20.9               7.8               6.4              18.3
1267              20.8               7.6               5.5              16.7
1275              20.5               9.6               5.9              17.7
1287              20.1               6.0               5.5              14.5
1302              20.1               7.9               4.7              19.0
1339              20.3               8.7               3.4              15.5
1346              21.2               8.7               5.1              18.5

perGameStats_PTS_per_100_poss  perGameStats_2PA_per_100_poss  \
1238                      96.920126                      85.402931
1248                      96.768541                      74.724306
1250                      96.564271                      72.127159
1252                      96.510216                      75.286416
1267                      95.889146                      81.989021
1275                      95.536647                      58.464274
1287                      95.182177                      72.973003
1302                      94.265427                      69.809774
1339                      92.385135                      72.757524
1346                      92.296731                      76.512017

perGameStats_3PA_per_100_poss  perGameStats_FTA_per_100_poss  \
1238                       3.220911                      23.034391
1248                      15.148346                      23.287756
1250                      16.470829                      24.114155
1252                      11.509424                      25.869806
1267                       9.230552                      25.302572
1275                      27.311020                      24.714915
1287                      14.769648                      24.287866
1302                      14.006420                      28.346325
1339                      13.761888                      26.734160
1346                      10.961607                      24.773232

perGameStats_ORB_per_100_poss  perGameStats_DRB_per_100_poss  \
1238                      14.347692                      26.938525
1248                      13.113494                      33.914208
1250                      13.779517                      33.049310
1252                      14.360382                      32.733224
1267                      17.049373                      32.795608
1275                      12.357458                      32.087852
1287                      11.268695                      31.399178
1302                      14.006420                      31.458863
1339                      12.972272                      31.471859
1346                      14.907785                      31.569428

perGameStats_AST_per_100_poss  perGameStats_STL_per_100_poss  \
1238                      22.936787                       7.710665
1248                      20.687667                       8.139410
1250                      23.575892                       8.612198
1252                      22.068529                       8.236102
1267                      22.587704                       8.253199
1275                      21.288057                       9.969041
1287                      21.990365                       6.564288
1302                      22.343574                       8.781803
1339                      22.898880                       9.813806
1346                      23.238607                       9.536598

perGameStats_BLK_per_100_poss  perGameStats_TOV_per_100_poss  \
1238                       4.977771                      18.739843
1248                       4.521894                      16.052725
1250                       5.167319                      17.332049
1252                       6.757827                      19.323161
1267                       5.972710                      18.135320
1275                       6.126807                      18.380420
1287                       6.017264                      15.863696
1302                       5.224617                      21.120791
1339                       3.835280                      17.484366
1346                       5.590420                      20.278973

unique_team_id
1238       1982-HOU
1248       2002-MIA
1250       2003-CHI
1252       2002-CLE
1267       1997-GSW
1275       2014-PHI
1287       2011-CHA
1302       1999-CHI
1339       1998-CHI
1346       2002-DEN

In [318]:
%%R -i teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersBottom -w 1000 -h 800 -u px

leagueNTeamsPlot(teamAggDfToAnalyzeTiersBottom, 'Bottom')


Again, some observations:

• ORtg of these teams are about 20 points less / 100 possessions than the best teams, that’s A LOT of points going missing
• Turnovers are starting to come into play… The median of the good teams were about 15 turnovers, we’re not getting into 18-19 turnovers where those 3-4 extra turnovers are costing maybe 5-6 points!
• These teams demonstrated fairly poor shooting from the floor at both 2P range and 3P range
• From 2P range, we’re seeing, in many cases, similar amounts of shots attempted, but they’re hitting at 10% less accuracy. If we take 75 shots / 100 possessions, 10% more shots going in means another ~8 shots going in, resulting in 16 points!
• From 3P range, again, similar amount of attempts, but they’re hitting at ~8% less accuracy. Shooting 15 threes, that’s about 1-2 threes less, good for up to 6 points!

On the turnover front, let’s take a look at some of these teams’ guards

• 2014-PHI – Guards on opening night were… actually, I don’t even know who the guards were on this team. Is that bad (on my part)? The starters were Tony Wroten, Noel, Chris Johnson, Hollis Thompson, Henry Sims. I think Tony Wroten is a guard, and I know Noel is not a guard, so I randomly guessed that Henry Sims was the second guard. Upon double-checking, I was incorrect and the answer was Hollis Thompson. I would’ve lost a lot of money on “Who He Play For”, or even just “Is He A Basketball Player”. Honest to God and truth be told, I couldn’t really tell you what makes a great point guard. There’s a lot of intangibles that goes into a good point guard… leadership, court vision, ball handling. I couldn’t tell you whether Chris Paul was a better point guard than Deron Williams back in the day, but I can tell you that Hollis Thompson probably isn’t the guard you want starting.
• 1998-CHI – Look at all the post-Jordan CHI teams on here in general, lol. That’s crazy. Let’s just look at one of them. The season right after Jordan’s second three-peat. The point guards on the team were Randy Brown, Charles Jones, and Rusty LaRue. Not only did Jordan leave, but Pippen and Rodman also left. Enough said here.
• 2002-CLE – I remember this team being around. This was when a few teams outright sucked. I remember thinking CLE, LAC, and GSW around this era was simply horrible. Not to mention the raps were post-VC and they were also pretty horrible haha. It’s so weird to see these teams on top of the league now. Anyways, let’s check out this CLE team’s guards: Milt Palacio, Tierre Brown, Smush Parker, Dajuan Wagner, Ricky Davis. Actually, this doesn’t sound quite as bad as the Philly team, but I definitely remember thinking “man Cleveland sucks!”. They also had pretty outdated jerseys back then and that just made them seem like more of a joke. Yes, this is coming from me, the armchair GM.

On the shooting front, I don’t want to make any generalizations because there’s a lot that can go into this. Coaching, players, injuries, playing style… So many things can factor into this. I’ll just leave it at “bad shooting” for now.

## The Three Pointer

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from all my analysis so far, and I think I’ve said it before, is just seeing how the game is changing and how shots are transitioning from 2’s to 3’s.

The Engineer inside of me wants to quantify this a little bit. We saw that old school teams were shooting around 75 2PA and 10 3PA for about 85 FGA / 100 possessions. At the most extreme, what we’re seeing from today’s rockets is 45 2PA and 40 3PA.

Below are your average shooting percentages:

In [305]:
teamAggDfToAnalyze[['perGameStats_2PPerc']].plot(kind = 'hist', title = 'League History 2P%')
print teamAggDfToAnalyze[['perGameStats_2PPerc']].mean()

perGameStats_2PPerc    0.469417
dtype: float64

In [306]:
teamAggDfToAnalyze[['perGameStats_3PPerc']].plot(kind = 'hist', title = 'League History 3P%')
print teamAggDfToAnalyze[['perGameStats_3PPerc']].mean()

perGameStats_3PPerc    0.328943
dtype: float64


We’re seeing about an average of 47% on 2PA and 33% on 3PA. I wonder what % at 3 you’d have to shoot to make up for all the missed 3’s.

How many points does this generally come out to?
$(75\ 2PA\times 47\%\times 2\ Points)+(10\ 3PA\times 33\%\times 3\ Points)=80.4\ Points$

For example, Let’s take the extreme case where all your 90 FGA are 3’s and you shoot them at league average 33%:
$85\ 3PA\times 33\%\times 3\ Points=84.2\ Points$

Historically, I’m kinda paraphrasing here with some numbers off the top of my head, but even great shooters will shoot the 3 ball at around 40%. In the Miami days, Ray Allen was shooting the 3 around 40%. He has gone above 45% even, but he’s the greatest 3 point shooter of all time. A role player like Shane Battier was known to jack up a corner 3 if he was open, and he shot it around 40% at his career as well. A player like Terrence Ross was known as a 3-and-D player and he never broke 40%. Even back in the Toronto heyday, someone like Jorge Garbajosa (I think) was regarded as a respectable 3-point shooter, and he would shoot the rock at 34% in his two years in Toronto. All this to say, great shooters shoot it around the average mark, and this is having plays essentially designed so they get the optimal shot, i.e. an open shot.

You can’t really expect to waltz down and just hit a 3 every possession. People will be on you like a hawk and at some point you will be forced to take an easy two or turn it over. I’m saying this with a DISCLAIMER THAT I AM OPEN TO BE PROVEN WRONG IN AS EARLY AS 5 YEARS TIME.

Among the top 10 best offensive teams, we were seeing 2P% in the 50’s, as high as 54-55%. The 87 celtics were basically shooting 54% / 39%, good for:
$(75\ 2PA\times 54\%\times 2\ Points)+(15\ 3PA\times 39\%\times 3\ Points)=92.3\ Points$

So if you were an average 3-point shooting team and all your points came from 3’s, you’d still be 8 points off the 87 celtics. To match them, you would need to be shooting at
$\frac{92.3\ Points}{85\ 3PA\times 3\ Points}=36\%$

This means you pretty much need an elite 3 point shooter to take over the entire game or be coached so well that every single shot is a open and accurate look. Not likely.

### Technology Sidenote

Since I’m trying to plot a function of 2 variables with a response variable, a 3D plot is necessary. I’ve never tried the 3D plot functionality of matplotlib before, but I found a quick example here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8722735/i-want-to-use-matplotlib-to-make-a-3d-plot-given-a-z-function

I took my example from the second example given in the answer, utilizing the ‘meshgrid’, ‘zip’, ‘reshape’, and ‘ravel’ functions, and finally plotting using the Axes3D library. It’s quite easy if we know the limits of X and Y, and the function of Z that we’d like to plot. In this case, I took X and Y as 3PA & 3P%, and we can generalize our formulas above to:
$(2PA\times 2P\%\times 2\ Points)+(3PA\times 3P\%\times 3\ Points)=Total\ Points$

If we just look at what the surface plot would look like for an elite team with

• Fixed 2P% (let’s take 2P% as 50%)
• Fixed FGA (let’s say 85 on average)
• 2PA as a function of 3PA = 2PA + 3PA = FGA

Then we get something like:
$((85-3PA)\times 50\%\times 2\ Points)+(3PA\times 3P\%\times 3\ Points)=Total\ Points$

In [308]:
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Here we define the function that outputs how many points will be scored as a function of 3PA and 3P%
def fun(threePA, threePPerc):
return ((85-threePA)*0.5*2)+(threePA*threePPerc*3)

fig = plt.figure()
# Define 'X' values
threePA = np.arange(5, 95, 10)
# Define 'Y' values
threePPerc = np.arange(0.26, 0.44, 0.02)

# Find a grid of overlapping X to Y values
X, Y = np.meshgrid(threePA, threePPerc)

# Calculate Z value for each X-Y pair
pointsScored = np.array([fun(x,y) for x,y in zip(np.ravel(X), np.ravel(Y))])
Z = pointsScored.reshape(X.shape)

# Prepare & plot
ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z)

ax.set_xlabel('3PA')
ax.set_ylabel('3P%')
ax.set_zlabel('Points Scored')

ax.set_zlim(0, 110)

plt.show()


We can see that if a team attempts 0 3PA, it’s obviously that the 3P% won’t matter. The team will end up with 85 points on FGA because they will only be shooting 2’s, and they’re shooting it at 50%

As soon as a team starts shooting any amount of 3’s, it really depends on how well they shoot the 3 ball to understand how many points they’ll score. A team will have to shoot the 3 ball at at least 33% to match the efficiency they are shooting the 2 ball at, and anything above that, they’re actually more efficient the more 3PA they can manage.

Does this make sense? I think so. At 50%, 2PA’s are essentially “worth” 1 point. 85 2PA @ 50% get you 85 points, 1 point / 2PA.

At 33%, each 3PA is “worth” 1 point. 85 3PA @ 33% also get you ~85 points (would be 33.33% repeating for an even 85). 1 point / 3PA! If you’re shooting better than 33%, each shot you take is worth more than 1 point.

The average NBA team throughout history, again, shoots the 2 ball at ~47% and the 3 ball at ~33%. This is interesting – teams, on average, are actually shooting the 3-ball more efficiently! Not by a lot, but if we extrapolate this out to a whole season, it may make quite the difference. Again, I didn’t watch too much basketball in the 80’s and 90’s, I can only imagine what types of plays were drawn up, but I don’t think you had the culture or the shooters to do whatever James Harden was doing in that gif above. 3’s were shot at 33% on average, but most of these were, again, designed plays to get a player wide open, and not quite sustainable across an entire game (e.g. to be able to shoot 50% of your FGA like HOU is doing now).

Let’s contrast that Harden gif with this one:

Same result!

I just want to build that same 3D plot again, and instead of absolute points, I want to see how many times more / less points you would be scoring relative to if you only shot 2’s (85 points)

In [316]:
fig = plt.figure()

# Prepare & plot
ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z/85)

ax.set_xlabel('3PA')
ax.set_ylabel('3P%')
ax.set_zlabel('Points Scored')

ax.set_zlim(0, 1.5)

plt.show()


This is pretty interesting, because they’re getting about 10% more output by shooting the volume of 3’s that they do at the % they shoot compared to a team that just shot 2’s at a really good rate. You’ll never see a team shoot only 2’s these days, but teams definitely shoot at 2P% and 3P% for the same efficiency that that team would be shooting it at.

Again, a team shooting 50% 2P% is a really good 2P shooting team, on 85 shots, would be getting 85 points on 85 shots.

The 2014 sixers shot 58 2PA @ 45%, 28 3PA @ 32%, and that’s good for about 79 points on 86 shots. A team shooting consistently at 50% 2PA without any 3PA would’ve won any game vs that 2014 sixers team (GROSSLY OVERSIMPLIFYING, I KNOW, BUT JUST TRYING TO COMMUNICATE A POINT).

Just for kicks, I want to see how much of an impact 3P shooting would have on a team that shoots subpar 2P. Let’s say 43% 2P%, where a lot of those bad teams were bunched.

In [317]:
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Here we define the function that outputs how many points will be scored as a function of 3PA and 3P%
def fun(threePA, threePPerc):
return ((85-threePA)*0.43*2)+(threePA*threePPerc*3)

fig = plt.figure()
# Define 'X' values
threePA = np.arange(5, 95, 10)
# Define 'Y' values
threePPerc = np.arange(0.26, 0.44, 0.02)

# Find a grid of overlapping X to Y values
X, Y = np.meshgrid(threePA, threePPerc)

# Calculate Z value for each X-Y pair
pointsScored = np.array([fun(x,y) for x,y in zip(np.ravel(X), np.ravel(Y))])
Z = pointsScored.reshape(X.shape)

# Prepare & plot
ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z)

ax.set_xlabel('3PA')
ax.set_ylabel('3P%')
ax.set_zlabel('Points Scored')

ax.set_zlim(0, 110)

plt.show()


By this graph, a team only has to shoot 28% on 3’s to efficiently match the 43% on 2’s, but this is setting the bar low.

## Tying It All Together

In terms of offence, after looking at all these stupid graphs and charts, it just comes down to putting the ball in the hole, I guess lol. Good teams will find more efficient ways to put the ball in the hole. Better looks, better shooters, better coaching, better plays. Taking care of the basketball and having the tenacity to grab ORB is definitely important as well, but turnovers can only account for so many lost points and ORBs will only matter if you can put the ball in the hole the second time, otherwise it makes you even LESS efficient!

Of course, I’ve been speaking about the game as if the only thing that matters if offence, and even then I’m just scratching the surface of offence, but I think it’s worth getting a more complete picture by incorporating some defensive metrics as well, and taking a look at the best and worst defensive teams.