Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Offensive/Defensive Efficiency Review

The two tables below show, first, the team's offensive efficiency and, second, the team's defensive efficiency, when each player is on the floor. I've included the percentage of the team's minutes each player has been on the floor. Offensive and defensive efficiency are represented in terms of (team) points scored per 100 possessions.

(all numbers from BasketballValue.com)

Name%MinOff Eff
Stoudamire13.5%109
Lue37.2%106.9
J Johnson86.8%106.5
Childress66.3%105.4
West5.5%105.2
M Williams72.4%105.1
Horford65.9%103.8
TEAMN/A103.8
Smith66.7%102.3
Law25.5%100.7
Pachulia16.2%100
S Williams22%99.2
A Johnson20.2%91.7

They've already begun to slow, but once Al Horford thoroughly reduces his turnover rate to an average level, he's going to be an extremely valuable offensive player. One could say a more modest version of the same for Acie Law IV once he returns from his ankle sprain.

Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Josh Childress, Horford, Law, and Josh Smith form a pretty good offensive core going forward. The Hawks' offensive efficiency ranks 19th in the league at Knickerblogger.net. (The discrepancies in the offensive ratings published at Knickerblogger.net and BasketballValue.com lead me to believe that they are calculating possessions differently, which shouldn't effect a team's ranking.)

Lest you think (as I did) that Anthony Johnson and Shelden Williams are conspiring to drive down each other's offensive rating, of the 20 most frequently deployed 5-man units (per 82games.com) none include both Shelden Williams and Anthony Johnson.

Anthony Johnson is such a bad offensive player at this point in his career that he's rendered his defensive prowess (at least his defensive prowess relative to the other point guards on this roster) largely irrelevant.

Name%MinDef Eff
A Johnson20.2%100.9
Smith66.7%102.6
Law25.5%104.7
M Williams72.4%104.9
Horford65.9%106.5
TEAMN/A106.7
Childress66.3%107.4
Lue37.2%108.2
S Williams22%108.2
J Johnson86.8%109
Pachulia16.2%111.1
West5.5%113.2
Stoudamire13.5%115.2

Zaza Pachulia and Shelden Williams are really hurting this team. They're below the team averages, both offensively and defensively, for a team that is itself slightly below league average offensively and 23rd in the league defensively.

Looking to the future, many more of the point guard minutes should be concentrated on Acie Law, freeing one or two roster spots to add either frontcourt depth or a good wing defender to limit Joe Johnson's exposure/workload.

Ballhype: hype it up!

2 comments:

Drew Ditzel said...

I am very excited to see what kind of mindblowingly bad statistics the hawks put up from last nights game.
i had to stop my live blog in the
4th because i was starting to feel sad about my life in general.

Bret LaGree said...

Estimating possessions, the Hawks scored 89 pts/100 possessions (~4.5% worse than the worst team in the league, i.e. Chicago averages) and allowed an even 100 pts/100 possessions (That's Chicago scoring almost 9% more efficiently than they did in their first 12 games.).