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Tag Archives: DeMarcus Cousins
Translated Lottery Odds
The NBA Lottery will be held tonight and the odds have been set since the end of the regular season. However, expressing those odds as percentages and fractions of percentages doesn’t always give a tangible sense of the real likelihood of each team winning. I took the liberty of converting each team’s odds into a unit that may be understood more intuitively. I hope it’s helpful. _____ Orlando Magic – 25.0% chance of winning … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week I decided to chart the importance of turning turnovers into points. In the 52 games this week, the winning team scored 18.12 points per game off of turnovers while losing teams managed just 14.02 points. That may not seem like much, but when you consider that 17.31% of the games this week either went to overtime or were decided by four or fewer points, the ability to score points off of … Continue reading
Searching for Value in NBA Contracts
Introduction A few weeks ago, Kevin Pelton of ESPN looked at the best contracts in the NBA by multiplying a player’s WARP (wins above replacement level) by the average amount that teams pay for each WARP. I’d like to approach this same problem from a different angle: namely, how much value are teams getting out of the salaries they pay their players? Instead of looking at WARP, I’ll focus on win shares, another metric … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week’s Stat Study, I decided to look at average FGA, FTA, and 3PA in an effort to forecast winners. After each of the 54 games had been played this week, I charted every matchup and jotted down which team averaged more FTA, FGA, and 3PA to see if there was a constant link between any of them to the winner. I posed the question of which statistic (FTA, FGA, or 3PA) would … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
Thanks to Utah Jazz fan, Taylor Berthelson (@utahmankiyi), this week’s study was devoted to determining the importance of the first quarter to the game result. I used years of data to determine that winning teams typically performed well in the first quarter earlier this week, but it doesn’t hurt to add some 2012-2013 statistics to prove the trend true for this season. Taylor estimated that 60% of teams that win the first quarter win the … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I thought I’d take a look at the shot taking/making of offenses “at the rim” and behind the arc. Theoretically, offenses work hard to get a good look from one of these spots on very possession, and I was curious which had a greater impact on the game. My hypothesis was that winning teams would have the consistent edge “at the rim” while the three point shooting would be something of a … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
As mentioned in the previous edition of the Weekly Stats Recap, the suggested #StatStudy for this week was orchestrated to determine the impact of elite assist men. Perry Missner (@PerryMissner), a noted doubter of the importance of great point guards, estimated that 65% of the teams with a double digit dime man would win. As it turns out (for this week at least), Perry wasn’t pessimistic enough when it comes to the correlation between … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week’s study my brother (@KurtSoppe) pondered if FG% or FT% was more directly correlated to the game’s final outcome. He hypothesized that both FG% and FT% would be consistently higher for victorious teams, with the stronger correlation being found in the field goal percentage. In support of Kurt’s guess, winning teams shot an average of 47.9% from the field while losing teams shot only 42.3%. Winning teams shot better than 50% from … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I had a stat request from Jesse Silverman (@JesseBeau), a Cortland intramural champion and defending March Madness king. He wondered if the number of double digit scorers was directly correlated to victories, guessing that winning teams would have more double digit scorers in each game. As it turns out, there was not a considerable difference in the number of players in double figures for winning and losing teams. Over this holiday week … Continue reading
