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Tag Archives: Kevin Durant
The Myth of Danger
Every year as the playoffs approach one thing is guaranteed. A team or two always gets marked as “the team no one should want to face.” The teams normally fall into one of two categories. First the young up and coming team that does something better than anyone else in the league. Think the Grizzlies of a few years ago, who excelled at the slowdown grind it out game because of an elite defense. … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
With a short week and reserves aplenty, we took a week off from the Stat Study. Here are the stats you missed and trends that were ignored from the past seven days in the Association. Tuesday – In the last three weeks, Jimmy Butler has taken at least 10 shots on seven occasions. The Bulls are 2-0 when he does it against a playoff team with wins over Brooklyn and Miami, but are only … Continue reading
Objectivity, In A Subjective World
This week ESPN gave us a snapshot of what’s become one of their standard summer projects, #NBARank. As an end-of-season treat they put together an early preview, giving their panel of 111 contributors (myself included) the standard task of ranking each player on a scale of 1-to-10 in terms of ‘current quality.’ This time instead of evaluating the whole league we were just asked to assess a core group, assembling a list of the … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I decided to take a look at the impact of free throws on the final outcome. Is getting to the line more important than taking advantage of the freebies when a team gets there? During a 54 game sample, I recorded the free throws attempted and the free throw percentage for every team. Winning teams shot an average of 77.1% on 21.9 free throws per game while losing teams made 76% of … Continue reading
Harden Week: Piling Stats Upon Stats
Welcome to Harden Week, a celebration of all things James Harden! Kyle Soppe is a regular contributor to Hickory-High, specializing in the identification of unique numeric accomplishments. You can find more from him at Hardwood Paroxysm and on Twitter, @unSOPable23. – James Harden made 10+ free throws six times in a 12-day stretch in late December. Kobe Bryant did so six times from December 9th to March 21st. It is worth noting that Kobe … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week’s Stat Study was done with the intention to determine the impact of playing a back to back in terms of total shooting percentage (TS%) and turnover rate (TOR). To understand this study, one must be familiar with these metrics. Total shooting percentage created a total metric of shooting accuracy looking at three-pointers, two-pointers and free throws. Turnover rate is a simple tally of the percentage of possessions that end in a turnover. … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I decided to take a look at players who rebound, but also score. I charted the total points each team received from players grabbing at least five rebounds in an effort to determine if teams with high scoring rebounders won more often than not. I figured that winning teams would have a higher average point total from qualifying players, but never did I imagine the difference being this drastic. During the 50 … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week’s #StatStudy, basketball coach/guru @C1ayMitche11 questioned an offense predicated on launching three pointers and chasing down the loose ball was an effective strategy in the NBA. He estimated that 60% of teams that won the rebound battle and attempted more triples would win the game and that the number would rise to a 75% success rate if the team tallied more offensive rebounds and 3PA. Our sample size this week was 54 … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week, thanks to the suggestion of David Vertsberger (@_Verts), I decided to take a look at the top assist men on each team and how they contributed to each game this week in terms of percentage of total points scored (PS%) and percentage of total assists handed out (A%). I constructed a spread sheet that detailed the top dime dropper on each roster along with the PS% and A% for that player entering … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
Thanks to the All Star Break, we’ve got a Weekly Stats Recap with 43% more stats for you to enjoy. But before we dive into the week’s oddities, let’s determine how important the distribution of assists is to a team’s success rate. Jared Dubin (@JADubin5), the founder of HoopChalk and Co-EIC of Hardwood Paroxysm, was curious as to the impact of having many good distributors. To answer this question, I charted the number of … Continue reading
