Someone ‘splain the NBA to me | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Someone ‘splain the NBA to me

I just can't anymore. I remember watching Shaq dunk and pulling on the rim, celebrating like he just performed some brilliant feat. Just awful stuff. 7-footers getting excited about jamming a ball through a 10 foot rim. That is about as unexciting as it gets for me. Ooooh, great job. You just jumped 1 foot off the ground and grabbed the rim to boot. Give the man a metal. Home runs are exciting. Touchdown runs, touchdown passes, Scoring from 1st. I really don't get the lure of the NBA at all.
 
Greedo said:
I have a genuine question. I don’t watch much NBA and don’t fully understand all of the analytics. But from the few games I watched it seems like teams don’t even try for offensive rebounds. Someone will put up a 3 and then the entire team immediately begins jogging to the other end before it hits the rim. Is it just not worth their while? The 3 pt % is too high to bother? Or the whole team is on the perimeter so it’s not worth it? It just gives the game more of an arcade feel to me.
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When all five guys are on the perimeter, there isn’t anybody to rebound. Not every team does that, but when they do, having a guy make a low percentage try for a rebound isn’t worth it compared to getting back on D.
 
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Greedo said:
I have a genuine question. I don’t watch much NBA and don’t fully understand all of the analytics. But from the few games I watched it seems like teams don’t even try for offensive rebounds. Someone will put up a 3 and then the entire team immediately begins jogging to the other end before it hits the rim. Is it just not worth their while? The 3 pt % is too high to bother? Or the whole team is on the perimeter so it’s not worth it? It just gives the game more of an arcade feel to me.
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Out of curiosity I went and looked to see what the numbers looked like.

Memphis led the NBA this year with 14.1 ORPG. 17 teams were in double digits and 28 were over 9. Philly was last at 8.5

A decade ago, Chicago led the league with 13.7, but 27 teams were in double digits and one more was at 9.9. Boston was last at 7.8.

Without doing the math, it looks like there's a slight decrease.

Going back to 2003-04, the first year for which the stats are available on the website I found, you can see there was a greater emphasis on offensive rebounding. Dallas was first at 14.7, but 23 teams were over 11 and all were over 10.

NBA Stats - NBA Team Offensive Rebounds per Game | TeamRankings.com

NBA offensive rebounds per game, by team.
www.teamrankings.com www.teamrankings.com

Not trying to prove any points here, I was genuinely curious.

Given the huge increase in 3-point shooting, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. (Every team made between 10.5 and 14.8 3s per game this season; in 2003-04, the numbers ranged from 3.0 to 8.8.; and in 2011-12, the numbers ranged from 3.9 to 10.0.) But I think it's fair to say offensive rebounding is still an important part of basketball; it's not like the numbers went from 12 per team to, say, 6.
 
Greedo said:
I have a genuine question. I don’t watch much NBA and don’t fully understand all of the analytics. But from the few games I watched it seems like teams don’t even try for offensive rebounds. Someone will put up a 3 and then the entire team immediately begins jogging to the other end before it hits the rim. Is it just not worth their while? The 3 pt % is too high to bother? Or the whole team is on the perimeter so it’s not worth it? It just gives the game more of an arcade feel to me.
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Transition defense is viewed as more valuable than offensive rebounding.
 
nomar said:
Out of curiosity I went and looked to see what the numbers looked like.

Memphis led the NBA this year with 14.1 ORPG. 17 teams were in double digits and 28 were over 9. Philly was last at 8.5

A decade ago, Chicago led the league with 13.7, but 27 teams were in double digits and one more was at 9.9. Boston was last at 7.8.

Without doing the math, it looks like there's a slight decrease.

Going back to 2003-04, the first year for which the stats are available on the website I found, you can see there was a greater emphasis on offensive rebounding. Dallas was first at 14.7, but 23 teams were over 11 and all were over 10.

NBA Stats - NBA Team Offensive Rebounds per Game | TeamRankings.com

NBA offensive rebounds per game, by team.
www.teamrankings.com www.teamrankings.com

Not trying to prove any points here, I was genuinely curious.

Given the huge increase in 3-point shooting, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. (Every team made between 10.5 and 14.8 3s per game this season; in 2003-04, the numbers ranged from 3.0 to 8.8.; and in 2011-12, the numbers ranged from 3.9 to 10.0.) But I think it's fair to say offensive rebounding is still an important part of basketball; it's not like the numbers went from 12 per team to, say, 6.
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Right I was thinking more compared to college basketball rather than if the NBA has shifted in process over the years.
 
Greedo said:
Right I was thinking more compared to college basketball rather than if the NBA has shifted in process over the years.
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I'd imagine there's been a similar trend in MCBB.

As the FG%s are higher in the NBA than in MCBB, I wouldn't be surprised to see a slightly higher median ORPG rate in MCBB. But it's not such a wide gap that it suggests two wildly different philosophies.
 
1) I agree the 3 has had a large hand in ruining the game.
2) Players are just too good for the court now. These guys are outrageous athletes. The player now is not
the proto-type Naismith envisioned. They need to make changes the court length & width and basket height.
They needs to make it more challenging to score. Like baseball. Did anyone in the 30's throw at 97mph. It is very common
now. They need to move the mound back. I loved the Red Holtzman Knicks, can't watch it now.
 
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cordeodato said:
1) I agree the 3 has had a large hand in ruining the game.
2) Players are just too good for the court now. These guys are outrageous athletes. The player now is not
the proto-type Naismith envisioned. They need to make changes the court length & width and basket height.
They needs to make it more challenging to score. Like baseball. Did anyone in the 30's throw at 97mph. It is very common
now. They need to move the mound back. I loved the Red Holtzman Knicks, can't watch it now.
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Pitchers most definitely could throw mid to high 90's in the 30's. It just wasn't every single pitch by a majority of the pitchers. Used to have 4 man rotation where many threw 250-300 IP a season.
 
storrsroars said:
I'm stuck on one team getting 58 pts on 3s and the other getting 50 pts on 3s.

If you have to ask why, I'm gonna demand to see your math transcripts.
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those were the attempts, not points off of

as others noted, it's your reading skills that are the issue, i'm sure your math is fine
 
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Matrim55 said:
No, but even 15 years ago Big Al was not a winning player b/c he just did not defend at all -- and especially not in space. Big guys need to be able to move their damn feet, which is a ton better than the awful basketball we saw in the second half of the '90s and most of the '00s.



BTW, two of the three best players in the league this year were dominant post-scoring big men. Just b/c they can also shoot does not mean they're not capable of the type of smashing on the block that everybody apparently loved 30 years ago.
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Thanks for this!

Can we please incorporate some of these sets?

Our offense was way too structured and predictable.

There was another vid posted a month plus ago about Gonzaga and Arizona running a modern motion spread offense.

It is beautiful to watch.
 
The game has changed in MANY ways: more dunking, more obtuse hair styles, more tattoos, and more 3 pointers!
 
Giddyup5 said:
Our offense was way too structured and predictable.
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We should, but the simplicity is across the board in college basketball. KD and JJ Redick were talking/laughing about it on a recent podcast episode. NBA offenses and defenses are so incredibly sophisticated, and most of the college stuff is pretty simple, though they noted that the incredibly intricate "pet" plays are more recent and this transformation is something Durant noticed in his time in the league.

Now, clearly college sets are still above a bunch of our fans' heads since most of our fans think we just roll the ball out there and hope for the best, but they're still pretty simple as opposed to what the NBA runs now.
 
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Chin Diesel said:
Considering Olajuwon is 59 years old, yes, I would expect him to be cherry picking his court running quite a bit nowadays. Back in his early years and prime, he was one of the best two way players.
Now, if you want to walk it back even further (You've already walked back your "I never saw these guys never get back to play D" and turned it in to "cherry picking a good part") and just say no player runs the court every play in any game, that would make sense. Every fan knows players will take off some plays during a game.
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You write funny stuff. Funny ridiculous not funny humorous.

As I wrote, the 1980s!!!

And cherry picking = not getting back on D. It's the same thing.

I know all about Olajuwon. I watched him not go back on D practically an entire game. Robert Parish stuffed it down again and again and again. All I remember that night was Parish playing against a ghost while Olajuwon watched from the other end. I don't know how many Parish had that night, but if you told me he had 20 baskets, I wouldn't be surprised. He had absolutely no one on him, and it was all tomahawks and fast breaks.
 
aburks41 said:
Yes /thread over
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Essentially Yes. The league is driven by efficiency and points per possession.

Post up plays, like What Adama Sanogo does, is inefficient offense unless you are fantastic at it. The best offenses have a 5-man who can either shoot in the perimeter or off, the PnR, dice to the rim.

It’s hard for people who grew up in the era
Of Kareem and Mchale to learn that that is bad basketball.

By having. Your 5-man not posting up, it also clears out the lane. You can’t have a defender just sit in the middle of the paint and guard the Rim.
 
Who said nba is awful product? It is terrific if you don’t watch the lakers. Lol.

The big difference for big men these days is they have to run the floor.

They are asked to do so much defensively and run every play. The lumbering center can’t play in the league anymore .

Think if nba guy like Robert Williams…that is a tangy, 6-9 center who covers a lot of ground. He essentially plays 100% for 25+ minutes a night. You can’t play 40 at the pace he does.

Andre Drummond is one of the great rebounders of this generation, but he sucks at defense and doesn’t have enough perimeter skills.

He is basically a MLE type player.
 
Matrim55 said:
No, but even 15 years ago Big Al was not a winning player b/c he just did not defend at all -- and especially not in space. Big guys need to be able to move their damn feet, which is a ton better than the awful basketball we saw in the second half of the '90s and most of the '00s.



BTW, two of the three best players in the league this year were dominant post-scoring big men. Just b/c they can also shoot does not mean they're not capable of the type of smashing on the block that everybody apparently loved 30 years ago.
Expand ...

Big Al was the prototypical case of Kirk Goldsberry’s book sprawl ball. He took, essentially, the least efficient shots in the nba.
 
Lefty2one said:
Transition defense is viewed as more valuable than offensive rebounding.
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This is 100% the correct answer (and also why Andre was born 20 years too late), though as someone else pointed out in the thread offensive rebounding has bounced back again after cratering in the mid-2010s.

Also, the level of sophistication in the base defensive sets for these teams is just freaking mind-blowing. Look at this from the Celtics (who are admittedly breaking the curve with their defense since January):



The hoops IQ of these guys is unreal, and the gap between college and the NBA has never been wider. It's insane how good the league is now.
 
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Matrim55 said:
This is 100% the correct answer (and also why Andre was born 20 years too late).

Also, the level of sophistication in the base defensive sets for these teams is just freaking mind-blowing. Look at this from the Celtics (who are admittedly breaking the curve with their defense since January):



The hoops IQ of these guys is unreal, and the gap between college and the NBA has never been wider. It's insane how good the league is now.
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But they don't play defense in the NBA...what do you mean? Have you not watched elite WBB that is high level basketball ball. /s
 
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uconngb said:
those were the attempts, not points off of

as others noted, it's your reading skills that are the issue, i'm sure your math is fine
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And I'm sure you missing my reply acknowledging that error which was 50 posts before yours was just a computer lag issue :D
 
BigErnMcCracken said:
I had the same thought.
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For the longest time, I couldn't find anyone I really liked on the podcast scene, other than Lowe's corny self. Thinking Basketball and The Dunker Spot with Nekias Duncan & Steve Jones Jr are both great. What I really like about Nekias is that he is an analytics guy to some extent but actually watches tons of tape. I feel like that is a lot less common than it should be. Chris Herring is great on the SI pod but is not on every episode.
 
Giddyup5 said:
Thanks Matrim. Think I just found a new podcast!
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His podcast is great but his YouTube videos are even better. I will be devastated when some team hires him and that channel goes dark.
 
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