Stats 101, Part 3 (sneak peek)
Added 2019-09-23 20:52:18 +0000 UTCHere's an early look at the third installment of the Stats 101 series on YouTube. As mentioned on the new Athletic podcast "All Axes" with Seth Partnow, the series will start to grow more advanced as it progresses. (Episode available here for free: https://theathletic.com/podcast/8-back-to-back/?episode=46)
Most of this video will be review for you, although hopefully there are some thought-provoking nuggets in there. I'll also point you to some additional resources if you're interested:
- Margin of Victory AND win percentage : https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/good-news-warriors-fans-every-cliche-about-the-nba-playoffs-is-true/
- Justin Jacobs detailing the Four Factors (observing a 0.91 R^2 modeling team performance with 4 Factors): https://squared2020.com/2017/09/05/introduction-to-olivers-four-factors/
- Seth Partnow on offensive rebounding trends: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fancy-stats/wp/2015/08/03/missed-three-pointers-dont-always-lead-to-nba-fast-breaks/
- Sloan paper on visual tracking patterns that suggests crashing glass more is beneficial yet players crash conditionally: http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/To%20Crash%20or%20Not%20To%20Crash%20A%20quantitative%20look%20at%20the%20relationship%20between%20offensive%20rebounding%20and%20transition%20defense%20in%20the%20NBA.pdf
- A college study on crashing the glass more: https://kenpom.com/blog/charting-3point-rebounds/
The last two links are particularly interesting, both suggesting that teams could be more aggressive crashing the glass without a loss in transition defense. I think there's a bit more to it than that -- including fatigue! -- but it's certainly interesting to think about how teams could exploit offensive rebounding edges as the league plays smaller/fluid lineups.
Enjoy!
