Pace is Irrelevant, So What DOES Make Us Win?

[captain bill]

It's not just jumping to conclusions. Vivek and PDA were interviewed about the reason for the coaching change and the terms Pace, Style of Play, Running, Uptempo, and NBA 3.0 were thrown at us repeatedly as justification. Maybe not NBA 3.0 in particular, but that's become a shorthand term for this front office's overall basketball philosophy mainly because they seem to delight in using it as much as possible. It's by design a catch-all term that refers to everything anyway. If we take them at their word, the belief is that slow-paced and predictable half-court offense based around getting Cousins and Rudy the ball in isolation situations and asking them to create from there is not going to lead to wins. This is a problematic belief for many of us because we watched exactly that style creating wins early in the season. Could there be another style that leads to wins? Of course there can. But it probably is worth noting (given the ongoing discussion in game threads and related topics) that pace doesn't seem to be as big of a factor for this team as certain front office personnel tell us it is. And if pace isn't the reason we're winning or losing, and defense is, tell us again why we fired the coach who was (finally) getting tangible, quantifiable results on the defensive end?

100% this. People also need to realize that the "pace" stat is literally only a gauge of possessions per game, which says little to nothing about how the offense is built. When PDA discussed pace, he was very vague and mush-mouthed, but he did say he wanted passing, more creative offense, and running the break. Off the top of my head, here are some key stats we DON'T have, that are more relevant to that concept of "pace":

-percentage of field goals that are assisted
-passes per possession
-fast break points (for, against, and differential)
-offensive boards and second chance points
-total time per possession

Other data problems are:
-parsing data with and without Cousins
-parsing data with Malone vs Corbin
-parsing data based on rotations

....and then were still left with a sample size that's too small to base any meaningful conclusions on

 

[rainmaker]

Also, I wish people would stop saying that the FO and NBA 3.0 does not care about winning or that they care about style more than wins.

Then they probably shouldn't have fired our coach who was winning and blown up the season, while coming out and saying it's not about wins/losses but is about the style they want.

I wish some people would stop acting like tossing this season in the garbage is some novel act and no big deal for a franchise starved of winning.

 

[twslam07]

Agreed. I don't understand such anger for firing such an average coach.

You just don't get it, do you? I've seen you posting on here for the past few days with short, little comments like these that have absolutely no substance to them. It's as if you are trying to spark a reaction out of posters here.

You say you don't understand the anger over firing coach Malone, yet there have been numerous replies to your comments about why so many people are upset. Which leads me to believe you are attempting to troll, choosing not to read any posts on this board (which seems unlikely since you are replying to many members on this board), or you have the reading comprehension of a 2nd grader.

Are you allowed to disagree with the opinion that firing Malone was a poor decision by our FO? Yes, but at least be respectful and take the time to understand where the other side is coming from. It's comments like "I don't understand such anger for firing such an average coach" that make you look childish and ignorant. It's been explained to you multiple times on this board why there is anger over firing Malone. Don't sit there and play dumb in an attempt to get a rise out of people.

Most normal people backup their statements with evidence of why they believe a certain way. I'm still waiting on your piece of evidence that hasn't already been nullified by other posters here. If you ever expect to be taken seriously as someone who knows a thing or two about the NBA, I suggest you change your username and try a different approach because I'm not sure there is anyway you can climb out of this crater you dug for yourself.

 

[Swaze]

You just don't get it, do you? I've seen you posting on here for the past few days with short, little comments like these that have absolutely no substance to them. It's as if you are trying to spark a reaction out of posters here.

You say you don't understand the anger over firing coach Malone, yet there have been numerous replies to your comments about why so many people are upset. Which leads me to believe you are attempting to troll, choosing not to read any posts on this board (which seems unlikely since you are replying to many members on this board), or you have the reading comprehension of a 2nd grader.

Are you allowed to disagree with the opinion that firing Malone was a poor decision by our FO? Yes, but at least be respectful and take the time to understand where the other side is coming from. It's comments like "I don't understand such anger for firing such an average coach" that make you look childish and ignorant. It's been explained to you multiple times on this board why there is anger over firing Malone. Don't sit there and play dumb in an attempt to get a rise out of people.

Most normal people backup their statements with evidence of why they believe a certain way. I'm still waiting on your piece of evidence that hasn't already been nullified by other posters here. If you ever expect to be taken seriously as someone who knows a thing or two about the NBA, I suggest you change your username and try a different approach because I'm not sure there is anyway you can climb out of this crater you dug for yourself.

He's trolling like Jeremy Wade and you just swallowed the hook. "Fish On!"

 

[Capt. Factorial]

As always, I'm a fan of using more data. We're looking at a very small sample size here and it's hard to make very definitive statements. What if we take all teams in the league over the past five years?

It's impossible to break it down into wins/losses easily when you look at this data, but what is just as good is to look at a team's winning percentage. Thus, rather than ask how a team did in a win, versus how a team did in a loss, just ask what was a team's winning percentage for the entire season, and then compare that to their performance in these categories to see where there are correlations and where there are not.

I made the plots for all of these, but I will spare everybody the eyesore and simply report the results, as everything is relatively straightforward. One caveat to note is that for all comparisons, instead of using winning percentage (as I said just in the paragraph above) I am instead using Margin Of Victory as a proxy for winning percentage. It has been shown repeatedly (and I have in the past independently verified) that MOV is a very, very good proxy for winning percentage over the course of a season (we're talking like explaining well over 90% of the variance), and MOV is a simple cut-and-paste from basketball-reference.com while winning percentage is not. That's the only reason I did it. I have no doubt whatsoever that using actual season winning percentages would not change any of the conclusions below.

Part I -- What Does NOT Matter

1) Pace. Pace? PACE.
Kings Pace in 16 wins: 93.74
Kings Pace in 21 losses: 93.76

The relationship between MOV and Pace is absolutely flat. No correlation at all. Verified: Pace does not matter.

2) Assists. Do NOT Matter.
Kings Assists in 16 wins: 19.4
Kings Assists in 21 losses: 20.0

Raw assists is not the best number to use here because it's not pace-independent. b-r.com doesn't have a simple assist rate column for its team stats, so I cobbled together my own crude approximation: Ast/FGM. This is %age of made baskets assisted, which is really what we're asking anyway. There is a very weak positive relationship (r = 0.14) that is not quite statistically significant. Mostly Verified: There appears to be a very small positive effect of additional assists, but the relationship is very noisy.

3) Three Point Shooting. Does NOT matter.
Kings Three Points Makes/Takes in 16 wins: 4.9/14.3
Kings Three Points Makes/Takes in 21 losses: 5.7/16.5

And on that latter the gap is big enough you could almost argue for a NEGATIVE correlation. I.e. the more threes we shoot, the more we lose.

One problem with the split by wins/losses approach is evident here, because strategy may change depending on game situation. For instance, it is possible that a team that is losing late (and therefore likely to lose) will jack up more threes in an attempt to catch up. Here I simply used 3pt rate against MOV. There is a good, statistically significant (p = 1x10^-4, r = 0.31) positive relationship between three point rate and MOV. Note that this does not even take into account three point percentage. Falsified: There is a positive relationship between three point rate and winning percentage.

Part II -- What DOES Matter

1) Free Throws
Kings Free Throw Makes/Takes in 16 wins: 26.8/33.0
Kings Free Throw Makes/Takes in 21 losses: 20.9/28.1

Here I used free throw rate, which is a decent measure of how often a team gets to the line. One caveat here is that strategy does potentially play into this one: teams that are winning down the stretch tend to get fouled intentionally and that could explain some of the correlation here. There is a fairly good, positive relationship between free throw rate and MOV (p = 0.014, r = 0.2) which is statistically significant depending on choice of criterion. Mostly Verified: There is a small positive relationship between free throw rate and winning percentage.

2) Turnovers
Kings Turnovers in 16 wins: 13.9
Kings Turnovers in 21 losses: 16.7

Here I used turnover percentage. The relationship is almost exactly as good as that between free throw rate and MOV (p = 0.010, r = -0.21). Since turnovers are something you want to avoid, the negative sign is expected. Mostly Verified: There is a small negative relationship between turnover percentage and winning percentage.

3) Defense, in ALL its particulars
Kings Defensive Stats in 16 wins: OppFG: .412, Opp3pt%: .294, Steals: 7.1, Blocks: 4.6
Kings Defensive Stats in 21 losses: OppFG: .476, Opp3pt%: .357, Steals: 6.0, Blocks: 3.6

Here's the doozy. Probably the best stat to use is DRtg, which is an approximation of how many points you give up per 100 possessions. There is an extremely strong correlation between DRtg and MOV, with an r of -0.72 and a p-value around 10^-25. This is a far stronger relationship than any other we've looked at so far. Totally Verified: Defense matters a LOT.

However, there is one thing that Brick didn't look at, which is offense. Does offense matter as much as defense? It's as simple as doing the same calculation for ORtg as we did for DRtg. The relationship for offense turns out to be marginally stronger than the relationship for defense (r = 0.77, p = 1x10^-30). Does that mean that offense is MORE important than defense? Or is the relationship so strong for each that the differences between them are insignificant? You guys can fight that one out. Bottom Line: Offensive efficiency matters no less than defensive efficiency.

Essentially, what these numbers say is that following: Make your defense as efficient as you can make it, make your offense as efficient as you can make it, and nothing else really matters. There are a few ways to make your offense better: Taking more threes helps your offense by a good amount. Committing fewer turnovers helps your offense a bit. Getting to the free throw line helps your offense a bit. And moving the ball might help a little. But how fast you play appears to make not a whit of difference in your ultimate success.

 

[John Galt]

Malone was not a winning coash. He was 39-67 while here and 11-13 this season. He was a losing coach.

That's why Pete waited till Cuz was out ten games before he fired Malone. To fool people like you and anyone else who looks at 11-13 as an indication of Malone's effectiveness this season.

 

[hrdboild]

Falsified: There is a positive relationship between three point rate and winning percentage.
Totally Verified: Defense matters a LOT.
Bottom Line: Offensive efficiency matters no less than defensive efficiency.

Essentially, what these numbers say is that following: Make your defense as efficient as you can make it, make your offense as efficient as you can make it, and nothing else really matters. There are a few ways to make your offense better: Taking more threes helps your offense by a good amount. Committing fewer turnovers helps your offense a bit. Getting to the free throw line helps your offense a bit. And moving the ball might help a little. But how fast you play appears to make not a whit of difference in your ultimate success.

See there's a certain shorthand I use when arguing for the value of defense, and that is that offensive efficiency is important too, but almost everyone else wants to talk about that so I don't have to. It's not that I don't think it's important, it's more that everybody who watches basketball knows that assisted baskets are often higher percentage shots, turnovers hurt you on both ends, three-pointers improve your points per possession (but only if they go in), and so on. There's just not much to say which hasn't already been said. This can come across, I understand, as if I think offense is in some way less important than defense.

I think the numbers Brick has pointed out here don't marginalize the value of offense so much as they show that our offensive efficiency has been nearly as good in our losses as it has been in our wins. If you want to argue that we're losing games because we're not hitting enough three pointers or because we're not moving the ball around very well, the numbers show that it hasn't been nearly as big of a factor for this team as the defensive stats have been. Which, if you think about it, is common sense. We're once again one of the better teams in the league in terms of points scored and FG% but we're 23 in Defensive Rating. When the defense is better than average, we have a chance to win. When it's characteristically bad, we have no chance to win. This is nothing new. It's been a problem here for years. PDA and Vivek are new kids on the block in comparison. Maybe they think they know something that we don't know. Or maybe they just have to learn this lesson the hard way.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

One problem with the split by wins/losses approach is evident here, because strategy may change depending on game situation. For instance, it is possible that a team that is losing late (and therefore likely to lose) will jack up more threes in an attempt to catch up. Here I simply used 3pt rate against MOV. There is a good, statistically significant (p = 1x10^-4, r = 0.31) positive relationship between three point rate and MOV. Note that this does not even take into account three point percentage. Falsified: There is a positive relationship between three point rate and winning percentage.

Who else, besides you, uses this metric?

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Who else, besides you, uses this metric?

Which, three point rate or MOV? I explained exactly why I used MOV at the top of the post. Three point rate was an easy and fairly sensible metric - how many of your shots are threes? It actually ignores whether you hit them or not, but a) it's pre-calculated on b-r.com for easy copy-and-paste and b) it's actually a bit more generous towards those who expect threes to not be a positive factor than something that took into account both number and percentage of threes taken.

 

[Spike]

I hope that everyone here realizes that analytics is based upon statistical models far, far more complex than the descriptive statistics just presented.

I guess if simple stats don't tell the story you want to hear, you can keep digging until you find the stats that tell your story...

They must have a secret stash of numbers that explains DWill's hairstyle, and thus, his need for more playing time, even though both the numbers and eye test say we do better the less involved he is.

I think the people here have a good enough sense to tell the story with the numbers given.

 

[SacTownKid]

This team is average, even when they were winning, and that's the problem and why they are what they are now. And in reality, assists do matter. Perhaps most of all since the way this team can or should be accumulating assists game to game is via double teams in which the ball is passed to an open shooter for an easy look. This team wins in spite of it's lack of passing. It wins in spite of it's lack of consistent production at PF and SG. And so on. but it's still not winning much is it? This team needs spectacular performances individually to win and that all ties back to things like assists in particular because that is the greatest indicator of how you're team is functioning offensively as a whole. This team has a near 1:1 assist to turnover ratio so if you're looking for a reason behind all this it's mostly to do with that area of the game.

Another part of the game that also has something to do with the passing is that this teams field goal % is a major issue. This team shoots the 2nd fewest 3's in the league and hits them at a rate in the lower half in the league. The overall FG% is around 46%, and if you aren't getting that extra point on 3's like the Kings haven't, that % better be way higher if you want to make up the difference.

Obviously the defense is what it is, but even bad defensive teams win in the regular season. I look at those numbers and I see the main thing keeping this team from winning being an inconsistent TEAM game and a lack of shooting.

 

[The_Jamal]

As always, I'm a fan of using more data. We're looking at a very small sample size here and it's hard to make very definitive statements. What if we take all teams in the league over the past five years?

It's impossible to break it down into wins/losses easily when you look at this data, but what is just as good is to look at a team's winning percentage. Thus, rather than ask how a team did in a win, versus how a team did in a loss, just ask what was a team's winning percentage for the entire season, and then compare that to their performance in these categories to see where there are correlations and where there are not.

I made the plots for all of these, but I will spare everybody the eyesore and simply report the results, as everything is relatively straightforward. One caveat to note is that for all comparisons, instead of using winning percentage (as I said just in the paragraph above) I am instead using Margin Of Victory as a proxy for winning percentage. It has been shown repeatedly (and I have in the past independently verified) that MOV is a very, very good proxy for winning percentage over the course of a season (we're talking like explaining well over 90% of the variance), and MOV is a simple cut-and-paste from basketball-reference.com while winning percentage is not. That's the only reason I did it. I have no doubt whatsoever that using actual season winning percentages would not change any of the conclusions below.



The relationship between MOV and Pace is absolutely flat. No correlation at all. Verified: Pace does not matter.



Raw assists is not the best number to use here because it's not pace-independent. b-r.com doesn't have a simple assist rate column for its team stats, so I cobbled together my own crude approximation: Ast/FGM. This is %age of made baskets assisted, which is really what we're asking anyway. There is a very weak positive relationship (r = 0.14) that is not quite statistically significant. Mostly Verified: There appears to be a very small positive effect of additional assists, but the relationship is very noisy.



One problem with the split by wins/losses approach is evident here, because strategy may change depending on game situation. For instance, it is possible that a team that is losing late (and therefore likely to lose) will jack up more threes in an attempt to catch up. Here I simply used 3pt rate against MOV. There is a good, statistically significant (p = 1x10^-4, r = 0.31) positive relationship between three point rate and MOV. Note that this does not even take into account three point percentage. Falsified: There is a positive relationship between three point rate and winning percentage.



Here I used free throw rate, which is a decent measure of how often a team gets to the line. One caveat here is that strategy does potentially play into this one: teams that are winning down the stretch tend to get fouled intentionally and that could explain some of the correlation here. There is a fairly good, positive relationship between free throw rate and MOV (p = 0.014, r = 0.2) which is statistically significant depending on choice of criterion. Mostly Verified: There is a small positive relationship between free throw rate and winning percentage.



Here I used turnover percentage. The relationship is almost exactly as good as that between free throw rate and MOV (p = 0.010, r = -0.21). Since turnovers are something you want to avoid, the negative sign is expected. Mostly Verified: There is a small negative relationship between turnover percentage and winning percentage.



Here's the doozy. Probably the best stat to use is DRtg, which is an approximation of how many points you give up per 100 possessions. There is an extremely strong correlation between DRtg and MOV, with an r of -0.72 and a p-value around 10^-25. This is a far stronger relationship than any other we've looked at so far. Totally Verified: Defense matters a LOT.

However, there is one thing that Brick didn't look at, which is offense. Does offense matter as much as defense? It's as simple as doing the same calculation for ORtg as we did for DRtg. The relationship for offense turns out to be marginally stronger than the relationship for defense (r = 0.77, p = 1x10^-30). Does that mean that offense is MORE important than defense? Or is the relationship so strong for each that the differences between them are insignificant? You guys can fight that one out. Bottom Line: Offensive efficiency matters no less than defensive efficiency.

Essentially, what these numbers say is that following: Make your defense as efficient as you can make it, make your offense as efficient as you can make it, and nothing else really matters. There are a few ways to make your offense better: Taking more threes helps your offense by a good amount. Committing fewer turnovers helps your offense a bit. Getting to the free throw line helps your offense a bit. And moving the ball might help a little. But how fast you play appears to make not a whit of difference in your ultimate success.

Any chance you can PM me the "eyesore?" Would love to take a look at it and what you did with the numbers.

At any rate, fantastic work

 

[Bricklayer]

As always, I'm a fan of using more data. We're looking at a very small sample size here and it's hard to make very definitive statements. What if we take all teams in the league over the past five years?

It's impossible to break it down into wins/losses easily when you look at this data, but what is just as good is to look at a team's winning percentage. Thus, rather than ask how a team did in a win, versus how a team did in a loss, just ask what was a team's winning percentage for the entire season, and then compare that to their performance in these categories to see where there are correlations and where there are not.

I made the plots for all of these, but I will spare everybody the eyesore and simply report the results, as everything is relatively straightforward. One caveat to note is that for all comparisons, instead of using winning percentage (as I said just in the paragraph above) I am instead using Margin Of Victory as a proxy for winning percentage. It has been shown repeatedly (and I have in the past independently verified) that MOV is a very, very good proxy for winning percentage over the course of a season (we're talking like explaining well over 90% of the variance), and MOV is a simple cut-and-paste from basketball-reference.com while winning percentage is not. That's the only reason I did it. I have no doubt whatsoever that using actual season winning percentages would not change any of the conclusions below.



The relationship between MOV and Pace is absolutely flat. No correlation at all. Verified: Pace does not matter.



Raw assists is not the best number to use here because it's not pace-independent. b-r.com doesn't have a simple assist rate column for its team stats, so I cobbled together my own crude approximation: Ast/FGM. This is %age of made baskets assisted, which is really what we're asking anyway. There is a very weak positive relationship (r = 0.14) that is not quite statistically significant. Mostly Verified: There appears to be a very small positive effect of additional assists, but the relationship is very noisy.



One problem with the split by wins/losses approach is evident here, because strategy may change depending on game situation. For instance, it is possible that a team that is losing late (and therefore likely to lose) will jack up more threes in an attempt to catch up. Here I simply used 3pt rate against MOV. There is a good, statistically significant (p = 1x10^-4, r = 0.31) positive relationship between three point rate and MOV. Note that this does not even take into account three point percentage. Falsified: There is a positive relationship between three point rate and winning percentage.



Here I used free throw rate, which is a decent measure of how often a team gets to the line. One caveat here is that strategy does potentially play into this one: teams that are winning down the stretch tend to get fouled intentionally and that could explain some of the correlation here. There is a fairly good, positive relationship between free throw rate and MOV (p = 0.014, r = 0.2) which is statistically significant depending on choice of criterion. Mostly Verified: There is a small positive relationship between free throw rate and winning percentage.



Here I used turnover percentage. The relationship is almost exactly as good as that between free throw rate and MOV (p = 0.010, r = -0.21). Since turnovers are something you want to avoid, the negative sign is expected. Mostly Verified: There is a small negative relationship between turnover percentage and winning percentage.



Here's the doozy. Probably the best stat to use is DRtg, which is an approximation of how many points you give up per 100 possessions. There is an extremely strong correlation between DRtg and MOV, with an r of -0.72 and a p-value around 10^-25. This is a far stronger relationship than any other we've looked at so far. Totally Verified: Defense matters a LOT.

However, there is one thing that Brick didn't look at, which is offense. Does offense matter as much as defense? It's as simple as doing the same calculation for ORtg as we did for DRtg. The relationship for offense turns out to be marginally stronger than the relationship for defense (r = 0.77, p = 1x10^-30). Does that mean that offense is MORE important than defense? Or is the relationship so strong for each that the differences between them are insignificant? You guys can fight that one out. Bottom Line: Offensive efficiency matters no less than defensive efficiency.

Essentially, what these numbers say is that following: Make your defense as efficient as you can make it, make your offense as efficient as you can make it, and nothing else really matters. There are a few ways to make your offense better: Taking more threes helps your offense by a good amount. Committing fewer turnovers helps your offense a bit. Getting to the free throw line helps your offense a bit. And moving the ball might help a little. But how fast you play appears to make not a whit of difference in your ultimate success.

While not particularly quibbling with comprehensive leaguewide statistical results Capt., the difficulty with what you did here is that you took stats for the league's teams as a whole. That was your intent of course. Mine however was to look at what worked for US, with our personnel. What works for Atlanta's merry band of chuckers isn't really relevant for our personnel, anymore than it would make sense for me to tell the GSW that the key to winning for them is to slam the ball inside repeatedly. For us, for this team, for our personnel? These are our rules. If you are a team with 12 Kyle Korvers on it, then yours may differ.

 

[lawlman91]

He's trolling like Jeremy Wade and you just swallowed the hook. "Fish On!"

problem with Pace is that he's giving a bad name to those with the same opinions as him

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Any chance you can PM me the "eyesore?" Would love to take a look at it and what you did with the numbers.

At any rate, fantastic work

Not tonight, but possibly tomorrow.

 

[hrdboild]

problem with Pace is that he's giving a bad name to those with the same opinions as him

Eh, I think most of us can tell the difference

 

[Capt. Factorial]

While not particularly quibbling with comprehensive leaguewide statistical results Capt., the difficulty with what you did here is that you took stats for the league's teams as a whole. That was your intent of course. Mine however was to look at what worked for US, with our personnel. What works for Atlanta's merry band of chuckers isn't really relevant for our personnel, anymore than it would make sense for me to tell the GSW that the key to winning for them is to slam the ball inside repeatedly. For us, for this team, for our personnel? These are our rules. If you are a team with 12 Kyle Korvers on it, then yours may differ.

True, the question of "what works in general" and "what works for our team" are not precisely the same, though there are definitely issues with sample size and other questions (most notably "with Boogie" vs "without Boogie") that make it in my eyes a bit difficult to draw hard conclusions, which is why I went the other route. Still and all, the only conclusion you made that wasn't valid for the general team was regarding three pointers, and considering that we have not been a particularly accurate three point shooting team (19th in the league) the difference there may be explained by personnel and not by small sample size.

But I'd say that the general thrust of what I did basically supports your argument.

 

[The_Jamal]

While not particularly quibbling with comprehensive leaguewide statistical results Capt., the difficulty with what you did here is that you took stats for the league's teams as a whole. That was your intent of course. Mine however was to look at what worked for US, with our personnel. What works for Atlanta's merry band of chuckers isn't really relevant for our personnel, anymore than it would make sense for me to tell the GSW that the key to winning for them is to slam the ball inside repeatedly. For us, for this team, for our personnel? These are our rules. If you are a team with 12 Kyle Korvers on it, then yours may differ.

I think the bigger issue I have with your data set is A. 3pt shooting is never worthless for any team to disregard, so you're pretty off-base there. and B. What team are we really testing in that set? That 9-5 Malone Kings with a healthy Cuz? The 2-8 Malone Kings without Cuz? The Corbin era? We've had essentially 3 big independent variables change over the course of the first 40 games. I'd greatly hesitate to say 40 games under one team with few changes is enough to say what makes us win, especially since we don't have a recent past history of success to look for like a SA or OKC.

 

[Bricklayer]

I think the bigger issue I have with your data set is A. 3pt shooting is never worthless for any team to disregard, so you're pretty off-base there. and B. What team are we really testing in that set? That 9-5 Malone Kings with a healthy Cuz? The 2-8 Malone Kings without Cuz? The Corbin era? We've had essentially 3 big independent variables change over the course of the first 40 games. I'd greatly hesitate to say 40 games under one team with few changes is enough to say what makes us win, especially since we don't have a recent past history of success to look for like a SA or OKC.

1) yes, we can only have these threads after 2 or 3 seasons go by?

2) if the front office numbnuts wanted to make a call based on 24 games I'm perfectly fine responding after 37.

3) I know perfectly well what makes this team win, and knew before I made this thread. The numbers merely illustrate the obvious. And yes even with 3pt shooting. We have lost multiple games this year where teams packed the middle and made us shoot threes, and we could not hit. Shooting threes is the analytics movement's great holy grail, well alongside being a good FT shooter of course, but even if you believe that stuff it is in no way universal. In fact one of the big problems with many analytics types is how essentially basketball stupid they are.

Analytics Pt 1: shooting threes = good!
Real basketball situation: your team is composed of 5 Shaquille O'Neals

The thoughtless (and lazy) number cruncher will say, well then the Shaqs should shoot threes. The person who has actually watched the game outside of a spreadsheet will say er...maybe we better just slam it inside. The Kings just don't have good volume 3pt shooters. You can say it would be great if Shaq could hit a bunch of threes. But since Shaq can't hit a bunch of threes, that doesn't apply. Ditto for us. Shooting lots of threes does not play to our strengths or our personnel. And in fact I'm not even sure leaugewide data matters, because they don't have a Demarcus Cousins. Certainly not paired with a Rudy Gay. There's certainly a model for surrounding a guy like Cuz with great spot shooters, and in future years hopefully we might. But if you cloned Boogie and Rudy and dumped a copy on every team in the league, I'm betting the supposed benefit of a bunch of chuckers bombing threes willy nilly would drop precipitously because suddenly you'd have a much better option than most teams have. If Plumlee is your best option inside, then yeah, that three point bomb looks like a pretty good option. If Boogie or Shaq is your best option inside, it changes the whole relationship. Now the three point shooter is a servant to the superior inside player, rather than the reverse. And the relationship is even more unbalanced when its Boogie and Rudy inside and nobody better from the perimeter than an erratic Ben and a couple of low volume guys like DC and Gay.

 

[Big Cuz 15]

You just don't get it, do you? I've seen you posting on here for the past few days with short, little comments like these that have absolutely no substance to them. It's as if you are trying to spark a reaction out of posters here.

You say you don't understand the anger over firing coach Malone, yet there have been numerous replies to your comments about why so many people are upset. Which leads me to believe you are attempting to troll, choosing not to read any posts on this board (which seems unlikely since you are replying to many members on this board), or you have the reading comprehension of a 2nd grader.

Are you allowed to disagree with the opinion that firing Malone was a poor decision by our FO? Yes, but at least be respectful and take the time to understand where the other side is coming from. It's comments like "I don't understand such anger for firing such an average coach" that make you look childish and ignorant. It's been explained to you multiple times on this board why there is anger over firing Malone. Don't sit there and play dumb in an attempt to get a rise out of people.

Most normal people backup their statements with evidence of why they believe a certain way. I'm still waiting on your piece of evidence that hasn't already been nullified by other posters here. If you ever expect to be taken seriously as someone who knows a thing or two about the NBA, I suggest you change your username and try a different approach because I'm not sure there is anyway you can climb out of this crater you dug for yourself.

just hit the ignore button bro.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Which, three point rate or MOV? I explained exactly why I used MOV at the top of the post.

Neither. I want to know who, besides you, uses that formula? I'm not interested in how easy the formula is to arrive at, I'm interested in who, besides Capt. Factorial, relies on that formula, or one like it, to compile data?

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Neither. I want to know who, besides you, uses that formula? I'm not interested in how easy the formula is to arrive at, I'm interested in who, besides Capt. Factorial, relies on that formula, or one like it, to compile data?

I'm afraid I still don't understand the question. What formula are you interested in, MOV or three point rate?

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I'm afraid I still don't understand the question. What formula are you interested in, MOV or three point rate?

I want to know where you got this from:

Here I simply used 3pt rate against MOV. There is a good, statistically significant (p = 1x10^-4, r = 0.31) positive relationship between three point rate and MOV.

I'm not asking where you got three-point rate from. I'm not asking where you got Margin of Victory from. I'm asking where you got the formula that you're using to correlate three-point rate and Margin of Victory from, and who, besides you, is using it?

 

[randymoss1881]

Malone was not a winning coash. He was 39-67 while here and 11-13 this season. He was a losing coach.

This actually angers me

 

[King Baller]

As Brick pointed out the Kings are not a very good 3 point shooting team. It is hard to compare teams NBA wide due the difference in shooting ability.

But as far as the importance of defense in the grand scheme of things I believe it to be the most important part of a winning team. It does not matter if a team scores 111 if their opponent scores 114.

Defense is a constant. Defensive teams rarely get blown out. The defense keeps them in games

This is what we were seeing early on this season. A little flicker of a defensive juggernaut IN THE STARTING UNIT. When the bench came in, not so much. When Cousins was in foul trouble, not so much. If Collison or Gay were out, not so much. But when the starters were rolling it was a thing of beauty AND THAT IS WHY WE LOVED MALONE. Those of you questioning Malone's coaching acumen may not understand the Kings had not played defense in like a DECADE??????

What was needed was a couple of bench players. Say Jodie Meeks and Ed Davis to name two I think would have worked. If you add Elfrid Payton then you have something for Malone to work with.

But the Kings Brain Trust had to extinguish that little flicker of a defensive juggernaut. Then the first game with Corbin in charge, our Team Cornerstone coming back from SPINAL FRAKING MENINGITIS Corbin was yelling RUN, RUN, RUN!!!! It made me want to puke and I was sitting home watching it on TV.

Vivek, Mullin and Pete really screwed up a good thing and probably set the Kings back a season at least.

KB

 

[Capt. Factorial]

I want to know where you got this from:
I'm not asking where you got three-point rate from. I'm not asking where you got Margin of Victory from. I'm asking where you got the formula that you're using to correlate three-point rate and Margin of Victory from, and who, besides you, is using it?

OK, thanks for clarifying.

The formula I used to correlate three-point rate and MOV (and all of the other correlations in that post) is technically called the Pearson product-moment correlation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_product-moment_correlation_coefficient), though most people refer to it as "Pearson's R" or sometimes simply "R" or will say that they are "running a correlation coefficient". I didn't mention the specific test because it is a fundamentally basic tool of statistics and almost certainly the most common tool used for linear correlations, though I probably should have specified. I would say that the vast majority of all scientists/statisticians/mathematicians use it from time to time.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

And who, besides you, uses it, as it pertains to basketball? I hope you understand why I'm asking you these questions?

 

[VF21]

And who, besides you, uses it, as it pertains to basketball? I hope you understand why I'm asking you these questions?

To completely obfuscate any mention of "pace"?

 

[King Baller]

The nice thing about Pace, Kupman and to a lesser degree Swaze is the responses to their posts

 

[King Baller]

I like a fast paced game!!!!