ForlornKing
Starter
lol those forumulas......
Up-tempo worked for us tonight
- Thread starter Ron
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HighFlyingMonkey
Starter
NBA.com and Basketball Reference use different formulas for possessions. One of them takes into account offensive rebounds as an extra possession while the other counts them as continuation of the same possession.
Regardless, the number of possessions is an estimate, not an exact statistic, because of the free throws per game. Just by looking at a boxscore, you can't tell if a free throw is a result of a three/four point play (1 FT on the possession), a standard two shot foul, if a player got fouled shooting a three (3 FTs on the possession), technical fouls or flagrant fouls. So it averages out all of the possibilities to give an estimate that, on average, will be more often accurate than not.
NBA.com and BR using different formulas is good info to have. Do you happen to know what NBA.com's formula is?
I would imagine that with Sport VU it shouldn't be long before we get an actual measurement of possessions per game. I have to think that data already is generated but just not publicly available.
But until then we'll have to estimate using a formula - one that as you point out isn't even consistent across websites.
Still, the simplest dismissal of the original notion that the Kings won last night because of pace is this - the Thunder played at the same pace last night with a higher (statistically anyway) efficiency on fast breaks and they lost by 21.
Siranthony
Starter
IMO this quote is probably why Malone got fired. He was openly bucking what the front office wanted him to do.
I believe that team rebounds also throw a monkey wrench into possession calculations. The B-R formula has a term that attempts to correct for team offensive rebounds. It actually threw me for a bit of a loop ("why don't you just use offensive rebounds?!?!") until I divined what they were doing.
It looked like Malone-ball. The pace increase comes from the Thunder playing like poo. Blowout + dumb turnovers by other team = higher pace.
They actually pushed the ball less than they had at the start of the road trip. The threes falling in this game helped a lot. If you're making transition threes then it helps encourage pace. Against Detroit, they tried to go back to defense and Malone-esque, but they couldn't hit a shot so pushing into a three was a bad move.
They actually pushed the ball less than they had at the start of the road trip. The threes falling in this game helped a lot. If you're making transition threes then it helps encourage pace. Against Detroit, they tried to go back to defense and Malone-esque, but they couldn't hit a shot so pushing into a three was a bad move.
kupman
Starter
I think you and everyone else saying last night was a throw back to Malone is wrong.
Malone-ball consists of getting a 20+ point lead and finding a way to pee the game down your leg. LOL
Siranthony
Starter
The pace was definitely faster during the 1st quarter. It seemed to slow down during the second. Coincidentally that was when the Thunder made a comeback. What was the most impressive thing to me was... We would have blown this lead and lost the game in the final seconds in the past. They did not let the Thunder back in it. I hope this continues! I was very impressed with this win.
Glenn
Hall of Famer
I think the D League is a lab for crazy ideas. The present version is the Paul Westhead study and is proving not to work. The conclusion is that the NBA team will not try the Paul Westhead version.
Is it that important??? I take it the numbers and reason for the pace calculation is very important to some of you. I didn't see pace winning the game. I am very simple minded. OKC played poorly and seemed disjointed. Certainly some of that had to do with the Kings defense but they also had an off day.
I think a bigger part of that coincidence is that it was when the Kings bench was in the game.
randymoss1881
Starter
And what do you think will happen if Reno wins the championship? You saw what happened when our summer league team won the championship
Siranthony
Starter
Could be. The pace looked like it slowed to me though.
HereWeBoogie
Hall of Famer
Just an idea here, but i think maybe all of the fouls we drew on OKC could have made the pace numbers go up?
Both can be true. Especially with Omri out and Ray playing backup PG instead of Sessions. Sessions has been terrible this year but he definitely seems to push the pace more than McCallum.
randymoss1881
Starter
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2322939-nba-insider-has-cavs-busy-week-set-stage-for-busy-nba-trade-season-ahead (Mod note: The article is by Ric Bucher)
Go to the bottom there is a section about our dumbass owner.
Go to the bottom there is a section about our dumbass owner.
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Chubbs
Starter
Sources sure seem to indicate he's extremely meddling. Texting ideas? Really?
"While there were doubts if Malone was the long-term answer for the franchise, most of the organization was happy with the Kings' direction and felt the team, overall, was overachieving this season. Ranadive, however, was unhappy that Malone wouldn't answer or incorporate his texted ideas about how the team should be run, sources say, and made the unilateral decision to fire him."
I have no idea who is pulling what strings in the Kings front office or who actually made the decision to fire Malone or why.
But I will say this. Of the crap Ric Bucher spews I believe a virtually none of it and this is no exception.
It wasn't about pace. It was about returning to a focus on DEFENSE FIRST and utilizing Cousins the way a dominant big man should be used.
And that is what we saw at the beginning of the year with Malone until DMC got sick.
I'm not still harping about Malone for the simple reason he's gone and he's not coming back. I am, however, going to continue to stress the importance of what he was able to get the team to do. Last night we did indeed see a blending of old and new but you cannot act as though the old wasn't a major part of the whole scheme.
"Borderline career worst game by Westbrook"??? His nickname is Westbrick for a reason Chubbs... Our pace helped on defense.
Russell Westbrook has only had seven games in his career where he took 10 or more shots and had a lower shooting percentage than he did last night. In all but two of them he had greater assists numbers than last night (the other two he had 3 and 4 assists) And in none of those did he have more than 4 turnovers, let alone the 7 he had last night. I think you could easily argue it was one of the very worst games of his career - top 5 at least.
The Kings definitely played defense. That's one thing I think the vast majority of people here are in agreement with. The Kings returned to giving much better effort on defense AND the Thunder shot horribly. The issue in this particular thread is whether or not the Kings playing at a higher pace is why they won. I'd argue it isn't.
Well, the simplest argument is that OKC played at the same pace and lost by 21 despite having more fastbreak points and being more effective in transition. Are we to believe that only the Kings benefit from a higher pace? After all, the Kings played at nearly the same pace in Detroit and got blown out.
In general I've never seen a strong correlation between pace and wins in the NBA and so far with the Kings increasing the pace (with an admittedly small sample size) has not yielded consistently positive results.
Chubbs
Starter
3-19, 10 points, 7 turnovers. 4 assists. He's averaging 26.
It's definitively his worst game of the season. Lowest points, worst shooting, most turnovers, tied for fewest assists. Previous low for points was 18.
It's certainly among his worst games. I'm nOt going to check beyond this season.
Edit: thanks funky. I was pretty confident my statement would hold up. The turnovers make it stand out more than the awful shooting.
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Ron
Starter
Sure thing.
That's exactly what I meant to say.
I was praying that last night was sort of a plan for our future, in which we have a combo of (1) our bad-boys D
with (2) some faster pace and early transition buckets, and with (3) right use of our super-big-man inside
(Which is stressed as a major part of both the old and the new systems, if I read correctly).
I could give a flying **** about pace... I do give 2 craps about defense though. Last night the team played focused defense. Cousins put in full effort mode or maybe he's healthier. I don't care if they row the ball up in a boat. They need to play defense and Cousins needs to touch the ball often.
Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
We didn't win this one with pace. Anybody insinuating we did is just being ridiculous. Or is possibly a PDA plant.
Embrace the beauty of "and".
This is the biggest issue I have with the Malone firing. Perhaps tonight was more of what's to come from our offense and what we want to do as a team. But it cost us 10+ games to get to a point of even having something to build off of and maybe a sliver of hope with the new direction of the team. We shouldn't have had to sacrifice real games to fit in a new playstyle. That new playstyle should have been something in the works from May 1st of last year.
That didn't happen with Denver early in the season and didn't happen with the Thunder here. One was with Malone and one was without Malone. The common factor here, to me, is that both the Nuggets and the Thunder self-imploded.
Yeah, the team lost a big lead to Memphis, but Memphis was beating everyone at that point. To blow out the Grizzlies would be a major anomaly. To blow out the Nuggets at that time or the Thunder last night is more a suggestion of the opponent being in a funk.
Meanwhile, the Knicks and Lakers are teams in terrible funks that you should blow out, but the new pace Kings did not do that.
I think this ultimately comes down to a lack of patience. So Malone's offense was clunky and iso heavy. Maybe once the defense was firmly established he would upgrade it. Or maybe the reality is that his expertise is mainly on the defensive side and we wouldn't have seen much growth there. I suspect the former but I can't really say. But clearly he was improving the team, even if it was primarily on one end of the floor. He was getting the guys to compete, play hard and battle every night with a chance to win most games. That's huge IMO. And he should have been given at least the rest of the year to continue to build that foundation. Because regardless of what Vivek or PDA want offensively, that defensive focus is something the next coach could use, if indeed they were determined to fire Malone.
This is the reason I won't let this go. I liked Malone but will easily concede that there are a number of better NBA coaches. It isn't that Mike Malone was fired as coach of the Kings. It's that Mike Malone was fired as coach of the Kings 24 games in and completely torpedoing any playoff hopes and setting this team back significantly instead of moving it forward.
