re: Eric Gordon and the Kobe Assist

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The video showed a big difference that my data cannot fully explain. Although the Hornets had similar Repo rates on shots by Gordon and Vasquez, there was a noticeable difference in how it was happening. To assist in my analysis, I gathered some data from nbawowy.com

Gordon: takes 30 percent of his shots from 0-3 feet; 15 percent of his shots from 4-9 feet
Vasquez: takes 25 percent of his shots from 0-3 feet; 30 percent of his shots from 4-9 feet

This data illustrates what I saw in the video. Vasquez takes many more shots from the range just outside of the basket. His size allows him to get off his floater versus almost any guard who defends him. Vasquez is using his floater in the 4-9 foot range, and teams have caught onto this, so opposing bigs are coming out to contest him. As these shots are being taken a few feet further than Gordon’s, Hornet bigs have more space around the rim to rebound. Conversely, the Hornets are keeping possession off of Gordon’s misses because he’s getting to the basket more quickly and the defense doesn’t have as much time to react.

Surprisingly, Gordon’s missed jumpers result in a better reposession rate than Vasquez’s. Vasquez has his faults, but he isn’t particularly prone to taking ”bad” jumpers- stepbacks, contested jumpers, etc. In fact, a good percentage of his missed jumpers are resulting from getting the ball late in the shot clock. This is certainly related to his and other guards’ inabilities to get good offense initiated earlier, but it’s much harder to fault a bad shot that is taken to beat the shot clock.

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