re: General NBA Links

Fascinating article from Hickory High looking at SportVU numbers.

LINK

On Davis as a rim protector

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Anthony Davis, despite leading the league in blocks, is not actually an especially effective rim protector. Though he does hold opponents to around 45 percent shooting at the rim, he only contests around 28 percent of opponents’ rim attempts, on par with noted help stalwarts Carlos Boozer, Andrea Bargnani and Boris Diaw. Therefore, despite his lofty block totals and good ability to force misses when he’s present, his relative inability to contest shots renders him below average in this metric, costing New Orleans about .5 pts/gm

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More reason to match Davis up on centers? Though he does add this

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Of course, rim protection is not the sum total of a player’s (even a big man’s) defensive contributions. How much of Davis’ relative dearth of contests are as a result of New Orleans’ schemes which often have him aggressively trapping the pick-and-roll, and how much is it simply Davis having just turned 21 and not yet able to rotate quite as quickly as the NBA game demands? Unfortunately, the public data can’t tell us that, yet

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Also on Evans

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Well, a combination of SportVU generated stats and traditional box score numbers allow’s an estimation of a player’s total offensive role. I’ve named the metric “True Usage” as it is intended to be an addition to or replacement for traditional usage rate. Essentially True Usage combines a player’s shots, turnovers and assist chances into one number to estimate the percentage of his team’s possessions with which the player is directly involved

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Of the players with the top 24 TrueUsage rates, 20 are pure point guards, two (Brandon Knight and Tyreke Evans) are combo guards with significant ball-handling and playmaking responsibilities and two are LeBron and Kevin Durant.

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Interesting stuff as the debate on Evans as SF rages on here. He may be listed as SF, but he that isn't the role he plays on the court.