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NBA data shows LeBron James shaky on wide-open attempts
Overall, LeBron is a good shooter: he ranked 36th out of 117 eligible players3 last season in effective field goal percentage (57.1%) and is in the top 10 percentile all time. But LeBron is not good on the aspects of shooting that are isolated in free throws. Using NBA tracking data, we can look at shooting percentage on “wide open” shots, when the closest defender is over 6 feet away. For some players, the extra time and space takes them out of their rhythm and makes what should be an easier shot, a more challenging one. That seems to be the case for LeBron. He makes just over half of these wide open twos, amongst the lowest rates in the league. Interestingly, Steph Curry, aka the best shooter of all time, is also down here, making exactly half of his 24 wide open twos last season.
Relatedly, you would expect a player to make more free throws if they are taken closer together, as it gives them the ability to calibrate from recent attempts. It’s why players make the second of two free throws much more often than the first. However, LeBron makes just 75% of attempts taken within a minute of his last free throw, only 1.3 percentage points above his average.
Finally, LeBron’s percentage is slightly better later into games, when he’s played over 35 minutes, which may suggest a sharper mental focus despite, or maybe because of, the physical fatigue accumulated. However, the majority of LeBron’s free throws come earlier, when they are less directly important and he is less locked in, and his percentage slips south of 70%.
The 16 players that switched conferences to the East are collectively far worse than the 15 players that went the other way. According to EPM data from DunksAndThrees.com, West-to-East players registered an aggregated MINUS-14.6 EPM while the West saw that same total check in at plus-5.3. Said another way, the caliber of players that the West took from the East were 20 points better per 100 possessions than the ones that the East took from the West.
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Revolutionary tracking of the PHYSICALITY in NBA playoff basketball. A new approach to measuring effort and physical impact. Tracking over 40 types of contact — grabs, bumps, vertical contests, clear out moves for a jumpshot, screen battles, sprint recoveries, dives for loose balls etc. — across dozens of playoff games and full series. The goal? To identify who’s really winning the physical battle — and make that teachable, actionable, and tied to results. Why It Matters Predictive Power: The team winning the "Physicality" battle has won the game 71% of the time. Winning the “Playing Hard” effort count won the game 84% of the time! Winning the “Ball Pressure/Swipes at Ball” physicality area won the game 78%.
Quick Overview Oklahoma City won the physicality on a game by game basis 4-3. They also took the "playing hard energy" wins by the same 4-3 margin. The team with the better Physicality score was 5-2, while the team with the most "Playing Hard Wins" was 7-0. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led all players with 226 Physicality Wins, followed by Pascal Siakam (164), Myles Turner (140), Chet Holmgren (134) and Jalen Williams (132). Siakam led in Net Wins with +33. Hartenstein led in Net Wins per 36 min. Siakam was the top "playing hard energy plays" leader with 63 PH Wins, followed by Caruso (55), Holmgren (52), Haliburton (47), and Nembhard (43). Siakam dominated Jalen Williams Head-to-Head (+19 wins), while Shai was +20 net wins against the five IND starters (only losing H2H to Siakam).
And we can sit here and debate whether Kenny was right to do that, whether he should have trusted Tai a little bit more, whether Tai earned a longer leash. But there were people inside the organization that saw the defensive numbers of Ty Jerome in that series against Indiana, and they were terrified. They were terrified about what that could look like moving into the future. And I think there was some hesitancy to make that kind of financial commitment to somebody when you're legitimately wondering, ‘How much can we trust him in a playoff series or in a playoff run?
None of the other 29 teams played with the Pacers’ verve this season. They traveled more miles per game on offense than anyone else in the playoffs, and traveled more miles per game on defense than anyone else in the playoffs, according to Second Spectrum. Indiana’s players combined to run 444 total miles over their 23 playoff games, shattering the previous postseason record, which belonged to the 2019 Toronto Raptors. Second Spectrum has tracked the statistic since 2013. “We play hard for 82 games straight at a higher pace than anyone else,” starting guard Andrew Nembhard said. “I mean, that’s what it is. You only get in shape from the games. (Most teams) just don’t play as hard as us every game. It’s just will.”
As to why he all of a sudden became a screener upon entering the NBA, he once told me, “This is how we play, and if you’re not bought into it, you’re not gonna play.” So Wallace adapted willingly. Now, he sets picks and rolls to the rim, facilitating from there, as do Alex Caruso, Wiggins and the rest of Oklahoma City’s guards and wings. The Thunder set 28 ball screens per 100 possessions with their guards during the regular season, according to Second Spectrum. No one else in the NBA averaged more than 18.
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Does OKC’s record setting +1,247 point differential put them in the conversation as one of the most dominant teams of all time? I’m not so sure. Point differential — the difference between how many points a team scores vs. how many they allow — is a simple and useful metric for evaluating team strength, but it loses some potency when you use it to compare teams across eras. There are more threes than ever before, which makes blowouts more common. If one team gets hot from beyond the arc and the other goes could The Diff could get to +30 rather quickly. This year alone there were 80 games decided by 30 or more points1.
Howard Beck: They didn’t have a flowchart. I’m almost certain they did not actually have one. I don’t think Mitch was being facetious. Which is just to say—it is a very streamlined organization. But sometimes to their detriment. You have probably heard, as I have over the many years, about whether they were fully staffed in the front office or in their analytics department. They were not. They didn’t have Synergy Sports when the other 29 teams had it—they weren’t paying for it. They’ve been lean. They pay their players—they’ve always been known to pay their players. Phil Jackson was the first coach they really paid when he first got there in '99. Before that, they had been known to not necessarily go all-out to pay coaches.
According to GeniusIQ shot data, Gilgeous-Alexander ranked second behind only Sacramento's DeMar DeRozan in 2-point jump shots made (261) and attempted (495) this season. Gilgeous-Alexander's 52.7% shooting on those shots ranked second behind only Phoenix's Kevin Durant among players who attempted at least 150 2-point jumpers. Gilgeous-Alexander joined Durant and Chris Paul, a pair of future first-ballot Hall of Famers, as the only players with at least 250 made 2-point jumpers on 50% shooting or better in multiple seasons since player tracking began in 2013-14. "As my game's been molded and as I came into my own, I've tried to stick with what works and what's comfortable to me," Gilgeous-Alexander told ESPN. "That's one of those things that just has become very comfortable. Then I've figured out how to find certain spots in certain situations, and now I just play with it. But it all started with building the comfortability, and [Cassell] had a big part in that for sure."
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