Weekly Chart Dump
March (Defensive) Shooting Luck and L2M Report Check-In
We’re heading into the last several games in the ongoing resourceful NBA season, and as we’ve entered a new month, it’s a great opportunity for us to look at how teams were affected by shooting luck in March. In addition, we’ll also look at the Last 2 Minute Reports and which teams were most damaged by the wrong ref whistle in the crunch time.
March Defensive Shooting Luck
The shooting luck has a huge swing on the team’s defensive rating. This season I’ve followed this metric in detail from month to month. In February, the Knicks had some of the worst defensive shooting luck, and thus they had their worst month - both in terms of defensive rating and overall win percentage and rating altogether.
Here is a reminder of how that table looked. The Knicks and the Kings struggled with both shooting luck as well as defense and winning in general. On the opposite side of the table, we have the Suns and the Mavs who were on the keen side of the shooting luck - thus they managed to secure a better defensive rating and record. It’s interesting to see that generally good and bad teams aren’t affected by the shooting luck that much.
March
Let’s now get to the March report.
The tide has turned for the Knicks, Magic, and the Rockets, and thus they’ve been one of the hottest teams of March. The Knicks are specifically the one that most yo-yoed from top to bottom of the table in both luck and overall score through the entire month.
Some other interesting notes from the table:
The Clippers have been really unlucky, but their defensive rating isn’t outside of the norm - it’s been barely above their average in March compared to the one across the season. It still raises a question of whether their performance would be better with just average defensive shooting luck
The Mavs caught their groove, their defensive rating was 10th best in March despite having poor shooting luck. Their offense was 5th best in March and they currently look scary, especially when Luka scores shots like this
Extra tidbits on shooting luck
The current trend of research in the NBA is advanced pose data through the NBA’s newest data provider Hawkeye Innovations. This new data contains data points for 29 of the players’ body parts. One of the main things regarding this data could be a better estimation of wide-open shots, as we could get a better context of where and how exactly the closest defender contests a shot (from behind the player, from the side of the player, or by performing a Battier Contest).
L2M Report Check-In
As mentioned at the start of this text, we’re reaching the end of the season, so now we can get an almost complete image of the last 2-minute reports to check what teams were seemingly harmed by the ref’s whistle, and what teams profited from it.
Interestingly enough, some of the more controversial teams like the Lakers and the Celtics have actually been harmed a lot more during the last several minutes. The Lakers have been in the spotlight in the recent week or two when information about their ridiculous FT differential has started to circulate the media and social media. The refs have actually harmed the Lakers during the last two minutes of close games, so I hardly doubt there’s any basis for such claims as in the link above.
That’s all for this week’s shorter edition of the chart dump. I’m preparing an (at least what I think) interesting text for later in the week, so stay tuned!