small sample size | Pace and Space

Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats (2022-23 Edition!)

October 24, 2022October 25, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

(Ed. note: yeah, I know this is a day late. Illness on the weekend is no fun.) Through games of October 23, 28 teams in the NBA have played three games. Milwaukee and Dallas have each played two. And with such a small sample size, we see some strange stats. The Law of Averages hasn’t taken over yet. So let’s take a look at unlikely and unsustainable and downright absurd stats. We’ll compare them to the NBA record book while we’re at it. That’s right. It’s the Fourth Annual Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats. The Unbeatens Boston, …

Analysis

Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats (2021-22 Edition!)

October 24, 2021 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

It’s time for the third annual edition of Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats! If you’re not familiar with the concept, you can read the 2019-20 edition or the 2020-21 version, but the basic idea is after the first week of the season, when every team has played two or three games, there are all kinds of wacky statistical anomalies from players and teams getting off to hot (or ice-cold) starts. Projecting them for the entire season can be all kinds of fun and produce some insane forecasts that speak to just how powerful the Law of Averages …

Analysis

Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats (2020-21 Edition!)

December 27, 2020 - by Fox Doucette

Last year, early in the season when most teams had only played two or three games, I took a look at the insane NBA records that would not only fall but be shattered if the players who had wild openings to the season kept up that pace for 82 games. After Trae Young went for 37 points on just 12 shots and for one game had an absolutely bonkers PER of 59, it was clear that a sequel was in order. So welcome to the Second Annual Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Statistics column! Rather than get caught …

Analysis

Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Statistics

October 27, 2019 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

Is there anything better than gross overreaction to a hot start in any sport? Two or three games into a season, when the Law of Averages Police have not yet been called in to restore order, a guy who had a big game or two still has gaudy counting stats, a team that smashed their opening-night opponent has the kind of net rating that you’d expect from a team that wins 250 games in an 82-game season, and fans start dreaming of horrifically unsustainable statistical runs that nonetheless pop off the page. Don’t believe me? Consider the following! If Trae …

Analysis

The Washington Wizards Worst Season: 2009

October 18, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards have been consistently pretty bad since their glory days in the 1970s. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Wizards were bad even by their own low standards. Twice in the aughts, the Wiz went 19-63. Their first lost season came in 2001, the nadir so bad that it prompted Michael Jordan to give up on being an executive for a couple of years and instead try a comeback. But 2009 is a special kind of dreadful. Indeed, the record tells only a small part of the story. The rest of the story is told …

Analysis

The Denver Nuggets’ Weird 2-1 Start

October 26, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

As the Denver Nuggets get ready to face the Utah Jazz (as this goes to press it’s about two hours from tipoff), they are going to have to overcome a weird and disturbing three-game start to the season. Sure, they’re two up and one down after losing 99-87 to Cleveland Monday night, but one 87-point game generally doesn’t drag a team too badly even in the first three. The Nuggets are 26th in the league in Offensive Rating at a pathetic 100.1. Combine that with their 99.6 pace (eighth-slowest in the rapid-fire NBA of 2021) and they’re not even cracking …

Editorial

The NBA: The Best Sport For Analytics

November 1, 2020 - by Fox Doucette

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic messing up the schedule for the NBA, most of the people normally tweeting about the nascent NBA season that’s underway by the end of October have turned their attention to football; the World Series is over, hockey has the same questions surrounding the beginning of next season as basketball does, but the NFL—with a few interruptions when players test positive for the virus ahead of gameday—marches on. And one thing NBA Stat Nerd Twitter tends to notice when watching football is the sheer volume of suboptimal play that comes with the territory in your average …

Analysis

The NBA is Back…but is the Level of Play Back?

August 2, 2020 - by Fox Doucette

After weeks of filling in the gaps in the posting schedule with some NBA history and a lot of waiting around, the “Whole New Game” relaunch of the coronavirus-delayed 2019-20 season started up last Thursday. And looking at the box scores, one of two things happened. Either the league’s offensive explosion never missed a beat…or the defensive level of play dipped to the level of an All-Star Game. There are some interesting theories kicking around the NBA Twitterverse about what’s going on—J.E. Skeets pointed out that referees are calling the games tighter because without the crowd noise to drown out …

Pacers Tuesday

Shooters Shoot: The Re-Integration of Victor Oladipo

February 5, 2020 - by Fox Doucette

The Indiana Pacers, after winning in spectacular fashion in Victor Oladipo‘s first game back with the team, have lost three in a row, including a listless disaster of a game against the Knicks, a garbage loss to a Mavs team that didn’t have Luka Doncic, and a FIRE NATE NOW DEAR GODS HOW DO YOU BLOW AN 8 POINT LEAD IN 83 SECONDS 119-118 disaster movie against the Toronto Raptors. Through all of this, and including Oladipo’s 2-of-8 performance against Chicago that was redeemed in the final seconds of regulation, the Pacers’ two-time All-Star is just 13-of-53 (24.5 percent) from …

Analysis

Kevin Durant’s Career Is Over

June 13, 2019June 13, 2019 - by Fox Doucette - 2 Comments.

Sometimes, a player can get injured, even catastrophically, sit out a season, come back, and return to the form they enjoyed before they got hurt, noticing no dropoff in performance that anyone is able to measure statistically. An Achilles tendon rupture, which Kevin Durant suffered during Game 5 of the NBA Finals, is not one of those injuries that players typically come back from. Here’s a list of the All-Stars besides Durant who have torn Achilles tendons, according to collected sources from a Google search that all seemed to be working from the same data set: Elton Brand, Dominique Wilkins, …