League-Wide | Pace and Space

The Worst-Ever NBA Playoff Teams

February 26, 2022 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

Not long ago, I was on YouTube watching footage of Michael Jordan‘s legendary 63-point outburst in Game 2 of the 1986 first round, a game his Chicago Bulls lost to the Boston Celtics 135-131 in double overtime on their way to a sweep. That Bulls team, at 30-52 on the regular season, made the playoffs because there were only 11 teams in the Eastern Conference and three of them—29-53 Cleveland, 26-56 Indiana, and 23-59 New York—managed to be even more utterly putrescent than a Bulls team referred to as “a bunch of coke fiends” in ESPN’s 2020 smash hit documentary …

Editorial

The NBA Dunk Contest Is Obsolete

February 19, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

I am, by the standards of NBA fans, an old man. Even though I’m just 44, basketball’s demographic has always skewed more toward the Millennials, Zoomers, and whatever they’re going to call the generation that’s already started but who are going to be defined by being too young to have watched LeBron James play basketball—or if they do remember him, they’ll remember him the way kids born in the mid-’90s remember Michael Jordan, as “that old guy on the Wizards who used to be good.” Unlike baseball, where being a 44-year-old MLB fan makes you a kid by that league’s …

Analysis

“Suck Faster” Revisited: Relating Pace to Net Rating

January 29, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

It’s been awhile since we’ve taken a deep, obscure statistical dive around here and squeezed every little dust particle of data out of it, hasn’t it? So why not put that hat back on and revisit a concept first examined in the very early days of this site’s existence? In 2017, I wrote about the Brooklyn Nets under Kenny Atkinson, long before they got their current roster, and considered how combining an up-tempo style with a plug-awful team only managed to make Brooklyn 9-35, holders of the league’s worst record on January 25, 2017, a state of affairs that ultimately …

Editorial

The NBA’s “Omicron Asterisk” in 2022

January 1, 2022 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

The last three seasons of NBA basketball have been challenging to sort out if you’re the kind of person who isn’t a fan of making apples and oranges occupy the same history book. The 2019-20 season had a five-month hiatus, an eight-game abbreviated finish, and playoffs conducted entirely within a “bubble” where home court advantage instantly evaporated in a puff of COVID-scented smoke as all the games were in the same place and played to empty houses. Indeed, fans of the Phoenix Suns, who won all eight of their bubble games, stood at 34-39, and in any other season would’ve …

Editorial

Every NBA Team’s 2021 Christmas Present

December 25, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

Christmas and the NBA go together like hamburgers and J. Wellington Wimpy’s credit rating. As such, let’s take a look at all 30 NBA teams, from worst to first by conference, and play Santa Claus, giving every team its dearest holiday wish. No fancy intro this time out, just straight to opening presents like…well, like a kid on Christmas. Detroit Pistons: All Their Young Players Hit Their Best Possible Ceiling. The Pistons start three players—Cade Cunningham, Isaiah Stewart, and Killian Hayes—who are too young to drink the fun kind of egg nog on Christmas morning. Another starter—Saddiq Bey—is 22. And …

Analysis

Breaking Down the 2022 Eastern Conference Free-For-All

November 28, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

The NBA’s Eastern Conference standings are proof that when you take your eye off the league for even one minute, let alone an entire week, much like a momentarily neglected toddler with a distracted parent, those 15 teams get into all kinds of trouble. As of Thanksgiving Day, just three games separated the tied-for-second-place Miami Heat and Washington Wizards and the 12th-place Toronto Raptors with nearly a quarter of the season in the books. Things both did and did not shake out a bit over the weekend thus far. Miami beat Chicago and Washington beat Dallas on Saturday night, bringing …

Analysis

Examining the NBA’s One-Loss October Teams

November 1, 2021November 1, 2021 - by Fox Doucette - 2 Comments.

Through games of October 31, six NBA teams stand at 5-1. The Knicks, Wizards, Bulls, and Heat have recorded that mark in the East. In the West, the Jazz and Warriors hold the honors. The big question becomes one of which of those six teams, if any, has put up the statistical profile to suggest they’ll be able to sustain a winning clip through 82 games—an .833 winning percentage works out to 68-14 in an 82-game season. I wouldn’t bet on any of them winning 68 games, but high 50s/low 60s and the top seed? That’s the kind of goal …

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

Every NBA Team’s Worst Player Ever (Part 3)

August 30, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

When last we left off (two days ago…whoops), we’d gone through 20 of the 30 current NBA franchises and took a look at the worst player to suit up for at least 400 games, or five full seasons’ worth of time. These are not guys who show up, stink out the joint, then get thankfully dismissed—either traded, waived, or even stretch-provisioned if their contract is so awful that they’re untradable. These are guys who are on the team for years even though they stink. And funnily enough, most of these guys have been centers whose sole virtue as basketball players …

Analysis

Every NBA Team’s Worst Player Ever (Part 2)

August 28, 2021 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at 10 NBA teams and asked who their worst player ever turned out to be. Our criteria included not just advanced stats (although it’s hard to argue with negative Win Shares or a deeply negative VORP) but also a player who hung around long enough to do real damage, playing at least 400 games in that team’s uniform. After all, any player can come in, stink out the joint for a year or two, and then get run out of town or stretch-provisioned out of a bad contract (ask any …