ShencotheMC
New member
Minutes
Just about a year ago exactly I did some rough-and-ready research and found that teams whose top players play a ton of minutes don't win NBA titles. Not anymore. They used to. But not in recent years.
The best theory I heard to explain that came from David Thorpe, who laid the blame it on that hustling, switching team defense. Once upon a time, lots of teams preferred an "isolation" offense, which meant one player dribbling alone against one defender, while as many as eight guys caught breathers. On many NBA plays these days, nobody stands around. It's common to see 10 guys flying all over the court. This is not your daddy's NBA. It's great for fans and team play, but it's much tougher for players: A minute of play, the theory goes, is now much more work than it used to be, and one result is that more rest is required.
I went into this season expecting that more smart teams would limit their top players' minutes, Popovich-style, not because they are weak in the mind nor because they are not in good-enough shape. But because it works.
Basketball-Reference was built to answer these kinds of questions, and what I found was that while some top teams may be managing minutes, plenty are not. I dug in, using the top 10 players in minutes played as a test. In the first 36 games of the 2007-08 season, the 10 players with the most minutes played logged a combined 14,281 minutes. This season, that list includes Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard, and the total minutes they have played is down to 13,793. So maybe that's having some effect.
And while there are plenty of heavy-minute players this season, some of those on limited diets of playing time, because of injury or strategy, are players who might have scored more in a different season. Brook Lopez, Tim Duncan, Jamal Crawford, Kevin Martin, Kevin Garnett and Derrick Rose are among those who'd threaten the 20-per-game with a typical alpha-scorer's playing time.
But it's not some massive historical trend that big names are sitting more. I checked 1985-86, too, back when Dominique Wilkins and Larry Bird were scoring at will, and in that season the top 10 combined to play even fewer minutes than today's big names.
Joe Johnson is something of a poster child here: He was scoring 21.7 points per game five years ago playing the second-most minutes in the league. This year he's playing less and scoring just 17.1 points per game. In other words, Johnson is one of the players Barry was e-mailing about, one of the players who has been affected by ... whatever is happening.
Did they rob us of this transcendent scorer by sitting him? Not exactly.
His minutes are down, but his scoring is down even more -- even with his old minutes, he'd only score 18.5 points per game at this season's scoring rate. That's the trend: There are plenty of gifted scorers playing the kinds of minutes that used to get you 20 points per game. Those players just aren't scoring as much now.
Something else is up.
Pace
Maybe the game has slowed down? It would explain a lot. Simply keeping the ball longer before shooting would explain now the same number of minutes played would result in fewer possessions, fewer shots and, importantly ... fewer points.
It's so perfect!
But it's not happening. The average pace has bounced around this season but is just a tad slower than five years ago, at 91.7 compared to 92.4.
Shot selection
OK, so teams are playing at the same speed, and the high-minute players are playing about as many minutes as ever.
Maybe they're just shooting less? Maybe stat geekery has inspired some kind of revolution in thinking, and suddenly all those inefficient gunners are thinking twice about jacking up bad shots?
Despite the lack of total points, top players do have slightly better field goal percentage (46.7 compared to 45.7 percent) this year compared to five years ago.
Again using the the players who lead the league in minutes this season as a sample group of the kinds of players who are candidates to average 20 or more points per game, we find ... this theory strikes out too. The truth is, they're shooting more often.
This year those top players are taking a shot every 2:19 of play, compared to every 2:24 five years ago. (In 1985-1986 they shot every 2:10, which is a lot of shooting.)
I had been abusing the numbers of Basketball-Reference for some time, but they simply would not give up the answers I was looking for.
Time for another perspective.
Just about a year ago exactly I did some rough-and-ready research and found that teams whose top players play a ton of minutes don't win NBA titles. Not anymore. They used to. But not in recent years.
The best theory I heard to explain that came from David Thorpe, who laid the blame it on that hustling, switching team defense. Once upon a time, lots of teams preferred an "isolation" offense, which meant one player dribbling alone against one defender, while as many as eight guys caught breathers. On many NBA plays these days, nobody stands around. It's common to see 10 guys flying all over the court. This is not your daddy's NBA. It's great for fans and team play, but it's much tougher for players: A minute of play, the theory goes, is now much more work than it used to be, and one result is that more rest is required.
I went into this season expecting that more smart teams would limit their top players' minutes, Popovich-style, not because they are weak in the mind nor because they are not in good-enough shape. But because it works.
Basketball-Reference was built to answer these kinds of questions, and what I found was that while some top teams may be managing minutes, plenty are not. I dug in, using the top 10 players in minutes played as a test. In the first 36 games of the 2007-08 season, the 10 players with the most minutes played logged a combined 14,281 minutes. This season, that list includes Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard, and the total minutes they have played is down to 13,793. So maybe that's having some effect.
And while there are plenty of heavy-minute players this season, some of those on limited diets of playing time, because of injury or strategy, are players who might have scored more in a different season. Brook Lopez, Tim Duncan, Jamal Crawford, Kevin Martin, Kevin Garnett and Derrick Rose are among those who'd threaten the 20-per-game with a typical alpha-scorer's playing time.
But it's not some massive historical trend that big names are sitting more. I checked 1985-86, too, back when Dominique Wilkins and Larry Bird were scoring at will, and in that season the top 10 combined to play even fewer minutes than today's big names.
Joe Johnson is something of a poster child here: He was scoring 21.7 points per game five years ago playing the second-most minutes in the league. This year he's playing less and scoring just 17.1 points per game. In other words, Johnson is one of the players Barry was e-mailing about, one of the players who has been affected by ... whatever is happening.
Did they rob us of this transcendent scorer by sitting him? Not exactly.
His minutes are down, but his scoring is down even more -- even with his old minutes, he'd only score 18.5 points per game at this season's scoring rate. That's the trend: There are plenty of gifted scorers playing the kinds of minutes that used to get you 20 points per game. Those players just aren't scoring as much now.
Something else is up.
Pace
Maybe the game has slowed down? It would explain a lot. Simply keeping the ball longer before shooting would explain now the same number of minutes played would result in fewer possessions, fewer shots and, importantly ... fewer points.
It's so perfect!
But it's not happening. The average pace has bounced around this season but is just a tad slower than five years ago, at 91.7 compared to 92.4.
Shot selection
OK, so teams are playing at the same speed, and the high-minute players are playing about as many minutes as ever.
Maybe they're just shooting less? Maybe stat geekery has inspired some kind of revolution in thinking, and suddenly all those inefficient gunners are thinking twice about jacking up bad shots?
Despite the lack of total points, top players do have slightly better field goal percentage (46.7 compared to 45.7 percent) this year compared to five years ago.
Again using the the players who lead the league in minutes this season as a sample group of the kinds of players who are candidates to average 20 or more points per game, we find ... this theory strikes out too. The truth is, they're shooting more often.
This year those top players are taking a shot every 2:19 of play, compared to every 2:24 five years ago. (In 1985-1986 they shot every 2:10, which is a lot of shooting.)
I had been abusing the numbers of Basketball-Reference for some time, but they simply would not give up the answers I was looking for.
Time for another perspective.
