{"id":210,"date":"2006-04-24T10:59:49","date_gmt":"2006-04-24T10:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/24\/methadone-basketball\/"},"modified":"2006-04-24T10:59:49","modified_gmt":"2006-04-24T10:59:49","slug":"methadone-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/24\/methadone-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Methadone Basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous post, I dissed the NBA<\/a> as being a haven for ugly pseudo-basketball. It does serve a purpose, though, as a sort of methadone program to ease the way down from the hoops-jukie high of March to the Great Sports Desert between the end of the NBA and the start of the NFL.<\/p>\n

As I was feeling generally cruddy yesterday (side effects of some medication, I think, and we’re going to be getting that dosage tweaked just as soon as the doctor’s office opens), I wound up watching a little of the NBA playoffs, specifically, the Indiana Pacers playing the New Jersey Nets. Now, granted, these are not among the teams anybody expects to win it all, but I was struck by the fact that five of the last seven possessions in the first half featured a clear-out one-on-one move– exactly the sort of ugly basketball I complained about earlier.<\/p>\n

I was busy doing other stuff as well, so I didn’t watch the entire second half, but I did take notes for part of the fourth quarter. The findings are below the fold:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Looking for a decent proxy for team play, I counted the number of passes made in the half-court offensive set for each team. I didn’t count fast breaks (of which there were few), or quick scores off offensive rebounds. The results, from about 10:30 in the fourth quarter to about 5:00 remaining (“t” indicates that the play ended with a turnover, rather than a shot):<\/p>\n

NJ: 1, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 3t, 1, 3, 1<\/p>\n

IND: 4t, 2, 3t, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 1, 1t<\/p>\n

That’s 16 passes in 11 possessions for the Nets, and 17 in 11 for the Pacers, for a whopping 1.5 passes per set average. Which is inflated, if anything, because Vince Carter doesn’t bring the ball up the court– most of those “1”‘s were passes to him.<\/p>\n

All in all, pretty much exactly what I remember hating about the NBA. Lots of people bouncing the ball, looking to make a one-on-one move, and relatively little motion form anybody else. And possessions involving three or more passes were as likely to end up with a turnover as a good basket, because it usually meant that somebody had dribbled into a tight spot, and hucked a desperate pass across the court.<\/p>\n

Again, these are not teams renowned for their high-quality basketball (Steve Kerr’s repeated references to “Princeton offense” aside), but this was exactly the sort of ugly crap I dislike. I meant to try to watch a little of one of the other games, for comparison, but got busy with grading papers, and didn’t get to it. Maybe later in the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a previous post, I dissed the NBA as being a haven for ugly pseudo-basketball. It does serve a purpose, though, as a sort of methadone program to ease the way down from the hoops-jukie high of March to the Great Sports Desert between the end of the NBA and the start of the NFL.… Continue reading Methadone Basketball<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}