- #TOY DEFENSE 2 WHAT IS MOST USEFUL PLUS#
- #TOY DEFENSE 2 WHAT IS MOST USEFUL SERIES#
- #TOY DEFENSE 2 WHAT IS MOST USEFUL FREE#
Three-point shooting is the great equalizer for the offense. And the only thing the defense has less absolute control over than opposing three-point percentage is opposing free-throw percentage. There is less random variance associated with three-point attempt percentage than any other stat I looked at except for points per possession. So while the defense only has 29% control of its opponent’s three-point attempt percentage, in terms of absolute control there are only two things it has more infleunce over – block percentage and points per possession. Below are the stats ranked by each side’s absolute control over them. Two-point shooting is quite a bit more predictable.Īnd that leads me to a different way of looking at the control issue. And to a slightly lesser extent, this idea applies to three-point shooting.
#TOY DEFENSE 2 WHAT IS MOST USEFUL FREE#
Even the best free throw shooting teams are going to have off nights. So while the offense is basically in total control of its own free throw percentage, on a game level there’s a bunch of variance. But there are really three pieces to the predictive pie…offense, defense, and random variance.
I embarked on this adventure just looking at the percentage of control the offense had compared to the defense. There’s a ton of variability in shooting percentage. Blocks, steals, and fouls are under defensive control, while everything else is under offensive control. Other stats are in control (to varying degrees) of the side providing the action for the stat. Two-point percentage and turnover percentage are under nearly equal influence of the offense and defense. Two-point percentage and turnover percentage are the battlefield stats. Basically, an offensive player is more likely to take a shot in the presence of a defender the closer he is to the rim. While we are only looking at 2’s and 3’s, one can imagine that long 2’s are more in control of the offense since those shots share some similarities with 3’s. In other words, our initial assumption should be that Wright State’s dismal performance was equal parts offensive incompetence and defensive excellence. However, two-point percentage is roughly an equal battle between offense and defense. We’ve been through the issue of 3-point shooting many times, but this approach again confirmed that the defense’s ability to affect opposing three-point percentage is quite limited. The offensive control over shooting percentage decreases the closer you get to the basket. That is to say, if we know the quality of a team’s offense and its opponents defense, we should expect the offense’s efficiency in a game to be closer to the offense’s ability than the defense’s. In the college game anyway, offense has majority control of scoring. A bad offense will struggle against against a bad defense. I hope the others are familiar to you.) FT% 98% (HCA=+0.5%)Ī good offense beats a good defense. Here’s the master list of stats and the percentage of influence the offense has over them in a particular game along with the home court advantage associated with each stat.
#TOY DEFENSE 2 WHAT IS MOST USEFUL SERIES#
And links to the other parts of this series are listed at the end of this piece. You can read more about the methodology here. For instance, how well does a team’s offensive free throw percentage and its opponent’s defensive free throw shooting predict a team’s free throw shooting in a game? Naturally, the defensive value isn’t useful for predicting free throw percentage, but for other stats it gets more interesting. To do this, I made a very simple model to predict a stat for a game based on the offense’s and defense’s ability with respect to said stat. How much of that wretched performance can be blamed on Wright State’s offense and how much can be credited to George Mason’s defense? And even if I did see the game, having a background knowledge of what the offense or defense can typically control can be useful. On Saturday, Wright State made 5-of-32 two-point shots against George Mason. For the rest of you, herein lies a summary of those works.įor starters, my purpose here was to get a better understanding of what the box score means. If you read all of those posts, you have my fullest admiration, but you are also an unusual person.
#TOY DEFENSE 2 WHAT IS MOST USEFUL PLUS#
There were 14 posts in all, plus a bonus post on how one could misuse stats to show that the defense has control over free throw percentage. Over the summer, I embarked on an exercise to determine how much control offense and defense had on various stats in a particular game.
Defense: The summary Ken Pomeroy | 12.03.15