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Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

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Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#71

Post by 1970-01-01 »

brutalhonesty wrote: post #31
raincole wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such an arrogant comment. "Really basic math"? Do you think NBA coaches reached this conclusion like this: 1. A player can throw X 2-points in a game. 2. Or he can throw Y 3-points in a game. 3. 3Y > 2X, so we should just throw 3-points all the time. It's absolutely not what happened. And the reason teams didn't discovery the current strategy decades earlier was absolutely not that they couldn't do basic math.

It really is basic math though. A 3 point shot with 36% chance to go in (league average) = 1.08 points per attempt. A mid-range 2 point shot with 45% chance to go in = .9 points per attempt. The math is very basic.

OK so eFGs are basic math. Are we ignoring them??

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_g...

https://www.basketballforcoaches.com/effective-field-goal-pe...

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#72

Post by nabaraz »

chasd00 wrote: post #18
waderyan wrote: post #11

Easy fix. Get rid of the corner threes and push the three point line back.

Yeah just make it a straight line, that would be the easiest. Wouldn’t require any rule changes either.

This could affect the sales, as there will be less court-side seats.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#73

Post by atmosx »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #9

> Recently, teams have realized three-pointers have higher point value despite their lower scoring percentage. This was such an eye-opener for me. A high-stakes sport like basketball/the NBA went on for decades without realising the simple math that three pointers are more valuable than two-pointers if you just do the basic math. How many areas in our lives are yet to be optimised with really basic math?

No, because hand-checking was allowed back then. Smaller guards like Mark Price for example, would go off in some games but stronger, bigger defenders would ultimate shut them down because they could feel and follow their movements with their hands. Now, if you so much as think too much of a player, they call a foul - supposedly to help the offense and make the game more entertaining. The result? A watered-down product where any team can win on any given night, but no one cares because defense is nonexistent during the regular season.

The only basketball that really matters happens in the playoffs; the rest is irrelevant and says nothing about the true power rankings.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#74

Post by epolanski »

meisel wrote: post #23

This article presents a readable overview of today’s NBA trends, but IMO is too absolute in its judgment. Basketball is not a solved sport. There is still innovation, for example with OKC’s historically good defense that relies on playing 5 smaller but faster players. There are still good all-around players. There are still people that hit a lot of mid range shots. We have trends going the other way, sure, but they h…

You are right, the situation is not as dire as in baseball or arguably even soccer, there's more chaos and room for innovation.

But still data-lization is taking the fun out of basketball, that's for sure.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#75

Post by epolanski »

beoberha wrote: post #15

I don’t think this is a particularly well written article, but I sort of agree with the sentiment. Basketball just isn’t THAT complex and the talent pool is homogenous enough that most teams can find these archetypes and build rosters that get you to the playoffs. That said, trends are cyclical. Look at the role of the running back in the NFL. There will always be outlier players like Shaq who will buck the trends an…

> most teams can find these archetypes and build rosters that get you to the playoffs

Not really, it's still 16/30 (I don't like playoff formats btw, so American).

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#76

Post by mopenstein »

epolanski wrote: post #75
beoberha wrote: post #15

I don’t think this is a particularly well written article, but I sort of agree with the sentiment. Basketball just isn’t THAT complex and the talent pool is homogenous enough that most teams can find these archetypes and build rosters that get you to the playoffs. That said, trends are cyclical. Look at the role of the running back in the NFL. There will always be outlier players like Shaq who will buck the trends an…

> most teams can find these archetypes and build rosters that get you to the playoffs Not really, it's still 16/30 (I don't like playoff formats btw, so American).

My country of Smugistan solved playoff problem years ago. Very simple: every Smugball team makes playoffs. If Americans and Europeans weren't so far behind Smugistanian education system, they would have figured it out too.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#77

Post by sandworm101 »

Teams try to win, but basketball as a sport is entertainment. The opposing teams actually work together to put on a great show for the fans. If those fans don't want to see an endless series of 3-point shots, basketball will indeed change its rules.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#78

Post by atmosx »

meisel wrote: post #23

This article presents a readable overview of today’s NBA trends, but IMO is too absolute in its judgment. Basketball is not a solved sport. There is still innovation, for example with OKC’s historically good defense that relies on playing 5 smaller but faster players. There are still good all-around players. There are still people that hit a lot of mid range shots. We have trends going the other way, sure, but they h…

In my opinion, the real problem with the NBA is that we no longer get the marquee matchups in the Finals that we used to during the 90s and 00s, mainly because the season is too long. An 82-game grind isn’t sustainable - it practically guarantees that stars like Giannis, Luka, or Jokic (or their key teammates) will get injured to the playoffs or not at all.

The fact that we’ve never seen Embiid vs. Giannis in the ECF, and that we’ll likely never get Giannis vs. Jokic, the two best players during the 2020s, in the NBA Finals says everything you need to know and it's a bummer.

Aside from 2021, I can’t remember another truly competitive finals where both teams had a real shot at winning. Maybe Boston wasn’t expected to fall so hard against Golden State, but matchups like DEN vs. MIA, BOS vs. DAL, or LAL vs. MIA felt lopsided—one team stacked with talent, the other never really standing a chance.

At this point, injuries, not players or teams, are deciding who moves forward.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#79

Post by Y_Y »

ysavir wrote: post #65
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #9

> Recently, teams have realized three-pointers have higher point value despite their lower scoring percentage. This was such an eye-opener for me. A high-stakes sport like basketball/the NBA went on for decades without realising the simple math that three pointers are more valuable than two-pointers if you just do the basic math. How many areas in our lives are yet to be optimised with really basic math?

I'm guessing that it's more complicated than that. Possibly when the specifications for a basketball court were laid out, the 3-point line was intentionally drawn where it would be a risky shot. And the coaching/playing culture developed with that mindset. But since then people have gotten at least a little bit taller. We developed more ways in which to train and grow our physical strength. Training got more intense,…

Ok, so we learn a function mapping position on the court to point value. Clearly a step function was too simple. Might want to fix the values during the games though to make it a bit easier on the fans.

Re: Basketball has evolved into a game of calculated decision-making

#80

Post by atmosx »

> In the end, it’s all about optimizing every ball possession.

While I partially agree with the article's stance, you can't optimize for this[^1] or this[^2] because they’re unpredictable—historically great outliers that defy averages and planning.

[^1] Luka Doncic WCF G5 against the Twolves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H3bGEXk3GA

[^2]: Giannis Antetokoumpo scoring 50p in G6 of the 2021 NBA Finals (featuring 17/19 FTs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHPLeWsAQw4

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