Solving Basketball - Exposing the NBA’s Biggest Inefficiency

[eliteballer]

Thoughts?

[Im Still Ballin]

Very cool. Agree on all fronts.

[elementally morale]

Nice videos. Thx.

[ILLsmak]

When they talked about chaos, that would be my thought.

Basketball is unsolvable because of chaos. OK.

For a long time, the goal of basketball was to minimize chaos. That's why the 3 > 2 thing didn't catch on very quickly. The idea, I think, was that losing, even losing in a series, was the WORST THING. The numbers are going to bear out where the better team CAN lose a once there is a certain amount of chaos, even if overall they will be scoring 'more efficiently.' 3 point chucking creates chaos because of the shot itself, the rebound, the scrambles for the ball. Any team can shoot 25% or less for a night and that's how you see/saw teams losing by 30 in the playoffs.

If you look at it on "a cosmic scale," the whole 40% 3 = 60% 2, even discounting a lot of factors like put backs, fouls, fast breaks... makes more sense (still kind of disagree with the theory that hunting 3s is better.) However, the lows will always be lower (and the highs higher.) If you are trying to do something successfully, that is "win at all costs," you want to minimize failure. You want a system that is going to produce consistent results even if you might get out shot sometimes.

Steph is basically the greatest shooter ever + Klay is up there, the NBA was pretty 'down' when they were winning (imo,) and the NBA is FIXED (people have fallen hard into the 3 point era, which is kind of funny because it just looks like chaotic garbage oftentimes.) If you take KD out of the equation, we don't know if the GSW, one of the greatest if not THE GREATEST shooting team would have won more than a couple rings, and we saw them choke away a 3-1 lead.

And this is all with fake defense, too.

But yes, passing is also good haha. I feel like the simplicity of NBA basketball is rotting the brains of its consumers. "sad."

-Smak

[Im Still Ballin]

When they talked about chaos, that would be my thought.

Basketball is unsolvable because of chaos. OK.

For a long time, the goal of basketball was to minimize chaos. That's why the 3 > 2 thing didn't catch on very quickly. The idea, I think, was that losing, even losing in a series, was the WORST THING. The numbers are going to bear out where the better team CAN lose a once there is a certain amount of chaos, even if overall they will be scoring 'more efficiently.' 3 point chucking creates chaos because of the shot itself, the rebound, the scrambles for the ball. Any team can shoot 25% or less for a night and that's how you see/saw teams losing by 30 in the playoffs.

If you look at it on "a cosmic scale," the whole 40% 3 = 60% 2, even discounting a lot of factors like put backs, fouls, fast breaks... makes more sense (still kind of disagree with the theory that hunting 3s is better.) However, the lows will always be lower (and the highs higher.) If you are trying to do something successfully, that is "win at all costs," you want to minimize failure. You want a system that is going to produce consistent results even if you might get out shot sometimes.

Steph is basically the greatest shooter ever + Klay is up there, the NBA was pretty 'down' when they were winning (imo,) and the NBA is FIXED (people have fallen hard into the 3 point era, which is kind of funny because it just looks like chaotic garbage oftentimes.) If you take KD out of the equation, we don't know if the GSW, one of the greatest if not THE GREATEST shooting team would have won more than a couple rings, and we saw them choke away a 3-1 lead.

And this is all with fake defense, too.

But yes, passing is also good haha. I feel like the simplicity of NBA basketball is rotting the brains of its consumers. "sad."

-Smak

Good post. Risk mitigation is definitely not as important to teams as it once was. So much chaos nowadays. Lots of variance.