Pistons Vs Nuggets ~ November 23rd, 2005

Stats

I heard on the radio earlier this week about a statistical measure that is gaining popularity in the league. It is points per possession. It gets to the heart of what you seek. Total offensive efficiency "irregardless" of offensive style. It is effected by FG%, TO, FT% & 3pt%. I presume an offensive board creates a new possession. I believe it was developed by whoever runs the 82 game stat website.

lemonpen

That is a good stat. I think there is one stat that has more meaning though. That is points per possession scored minus points per possession allowed. This way we can compare Flip vs. LB in a meanigfull way. Basically it boils down to "our we winning by a bigger margin on average?" The points per possession stat doesn't have much meaning if we can't determine the net gain or loss when comparing the two teams.

Buckeyes#1

Yep, I was thinking the same thing about comparing O to D. To have an even more comprehensive tool I think it would have to be used in conjunction with the differential for number of possessions. Helps to know if greater efficiency is required or more possessions.
I like the fact that by offering a relative measurement against our peers it can be used to determine which side of the ball is likely to generate greater net improvement.

slippy

My problem is that I never really know if the other team is shooting particularly hot or our defense is not so particularly hot that night. It is the same with the big men: if too many have season highs against us, maybe our big men are not defending them as well as we think they are.

When these things happen a lot, methinks we need to find the actual cause for them.

points per

i'm not sure if this is the sort of thing y'all are looking for (these various statistical categories tend to confuse me more than anything), but according to 82games.com, Pistons points per 100 possessions (for and against) over the past four seasons:

Pist. Opp.
2005-2006: 114 to 103
2004-2005: 105 to 101
2003-2004: 103 to 96
2002-2003: 107 to 103

Scolas

Dayam, thats seems like a huge increase. I'll make it a point to check back and see how 05-06 changes with additional games. Thanks for the data.

scolas

excellent! That is an excellent comparison.

03-4pt. diff
04-7pt. diff
05-4pt. diff
06 so far 11pt. diff

more stats

i'm glad this particular stat was useful...

another useful one, for shedding some light on some of the debates i've seen in the forum about what particular players (and rotations) are providing and costing the team when they are out there can be found here:

http://www.82games.com/0506/0506DET.HTM

just click on the "5 man unit" link on the left hand side of the page.

As with all of their "in depth team" stats, you can go here: http://82games.com/teams04.htm to see the 2004-05 stats, and also to find your way to the 03-04 and 02-03 stats.

apologies if all of this is already well known -- i couldn't find it anywhere on the forum