Sometimes you take a look at numbers and they paint a picture. Sometime's that picture is so clear that it matches up with exactly what your eyes tell you while watching NBA games. It's even rarer that what you see while watching your favorite player on your favorite team matches up with statistics. As an unabashed fan of the Oklahoma City Thunder, I will tell anyone that will listen that I'd trust Kevin Durant to make a shot to save my life 100 times out of 100. He's simply amazing. This year has been the year of Curry. (By the way green curry > red curry every day) He's had an unbelievable start to the season, historic in every imaginable way. What has not really been discussed is KD quietly humming along behind him. Steph is sitting at a TS% of 68.8 and KD is at 66.4. All time, there has only been 49 seasons where a player averaged 25+ points and >.600 TS%. Historic stuff. Now, for the purpose behind my post. I took a peak and NBA.com/Stats. Now, if you've been reading along with me you might have realized I never use their stats application. The reason behind this is I hate their interface. I find it cumbersome, difficult to navigate and the results aren't presented in an easily digestible way. I will stick with basketball reference as frequently as possible. The NBA's application is privy to data not available to BBR so from time to time I head over and take a look. Player tracking data is all the rage today and for good reason. It's amazing to be able to dissect a game in such a way. NBA.com has tracking data, BBR probably never will. Alas. Today, I looked at Player Isolation possessions. I pulled a list of the top 50 players in number of isolations possessions. Number 1? You guessed it, Harden. Hat's still off to you if you guessed Melo. He's in second and its not really close (205 to 153). Anyway, I was skimming over the data and took a look a points per possession. The average for these 50 players was 0.8186. The lowest ppp on the list, was Emmanuel Mudiay at .37! The highest ppp, Kevin Durant at 1.25! Dude is good. Unfortunately, he has only recorded 63 iso plays on the season, good for 14.7% of his attempts. The Thunder isn't doing itself any favors not letting KD have the ball and go to work, any more than they do. Taking a look at number of possessions used in iso vs eFG% told even more of the story. #UNDERUTILIZED
35 scores on 58.7% of his iso possessions, good for first in the league (steph is at 47.8%). All the more impressive considering 7.9% of those possessions result in a turnover. He's just the best at creating a shot for himself in the league. It might be the ultimate tool come playoff time. |
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