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Re: Flip has an obvious massive chip on his shoulder

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 8:27 pm
by Q12543 [enjin:6621299]
I am really surprised to hear this coming from you Q. You are always so into stats and yet for this point you put luck out there as an explanation. One thing that was fairly obvious last year statistically is that the 4th quarter was our worst shooting % for our core 4th quarter players..

eFG% Season / 4th Quarter
Love .524 / .450
Rubio .419 / .299
Pek .540 / .504
Brewer .517 /.492
Martin .486 / .484
JJ .443 / .370

As an aside, when I did this I was actually surprised that Martin was the most consistent performer. But I do think it shows that with Martin he is a veteran who will give you exactly what you expect.

When you do the same comparison on raw FG% the disparity is even greater, implying that we are actually getting calls in the 4th to improve our eFG%. I really don't think luck had nothing to do with us losing close games. We were taking bad shots at the end of games, and the biggest examples of that were our 2 "stars" Love and Rubio. I think coaching has a huge impact on the type of shots players are taking in the 4th. I think Adelman got through to our team in the first 3 quarters last season but he had no way to calm them down and get them to make good decisions in the 4th. Our maybe Adelman tried to treat every game situation the same instead of adjusting to NBA 4th quarter basketball? Either way the 4th quarter was our teams worst shooting quarter, especially for Love, Rubio and JJ.



Two different things. I'm referring specifically to "close game" situations, where the outcome is decided by 4 points or less. Your stats cover the entirety of the 4th quarter regardless of the final outcome (a different argument that could be supported by your stats is that we wouldn't have been in as many close games to begin with if we were more efficient in the 4th, from beginning to end, which I would agree with).

When we got into those close game situations, we are talking about a sample size of plays that make it tough to draw exacting conclusions about cause and effect. How does one explain Gerald Green's ridiculous (and very well contested) shot against us in the Phoenix last second win or the three missed Kevin Love free throws against the Thunder or the non-call by the official when Love was clearly hacked? These are three different instances of close-game losses without any common theme in the decisive play. What about Gorgui's last second make against Dallas that helped win the game for us? He misses that shot probably 60% of the time. He happened to make it that night.

My point isn't that there aren't other contributing factors. It's that random variability plays a larger role than we feel comfortable acknowledging. How else does one explain the fact we went 6-2 in our final 8 close games? It was the same players with the same coaching staff. Regression to the mean.....