In which we observe NBA items of interest and give them a lion face (RARR!) or a lemon face (Ooh!). For reference:

In this episode? We look at Raptors (RARR!) and Bucks (Ooh!).

LION FACE (RARR!): Raptors

I touched on this over at FH. The Raptors are currently in the lead for Pet Team of 2009-2010. It’s a close race with Charlotte (flawed) and Milwaukee (pathetically plucky), but enough to say it’s theirs to lose. You have to admire the guts of Colangelo here. He’s morphed into some sort of odd combination of long-term development manager and “WIN NOW, WIN HOWEVER YOU HAVE TO IN ORDER TO KEEP BOSH” disciple. He invests in Bargnani, who no one likes right now because he doesn’t rebound and that 10 foot leaner in the lane doesn’t look invaluable yet. But that investment signals a long term commitment to the youth bedrock of this team. He lands Hedo, saying “we’re going to get the very best in order to win now.” He lands Jarret Jack and creates options in the backcourt. He trades Delfino and Ukic, abandoning projects that take a long time to develop. If you’re not good once the cork is opened, you’re not to be left on the table to breathe. He knows he’s weak on defense and rebounding, so he brings in Johnson, who’s either a flawed prototype still built of high tech material or a hybrid disaster that should never have been set free, depending on who you talk to.

The lineup flexibility, as I noted is what kills me. That’s probably where I’m going to be getting my kicks next season, because like never before, there’s going to be some seriously demented lineups. My favorite I came up with for the raps? Jack-DeRozan-Bosh-Johnson-Bargnani. It’s obviously a GO BIG counter, but I like the idea of keeping Johnson at that four spot and still keeping your two best scorers on the floor. You’d have to play zone because Bosh man-up at the three would be a disaster, but then, putting Bargnani on seek-and-destroy is probably a good idea anyway.

I keep forgetting Hedo’s on this team, and that’s probably because he was such an integral part of Orlando’s rise to prominence for me. Howard was what you expected, but Hedo was who helped define them, more than anyone. The amount of silliness that now exists in Toronto with he, Bosh, and Bargs is just absurd. I only wish Jamario was back with them to complete the sillyfest. Still, they need flip cams on them at all times.

As it is with most teams that are contending, even the minor deals seem huge. Antoine Wright gives them a great team defender with length and upside. Bellinelli is either a flash fire waiting to happen or an artillery dud. But that still makes them more fun to watch than Anthony Parker or a Graham bro.

You have to wonder what Colangelo has targeted as the ceiling for this team. He can’t realistically think this team is going to win a championship. It needs to make the playoffs, that much is clear from salary alone. With Orlando, Cleveland, and Boston at the apex, does he believe they can get the 4 seed? Hope to make a push in the semis, and possibly get lucky with playing a banged up team that sparks them to the Finals (the Orlando plan)? Or is the goal just to contend, to be relevant, to be fun? Colangelo was part of something special in Phoenix by thinking outside the box and creating something new. Maybe this multi-positional rubix cube he’s created is his next masterpiece that changes things without ever bearing fruit.

LEMON FACE (Ooh!): BUCKS

I talk this team up a lot, so the fact that they get a lemon face might be confusing. Let me explain.

I don’t blame this team for the decisions they made. No one is in a worse financial situation than the Bucks. No one. They were valued at the bottom in the Forbes thing a few years ago and I doubt much has changed there. They’re handcuffed to two large contracts (Redd and Bogut), one of which they had to make in order to maintain any level of non-Grizzlie-ness. They play in a pretty old arena that they mostly use because rent is free and they know there’s no freaking way Milwaukee is springing for new digs, and since Kohl is actually a person with a soul, he won’t sell if there’s even the slightest chance they might move. He’s put too much into them.

Now, I would have put Redd out there on discount pricing to a contender for expirings, but then, I saw flashes of decency from them last season. And trading Redd for expirings may have pushed Villanueva’s contract so high he wouldn’t re-sign with them anyway. But I still would have pursued that first. Heck, I’d still pursue that now. Since they’re likely to lose Villanueva, Jefferson, Sessions, and Amir Johnson all in one summer, this presents a great opportunity to clear stars off to build around Jennings-Bogut with Mbah A Moute (who I think is terrific; length, motor, and a ridiculous name) and Warrick fun plug-and-play pieces. But Redd stands in the way of all that. Not that Redd’s not a warrior and not that he doesn’t mean a lot to the franchise, but he’s a veteran shooter with an expiring contract and those guys are ripe for the move. Then again, the Bucks may be handcuffed by the injury situation and just the fact that Redd’s been The Guy. It’s hard to let go of the most talented guy on the team. And look what happened to Memphis. They just traded for Zach Randolph, for God’s sake.

The main reason they get a Lemon Face is that they seem to be going in two directions. Jennings is the future, but Bogut is the franchise, but Redd is the leader, but we’re building for the future, but Luke Ridnour has a chokehold on our point guard spot but Roko Ukic could be great with some time but we want to win now but we want to win a championship but we’re also filling in holes like with Warrick.

I love Warrick’s game, it just feels like letting V-Nuv go and signing Warrick was too much of a ‘replace Salsa with tomato sauce’ move. The ingredients are still there, but it’s not salsa. And moving for Delfino seems more and more like they don’t know what they want to do, so they got a guy who can do a couple of things. Which means either Mbah-A-Moute is less in their plans, which is a waste, or they want to limit Jennings’ time, which is a waste, or they want to put Jennings/Redd at 2, Moute/Warrick at the 4, and run Delfino at the three, just means you’ll constantly be undersized and outrebounded.  And nobody likes that. Except Detroit, apparently.

There’s still hope for the Bucks, if they can turn Redd into something good, take on whoever is the young guy that doesn’t get enough time guys before people notice. I recommend calling the Warriors early and often. But if this is the rebuilding plan, stocking young talent while filling in the gap with mid-level support around two unreliable veterans, things will continue to be dark and gloomy for the Green and Red.

I met Clay Moser a year ago at Summer League after he’d been recently hired by D-League squad and surprisingly deep talent pool Rio Grande Valley as head coach. He seemed like a really nice dude, knowledgeable, with a wealth of experience in scouting and minor league experience. Which he’ll need.

Cause he just got canned.

Moser will land on his feet, since the dude knows just about everyone, everywhere, and if Ruland can get back into college coaching, Moser will find himself a gig.

But here’s where this gets really interesting (with apologies to coach Moser; best of luck, bro!). The article quotes Moser as saying Rockets GM Morey informed him that there wasn’t anything Moser was doing wrong, but they had someone more experience they wanted to install.

For the uninitiated, the Rockets purchased the basketball operations of the Vipers, making them the first hybrid model in the league.

(For more on the hybrid model read here and here.)

Okay, now that you’re up to speed, here’s why the Rockets being the first to try this model is terrific for the D-League AND the NBA and puppies and the world in general.

When I talked to Morey at Summer League last year (about ten minutes after I talked to Moser, actually), I asked him about Houston’s interest in owning a team. He told me in GM pressspeak that he’d like to see some more control before they made the investment. The hybrid system gives them that. Stein reported that the average loss for a team is $1 million. That number is staggering to me. Not for how big it is, but for how little it is. Think about this. For 1/16th of what they’re paying Zach Randolph (that’s Zach!) in a year they have absolutely no immediate goals for, the Memphis Grizzlies could have invested in control over an affiliate to develop all that young talent they have.

Anyway, what the quote from Morey concerning the Vipers head coaching vacancy indicates is that the Rockets take this seriously. An overlooked part of this arrangement is that affiliate teams can send down a young assistant coach and let him develop time with the prospects and how to run the offense. Then when those players and that coach are later promoted, there’s already a relationship. It means that the values and conditioning the Rockets want to instill in their system will be present in Rio Grande Valley.

For the longest time, I questioned why the Rockets invested so much money in a team that’s about five hours away from ANYTHING RESEMBLING CIVILIZATION. Now it’s become clear to me. They’ve built their own basketball lab down there. Remember that the Rockets have had more players with D-League experience in the playoffs than anyone else. Aaron Brooks? Yeah, that guy that torched the Lakers spent time in RGV. Same with Chuck Hayes. And Rio Grande Valley is tucked away, so they can train and condition and work on the playbook without any exposure or risk of visiting team personnel. It’s like Morey’s personal Batcave, only with huevos rancheros.

Most NBA GMs are skeptical towards the D-League because they are terrified of sending down a $10 million investment to work with a minor league coach they don’t know in a system they’re not familiar with being handled by trainers they have not vetted. Or in the case of the Thunderbirds in 2008, no trainers at all (and this was while David Kahn owned the team! Get excited, T-Wolves fans!)

The Hybrid System removes that concern. Morey will know everyone involved in the hands on development of their players. He can install a head coach who’s a part of their organization, someone they want to specifically work on developing their young players (get ready for sprints, Chase Budinger!). And while the D-League annoyingly has a salary cap that limits the amount of money they can spend on players (and the stupid CBA won’t allow for what they should, which is an additional six roster spots for D-League assignment that don’t count against the cap unless they’re activated, but that’s a story for another day). HOWEVER, there’s no cap on what Morey can spend on basketball ops. So if he wants to pay a few hundred thousand on a flight of strength and conditioning coaches and turn the team into a year round training camp, he can. If he wants to install state of the art rehab facilities and get top notch trainers to rotate between there and Houston to work with rookies who get banged up? He can do that. The possibilities are endless. And all of those decisions are up to Morey. Control.

So while it sucks that Moser got booted, this may end up being an egg and omelet situation. And anything that helps push basketball development that results in more cheap, productive young players and fewer overpriced, older players is a good thing. I mean, sure, they’re not 20 and 10 guys, but maybe they won’t do this either.

Ye Gods.

Free agency’s over, for the most part (except for Ramon Sessions, who’s going to be in limbo forever at this point). Training camp doesn’t start for another month. The season is about a billionyears away. Football’s not even on to distract us. We’re left with…(shudder)…(wretch)…(periodic weeping)…baseball.

(What’s a man gotta do to get a sport that actually requires athleticism around here?!)

So to get you through, here’s some awesome things to watch and say “Wow. The NBA is awesome.”

And what better way to start than with that most homespun tradition of awesomeness, the alley oop.

You know what else is awesome? Throwing a basketball to another person which leads to them scoring. You may have heard this referred to as an “assist” or a “dime” or “why Chris Paul is awesome.”

And this one? Just for me.

For you Lakers fans out there…

And for the rest of you, who have a soul out there…

Flight 23, you’re clear for takeoff.

Copy that, 23, you’re clear for landing.

But what I can’t wait for most? Shots like this.

“A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.”

Okay, I’m not exactly experiencing déjà vu here. Because I don’t remember this happening. At all.

But apparently it did.

I mean… it freaking happened!

I was reading a post on Sactown Royalty by an author who goes by Exhibit G. He’s a really good writer and does a nice job of pontificating about the Sacramento Kings and where the entire organization and fan base stand. In the post, there is a point in which he mentions Jamaal Magloire and then throws in a brief mention that the former first round pick from Kentucky was once an All-Star.

And the crazy thing is that he’s not making that up. He’s not lying at all. It actually happened.

Perhaps, you’re asking yourself, “How does someone who’s allowed to post on Hardwood Paroxysm not know that Jamaal Magloire was once an All-Star in this league?”

That’s the thing; I do know that this happened but I don’t really remember it. I guess it’s just something that I’ve tried to push out of my memory as a human being – like the playing career of Troy Hudson or Dick Butkis taking over the head coaching job for the Deering High varsity basketball team. The fact that he was an All-Star still just never makes sense. It was arguably the biggest and unlikeliest occurrence in American professional sporting history.

First, let’s look back at that season for the New Orleans Hornets. It was their second year in the city of New Orleans and the place was buzzing (a really unfortunate choice of words and not meant as a pun at all) with excitement over their new basketball team. They were coming off of a 47-win season in their first year in Louisiana and Baron Davis was becoming a star. He was teamed with veterans like Jamal Mashburn and David Wesley and looked poised to make a deeper run in the playoffs than their previous first round exit.

But something weird happened that off-season – their head coach was fired. Not only was Paul Silas fired but he was fired after compiling a record of 186-142 (56.7 winning percentage) in four seasons. The reason was presumed to be the fact that he had a 13-16 playoff record but whatever the reason was, he was moved aside for and replaced with a confounding choice. The new head coach of the Hornets was Tim Floyd. Yes, THAT Tim Floyd.

The same Tim Floyd who had just finished compiling a 49-190 (20.5 winning percentage) record with a rebuilding and sputtering Chicago Bulls franchise. The same Tim Floyd who needed three full seasons worth of games to win two more games than what the team he was taking over had accomplished the previous season. And he was leading that team to a disappointing .500 season in which he’d never get to coach a tick off the clock of the following season. Instead, he’d eventually end up taking his coaching career and NBA money to USC (literally).

So that was the state of the team. But what was the state of the center position in the NBA that allowed for Jamaal Magloire to earn a spot on the often overly esteemed All-Star team? What was the state of the Eastern Conference that warranted Jamaal Magloire to be selected to battle with Ben Wallace against the duo of Yao Ming and Shaquille O’Neal?

Magloire made the team with pre-All-Star break numbers of 12.1 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.29 bpg, and field goal percentage of 46.9%. At the time, he was the seventh leading rebounder in the Eastern Conference behind Ben Wallace, Carlos Boozer, Jermaine O’Neal, Kenyon Martin, Lamar Odom, and Kenny Thomas (yes, THAT Kenny Thomas). In fact, Boozer and Odom by far had better numbers than Magloire did before the All-Star break that season and yet, Jamaal was playing in Los Angeles for the extravaganza that year.

So why not Odom? Maybe they thought if he was back in Los Angeles for a couple of days, he’d get hooked up with his weed dealer again and it would look bad for the league. So why not Boozer? Maybe the Cavs asked that he didn’t make an All-Star team since he was heading into free agency that summer and they didn’t want him to warrant big money from another team because he was now officially an All-Star, not knowing that he was just waiting in the wings to swindle a blind man.

But we all know the reason – it was a glitch in the system. The system used to be that there were five starters voted in by biased fans followed by a backup for each traditional position and then two wild cards entries that usually included a guard and a forward. By today’s standards, they’ve jettisoned the idea of there having to be a backup center and just allow the coach to select whoever seems most deserving and/or whoever is someone the coach can tolerate being around. But back then, Jamaal Magloire was the benefit of some good ole positionalist thinking. He was invited to the All-Star Game because he was a center, not because he was an All-Star.

And the crazy thing was he played really well in the All-Star Game. He scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds in 21 minutes. In fact, he took 16 shots in those 21 minutes. 16!!!! Who does he think he is – Von Wafer?

Hold on a sec, I have a couple more

Who does he think he is – Allen Iverson?
Who does he think he is – Isaiah Rider?
Who does he think he is – Darrick Martin?
Who does he think he is – Eddie House?
Okay, that’s probably enough.

Looking back, there was no real explanation for why he made it. It was arguably the most improbable All-Star selection in sports history. He wasn’t asked to come because a player was injured. He wasn’t asked to come because an injury replacement wouldn’t cancel his three-day trip to the Bahamas. He was a fourth year center averaging decent enough numbers on a playoff-bound team that wasn’t living up to expectations and was being coached by a coach with the 13^th lowest winning percentage in league history and he made the All-Star Game.

We’ll never see something like that ever again. There simply won’t be déjà vu with this type of occurrence in the NBA. In today’s age of sports and politics, if something like that was about to happen again then people would be asked to testify before some type of oversight committee on Capitol Hill.

But back then?

It was just a glitch in the system. I know that it happened but I can’t remember it at all.

In my last article, I suggested that knowing how an individual team changes the way it attempts its shots as a game progresses might be a valuable piece of information. Today I will take a look at the Los Angeles Lakers.

To study shot types at the team level instead of at the league level, I’ve made two changes. First, I’ve lumped the layup, dunk, tip, and putback categories into one called “Close.” This will make the sample size large enough to draw reasonable conclusions. Secondly, instead of totaling the Lakers’ amount of each shot type for every second, I will be doing it for every minute. This will make the graph look much smoother, too.

Here are the Lakers’ total shots for the season per minute:

Similar to the league-wide trend, the Lakers see their midrange/post attempts start high then decrease. They also see their three-point attempts start low then increase, and their close attempts stay at a consistent level. At the start of the game, it’s clear which shots they prefer. By the end, it’s much harder to tell. Also, coming out of halftime, the Lakers’ close shots spike first, followed by midrange shots, and then three-pointers. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Lakers coaching staff at the half emphasizes getting shots near the basket to start off the second half.

Of course, this graph is a bit hard to make sense of sometimes because the data fluctuates so much. To simplify it, I’ve broken it down by quarter:

This graph presents the data in a much clearer way. With this graph the shot counts are calculated per game. Here we can see that midrange shots consistently decrease throughout the game, while three-point shots have their biggest increases in the second and fourth quarters.

Overall, in terms of shot types, the Lakers don’t seem to be that unusual of a team. They start with a lot of midrange/post shots, but by the end of the game their attempts of three-pointers have almost caught up.

Linas Kleiza and Von Wafer are now teammates, thought hardly in the sense that NBA fans would prefer.  They’ll be a comedic duo coming to a theater near you in the latest installment of the road tripping genre.  One lovable Lithuanian and his partner in crime, friendship, and basketball will venture off to see the world, find their fortune, and win the girl(s).

Cameo by Josh Childress, and Allen Iverson (rumored, unconfirmed).

It’s a pity, really, but this is a pretty substantial option for restricted free agents looking to make some extra coin or stick it to their respective teams.  Childress was undoubtedly the trailblazer, and perhaps it’s fitting that Kleiza, an underrated contributor, and Von Wafer, an emerging scorer in his own right, have followed the path of the consummate role player.  There are essentially two types of role players: company men (Derek Fisher, etc.), and vagabonds.  Kleiza, Childress, Wafer and the like have simply upped the ante in regard to the journeyman tag, proving that the gun-for-hire ethic of professional sports musn’t be limited by oceans or passports.  Teams in the NBA are in a tight spot right now, hence Kleiza bolting from a team that frankly needs him in the rotation and has no significant talent waiting in the wings.  The luxury tax cares not for your team’s depth chart, and apparently not at all for the preferences of HP.  But we’re hardly unique in appreciating Kleiza’s style and game, because the dude is straight up fan favorite.  How could you not appreciate Kleiza launching threes and barreling into the lane?  How could you not go nuts when he dropped 41 on national television?  Kleiza’s tough, he’s big, and he’s fun, three attributes which no other Nugget embodies.

Wafer brings his own tragedy, if only because his European vacation is a product of his immaturity.  Von has all the makings of a cult icon: scoring machine, limited playing time, prodigious name.  But instead of bringing his particular brand of exciting basketball (exciting for us, not his teammates) to a new team and a new fan base here in the States, he’ll be out of sight and out of mind in Greece.  It’s a pity, but does hold a bright side for Wafer: an opportunity, as Kelly Dwyer puts it, to chill the hell out.  Wafer is living proof that playing as if you have nothing to lose can make you lose quite a bit in terms of professional opportunity, if only for a season or two.

Godspeed, sons of HP.  Kleiza, may your sword be your guide, as you climb to new heights as a scoring threat.  Von, may you continue your evolution along the J.R. Smith line, until the fateful day where you join forces with him to make the universe explode.

The Magic are loaded and the Lakers loaded-er, but let’s all take a moment to be wary of the force that’s mounting in the Northeast.  The Boston Celtics are building an army.  It is an army bred for a single purpose: to destroy the world of Men.

Betting against the Celtics is a tricky proposition, especially since discounting the Celtics likely requires detailed medical information that flies far above our amateur Doogie Howser heads.  Garnett still needs to prove that his he can run without his knee clicking like a metronome, but I’m willing to grant one of the league’s iron men the benefit of the doubt.  KG did miss the playoffs due to injury, but isn’t expecting further injury or even limitation a bit presumptuous?  This isn’t Yao Ming, this is Kevin Garnett.  Or as he’d probably be the first to tell you, Kevin M.F. Garnett.  He’s got some miles on him, sure, but he also managed six straight seasons of 81+ regular season games.  At this very moment, he’s probably making this face while leg pressing school buses.  Full of children.  And rhinos.  The same player that was accused of being too passionate is now flagged as an injury problem waiting to happen, and I’m just not sure that adds up.  While I’m well aware that Garnett’s heart doesn’t vouch for the rest of his body’s welfare, I believe very much in the mental and emotional sides of injury recovery.  That, and if last season taught us anything, it’s that this man cannot and will not sit on the bench in a suit.  KG just Hulks out whenever he comes within a hundred feet of a bouncing ball, and no innocent bystanders would be safe with him ticking like a time bomb on the pine.

I’m not ignoring the possibility that Garnett could and may miss some time.  I just don’t think it’s fair to him or this team to assume it’s destined to happen.

Of course, the Celtics have added enough to still pose a real threat without KG.  The Magic and the Cavs have made some tremendous moves this off-season, but the Boston army still looms.  The C’s are absolutely stacked inside, and they’ve complemented Kendrick Perkins (who may be the best solo defender of Dwight Howard in the game) nicely by adding Rasheed Wallace, re-signing Glen Davis, and digging Shelden Williams out from under the porch.  That’s a set of bigs to be proud of, even if the rest of the world eyes your team with bitter jealousy; Wallace and Davis can both space the floor on offense, while Perk and Williams are more prototypical defenders and rebounders inside.  That’s depth without Kevin Garnett, and adding one of the best power forwards in the game back into that mix only makes it that much more potent.  It’s nightmare fuel for every Eastern Conference coach nursing rebounding advantage dreams.

What impressed me most about the Celtics in last year’s playoffs was just how good they were without Garnett.  On offense, I expected Pierce to be swarmed, Rondo to look a little uncomfortable, and the works to gum up.  Instead, Glen Davis slid comfortably into KG’s slot in the rotation, and a combination of role players found ways to pick up the slack.  On defense, I expected one of the league’s most consistent and stellar systems to sputter without its vocal and emotional leader.  Instead, Garnett morphed from leader to symbol.  The outfit functioned without him but within his spirit, and the defensive ethic that won the day in 2008 was every bit as present in 2009.  Personnel was limited (James Posey also went bye-bye) in comparison and the competition improved, hence a different result.  But the experience from last year’s run both tangibly and intangibly changed this team for the better, and elevated KG’s influence from mentor and leader by example to force more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Look, I’m not happy about this either.  I have a hard time getting behind Garnett’s antics, Pierce’s hubris, or Rondo post-Hinrich.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t respect the hell out of ‘em.  They’re veteran-laden, and the confidence, experience, and skill that oozes from the very pores of this roster make the Celtics as good as any team in the East.  They needed some offensive versatility and backcourt depth, and got that in Marquis Daniels.  They needed to bring back their frontcourt at the very least, and they’ve done that and then some.  What more would you ask of a team already within the realm of contention?

Recently I explored how shot types change during the final two minutes of a game. However, that only gave snapshots based on certain timeframes that I chose. Looking at how those shot types change, second by second, is much more enlightening. That is what I will be doing today. For each shot type, I will calculate the total amount of attempts from every game this year for each second.

Let’s start with three-pointers. From the last study, we saw that three-point attempts increase dramatically relative to other shot attempts in the last two minutes. Is that a late-game surge only or do three-point attempts increase progressively throughout the game? Here’s the data:

Outliers (which occurred at the end of each quarter) were removed from the graph for the sake of clarity. As you can see, there’s a significant increase in attempts as the game goes on. We also see a very rapid increase at the end of the game. I won’t speculate as to why this happens, but it certainly is interesting.

In the last two minutes, three-point attempts increase mostly at the expense of midrange/post attempts. Is this only a late-game trend, or does it gradually occur during all 48 minutes? Let’s look at midrange attempts:

Two-point shots away from the basket appear to do the opposite of three-pointers. They start at their highest frequency and gradually decrease as the game goes on. In the final moments the decline slows, but that is because all shot attempts, regardless of shot type, increase in the final seconds.

Layups are the third shot type with a large enough sample size at each second in the game to make some sense of it:

Layups decline ever so slightly as the game progresses. At the start of the game the trendline is at around 17, and by the end it is just above 15. This difference is very small and can possibly be explained by one other change as the game progresses: fouls. How do shooting fouls change over the course of a game?

These fouls rise by about 2.5 during the 48 minutes, so it may be that layups just go down because shooting fouls (which will not show the shot type in the play-by-play) go up. We don’t know that most shooting fouls are on layup attempts, but outside shooters are rarely fouled and dunks, tips, and putbacks are infrequent enough to not be much of a factor.

What about those dunks, tips, and putbacks? I’ve put together graphs on all three shot types, but good luck making any sense of them:

In conclusion, teams don’t move away from midrange/post and towards three-point shots only in the last two minutes. This appears to be a phenomenon that occurs from the very start of the game. Also, layups go down as the game progresses, but this may just be because of an increase in shooting fouls.

Although this information is interesting at the league-wide level, it may be even more helpful on a team-by-team basis. If you knew how a certain team changes its style as the game progresses, it would be easier to game plan for them. This is something I will look into studying in the future.

Using the play-by-play data at BasketballValue, I decided to see how shot attempts change in crunch time. Do players take more three-pointers in the last two minutes of a game? Are layups and dunks harder to come by? Does desperation lead to more players crashing the offensive boards and tipping the ball in? Today I’ll try to answer some of those questions.

Without further ado, here are the shot frequencies when there are more than two minutes remaining and when there are less than two:

As you can see, essentially nothing changes except for two types: three-pointers and midrange/post shots. It appears teams take more long distance shots at the expense of less efficient and perhaps more difficult midrange shots. Logically, this makes sense, especially when your team is trailing and every point appears to matter more. If you’re down seven or eight points with little time left, you’re more likely to try to make up that difference in larger chunks. Also, perhaps players know that on average three-point shots tend to be more efficient than long twos. With the game on the line, they want to maximize their chances of having a productive possession.

There are a number of problems to consider when looking at this data, and today I’ll take a look at one of them. Perhaps three point attempts only are high in the final seconds, when there simply isn’t enough time to get a shot off near the basket.

With that in mind, I’ve split up the final two minutes into four parts. The results are below:

There are only thee shot types that have enough attempts in each timeframe to qualify: three-pointers, layups, and midrange shots. As a general rule, with the game winding down, three-point attempts increase, layups decrease, and midrange shots bounce around a bit but also generally decrease. When I didn’t split the final two minutes into chunks, it appeared layups did not decrease. However, you can see that defenses tighten up on the inside as time runs out. The only reason I can think of for why midrange shots spike in the last five seconds is because players don’t have time to get any closer. There are also a lot of players like Dwyane Wade who will run the clock down to the final seconds and launch a midrange jumper at the buzzer.

The next thing to consider is the situation in which these shots were taken. Narrowing it down to five-second intervals is nice, but it would be a lot more useful if we also knew the score and exactly how much time is remaining during each shot attempt. That is something I will take a look at in the future.