Cavaliers-Hawks Super Preview Extravaganza (Or: Y'All Come Back Now, Ya Hear?)
by Corey
Just when you were starting to enjoy your inter-rounds vacation, it's time for more pancake hoops! This month, our beloved Cavs take on those Southern belles, the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta had a .556 Pythagorean win percentage in the regular season, which makes them the NBA's 13th-best team, and rightly deserving of the 4th seed in the Eastern Conference. (Interestingly, the Hawks' Pythagorean stats peg them as being worse than every single playoff team in the West—and also Phoenix—but hey, this is the swinging East, baby!)
(Here's another interesting tidbit for you before we dive in. In the first round, the Hawks and Heat, despite playing seven blowouts, were more evenly matched than the Celtics and Bulls, five of whose games were famously close. In Round 1, the Celtics outscored the Bulls 788 to 758, whereas the Heat actually outscored the Hawks by a slim margin: 617 to 611. Atlanta's average margin of victory in four games was 16.0, whereas Miami's average margin of victory in three games was 23.3. Ironically, those two surprisingly high figures end up cancelling each other out.)
Anyway, as our ancestors have done for countless millennia, we'll run through each of the four factors—once for offense and once for defense—to see what kind of contests we can expect from the Cavs and Hawks. Let's do it.
The second graph shows each player's Net Offensive Plus/Minus against his Net Defensive Plus/Minus:
First off (again), praised be LeBron, the Ruler and King of all the universe. Secondly, it seems that Dean Oliver's stats (i.e., the first graph) and plus/minus (the second graph) can't find many Hawks players on which to agree. For offense, O-rating likes Solomon Jones, Marvin Williams, and Maurice Evans, all of whom do quite poorly by plus/minus standards. Plus/minus prefers instead Joe Johnson and Josh Smith (of course, Smith has about the worst O-Rating on the whole team—go figure). For defense, D-Rating likes Smith and Al Horford, while plus/minus likes Murray (holy crap!) and Pachulia. Overall, Oliver's stats seem to suggest that Atlanta's best player is Horford, Williams, or (if we're allowing for small sample sizes) Solomon. Plus/minus suggests the best player is Murray (still shocked), Pachulia, Smith, or Johnson.
What do I make of this? Honestly, it's pretty confusing. For one thing, it reveals that whatever else the Hawks are, they're balanced. They don't have a Dwyane [sic] Wade carrying them, that's for sure. You could make a case for just about every major contributor being Atlanta's most (or least) efficient weapon. For what it's worth, I tend to trust O-Rating and D-Rating slightly more than I trust plus/minus, but believe me when I say that the two sets of numbers don't usually paint such contradictory pictures.
Still, I can hazard a guess as to what's going on here. When we say that Joe Johnson rates well in offensive plus/minus, what it means is "the Hawks offense tends to score more efficiently when Joe Johnson is on the floor," but it doesn't care whether Johnson himself is the guy doing the scoring. O-Rating, on the other hand, takes Johnson's individual stats—scoring efficiency being foremost among them—and builds upward from there. And it just happens that Johnson is among the least efficient scorers on the team. Complicating the picture is the fact that Johnson is also the Hawk with the highest usage rate (26.6%); in other words, when he's on the floor (and he's on the floor a lot—he leads the team in minutes), he's the player most likely to "use up" a possession, either by shooting the ball or turning it over. In summary, Johnson's offensive plus/minus could be high because of some not-obvious effect he has on his teammates' scoring (such as drawing extra defenders, in which case, shame on the defense) or it could be some weird tendency in Coach Mike Woodson's substitution patterns, resulting in better shooters taking the floor at the same time as Johnson (for example, Johnson and Murray play the same position, so they might tend not to share the floor, which would allow each to "benefit" from the other's absence).
This is all well and good, but it's not just Joe Johnson whose plus/minus flatly contradicts his individual stats. It's like the whole team is taking opposite pills. The reason for this might be related to the fact that the Hawks have a slightly negative correlation (-.29) between their usage and their offensive efficiency. Most teams will have a positive such correlation, as players have to "earn" the right to use up possessions (by being efficient to begin with). The Cavs, for example, have a healthy .38 correlation between their usage and their offensive efficiency. This could mean that the Hawks are not allocating their resources in the best possible way, or it could mean that they've happened upon some delicate balance whereby some players use up possessions badly, in order to make it possible for other players to use up other possessions efficiently. Or I could just be trying too hard. Either way, I find Atlanta to be a very interesting and unusual team.
Whew, that's enough Hawks talk. This is a still a Cavs blog, I swear. (Also, this may or may not be a socks blog—2005 joke!) Enjoy Round 2, friends—and I promise I'll wake you up when the real playoffs start. Go Cavs!
(Here's another interesting tidbit for you before we dive in. In the first round, the Hawks and Heat, despite playing seven blowouts, were more evenly matched than the Celtics and Bulls, five of whose games were famously close. In Round 1, the Celtics outscored the Bulls 788 to 758, whereas the Heat actually outscored the Hawks by a slim margin: 617 to 611. Atlanta's average margin of victory in four games was 16.0, whereas Miami's average margin of victory in three games was 23.3. Ironically, those two surprisingly high figures end up cancelling each other out.)
Anyway, as our ancestors have done for countless millennia, we'll run through each of the four factors—once for offense and once for defense—to see what kind of contests we can expect from the Cavs and Hawks. Let's do it.
When the Cavs are on offense
As you know, the Cavs have the NBA's 4th-best offense, with 112.4 points scored per 100 possessions. Atlanta has the NBA's 11th-best defense, having given up 107.6 points per 100 possessions.- Shooting
eFG% NBA rank
In stark contrast to previous years, shooting is the Cavs' biggest offensive strength, in which they're led by Mo Williams (.548 eFG%), Wally Szczerbiak (.536) and Anderson Varejão (.536). The highest volume shooter, The MVP, is right behind with an eFG% of .530. Atlanta, for their part, is pretty decent at controlling opponent shots, especially on the perimeter. While the Hawks rank 11th in overall eFG% allowed, they rank 7th in 3-point percentage allowed (.353). Of course, the Cavs offense does rank 2nd in 3-point percentage (.393), so I don't think a drastic change of strategy is really needed here.
Cavs .519 4
Hawks .494 11 - Turnovers
TO% NBA rank
Among Cavaliers who get regular minutes, only two guys turn the ball over at higher than the league average rate of 13.3%—Ben Wallace (15.7 TO%) and Sasha Pavlovic (13.8%). The Hawks are better than average at forcing turnovers, more so with steals (.082 steals per possession, to rank 10th) than with other types of turnovers. Atlanta's top ball-stealers are my nemesis Flip "Ronald" Murray (2.4 Stl%), Josh Smith (2.1%) and Mike Bibby (1.9%). To be fair, though, only 47.3% of Hawks' forced turnovers come in the form of steals—the 25th-highest such total in the NBA.
Cavs .125 6
Hawks .132 12 - Rebounding
OReb% NBA rank
The Cavs' three offensive rebounding dynamos are Wallace (12.8 OReb%), Z (11.0%) and Joe Smith (10.8%). Regardless, the Hawks are somewhat weak in defensive rebounding. Al Horford (25.0 DReb%) and Zaza Pachulia (20.9%) are in fact quite great, but those two cohabit the court only 10.9% of the time, and the rest of the team really struggles to help out on the defensive glass (Josh Smith is next with 17.6%).
Cavs .277 12
Hawks .284 24 - Getting to the foul line & foul shooting
FTA/FGA NBA rank FT% NBA rank
The Cavs get to the line a fair amount but aren't so great at converting those free throws into points. The Hawks, however, are among the worst at keeping their opponents off the line, so the Cavs should get plenty of foul shot attempts.
Cavs .312 12 .757 21
Hawks .272 27 -- --
When the Cavs are on defense
The Cavs have the NBA's 3rd-best defense, having given up 102.4 points per 100 possessions, whereas the Hawks have the NBA's 10th-best offense, having scored 109.3 points per 100 possessions. Let's let the factors paint us a picture:- Shooting
eFG% NBA rank
Cavs' opponents do not tend to get much efficiency out of their field goal attempts. One of the biggest reasons for that is that the Cavs lead the NBA in 3-point percentage allowed, at just .333 (and it's not especially close: Orlando's D ranks 2nd, having allowed .342 on 3-point attempts). The Hawks' shooters rank just 16th in 3-point percentage, so the Cavs should really own the perimeter in this series. For what it's worth, the Hawks' most efficient shooters are the rarely-used [small sample size fluke] Solomon Jones (.608 eFG%), who is not an outside threat, followed by Maurice Evans (.533), Al Horford (.525) and Mike Bibby (.518). Notably weak as a shooter is Joe Johnson (.489), who leads the Hawks in minutes played and in usage rate (26.6%).
Hawks .504 11
Cavs .468 2 - Turnovers
TO% NBA rank
The Hawks do not turn the ball over much. The Cavs are also fairly good at forcing turnovers. I don't have much else to point out here.
Hawks .125 7
Cavs .135 10 - Rebounding
OReb% NBA rank
Atlanta's top offensive rebounder is Zaza Pachulia (13.8 OReb%), who is clearly a much better rebounder than I ever realized (his DReb% is also quite superb). After that, there's a big drop before you get to Jones (9.1%) and Horford (7.6%), both of whom are not that great on the offensive glass, for big men. They'll have to contend with Big Z (21.6 DReb%), Varejão (20.6%), Wallace (19.7%), and The MVP (19.0%), all of whom are pretty strong for their respective positions.
Hawks .260 19
Cavs .254 9 - Getting to the foul line & foul shooting
FTA/FGA NBA rank FT% NBA rank
Atlanta earns its way to the stripe, but is third-worst in the NBA at making its free throw attempts. The real culprit is Josh Smith, who ranks 2nd on the team in FTA, having attempted 359 free throws, but converted only 58.8% of those (worst on the team among regular minutes-getters). Nearly everyone else on the team is either decent at foul shooting, or doesn't get fouled very often. So if there's one guy the Cavs can afford to (and should look to) hack, it's Smith.
Hawks .323 9 .737 28
Cavs .294 12 -- --
Gratuitous graphs
Once again, I've prepared two of my trademark "offense vs. defense" bubble graphs, to show you how the individual Hawks compare to the individual Cavs. The first one shows each player's O-Rating against his D-Rating. The reason one bubble appears to be a shade of orange is that Delonte West and Al Horford finished the regular season with the exact same O-Rating and D-Rating, and also about the same number of minutes. So whichever way I set it up, one player's bubble always eclipsed the other's. Click to enlarge:
The second graph shows each player's Net Offensive Plus/Minus against his Net Defensive Plus/Minus:
First off (again), praised be LeBron, the Ruler and King of all the universe. Secondly, it seems that Dean Oliver's stats (i.e., the first graph) and plus/minus (the second graph) can't find many Hawks players on which to agree. For offense, O-rating likes Solomon Jones, Marvin Williams, and Maurice Evans, all of whom do quite poorly by plus/minus standards. Plus/minus prefers instead Joe Johnson and Josh Smith (of course, Smith has about the worst O-Rating on the whole team—go figure). For defense, D-Rating likes Smith and Al Horford, while plus/minus likes Murray (holy crap!) and Pachulia. Overall, Oliver's stats seem to suggest that Atlanta's best player is Horford, Williams, or (if we're allowing for small sample sizes) Solomon. Plus/minus suggests the best player is Murray (still shocked), Pachulia, Smith, or Johnson.
What do I make of this? Honestly, it's pretty confusing. For one thing, it reveals that whatever else the Hawks are, they're balanced. They don't have a Dwyane [sic] Wade carrying them, that's for sure. You could make a case for just about every major contributor being Atlanta's most (or least) efficient weapon. For what it's worth, I tend to trust O-Rating and D-Rating slightly more than I trust plus/minus, but believe me when I say that the two sets of numbers don't usually paint such contradictory pictures.
Still, I can hazard a guess as to what's going on here. When we say that Joe Johnson rates well in offensive plus/minus, what it means is "the Hawks offense tends to score more efficiently when Joe Johnson is on the floor," but it doesn't care whether Johnson himself is the guy doing the scoring. O-Rating, on the other hand, takes Johnson's individual stats—scoring efficiency being foremost among them—and builds upward from there. And it just happens that Johnson is among the least efficient scorers on the team. Complicating the picture is the fact that Johnson is also the Hawk with the highest usage rate (26.6%); in other words, when he's on the floor (and he's on the floor a lot—he leads the team in minutes), he's the player most likely to "use up" a possession, either by shooting the ball or turning it over. In summary, Johnson's offensive plus/minus could be high because of some not-obvious effect he has on his teammates' scoring (such as drawing extra defenders, in which case, shame on the defense) or it could be some weird tendency in Coach Mike Woodson's substitution patterns, resulting in better shooters taking the floor at the same time as Johnson (for example, Johnson and Murray play the same position, so they might tend not to share the floor, which would allow each to "benefit" from the other's absence).
This is all well and good, but it's not just Joe Johnson whose plus/minus flatly contradicts his individual stats. It's like the whole team is taking opposite pills. The reason for this might be related to the fact that the Hawks have a slightly negative correlation (-.29) between their usage and their offensive efficiency. Most teams will have a positive such correlation, as players have to "earn" the right to use up possessions (by being efficient to begin with). The Cavs, for example, have a healthy .38 correlation between their usage and their offensive efficiency. This could mean that the Hawks are not allocating their resources in the best possible way, or it could mean that they've happened upon some delicate balance whereby some players use up possessions badly, in order to make it possible for other players to use up other possessions efficiently. Or I could just be trying too hard. Either way, I find Atlanta to be a very interesting and unusual team.
Whew, that's enough Hawks talk. This is a still a Cavs blog, I swear. (Also, this may or may not be a socks blog—2005 joke!) Enjoy Round 2, friends—and I promise I'll wake you up when the real playoffs start. Go Cavs!
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