APBRmetrics

We can use metrics to see when coaches should be fired based on under performing expectations. However, expectations are based on the team's projections with the coach's system already in place.

Is there any tools we can use to see if a coach is getting the most out of their roster/doing a good job? Or is this something thats strictly a "basketball" decision?

Just one test but I look at raw plus minus of top 10 most used lineups. If there are more than a few real clunkers and they keep getting used at high rate, I get concerned.

Comparing team performance of top 10 most used lineups vs. all the rest on minutes and performance can be used to categorize coaches as design coaches vs adjustment coaches. More than one way to win but design winners might be more consistent. But could be interesting to see a detailed study. Matchup winning coaches probably have a skill but might also have more luck associated with their micro-lineup usage.


Expected efg% and ts% are a decent coaching test too. Really actual vs expected four factors of offense and defense would seem to be a worthwhile routine for the coach, mgt, and outside analysts.

Brad Stevens is not the next Mark Jackson exiting soon, because of stronger support (use), but...


http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... y=diff_pts This season he has just one really strong lineup over 50 minutes, 2 ok positive, 2 mild negative, 3 way negative.

Last season it was 2 barely positive over 50 minutes and 10 negative, about half bad to really bad.

Wasn't this supposed to a strength of his and his assistant?

His strength and / or good fortune might be more situational / dink lineups than system / design / strategy.

Meanwhile Quinn Synder is 12 positive / 4 negative on same check http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... y=diff_pts
Is one a system genius and the other a mixed bag and somewhat over-rated to date?

They should be looked from more angles. On actual wins compared to Pythagorean expected wins (atBRef), it is Stevens -2, Synder -4. But one is in east and other in much tougher west. Stevens was -3 last season. This stat may not tell one simple story but negative is probably not where you want to be as a coach, all things considered. -4 or more might be a decent indicator of near to mid-term dismissal. I have flipped around the data but have not compiled it comprehensively.

Mark Jackson's trend? -2, plus 3, then -3. -3 might be a little questionable for a firing but going from plus 3 to -3 in the face of rising expectations was too much. When do Stevens or Synder deliver a plus 2? How many more years is fair / enough to get there?

Monty Williams has been on a hot seat but looks better than Stevens on both the top 10 lineup plus minus check and the actual vs expected win check (he is plus 1 this season). The full history on Williams for actual vs expected wins is plus 2, -3, -3, plus 1, plus 1. Is Stevens going to positive the next 3 seasons and equal Williams' positive / negative split in first 5 years?

Stan Van Gundy is -5, but he is safe for now.

How common is it for GMs and owners to know these actual vs expected numbers? Do they give them weight? Should they? Are they random or predictive? A comprehensive and detailed study would be fascinating. I assume a few teams have done this and more but how many? 5? 15? If it is only 5 that would be disappointing. We'll never know on the outside but some teams reputed to be serious about analytics might have notable projects undone yet or done and not valued much. If they mostly random, a coach should hope for a lucky or at least tolerable pattern. Or a GM / owner unaware. Or aware and above.

Don't know what effect this has, but GS is moving both the ball and their players a lot better this year. Last year I approximated GS as the team with the 30th passing offense and the 22nd moving offense (http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2014/0 ... -movement/) and this year, by the same methodology, they rank 6th and 3rd respectively. I also found that player movement was, as you can imagine, very helpful in an offense, so that might explain why their offensive rating on b-ref is up 4 points.

As far as who the next Mark Jackson might be, the bottom five in passing this year are Byron Scott (30th), Monty Williams, Brian Shaw (well, DEN as a whole), Lionel Hollins, Flip Saunders.The bottom five in movement are Dwayne Casey (30th), Byron Scott, Frank Vogel, David Blatt, and Jeff Hornacek.

Celtics offense: 28th on ft rate, 21st fga within 3 feet, 13th on 3pt rate and 9th highest on longest twos. That is not good / pretty awful execution and probably relatively weak design.

I'm guessing the Mark Jackson effect is just a bad coach getting replaced effect. Most of the time when I see a situation like 2013-2014 GSW having 4th defense 12th offense despite what looks like a top 5 talented team in offense, I assume there's a "defensive coach" effect where his style of coaching is distributing what should be better offensive results to the defensive end. However this year's GSW being even better on defense despite Kerr playing a more offensive friendly style of play, it makes it seem like Jackson was hurting the offense without helping the defense and that having a top 5 D last season was all talent and the combo of Iggy, Draymond and Bogut being deadly. Also to be fair to Jackson, Kerr super mushroom'd the team's assistant coaching staff with Gentry and Adams.

Crow wrote:Celtics offense: 28th on ft rate, 21st fga within 3 feet, 13th on 3pt rate and 9th highest on longest twos. That is not good / pretty awful execution and probably relatively weak design.

Uh have you see that roster? They have no one who can get to the line or drive strong to the basket. It's amazing that the Celtics are in the playoff race with the guys they have. 13th in 3PT rate is an accomplishment since they gave heavy minutes to guys like Rondo, Evan Turner, Bass, Green, and Smart. Those guys aren't shooters, and they really do't have any elite shooters besides maybe Thomas now. To the team's credit, they're urging their frontcourt guys to take three-pointers.

To me sucking badly on shot distribution is a critique fairly independent of talent evaluation. Shot distribution is a main coaching responsibility. It is only year 2 of Stevens era but there is a ton of improvement still required for not only roster but the rotation and shot distribution. I keep hearing Stevens called a great or amazing NBA coach. The team shot distribution is nowhere average, much less good. If it was near average or they were doing a full on tank, I'd probably let it slide. If I am premature with stat based critique to the ears of some, the largely subjective praise is overdone by as much or a lot more to mine.

If you consider shooting efficiency from 3 pt land, the Celtics fall from near average from there to well below average. Couple that with the way wrong balance with the other 3/4ths of shot / scoring attempts and that is a design or execution of design that is worthy of recognizing, if not calling out.

Crow wrote:To me sucking badly on shot distribution is a critique fairly independent of talent evaluation. Shot distribution is a main coaching responsibility. It is only year 2 of Stevens era but there is a ton of improvement still required for not only roster but the rotation and shot distribution. I keep hearing Stevens called a great or amazing NBA coach. The team shot distribution is nowhere average, much less good. If it was near average or they were doing a full on tank, I'd probably let it slide. If I am premature with stat based critique to the ears of some, the largely subjective praise is overdone by as much or a lot more to mine.

If you consider shooting efficiency from 3 pt land, the Celtics fall from near average from there to well below average. Couple that with the way wrong balance with the other 3/4ths of shot / scoring attempts and that is a design or execution of design that is worthy of recognizing, if not calling out.

I don't understand why you're calling him out. Shot distribution is Brad's strength here. That roster 13th in 3PT rate ... that's really high for a team lacking shooters. A normal coach would play them more like the Grizzlies or Wizards. Look at guys like Bradley, Turner, Rondo, et all historically: they're long two-point shooters (Rondo's an odd piece, but definitely doesn't help 3PT rates.)

And then you call them out for 3PT%. They don't have any elite shooting talent. They're pushing those guys to shoot more 3's than they're comfy with.

They don't get to the line because they don't have guys who have that skill. I'm sure Stevens would love to get to the line more. It's a roster lacking talent and it's impressive how good they've been. They have no one.

Shot distribution "is Brad's strength"... when it actually happens to be a strength. Til then we'll disagree, but we can set it aside for now. If they improve next year, good. This exchange highlights something to watch / check back on.

When I noted the downward drift in the Celtics shot distribution after the title I think it drew a similar reaction and / or apathy. And the drift continued and got worse. Til they started a new chapter... with similar if not greater issues.

The Celtics are projecting to be the 5th most overachieving team in the league, relative to the avg of our expectations:If you thought their talent + coaching was going to get them 28 wins, but they're headed for 36, then shouldn't you say they're doing something better than you expected?

Mark Jackson "improved" the Warriors by 11 games after 2 seasons, and +15 after 3, but that wasn't good enough.
Celts won 25 last year, so their projected 36 this year is also an 11-win gain.

They did improve on 3pt attempts from 18th to 13th. But that wasn't very impressive given the rest of the shot distribution. They got better it appears mainly from improvements in defensive rebounding, steals, own turnovers and assists. It would have been better if I looked at everything all at once but I was focused on the below average overall team distribution. The team rank on ft rate still unchanged at 28th yr1 to yr2 and the rank on fga within 3 got worse. The rank on mid range shots over 15 feet got slightly better but they were still bottom 20%.

Overall it appears from looking at team offensive and defensive rankings that roughly 3/4ths of the improvement came on the defensive side. That was helped by the maturation of Olynyk and Sullinger, the trades of Green and Thornton, and the acquisitions of Smart, Zeller and Crowder. Stevens might have helped too, though it is probably only for a share rather than the bulk of the credit.

The whole league has improved on the defensive side. From a 20-year high of 101.0 PPG last year, scoring is down to 99.9
League ORtg is also down 1.1 from last year.Add 1.1 to the ORtg impr, drop 1.1 from the DRtg impr., and it's 2.5 for the offense and 1.5 for the D.

That's good to see. It often seems to take a bit of heat to get a discussion going about a team. The offensive improvement seems to be mainly from about 1.5 less turnovers per game than last season and about 1 more shot in every hundred going in. That is probably some from coaching, some from moving away from Rondo, some from the talent change, some from luck. But probably little of the overall offensive improvement relative to the league is from improvement from the shot distribution because there was little improvement on that.