Film Room: Michael Jordan's Defense

These are the highlights that didn't make SportsCenter.

But don't think for one second that they weren't just as important to the greatness of Michael Jordan as the switch of hands, the shots on Craig Ehlo and Bryon Russell, the cradle dunks and all of the other Jordan plays that you see all the time.

Although Carmelo Anthony, Monta Ellis and Amar'e Stoudemire receive all of the criticism, there are many more players in the NBA who to one degree or another need to step up their games defensively.

And Michael Jordan is here to show everyone how to do it.

Notice how spectacular he is at so many different aspects of defense: ball denial, being physical, staying in front of his man and stopping dribble penetration, helping his teammates out, hustling and never giving up plays, reading and anticipating plays and taking the ball away from the other team.

Incredible.

Jordan was kind enough to tell exactly how he was able to pull most of these things off.

It started with his mental approach to the game and knowing the strengths and weakness of his opponents and trying to force them to do things they weren't comfortable doing.

Techniques like off-ball defense and keeping his eyes on his man and the ball at the same time helped him as well.

This is how it looks in game situations.

His defensive stance and the placement of his hands to block the passing lane with one and swat at the ball with the other helped him contain his man and get steals.

And eating right, staying in shape and getting plenty of rest gave him the energy to go all out and be a force on both ends of the floor.

There it is.

Michael Jordan, who is a great teacher, has laid a solid foundation for defensive improvement; so don't blame him if guys aren't better on defense.

And don't blame Scottie Pippen.

Between the two of them, those in the NBA have all of the examples they need to dominate the defensive end of the floor.

Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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NBA Advanced Defensive Statistics

I've been working on some new defensive statistics which I need to introduce to the public.

Some of this builds on work developed by Dean Oliver. The rest I came up with on my own.

One of my biggest problems with statistics in general is that they are extremely biased in favor of offense. And advanced basketball statistics are no different.

I've been on a mission to create a statistic for everything a basketball player does to help his team win, or lose, and credit it accurately to improve player and team evaluation.

And these defensive statistics are another step in that direction.

I must again tell you that this article is about to get really nerdy right now, talking about the minute details of various basketball scenarios, so consider yourself warned.


INDIVIDUAL STATS

The first defensive concept is the stall.

A stall is mainly when an offensive player tries to score on a defensive player, but the defensive player prevents the scoring attempt, usually forcing the offensive player to pass the basketball.

It is a stall and not a stop because there was no shot attempt; the defender didn't prevent a score; he only delayed a scoring opportunity due to the possession being still alive with the ball in the hands of the offense.

Like almost everything else, some of these will be judgment calls; but you can usually tell when an offensive player is trying to score.

I'll stick with Oliver's language on this next one and go with forced miss.

A forced miss is when a defensive player forces an offensive player to miss a shot. He can do this by either contesting the shot or by blocking the path of the offensive player and forcing him shoot farther away from the basket than he could have without the path block.

Forced misses which are not contested and don't involve a path block will be credited to the team.

A forced miss plus a rebound equals a stop.

When the same player who forced the miss gets the rebound, he will be credited with a full stop.

A stop can also be defined more broadly as anything a defensive player or team does to create a change of possession without any points being scored by the offense.

So drawing charges, getting steals, forcing shot-clock violations and a wide variety of other things will be counted as stops as well.

And as Dean Oliver pointed out, fouling a player who goes to the line and misses both free throws will be counted as a stop, assuming the defense secures the rebound after the second free-throw miss.

½ Stops. When one player forces a miss and a different player gets the rebound, the stop will be divided into two equal halves, the forced miss half and the rebound half.

And each player will be given ½ stop.

¼ Stops. When two players force a miss or two players combine for a rebound, the ½ stop for the forced miss or rebound will be split in half and each player given ¼ stop.

Let's say two defensive players double-team a player in the post and force him to miss a shot, and a third defensive player gets the rebound.

The forced-miss half of the stop will be divided in two, and the two players will be given ¼ stop each for forcing the miss.

Since only one player got the rebound, he will be credited with his regular ½ stop.

¼ stops for the rebound half are for plays when one defensive player deflects the rebound, and a second recovers it.

Let's get really complicated and look at one more scenario.

A player dribbles the ball across half court and is immediately double-teamed.

The ball pressure from the trap forces him into a bad pass which is deflected by a third defender and recovered by a fourth for a steal.

This stop would be split into two equal halves, the ball-pressure half and the steal half.

The two trapping players would be given ¼ stop each for the ball-pressure half, and the players who got the steal would be given ¼ stop each for their combined play on the steal half.

Because these fractions can get out of hand, whenever more than two players combine for ½ of a stop, it will be credited to the team.


TEAM STATS

Now let's move over and look at some team defensive statistics.

The best way to stop a team from scoring is to not let them shoot the basketball.

You can't score without shooting, right?

So one of the things which will be tracked is the percentage of no-shot stops a defensive team gets, meaning they did something to change possession and get the ball back from the offense before the offense had the opportunity to attempt a field goal.

For a team which can't get a no-shot stop, a one-shot stop is the next best thing. That obviously means that the offense came down and missed one shot, and the defense got the rebound and ended the possession.

And the percentage of times a defense does that will be logged as well.

No-shot stops may be called "none-and-dones" and one-shot stops "one-and-dones."

Another thing is that not all stops are created equally.

Live-ball stops are the best because they give the team the opportunity to get fast-break points. So teams will be measured on their field goal percentages after live-ball stops, dead-ball stops and after made baskets for comparison.

These statistics can also be used for offense.

One of the biggest problems for Golden State is that they have too many no-shot possessions on offense. It absolutely killed them in road games at the Lakers and at Oklahoma City this year.

Finally, I'll be looking at dunks and layups.

I'm sure we can all agree that the two easiest shots to make in basketball are an uncontested dunk and an uncontested layup.

Field goals allowed will be looked at to see what percentage were uncontested dunks and layups and what impact this had on the field goal percentage allowed by the defense.

As I wrote before, I don't have nearly the resources or the manpower to track this information on a large scale but will do some games from time to time.

UPDATE: 1/31/2011

Here are some other situations where a player will be credited with a stall: (1) when he deflects a ball out of bounds, (2) when he deflects a ball which gets recovered by the offense, (3) when the offense is trying to pass to his man but his ball denial doesn't allow the pass attempt, (4) when his ball pressure on the passer forces the offense away from who it was trying to pass the ball to, (5) when he forces a jump ball and the offense maintains possession, (6*) when he bumps or blocks off an offensive player moving without the ball and disrupts the play, (7*) when he blocks the path of a dribbler not attempting to score and disrupts the play.

*UPDATE: 5/26/2011, 5:00 AM

It should also be noted that stalls can and will be divided into ½ stalls and ¼ stalls just like stops, and when more than two players combine for ½ of a stall it will be credited to the team.

Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com
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More NBA Advanced Statistics

Before we begin, I have to first introduce a NBA floor chart which I have been working on.

Everything that will be talked about when it comes to advanced statistics revolves around this floor chart. 

Here is the mid-court area of the chart. Notice how the chart flips and reverses itself once the half-court line is crossed.

This was going to be called a "shot chart," but it hit me that this chart can track much more than shooting.

I use it mostly for defense. It can show where a player gets most of his blocks, his rebounds and where he gives up the most points.

Although it is free for anyone to use, for convenience it will be called the "High Basketball IQ Floor Chart."

It is not perfect and not accurate to the exact dimensions of a NBA court; it was created to the best of my limited engineering abilities just to have a visual representation of what I am writing about.

Also, a player a step or two outside of the high post, for example, may be labeled as being in the high post; it won't be an accurate description of where the player is to the exact inch, but you'll get my point.

Another great use of the floor chart is to show players who do or don't get rebounds outside of their area. 

You can look at where the players are when the ball goes in the air, where they are when it hits the rim and where they are when the rebound is secured.

Who moved? And who didn't? And how far did they move? It's great for hustle stats.

Ideally, I would like to use this floor chart to track the movement of the ball and every player for every minute of every game.

But since I don't have anywhere near the resources or the manpower to pull that off, I'll do what I can from in front of my computer.

It should be noted that this article is about to get really nerdy right now, talking about the minute details of various NBA games, so consider yourself warned.

Deflections will be covered first.

A deflection is when a player tips the ball, usually sending it in a different direction.

There are all kinds of deflections, pass deflections, rebound deflections, dribble deflections, you name it.

This is a hustle stat which needs to be accurately tracked because it is a play which a player makes to help his team.

In short, that is what we are shooting for here, the tracking of anything (anything!) which a player does on a basketball court to help his team win.

Sister to the deflection is the recovery.

Either the player who deflected the ball or another player recovers it.

When one player deflects the ball and another player recovers it, each must be given credit for the part they contributed to the play in order to accurately determine the value of each player and the overall ability of the team.

Like deflections, there are many types of recoveries.

There are blocked shot recoveries, saved ball recoveries, rebound deflection recoveries, pass deflection recoveries and many more.

And all should be tracked and recorded so that each player's value to the team can be accurately measured and because every possession counts.

Let's look at a play from the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat game from last season (3:50).

There are 21.9 seconds left in the game. Kobe Bryant drives and misses a layup.

Although what follows looks like nothing more than a wild scrum with no identifiable parts, that is the furthest thing from the truth.

The play's individual parts are actually highly identifiable.

Here is how I would score the play; the best angle is at 4:14:

Missed Layup: Kobe Bryant
Rebound Deflection: Kobe Bryant (O) & Pau Gasol (O) & Udonis Haslem (D)
Missed Rebound: Kobe Bryant
Rebound: Dwyane Wade (D)
Baseline Save: Dwyane Wade
Saved Ball Deflection: Mario Chalmers
Saved Ball Recovery: Pau Gasol
Foul: Quentin Richardson on Pau Gasol.

The scoring format comes from the "Play-By-Play" section of the box scores on NBA.com.

Also, this is being scored as best I can on a computer screen. More details would be seen on a full television screen and might change the scoring some.

Pau Gasol went to the foul line and made both free throws.

The Lakers won the game by one point on a running three-pointer by Kobe Bryant.

Without the hustle and deflections of Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant saving this possession for the Lakers, they might have lost the game; but we would never know that because there are no statistics for plays like this.

Steals also need to be more specific.

Against the New York Knicks, Kobe Bryant deflects the ball away from Chris Duhon (1:04); and Ron Artest recovers it.

Although both players combined for the steal, Ron Artest got no credit for his contribution to the play.

Is this fair?

Is it an accurate reflection of each player's contribution to the team?

Without Artest picking up the ball, a Knick could have gotten it; then there wouldn't have been any steal at all. What Artest did was very important.

Add up all of these uncredited plays over the course of a season, and it becomes extremely significant. And what about over the course of a career?

When two players combine like this on a steal, they should be given ½ steal (the deflection ½ and the recovery ½) each.

Here is how it should look:

STEALS: K. Bryant: FULL (0); DFL ½ (1); RCR ½ (0); TOTAL (½)
                 R. Artest: FULL (0); DFL ½ (0); RCR ½ (1); TOTAL (½)

"DFL" is short for deflection, "RCR" short for recovery. A "FULL" steal is when one player completes the entire steal by himself.

Now it is time to get really technical.

Steals would also be divided into type.

There are three types of steals: passed ball steals, dribbled ball steals and held ball steals.

Wouldn't it be important to know going into a game against a team which uses its small forward to bring the ball up the court that you have a point guard who can steal dribbles but not passes?

You think his steals might be down that night?

Let's throw in the floor chart and look at one more play, a steal by Jordan Farmar against the Orlando Magic (2:49).

Here is how I would score the play:

Pass Steal: Jordan Farmar, straightaway three-point line (ORL) deflection and right mid-court (LAL) recovery of Jameer Nelson pass from top-right three-point area (ORL) to Ryan Anderson at top-left three-point area (ORL).

Deep Right Paint (LAL) Foul: Ryan Anderson on Jordan Farmar.

The ORL and LAL tell on which offensive half of the court the play takes place.

This scoring method is technical and highly-detailed, but it gives credit where credit is due and gives an accurate accounting of every player's contribution to the team's success, or failure.

In a prior post I wrote that the NBA was in the Stone Ages when it comes to advanced statistics. It looks like that may not be entirely true.

Some of this information is being tracked; it is just not publicly available.

Bill Simmons tried to get some details and wrote a great story on what he would like to know and his journey to find out. Some of the things he asks about are the very same things I am trying to log and account for: winning plays.

Note: I got the idea to use numbers instead of words on my floor chart from this chart on 82games.com. When I went to add the names to the areas of my chart, the names were too long to fit into those tiny little spaces.

Floor chart updated September 2012.

Comment or e-mail: thenbaoutsider@yahoo.com

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