James Good (flickr)

In this survey, I shall present the evolution of how dependent NBA champs have become upon the 3-pt shot. Now remember this is just NBA champs, so contenders and pretenders may have beat the champs to the punch on the 3-pt shot, but I still think this shows a neat progression of the 3-pt shot and its utilization.
Editor’s Note: I amazingly did not note the shortening of the three-point line in the mid-1990s. That may have had a sliiiiiight effect on 3-point shooting.

The Three Point Stone Age

In the Three Point Stone Age (1980 to 1993), NBA champs hardly deigned to use the three-point basket. From 1980 to 1983, a grand total of 16 threes were made by all four NBA champs for the entirety of their playoff runs. When asked about why the 1983 Sixers only made one three, Moses Malone responded, “cuz there are no fo’s.” (terrible joke)

It wouldn’t be until the 1990 Pistons (somewhat) and the 1993 Bulls (truly) that teams put the long-range bomb to effective use. The players on most of these teams had grown up playing basketball without the 3-pt shot and their coaches certainly had as well. It would take a new crop of players and new philosophies from old-timers to unleash the three-pointer.

The Rockets Shot for the Stars… and then the league relapses

Well, we have the breakthrough! The Houston Rockets in 1994 and 1995 demonstrated the utility and deadliness of the 3-pt shot. And not only did they take a lot, they made a high percentage. 36% as a team in 1994 and then 39% in 1995 as Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell, Sam Cassell and Robert Horry drilled shots when Hakeem Olajuwon was double-teamed. But perhaps the formula proved to be unique to Houston for the time being.

The late 90s Bulls also attempted a lot of threes, but stunk at making them. never getting above 33% accuracy. The Shaq-Kobe Lakers resuscitated some of the Rockets’ magic but it was all but killed with the 2004 Detroit Pistons. Who then was the team that finally rediscovered the Rockets formula for success?

The Spurs Corner Threes!

The Spurs finally become a team to actually approach the 1994 and 1995 Rockets in terms of three point attempts, makes, percentage and % of team points derived from the three. And since then, the NBA has been loathe to lose the secret again. Finally, last season, the Mavericks crested above the 1995 Rockets’ record of 24.09% of team points scored from threes as they claimed 26.76% of their points from downtown.

As for this year’s finals, the Heat and Thunder are both on pace to maintain the plateau of at least 20% of points derived from threes.

And here’s the gargantuan historical line graph. If you’re a fan of long-range deliverance, you can thank Rudy Tomjanovich for devising one of the 1st schemes to make it a tool of deadly effectiveness on the court. Vive la three! Vive le Rudy T!

From Kobe Bryant to Chris Paul, Blake Griffin to Andrew Bynum, the NBA All-Star game is shaping up as an L.A. story.

Two Lakers and two Clippers were voted as starters Thursday for the game, the first time in 15 years that two pairs of teammates have been voted to start for one conference.

“It’s pretty cool,” Griffin said.

- Via LA Story by Brian Mahoney

Eh, it’s not so cool to have 4 starters from the same city (unless you’re from the city), but you can’t argue with the fan voting results this year. Everyone voted in was surely all-star caliber. Furthermore, the players are worthy of starting, even if there’s stiff competition in the case of Blake Griffin’s forward spot.

The Eastern Conference, however, did have a mild dud in Carmelo Anthony. Chris Bosh or Paul Pierce would be better served in his starting spot, but it’s nothing to picket the David Stern’s Ivory Tower about. However, there have been some duds in all-star voting’s past that merit uprising.

This usually occurs when fans get drunk on the selfish nectar of seeing their middling hometown role player start ahead of a Hall of Famer. Getting high on the glue of prematurely anointing a spectacular young player as one of the 10 best players in the game. Or just simply stuffing the ballot box for [redacted] and giggles.

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Former NBA all-star and general basketball legend Detlef Schrempf critiqued the shot selection and offensive execution of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant from their loss to the Washington Wizards (box score).  Ever curious, I stepped beyond my initial ‘aghastedness’ and wondered, well, has a team ever won a title with two players dominating shots like that?

So, I decided to look back from 2011 to 1970 to see exactly how dependent each NBA champion was on its top two shooters. Why 1970? Because that’s as far back as Basketball References finals boxscores go. A great reason, I know. In any event, you’ll find the percentage of shots taken by the top two shooters for regular season, playoffs and finals below for each of those champions.

Note: Percentages were derived by taking the FGAs per game of the two players divided by the FGAs of the entire team for the regular season, playoffs and finals, respectively. This means there is going to be some imperfection in the percentages here, since for instance Scottie Pippen in 1998 averaged 16 FGAs per game for Chicago but only appeared in 44 games. This means other players FGAs were ‘artificially’ inflated during Pippen’s absence and skew the numbers.

Even if not perfect, this still gives an excellent idea of how dependent each team was and no way in the world was I going to peruse every single boxscore from 1998. ENJOY!

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photo by Nebraska Farm Boy via Flickr

This wonderful, glorious and super fantastic analysis was inspired, as usual, by that great water cooler in the cyber sky, Twitter. Like any enjoyable conversation, you’re not entirely sure how it got started or how you encountered the subject. Well, on Friday afternoon, someone said something. Then someone else chirped. Then another person dropped a nugget of wisdom. And this went on for hours or maybe minutes, I don’t remember… but finally this tweet popped up.

And hard to argue with that. The popular opinion is that the 1984 draft class is indeed the best ever. Hard to argue considering that Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, John Stockton and Charles Barkley were the highlight members and guys like Kevin Willis, Alvin Robertson, Michael Cage, Otis Thorpe and Sam Perkins are afterthoughts.

However, we here at Pro Hoops History are not in the business of kowtowing to popular opinion. Instead we look at the cold hard facts and then shrug shoulders as to what they mean. So the task at hand is to discover with Cold Hard Facts, which draft class is the best ever… or at least the best since the ABA and NBA merged prior to the 1976 draft.

So, why the merger cutoff?

Because the best, singular analysis I could think of to judge the draft classes was win shares. The dual existence of the NBA and ABA wreaks havoc with a universal look at the stat between 1967 and 1976. Perhaps in the future I will separately look at those classes. As for the drafts prior to the ABA/NBA dual, they too deserve a specialized look in the future. Hooray, sequels!

Also, in the interest of fairness, there was a second cutoff with the 2002 draft class. I deemed that classes thereafter haven’t had the time to fully blossom and let history be a Cold Hard Judge of their merit via win shares.

The win share totals for each draft class were calculated by adding up the 25 highest totals from each class.

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Photo by hubertk via flickr

In a continuing quest to see when players peak statistically, this analysis eschews scoring for the other noble hardwood pursuits of rebounding and assisting. Below are the 49 players to have averaged 6+ apg for their career and the 48 players to have 10+ rpg for their career. All players chosen had to have played a minimum of 500 career games. Furthermore, the career high had to have come from a season in which they played 50+ games. So no credit for putting up 10.4 apg in a 16-game season, Mark Price.

After the tables will be the usual  Notes of Interest to give meaning to the globs of numbers.

Note: Bob Cousy, Harry Gallatin and Dolph Schayes had the great fortune of playing part of their careers during a time when the NBA did not log minutes played. Their minutes played were not used in the overall averages.

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Photo by Petur Gunnarsson via Flickr

Recently, I looked at when scorers reach their peach average based on seasons and chronological age. However, the always cerebral Clint Peterson chimed in that I might want to take a gander at this same phenomena but from the perspective of minutes played in a players career.

Not in the mood to argue or think of a fresh research idea, I happily took up Clint’s suggestion, so here we are with a different look at the same question: when do scorers reach their peak?

Note: The minutes are the grand total of minutes the player played up to and including the season he reached his highest scoring average.

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Photo by gareth1953 via Flickr

In this statistical analysis, I tackle the issue of when NBA players reach their peak in terms of scoring prowess. Now, there’s no way on earth I could peruse each and every single player in league history. Nor would I really want to. I’m not too interested in seeing when Tree Rollins averaged a career high scoring for this exercise.

So, the players sampled here are those who averaged at least 20 points per game for their career and also played in at least 500 games in the NBA and/or the ABA. The points per game minimum is my way of singling out the best scorers, even if it does come with flaws. The 500 game limit is to dispose of players whose careers didn’t last long enough to descend from peak play.

This leaves us with 60 players and the following data:

Season: the season the player hit their ppg peak.

Year: the year of their playing career ppg peak was reached.

Age: the age the player reached his career high ppg

Notes of Interest

Averages by Decade

It’s important to note that Tim Duncan, Ray Allen, and Tracy McGrady are likely to drop out of the 20 ppg career average club. Michael Redd is sitting right at 20.0 ppg and is gearing up for a season in Phoenix of spot minutes, so his average is assuredly about to fall below the line.

Scoring Spike: 1962 is often noted as the most statistically ridiculous season in NBA history. The distinction is well-deserved since it’s the year Wilt averaged 50 points and Oscar threw up a triple double average for the season. However, did you notice that in 2006 and 2007 NINE of the 60 players here set their career high in ppg? Something was definitely in the water.

The Least Deviant: Glenn “Big Dawg” Robinson was the most steady of scorers in this survey. his career average was 20.7 and his career high ppg of 23.4 represented only a 13% increase. Other steady-as-they-come scorers are LeBron James (13.4% increase), Paul Arizin (15.8%), Jerry West (15.9%), Dirk Nowitzki (16.2%), Carmelo Anthony (16.5%), and John Drew (16.9%).

The Most Deviant: These are the players who certainly scored in bunches during their career but at some point they cut back on the binging. Unsurprisingly, Wilt Chamberlain paces this group with his 50.4 ppg high being 67.4% larger than his career average of 30.1.

Other deviant scorers include Charlie Scott (61.4%), Tracy McGrady (57.4%), Walt Bellamy (57.2%), Bob McAdoo (56.1%), and Moses Malone (56.1%).

Baby Faces: Spencer Haywood at 20-years old is the youngest player here to set a career high in ppg. His 30 ppg in 1970 were good enough to take home both MVP and ROY for the ABA that season. LeBron James during his 3rd season at age 21 is the only other player to set a career-high under the age of 22.

Walt Bellamy is the only other player to set a career-high during his rookie season in the go-go season of 1962. Dave Bing, Charlie Scott, Dan Issel, Bob Lanier, Rick Barry, Julius Erving, and Marques Johnson all set their high ppg during their 2nd season.

Fine Wine: Only 8 of the 60 players set their career high in ppg after reaching age 30 and only two of these did so prior to 1986, showing that player longevity and ability to produce during their career arc has increased. The two super studs who defied the aging processes of their eras were Paul Arizin and John Havlicek. Arizin did so at age 30 in his 7th season (1959). Havlicek hit his peak at age 3o, too, in his 9th season (1970).

The most vintage of these wines, though, is Hakeem Olajuwon. In his 11th season at age 32, he crested at 27.8 ppg. Centers at age 32 are usually creaky and starting to resemble the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. Hakeem’s 27.8 ppg represent the single highest scoring average for a center over thirty years of age. His average of 20.8 ppg overall after passing 30 years of age is 2nd only to the wondrous Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

And really, perusing Hakeem’s career stats is what inspired this whole analysis, so let’s go ahead and see him and his Rockets do their thing back in the mid-90s as he was entering his most vintage years.

Editor’s Note: this article first appeared at Hardwood Paroxysm on December 4, 2011

Earlier this week,the undisputed king of McGridles, Conner Huchton, conducted an impromptu Twitter poll to find out which center people prefer: Joakim Noah or Tyson Chandler. I’d be happy to have either, but dodged the question completely by selecting Andrew Bogut because Joakim and Tyson are injury liabilities. Plus, Bogut is a better player in my estimation.

A millisecond later, I remembered Bogut is also an injury prone big man. Fiddlesticks. Another infinitesimal second passed and I remembered Dwight Howard trumps them all. Not just in talent but in ability to stay on the court. In Howard’s 7 seasons, he’s missed a measly 7 games total. Amazing. Astounding. Unbelievable. Cup cakes.

In contrast, Bogut, Chandler and Noah all have played 80% to 81% of possible games in their careers. Intrigued, I decided to take a gander at some of the NBA’s best bigmen and see how they stood the test of time. This means not just the number of times they showed up for games, but also the amount of time they were able to give in those games.

It’s nice to get a player who shows up all 82 games, but if he can only give you 20 minutes because of durability or talent issues, that’s no good. If he can play 38 minutes but only gives you 60 games a year, that’s no good either. We want the Howard ability to show up every night and play heavy minutes.

• Caveat: games can be missed for many reasons. Mostly because of injury, but suspension, DNP-CD and other reasons factor in too. So be sure see the percentages, but also add a little player specific context when applicable.
• Formula: Percentage of Games Played (GP%) = Games Played / Potential Games Played; the potential is calculated by how many games the player’s team(s) appeared in.
  
• Formula: Percentage of Minutes Played (MP%) = Minutes Played / Potential Minutes Played; the potential is found by multiplying 48 by the Potential Games Played.
• The players chosen for the survey were the 30 centers with the highest Win Shares in NBA/ABA history

What’s amazing here is the superhuman durability of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, the recently-departed Ed Macauley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the aforementioned Howard. They rarely suffered injury and still were able to log tremendous minutes. These men were genetically, heavenly blessed.

Then there’s the average run-of-the-mill durability of Zelmo Beaty, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Vlade Divac. They endured their fare share of nicks and bruises, however, they were rarely absent for multiple extended, crippling stretches during the heart of their careers. Like Bernie Mac’s back, though, something eventually gave out in their older years.

Finally, there’s the health liabilities. Marcus Camby, Bob Lanier and, most disappointingly, Shaquille O’Neal. Whereas these other players missed out on games due to physiological reasons they couldn’t much help (Mourning’s kidney disease for instance) or getting long in the tooth and riding the bench (Dikembe), Shaq’s injuries seemed a disappointing symptom of horrendous conditioning rather than losing the genetic lottery or having his skills erode leading to DNP-CDs.

This disappointment isn’t merely because he didn’t commit himself as thoroughly to conditioning as I would have liked. That’s Shaq’s prerogative, his body and his career. What takes me from tsk-tsking to full out facepalm, is O’Neal’s subsequent, almost pathological, insistence on creating a mythological aura for himself: Superman, the Diesel, etc.

If anything, this exercise has logically refuted Shaq’s tenuous hold on that Superman title. Nevertheless, we know that ego is hardly the mistress of logic, so here’s a video to stoke O’Neal’s conceit one last time.

Let’s turn it over to the Kinks, shall we…

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LyOxJaOT1s w=600 h=400]