Posted by SupremeCommander:
Basketball might be the simplest game to analyze on the planet. Why so many GMs botch it ****ing baffling.
The three most important aspects of basketball are: team assists:turnovers, defensive rebounding, and free throw shooting.
Team assists:turnovers - This is simple, protect the basketball and find the open man. Why is this important? Because it maximizes the team shooting percentage each possession.
Defensive rebounding - this is important because it minimizes high percentage opportunities the opposition has, has lowering their shooting percentage as well as their total FGA. Why is this important?Because every championship caliber coach says it is important.
Free Throw Shooting - This aspect of the game is so often overlooked, but it is so incredibly critical. If players can't hit free throws, the tendency is to settle for jump shots instead of driving . Why is this important? Getting FREE points is important and keeps teams in control during the last two minutes of play.
Obviously there are more aspects of basketball that need to be addressed. But these are the three most important for certain. Adding more complex wrinkles to the team dynamic are important to building a team that is difficult to prepare against. These are the fundamental aspects of a chanpionship team though and should be treated as such.
I think shot-blocking (and altering shots, which I suspect is highly correlated with shot-blocking) is extremely important too. Briggs posted a thread about a year ago where all the top 6 teams in the league were top 10 in shot-blocking and the bottom six teams were in the bottom 10 in shot-blocking. I might have the numbers slightly off but I remember it was remarkable how correlated shot-blocking was with winning. Thank goodness our GM said shot-blocking was "overrated." That could have just been spin he was giving the media, but you have to take that quote in the context of the fact that he hasn't added one good shot-blocker in his four years here!
