yellowboy90 wrote:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303773704579266762885659706
Center's Misfires Create Fast Breaks for Knicks' Foes
If Bargnani Misses From Long Range, Opposing Team Usually Scores
By CHRIS HERRING
Updated Dec. 19, 2013 10:16 p.m. ET
Andrea Bargnani has long been one of the NBA's toughest players to label.
Proponents of his game see him as an athletic, floor-spacing 7-footer with game-changing ability on offense, particularly his outside shooting. Others argue that Bargnani's scoring punch isn't worth what he gives up as a slow-footed defender and subpar rebounder at his position.
But almost everyone has overlooked perhaps the biggest reason why Bargnani's teams struggle when he's on the court: When he misses from long range, it usually turns into automatic points for the opposing team.
Andrea Bargnani's flat jump shots allow opponents to score at a high rate when he misses. European Pressphoto Agency
This season, Knicks opponents have grabbed 58 rebounds on jumpers that Bargnani has missed from outside the paint, and 35 of them—a whopping 60.3%—have led to a basket on the other end of the floor. That scoring rate off one player's missed shots is the highest in the NBA, just ahead of Detroit's Brandon Jennings and Brooklyn's Joe Johnson, according to Stats LLC.
In Bargnani's case, this season is no aberration: Opponents have scored after grabbing rebounds off his missed jumpers at least 50% of the time in each of the past five seasons—hardly a coincidence considering that the league as a whole scores just 45.8% of the time after a miss. Looking back over the past 15 years of play-by-play data, Bargnani is the only player to have logged five straight years at 50% or above.
Of course, Bargnani has helped the Knicks in a number of ways, too. In the absence of injured center Tyson Chandler, he has shown himself to be a good one-on-one post defender. And entering Wednesday's game in Milwaukee, he was averaging 15 points a night on 45% shooting as the team's No. 2 scorer.
But the statistic may shed light on why coaches—first in Toronto, now in New York—have struggled to incorporate Bargnani into the mix without him being a net negative. Over his seven seasons in the league, the 28-year-old has experienced just two in which his club outscored its opponents during his minutes on the floor. As of Wednesday, the Knicks had been beaten by 90 points in Bargnani's 753 minutes, an average of 5.7 points per 48 minutes.
Asked about how frequently teams score off his misses, Bargnani seemed perplexed. "I don't know," said Bargnani, who is shooting just below 30% three-point range. "We just have to get back as a team on defense. You can't let the other team beat you down the floor for easy points."
The Knicks, who according to Synergy Sports have allowed scores on a league-high 59.6% of their opponent's transition opportunities, have struggled with fast-break defense when Bargnani plays. When he's on the floor, the team has allowed 15.8 fast-break points per 100 plays—up from 11.1 points when he's on the bench, per NBA.com. Some of that stems from Bargnani's limited wheels: At an average of 3.7 miles per hour, he is the sixth-slowest player in the league's 445-player database, according to SportVU player-tracking technology.
But the bigger factor may be Bargnani's relatively flat jumper, which causes long rebounds when it ricochets off the rim, providing ready-made fastbreaks. Bargnani's jumpers from outside the paint average a maximum height of 14.7 feet, a half-foot lower than the league average of 15.2 feet, according to SportVU. Kevin Garnett has a similarly low trajectory, and the Nets have also seen opponents score on more than half his misfires this year.
Compare that with Steve Novak, who took 351 three-pointers for the Knicks last year before being traded for Bargnani. Novak's jumpers averaged 15.6 feet of arc, and Knicks opponents scored only 33.3% of the time after he missed, tied for the lowest rate in the league.
Raptors consultant John Townsend, a shooting coach who has worked with both Novak and Bargnani, said the mechanical differences between the shooters helps explain the disparity in how often teams score off their misses. Where Novak's release compares to a restaurant waiter carrying a tray of food, with his palm held up and off to the side of his head, Bargnani—who has "good, but not perfect alignment," said Townsend—brings the ball near his eyebrow area, where he can't consistently straighten out his arm to get extra arc on his shots.
"And if the trajectory of the shot is flatter, that means it's probably faster, and you're gonna have less friendly bounces off the rim," Townsend said.
I don't think he is a fan of Bargs. When knowledgeable guys write about that trade and refer to 'the picks' moved without acknowledging that two of the picks are second rounders and the first round pick already was compromised by Denver's right to swap. He also came out hard after Bargs had his blunder in the Bucks game. Maybe it isn't agenda driven but it seems like he is a bit keyed in on Bargs if he highlights the type of shot one particular Knick takes and how it impacts the team if he misses.
12/21/2013 3:08 PM