martin wrote:I think this will add a ton to defensive stats.

http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/04/14/nba-adds-hustle-stats-to-playoff-coverage/

http://nyloncalculus.com/2015/07/15/cant-knock-the-hustle-but-can-we-measure-it/

I like this blog.

At Las Vegas Summer League, the NBA experimented with tracking “hustle.” In an attempt to better capture some of the “intangibles” that correlate with winning, cataloging these events seeks to make them tangible. While the LVSL stats were never made available to the public, the test run was evidently successful enough that for 2016 Playoffs, the league will collect this information for every game, and make the totals available on NBA.com.

According to the NBA, the following will be counted through a combination of SportVU tracking and video analysis performed at the Secaucus replay center:

Deflections – Defensive player touches the ball on a non-shot attempt
Loose Balls Recovered – Player gains sole possession of a live ball not in the control of either team
Contested 2’s – Defensive player closes out and raises a hand to contest a 2 point shot prior to its release
Contested 3’s – Defensive player closes out and raises a hand to contest a 3 point shot prior to its release
Charges Drawn – Defensive player draws a charge
Screen Assists – Offensive player sets a screen for a teammate that directly leads to a made field goal by that teammate

The first five were the items tracked at Summer League, while “Screen Assists” are a new category.1

This is obviously good news – more information is almost always better than less. I am particularly interested in the “Loose Balls Recovered” stat, as tracked over a full season I wonder if it could start to explain some of the value ascribed to steals in box score-based models. If having a “nose for the ball” is really a discernable skill, loose balls and perhaps even deflections might start to help identify those players who actually have it.

The Contested 2 and 3’s will be intriguing to look at, but should be interpreted with caution on an aggregate level, especially with respect to evaluating individual players. For one thing, the player who ends up contesting a shot is quite often much more the result of a rotation scheme than the play (good or bad) of the player making the contest. Further, the effectiveness of a “hands up contest” in terms of suppressing shooting percentages is unknown. As a blatant plea for more and better data, I would say that combining a “contest yes/no” variable with the late, lamented SportVU shot logs would go a ways towards answering this question, though it would probably require a much larger sample than the 80 or so playoff games we’ll get this spring. That said, it is possible on the team level, contesting shots will be useful proxy for some sort of defensive skill. That said, especially on three pointers contesting a three is most likely a distant second-best outcome to not allowing the shot to be taken in the first place.

Whether or not this is a “playoffs only” feature or will be tracked leaguewide going forward is unknown – the fact that it requires some degree of manual review might make it too time intensive to be practicable under regular season conditions when there might be 10 or more games on a particular night. If this tracking does continue into the regular 82 games schedule, it could prove some extremely interesting data points for a system like Andrew’s Player Tracking Plus-Minus model.2 Either way, it’s a good look for the league to continue to push the boundaries in terms of the information, statistical and otherwise, they continue to make available to the public.

All good info, missed assignments, &/or losing track of man &/or help defense should be tracked as well if they don't already.

Probably the fastest way for this team to improve as a playoff team next season would be to ramp of the defense even if they aren't great offensively. We have two strong rim protectors and lead the league rim protection 5ft and in. If we add guys that get after it and apply serious pressure we could probably net a good amount of wins while we build the roster up.

Just found this link which is interesting.

Knicks gave up the 5th least amount of points per game (18.9) to forwards in the NBA.
Knicks gave up the 4th most amount of points per game (21.8) to centers in the NBA.
16th in points per game given up (20.6) to guards in the NBA.

5th best in FG% vs Centers @49.6
6th best in FG% vs Forwards @44.2
15th vs Guards @42.6

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/team/_/stat/defense-per-game/sort/avgPointsOpponent

Knicks top 10 in Points Allowed @101.1
Top 10 in Defensive FG% @44.3
Top 7 in Defensive 3pt% @34.1
#13 in opponents made FG @38.0
#25 in opponents attempted FG @85.6
#15 in opponents FTs made @17.5
#15 in opponents FTs attempted @23.2

On the offensive side of the ball we are pretty much ranked in the 20s across the board.