In the last post, we looked at the leaders in Expected Value (EV) on the defensive side of the ball for the 2010 playoffs. Not surprisingly, Dwight Howard was the winner there. Now let’s look at the offensive leaders in EV from the 2010 playoffs. There are three notable additions to the classic box score involved in that calculation:
- Opportunities Created (OC)
- Fouls Drawn
- Help Needed
“Help Needed” includes all of the points scored that were created by a teammate. I will have a post about it in the near future, but for now, think of Kobe Bryant driving down the lane and drawing hordes of defenders (an OC), setting up Andrew Bynum for an open dunk. In that case, Bynum’s dunk loses some value because it was created by another teammate. More on this in the future, though.
Here are the leaders in offensive EV from the 2010 playoffs, minimum 300 possessions played. All EV values are relative to league averge:
As always, with playoff data, it’s important to remember particular matchups. Last year, Deron Williams dissected a soft Denver defense and then he made Derek Fisher look like an AARP member. Utah actually boasted the second best Offensive Rating in the playoffs — 114 pts per 100 possessions — but the defense let them down mightily. Here is the complete list of leaders in Offensive EV from the 2010 playoffs, minimum 300 possessions played.
Finally, we can combine the defensive and offensive components and view the overall Expected Value leaders from the 2010 playoffs:
By just about any measure, Dwyane Wade had a fantastic series against Boston’s vaunted defense. LeBron James’ second round against Boston wasn’t quite as good (8.5 EV), but he tortured Chicago in the opening series. Of the three superheroes, Kobe had it the worst of against Boston, posting a 3.4 EV in the Finals.
For reference, the top series performances by EV from the 2010 playoffs (EV in parentheses):
- James vs. Chi (16.2)
- Gasol vs. Uta (12.8)
- Howard vs. Atl (12.5)
- Nelson vs. Cha (12.5)
- Wade vs.Bos (11.8)
- Bryant vs. Pho (11.8)
- Nash vs. SAS (10.8)
- D Will vs. Den (10.2)
- Dirk vs. SAS (9.3)
- James vs. Bos (8.5)
Paul Gasol had the highest EV of the 2010 NBA Finals (5.0). Here is the complete list of EV leaders from the 2010 playoffs, minimum 150 possessions played.
Further damning proof at just how overrated Kobe Bryant is. 1700 possessions?! My Lord!
Well, the Lakers did make the Finals, so he logged more court time than just about everyone…his defensive accolades continue to be, frankly, bizarre to most of the universe.
Somehow I think he will still earn a few all-d votes next month…
For comparison, here are the top 20 on offense according to ezpm:
Steve Nash 8.48
Deron Williams 8.21
Dirk Nowitzki 6.93
Dwyane Wade 6.59
LeBron James 6.46
Jameer Nelson 5.66
Russell Westbrook 5.05
Arron Afflalo 4.51
Kobe Bryant 3.90
Chauncey Billups 3.72
Pau Gasol 3.25
Jason Richardson 3.25
Nene Hilario 2.65
Manu Ginobili 2.47
Brandon Jennings 2.33
Gerald Wallace 2.32
Rajon Rondo 2.28
Carmelo Anthony 2.02
Rudy Fernandez 1.66
Raymond Felton 1.49
Disregard my last post. I didn’t have rebounds counted in total offense. Here’s the correct list (top 20 offensive players according to ezpm):
Deron Williams 9.08
Steve Nash 9.03
Dwyane Wade 8.14
LeBron James 7.88
Russell Westbrook 7.11
Jameer Nelson 6.85
Dirk Nowitzki 6.77
Goran Dragic 6.68
Pau Gasol 6.49
Marcin Gortat 6.44
Paul Millsap 5.61
Kobe Bryant 4.76
Carmelo Anthony 4.75
Jason Richardson 4.54
Louis Amundson 4.28
Jason Williams 4.16
Chauncey Billups 4.00
Rajon Rondo 3.96
Jared Dudley 3.59
Nene Hilario 3.40
And here’s my list of top 20 overall:
LeBron James 12.26
Dwyane Wade 9.52
Carmelo Anthony 8.11
Dwight Howard 7.84
Joakim Noah 7.20
Kobe Bryant 7.04
Pau Gasol 6.87
Marcus Camby 6.75
Jason Williams 6.43
Russell Westbrook 6.34
Marcin Gortat 6.07
Manu Ginobili 6.05
Deron Williams 5.93
Steve Nash 5.91
Louis Amundson 5.79
Dirk Nowitzki 5.50
Rajon Rondo 3.79
Jared Dudley 3.77
Brandon Jennings 3.40
Josh Smith 3.03
Evan – I’m obviously partial to EV (basically because I’m using more data), but for box score/PBP-based metrics, ezpm has a really strong smell test.
I’m quite interested in it historically – how far back have you gone with it? In theory, you could model every season and playoffs since 2003, no?
Thanks, I’m happy that what you are doing is providing some cross-validation. There’s only so much we can get from PBP, after all. I wrote my code to parse the PBP/matchup file from basketball-value, which go back to 05-06, although I’m having problems parsing his files before the ’08-09 season. He changed something, and I wrote the code before I realized that. So, when I get that worked out, I will be able to go back about 6 seasons, I guess.