Offensive Four Factors: Charlotte Bobcats

Coming off the best season in franchise history which saw Charlotte make the playoffs for the first time, there was some optimism that the team could build off of that experience and slowly position itself as a sleeper in the East.  This never materialized, as 2010-11 saw Charlotte miss the playoffs yet again.  This was due in large part to an anemic offense.  We'll attempt to explain why.

Charlotte Bobcats


Offensive Rating - 103.4 (26th)

Offensive Four Factors Performance:

eFG: .482 (25th)
TOV: .141 (24th)
OREB: .257 (18th)
FTA/FGA: .237 (7th)

As is the case with the league's other bad offenses, the problem begins with shooting.  It is rare to find a team perform shoot poorly yet still do well offensively.  Unfortunately for Charlotte, they matched up poor shooting with a high turnover rate and mediocre offensive rebounding.  Let's take a look at why they struggled putting the ball in the hoop.

If we look at a combination of USG% and Minutes Played, the 4 players who had the biggest impact on their season were Boris Diaw, DJ Augustin, Stephen Jackson, and Gerald Wallace.  Of those 4, Diaw had the lowest USG% (only 16.8% - meaning he was rarely the focal point).  Neither of the 3 remaining players did well in terms of efficiency.  Augustin had an eFG of 47.4%, Jackson's was 46.8%, and Wallace's was 46.3%.  All three of these players had similar profiles in terms of their shot attempts - all three were poor 2 point shooters on varying degrees of volume and all were decent 3 point shooters on varying degrees of volume.

Lacking any credible inside threat allowed defenses to adjust accordingly, and the possessions that didn't end in a turnover typically ended in a low efficiency shot taken by one of those three players.

Charlotte was also poor at limiting turnovers.  The biggest culprit here was Stephen Jackson, who had a TOV of nearly 15% compared to the 11.4% league average for small forwards.  The big issue here is not just his turnovers in a vacuum, but that he was by far Charlotte's number one offensive option.  The other culprit of Boris Diaw.  Diaw will always have a higher TOV than most bigs given his style of play, but that is no excuse.  Teams that have difficulty shooting the ball need to protect the ball incredibly well to have any success, and having two players who are some of the worst at their positions in terms of protecting the ball makes matters worse.

Charlotte's offensive rebounding was a tinge below average.  I suspect that part of this was due to the inexcusable decision to limit Tyrus Thomas' minutes early in the season (and then, of course, his season ending injury).  The other factor here was Boris Diaw (again).  Diaw put up a putrid 4.5% offensive rebounding rate, and given that he played all of his minutes at either the 4 or the 5, we can quickly pick up why Charlotte struggled on the offensive glass.

Getting to the rack was the only bright spot in Charlotte's offensive resume this past year.  However, when we look at the free throw rates of some of their players, we see some confusion, as outside of Gerald Wallace's (1872 minutes) 5.6 attempts/game and Kwame Brown's (1714 minutes) 4.9 attempts/game, the only player who got to the line with any frequency was Stephen Jackson at 4.6 attempts/game.  This is where their inability to protect the ball coupled with their inability to grab offensive rebounds hurt them.  Even though they got to the line a good deal as a proportion of their total field goal attempts, their raw free throw attempts were low, simply because they had fewer possessions per game.

Offensive Four Factors: Milwaukee Bucks

This is our first post in a series what will chronicle the offensive performance of each team in the 2010-2011 NBA season.  We will perform our analysis based on the four factors as detailed by Dean Oliver and distilled in our previous post.

Milwaukee Bucks


Offensive Rating - 101.6 (30th)

Four Factors Performance


effective Field Goal % - 46.7% (30th)
Turnover % - 13% (9th)
Offensive Rebounding % - 24.7% (22nd)
Free Throw/Field Goal Attempts Ratio - 21.7% (21st)

The explanation for Milwaukee's putrid offensive performance is pretty simple - they didn't make shots.  While a league worst Effective Field Goal % provides the bulk of the explanation, we do need to dig a little bit to gain some context.  Although there's a relationship between eFG% and ORating, there are some cases this year where teams have made up for poor shooting (Portland, for one).

The problem with Milwaukee was that they complemented their terrible shooting with poor rebounding and penetration numbers.  They ranked 22nd in Offensive Rebounding % and 21st in Free Throw Attempts as a percentage of Field Goal Attempts.  Both of these events can help an offense that cannot shoot well.  Unfortunately for Milwaukee, they did neither of these well enough to offset their shooting woes.

The bright side is that they protected the ball very well, having the 9th lowest turnover % in the league.  Possessions are paramount for any team, but the importance of a single possession is magnified when that team struggles to the degree that Milwaukee struggled.  Luckily for them they were able to protect the ball well enough.  Ballhandling more in line with the rest of their offensive numbers had the potential to lead to a historically bad offense.

Daily Dictionary: Possessions

Daily Dictionary: Possessions


Team: FGA + .44FTA + TOV - OREB
Individual: FGA + .44FTA + TOV - 1/3*Missed FG (included because 1/3 of FGA result in an offensive rebound)


The goal of these first few dictionary posts are to introduce some of the major concepts that will be applied in our game reviews.  We started with a few individual level statistics that more completely measure a players offensive contribution.  True Shooting and Usage are extremely valuable tools, but they fail to measure the impact of Offensive Rebounding and Turnovers on team success.

One key point to understand is that teams will generally have an extremely similar number of possessions in a given game (+/- 1 or 2).  This places a premium on the ability to score efficiently, crash the offensive glass, and limit turnovers.  Matt W. will have a post up shortly on the impact of offensive rebounds and turnovers, so I'll instead focus on scoring.

As I referenced yesterday, many fans tend to overrate pure bulk scoring, and in doing so, they neglect to take into consideration how many possessions are used to get these points.

Player A: 25.3 Points/Game
Player B: 26.7 Points/Game

Player A Possessions Used: 20 + .44(7.1) + 3 - .33(11) = 26.124 - 3.63 = 22.494 Possessions/Game
Player B Possessions Used: 17.5 + .44(7.8) + 3.3 -.33(8.6) = 24.232 - 2.838 = 21.394 Possessions/Game

Player A Points Per Possession = 25.3/22.494 = 1.12
Player B Points Per Possession = 26.7/21.394 = 1.25

Player A is Kobe Bryant, Player B is LeBron James

All of this information is readily available in the boxscore, and can be done for single games or for an entire season (or career).  These simple calculations provide a deeper insight into the offensive contributions of a specific player.