NBA: Thunder Flattens The Nuggets  // What Causes One NBA Team To Prevail Over Another?

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            “SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

NBA:   Down went the Denver Nuggets to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night, yet it was a gallant drop considering that two of the team’s usual starters, Nene and Danilo Gallinari, were unable to play due to injuries. Still, the Nuggets spurred an early lead against the Thunder and held it through most of the first quarter, and in the second Q the Nuggets managed a 46-32 lead.

Then, boom! the Thunder’s Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook put up 33 points in the first half. At the start of the fourth Q, the Thunder tied the game, 83-83. In the fourth, it was an exchange of field goals, so that a tie existed at the two minute warning, 104-104.

The Nuggets pushed on: 43 seconds to go in the game and they led, 111-106, only to experience a tie and then lose in overtime, during which Kevin Durant got to his career high 51 point game. Final score: Thunder 124, Nuggets118.

The pain of losing can be softened, eased when looking back on a game’s high points, for example, though the main thrust against the Nuggets were the combined 91 points set by Durant and Westbrook, the Nuggets Arron Afflalo accrued 27, Andre Miller, 21, Ty Lawson, 17, and four additional Nuggets ended the game with double digit points, as well. That’s seven Nuggets players scoring in double digits versus the Thunder’s four. Also, the Nuggets had a roughly equal number of assists, blocks and rebounds compared with the Thunder’s. Too, at 17 wins, 15 losses, and though tied with the Portland Trail Blazers, the Nuggets are still in contention for a Northwest Division/Western Conference billet.

But the Nuggets won’t be having it easy in the last days of February. Up ahead are games vs. the San Antonio Spurs, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Trail Blazers, each a top Western Conference team.

NBA: Last week Sports Notebook analyzed most of the losses that the Denver Nuggets have experienced during the current season, concluding that a single cause catalyzing a loss is quite rare. In almost all cases, numerous reasons are responsible for a team’s loss. Anyway, Sports Notebook reported its loss-factor findings on Friday, leading to the question, “What’s behind an NBA team’s wins?”  

Easily guessed is that multiple causes are behind nearly all NBA team victories. Below, then, and to underscore that assumption, is the result of Sports Notebook looking at 12 of the 17 wins accrued by the Nuggets to date, thus a look at such factors as field goal percentage, three-pointer percentage, free throw percentage, number of players finishing with double-digit points per game, number of players surpassing 20 points, also assists, rebounds, blocks.  

Here are major findings---

• Of the 12 Nuggets victories that were examined, 11 included a field goal shooting percentage higher than 42 percent, the highest being 66 percent, three of these wins with field goal percentages of 53, 55 and 59 percent respectively. And, in only three of the 12 wins was the Nuggets field goal percentage lower than that of the opposing team. Also, whenever the Nuggets executed 20 or more assists, the team’s field goal percentage was at, or higher than, 40 percent. Too, during nine games, when the Nuggets scored 100 or more points, the field goal percentage was greater than 40 percent. Yet during five of the 12 wins the Nuggets three pointer shooting percentage was lower than that of the opposing team. In addition, the Nuggets lowest winning score of the year (91 points) included the team’s lowest field goal percentage among the 12 wins (39 percent).
• In four of the 12 wins, the Nuggets free throw percentage was lower than that of the competition, though it was at or higher than 70 percent. Moreover, in three of the 12 wins when the Nuggets field goal percentage was lower than 43 percent, the team’s free throw shooting percentage of 70 percent or higher became a significant advantage.
• During eight of the 12 games, the Nuggets accrued more rebounds than the opposing franchise, with five Nuggets wins having eight or more rebounds, and in the remaining four wins the Nuggets number of rebounds was in no way significantly lower than that of the competition. And in five of the 12 games, the Nuggets had more blocks than the other team, while in the remaining number of Nuggets wins the number of blocks was close enough to that of the opposing team. Also, in six of the 12 games, the Nuggets achieved more steals than the opposing team had, and in the remaining six wins the number of Nuggets steals was in no way significantly less than that of the competition.
• Within only one game did the Nuggets finish with fewer double-digit scorers than the competition had; and in six games the Nuggets matched six opposing players that had double-digit points with six of their own. Too, the Nuggets had more than one player finishing with 20 or more points in only three of the 12 wins.
• Five of the 12 wins were against teams with better records than the Nuggets had at the time of play, each of the five wins with 100 or more points accrued.

From the above, it’s easy to conclude that most wins evolve from multiple factors, and that it may never be the same factors per win. Obvious is the importance of a field goal percentage being higher than 40 %, and that a 40+ field goal percentage usually results from a combination of assists and rebounds, and from the blocks and steals that can lead to turnovers, to fast breaks and therefore shooting opportunities. Too, a majority of wins could include double-digit points achieved by each of five or more players, as opposed to only one or two stars finishing with 20 or more points per game.

Possibly the best lesson from the analysis of the Nuggets losses and wins is that ‘variance” dominates. In other words, you may be able to tell from past games which factors will be more important for winning a basketball game, but you can’t really know which of those factors are going to come together for the next win or the win after that

So, what’s the point here? This: you can’t Moneyball an NBA game accurately past a lot of assumptions, no more than you can Moneyball baseball or any other sport to the nth degree and know all outcomes before they appear, even though assumptions from the process can lead to some positive directions and help create good decisions about plays and who should hit the hardwood and who shouldn’t. Sports will always beat the computer and surprise the heck out of us. Only a portion of sports-info can be a sensible book or an entertaining and instructive movie---the not knowing, the guessing and the hoping has a lot to do with why we love sports, trumping the math game-after-game, win or lose.

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