I dragged this lake looking for corpses
Dusted for prints, pried up the floorboards
Pieces of planes and black box recorders
Don’t lie
— “Private Eye”
Alkaline Trio
If you wanted to know quickly which teams had the best & worst offense & defense in the league, you might go to ESPN.com NBA stats page. You can click on the team-by-team comparison link and you’d see which teams have scored and given up the most points. You can sort the teams by a few different stats, and for this example you might use points scored per game and opponents points scored per game. So according to this you might conclude the best NBA offenses are:
Rank Type Pts 1 SAC 104.6 2 DAL 103.3 3 SEA 97.8 4 LAL 97.6 5 MIL 97.1 6 DEN 97 7 MEM 97 8 LAC 96.5 9 MIN 95.5 10 ORL 94.9 11 BOS 94.6 12 GS 94.4 13 PHO 93.6 14 CLE 92 15 POR 92 16 NO 91.9 17 NYK 91 18 NJ 90.7 19 WAS 90.6 20 SAS 90.1 21 IND 89.8 22 ATL 89.7 23 CHI 89.6 24 PHI 89.6 25 DET 89.6 26 UTA 88.9 27 HOU 88.3 28 MIA 88 29 TOR 84.9 And the best defenses: Rank Type Pts 1 SAS 83.9 2 IND 84.9 3 HOU 85.1 4 NJ 86.5 5 DET 87 6 TOR 87.3 7 MIA 89.4 8 MIN 90 9 UTA 90.6 10 PHI 91.2 11 NO 91.8 12 NYK 92.6 13 POR 93.6 14 LAL 94 15 MEM 94.4 16 GS 95.2 17 ATL 95.2 18 DEN 95.3 19 CLE 95.3 20 MIL 95.4 21 CHI 95.7 22 WAS 96.2 23 BOS 96.6 24 PHO 97.2 25 SAC 97.3 26 SEA 98.8 27 LAC 98.8 28 DAL 99.8 29 ORL 100.7
But if you’ve ever seen an NBA game, you know some teams’ offenses are faster than others. This is because some teams like to run down the shot clock because they want to slow the tempo, where others like to take the first or second available open shot, because their offense is good enough to get an efficient shot off quickly. A team like Dallas or Sacramento would have more chances to score than let’s say Miami or Toronto. So the team that scores the most points in a game may not have the best offense in the league, because they simply might have the fastest offense in the league.
Well some smart people have already thought about this. They said, maybe instead of looking at how many points are scored per game, we should see how many points are scored per possession (or 100 possessions). Unfortunately the people at ESPN have never thought to ask this question, or at least have not thought it important enough to put it on their stat page. Luckily the good people at 82games.com have. You can’t sort the teams all nice like the ESPN page, and they don’t even have a page where all the teams are displayed. They only have the information by team pages. But with some patience, a good spreadsheet program, and 10 minutes of free time, you can do some quick analysis yourself.
So here we are, the best offenses in the NBA, by points per 100 possessions (pPts):
Rank Type Pts Poss pPts OldRank DRANK 1 SAC 104.6 91 114 1 +0 2 DAL 103.3 91 112 2 +0 3 SEA 97.8 89 109 3 +0 4 MIN 95.5 87 109 9 +5 5 LAL 97.6 90 108 4 -1 6 MIL 97.1 90 107 5 -1 7 MEM 97 90 107 6 -1 8 LAC 96.5 90 107 8 +0 9 POR 92 86 107 14 +5 10 DEN 97 91 106 7 -3 11 ORL 94.9 89 106 10 -1 12 GS 94.4 89 106 12 +0 13 NO 91.9 88 104 16 +3 14 IND 89.8 86 104 21 +7 15 UTA 88.9 85 104 26 +11 16 BOS 94.6 91 103 11 -5 17 PHO 93.6 91 103 13 -4 18 NJ 90.7 88 103 18 +0 19 SAS 90.1 87 103 20 +1 20 DET 89.6 86 103 23 +3 21 HOU 88.3 85 103 27 +6 22 MIA 88 85 103 28 +6 23 CLE 92 90 102 15 -8 24 NYK 91 89 102 17 -7 25 PHI 89.6 87 102 24 -1 26 WAS 90.6 90 100 19 -7 27 ATL 89.7 90 99 22 -5 28 CHI 89.6 90 99 25 -3 29 TOR 84.9 85 99 29 +0
The first team that jumps into the top 5, that wasn’t there before, is the Timberwolves at #4. Even though they only score 95.5 points a game, they would score 109 points if given 100 possessions. They just play at a slow pace of only 87 offensive possessions per game. (The average pace is 88.4 possessions/game). Portland also jumps into the top 10, while Utah & Indy move into the middle from the bottom 10. The big losers are Cleveland, Washington, and my own beloved Knicks, who drop to 6th worst.
Now for the defenses:
Rank Type Pts Poss pPts OldRank Diff 1 SAS 83.9 87 96 1 +0 2 IND 84.9 86 98 2 +0 3 NJ 86.5 88 98 4 +1 4 HOU 85.1 85 100 3 -1 5 DET 87 86 100 5 +0 6 TOR 87.3 85 102 6 +0 7 MIN 90 88 102 8 +1 8 LAL 94 90 103 14 +6 9 PHI 91.2 87 104 10 +1 10 NO 91.8 87 104 11 +1 11 NYK 92.6 89 104 12 +1 12 MEM 94.4 90 104 15 +3 13 DEN 95.3 91 104 18 +5 14 MIA 89.4 85 105 7 -7 15 MIL 95.4 90 105 20 +5 16 UTA 90.6 85 106 9 -7 17 GS 95.2 89 106 16 -1 18 ATL 95.2 89 106 17 -1 19 CLE 95.3 89 106 19 +0 20 CHI 95.7 90 106 21 +1 21 WAS 96.2 90 106 22 +1 22 BOS 96.6 91 106 23 +1 23 SAC 97.3 91 106 25 +2 24 PHO 97.2 90 107 24 +0 25 POR 93.6 86 109 13 -12 26 DAL 99.8 91 109 28 +2 27 SEA 98.8 89 110 26 -1 28 LAC 98.8 90 110 27 -1 29 ORL 100.7 89 112 29 +0
Not much difference here among the top teams. The Lakers move into the top 10. Meanwhile Miami and Utah drop out of the top 10 into the middle of the pack, while Portland takes the biggest dip to the 5th worst defense in the league.
Unfortunately it’s hard to judge the Knicks current team using these tools. The team has experienced a large turnover in their roster. These stats are for the Knicks over the entire year, which includes players like Van Horn, Charlie Ward, as well as Marbury and Penny Hardaway. However we can use it to learn a bit about tonight’s opponents, the Kings. The Kings are the team’s top scoring offense both by points per game, and by points per possession. Their 91 possessions/game tell you that they have one of the league’s fastest paced offense. Their defense is lacking, 7th worst in the league.
So then you might ask, if they have a great offense and a poor defense, shouldn’t they be an average team? Not necessarily. If anything they might be a little bit better, since their Pythagorean expected wins says they should have about 1 or 2 more wins, based on their points for/against. However, you can look at the offensive numbers above, and realize that they are a LOT better offensively than most teams. The difference between them and the #5 Lakers, is 6 points (per hundred possessions). This is the same difference between the #5 Lakers and #23 Cleveland.
So the Kings’ offense is very good, which is why they have the best record in the league.