Eight Charts That Kind Of Explain The NBA Playoffs
Charting around the first round
Two games are in the books for each playoff series. That gives me the chance to make a few charts, pop off a few takes, and do my best to explain the NBA playoffs as I see it. We’ll start in the West and work our way East.
OKC x MEM
The first two games of this series has been a nice piece of evidence in support of my weak link theory of the NBA. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hasn’t looked like himself. In Game 1, he had a 46.6 True Shooting Percentage. He followed that up in Game 2 by posting a 43.9 True Shooting Percentage. Those are two of SGA’s least efficient scoring games all season, which is partially why they rank among his worst performances, according to Daily RAPM Estimate (it’s a metric designed to estimate single game individual performances — think of it as a better version of Basketball-Reference’s Game Score).
And still, the Thunder are running away with this series with a total point differential of +70.
That’s the thing with weak link sports. The performance of your strongest link matters a little less and the performance of everyone else around them matters a whole lot more.
Speaking of Daily RAPM Estimate, I’ve tweaked my Best of Yesterday web app to display the top single game performances of the playoffs. It’ll update nightly throughout the postseason.
HOU x GSW
Doesn’t matter who you are rooting for in this series, you probably think the refs are conspiring against you. But Rockets x Warriors was always going to be a physical series with a ton of whistles — both teams finished in the top ten in personal fouls committed during the regular season.
Still, if you’re going to point to the refs as the reason your team lost, at least do so in a data informed way. The chart below shows the 36 playoff officials that are assigned to the first round, ranked by how often each one called shooting, personal, offensive, and technical fouls during this year’s regular season.
LAL x MIN
In Game 1, Rudy Gobert defended nine isolation plays as the primary defender, according to Second Spectrum tracking data. In Game 2, he defended 16.
16 was the most isolations Gobert had defended in a game all season — and it’s tied for the second most any player in the league has defended in a game this year.
Now, I should mention the Lakers only scored 0.92 points per direct chance1 when Gobert was the primary defender in isolation. That’s not a good number number. But I still think the volume he defended is indicative of a point of emphasis for the Lakers and something we’re likely to see more of.
You can see all of this in the NBA’s matchup data as well. Gobert more than doubled the amount of time he spent defending Luka Doncic in Game 2 compared to Game 1.
DEN x LAC
You don’t need me to tell you that this is the best series of the first round. But I’ll prove it to you anyway. Over on inpredictable.com, Mike Beuoy tracks how “exciting” each game is by measuring how much the win probability bounced around throughout the game. More swings in win probability make more for a more exciting product. No surprise, both games in this series have been certified bangers by Beuoy’s Excitement metric.
Meanwhile, on the court, no one is guarding Russell Westbrook or Kris Dunn when they’re beyond the three-point line. And yet, both players are making just enough plays when they don’t have the ball to make up for the fact that they have about ten feet of space every time they launch a three. That’s consistent with how defenses treated these two non-shooters during the regular season as well.
It feels like David Adelman and Ty Lue are in a staring contest to see which coach blinks first and starts defending them with their Center or puts them on the bench.
CLE x MIA
Here’s a list of players that have faced the most pick and rolls as the screener defender in this year’s playoffs so far. Notice anything odd?
Tyler Herro is the only non-Center on this list.
Cleveland is targeting Herro and putting him in as many pick and rolls as they can because, according to Darius Garland, they want to pick on Miami’s weakest defender. In Game 2, Cleveland used a combination of Max Strus and Sam Merrill to set screens for Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland because that’s who Tyler Herro was defending. The result was Herro getting flambéed to the tune of 1.20 points per direct pick.
Eric Spoelstra doesn’t have a lot of buttons to press. He’s already put Davion Mitchell in the starting lineup. And while Mitchell has played well by his standards, he can’t defend Mitchell and Garland at the same time. More zone defense likely isn’t the answer either. The Cavaliers are shooting 45.5 percent from three and are happy to shoot them if that’s what Miami wants to give up.
BOS x ORL
No Jayson Tatum, no problem.
The Celtics don’t just have the best player in the series — they arguably have seven of the top ten. So even if there’s no Jayson Tatum for the rest of the series the Celtics will still have a noticeable talent advantage.
If there’s a silver lining for Magic it’s that Paolo Banchero has more than held his own in this series. We can put those Banchero for Deni Avdija fake trades on ice…for now.
NYK x DET
In Game 2, it felt like every other play Jalen Brunson was on the ground. By my count, he hit the deck a dozen times.
(A little birdie with access to some proprietary 3D tracking data told me that the record for falls in a game this season is 13.)
During the game, one New York media member was quick to point out that the Knicks were 6-11 in games officiated by Ray Acosta over the past three seasons coming into Game 2. They conveniently left out the fact that the Knicks were also 13-5 in games officiated by Josh Tiven, one of the other two refs assigned to the game.
Anyway, I put together a searchable database with every team’s regular season record since 2020-21 when a given referee was assigned to their game. Do with it what you will.
IND x MIL
The Bucks are getting rocked in every which way in this series. I thought they might be able to at least defend the Pacers in the halfcourt when they have the chance to set their defense, but that has not been the case through two games. The Bucks have allowed the Pacers to score 1.26 points per possession off made baskets and 1.37 off dead ball situations — that’s about the same as what the Bucks are conceding after a missed shot. All of those numbers are way up from the Bucks’ regular season defensive averages.
At some point I expect Doc Rivers to concede the fact that he doesn’t have the personnel to defend the Pacers and will go all in on offense. Don’t be surprised if we see more Kevin Porter Jr. and A.J. Green and less Tauren Prince and Brook Lopez as the series goes on.
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A “direct chance” means whenever the primary player either shoots, gets fouled, turns it over, or passes the ball to someone that immediately shoots, gets fouled, or turns it over.
This stuff is so f'ing cool man
What an all-time substack from Owen. Amazing charts all around. That little birdy must be pretty cool.