NBA Analytics restart

What now?

After reading the article in The Athletic written by Seth Partnow.

Soccer and Basketball have been able to restart and keep the sports experience alive despite spiking numbers of Covid-19 amid a pandemic. I think this makes sense for running times of games with 1 for 2 rules. Points following a shooting foul are to shorten the game length.

Referees are calling more fouls. This slows up the game and the pace. It is happening at the worst time, to be honest, and I think it is affecting the flow of the game. Read what they said in the Athletic below.

“Which brings us back to the restart. There have been whistles on whistles so far. Before the shutdown, NBA games averaged 45.8 free throws and 41.6 total fouls called per game. Through the first 19 restart games, these have skyrocketed to 58.2 FTA/G and 52.0 fouls per game. Interestingly, nearly half of this increase has occurred in what is typically the least tightly officiated portion of the game; the first quarter:”

One theory suggests that it is because they can hear better without crown noise. Regardless of what it is they need to chill out. Part of the appeal to the game is the pace and flow. As mentioned in the article that is why the G League is experimenting with 2 for 1. This means a person takes 1 free throw with they get fouled regardless of if they get fouled on the 2 point line or the 3 point line. Instead of shooting 2 or 3 free throws they only get 1 for the same value. You can imagine what this does for game length and idle time as each free throw can take up to 10 seconds of 10 players stagnant looking at 1 shoot their free attempts.

I think this is one of the few things soccer does better than basketball. I think a lot of the other rules in soccer suck like how many players since you can have one player get disqualified and it still does not impact the game but that is another subject altogether. In soccer when shooting and getting fouled you get a chance from that place you shot from with defenders being able to block your shot if you are not in the penalty box when it happened. I think basketball should have a way that it is like a 1 on 1 moment from where they got fouled with everyone behind the 3 point line to bring more movement and action to the game. When I think of the free throw now I think on Rick Barry’s underhand shot.

Shot expectancy is similar to when the NBA was postponed. I have never gone through a league stoppage before buying I’m sure the coaching staff was in their player’s ears throughout the break about how they were going to approach the season as if it is the same from where we left off before the break. This could be a reason why the shots taken are still the same for the most part. I think players are still taking the shots that

The collision ratio in basketball is interesting to me. I never know that was a stat that is kept. The referees are under some serious pressure now that they can measure if there was contact on a foul. I have to look more into depth on this topic.

Why are the Pelicans playing so slow? They may be playing slow for Zion could be the case. He is out of shape. I could never imagine Lonzo Ball playing slow but I guess it managed to happen for the sake of Zion. This is hard for me to believe, however. I am not sure how someone who is Sports Science is not the end all be all. I think Zion is being monitored on his load. Even if you have all the metrics on Zion he is such an anomaly there is no way to know how to access how much he should play even with all of the sensors they have nowadays.