“He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.”- Lennon/McCartney
Weirdly, they held a Finals game in Dallas tonight and only one of the Heat showed. This is very unexpected.
Prior to the Finals these were the Heat:
Lebron and D-Wade played like superstars (Wade was limited somewhat by some injuries). Throw in excellent performances from Bosh and Miller and Miami looked like world beaters.
A funny thing happened when we got to the Finals:
On the biggest possible stage, with the biggest possible stakes, Dwayne Wade has cemented his claim as the true heir to his Airness.
No Kobe. Not Yours. 6-24
Lebron seems to have gotten lost as of late. Bosh is on a Milk Carton.
Miami is a crazy heave three from Chalmers (that probably should have been called a backcourt violation) from being down 3-1 and facing elimination.
As for Dallas, who you may have heard won the game, even the German fever couldn’t keep him down. However, Rick Carlisle be warned, I watched the game with my wife, a passionate Barea fan, and it only took a quarter for her to start blaming his girlfriend for his trouble. The experiment was not a success.
Fun stat time: Dallas is + 14 in the last three fourth Quarters in this series.
For the series so far, the numbers look like so:
D-Wade is fantastic but he’s getting beat by a basketball team. His teammates have become hard men to find.
Boxscore Explanations in gray:
I’m going to be posting an advanced Box Score during the playoffs after every game.
It contains:
- Basic information: Player , Team, Game ID (Who,what and when)
- Classic Stats:Points ,Shots, Offensive Rebounds, Defensive Rebounds,Steals,Blocks, Assists (Because the classics are classics for a reason).
- Simple spins on classics: % of Team Minutes (player minutes as % of total minutes available), Position (average player position)
- Possesion and Play stats:
- Offensive Plays : Field Goal attempts + .434 Free Throw Attempts + Turnovers
- Usage of Offensive Plays : % of Offensive plays used by player when in the game
- All the classic Offensive Efficiency stats (and some slightly modded ones):
- Effective Field Goal %=(FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA
- True Shooting %=Pts / (2 * (FGA + 0.44 * FTA)
- Points per Shot = Pts/FGA
- Points per Offensive Play= Pts/Offensive Plays
- Do it Yourself Offensive Point Margin Stats:
- Offensive Point Margin: this is the marginal value created by the player per offensive play spent. The calculation is:
- OPM = (Points per Play for Player- Avg Points per play for Player for League)*Offensive Plays for Player
- Defensive Point Margin: this is the marginal value surrendered by the player per offensive play spent. The calculation is:
- DPM = (Points per Play for Opponent- Avg Points per play for Player for League)*Offensive Plays for Opponent. I’m doing this one by position averages per game.
- Combined Margin: this is just OPM-DPM
- Rebounding Rates: % of Rebounds on Offense, % of Rebounds on Defense.
- The Classic Wins Produced stats (explained here) and my own opponent adjusted Wins Produced Stats (explained here). The difference? Classic assumes the opposing player is average. Opponent adjusted goes out and checks by position.
Parking Lot items :
- Do DPM based on average points per play for opponent.
- Add other advanced metricss (PER,Win Shares,EZPM, etc.)
Remember kids, my tastes are reflected in this (and they may not line up with yours).
I encourage you to comment and make suggestions as the eventual goal is to build an automatic version of this.
The raw data is here as a google doc (updated 6/6/11)
The Box-score follows (I fixed TS% and added totals).
Heat-Mavs Game 4
Tyson Chandler as the Dallas MVP for the game. Marion and DeShawn stepping up. My wife joking that Jason Kidd played like he had money on Miami with those crazy passes. The best basketball player alive looking anything but for yet another finals game (2 for 8 career by my count).
Dirk’s night wasn’t very different from Lebron’s. Except for the fact, that once again, fever and all it got better in the end.
Critical Game 5 coming up.
Paging Lebron James.
Arturo's Silly Little Stats v2.0 
EntityAbyss
06/08/2011
Wow. What is up with all these Chalmer’s heave kept them from losing game 3. It’s part of the game. You can pick a lot of reasons for why the Mavs won game 2 (which was by 2 points btw)… Also, picking on Lebron. lol. That’s Lebron James. Not Kobe Bryant.
Anyways, looking at your numbers, it looks like Dallas should win game 5, and Miami should win the two games back in Miami. Lebron should have time to show up, and do what he did to Boston and Chicago.
ilikeflowers
06/08/2011
I agree way too much ESPNesque small sample dramatization. Dallas has to win the next one. I don’t think that they can do it. They just barely beat a Heat team more or less at its worst on their home court. We have game 1 that was easily won by Miami and game 2 that shoulda been. Dallas is just barely eeking out wins at home. I still have Mia in 6.
arturogalletti
06/08/2011
EA,
That heave was very,very unlikely. And it really changed the end of that game. Without it the end of game 3 plays out like game 4 and Miami is facing elimination.
ILF,
I am completely and utterly impressed by the way Dallas has taken control of the last three games. They go to their zone, put Dirk on Bosh, Marion on Lebron and turn Miami into a jumpshooting team. Chandler/Dirk also shut off all the Miami offensive boards.
It’s actually kind of annoying that they go away from it so often. The key seems to be:
Chandler on Bosh = Miami great
Dirk on Bosh, Chandler roaming= Miami Collapse
ilikeflowers
06/09/2011
Dallas’ book on Miami looks like stop LeBron, let Wade do whatever he wants, pray that Bibby keeps getting Miller’s minutes. Miami’s frontcourt is overmatched so it doesn’t really matter. It’s just barely working though. They’re closer to being swept than they are to being up 3-1 and they’re the ones who have to win this next game. They keep bating the bear by trash talking LeBron (after they barely win). It’s gonna bite em in the end.
I think the real difference is Miller’s reduced minutes, otherwise this series is already over.
ilikeflowers
06/09/2011
The real problem is that the Mav’s lost a game at home where they got most of the calls and then they just barely won the last one where only Wade played well. Miami isn’t going to play as poorly as they did in game 4 again this series. Game 2 equals the Brandon Roy game. This does not bode well for Dallas.
marparker
06/08/2011
TYson Chandler is definitely the seriers MVP so far. He is the guy challenging Miami at the basket without fouling repeatedly. Its a thing of beauty in my eyes. He goes up chest to chest but jumps backwards slightly instead of into the driver. Wallah, Miami sees no free throws.
Against the rest of the league thats a pretty good skill. Against Miami its a tremendous skill.
Also, I think its good for one of the big 3 to say fuck it I’m not scoring. But if its going to be Lebron he needs to realize that he still needs to find a way to be around 20 points. A guy like Lebron should get at least 4 layups a game(1 a quarter). And maybe 2 shots of of bad switches. Some open 3s maybe. The game is so easy for him that I think he could shoot well over 50% with that attitude and distribute and rebound his way to dominance the rest of the 46 minutes when hes not shooting. Last night was awful.
arturogalletti
06/08/2011
Marion on Lebron and Dirk on Bosh cannot be underrated as well.
acidwithwalton
06/08/2011
arturo,
what is the most you can say about dallas’ defense on lebron and that on wade? i feel the main reason for why lebron isn’t being as productive is simply the amount of defensive attention he receives and the lack the other players get, including wade.
arturogalletti
06/08/2011
AWW,
The actual problem is that Dallas cannot handle a guard like Wade. Marion gets Lebron (and has done a great job on him). Dirk has CB4 playing like a Bosh. Chandler mops up for everyone. Wade is the random factor (Kidd, Barea and Terry not doing it). Once they go to zone and Dirk/Marion/Chandler close the middle the Miami offense goes into clogged toilet mode.
reservoirgod
06/09/2011
Mike Miler has not been more productive than Bibby in this series. http://miami-heat-index.blogspot.com/p/heat-produced.html