http://georgetownsportsanalysis.word...ny-green-open/
Danny Green continues to light it up in this year’s NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, shooting an unheard of 67.9% (19-28) on threes in the Finals. Frustrated Heat fans might be cursing Mike Miller and Dwyane Wade for drifting too far from the Spurs sharpshooter, like Wade does in the picture above, instead of sticking close so that they can contest his jump shots. But could they actually be following the game plan and intentionally leaving Green open?
As you might expect, not many people would like to leave an opposing team’s three point gunner wide open. But for the Heat’s situation, it might actually be their best option in some scenarios. The Miami Heat defense is known for its swarming ability to force turnovers. It, like all NBA defenses, relies on solid communication, rotations, effort and talent to disrupt the offense.
Most important for the Danny Green scenario are the defensive rotations. Anyone who has played basketball can attest to the fact that defense is not all about preventing your own man from scoring. Rather, it’s about limiting as much as possible the opposing team’s scoring, irrespective of whose man scores and whose man doesn’t score.
When Heat players help hard on pick and rolls, drives and cuts to the basket (especially by Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili) and post-ups (especially by Tim Duncan), they disrupt the Spurs offensive efficiency much more than when they stick to their primary assignment, like staying on Danny Green. But is there a way to verify or quantify this reasoning? We can see with some insights from STATS, LLC’s SportVU data.
The SportVU data uses cameras originally designed for Israeli missile tracking technology to track the X and Y coordinates of all players and referees on the court 25 times per second, as well as the X,Y and Z coordinates of the ball 25 times per second, allowing us a much more detailed picture of what is happening on the court at all times. The cameras are currently installed in 15 of the 30 NBA arenas and, as such, the data is incomplete, but it still allows us to analyze parts of the game otherwise unavailable.
According to Brian Kopp, Vice President of Strategy & Development and Head of the Sports Solutions Group at STATS, over the course of the season the Spurs as a team have shot 39% on threes when the defender was 4+ feet away, and 30% when the defender was closer than 4 feet to the shooter.
However, Danny Green shoots 44% when the defender is 4+ feet away but that only drops to 41% when the defender is less than 4 feet away. This contrasts hugely with players like Gary Neal, who shoots 40% on threes when open, dropping to 31% when the defender is less than 4 feet away.
Of course the Heat don’t want Green, with his exceptionally high three point percentage, to shoot threes in the first place. But because his drop in his percentage from open to guarded is not quite as big as one might otherwise expect, it makes more sense for Heat players guarding Green, which has included Wade, Miller, Ray Allen and LeBron James, to help hard on other players getting close to the basket.
Allen does so in response to the Kawhi Leonard-Tiago Splitter pick and roll above, causing James to rotate to Allen’s man on the perimeter and leaving Green open for the eventual three.
Even though the outcomes of the small sample size so far have been bad for the Heat in this situation, knowing that staying on Green won’t make quite as big a difference as helping on the drive, pick and roll, cut or post-up gives the Heat a strategy to minimize the Spurs offensive efficiency overall, even if it lets Danny Green take a bunch of open threes.
By no means do I know for sure that the Heat are playing this way, but it presents an interesting way of thinking of how to solve the problem of minimizing an opponent’s offensive efficiency. If the data shows that allowing one player to go off gives the benefit of limiting the team overall, it’s a strategy worth pursuing.
Screenshots via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxxD122GVwc
Nik Oza
Georgetown Class of 2016
Someone posted this on APBR, and I think it's an interesting look at how the Heat may be leaving Danny open as he's unaffected by the presence of a close defender.
scrambling Heat D is not designed against the GOAT shooting sprees in NBA Finals History tbh
no D is.
Yes they could shut down Green but they would have to go away from Heat D and play some kind of Spurs D and then Spurs would just kill them with conventional basketball plays
Heat are a gimmick team
that's why Fili keeps saying the problem is not D it's O.
he knows they are getting killed and the only hope they have is to have monster offensive games from Wade, Lebron and Yoshi
that's why I made the thread if Wade plays like Jordan 3 more times, Heat will win. He played close to Jordan today so he still has to repeat or improve the performance 2 more times. Heat have no other option
and noLebron is not a guy you give a team to and tell him to win the series for you. He's over his head, if anyone is going to win this is Wade
What an idiotic article. Green shoots contested threes almost as efficiently as he shoots open threes, so the solution is to pay even less attention to him? Since, you know, it doesn't make much difference anyway? Was the author drunk when he wrote this ?
not quite.What an idiotic article. Green shoots contested threes almost as efficiently as he shoots open threes, so the solution is to pay even less attention to him? Since, you know, it doesn't make much difference anyway? Was the author drunk when he wrote this ?
Green is shooting 75% uncontested
50% contested
If they mark Green closely, Leonard or Gary Neal will light them up.
I was going by what the article said, which is that Green shoots threes at 44% uncontested vs 41% contested, per SportVU. He might be referring to season % while maybe you're talking about series %.
The point is that his conclusion is dumb. "It doesn't matter if you contest his shot or not since he shoots about the same % regardless, so hey let's not even worry about giving him more attention since it doesn't make much difference anyway. Mensa, here I come!"
Danny is 7-14 on contested three point shots.
That is still a ridiculous percentage for the long ball.
Green has such a beautiful shot:
1) jumps high and releases at the top
2) long arms
3) quick release but not unnatural quick like Allen
4) nice follow through
I don't think I've ever seen him get a 3 blocked as a result.
Back to the article, stupid and here's why. Even if he hits 40% that's like shooting 60% from 2 PT range which we all know, simple math. If you leave him wide open though he's going to take more shots (duh).
Danny Green is open because the Heat like to trap. That leaves the rest of their defenders having to scramble to cover open shooters. Many predicted this would be a big problem for Miami if they didn't get a lot of turnovers off their trapping.
The reason they cant stop Green is the same reason we cant stop Miller or Allen, sometimes they are hot and you cant stop them.
And when their teammates are also good players is impossible to defend everything.
Sometimes you lose because the other team is better.
If Green was playing for the Bobcats he would not be left open so many times, no one would care about his minimal 3p% decrease.
There's a sense in which it's intentional -- they're obviously paying less attention to Danny so they can focus on Tony, etc. And they probably would rather have Danny go off than have Tony explode.
But clearly Danny is killing them far beyond any plans they could have had for letting our "role players" score a few.
Stupid swarm defense is going to pay for excessive aggression on the ballhandler against an offense with capable shooters.
Pass out, swing, and swish.
I'm tired of people talking about "reverting to the mean" and that the Spurs will come back to earth when Green does. Little do people realize that Allen+Miller combined are out-shooting Danny Green!? 21 out of 30 based on my math (70%) vs. Green's 65.8%.
Green is just getting up more shots because of the over-aggressive Heat defense. He's been on the floor for 34 minutes a night vs. a combined 47 from Allen+Miller. So even if Green's shooting tails off in the last game or two, hopefully the same happens on the other side of the ball.
Terrible premise for an article. Yeah, they're leaving a guy who's TS% is literally over 100% on threes wide open because. . .oh yeah that's in stupid and there's no reason they'd ever do that.
Seriously. The way he's shooting threes, it's literally better than letting a player walk and dribble slowly down the lane uncontested and lay the ball up. If they accidently miss, they make sure to give the ball back until they put it in the hoop, making sure to push them a little after every few shots so he can get a free throw to add to his points every more. That's the equivelant of letting Danny Green shoot an open, uncontested three in the Finals.
Nice stat, thanks for posting it. I knew Miller was hot, but Allen's been hitting too I guess.
If some people think the best strategy for dealing with a player who just broke the record for most threes in a Finals is to leave him open, then by all means I hope to see lots of that strategy in Game 6.
I think the Heat are intentionally losing the series to be fresh and ready for the first minute of training camp, imho.
Danny Green should try shooting a couple of threes backwards over his head.
He hits those, the Heat will walk off the court.
Listening to some of the media today they seem to think the Heat are intentionally down 3-2 and didn't care to play in game 5.. They just wanted to go home with no margin for error to beat the Spurs..
Why don't you show us your expert articles? Enthrall us with your a en.
This. With Tony and Tim out there, you have to take your chances that Green will come back to reality. Thank goodness for us Spurs fans, that hasn't happened yet.
To put it into perspective, remember last season vs. OKC when Ibaka had that perfect shooting game in WCF game 4? OKC fans were ecstatic, but we Spurs fans were calling bull because he's not that good, he just got lucky. Well now the Heat are in our shoes from last season. The difference is Green has been doing it game after game. I mean, he's an excellent outside shooter, but in this series he's just unconscious.
Nonetheless, the Heat must be in as much disbelief as the Spurs were last season with Ibaka. And when the Spurs prevail, the Heat and their fans will say "We can't believe Danny ing Green beat us."
Last edited by Keepin' it real; 06-17-2013 at 11:57 PM.
Here. It's got pictures and all.
How Danny Green keeps getting open
While I don't think that the heat are doing this intentionally geared toward leaving Green open, its not as far fetched a strategy as many are thinking. I would bet the Spurs have similar thinking in their decision to drop off Wade and Lebron. I can't find the stats that the guy in the article uses, but it may very well say that those two hit their shots at the same clip whether they are being guarded or not.
Where this article gets off track is that even indeed the Spurs Lebron/Wade approach is based on the same DG approach it puts forth the Spurs use of the strategy is also backed up by other, and much more basic, defensive principles such as keeping them from getting to the rim where they are much more efficient. Brian Kopp's theory about Green breaks down because it has no other sound basketball principles behind it; it is a statistician working in a vacuum where players are models and results are treated as completely predictable.
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