NBA Advanced Matchups: Tuesday, March 17th
Welcome to the NBA Advanced Matchups, presented by Ohnjz. I’ll be taking you deep into the depths of NBA advanced stats to uncover the top plays in each NBA slate (with 4 or more games). We’ll consider a broad spectrum of metrics here, including SPORTSVU player and shot tracking, play type data, individual defensive metrics, and my personal favorite, Ohnjz’ bad-jokes-and-snarky-comments-per-article.
As always, this work is meant as a guide to help you hone in on what advanced stats would suggest are some of the top plays – but it’s ultimately up to you to decide how to build your lineups.
ROCKETS SG JAMES HARDEN
James Harden is the Next Best Thing tonight, but has an equally massive ceiling against the Magic. While looking at the DVP through a seasonal lens would suggest that the Magic struggle against SFs and not SGs (30th in SF DVP, 9th in SGS DVP), the truth is that they’ve been getting obliterated by basically all offensive wing players of late. More recent DVP helps bear this out: the Magic are 28th vs SG and 30 vs SF over the Last 3 Weeks. Here’s just a small sample of the atrocities committed on the Magic defense by opposing wing players lately:
• Evan Turner: 30 real points
• Rodney Stuckey: 34 real points
• Khris Middleton: 30 real points
• Brandon Knight: 28 real points
• Rudy Gay: 39 real points
It’s pretty disgusting. Whether small forward or shooting guard, it doesn’t matter. If the Magic are facing talented scorers – they often get burned by them. You’ll notice that none of the players above are truly elite, either. Given the success of players like Rodney Stuckey and Khris Middleton (who, to be fair, have both been excellent of late), it should be pretty clear that James Harden has elite upside in this matchup. He’s already dropped a 50+ FPT performance on this team, where he racked up 26 points (10-16 FG, 5-6 FTM), 4 rebounds, 10 assists, and 5 steals. And Dwight Howard played in that game. And Harden hardly got to the line, despite 10 of his shots coming from inside the paint. So long as this game stays close, I expect another massive game from Harden tonight.
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