NBA Advanced Matchups: Wednesday, March 11th
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.
UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
ROCKETS SG JAMES HARDEN
With the Russell Westbrook discussion dominating the day, the other elite players are being a little overlooked. What about one of the other MVP candidates, James Harden? Harden faces the Portland Trail Blazers tonight, a team whose favorable DVP against SGs is largely due to Harden’s two matchups with them this season:
• 2/8: 45 points (11/25 FG, 19/23 FT), 9 rebounds, 8 assists, 2 steals
• 12/22: 44 points (14/26, 12/13 FT), 3 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 steals
We now call those numbers Westbrook-esque, but 60-70 FPT bombs used to be the norm for the Beard. The interesting difference is that the Blazers are without SG Wes Matthews in this game. Matthews was mainly tasked with chasing Harden around in their matchups – of Harden’s 51 shots across the two games above, 18 came directly against Matthews. The question is, what will the Blazers do now? Harden executes Isolation plays more than any other player in the NBA, so a large part of his success tonight will be dictated by the individual defense of that player. Blazers SF Nicolas Batum is an effective perimeter defender, but has rarely defended Harden this year. What about replacement SG Arron Afflalo? We should hope they use him instead based on his last game facing Harden:
• 12/17: 41 points on 11/21 FG & 18/21 FT
The Blazers as a team are essentially middle of the pack defending Iso plays (.85 PPP, 51st percentile) Both Afflalo and Batum defend Isolation plays at roughly the same level as Wes Matthews did (Matthews: .78 points-per-possession; Batum: .79 PPP, Afflalo: .70), which is to say they actually defend it reasonably well… just not against James Harden. He should go berserk tonight regardless of the defender.
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