The road to success for stars in the NBA is littered with teams whose pieces don’t fit. With cracks in those connections, it’s hard for even the most talented teams to stay together when driving over the potholes and through the speed traps of the playoffs. Perhaps the wheels fall off when faced with pressure. […]
Going into the playoffs, our NBA model wasn’t particularly high on the Dallas Mavericks’ chances of making a deep run. We gave Dallas only a 37 percent chance of beating the Utah Jazz in the first round and a 12 percent chance of making the Western Conference finals. But that was before Luka Dončić returned […]
The Phoenix Suns finished the regular season with the NBA’s best record, eight games better than the next closest team. They led the league in net rating and were the only team in the league to sport a top-five offense and a top-five defense. And yet, their disastrous defeat Sunday at the hands of the […]
In the NBA playoffs, experience matters. FiveThirtyEight found that championship-winning rosters almost always have an above-average tally of career playoff minutes played. It’s such a good predictor of success that it’s a part of our NBA projections. This year’s Dallas Mavericks don’t have much of that postseason experience on their roster. They ranked 14th among […]
For a while now, the pick and roll has been the centerpiece of nearly every offensive attack in the NBA. The on-ball screen has arguably never been more central than it is right now. According to Second Spectrum, the average NBA team ran 71.7 pick and rolls per 100 possessions during the 2021-22 regular season […]