The Numbers Crunch: Wizards bow to Curry and the Warriors

[BaltimoreBill]

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry lit up the Washington Wizards for 30 points, including eight threes. | Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images Stats, analysis, commentary. Going into last night’s matchup against the Golden State Warriors, the Washington Wizards had no realistic chance of winning. It was the second night of a back-to-back, the fourth and final game of a four-game western road trip with three days off until their next game, they won the night before, and the Warriors are just plain better. Just no shot at winning. The Wizards stayed close until the Warriors broke the game open by winning the third quarter, 38-22. The “hero” was predictably Stephen Curry, who started the game missing five of his first six shots to torch the Wizards for 13 points in the period on 4-5 shooting from three-point range. Don’t be fooled by the 11-point final margin — the Wizards got blown out. They were down 23 in the fourth quarter when Wes Unseld Jr. threw in the towel. The garbage time gang went on a meaningless run to make the final score look superficially better. Musings & Observations

• Jordan Poole got a classy and warm reception from the Golden State fans, and he actually played a not terrible game. His shooting from the floor stunk, but he got to the free throw line (8-9) and avoided turnovers. His decision-making and shot selection was terrible, as has been his norm.
• Kyle Kuzma played poorly until he left the game with a sore knee and didn’t return. He could use those days off the Wizards have coming. Against the Warriors — 7 points on 3-11 shooting, 9 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 turnovers.
• Tyus Jones was excellent, again. In 25 minutes, he had 14 points on eight shots, 3 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal and no turnovers or fouls.
• Corey Kispert was just 2-7 from three-point range, which means it was a relatively bad game from him. As usual, he provided little aside from launching shots — just one rebound and no assists in 25 minutes.
• Bilal Coulibaly had some good defensive possessions in the first half but largely disappeared otherwise until garbage time.

Four Factors Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made). Stats & Metrics Below are a few performance metrics, including the Player Production Average (PPA) Game Score. PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls). Game Score (GmSC) converts individual production into points on the scoreboard. The scale is the same as points and reflects each player’s total contributions for the game. The lowest possible GmSC is zero. PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results. POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game. ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average last season was 114.8. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist. USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%. ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. +PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.

Source: https://www.bulletsforever.com/2023/12/ ... e-warriors