Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Denver as a poster child for white-collar basketball

Denver just finished their season, and their stat sheet is predictable: once again a large percentage of their attempts (42.3%) are from the arc, once again they shoot lights out all across the board and share the ball well - and once again they get pounded on the boards and play very porous defense.

The lack of rebounding on a team that concentrates on three-point shooting is somewhat understandable, since their players are theoretically going to spend more time outside than other teams, and thus on the offensive end of the floor they logically will be at a disadvantage on the boards. However, the lack of defense does not necessarily follow logically. Sometime (when I have LOTS of time) I am going to do a study of "white-collar" teams (teams that like to bomb from long range but shy from the dirty work) and see if there is a correlation between that and the level of defense teams play. I am theorizing that there will be a pattern. However, it will not be a logical connection, but a psychological connection. Some teams just do not want to get their hands dirty doing trivial things like playing defense.

(Have I mentioned how much I dislike the three-point shot?)

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