Due to the rust that the lockout has caused league-wide, the Wizards should improve slightly as the season goes on.  However, in a season that has 7 teams on pace to qualify for the worst 100 offensive season in league history, the Wizards have been playing epically bad basketball.

Whenever a team is this bad on the offensive end, it usually a combination of a lack of talent and poor execution. The Wizards, with a roster full of low basketball IQ players, are no exception. It’s to the point where it’s tough to accurately scout the one player Washington fans should be optimistic about, John Wall. Wall’s progress as a prospect has stalled and it looks as though his teammates may be part of the problem with his development.

While one could fill a 1,500 word post with examples of poor execution, selfish play or bad shot selection from the Wizards this season, we’ll just take a look at a few possessions where Washington starts out in a great position and ends up with a failed result.

This first play is a pick and roll between John Wall and Ronny Turiaf that’s defended by the Sixers’ Jrue Holiday and Nikola Vucevic. The Wizards are immediately put in an advantageous situation because Jrue Holiday goes over the top of Turiaf’s screen. The Wall-Turiaf tandem is tailor-made for a defense to have the on-ball defender go under thanks to Wall’s struggles shooting off the pick and roll (He’s currently at just 27.3% on jump shots coming off pick and rolls).

With Vucevic’s slow lateral foot speed, he doesn’t have a chance of staying with Wall. Wall easily splits the trap and forces Marreese Speights to have to rotate over, leaving an easy kickout pass to Trevor Booker on the left wing.

Booker should straddle the three point line and give Wall the option for an easy kickout pass. This would force Philly’s Jodie Meeks to defend both Booker and the Wizards player stationed in the corner.  When Meeks closes out, the Wizards will have an uncontested corner three.  If Meeks closes out too aggressively, Booker can then pump fake and drive past him. Instead, Booker dives to the paint, changing the angle of John Wall’s pass and giving Meeks a chance to intercept it, which he does.

Here is a video of the play. Watch the angle change as Booker dives to the paint, giving Meeks a chance to intercept the ball and changing a 2 on 1 situation in favor of the Wizards into a fast break opportunity for the Sixers.

The second scenario again involves a pick and roll, this time with Nick Young handling the ball and JaVale McGee setting the screen and diving into the paint.

Trevor Booker is in the paint, and Rashard Lewis is standing in the corner. Wall, standing at the top of the key, should be Young’s outlet valve, rotating over to give Young a clear pass if he’s trapped. Lewis should then slide over to his left and Booker should curl over to the corner three slot.  Not only will this movement opening up the paint for McGee, but Young will have pressure-release if trapped, and station the Wizards players to swing the ball around the three point line against a scrambling Sixers’ defense.

Instead, Wall, Booker, and Lewis remain virtually still and don’t start moving until Young is already trapped.  There’s no spacing in the paint, which allows Vucevic and Meeks to double team Young out in the corner, with no clear passing lane to Wall.

The play once again results in a turnover. Here’s the video:

Flip Saunders is likely to be a casualty before any player movement occurs, but many of the Wizards core players (Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee, Nick Young, and Jordan Crawford, primarily) had questionable basketball IQ’s long before they stepped onto an NBA court. It’s not uncommon for a top overall pick to come into a team that lacks talent, but is uncommon to belong to a team as dysfunctional as this current Washington Wizards team. Only time will tell how it affects Wall’s development going forward.

The results were not pretty.  Turner had a tough time extending his range out to NBA three point territory, making only 14 three pointers in 78 games.  As a whole, his 0.8 points per possession on jump shot attempts were in the bottom third of the league, and he shot only 40.2% on no dribble jump shots, limiting his usefulness as a spot-up player.  Turner struggled to find a comfort zone on the offensive end last year, which caused both his confidence — and his minutes — to fall.

Taking a look at Evan Turner’s shot from last year, there are a few very clear problems that could be causing him problems with consistency.

The smaller issue is his strong hand’s elbow is slightly flared out to the right, not forming a proper 90 degree angle, which affects his follow through and accuracy.  The much more pressing concern, however, is his guide hand.  While the image here is a little blurry, the guide hand is out of place and affecting his shot.  Turner’s guide hand is actually on top of the basketball, which has the bad combination of not only failing to properly guide the basketball but also altering the spin on the shot.

Here is a photo from John Raoux of the Associated Press which is clearly and shows the problem.  The guide hand is on top of the basketball, rather than off to the left side.

Evan Turner (John Raoux/AP)

 
Here, the strong hand is in better position, showing that the previous flare was more a problem with consistency than a broken part of his jump shot, but the guide hand is still out of position.  Again, in this position not only is the guide hand not helping in maintaining the accuracy in the follow through but it’s actually affecting the rotation on the basketball and altering the course of the shot.

Here are some more video examples from Evan Turner’s rookie season:

Turner recognized this hitch and spent a significant part of his lockout-extended offseason working with Herb Magee.  Magee is the long time head coach at Philadelphia University and recent Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, generally regarded as one of the best shooting coaches in the nation.  Magee reworked multiple areas of Turner’s jump shot, including smoothing out a small hitch at the top of his release and shortening up his shot, but most prominently changing the positioning of his off hand.

Here is an image from the Sixers most recent preseason game against the Washington Wizards:

The angle of the image is less than perfect, as due to the small sample of jump shots so far this season to chose from, finding one with the perfect camera angle was a challenge.  Regardless, the mechanics of the jump shot are visible.  His balance is good, feet are shoulder width apart, and he goes up straight.  His strong hand is at a 90 degree angle and his off hand is on the left hand side of the ball, giving him much better follow through and rotation on his ball.

Here are some more video examples from the Sixers most recent preseason game against the Washington Wizards:

It will be interesting to see whether Turner reverts at all to his previous form, particularly when shooting off the dribble, an area where years of muscle memory may override months of retraining.  So far the results have been positive.  Turner averaged 14.5 points on 44.4% from the field in his two preseason games, shooting 7-15 on jump shots beyond 10 feet, including a three pointer.

Sixers coach Doug Collins appears poised to give Evan Turner more ball handling and shot creating responsibilities this year with the Sixers second unit, which will allow him to return to a more familiar role.  Even with that, with third year point guard Jrue Holiday along with Andre Iguodala and Louis Williams, Turner is going to have to become more efficient off the ball, including hitting jump shots in spot-up situations and coming off of screens.  If the preseason is any indication of that, it looks like he’s taken the first step in doing so.

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Shooting Form

Wesley Johnson

I absolutely love Wesley Johnson’s shooting form.  He is a jump shooter rather than a set shooter, and his fundamentals are really on point, elbows are bent the right way, guide hand is on the side of the ball and it isn’t used during the shot.  My favorite thing about his shot though is how high he keeps the basketball up on his release.  Wesley Johnson is 6’6″ so he is already just as tall as most threes and probably taller than most shooting guards trying to defend him on the outside.  With the way that Johnson keeps the ball up, there is going to be no way his shot gets altered/blocked when shooting from the outside.

Evan Turner

Evan Turner too is a jump shooter rather than a set shooter.  Turner also has solid form when looking at his elbow and guide hand (you can’t see it from here, so you are going to have to take my word for it).  However, what I don’t like in Turner’s form is what I love in Johnson’s, where the basketball is.  Wesley Johnson kept the basketball up ridiculously high, but Evan Turner looks like he is almost resting the ball on his shoulder.  In my opinion, he keeps the basketball too low, but that has never been a problem in college because as M. Haubs of The Painted Area mentioned, he has been going up against smaller defenders most of his college career.

Off The Dribble

Both players here don’t really like to take jumpers off the dribble a ton, and when they do, they tend to turn their back to their defenders and rely on turn around jumpers.

Wesley Johnson

Evan Turner

The thing that sticks out to me when watching these two videos is the body position at the release point of the shot.  While Evan Turner is fading away, Wesley Johnson is sending his body towards the basket.

Conclusion

In my opinion, Wesley Johnson will be the better shooter in the pros.  His skillset will allow him to take the step back to the three point line, and the fact that he keeps the ball higher than Evan Turner really appeals to me.

Play 1 (Two Points)

Above is a play from a sideline out of bounds set.  Immediately after Ron Artest inbounds the basketball and floats to the corner, Paul Pierce leaves him to float in the middle of the court.  Rajon Rondo, unsure of what to make of the situation decides to pick up Artest.  As the shot goes up, Artest uses his size advantage on Rondo to grab the rebound and put it right back in the basket.

Play 2 (Five Points)

In the play above, the ball gets swung around to Derek Fisher from the opposite sideline.  As this ball movement takes place, Paul Pierce leaves Ron Artest to defend Fisher and prevent him from shooting.  However, once he forces Fisher to take the ball into the paint he stays with him despite the two other Celtics in the paint.  Fisher finds a wide open Ron Artest, and he knocks down the three pointer.

Play 3 (Eight Points)

The play above is my favorite one of the four plays, so I am going to break it down with screenshots.

Here, Ron Artest gets the ball on the wing as Pau Gasol posts up.

Artest enters the ball into the post and then cuts off of Gasol, going along the baseline with Paul Pierce trailing him.

When it looks like Artest is headed for the corner (and gets out from under the basket), Paul Pierce leads him to double Gasol in the post.

When Ron Artest notices that Paul Pierce has left him, he curls around Lamar Odom and cuts right too the rim.  This is what I wanted to see Rajon Rondo do in game six and seven, but it never happened.  Nobody stops Artest as he gets right in the middle of the lane untouched.

Artest makes the catch, absorbs the contact, and finishes with the And 1.

Play 4 (Eleven Points)

This was the backbreaking play right here.  After a Celtics’ three, the Lakers came down and responded with one of their own.  It came from Ron Artest, after the Lakers left him open.  Kobe has the basketball here, and Paul Pierce settles into help position.  However, he sinks a little to far and when Artest gets the pass, Pierce isn’t able to get back to him and he knocks down the three.

And on the second part, the mechanical side, Corey was–and sometimes still does–he gets his head and shoulders far in front of his feet when he’s going to shoot, because he’s trying to stay low. But what happens is this: when you catch the ball and then try to stand up quickly, your head goes flying backward, and that’s kicking your legs out in front of you to counter balance your head or you’re going to fall on you back. So you kick your legs out–it’s an unconscious move–and therefore your balance is awful. Because you have poor balance, it’s very hard to have a great mechanic or stroke with your right arm, and it really threw his whole shot out of whack. So I actually talked a lot about–and I know the Wolves have worked him a ton–on just being more balanced and jumping straight up and landing straight down on two legs and not one leg. Not kicking his legs out in front of him, holding that form, and putting his hand to the rim and leading to all sorts of shooting cues that we worked on a lot this summer that we still talk a lot about literally every game day, almost.

This stuff looked familiar because the Nets had their own player struggling with his shot earlier in the year with Courtney Lee.  The problem was also in the lower half of his body, and over at NetsAreScorching, I took a look at it in depth:

…Look where Courtney’s feet are pointing.  They aren’t pointing towards the basket, but to the left of the basket.  As I mentioned earlier, you want your feet pointing towards the basket, because if they are, that means the rest of the body is forced to point towards the basket.  When you shoot the ball, it tends to go in the direction where your feet are pointing.  It is no surprise that Courtney’s shot misses to the left here.

As Courtney takes off, he starts to lean back.  Like I said, because NBA defenders are so good at staying on the ball, players tend to fade away more often than not.  You don’t want to be fading on a pull up jumper at the elbow though.  Usually on a jumper, you want your back to be straight.

Also, you usually want to land where you take off from when you shoot a jumper.  Here, Courtney lands a foot or two behind where he took off from (the yellow dot indicates that), he also lands on one foot, which is a sign of a player fading too much.  When you take off and go up straight, both of your feet tend to land on the ground at the same time.  The only shooter I have seen do this and hit shots consistently was Reggie Miller.

Like I said, Courtney kind of lumped every mistake he tends to make into one shot attempt here.  He usually does one of these things wrong on an attempt, but even just one of these mistakes is enough to throw off a shot.

Shooting Done Right:

OK, now that we have seen what Courtney has done wrong (and it is happening more often than not), let’s look at him doing everything right:

Here Courtney Lee is driving to the hoop as Mike Bibby covers him.  He is going to be pulling up for a jumper at the elbow.

The two yellow dots are Courtney’s toes, he has got them pointed towards the basket.  His feet are under him, and he is on balance as he gets ready to take off.  Another thing I wanted to point out is his elbow (because it is so apparent in this screen shot), that is perfect shooting form.  More reason why this slump is so frustrating.

As Courtney rises up, there is no fade, and his back stays straight through the whole jump shot.  That is perfect form and something that he needs to try to recreate on every jump shot.

Despite the YES scoreboard being in the way (seriously, I watch a lot of league pass, and YES’s scoreboard is probably the most annoying.  They need to go to the long one along the bottom like everyone else…but I digress), Courtney lands in just about the same spot he took off from, which is the elbow.  Also, both feet hit the ground at the same time as well.  This is a perfect jumper, no wonder it went it.

This is why shooting off the dribble is so hard compared to shooting off the catch.  Now, I don’t have the numbers to back this up, but I am willing to say that shooting percentages when coming off the dribble (in terms of jumpers) is probably lower.  This is because when you shoot off of the catch, you are already standing still, which makes it easy to rise and land in the same spot.  Off the dribble on the other hand, you are moving towards the basket at full speed, stopping, and jumping to shoot.  It is really hard to jump and land in the same spot, and that can lead to problems as David Thorpe mentioned above.

Another thing that you notice, is that most of the league’s best three point shooters are “set shooters” rather than “jump shooters.”  This is because with the number of shots from deep they end up taking, it is hard to get the same high jump over and over, however it is easy to replicate a set shot 10-15 times a game.  The only real jump shooter that is considered a great shooter from deep is Ray Allen, and he is a special case.  As Chris Ballard notes in his fantastic book The Art Of A Beautiful Game:

Allen’s success is due to a shot that is almost obsessively calibrated.  First, to ensure optimum lift and stamina, he attempts to maintain a body fat level of 4%, and varies his exercise depending on how his legs feel.  Some summers he focus on biking 30 miles a day, while during the season he may spend some more time jogging, all the time monitoring his calorie intake.  “Sometimes my body craves food, and I have to eat carbs,” he explains.  “There are times I get too slim, and my trainer will tell me, Go eat a cheeseburger”

In the end, there are a number of different ways to shoot a basketball (see Kevin Martin and Shawn Marion) and get proper rotation on it.  However, if you look at most of the best shooters in the NBA, you will notice that they have their feet pointing towards their target and more often then not are jumping straight up and down.

Fighting for their playoff lives, the Houston Rockets were down 4 points with 1:06 seconds left.  Their opponent the L.A. Clippers just pulled down an offensive rebound and bring the ball upcourt:

Now, it is obvious that the Clippers are trying to kill some clock here, and they effectively do.  20 valuable seconds come off the clock before Baron Davis hits his jumper.  This brings up something that has always bothered me when it comes down to coaches strategy, why don’t NBA teams foul earlier when they are losing (not counting the Hack-a-Shaq)?  The Rockets don’t foul in this situation, but they aren’t the only one, most teams in the NBA won’t foul here, and I think it’s silly.  In my opinion, when you are down by more than 1 possession with a minute left you want to extend the game as long as you can, and one way to do that is you foul.

Now, let’s use the above situation from the Rockets game as our starting point.  If the Rockets foul as soon as the Clippers get the ball and Baron Davis makes both of them, they are down 6 points with 1:06 left instead of being down 6 with 46 seconds left.  That is 20 seconds he could have saved, and in a NBA game 20 seconds is pretty damn valuable.  Another benefit of fouling is that there is no guarantee that the shooter will make both (remember that Golden State-Phoenix game a couple of days back).

The Rockets actually come down and quickly score in their next possession, they are now once again down four, but this time with 40 seconds left:

Again, the Rockets don’t foul and again Baron Davis runs down the clock, but this time he hits a three instead of a two and effectively closes out the game.

If the Clippers would have fouled in both of these situations, they would only be down 6 with about 40 seconds left, and while it is still a long shot, it is much more manageable than being down 7 with 17 seconds left.  Also, that is if the opposing team makes both of them, and that is never a guarantee, especially late.

Data

Before getting into the data and what it tells us, it was important for us to learn how the data was gained.  Mr. Huizinga developed a database called Chances.  The database uses data provided by STATS, LLC. and allowed everyone to know the context of the action before the block.  The sample of the data used in the presentation was players with over 100 blocks over the last 7 years (this is when the data has become available).  In total, this ended up being 170 player-seasons.

Type Of Block

Is blocking a lay-up more valuable than blocking a jump-shot?  Mr. Huizinga’s data says yes.  In his presentation, he said that it all comes down to expected value.  A jumper has an expected point value of 1.04 while a lay-up has an expected point value of 1.54.  Looking at it this way, Brendon Haywood, who many people is a very good defender (me included) actually is a less valuable shot blocker than Jermaine O’Neal.

Haywood gets 69% of his blocks on jumpers, meaning he only blocks 31% of the more valuable lay-ups.  On the other end of the spectrum, 91% of Jermaine O’Neal’s blocks were on lay-up attempts, while only 9% of his blocks were the less-valuable jump shots.

“Russells”

Many people who have seen Bill Russell play (or have seen highlights) know that Bill Russell was remembered for blocking shots for his teammates, starting a fast break (called by Bill Simmons as “Russells”.  Mr. Huizinga showed that this doesn’t really happen in the NBA anymore.  There have only been 7 players (in the 7 season where the data was tracked) who accumulated more than 20 “Russells” in a season.

Preblock Situation

One of the most important things to take away from Mr. Huizinga’s presentation is expected value of the preblock situation.  Or in otherwords, what happened right before the block took place.  Naturally, a block coming off of a live-turnover situation on a lay-up (think a LeBron chasedown) is going to be more valuable than a block coming off of a deadball situation.  Again, this comes down to expected point value.  The expected point value of a live-turnover situation is higher than a deadball situation because coming off of a live-ball turnover, the defense doesn’t have a chance to get back.

The best shot blocker in the NBA when it comes down to this situation ends up being Andrei Kirilenko, as 16% of his blocks come against this shot type.  The worst ends up being Greg Ostertag.  This makes sense considering that Ostertag isn’t really known for his footspeed.

Putting It All Together

So whose blocked shots are the most valuable?  Mr. Huizinga closed the presentation by going over what he calls “Block Value.”  To determine block value, he used the formula Points Saved + Points Created where Points Saved equals the effect of a Block on Opponents Expected Points during this possession and Points Created equals the effect of a Block on Own Team’s Expected Points During the next possession.

Using this formula, we found out who had the best season since the data started being collected (2002-03) in terms of overall block value.  It ended up being Theo Ratliff during his 2003 season.  Ratliff accumulated a block value of 300 (287 coming from points prevented while 13 came from points created), which when transformed into wins ends up being right around 5.

Interesting Numbers

Just thought it would be interesting to include some numbers towards the end of Mr. Huizinga’s presentation, showing how number of blocks can’t really be used when determining who is the best “shot blocker.”

2003 season

• Stromile Swift | 119 blocks with a block value of 74
• Rasho Nesterovic | 117 blocks with a block value of 124

So why was Mr. Huizinga’s paper called From “…Dwight Howard to Tim Duncan?”  Well as he explained, through a series of charts, Tim Duncan has had the best season in history when it came down to value/block with 1.12, meaning he saved 1.12 points with every block and Dwight Howard ended up with the worst season in terms of value/block with with .53 (both came during the 2008 season).