I feel like this post misses a very possible, perhaps likely, though unsatisfying explanation: variance. You mention the biggest issue with the 3rd quarter is offense. And on that side of the ball, it’s primarily they aren’t shooting well. As far as I understand it, that is mostly variance. Sure, it’s possible opposing defense come out better and the offense comes out lazy. But I mostly don’t think laziness means you miss shots. No NBA player is “lazy” when entering the shooting motion.
Now, as you note, it’s possible they are lazy in a way that causes them to run offense more sloppily and generate worse looks. But that could be investigated with shot location tracking data I assume.
Above that specific point is, I think, a bigger one about how much shooting variance now affects game outcomes compare to how little people want to acknowledge that. I have long had this issue with Spike and Mike (love you guys!). Whenever the Sixers get absolutely shelled from 3 during a game and the talk about it on the podcast it’s that the team was lazy and left shooters open, gave them 2nd chances etc. All those things may be true and by all means crush the SIxers players and coaches for it! But it probably matters less than crazy variance.
Take the terrible Knicks loss the other night. The Knicks shot 50% from three for the entire game. Do you know how many seasons in his career Steph Curry, the greatest shooter of all time, hit more than 50% of his WIDE OPEN threes? Once. Every other year, the greatest shooter ever, when left wide open, performed worse than the Knicks entire team that night.
I agree the Sixers players like shit against the Knicks. But when an entire team, in a game context in which many shots are contested, shooters better than the greatest shooter ever…you lose. Like, that’s kinda all there is to it. If the Sixers had been less lazy would they have lost by less? Might they have pushed the Knicks three point shooting down to 45% Maybe! Then the Knicks would merely have shoot better than MOST wide open Curry seasons…and the Sixers still almost certainly lose lol.
I actually very specifically did not bring up variance as a possibility in this article because I don't think that's the case. Variance from 3 is extremely real and far more impactful than most people even think, as you mentioned above. However, when a team is this outlier level of bad in a quarter and we're this deep into a season, it can't just come down to variance.
One thing I would caution against is that, while 3-pt variance happens all throughout the year, you can't just take any level of 3-pt shooting, good or bad, and chalk it down to variance. One game like the Knicks game? Sure! But over the course of the now 18-game sample size we have of 3rd quarter minutes, there is something there that makes a difference.
The volume of difference is what backs this up as teams are both shooting better from three against the Sixers and holding the Sixers to worse efficiency from three. And then on top of that, they are doing the same with 2-pt attempts, which are MUCH less prone to variance. At a certain point, it's not "Oh, teams will or won't make shots, it happens", and instead there's something that's causing that difference on the Sixers' end. Which is where I come back to effort like closing out on shooters or a change in scheme around helping or something else entirely that doesn't get as effectively captured in the numbers.
Now to your point, maybe SOME of this comes down to variance, where it's not quite as bad as the numbers make it out to be currently. But my argument here is even if you take away the variance, there is absolutely something there that is changing in the 3rd quarter behind the scenes to capture this full differential.
I guess my response would be to question whether you are drawing the line on what can and can’t be chalked up to variance in the right place. I recall years ago someone did an analysis for how many attempts a player needs from three for the percent to approach “real” and it was somewhere around 400 attempts…which is right around where the Sixers are in terms in 3PA during the third quarter. So, maybe it’s stable-ish?
I would also say that while you’re totally right that closing out and forcing worse shooters to shoot rather than better ones, etc a team can theoretically impact opponent 3pt%. But I say theoretically because I also recall multiple analyses showing that year-to-year teams mostly actually impact that; they can mainly just impact opponent attempts. I know every year or so there is a team that seems like an exception to that rule and no one can explain it. But I recall the statistical findings about defenses durably lowering opponent 3pt% being pretty robust.
Adding to that but getting way further out on a limb since I am not a statistician, over any length of time, there has to be some team that is the worst at any given thing. Like, over the past X years combined, there is some NBA team that is the worst in 1st quarters…and it very well might not be the team with the worst talent or record or over or net rating or whatever. Someone has to be last even if it’s for semi-random reasons.
I am not saying any of this to say that your article was bad or even necessarily wrong. Just trying to think about these things more expansively because I know how badly humans want to attribute things and see patterns or cause-and-effect so I try to look on the other side of that bias…likely to the point of being annoying haha
I feel like this post misses a very possible, perhaps likely, though unsatisfying explanation: variance. You mention the biggest issue with the 3rd quarter is offense. And on that side of the ball, it’s primarily they aren’t shooting well. As far as I understand it, that is mostly variance. Sure, it’s possible opposing defense come out better and the offense comes out lazy. But I mostly don’t think laziness means you miss shots. No NBA player is “lazy” when entering the shooting motion.
Now, as you note, it’s possible they are lazy in a way that causes them to run offense more sloppily and generate worse looks. But that could be investigated with shot location tracking data I assume.
Above that specific point is, I think, a bigger one about how much shooting variance now affects game outcomes compare to how little people want to acknowledge that. I have long had this issue with Spike and Mike (love you guys!). Whenever the Sixers get absolutely shelled from 3 during a game and the talk about it on the podcast it’s that the team was lazy and left shooters open, gave them 2nd chances etc. All those things may be true and by all means crush the SIxers players and coaches for it! But it probably matters less than crazy variance.
Take the terrible Knicks loss the other night. The Knicks shot 50% from three for the entire game. Do you know how many seasons in his career Steph Curry, the greatest shooter of all time, hit more than 50% of his WIDE OPEN threes? Once. Every other year, the greatest shooter ever, when left wide open, performed worse than the Knicks entire team that night.
I agree the Sixers players like shit against the Knicks. But when an entire team, in a game context in which many shots are contested, shooters better than the greatest shooter ever…you lose. Like, that’s kinda all there is to it. If the Sixers had been less lazy would they have lost by less? Might they have pushed the Knicks three point shooting down to 45% Maybe! Then the Knicks would merely have shoot better than MOST wide open Curry seasons…and the Sixers still almost certainly lose lol.
I actually very specifically did not bring up variance as a possibility in this article because I don't think that's the case. Variance from 3 is extremely real and far more impactful than most people even think, as you mentioned above. However, when a team is this outlier level of bad in a quarter and we're this deep into a season, it can't just come down to variance.
One thing I would caution against is that, while 3-pt variance happens all throughout the year, you can't just take any level of 3-pt shooting, good or bad, and chalk it down to variance. One game like the Knicks game? Sure! But over the course of the now 18-game sample size we have of 3rd quarter minutes, there is something there that makes a difference.
The volume of difference is what backs this up as teams are both shooting better from three against the Sixers and holding the Sixers to worse efficiency from three. And then on top of that, they are doing the same with 2-pt attempts, which are MUCH less prone to variance. At a certain point, it's not "Oh, teams will or won't make shots, it happens", and instead there's something that's causing that difference on the Sixers' end. Which is where I come back to effort like closing out on shooters or a change in scheme around helping or something else entirely that doesn't get as effectively captured in the numbers.
Now to your point, maybe SOME of this comes down to variance, where it's not quite as bad as the numbers make it out to be currently. But my argument here is even if you take away the variance, there is absolutely something there that is changing in the 3rd quarter behind the scenes to capture this full differential.
I guess my response would be to question whether you are drawing the line on what can and can’t be chalked up to variance in the right place. I recall years ago someone did an analysis for how many attempts a player needs from three for the percent to approach “real” and it was somewhere around 400 attempts…which is right around where the Sixers are in terms in 3PA during the third quarter. So, maybe it’s stable-ish?
I would also say that while you’re totally right that closing out and forcing worse shooters to shoot rather than better ones, etc a team can theoretically impact opponent 3pt%. But I say theoretically because I also recall multiple analyses showing that year-to-year teams mostly actually impact that; they can mainly just impact opponent attempts. I know every year or so there is a team that seems like an exception to that rule and no one can explain it. But I recall the statistical findings about defenses durably lowering opponent 3pt% being pretty robust.
Adding to that but getting way further out on a limb since I am not a statistician, over any length of time, there has to be some team that is the worst at any given thing. Like, over the past X years combined, there is some NBA team that is the worst in 1st quarters…and it very well might not be the team with the worst talent or record or over or net rating or whatever. Someone has to be last even if it’s for semi-random reasons.
I am not saying any of this to say that your article was bad or even necessarily wrong. Just trying to think about these things more expansively because I know how badly humans want to attribute things and see patterns or cause-and-effect so I try to look on the other side of that bias…likely to the point of being annoying haha
I don’t understand. You suggest it’s variance at a larger scale than one would expect, but also that the season is at that scale (400 attempts).