Take it to the Hoop, a Free MarShon Brooks Post

Welcome to 2013-2014's first official Free MarShon Brooks post.

To get this out of the way, in terms of efficiency so far Brooks has been middling in two years with Brooklyn. His player metrics overall show him better than replacement, but not quite average in terms of production. But, with the exception of Rondo, and to a lesser extent Lee I have just described the entire Celtics guard rotation. Brooks is also one of the Celtics guards in the stage of his career where we can reasonably expect to see some improvement in those numbers.

In addition, Brooks does have some identifiable skills that make him intriguing. In my previous cluster analysis Brooks scored out as a Slashing Guard and a Shot Creator. Brooks can get to the rim and score effectively.

	Attempts at Rim per 48 minutes	Pct Assisted at Rim	Field Goal Pct at Rim
Avery Bradley-BOS-2013	4.57	46.40	51.50
Courtney Lee-BOS-2013	4.17	53.60	65.90
Jordan Crawford-BOS-2013	4.34	37.90	58.00
Keith Bogans-BKN-2013	0.68	46.70	75.00
Marshon Brooks-BKN-2013	5.89	36.70	68.70
Rajon Rondo-BOS-2013	6.14	15.90	62.10
Average	4.30	39.53	63.53

Even though I am working on research trying to estimate a value for stretch in the offense, and the NBA is gaga over three point shots, there's a huge value to getting to the rim. (Of course, getting to the rim and burying threes are complimentary. Players drive to kick the ball out and space floor to open lanes to the basket).

But, overall there is more value to getting to the basket than the three ball, at least on any individual shot attempt. Shots at the basket have a higher effective field goal percentage, generate more free throws and are more likely to lead to offensive rebounds than shots from further away. 

Here's a great visualization of the rebound effect from Kirk Goldsberry using an analysis with SportsVu video tracking.

via courtvisionanalytics.com

 

I squinted really hard at the image, since I haven't found any data representation on-line.  Then I combined the Hoopdata shot location data and the Kirk Goldsberry rebounding effect to spitball the value of a shot at each range with the rebounding effect included. Since shots near the rim are 8% more like to be rebounded by the offense than the average of 32%, I added the differential to the expected effective field goal percentage to get what I am calling the Expected Offense Value.

Shot Location	HoopData FG%	Expected Offensive Rebounds	Rebound Differential	Expected Offense Value
Rim	64.60%	40%	8%	70.22%
Short (3-9)	39.70%	35%	3%	40.93%
Mid (10-15)	41.80%	31%	-1%	41.39%
Long Two (16-23)	38.30%	28%	-4%	36.83%
Three	35.93%	28%	-4%	52.51%

 

I could go even further, because as every coach preaches and the data shows, making your shots helps the defense. According to numbers from Evan Zamir last year, effective field goal percentage by the opposing team after a made shot was about 3.5% lower than after a defensive rebound (47.1% vs 50.6%), because the defense had time to get back.

This relates back to finding time for MarShon Brooks because he excels at the game's most efficient shot. Leading up to training camp some of his new team mates commented that Brooks was the best one on one player, I imagine it was because of his ability to get to the bucket.

The percentiles compare Brook's number to all other guards in the NBA over the last three years where he was in the top 80% percentile for each according to HoopData.

	Pct Shots at Rim	Percentile Shots at Rim	Attempts at the Rim per 48 min	Percentile in Att at Rim per 48 min	Field Goal Pct at Rim	Percentile Rim FG%
Marshon Brooks	35.60%	82.50%	5.89	82.60%	68.70	87.7%

 

Of course, there are reason's you haven't seen Brooks in any All Star games. By all accounts his defense needs work, though his blocks and steals numbers aren't terrible due to his long wing span. But, I don't want to know how a Crawford/Brooks back court would do on the defensive end over an extended period.

Also, Brooks' stretch game is weak. He shot 27% from three last year, which put him in the 23 percentile over the last three years, though that was down from 31% the year before. It's hard to imagine too much time with a Rondo/Brooks back court if those numbers from distance don't improve.

The good news is that there is some reason to believe that Brooks can improve in his weak areas. One is simply age and NBA experience, Brooks is still on the right side of the growth curve. The other is that he did shoot better from three the year before at 31%, and his 73.4% free throw shooting indicates a decent stroke.  And with his excellent attacking ability Brooks doesn't need to be Danny Green, he just needs make opponents respect his outside shot.

I think Brooks could pair nicely with Lee or Bradley, if Bradley's shot recovers.  And to a lesser extent Phil Pressey.  As long as he's clear why he's in the game, to take it to the basket and kick it out when he can't.

Comments

[Blake Pengelly]

Great post! I've been waiting for someone to combine this data and show shot value for a long time. How about the % chance that you get fouled from different shot locations? Shouldn't that also be added into the shot value? Not only is getting to the FT line the most efficient way to score but defensive possessions following made free throws are even better than defensive possessions after a made FG. I would love to see a total combined value of shot locations that includes the chance of being offensive rebounded, the chance of getting fouled, and the chance of making the shot in the first place.

Thanks for your work

[Andrew]

Blake- You're right. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the data anywhere. At this point all I could do would be to look at the correlations, which I might do at some point.

[StLhawk]

I am curious about whether this disadvantages 3's a little bit-
Presuming these numbers, if you take 100 shots at the rim
you'll make 64 and rebound 14 (and score something around 14 more points) for a total of 142, or an efg% of 70%.
if you take 100 3's
you'll make 36 and rebound 18 (and score something around 18 more points) for a total of 126 which is an efg% of 63% which is a lot closer battle than what you suggest.

[Andrew]

StLHawk- The way I am thinking about it is to only credit the shooter with the marginal difference in retaining possession. The rest of the value is apportioned to the rebounder.

I might be confusing things with the name I chose in terms of "offense" value, rather than shot.

[StLhawk]

Got it-I was thinking team level value.