Denver 2023 Playoff Run

[DSMok1]

I was looking at playoff runs since the merger (1977).

An interactive visualization of all of those runs is here:

https://public.tableau.com/views/NBAPla ... share_link

Denver's numbers in the postseason (8.3 average margin of victory, 16-4 record) are one of the best in recent memory. Only the 2017 Warriors and 2001 Lakers had a clearly better run in the past 25 years.

I would consider this Denver team a significantly above-average champion. Not all time, but well above average.

[Crow]

Ties 2014-15 Warriors for youngest champions (in modern era and probably all-time) at minutes weighted average age of 26.6.

[Mike G]

Well, that is cool.
In 46 postseasons, it looks like 17 teams have had either better Win% or point differential (MOV) than this year's Nuggets.
Converting MOV to Pythagorean (expected) W%, and averaging the two:

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Wp/2    tm    yr     W  L    MOV    W%     pW%   T
.898   GSW   2017   16  1   13.5   .941   .855   1
.891   LAL   2001   15  1   12.8   .938   .844   1
.854   Chi   1991   15  2   11.7   .882   .825   1
.826   LAL   1987   15  3   11.4   .833   .819   1
.819   Chi   1996   15  3   10.6   .833   .804   1
.816   Bos   1986   15  3   10.3   .833   .798   1
.815   Phl   1983   12  1    6.5   .923   .707   1
.810   Det   1989   15  2    7.7   .882   .739   1
.804   SAS   1999   15  2    7.2   .882   .726   1
.793   LAL   1985   15  4   10.2   .789   .796   1
.777   GSW   2018   16  5   10.0   .762   .792   1
.777 - Den - 2023   16  4    8.3   .800   .753   1
.777   LAL   1982   12  2    6.1   .857   .696   1
.761   Cle   2016   16  5    8.6   .762   .760   1
.737   Orl   2010   10  4    8.6   .714   .760   0
.736   SAS   2014   16  7    9.3   .696   .776   1
.716   Mil   2019   10  5    8.8   .667   .765   0
.686   SAS   2016    6  4    9.1   .600   .772   0

Only the top 6 had better real and expected W%. Final column is 'title'.
2014 Spurs were 0-3 in games decided by 3 or less.
2016 Spurs' 6 wins were by an avg of 21 pts; 4 losses by avg 8 pts.

[Crow]

Nuggets' starters for all of playoffs were 3.5 times as good as the Heat's biggest minute lineup with Love. With C Martin and Robinson was 3 times as good as Nuggets but only used 40% as much as with Love.

In the finals itself, the Love lineup went to horrible while the C Martin / Robinson lineup was very good. Spoelstra played the Love lineup more and also a bad Zeller lineup and a bad Highsmith lineup. Bad lineup management decisions that hurt a lot. These 3 lineups went -38, more than 90% of the series margin. Substitute in more of C Martin / Robinson or any slightly positive lineup and they might have won the series.


Suns' starters were almost twice as good as Nuggets'.

Only 7 lineups got to 100+ playoff minutes.



Nuggets had 2nd best regular season lineup over 300 minutes. Warriors were by far first. Celtics and Sixers were close behind Nuggets. Celtics lineup was only about half as good as regular season. Sixers lineup with Harris fell off to catastrophically horrible.

[Crow]

Heat lineup management in finals is a bit more complicated than described above. None of the 3 mentioned above got hardly any regular season test but the Love lineup did in earlier part of playoffs and looked good. The other two weren't obvious dogs. Early in finals they moved that way. The Love lineup was good in game 2 but Spoelstra didn't use in game 1, which may say something about confidence in it. It went bad later. He stayed with them too long.

[Mike G]

and damned if you don't

[Crow]

Got to play something and results are unknown... until they start to be known. Losers generally do not react to results quick enough.

Spoelstra didn't have to play those 3 lineups and when he did. He picked them while having other positives available.

Coaches demand discretion and are responsible as such for the consequences.

[Mike G]

They were also the vastly inferior team.
Miami outdid themselves for a while, but their luck ran out. As it will.

Here are round-by-round BPM for the finalists:

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rd   Mia    Den
1    5.4    8.5
2    5.2   11.8
3    6.0   11.0
4    1.1    9.7

Multiplied by 4.1 * their total player BPM. These would be MOV vs NBA-avg lineups.
Compared to their RS SRS of -0.13, even in the Finals the Heat were pretty good; esp. missing 2 of their top 8 guys.
An all-time postseason overachieving team.

[Mike G]

While the Nuggets beat two 7-seeds and an 8-seed to win this title (plus #4 Phx), they beat them all convincingly.
How does their postseason then rank among others in the last 20 years?

Adding up all player BPM from champions -- times minutes, then divided by total minutes -- we get 'team BPM'. As mentioned previously, multiply that by 4.1 to approximate MOV vs NBA avg competition.
Denver places squarely in the middle of last 21 years' champs:

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BPM     tm     year     G      vorp
3.05    SAS    2014    23.1    7.18
3.04    GSW    2017    17.0    5.27
2.99    Mia    2012    23.2    7.13
2.98    GSW    2015    21.3    6.53
2.93    GSW    2018    21.1    6.40
2.79    Cle    2016    21.0    6.19
2.64    LAL    2009    23.3    6.64
2.63    Bos    2008    26.0    7.41
2.55    Mia    2013    23.2    6.49
2.53    Tor    2019    24.2    6.75
2.52    Den    2023    20.1    5.59
2.51    Det    2004    23.4    6.50
2.46    SAS    2005    23.2    6.36
2.42    SAS    2007    20.0    5.44
2.30    Dal    2011    21.1    5.58
2.26    GSW    2022    22.0    5.77
2.22    SAS    2003    24.1    6.26
2.15    LAL    2020    21.0    5.37
2.08    Mil    2021    23.2    5.83
1.90    Mia    2006    23.1    5.54
1.80    LAL    2010    23.0    5.38

The avg is 2.51
The Games column is total minutes divided by 240; so each extra 0.1 is an overtime session.

Individual VORP leaders from champs, 2003-2023:

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vorp    player   year     tm    Min     BPM
3.15    Duncan   2003    SAS   1021    10.2
3.12    LeBron   2012    Mia    983    10.5
2.99    LeBron   2013    Mia    960    10.4
2.95    Jokić    2023    Den    789    12.8
2.86    Kawhi    2019    Tor    939    10.1

2.75    Wade     2006    Mia    959     9.3
2.71    LeBron   2016    Cle    822    11.0
2.62    Kobe     2009    LAL    940     9.1
2.45    LeBron   2020    LAL    762    10.7
2.40    Giannis  2021    Mil    800     9.9

vorp    player   year     tm    Min     BPM
2.25    Curry    2015    GSW    826     8.8
2.19    Ginobili 2005    SAS    772     9.2
2.15    Garnett  2008    Bos    987     6.6
2.11    Kobe     2010    LAL    923     7.0
2.08    Davis    2020    LAL    769     8.7

This brings up A Davis, who did not lead the Lakers; LeBron did.
Note too that Joker has easily the highest BPM in the group. Others played more minutes.

Team vorp leaders ranked by their fraction of total team vorp in each postseason:

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%Tm    player   year    tm    BPM   Min   vorp
.535   Jokić    2023   Den   12.8   789   2.99
.511   Duncan   2003   SAS   10.2  1021   3.19
.501   Wade     2006   Mia    9.3   959   2.78
.470   LeBron   2013   Mia   10.4   960   3.05
.462   LeBron   2020   LAL   10.7   762   2.48

.442   LeBron   2016   Cle   11.0   822   2.74
.442   LeBron   2012   Mia   10.5   983   3.15
.432   Kawhi    2019   Tor   10.1   939   2.91
.419   Giannis  2021   Mil    9.9   800   2.44
.403   Kobe     2009   LAL    9.1   940   2.68

%Tm    player   year    tm    BPM   Min   vorp
.396   Kobe     2010   LAL    7.0   923   2.13
.350   Curry    2015   GSW    8.8   826   2.29
.348   Ginobili 2005   SAS    9.2   772   2.22
.342   Curry    2017   GSW    9.7   601   1.80
.329   Curry    2022   GSW    7.7   764   1.90

.310   Durant   2018   GSW    7.6   807   1.99
.309   Duncan   2007   SAS    6.9   736   1.68
.294   Garnett  2008   Bos    6.6   987   2.18
.285   Nowitzki 2011   Dal    5.5   826   1.59
.266  B Wallace 2004   Det    5.3   924   1.73
.176   Kawhi    2014   SAS    4.7   736   1.26

Those 2014 Spurs! --

Code: Select all

vorp   Spurs   min   BPM
1.26  Kawhi    736   4.7
1.11  D Green  529   6.2
1.10  Ginobili 586   5.3
.98   Duncan   752   3.1
.94   Splitter 516   5.1
.90   Diaw     604   3.8
.50   Mills    351   3.5
.15   Bonner   136   2.2
.11   Parker   719  -1.4
.10   Joseph    87   2.3
.05  Belinelli 356  -1.4
.05   Ayres     65   1.0

[Crow]

There is other analysis out there from Knarsu3 with '23 Nuggets facing about the weakest average opponent of any champion.

https://twitter.com/knarsu3/status/1670886056286121986

[v-zero]

A tenacious and probably best coached, but vastly outmatched Miami team.

LeBron James and Anthony Davis on a finally functional roster, who handily put away the reigning champions only to get swept. Champions themselves not so long ago.

An ailing but previously finalist Phoenix squad with the addition of always lauded Kevin Durant.

A Minnesota team lacking identity or bite.

I wouldn't trust SRS to measure any of it. Denver looked easily better than all opposition, it's hard to say who it would have taken to beat them, from this year or any other.

[DSMok1]

FYI, summing up team BPM should actually be a good approach to assessing a playoff run strength. BPM is set to sum to the team's adjusted efficiency margin, which is itself fully adjusted for who is playing for each opponent game by game in the playoffs.

[Mike G]

FYI, summing up team BPM should actually be a good approach to assessing a playoff run strength. BPM is set to sum to the team's adjusted efficiency margin, which is itself fully adjusted for who is playing for each opponent game by game in the playoffs.

That's why I did it that way
Even if we don't all agree that Bruce Brown was better than Gordon, Porter, or KCP -- we don't care who gets the credit if we're just analyzing the overall strength of the Nuggets.

The one area I question is whether all Lebron-minutes or Durant-minutes are equal. Playing on a bum foot / past 40 minutes?