Spacing Rating

[Nate]

Good point. When I started thinking about this problem, all I wanted was a way to measure the term "spacing" that so many talking heads like to use. i.e. Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson will kill the Timberwolves offensive spacing.

In general the talking heads are primarily interested in telling stories and sounding good, I'm not sure you can expect something like that to have substantive meaning. (People love stuff like Lawler's law, but "more points wins" isn't exactly a novel insight into basketball.)

Let's say that I don't know anything about basketball, and I'm watching a game. What kind of stuff would I see that indicates that a team is 'spacing the floor well' or 'spacing the floor poorly.'

Naively, it seems like the primary game plan for a team should be to look for open corner 3s and shots from the restricted area.

Is 'spacing' about the quality and frequency of 3-point shots as suggested in the article that this thread started with? Maybe spacing is about the quality and frequency of FGAs outside the paint and the low post, in general. Should we be looking for off-the-ball runs into open space? Maybe it's about the offence making small movements that force large responses from the defence.

[jgoldstein34]

I think it would be defenses collapsing and being forced into extra rotations, but that's pretty tough for a casual fan to pick up on.

I think spacing is really, really hard to attribute to one player. Similar to defense, it matters who the guy handling the ball is if you're a spot up shooter on the wings. It matters who the post player is. Spacing needs an RAPM like treatment to really begin to glimpse who should be getting credit I think.

[Dr Positivity]

The Warriors and Cavs using my boxscore stat of (Average shot distance/23) * (% of FGs assisted):

Code: Select all

Matt Barnes	0.664
Klay Thompson	0.64
Patrick McCaw	0.553
Ian Clark	0.509
Andre Iguodala	0.488
Draymond Green	0.456
Stephen Curry	0.429
David West	0.387
Kevin Durant	0.382
Damian Jones	0.274
Shaun Livingston	0.233
James Michael McAdoo	0.221
Kevon Looney	0.188
Zaza Pachulia	0.167
Anderson Varejao	0.13
Briante Weber	0.095
Javale McGee	0.083

Code: Select all

Kyle Korver	0.945
Channing Frye	0.789
James Jones	0.778
J.R. Smith	0.776
Mike Dunleavy	0.661
Richard Jefferson	0.594
Derrick Williams	0.537
Iman Shumpert	0.503
Kevin Love	0.493
Jordan McRae	0.348
Dahntay Jones	0.346
Deandre Liggins	0.317
Deron Williams	0.254
Kyrie Irving	0.194
Lebron James	0.186
Chris Anderson	0.155
Kay Felder	0.135
Edy Tavares	0.131
Tristan Thompson	0.092
Larry Sanders	0

Does not reflect the extra "threat level" between Curry and Draymond for example. But does a quick job to tell you how much of a player's style of play is spot up shooting off the ball on a scale from McGee to Korver

[Crow]

I like that one.

Another possibility is distance from second closest defender at time of shot on on average. It is about space, not effective shooting space but it may be important to understand both.

A team where everyone stood at 3 point line and passed it around fir shots would look like great spacing on the measure in the article or Dr. P's formula but not as good on actual spacing. Space from others is different than space from the basket.