NBA 2009: Score less, win more. Forever.

LeBron's a singularity, he'll be alright. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

It’s summer, and it’s not even the interesting part of summer. It’s the part of summer where free agency is over, trades aren’t happening, there isn’t even summer league, and the most interesting thing going on—apparently—is twitter. Which we’ve now seen out one player as a potential gang member and apparently send another into a dark spiral culminating in rehab. So that’s nice.

Which makes this the perfect time for long analysises of basketball statistics, with the potential discovery of exciting and peculiar things.

This one’s about scoring. Because it seems to be the case that you don’t want nearly as much of it as you think you do.

What if I told you—you could win a championship with your best scorer scoring less than 20—but not more than 28? What if I told you that since at least 1980, only two franchises have won a championship with a player scoring over 28—Jordan, of course, then Shaq and Kobe—while since 1999, four teams have won with their best player scoring no more than 21—three of them twenty or less?

What if you knew that the only one team besides Jordan’s it won the championship with a player scoring over 28--but only with two players scoring that much.

Would you still want your guys going for thirty every night?

In the NBA, there are numbers. To a point, these are arbitrary. It is, however, unclear just how arbitrary they are. 25 ppg, for example.
That’s a number, and less than one shot a game different from a 24 ppg scorer, or a 26 ppg scorer. And yet, in the NBA last year, while six players managed more than 25 ppg—and not a single player scored 24, or even 23 points per game. There is a 2.5 ppg difference between the above 25 six and the next highest scorer—Chris Paul at 22.8. To put that in perspective, there are six players within .6 ppg of Chris Paul. 25, just a number? Maybe. But it does seem to indicate a line in the sand. Score more than 25 (last year, anyhow), and you’re elite. Score less, and you’re very good at it, but not great.

There are two other numbers I’d like to throw out, and both may also be arbitrary. But they do seem to work out well. 28 is one. 12 is the other.

There are, I think, a fair number of NBA players who COULD score 28 a game. In addition to the six who did last season (Wade, James, Bryant, Dirk, Granger, Durant, in that order), you have to figure most of the next ten COULD. Paul? Absolutely. Anthony? Sure. Maybe not Bosh, but Roy probably could. Tony Parker probably could.
They don’t though, and there are good reasons for that.
28 points per game is the number that seems to me to be the most reasonable to suppose that—in general—anyone scoring above that needs more help than they’re getting. 12 points per game is another number like that. You don’t score 28 points if you have help, but what constitutes help? I would say that if your third scorer isn’t scoring at least 12 points, you’re not getting enough help. Seems arbitrary, I know. It isn’t.

Check this.

<b> 28 </b>

Since 1999, nine players have scored more than 28 points per game in a season.

Carmelo did it once, in 2006—the Nuggets finished sixth that year, at 45-37.

Arenas did it twice, in ’05, and ’06—the Wizards finished 7th and 5th respectively. Neither got out of the first round of the playoffs. In fact, in three series, t hey collectively won three games.

Allen Iverson has surpassed the 28 point mark in 99, 2000, 01, 04, and 05. The 76ers had a prolonged playoff run in ’00, when three other players scored upwards of 11.6, and at least made it to the second round in ’99, when three other players scored 11.9 or up. They didn’t make it out in ’01 or ’04—and didn’t make the playoffs in ’05.

T-Mac did it in ’02 and ’03—losing in the first round once, failing to make the playoffs the second time.

Jerry Stackhouse did it in 2000 and failed to make the playoffs.

So, amongst all the (five) 28 plus ppg scorers in the last decade not named Shaq, Kobe, Lebron, or Wade, there are exactly three playoff series wins—all by Allen Iverson, all in the East at its low point, and all with a LITTLE help from other people.

As for Shaq, Kobe, Lebron and Wade—we’ll leave Wade for just a minute, I think he and the Heat make my point here very well.
Lebron James, like Michael Jordan, is an anomaly. He has surpassed the 28 point mark 3 times—’05, ’07, and ’08. Every single one of those years he made it out of the first round. But he’s Lebron James, like Michael Jordan was Michael Jordan, and that’s just how this stuff works. They’ve made it out of the second round twice, and in ’06-’07, when Lebron did not score over 28, they made it to the NBA finals. And even though last year’s surprise lost to the Magic was notable for the collapse of Lebron’s on-court help, I won’t mess with Lebron.

Shaq? Kobe?

In ’99, the first of the Lakers titles, Shaq scored 29.7—and Kobe scored 22.5. In 2000, both scored over 28 per game. In ’01, Shaq scored 27.2 and Kobe scored 25.2. In ’02, when they finally fell to the Spurs, Shaq scored 27.5 and Kobe scored 30.0.

After that, Shaq never scored more than 23 in a season—but he still got another ring, after he left the Lakers. On the other side of things, Kobe’s scoring average continued to climb in almost direct proportion to the team’s decline.

In ’04, Kobe scored 27.6, and the Lakers fell to 34-48. He scored a mind-boggling 35.4, the next year and the Lakers went 45-37 and lost in the first round. He scored 31.6 the next year—and lost in the first round. Finally in ’07 the Lakers brought in Gasol and Odom to help him out. Kobe scored 28.3—still high, but low for his recent performances, and the Lakers advanced to the NBA finals. In 2008—as we all know—Kobe’s scoring dropped to 26.8, and the Lakers won a championship.

Let’s be completely clear here. 28 is just a number. Not a completely arbitrary number, as you can see, but 27.6 and 28.4 aren’t exactly worlds apart. Jordan’s won a championship averaging over 30, Kobe and Lebron have done well in the playoffs averaging lots of points—it’s not a particularly dark line.

I think, however, that this is more about what the numbers indicate. The evidence all seems to point to balanced scoring being better for your team’s championship hopes than superlative scoring from one person, as we’ll see in a second. If there is a number that seems to indicate a player who has to do too much to make up for the rest of his team, that number, at least for the last decade, seems to be around 28.

<b> 13 </b>

The Showtime Lakers were a run and gun, score a ton type of team right?

1984 Lakers: Abdul-Jabbar, 22.0, Magic Johnson, 18.3, James Worthy, 17.6, Byron Scott 16.0

1986 Lakers: Magic Johnson, 23.9, James Worthy, 19.4, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 17.5, Byron Scott, 17.0

1987 Lakers: Scott, 21.7, Worthy 19.7, Johnson, 19.6, Kareem, 14.6
Okay, so they didn’t have one pre-eminent scorer, but they had PLENTY of people putting in buckets, right?

Those bad boy Pistons? They’re the same. Check it:
1988 Pistons: Adrian Dantley, 18.4, Isaiah Thomas, 18.2, Joe Dumars, 17.2, Mark Aguirre, 15.5
1989 Pistons: Isaiah, 18.4, Dumars 17.8, Edwards, 14.5, Aguirre 14.1

Not even a 20 point scorer, on either. Not even a 19 point scorer. Bird’s Celtics?

1980: Bird, 21.2, Parish, 18.9, Maxwell, 15.2, Archibald 13.8
1983: Bird, 24.2, Parish, 19.0, McHale,18.4, Johnson,13.2
1985: Bird 25.8, McHale 21.3, Parish, 16.1, Johnson 15.6

So that’s not really fair. All those teams had a collection of talent such as is almost never seen, these days, thanks to the salary cap and other concerns. Of course Bird’s not going to go for 28 with McHale, Parish, Maxwell, DJ, and so on around him. But let’s look at this decade.

03: Pistons: Hamilton, 17.6, Billups, 16.9, Rasheed 13.7
04: Spurs: Duncan, 20.3, Parker, 16.6, Ginobili, 16.0
06: Spurs: Duncan 20, Parker, 18.6, Ginobili 16.5
07: Celtics: 19.6,Garnett 18.8, Allen 17.4

That’s a staggering 4 champions in the last 6 years who not only barely even had one twenty point scorer, not one of them even had one of the top ten scorers in the NBA for that season.

I’m picking number again. This time we want one that quantifies valuable backup scoring punch. It’s at least reasonably likely that the Piston’s championship team had the lowest volume one-two scoring punch in the last several decades, so from that we’ll just assume that you need at least 36 points from your top two scoring options. The evidence clearly shows that, while this 36 does not necessarily need to be EVENLY divided, unless you’ve got Kobe and Shaq, the only one-two scoring punch in a few decades to routinely both place in the top five in league scoring, it’s better to have something more like 20 and 18 then 25 and 12.

That’s pretty intuitive, really. Two scoring threats is insurance against a bad day by one player, it keeps the defense from keying on one player, it keeps ball-movement a concern for the defense (rather than, say, watching McGrady dribble it up with a minute left and knowing it’s not really going anywhere else)—it makes a healthier team. But the numbers corroborate it, which is not always the case for intuitive theories about sports.

What makes all of this interesting is the fact, while only the Pistons have ever won a championship without at least one of the league’s pre-eminent players, yet there’s not all that much other evidence to suggest this is necessary—or even all that useful.

You would think, for example, that having one great scorer on your team would help your team score more points. This actually does not seem to be the case.

Of the East playoff teams last year, Chicago averaged 102.2 per game and Detroit averaged 94.7. Besides that, every team was within 2.5 points of each other per game.

There’s slightly more variance in the West, but there’s also distinct clumping. LA had far and away the best offense of playoff teams at 106.9, and the sprightly Nuggets were not too far off at 104.3. Besides that, there are the two premier strong offense, low defense teams—Dallas and Utah, each allowing nearly 100 points a game and scoring 102 and 103 respectively—and the more systematic teams. San Antonio, Houston and Portland all scored with 2.4 points of each other, and New Orleans was not far behind. Besides New Orleans and Detroit, every playoff team in BOTH conferences scored over 97 a game, and besides the Lakers, Nuggets and Jazz, they all scored less than 102.3.

In a way, the NBA is a complete scientific anomaly. The statistical improbability, for example, of 3 teams winning the exact same number of games in an 82 game season (Denver, San Antonio, Portland), with completely different players and completely different schedules is pretty dang low. This, however, may be just as surprising. Throughout all of those 82 games, out of 16 playoff teams---1312 games in all-- a total of 11 averaged within 5 points of each other, regularly, day in and day out. In fact, both the Spurs (97 ppg) and the Jazz (103.6 ppg), manage not only comparable, but in the Jazz’s case, superlative point scoring without a single player in the top 10 and top 20 in scoring respectively

We’re not yet talking about what makes a team better or worse. It’s not points, obviously, but point differential. Yet the fact that having Lebron James and not having Lebron Jaemes does not directly impact how many points you score a night is a little bit surprising.
You could point out, of course, that Lebron has almost no help, but then it’s only necessary to respond that, besides the Lakers, NO team scored significantly more than other playoff teams. Do all high volume, even high efficiency, scorers have no help? Perhaps. But it’s not the most logical explanation.

I believe it’s not how much you score, but how you do it—and I think that’s, in some ways at least, true even without considering defense.

What seems to be the case is that, to have success, you need a top scorer scoring (something like) less than 28—that much implies they’re having to do too much, with too little help), a second scorer who hits at about 17 or 18, and a 3rd scorer who can give you at least 13. Two 3rd and 4th scorers at 10 or less doesn’t seem to work, and only truly superlative scoring from two spots (really, only Shaq and Kobe), can make up for the lack of a true third option.

Consider the case of Dwayne Wade, one of the only players to score at Iverson or T-Mac levels in recent years—except that, unlike them, he has a championship ring.

Just like the team ppg averages, the Heat’s scoring averages are not in themselves elucidating. The Heat’s 3 best players in 2004, when they took the Eastern Finals to seven games, combined for 59.7. in 2005, when they won the championship, it was 59.3. In 2006, when they got swept out of the playoffs, it was 55.6—lower, but not significantly lower. In 2008, when they lost in the first round, it was back up to 57.

Except for their nightmare 2007 season, those Heat teams never failed to get within 4 points of the top-three scoring average they had when they won the championship, and when they took the Pistons to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. There is less than 3 points per game difference between those two seasons and last year’s disappointing effort.

There are two options at this point. Either, for the Heat, three points per game made a huge difference—or else it was more HOW they scored than how much.

Dwayne Wade is a great object lesson, as far as I’m concerned. Looking at 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008 specifically, you get these breakdowns from the top three Heat scorers:

2004 (Eastern Conference Finals): Dwayne Wade (24.1), Shaq (22.9), Eddie Jones (12.7)

2005 (Championship): Wade (27.2), Shaq(20), J-Will (12.3), Walker (12.4)

2006 (Swept in first round): Wade (27.4), Shaq (17.3), Kapono (10.9)

2008 (Lost in first round): Wade (30.2), Beasley (13.9), Marion (12.0)

As you can see, this departs from the general thrust of this article in some ways—the 3rd banana on the championship team did not score 13 points. However, as noted, both J-Will and Walker averaged over 12, and that little difference can’t matter THAT much. And obviously, there are more mundane factors here—the loss of a strong second option makes it nearly impossible to win in any case, no matter how many points your lead guy scores. However, it seems worthwhile to note that the real difference between the 2006 season—ending in a first round sweep—and the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals—has nothing to do with the number one and number two scorers. In 2004, Wade and Shaq combined for 47 points—in 2006 it was 45. Could the difference between the Finals (in an admittedly weaker East) and a first round sweep really be Eddie Jones rather than Jason Kapono?

If 13 points is a good watermark for a player who is a consistent third option—and from our own experience, I’d like to point out that Bass and Barea, who were super subs rather than truly consistent scoring threats, averaged around 8 each—absolutely.

And what’s even more surprising, and often forgotten, is that the Heat even made it to the second round of the playoffs in 2003—when Eddie Jones led the team with scoring (17.3), Lamar Odom chipped in 17.1 And in case you’re wondering, no, Dwayne Wade had not changed that pecking order by playoff time. Wade was the Heat’s 3rd scorer, or worse, in 4 out of 7 games in the first round, including in the clinching game (when he was the 4th scorer, with 12),and scored a particularly unmemorable 2 points in game 3.
No one is going to confuse Eddie Jones and Lamar Odom for Dwayne Wade, or even Josh Smith, in terms of scoring. But it still worked for the Heat.

But that by itself is clearly not convincing. How bout this? Exactly no teams, in 30 years, have won a championship with a third banana scoring less than 11—no matter how much their 1 and 2 scored.

When the Lakers finally lost, in ’02, despite a combined 57.5 from Kobe and Shaq—or better than the Heat’s top three last year-- D-Fish had dropped from an 11.5 scorer to a 10.5 scorer. That small a difference is coincidence, surely. However, there’s absolutely nothing unreasonable about assuming that the more points number one and number two score the less points you need from number three. Obviously, three can’t be a complete dud—but if we set 1-2 scoring punches to a 1-10 system, Kobe and Shaq are obviously a 10. D-fish can score 11 and they c an win—that’s the only time that’s ever happened.

Let’s bump the number up to 13, for more terrestrial teams. Who won a championship without that? As we’ve seen, D-Wade (27.2) and Shaq (20) did that, but they did get a pair of 12s from J-Will and Antoine Walker. The 1998 AND 2002 Spurs did that. 1998, of course, was the strike shortened season. 2002 was helped by two factors. First, a young Frenchman by the name of Tony Parker was just finding his legs that season and, second of all, probably no one has ever had a more fearsome front court than Duncan and Robinson. If you can protect the hoop like that, you may get away with not scoring so much. And besides that?

No one. In thirty years.

Literally no one else. Even Hakeem—even Jordan—had a third banana putting in more than 13 a game.

You know who didn’t have that third 13 point scorer last year? Cleveland. You know who did? Orlando. You know who didn’t? The Miami Heat. You know who did? The Atlanta Hawks. Most outside observers thought that Wade’s team would beat Joe Johnson’s, and that LeBron’s would meet Kobe’s in the Finals. Nike even invested millions in an ad campaign for the latter. Not what happened. And it doesn’t end there.

The Spurs, without Manu (which is how they played their only playoff series), did not have a 13 point scorer. Obviously, the fact that the Mavericks had Josh Howard and the Spurs did not have Manu was, in the playoffs, extremely important. However, it’s a fact that Howard placed just six more regular season games than Manu did last season—and the Spurs still finished four games ahead of the Mavericks in the regular season. But the playoff series wasn’t even close.

The Trail Blazers, who lost to the Rockets in the first round, did not have a 3rd 13-point scorer—BARELY. Travis Outlaw scored 12.8 during the regular season. His averaged dropped to 9, in the playoffs. Could that be because Brandon Roy’s average rose from 22.3 to 27? As for their opponents, the Rockets, although they did not OVERALL in the season, did for the last two months of the season and the playoffs did (Yao, Artest, Aaron Brooks). New Orleans, another first round loser, did, barely, until Peja got injured. Then, even when he came back, they did not.

Of all these teams, only the Lakers are really a surprise. Bynum actually averaged 14.3, so they were officially “with” but Bynum certainly wasn’t much use in the playoffs. On the other hand, Odom and Ariza combined for over 24 points a game—and often, quite a bit more. It’s not a hard and fast rule.

Now, all of this is perilously close to saying it’s better to have three good players than one or two which, while certainly true, is also staggeringly obvious. That’s not what’s being said here.

What’s being said is you’re better off having three decent players, and NO great players, than two great ones—unless those two great ones are mid-90s Shaq and Kobe.

All of which ultimately seems to mean these things:

1) There’s certainly such a thing as scoring too much.

The list of players to score 30 and win a championship starts, and ends, with Jordan. Although Shaq’s ’99 29.7 shouldn’t be ignored.

2) Having a pre-eminent scorer and a strong second banana is surprisingly useless without help.

Got a guy who scores 30 and a guy who scores 20? Great. If your third option can’t average 13 or more, you’re still screwed.

3) Balance is, surprisingly, far more important than individual scoring punch.

If NBA history has shown anything, time and time again, it’s that you can win with a 20 point—or slightly less—and two 16, 17, or 18 point scorers far more easily than you can with a couple of 20 point scorers—and MUCH more easily than with a 30 point scorer. Just in the last decade, the Celtics have done it, the Pistons have done, the Spurs have done it a couple of times—all in the last six years. The Showtime Lakers did it, only once having any one player score over 20 a game. The Bad Boy Pistons did it without a single 20 point scorer. Bird’s Celtics did it when he scored 21.2. It is tried and true.

In fact, if you take absolutely nothing else away from this column, take this. In the last thirty years, the only teams to win a championship with even a 25 point scorer on their team are the following:

The 1985 Boston Celtics. All the Bulls teams, and both Rockets teams (Hakeem did it with, and without, Drexler). The ’99-’01 Lakers. And the 2005 Miami Heat.

Clearly you can look at that one of two ways. On the one hand, you can say that every team that won the championship between 1990 and 1998—and all but one from 1990 to 2002—managed to win with a player scoring over 25. Or you can say that besides Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Kobe and Shaq—that is to say, four of the top ten players who ever played, two of them playing together—no one managed it except Larry Bird (another top ten all time player), once, on an otherwise well-balanced team, and Dwayne Wade, once, on an otherwise balanced team. And, of course, Kobe this year. Both Kobe and Wade, by the way have had seasons of scoring over 30 points a game---in those years, they have one second round playoff berth between them.

To me, this seems a reasonably obvious choice. And it seems actually quite likely that the number to worry about, the doing too much number isn’t even 28—but something much closer to 25, except in rare, special cases. That’s a pretty dramatic statement.

To sum up the discoveries here is a fairly simple task. No one besides Jordan has ever won a championship, while averaging more than 30 points a game. The only players ever to win a championship while averaging more than 28 points a game are Kobe and Shaq—together. The only players, ever, to win a championship while averaging even 25 points a game are Jordan, Hakeem, Larry Bird (once), Dwayne Wade, and Kobe this year.

Four times in the last six years a team has won the championship with no player averaging more than 20.5 points. This has happened 10 times in NBA history—10 times in 35 years since the merger. If you bump that number up to 22.5, the number goes to 14. Which still doesn’t seem that big a number, until you account for the singularities in NBA history. It is unlikely that a team will ever have a Jordan, again, unless that person is Lebron—and it’s even more unlikely that a team will ever have a Shaq ‘n’ Kobe again. Those three accounted for 9 of the 35 championships---which means that 14 out of 26 teams that didn’t have Kobe and Shaq, or Jordan by himself, had no one scoring even 23 points a game. If you add Hakeem, himself a singularity, you get 14 out of 24.

And, again, if you don’t have a third scorer, scoring very near to 13 a game, which seems to be a watershed number for consistent production, you’d better be Kobe and Shaq. I find that sort of comforting, actually. It seems that basketball is actually a team game, after all, and that you can make up for less than explosive scoring from one guy with balanced scoring from three guys---and that you can’t make up for explosive scoring from just one or even two guys without it!

The magic number of scorers on the court is three, no matter how good number one is. And number one almost always needs to take some off his own numbers to make room for other people.

Just something to think about, these long summer months….