Let's start with the same question; How can we measure offensive capability? As I've mentioned before, "points allowed" numbers are just not enough for us. Even possession adjusted points allowed numbers are not good enough, unfortunately. We need to combine all offensive stats to create an offensive ranking. Therefore, we need to bring all of them to common base, as I've done with defensive stats.
Now, let's analyze offensive stats. First of all, what can happen in a standard offense. Attacking team can score the ball, miss the shoot or turn the ball over. Other than that, offense could be interrupted by a defensive foul and also if team can grab the offensive rebound after a missed shoot, they can charge again. In every possible scenario, either attacking team can get what they want or opponent's defense carries the day. Let's assume that attacking team scored in an offense. It means that they've shot well. To measure shooting ability, I've used the F-Shoot stats -which is a stat that we've come up with- instead of ordinary shooting percentages or true-shooting since F-Shoot is more detailed and team oriented stat than others. Also a good shoot may/may not be created by an assist which means we should also take assists into consideration for a good offense. What if the attacking team misses the shoot? There are two options actually; either they grab the offensive rebound and set one more offense or opponent team grabs the defensive rebound. It's very rewarding to get the offensive rebound actually. First of all, it prevents your opponents to organize a fast-break offense, but it's not important for this analysis since we are just looking into offensive actions. Still, an offensive rebound is very important for offensive organizations, because, if you have a chance to organize a second chance offense, statistically you would shoot with higher shooting percentage for a fact. It means, while every shoot attempts are weighted with potential score of an standard offense -FGT- [1] and team's field goal percentage, every second chance shoot attempts will be weighted with FGT and second chance percentage which is fairly higher than the field goal percentage.
These all scenarios above are the pretty ones. However, there are some unpleasant ones as well. For example, attacking team could miss the shoot and couldn't get the offensive rebound.Then, since they've lost thier chance to score they should be penalized. Moreover, attacking team could turn the ball over. If a team commits a turnover , they should be punished for it too.Because, turnover means that team refused the chance of scoring number of points as much as their potential score per offense. It should be their penalty. One other scenario is, an offense could be interrupted by a defensive foul.It's the most tricky part actually, because it's more complicated to weight such positions. We need to think it through. If the opponent didn't commit a foul, the attacking team would attack with their field goal percentage and score as many as their FGT. So, opponent's foul eliminates that possibility. Instead of that, team can score as many points as their free throw percentage -if they manage to get to the free throw line- or they can organize another offense. At this very moment, I needed one more item to organize them; frequency of getting to the free throw line. This input solved all my problems, I was able to determine potential score of the attacking team after they get fouled thanks to line frequency.
Other than these, I also used a new approach in this analysis which I didn't use in defensive capability analysis. I didn't use it in TDR, because I've recently found it as a matter of fact. I wanted to make a difference between a team which is eliminated in the group phase and a team, let's say, reached to the playoffs. Because, it would be harder to keep playing with high offensive efficiency as tournament progressed.For instance, if a team is eliminated in the Top 16, they should have competed with the teams in approximately 67% percent of the league. On the other hand, a team who reached to the Final Four would be competed with the teams in 17% of the league. So, there should be a difference between these two teams. I used this approach to make the ranking smoother and happily it served for my purpose.
As defensive capability analysis, I analyzed the last year first. Let's look at the offensive rankings of the Euroleague Season 2011-12.
Now, let's analyze offensive stats. First of all, what can happen in a standard offense. Attacking team can score the ball, miss the shoot or turn the ball over. Other than that, offense could be interrupted by a defensive foul and also if team can grab the offensive rebound after a missed shoot, they can charge again. In every possible scenario, either attacking team can get what they want or opponent's defense carries the day. Let's assume that attacking team scored in an offense. It means that they've shot well. To measure shooting ability, I've used the F-Shoot stats -which is a stat that we've come up with- instead of ordinary shooting percentages or true-shooting since F-Shoot is more detailed and team oriented stat than others. Also a good shoot may/may not be created by an assist which means we should also take assists into consideration for a good offense. What if the attacking team misses the shoot? There are two options actually; either they grab the offensive rebound and set one more offense or opponent team grabs the defensive rebound. It's very rewarding to get the offensive rebound actually. First of all, it prevents your opponents to organize a fast-break offense, but it's not important for this analysis since we are just looking into offensive actions. Still, an offensive rebound is very important for offensive organizations, because, if you have a chance to organize a second chance offense, statistically you would shoot with higher shooting percentage for a fact. It means, while every shoot attempts are weighted with potential score of an standard offense -FGT- [1] and team's field goal percentage, every second chance shoot attempts will be weighted with FGT and second chance percentage which is fairly higher than the field goal percentage.
These all scenarios above are the pretty ones. However, there are some unpleasant ones as well. For example, attacking team could miss the shoot and couldn't get the offensive rebound.Then, since they've lost thier chance to score they should be penalized. Moreover, attacking team could turn the ball over. If a team commits a turnover , they should be punished for it too.Because, turnover means that team refused the chance of scoring number of points as much as their potential score per offense. It should be their penalty. One other scenario is, an offense could be interrupted by a defensive foul.It's the most tricky part actually, because it's more complicated to weight such positions. We need to think it through. If the opponent didn't commit a foul, the attacking team would attack with their field goal percentage and score as many as their FGT. So, opponent's foul eliminates that possibility. Instead of that, team can score as many points as their free throw percentage -if they manage to get to the free throw line- or they can organize another offense. At this very moment, I needed one more item to organize them; frequency of getting to the free throw line. This input solved all my problems, I was able to determine potential score of the attacking team after they get fouled thanks to line frequency.
Other than these, I also used a new approach in this analysis which I didn't use in defensive capability analysis. I didn't use it in TDR, because I've recently found it as a matter of fact. I wanted to make a difference between a team which is eliminated in the group phase and a team, let's say, reached to the playoffs. Because, it would be harder to keep playing with high offensive efficiency as tournament progressed.For instance, if a team is eliminated in the Top 16, they should have competed with the teams in approximately 67% percent of the league. On the other hand, a team who reached to the Final Four would be competed with the teams in 17% of the league. So, there should be a difference between these two teams. I used this approach to make the ranking smoother and happily it served for my purpose.
As defensive capability analysis, I analyzed the last year first. Let's look at the offensive rankings of the Euroleague Season 2011-12.
Let's look at the Top 3 of the list. Even though 4 out of first 5 are Final Four teams, our winner is a team who couldn't reach to the playoffs. Real Madrid was one of Top 3 teams for almost every input I've evaluated. Impressive... And Panathinaikos; even though they aren't at the Top 2 for any category, they've got pretty high points from every category. As for CSKA, turnovers was their biggest enemy.They have terrific shooting and asist numbers way above the league's standards.Yet,they look like an ordinary team in terms of turnovers.
In the second part, I'll show the historic offenses of the Euroleague's history.
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[1] Field Goal Tendency. For more info, look at the annotation of the Care To Defend post.
