#2 Barcelona Regal- Mes Que Un F4

Please read Prologue first,

#1 CSKA Moscow Russians have unfinised business

After a loss against Oly in F4 last year, Barca's roster stayed nearly same. Javai and Tomic was major  incomers. They adapted team in an instant and gave more than expected, especially  Tomic became a major piece for the both side of court. Barcelona's biggest loss in this season definetly Pete Mikael. He was only person who can score in the painted area from backcourt. That will Barca's weak side in El Clasico beyond any doubt. Pascual must find a way to score when team stucked in offense like game 2-3-4 against Pana. Besides CJ Wallace's doubtful health will effect Barca's rotation in 4.

T-CON values show us  so far Barca's MVP is Tomic. They have only 2 player in top 10. That demonstrates Barca came F4 with un-selfhood performances. In CSKA's analyze CSKA had 4 player top 10.

Guards of Barcelona's play making ability values can be discernible above. Barca had 2 great playmakers but this years numbers are not very well when you compare them against F4 opponents.

If someone mention F4 shooter, he will name Navarro somewhere in talking. But apart from La Bomba hard to say Barca has reliable shooters. As we saw in Top 8 against Pana in the crunch times, Barca can have difficulty to find someone to spread offense.

Rebounds one of Barca's strongest side. Tomic and Jawai don't let team trouble in rebounds with their size supermacies. And also they have great backcourt rebounders like Sada. But CJ Wallace's health issue will be important in rebounds too.

Past a few years, Pascual made one of best defensive team in Europe. Despite of big change in front court they still one of best. Above, TDR(Team Defensive Rating) table shows Barca's defense performances' round by round. Decreasing in the rates related with opponents strength but Barca's rates still very good when compared with F4 opponents. Graph of TDR can be shown below.

The progress of Barca offense is shown below with Team Offensive Rating (TOR).

The offense of Barca was always above from EL average till playoffs. Against Pana they struggled in the offense. And 3,04 value take them below from averages.I think, the value of TOR in F4 will decisive for Barca's success. Here is graph of TOR for Barca.

Last and the most important  part of analyze is Play Oriented Winning Percentages. We use this analyze to determine which number of play in the game will serve the teams. First opponent of Barca is rival enemy  Real Madrid.

In the Real Madrid-Barcelona game 83 number of play will be breaking point. That means the game below 83 number of the play will be advantage for Barcelona. As expected, high tempo will serve Real Madrid in F4 matchup against Barca.

If Barca pass Real Madrid against Oly things will change. This time breaking point is 77. And above 77 play number will be advantage for Barca.

As Doğuş mentioned in CSKA Analyze, In possible CSKA- Barca match-up things will be different. In this game will be two breaking point. Till 66 play number and above 85 play number Barca will be front-runner of the game.

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*: Points

**: Possessions

Note: Every analysis ,which is conducted for all players of the Euroleague, is applied for the players who had played at least 15 game in the Euroleague this season.

Care to Defend? Volume I (Measuring Defense)

It has always been a question in basketball talks; Defense or Offense? Is it possible to say that one is more important than the other ? Well, there could be an analysis about that later, but in this analysis,I'll focus on the defensive side of the game for now.

How can we measure defensive capability? Are "points allowed" numbers enough to measure it? Despite the fact that these numbers can tell us lots of things about defensive capability, it's still not enough. Say, Team X allows 60 points per game while Team Y allows 70 points per game.Yet, Team Y still could be better defensive team than Team X. If Team Y scored 100 points and Team X scored 70 points per game, then Team Y has better margin between Points Allowed and Points Scored than Team X. Now, here comes the one of the greatest devices of the modern statistics, possession. Don't worry,I won't say that I've just adjusted these numbers with possessions. Even though it's also a good approach to understand defensive capability, it's not enough too. Also, you can find these numbers in any site, no need for me to analyze it. How about some defensive statistics like steal,block or defensive rebound? Likewise,they aren't enough to understand defensive capability by themselves.

We just need to combine all defensive inputs to measure defensive capability. But again, they are different stats from each other, it won't be easy to combine them all. Thus, we need to bring them together to one,common base. I chose to value every defensive act with points. Let me explain. If a team didn't allow its opponent to score a three-pointer,that team deserves +3 points for its defensive effort. Let's say they stole the ball. Then, they would stopped their opponent to organize an offense. Yet, it is still difficult to assign any point to this effort. So let's think backward, if the team didn't steal the ball , opponent would attack as they attacked normally in the game. It means they would attack with their average field goal percentage in the game. Yet, would they go for three-pointer or send the ball to the rim for two-pointer ? It will be decided by their field goal tendency rate[1]. So if we multiplied opponent's field goal tendency rate for that particular game with opponent's average field goal rate -again,for that particular game- we could estimate that how many points the opponent can get from a standard offense. Let's assume that Team Y attacks with standard mean of 2,5 points. If Team X can steal the ball from Team Y, then they will be awarded with +2,5 points for their defensive effort. I applied same logic to every other defensive act.Thereby, carrying all the defensive inputs to the same base became possible. I made the analysis for every season since 2000-01. In this part, I'll show some some statistics from last season. Here are the best four defensive teams of 2011-12 Season.

Coincidentally -or is it?-, Final Four teams were the best defenders last season. It surprised everyone that Olympiacos won the championship, yet they were in fact one of the best defensive teams last season. Sure, it  surprised everyone that they beat Barcelona and CSKA Moscow who look unbeatable -especially CSKA with AK47-. On the other hand, they were pretty good on the defensive side of the game. Let's look at how they improve their defensive rates.

Even though Olympiacos didn't start the season in a great shape, after Top 16 phase they speeded up their defense. It should have helped them to reach their dreams. It was kind of a fairy tale what they did in the Istanbul,indeed. However, it wasn't surprising at all that they reached to Final Four. Now, let's look at the worst four defensive teams.

Three of the teams above eliminated in the group phase. As for the only team didn't, which was Zalgiris Kaunas, they couldn't reach the playoffs. It's not sane to say defense is the only key to succeed. Yet, it's obvious that it's a huge part of it. If you could be a solid defensive team, chances for you to achieve something in the Euroleague become higher.

In the second part, I'm going to show the best defensive teams in the Euroleague history.

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[1] Field Goal Tendency Rate is used to define teams' tendency to choose 3-pointers or 2-pointers. If a team use 3-pointers more often, then their potential score in one  possession would be higher. Because if they made the shoot,then they will get 3 points for a possession instead of 2 points. However, probably they would shoot with lower field goal percentage,so their potential score for one possession will multiplied with lower number. If you don't have couple of snipers, then going for lot's of 3-pointer would most probably hurt your points of standart mean for a possession.