#3 Olympiacos Piraeus - Fear the Beard

Here we came to reigning champion. Last year, Olympiacos set the Europe on fire by winning the title over CSKA. Who can forget Printezis' last shot. This year, they kept most of their roster but not their coach Dusan Ivkovic here they are again with their new coach Georgios Bartzokas. The table below shows the roster of the Olympiacos and players' T-Con values.

The Beard of the Europe (as Mehmet named him) , is the top player in all Final Four players in terms of tangible contribution. Also, Kyle Hines is one of the Top 10 players. Olympiacos has fewest player -only 4-  in Top 20 players. Yet, we all know how dangerous they are as a team. Also, they have a man who can change dynamics of a game whenever he wants, Spanoulis and Rising Star of the European Basketball, Papanikolaou.

Let's look at the playmakers of the Olympiacos ;

It's painful that Mantzaris done for the season. He was the best playmaker in the team as it seems. He was second best playmaker in all Final Four players. Even though there is big difference between Mantzaris and Sloukas&Law in all players list,both Sloukas and Law is at Top 10 in Final Four players.

As for shooters of the Olympiacos ;

In combined shooting ranking (SV1) Spanoulis is the best shooter of the Oly. As for 3-pointers Kostas Papanikolaou is not only Olympiacos' best shooter, but also one of the best in all players. Olympiacos has also a few more shooters who can hurt their opponent when they are needed like Printezis,Antic and Perperoglou.

Now, let's look at the rebounding stats of the Olympiacos;

Oly has 3 players in Top 10 list. Kyle Hines looks like best rebounders of the team. He is also Top 10 list for all Euroleague players. Also all best 5 rebounders of the Oly is in the Top 20 list. That shows us how strong Olympiacos is in the painted area. They are especially powerful at defensive rebounds. It can easily be linked to their defensive capability.

It's time to look TDR and TOR values.

Table above proves that Olympiacos was above EL average in every phase of the Euroleague. It is no surprise at all I believe, since it was obvious that Olympiacos was one of the best defensive teams in the Euroleague. The graph below shows the progress of the Euroleague,Olympiacos' TDR values and EL averages in every phase.

As for TOR values ;

Even though Olympiacos' TOR values are decreasing, they were above the EL averages in all phases. We can link this increase to the strength of the opponents. TOR values of the Oly and EL averages are shown  in the graph below.

And finally, Play Oriented Winning Functions;

As we showed in the CSKA post and Barcelona post, game function between Olympiacos and CSKA forms a quadratic function while game function between Olympiacos and Barcelona forms a linear function. The game function between Olympiacos and Real Madrid also forms a linear function.

Olympiacos should be very careful against CSKA Moscow, because number of plays they normally choose to play is in favor of CSKA Moscow. So, they should lower the game pace even more than they normally do. Another option for the CSKA game is increasing the game pace above 85 play, yet it would be much harder to accomplish since their roster not quite capable of playing in this pace.

In a potential match-up against Real Madrid, all they have to do is lower the game pace. Real Madrid is very dangerous in high-pace games. Olympiacos is exactly the opposite. So, in such match-up, whoever manages to establish its pace would win the game. The key of the game is 80 play. It means under 80 play, Olympiacos has a bigger chance to win and it increases while the game pace decreases.

As for a potential match-up against Barcelona, Olympiacos should lower the pace even more. Key number of the game is 77 play. Olympiacos should lower the game pace under the 77 play. If they couldn't,than any extra play would serve to the Barcelona.

To sum up, Olympiacos is a team which is successful in lower pace game. They should defend hard and discomfort their opponents. And also everyone should remember that, they are defending champion and as Rudy Tomjanovic said; "Don't ever underestimate the heart of a champion!".

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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.