Analysis The Race for Home-Court Advantage - 25/26 Playoffs Seed Tracker

Will the Spurs get HCA in the '25-26 Playoffs?

  • Total voters
    67
There's no reason to rest anyone who isn't actually injured, it's the last road trip of the season and we'll have a week off before the playoffs start.
 
SGA is a great basketball player. Great shooter, highly skilled, athletic, etc. its also impressive because he’s not even his listed height. He’s probably about 6’4. But if you actually watch the games you see there is more going on than his skills. It’s sickening.
 
LeBowen said:
There's no reason to rest anyone who isn't actually injured, it's the last road trip of the season and we'll have a week off before the playoffs start.
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And yet the Pistons did that last night and likely win the damn game had they just played their Fn guys. This is the kind of shit that drives old school fans crazy and the league in general.. Streaming on their new service Peacock, but nope, the Pistons HC is sitting half his roster..
 
The Spurs remind me of the 1999 team steamrolling to end the season mixed with some egalitarian 2014 vibes mixed with Boston 2008 Garnett yelling "anything is possible!!!" idealism.

Or something like that.
 
The Truth #6 said:
The Spurs remind me of the 1999 team steamrolling to end the season mixed with some egalitarian 2014 vibes mixed with Boston 2008 Garnett yelling "anything is possible!!!" idealism.

Or something like that.
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Yea but in 99 they had an old Jazz team, the Blazers and the Pre-Phil Jackson Lakers... These FN Thunder are great.. And annoying..
 
Glamor boi Shai and the refs just handed Wemby a ton more motivation imo.

I soo hope we meet them in the ECFs.
 
The good news if we make it to the CF and lose to OKC in a tough series there is little doubt the Spurs will be starving to win the Chip next season... Experience.
 
This guy is the biggest Jokic tard among the analytics-centric writers. I'm sorry, I don't care anymore about Jokic's gaudy stats. Unlike Wemby & SGA, his numbers aren't translating into actual team wins as much as they should because he is a strictly one-way player (same with Doncic). There is reason Wemby is going to win 60 games in just his 3rd season while Jokic has never won more than 57 wins in single one so far in his career. The gap in the standings between Denver and Spurs/OKC (10+ games) is simply too big for Jokic to be in this conversation or else 'player valuability' becomes a moot point if it's not directly related to team success.

PS. I say this even with Jokic probably being my favorite non-Spurs player.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2038773734782488755
 
Last edited:
Dbreiden83080 said:
And yet the Pistons did that last night and likely win the damn game had they just played their Fn guys. This is the kind of shit that drives old school fans crazy and the league in general.. Streaming on their new service Peacock, but nope, the Pistons HC is sitting half his roster..
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No need for that resting sht. There is a week off before the playoffs starts.
 
Once wemby reaches 65 games just go ahead and give him the defensive player of the year award then

Don't even bother waiting until the playoffs. Just hand it to him after game 65
 
spursistan said:
This guy is the biggest Jokic tard among the analytics-centric writers. I'm sorry, I don't care anymore about Jokic's gaudy stats. Unlike Wemby & SGA, his numbers aren't translating into actual team wins as much as they should because he is a strictly one-way player (same with Doncic). There is reason Wemby is going to win 60 games in just his 3rd season while Jokic has never won more than 57 wins in single one so far in his career. The gap in the standings between Denver and Spurs/OKC (10+ games) is simply too big for Jokic to be in this conversation or else 'player valuability' becomes a moot point if it's not directly related to team success.

PS. I say this even with Jokic probably being my favorite non-Spurs player.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2038773734782488755
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They can keep handing Joker MVP after MVP he is never breaking into that top 10 with 1 ring..
 
DAF86 said:
Don't be a homer, bro. There is definitely a case for SGA. In fact, if the Thunder finish 1st, he should get it.
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he's behind donut by 2 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 0.2 steals.. i don't think there has ever be an mvp so far behind in stats .
 
Raven_ said:
he's behind donut by 2 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 0.2 steals.. i don't think there has ever be an mvp so far behind in stats .
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If you go by raw numbers then Wemby shouldn't even be in the discussion, yet you are saying he should win it. Get in the same page with yourself.
 
I ran a simple linear regression model to estimate FTAs based on attempts in the restricted area, paint+non-restricted area, mid-range, and 3 pointers. Not surprisingly all of them have positive t-stat values, with Restricted Area having 18.14, Paint/Non-RA at 6.58, mid range at 10.79, but 3P at only 2.86 (2 is a general rule of thumb good indicator), but keep in mind that of course the more shots you take the more FTA you get, and I would expect the closer to the basket the more likely you will get FTs from them, which is why I am very surprised that not only does mid-range has a higher t-stat than paint/non-RA shots, but it has the highest coefficient amongst the 4 shot types. Part of the reason is because the league as a whole shoots much less mid-rangers than the other shot types. So far this season, there were only about 20K mid range shots, whereas there were close to 57K RA shots, 40K P/Non-RA shots, and 83K 3P shots, which means that the impact of each mid range shot will simply be magnified, assuming. more FGA leads to more FTA.

Now plugging the numbers back to each individual player by aligning the coefficients (I hard set the y-intercept as 0, because if you shoot 0 FGA, you should get 0 FTM), I ranked the players by raw number of FTA exceeding expectations.

Note that Shai isn't that ridiculous in terms of getting FTs, ranking #6, while Luka, Avdjia and Harden are just so far ahead of everybody else. This is also a function of how many times you shoot as well, of course. The more shots you shoot, the more magnified the variance. Play style also factors in, Castle, Zion, Giannis and Randle are known to play bully ball, so they get more fouls. This can be seen by their high % of RA and Paint FGAs.
What is interesting is that Shai has by far the most mid range shots amongst the group. Booker is the only person who shot mid rangers more than any other types of 2 points shots, but Shai's RA shots and mid range shots are almost the same, and he has significantly less non-RA paint shots. Back to the earlier point, mid range shots had a notable impact on the FTAs, because most people took so few of them.

Given the hypothesis is that Shai is getting so many FTs despite his shot diet, I removed Shai from the set, and ran the regression again, and coefficient for mid-range shots went from 0.534 to 0.491, which is rather significant given that he is just 1 of a sample of over 500 data lines.

All I can say is, perhaps he is getting more than his share of FTAs, but the league, as a whole, has been rewarding mid-range shooters with more FTs at that range.

Now for the true conspiracy theorists out there, the team with the most additional FTAs compared to expected FTAs using shot profile? Of course, the Lakers, with a rather staggering 54 more FTs than the 2nd placed Cavs, and overall 268 FTAs more than expected, that is more than 3.6 FTAs a game more than expected. Truly staggering.

EDIT: I couldn't cut and paste the table in for some reason.
 
Raven_ said:
he's behind donut by 2 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 0.2 steals.. i don't think there has ever be an mvp so far behind in stats .
Click to expand...

That would be like giving Kobe MVP in 2006 over Nash or Dirk because Kobe had the most points despite the Lakers being an average playoff team.
 
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