The Four Factors and Using the Timberwolves

Right now, the Wolves are about seven hours away from heading into their weekend back-to-back, which should be a good indication of how the Wolves are playing now that they've got the first W down. The current coverage of Wednesday's game (especially Britt Robson's superlative column) is fairly complete, but there's one thing I would like to point out that I didn't see mentioned anywhere: the Wolves did a fine job on the offensive boards, grabbing 30.3% of the their chances. Not only is that 4% above the league average, but it actually below average for the Wolves. They have been doing an amazing job of recovering their misses (fourth in the league), which is one of the main reasons we've only seen on real blowout to date. They are fifteenth in the league in defensive rebound percentage, and 9th overall. It's probably the true strength of this team to date. It's also one of the four factors defined by Dean Oliver. He defines it as thus:

After looking at a lot of teams over the years, I have come to realize that teams like these are bad because they don't control four crucial aspects of a game:

1. Shooting percentage from the field.
2. Getting offensive rebounds.
3. Committing Turnovers.
4. Going to the foul line a lot and making the shots.

There is really nothing else to the game.

Dean Oliver, Basketball on Paper, p. 63.

The Wolves are one of the best teams on the offensive glass, one of the worst at the line, slightly above average at committing turnovers, and almost exactly average when it comes to points per shot (complete disgression: I prefer points per shot to percentage because it allows a quick comparison between. Example: Greg Buckner is currently shooting 51.6% on twos, and 36.7% on treys. But he is making 1.03 points per two, and 1.09 points per three. So if the Wolves wanted to play things purely by the numbers, it would be better to have Buckner shoot from the arc than the paint. A note to those of you who think that this is simply a different way of expressing effective field goal percentage: you are completely correct). The Wolves problem is that their defense has been poor. More precisely, their opponents' offense has been very good. The Wolves opponents have an average offensive rebounding percentage (26.0%, league average is 25.6%) and an average turnover rate (12.0% versus leaguewide 11.9%). However, the Wolves opponents have been outstanding in two areas. First is in free throw shooting. Wolves opponents are getting to line .49 times for every field goal attempt, which means that whenever someone drives to the basket against the Wolves there is a coin flip's chance that they're going to be taking a free throw attempt. The other problem is that the Wolves are giving up 1.03 points per attempt. So they're a regular team on the glass and on the floor, but their opponents are simply putting the points up. Part of it is that the Magic, Nuggets, and Lakers are in the top eight in pts/fga (the Nuggets and Magic are in the top 5), while Sacramento and Denver are in the top ten for fta/fga (the Lakers are 11th). A good test of the Wolves will be Cleveland next week, which is a team whose strengths and weaknesses in the four factors mirror the Wolves. Meanwhile, tonights game against the Wizards will be a good chance to see if the foul trouble is truly behind the Wolves, or if it simply took a day off. They turnover the ball more often than other teams, and are shooting a woeful 0.84. But they get to the line at an above average clip. If the Wizards prevail, it'll be at the line.

Last night I put together the usage percentages for the Wolves players. Usage is simply how many possessions involves a given player. The formula is FGA + TO + (0.44 * FTA) + (0.33 * AST). I then divided it by the number of possessions (FGA + TO + (0.44 * FTA) - ORB) to see what percentage of plays involved specific Wolves.

Three things to note. Percentages that are red indicate that the player was deactivated for that game. 0.00% that are not in red do not indicate that the player didn't play (though that is the most likely scenario), but rather that they weren't involved with a possession. Finally (and most important) the percentages are higher than 100%. That's because more than one player can be involved with a possession, and usage numbers don't consider offensive rebounds. The only game that will ever add up to 100% is when the Wolves don't have an offensive rebound or assist. So what do we see from this? First, Rashad McCants has been the focal point of the offense so far (shocking revelation, I know). Even though Jefferson has posted the highest numbers, remember that McCants missed 1.75 games with an ankle sprain, and that the in Game 2 who was in frequent foul trouble, fouling out with 6 minutes left in the game after playing only 5 minutes in the second half. At this point it looks like the goal is to get McCants the ball about one-fourth of the time, with Jefferson getting it about one-fifth of the time. The surprising thing is that this is actually demonstrates team play for the Wolves. With the exception of Orlando, where four of their five starters were involved in 20% or more of their plays, the leader of any team (Carmelo Antony, Kevin Martin, Kobe Bryant, etc.) the Wolves have played to date has been between 25-30%. Both McCants and Jefferson have hit this mark twice (both of Jefferson's was while McCants was injured). It'll be interesting to see what happens when Foye returns. The most obvious reductions are going to be in Telfair and Jaric's numbers, but I think we'll also see a decrease for McCants. Not too much, but I imagine something along the lines of 20-20-15 for the three.