Wednesday night in Oklahoma City, the Indiana Pacers kicked off the most road-intensive stretch of their season. It will be 15 games before they get to play two or more home games in a row again, and 11 of those 15 games will be away from Conseco.
With that in mind, it’s worth looking at the differences in the team’s performance – at least statistically – Home vs. Road.
Team Wins & Losses
Starting at 30,000 feet, the Pacers “grade out” as a below average team overall – both at home and away. In a league where the Home Team wins 60% of the time, the Pacers have won only 55% of their games at the Fieldhouse. Their 35% winning percentage on the road is also below the 40% mark set by the NBA’s road squads.
Point differential tells more or less the same story. Their +3.5 at home is slightly above average, but buoyed by some big blowouts over the Nuggets, Clippers, and Nets. On the road, they rank in the bottom third of the league with a -4.7.
However, the 30,000-foot level only tells you so much. One major factor that must be noted is that coaching change. After all, new coach Frank Vogel told us all that “this is a new team, a new beginning.” To some degree, the basic metrics do show this.
Everyone’s well aware that Indiana has been winning more under Vogel, so the numbers above shouldn’t come as a big surprise to most. The question is, “Do these numbers mean that the Pacers will perform better on the road during this stretch.” Not necessarily.
The main thing that undercuts the 4-3 road record is the overall SoSHR and WinFactor (WF) of these games. The first seven road games in the Vogel Era had a combined SoSHR of .514, which means these teams barely won more games than they lose on their home floors, collectively. The WF for the four wins was .410. The 22 road games played under O’Brien had an SoSHR of .632, and the six wins a WF of .528. Therefore, sample size and ease of schedule prevents any reasonable assumption that this early performance is proof that the Pacers will have more success on the road under Vogel. With the exception of the Thunder game Wednesday, the team has played better overall, but whether that translates to more wins or not remains to be seen.
However, it’s important to note that while the schedule gets tougher for Vogel’s Pacers the rest of the way, it is not a particularly “tough” schedule. The SoSHR for the remaining road games is only .582 – still below the .601 average for the league and even further below the .632 faced in the first 22 road games this season. That factor can be a basis to expect better than the .273 road winning percentage turned in under O’Brien, but probably not enough to expect to continue to win more than they lose away from home.
Team Metrics
The win-loss record is essentially the “net-net” representation of the results, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s the final arbiter of success or failure. However, it’s worth looking at some of the drivers that underpin the results. (Besides, it would be thoroughly anachronistic and embarrassing not to present some form of Advanced Stat Analysis while the Sloan Sports Analytic Conference was being held – regardless of how cursory and amateurish.) First, a quick glossary:
"Off Eff – Offensive Efficiency, or points scored per 100 possessionsDef Eff – Defensive Efficiency, or points allowed per 100 possessionseFG % / Opp eFG% – FG% adjusted for impact of 3-pointers: (FGM + 0.5 * 3PM)/FGAORB% – A team’s offensive rebounds as a percentage of theoretic rebounds available: ORB/(ORB + Opp DRB)DRB% – A team’s defensive rebounds as a percentage of theoretic rebounds available: DRB/(DRB + Opp ORB)FT/FGA/Opp FG/FGA – A metric used to identify a team’s effectiveness at getting to the line – or – how often they allow their opponents to get to the line: FT/FGA"
This isn’t quite a discussion of the Four Factors of Winning (I’m not including Turnover percentages), but it’s pretty close. The shooting (eFG%) and rebounding (ORB%/DRB%) in combination are probably the most important metrics in terms of predicting success, while the FT/FGA numbers can give a view into the way a team conducts itself on the floor.
When taken as a whole, the Pacers’ advanced metrics indicate a bad offensive team (24th in Off Eff) and a solid-to-good (11th) defensive team. League-wide, the NBA scores/allows 107 points for every 100 possessions, while the Pacers score/allow roughly 105. At home, they’ve been mediocre offensively (105.8 would rank them 20th), but very good defensively (102.4 would be behind only Boston, Chicago, and Orlando). The road is another story.
Scoring only 103.1 points per 100 away from Conseco would make the Pacers the 26th in Offensive Efficiency. The 108.3 points allowed per 100 is just below middle of the pack. Taken as a whole, these paint the picture of a mediocre home team and a bad road team. That’s fairly accurate, but it’s still important to look at what has happened since the coaching change.
One of the reasons it’s necessary to look at these metrics is that they can sometimes tell you – or at least get a strong indication – of how “real” a team’s performance is. How well can they sustain it? In November of both this year and last, the Four Factors were way out of sync with the Pacers’ win-loss record. In December of both years, there was a sudden (and brutal) regression to the mean.
The advanced numbers under Vogel are difficult to read – very mixed. The most important single statistic – at least in terms of correlation to Offensive or Defensive Efficiency – is eFG%. Under O’Brien, the Pacers were in the bottom third of the league in shooting, but top third in field goal defense. Under Vogel, these trends have continued, perhaps even becoming more pronounced.
Where the differences arise are in Rebounding and Free Throws. Much was made of the Pacers’ work on the glass in the first few games under Vogel, and overall, the Pacers have grabbed about 52% of the rebounds since the coaching change (up from just under 50% prior). However, a lot of those numbers were put up in the first three games – home vs. Toronto and Portland, on the road at Cleveland – where they grabbed a ridiculous 56% of the available rebounds. Since then, it’s been less dramatic.
What’s interesting is that the dynamic of how the Pacers rebound has changed significantly. Under O’Brien, defensive rebounds were valued, but the offensive glass was not. The Pacers were in the top 20% of the league in DRB%, but almost dead last in ORB%. Under Vogel, offensive rebounding has gone through the roof, and the .309 ORB% would top the league, while the defensive rebounding has been below average.
At the same time, Indiana has created more Free Throw chances (.289 vs. .206), while allowing fewer chances to their opponent (.211 vs. .239). Reducing the opponents’ trips to the line has apparently mitigated the weaker defensive rebounding numbers, as the overall Defensive Efficiency is roughly flat. However, the ORB%, along with the higher FT/FGA, has a very positive impact on the offensive efficiency, increasing it by over 3 points per 100.
The most germane, and encouraging, information in this analysis are the road numbers under the new coach. Vogel’s Pacers have shot better and rebounded better on the road than they have at home. The road defense has remained roughly flat to O’Brien’s Pacers, while the road offense has improved by over 6 points per 100. Some of this is due to sample size and the weaker opponents, but a good portion is the result of changes and adjustments made by Vogel. Specifically, he has (to this point) done a good job of stabilizing the rotations and staying with a more traditional “two big” configuration the vast majority of time.
While these changes have all been improvements over the situation pre-coaching change, there are still things to be worried about embarking on this trip. This is still not a particularly efficient offensive team, and there are signs of that the offensive woes might be returning. Over the last four games (three of which were losses), the Offensive Efficiency has dropped below a point per possession (98.7). The ORB% and FT/FGA numbers are down slightly, but still strong, but the eFG% has dropped to .419 – a disturbing reminder of a disastrous December.
So, 60 games into the season, I’m still trying to figure out who this team is. That may be a somewhat unfair. I’m sure that many of you – and most of the Pacer organization – would argue for a reset after the first 44 games. And that’s fair – to a degree. But I can’t really let go of the first 44 games…or last year…or, for some players, the last several years. It’s great that they’re trying to re-make themselves, but like I said yesterday, there’s just as much evidence that this team will go one way as the other.
Aw, hell. D Barksdale said it better.
"He’s saying that the past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it. All this shit matters. Like at the end of the book, ya know, boats and tides and all. It’s like you can change up, right, you can say you’re somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But, what came first is who you really are and what happened before is what really happened. It don’t matter that some fool say he different cuz the things that make you different is what you really do, what you really go through. Like, ya know, all those books in his library. He frontin’ with all them books, but if you pull one down off the shelf, none of the pages have ever been opened. He got all them books, and he hasn’t read nearly one of them. Gatsby, he was who he was, and he did what he did. And cuz he wasn’t willing to get real with the story, that shit caught up to him. That’s what I think, anyway."
Individual Metrics
Here’s a quick glance at how individual players do at home vs. on the road.
Really, there’s a lot of material to dig here, but we’ll keep it simple for this pass. The old saw is that your starters win on the road, and your bench wins at home. How true that really is, I couldn’t tell you, but there are some things worth pointing out:
- Danny Granger, Jeff Foster, and Tyler Hansbrough show very little variation, home versus away. Granger and Foster, as vets with clearly defined roles, offer little surprise, but I didn’t expect this to be true about Hansbrough. Tyler probably benefits from his relatively uncomplicated approach, enabling him to simply “do what he does” without regard to his relative inexperience or whether the crowd is screaming for him or screaming at him.
- Darren Collison, Brandon Rush, and James Posey all see significant drops in production on the road. Posey has seen better days, and Brandon is, well…Brandon. However, DC’s numbers are extremely worrisome. He gets his points and assists, but his efficiency goes way down. As one of the most important players on the team, this is a particularly alarming situation – for the rest of this year.
- I’m very surprised at how much more productive Josh McRoberts is on the road. It would be one thing if there were a yin-yang thing going with him and Tyler, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s also not a sample size issue, as the he’s played plenty of minutes on the road. This is something that actually impresses me about the guy. I don’t think he’s a starter – at least not when teamed with Danny & Roy – but this could be an indicator of his usefulness as the team gets better.
Where’s Wallace at? Where’s the boy, String? Huh? Stringer?