Do Mid-Range Attempts Hurt Offensive Efficiency?

The midrange taboo A whole legion of sports fans with fancy spreadsheets have waged a war on the long two. Many have gone as far as to refer to shot charts with few to no long twos as “moneyball” shot charts. I wonder if...

Is Good Defense Due To Player Skills or Scheme? – Salt City Hoops Podcast

On this week’s Salt City Hoops Podcast, Laura Thompson moderates a discussion between Ben Dowsett and Clint Johnson about defense. In particular, we’re concerned: the Bulls have built an excellent defense despite...

Does Offensive Rebounding Hurt Transition Defense?

Uh oh, fellow basketball math nerds: we might have overcorrected. The analytics movement has given us so many new ways to see and understand NBA basketball. I myself am an ardent subscriber, and I think we’re just starting to...

Rudy Gobert Scouting Report

What have we learned about Rudy Gobert in his 226 minutes of playing time? We have the scouting...

Jazz Struggle on Nights When Numbers are Retired

Utah governor Gary Herbert declared January 31st to be Jerry Sloan day. For Utah Jazz fans, given the ceremonies that will transpire that day, it was already going to be Jerry’s day. From the sound of things, many Jazz...

A History of Jazz Midseason Signings

With Malcolm Thomas’s recent signing (and check out Dakota’s fantastic breakdown of his game here), I’ve been thinking about other pickups over the last few years—whether D-League call ups or picking up off waivers or...

The Triple Team: Three Thoughts on Jazz vs. Kings 1/27/2014

1. Mike Malone has a bad defensive squad, and he knows it.  Ranked 28th in the league defensively, the Kings don’t exactly have a sterling reputation when it comes to defending the ball. Sacramento head coach Mike Malone...

Trey Burke, Plus/Minus Rookie Leader

Because Adjusted Plus-Minus (APM; full description here) is a metric designed to track the actual scoreboard impact of individual players, it has some tendencies that aren’t shared by other common player evaluation metrics. ...

Malcolm Thomas Scouting Report

On late Saturday afternoon, it was announced that NBA journeyman Malcolm Thomas was acquired off waivers from Utah after being released from San Antonio earlier in the week. Prior to his less than stellar stint with the Spurs,...

The Triple Team: Three Thoughts on Jazz vs. Wizards 1/25/2014

1. The Jazz answered the Wizards’ two-big lineup with one of their own. The Jazz have had more success (i.e., more than 1 win in 15 games) since starting Marvin Williams at the 4, giving them a lineup with lots of shooting...