Best and Worst NBA Teams in Key Advanced Statistical Categories
No NBA team can hide from numbers.
When trying to distinguish the league's best factions from the absolute worst, there is no one approach to follow. But looking at the raw data is always a good place to start.
Statistics are objective and ubiquitous. They know no loyalties and, in most cases, retain no bias. They are not opinions; rather, they support and change opinions.
They exist to inform, and we're here to digest.
Offensive and defensive efficiency—points scored and allowed per 100 possessions—will play a pivotal part in the forthcoming analysis. Beyond that, we'll zero in on the three most heavily weighted Four Factors: effective field-goal percentage (cumulative measurement of two- and three-pointers), turnover percentage and rebounding percentage.
We won't be handing out trophies to the best teams in each category—just an infinite amount of high fives. Conversely, we won't shame the worst finishers. Their futility will speak for itself—though the occasional finger-wag is totally cool.
Let's party.
Offense
Best Effective Field-Goal Percentage: Golden State Warriors
Housekeeping note: These data dives double as a reminder that the Warriors are from the future and, by extension, light-years ahead of their NBA counterparts.
Rookie head honcho Steve Kerr employs a pace-and-space offense that prides itself on drive-and-kicks and the steady balance of point-blank and three-point looks. It helps that backcourt duo Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are two of the best darn shot-creators alive, but the Warriors are more than their individual talent.
They move the ball, set screens—single and double—in volume and have more secondary options on every play than the city of Denver has millennials. If James Harden's shot selection is the NBA's future, the Warriors are a team of ridiculously accurate James Hardens.
Should their effective field-goal percentage hold, it will be one of the 10 best marks in league history.
Worst Effective Field-Goal Percentage: Charlotte Hornets
Avert your eyes.
What you're pretty much looking at is a who's who of the NBA's crummiest offenses. It's mind-boggling that the Philadelphia 76ers—who are on pace to have one of the worst offenses ever—don't rank dead last. That said, they're right there with the Charlotte Hornets, so Philly mastermind Sam Hinkie can rest easy.
Meanwhile, this will be the fourth time since 2000 that Charlotte records an effective field goal percentage south of 46. No other team has matched such inefficiency more than three times during that span.
Best Offensive Rebounding Percentage: Utah Jazz
You mean to say the league's best offensive rebounding team is the one with Rudy Gobert, the human Gobstopper?
On a scale of "totally shocking" to "not at all surprising," this revelation breaks gradation, checking in at "duh."
Gobert ranks fifth in offensive rebounding percentage on the season, grabbing 14.4 percent of Utah's misses when in the game. The Jazz's team standing, however, is receiving a boon from Enes Kanter, now of the Oklahoma City Thunder. He ranks sixth overall and was corralling 12.9 percent of available offensive boards before leaving Utah.
This category is such a double-edged sword, though. Second-chance points are good and all, but you have to miss in order to get those mulligans.
Of the top 10 offensive rebounding teams, only two also finish inside the top 10 of effective field-goal percentage: the Cleveland Cavaliers and Houston Rockets. The Jazz themselves are in the bottom half of the league.
Make of this what you will, but just don't shirk the facts: Gobert creates more than three offensive do-overs per game and thus bails the Jazz out like, whoa.
Worst Offensive Rebounding Percentage: Atlanta Hawks
About that double-edged sword thing…
It's telling that the Hawks are the worst offensive rebounding team. They field the Association's sixth-best point-piling machines and rank third in effective field-goal percentage.
Five of the bottom 10 mulligan-generators achieve top-10 status in the latter category. And for the Hawks specifically, it's not difficult to see how they end up so far down the totem pole.
Head coach Mike Budenholzer runs one-in, four-out lineups that prioritize spacing over rebounds. Sometimes he pushes the bill, relying on zero-in, five-out combinations, thinning out Atlanta's interior personnel even further.
Oh, and by the by, the Hawks also don't miss (often).
Best (Lowest) Turnover Percentage: Charlotte Hornets
At least the Hornets protect the ball. Then again, this isn't especially hard when playing at sluggish paces.
All the high fives actually go to the Los Angeles Clippers. They're pumping in 112.4 points per 100 possessions yet coughing the ball up less than 12 percent of the time. This has happened just once since 2003-04 (Dallas Mavericks) and only four times post-merger.
The Clippers' offense is equal parts potent and economical, in large part because Chris Paul is still a point god. As Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal wrote in a previous edition of his positional rankings:
"Paul is now averaging 2.4 cough-ups per game this season, and that's actually his worst mark since joining the Clippers in 2011. Oh, and he's still providing a dollar's worth of dimes when he steps onto the court.
For perspective, only three qualified players have ever averaged at least 10 assists and less than 2.5 turnovers. John Lucas did so in 1983-84 for the San Antonio Spurs, and he became the inaugural member of the ultra-exclusive fraternity. Six years later, Muggsy Bogues joined the club for the first of two times in his career. And Paul is the third member, now set to hit the mark for an NBA-record third season.
"
Sorry, Charlotte. Your league-leading turnover percentage takes a back seat to longstanding greatness.
Worst (Highest) Turnover Percentage: Philadelphia 76ers
Long live the Sixers.
Not only are they giving the ball up more than any other team in the league, but their turnover percentage is, as of now, one of the 12 worst marks over the last 20 seasons.
It takes a special kind of offensive disregard to do what the Sixers are doing—squandering possessions without the potency to offset those losses. This is, however, good for their draft-lottery odds.
Best Offensive Rating: Los Angeles Clippers
Give it up for the Clippers.
Despite Blake Griffin's missing extensive time, they own the best offense for the second straight season. Unlike 2013-14, though, the Clippers need to be this offensively dominant. Their defense is sputtering, firmly binding their title hopes to an ability to put points on the board.
Luckily for us, DeAndre Jordan and Paul have prepared a video essay in which they explain why this isn't a problem:
Color me sold.
Worst Offensive Rating: Philadelphia 76ers
Sweet mother of Nerlens Noel's barber, the Sixers are atrocious on the offensive end.
Make that historically atrocious.
Adjusted offensive ratings (ORtng+) allow us to see where attacks rank throughout history by measuring a team's standing against the league average. Relative to this season's mean (105.6), the Sixers' ORtng+ is 90.05.
That gives them the second-worst offense of all time.
"We missed a lot of shots," coach Brett Brown said following a March 6 loss to Utah, per Philly.com's Shamus Clancy. "I think defensively we have no regrets. We just really struggled offensively."
Take this particular sound bite and remove the game-specific context, and you have the Sixers' season in a nutshell.
Defense
Best (Lowest) Defensive Effective Field-Goal Percentage: Golden State Warriors
Oh, hey; it's the Warriors again.
Statistically and fundamentally, their ability to suffocate shooters is second to none. They switch on everything, usually without a hitch.
Eliminating the need to fight over screens forces opposing shooters to make quicker decisions, lest they suffer the consequences—which typically consist of nose-to-nose meetings with Draymond Green, Andrew Bogut or Thompson.
Worst (Highest) Defensive Effective Field-Goal Percentage: Minnesota Timberwolves
Talk about your landslides.
The Timberwolves have the worst defensive effective field-goal percentage, and it's not even kind of close. They're allowing a 53.6 percent clip, which isn't just bad relative to this season. It's just plain bad.
In the event this benchmark lasts, the Timberwolves will notch the third-worst score in league history. And that's with Nikola Pekovic, resident turnstile, missing most of the season.
Yikes.
Best Defensive Rebounding Percentage: Charlotte Hornets
To be completely candid, I have no idea what the Los Angeles Lakers are doing in the top 10. Jordan Hill and Ed Davis grab all the defensive boards, I suppose.
Six Hornets players rank in the league's top 100 for defensive rebounding percentage—more than any other team—so it's no surprise coach Steve Clifford's crew towers over everyone else.
Al Jefferson continues to box out diligently, Bismack Biyombo can out-rebound any opposing big while standing on his tiptoes, Cody Zeller is subtly strong and Marvin Williams is sneaky valuable on the defensive glass.
It helps that rebounding is the one area in which Lance Stephenson hasn't completely disappointed. And it helps even more that Michael Kidd-Gilchrist crashes the glass like a power forward. His defensive rebounding percentage matches Marc Gasol's (21.8) and exceeds those of Noel (21) and Roy Hibbert (21.7).
Worst Defensive Rebounding Percentage: Minnesota Timberwolves
Another defensive category, another chance for the Timberwolves to finish in last place.
Just two of their players rank inside the top 100 of defensive rebounding percentage. One of those players is Anthony Bennett, who has logged fewer minutes than the New Orleans Pelicans' Alexis Ajinca (a meager 14.7 per night).
A healthy Pekovic would certainly help here, but his career defensive rebounding percentage (17.3) is worse than that of Michael Beasley (17.6).
Short of Kevin Garnett setting his time machine for 2006-07, the Timberwolves don't have enough interior presences to contend for many defensive rebounds.
Best Defensive Turnover Percentage: Milwaukee Bucks
And on the seventh day, the citizens of Milwaukee said, "Let there be length."
Doling out credit for the Bucks' defensive rise isn't difficult. Giannis Antetokounmpo, John Henson, Michael Carter-Williams and Khris Middleton are all lanky enough to clean gutters without a ladder.
When you have that much length, this kind of stuff happens all the time:
Defense is the Bucks' life, and forcing turnovers is the currency with which they've purchased a playoff ticket. And now, because of this aggression, they're one offensive heartbeat away from ensuring that ticket carries them further than the first round.
Worst Defensive Turnover Percentage: Chicago Bulls
Nobody panic.
Well, panic a little bit.
Chicago's defense has never been overly reliant on forcing turnovers. The Bulls pack the paint and look to contest shots, exhibiting visible restraint when it comes to being handsy.
Last season's team ranked second in defensive efficiency and 15th in forcing turnovers, so this is nothing new. But 15th isn't 30th, and last season's Bulls aren't this season's Bulls. They are outside the top 10 of defensive efficiency for the first time of the Tom Thibodeau era and nowhere near as scrappy as they usually are.
Feel free to panic it up, Bulls fans, but not too much.
Best (Lowest) Defensive Rating: Golden State Warriors
We meet again.
This meet-and-greet isn't particularly surprising. The Warriors have been an elite defensive squad for two years. They're only receiving more attention now because Bogut is healthy and, most notably, Green continues to bust up opposing offenses everywhere.
Green is even emerging as a favorite for Defensive Player of the Year, an honor no perimeter-oriented defender has earned in over 10 years.
Writing for Fox Sports, Fred Katz does a nice job of explaining why Green could buck that trend:
"[Green] is the most versatile defender in the league, able to man the post and then the perimeter, sometimes even on the same possessions. His talent comes out most when he plays teams with dominant point guard-power forward combinations, like what you'll find with the Los Angeles Clippers or Trail Blazers. When the Warriors do all that switching and Green doesn't miss a beat, you know he's a special player, especially when you see him guard Chris Paul and Blake Griffin on back-to-back possessions.
"
Combine Green's five-position versatility with Harrison Barnes' lateral quickness, Andre Iguodala's asphyxiating on-ball pressure, Thompson's reads on passes and dribble drives, Curry's calculated risk-taking and Kerr's switch-happy designs, and you have an impenetrable fortress.
You have Golden State's disruptive defense.
Worst (Highest) Defensive Rating: Minnesota Timberwolves
Three out of the five "Worst" categories belong to the Timberwolves. You know what that means.
Monopoly!
Ricky Rubio still knows how to generate steals, Zach LaVine may someday be the defensive equal of John Wall, Andrew Wiggins projects as a versatile wing guardian, and Dieng is a serviceable rim protector. But aside from them, the Timberwolves don't yet have the personnel necessary to put a foundation in place.
Keeping the ebbing Garnett around should help enhance the defensive culture. He has a "defend with enthusiasm or you'll have to cut my lawn with a pair of toenail clippers" vibe about him. But until Minnesota's youngsters become veterans and the second unit's transgressions are addressed in full, this will remain a team light on defensive execution.
Really, this is just a fancy way of saying Wiggins better hurry up and enter the All-Defensive conversation soon.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise cited and are accurate heading into games on April 1.
