Mailbag! East vs. West, Mikal vs. OG, more

Photo by Winslow Townson/Getty Images

Got a few pretty good mailbag questions from various sources over the last week or so. We’re going to dig right in without much in the way of a preamble.

From Robert Allen: Wondering how the very top of the Eastern Conference compares with the top teams in the West, in your view. The conferences look so imbalanced overall but the Cavs and Celtics really looked good last [week].

I was all ready to answer this question with something like, “Actually, it’s the middle of the West that’s better than the middle of the East, and the top of each conference is pretty close.” Then I looked a bit deeper into it.

The West has six of the top 10 in SRS (Basketball-Reference’s schedule-adjusted version of net rating), along with five of the top seven. OKC is actually ahead of both Cleveland and Boston. HOUSTON is almost dead-even with the two top teams in the East, thanks to the schedule adjustment. You can also look at things like Houston, Golden State, Memphis, and Dallas all currently under-performing relative to their point differential, while Cleveland and Boston have each over-performed, and use that to say the gap is even larger than it looks.

One thing I find really interesting, though, is that the top of the East is just smoking teams offensively. Cleveland, New York, and Boston are the top three in offensive rating by a mile. The Celtics, in third place, are 3.5 points per 100 possessions clear of the Mavericks in fourth. And those three teams are not just the top three offenses in the league. Cleveland is No. 2 all time in ORtg+, New York is No. 3, and Boston is No. 11. Three teams from one season, from one conference, in the top 11 out of the 1,350 team-seasons since the ABA-NBA merger prior to the 1976-77 season!

It's somewhat similar on the defensive side of the ball with three teams head and shoulders above the rest, but one of those teams (Orlando) is from the East. And the Magic (No. 13), like the Thunder (No. 1) and Rockets (No. 3) have a top-15 all-time DRtg+ mark. (The Thunder have yet to have Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein active for the same game, by the way. Those two and Alex Caruso have combined to make only 26 of their 54 possible appearances. And OKC still has the single-best defense since the merger. I am right about very few things; but I was right about this.)

But here’s the thing: You absolutely need a really, really good offense to win these days. And the clear-cut best offenses reside in the East. Maybe that means something. Maybe, at least among the elite teams, the East and West are closer in quality than it might appear.

From MTN on Bluesky: Does the decline in free-throw rate coincide with the increase in three-point attempt rate?

This came as a tangential point to a discussion about

Tom Haberstroh

’s Yahoo! piece about “shot deserts” and what can be done about the way shot distribution (if not the way it’s creation) has been homogenized around the league.

I brought up the fact that I didn’t necessarily think “too many threes” is a problem, and several people added in that it’s actually the parade to the free-throw line that’s a bigger issue. That’s when I noted that, actually, free-throw rates are down significantly in recent years. The same is true of free throws per game, even though games are now played at a much faster pace.

Unsurprisingly, MTN is right. Three-point rate and free-throw rate are pretty clearly inversely correlated. Fouls are much more likely to occur on two-point shots, so this makes intuitive sense.

I think there are several inflection points to consider here:

• After the Rockets won the title in both 1994 and 1995, three-point rates began to rise. There was a massive drop after the Bulls and Jazz met in the 1997 Finals, though, with the 1998 season having a three-point rate 5.3% (!!!!) lower than the prior season.

• In 2002, Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce combined to shoot over 14 threes per game for the Celtics, and the leaguewide three-point rate jumped.

• In 2008, Stan Van Gundy took over the Magic, and leaguewide three-point rate jumped again, before stabilizing in the 22% range for a few years. Free-throw rate also took its first really big dip in 2008 after it had been ticking up for a few years starting in 2002 with the introduction of the defensive three seconds, zone defense, and hand-checking rules.

• After the Heat won the 2012 title with their small-ball, pace-and-space unit, there was another significant jump in three-point rate (above 24% for the first time). Free-throw rates also declined by 3% from 2011 to 2013.

• After the Warriors won the title in 2015 and then especially after they won 73 games in 2016, there were massive jumps in three-point rate. (It went from 27.3% to 28.5% to 31.6% over that three-year span and has been spiking ever since.) Three-point rate surpassed free-throw rate for the first time in 2016.

• After the Celtics won the title last year with a three-point rate in the high-40s, there has been yet another jump to start this season. (A 2.7% rise year-over-year is pretty significant, and topped only by the 3.1% jump from 2016 to 2017.) Interestingly, free-throw rate is up nearly 1% at the same time.

I think a fascinating thing to watch will be whether it’s possible for both three-point attempt rate and free-throw attempt rate to rise at the same time, as has been the case so far this year.

From TwoWayGame in the comments section: Another theory for defending point guards with taller players: On a pick and roll switch a taller defender would be better equipped to defend the taller roll man.

This theory turns out to be spot on — at least in terms of it identifying the defensive strategy on ball screens. Switch rate on point guard-initiated pick and rolls skyrockets in pretty close correlation with defender height. (The correlation coefficient is 0.842, which is incredibly strong.)

Whether that means it’s an underlying reason for the bigger defender strategy in the first place, we can’t really know for sure without talking to teams directly — but it does make sense. There’s a reason we hear it on broadcasts all the time.

From several people on Twitter, Bluesky, G-chat, and especially my text messages: What’s up with Mikal Bridges? (And what do you think of the divergence between Bridges and OG Anunoby since they each arrived in New York?)

When Mikal was shooting something like 70% from mid-range a week or so ago, I was less concerned about the answer to this question. Now that he’s dipped back down to a somewhat normal range, his career-low 30.8% mark from three is more noticeable, and more noticeably damaging.

I don’t think it’s entirely about this, but I did notice earlier this week that his conversion rate in the second and fourth quarters is about 7.5% lower than it is in the first and third. The reason I think that’s relevant is because, for some reason, Bridges’ regular rotation sees him play the entire first and third, then stay out there to start the second and fourth quarters. To say this is rare would be the understatement of the century. NOBODY does this, and for good reason. It needs to stop right now.

That said, even his first- and third-quarter shooting is below his career norms. He’s around 34% from deep in those periods. As a 37% career shooter, though, that’s basically just someone having a little bit of an off stretch. I do think the way his minutes are being doled out is a contributing factor.

I don’t think they’re a factor, though, in his calamitous free-throw rate — he hasn’t gone to the line in SEVEN consecutive games and has taken just 11 foul shots all year — or his defensive decline. I have no idea what’s going on with the free throw stuff. Just stopping fading away in the lane and go up strong, I guess, is the solution. But his seeming inability to navigate screens is rapidly becoming more concerning than the shooting. He and Anunoby are supposed to be one of the best defensive wing duos in the NBA, if not the single-best. And only one of those two guys is holding up his end of the bargain right now.

He certainly slacked off on that end of the floor in Brooklyn last season while carrying a larger offensive burden than he could handle; but his usage rate is now down 18.9%, which is higher than it was in Phoenix by several percentage points, but lower by nearly the same amount than it was in Brooklyn. He should be able to ramp the defense back up to where it was. He just hasn't. And to me, at least, it doesn’t appear to be effort-related. It’s about execution and a general inattention to detail. And that’s more concerning, actually.

We're in essentially the opposite situation with Anunoby. His 19.3% usage rate is pretty much exactly where it was in his final 2.5 seasons with Toronto. He's just shooting it better than ever. I think that's at least in part because he has become almost exclusively a play-finisher this year.

For his career coming into this season, 57.7% of his two-point baskets were assisted. This year, that number is all the way up at 80%. (He’s also averaging almost exactly 2 dunks per game. His previous career high was just south of 1.5 per game. More dunks is always a good thing.) And he has yet to make a self-created three this season, with his 100% assisted rate a smidge higher than the 94.2% mark he had coming into this year.

Shocking absolutely nobody, the conversion rate of potentially-assisted shots is higher than it is for self-created looks, and OG is taking advantage of that. He’s having his best two-point shooting season since his rookie year (during which he took only 149 twos; he's already at 136 this season), and his best three-point shooting season save for the 2021-22 campaign when he played only 43 games.

He’s also been able to not just keep up his defense, but play better on that end than ever before. He is smothering not just his man, but entire offensive units at times. It hasn’t translated to the Knicks’ team defensive rating mostly because they cannot protect the rim at all, and because they’re gotten some bad opponent three-point shooting luck. But the dude has been outrageously good on that end and figures to be heavily in the mix for both All-Defense and one of the two non-Victor Wembanyama spots on Defensive Player of the Year ballots.