Archive for the 'Trivia' Category

As if Monday's post wasn't enough, we're back for another painful Cleveland history lesson courtesy of SI.com's Zach Lowe:

"Has any team finished last in both offensive and defensive efficiency? [...] Cavs now in danger of pulling off this double."

During the era in which we can apply the official possessions formula, two NBA teams can claim the unfortunate distinction of finishing last in both offensive rating & defensive rating in the same season:

Of course, that's just since 1974. If we use my pre-1974 possessions estimator, the list doubles in size:

How close are the 2011 Cavaliers, then? They're already dead last in offense, with a 0.9 pts/100 poss. cushion between them and #29 Milwaukee. They're also 28th in defense, fractionally ahead of #29 Toronto and 0.4 pts/100 poss. in front of last-place Phoenix. So it's certainly going to be possible for them to overtake (undertake?) the Suns before the season is over. Here's how they stack up against the other teams listed above:

What was the best run ever for your favorite team? What was the worst stretch of seasons? Let's take a look at the raw numbers in terms of NBA winning percentage over an x-year span (including our regressed 2011 WPcts):

Best & Worst 2 Years

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Last week we had a question that I wanted to get to, but didn't have a chance until today. David wrote:

"After seeing LeBron drop 44 and Wade drop 34 in the game today, I was wondering when was the last time two players on the same team both scored 40+?"

Our box score database goes back to 1986-87 -- 1991 for the playoffs -- so we have three games on hand where two teammates scored 40+ points in the same game (and oddly enough, two took place in the postseason):

• Utah at Houston, May 5, 1995. Facing elimination in Game 4 of the 1995 West quarters, the Rockets got exactly the kind of performance they envisioned when they acquired Clyde Drexler to pair with Hakeem Olajuwon. Glide dropped 41, Dream poured in 40, and Houston dominated 123-106. Two nights later, Olajuwon & Drexler combined for 64 points to put Utah away, and they went on to power the team's 2nd consecutive NBA title bid that June.
• Chicago at Indiana, February 18, 1996. For the Bulls, this was just one of 72 victories in a landmark 1996 campaign that still stands as the most successful in NBA history. Fresh off the All-Star break, Chicago took their 36th win in their last 39 games when Michael Jordan (44 points) and Scottie Pippen (40) combined for more than 76% of the team's scoring output all by themselves.
• Philadelphia at Indiana, May 6, 2000. This time, Indiana was on the giving end of the scoring outbursts, as Jalen Rose and Reggie Miller each tallied 40 apiece during a 108-91 win over the Sixers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semis. The Pacers would go on to take the series in 6 games, eventually advancing to the NBA Finals before running into a Laker buzz saw.

Since there's a certain primacy to players who required fewer "ballots" for Hall of Fame induction, here is everyone in the Basketball Hall of Fame who played in the NBA/ABA/BAA, sorted by the fewest years between their final NBA/ABA/BAA season and the HoF class in which they were inducted:

This is not necessarily a list of players with the shortest time between retirement from basketball and HoF induction. In most cases, "retirement from the NBA/ABA/BAA" and "retirement from basketball" are the same thing, but it's possible for a player to delay his eligibility by playing in a minor league after retiring from the "majors".

¹ - Cousy initially retired in 1963, which would have made him eligible for the Class of 1969. However, he returned to the NBA with the Royals for 7 games in 1969-70. After re-retiring, he maintained his earlier eligibility from 1969.
² - Inducted before HoF established the 5-year waiting period.
³ - Baylor played 9 games before retiring early in the 1971-72 season, so for the Hall of Fame's purposes he was eligible in 1977.

I was curious about which seasons saw the most Hall of Famers in action, so I set up a query to count how many HOFers (inducted as players) were active in a given season, both in the NBA and the NBA/ABA/BAA combined:

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From Sporcle, here's a quiz for everyone who fondly remembers the NBA of the nineties:

Can you name the players who made the All-NBA team in the 1990's?

I was browsing the stats this morning when I noticed that Ron Artest is currently using 14.7% of the Lakers' possessions when he's on the court, the 19th-lowest possession-usage rate of any qualified player in the NBA. Before joining L.A., Artest was accustomed to usage rates well over the league average of 20%, which had me wondering how Artest's decline in usage compares to other players who changed roles at varying times in the their careers.

It turns out that Artest is currently on pace to be one of only 5 players in NBA history (since 1952, at least) to have one qualified season with a possession rate of at least 25% and another with a rate of 15% of less:

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In early November, we had a reader point out that James Posey & James Jones were having historic seasons -- namely, the two Jameses were 1-2 all-time in terms of the highest single-season percentage of shot attempts coming from beyond the 3-point arc. A month and a half later, I thought we'd check in once again on that pair, to see if they're still on a collision course with history.

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This is sort of a random data dump/trivia post, but this old Doug Drinen post about NFL teams' records vs. fellow playoff participants inspired me to run a similar query for NBA top-4 seeds' records against other top-4 seeds (in either conference). Since the NBA expanded to 16 playoff teams in 1984, here are the top-4 seeds with the best records vs. their fellow top-4 seeds:

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As a follow-up to my review of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2, Wolverine Studios president Gary Gorski has generously offered to give one lucky BBR reader a free copy of his game. And since he asked that I come up with a contest for the giveaway, I thought this would be a great chance to revisit our old friends at Sporcle...

A significant part of DDS:PB2 is devoted to testing your skills as an executive, so I want you to name every NBA team's current General Manager in under 4 minutes. You can re-take the quiz as many times as you want, but starting the moment this post goes live at 11:00 AM EST , the first person to email me a screenshot of their form with all of the answers correct, within the allotted time, wins the game.

On your marks... get set... Go!!

UPDATE: We have a winner! This contest is closed.