Initially, I embraced the narrative that Jokić and Murray just ran out of gas, and that resting the starters more effectively may have been a difference maker. The DNVR crew has touched on this if I recall correctly. They've definitely stressed Denver's strength in running a limited crew into the playoffs vs. the effectiveness of the bench. TrueHoop kinda dug in on this topic. I'd argue that the TrueHoop crew at least suggested that the Knicks and Nuggets both went bust by running their starters into the ground. Either way, I think it's fair to say both Thidodeau and Malone have a rep for riding the starters and failing to develop their rookies effectively.
I wanted to see if I could find some data to back this up.
There's a statistical formula used in economics that examines distribution of income. It's called the Gini coefficient. I used this formula to take a look at distribution of minutes across the regular season and the playoffs. Basically, you run the formula on a set of Minutes Played data and you get a number between 0 and 1. The closer that number is to 0, the more evenly distributed your playing time. I think it's fair to describe this stat as Concentration of Minutes or Minutes Depth. I'll call it MD for convenience.
This is the regular season distribution. There's a trend. If you play a tighter crew, you win more games (seems obvious). Also notice the grouping on the Nuggets and Wolves.
I also ran the formula on playoffs series' into the second round. Here I took the MD of the losing team in a series and subtracted it from that of the winner. The resulting 'Discrepancy' is the difference in Minutes Depth between the winner and loser. 'RS discrepancy' is that same calculation across the regular season for the teams in question. A negative number indicates a winning team that spread playing time more equitably.
I don't see much of a correlation here. In the first round the teams that relied more heavily on a tighter lineup are the teams that were successful. In the second round, it's split evenly.
Just one part of the picture, and certainly debatable. I'd say the biggest issue is that the data set is small, particularly for the playoffs. I go into more detail here if you want to dive deeper or check my math. I have a Google Sheets Script that calculates the Gini Coefficient across a set of minutes if anyone is interested.
Genuinely surprised me though, that there doesn't appear to be a sharp decline when a team concentrates minutes on a small set of players. There is a clear correlation between Minutes Played and injury rate in the NBA. And you'd expect that just one extra injury could have a massive effect on win totals. My theory here is that teams have actually just become very good at understanding just how far they can push their crew, and a more durable team is actually a much more dominant factor in success.
by Select-Resource4275
4 Comments
What in the math? 🧐
Jokic played 39.5 minutes per playoff game during our championship run. He played 40.2 in our playoff run this season.
The bigger issue was his total games played in those season; 69 in 22-23 and 79 for 23-24.
Comparing his playoff stats the past two seasons, they are almost identical. The only noticeable fall off was his 3pt % falling from 46% down to 26% during those playoff runs.
He didn’t struggle from 3 during either of those regular season (.383 vs .359). The surprising fall off this post season was undoubtedly due to fatigue.
Malone had a good season overall, but he really needed to step in and rest the starters the last 10 games. It’s easy to see this in hindsight, but at the time they valued “being hot” a little too early and Jokic ran out of gas. Murray also might have entered the post season healthy if he only played 1/2 of his games during those finals few weeks.
Hard to get a high GINI when your starter has a midseason injury
Bruh they played until June last year and Reggie Jackson played every game this season.