Ball Hogs?

It's easy to tell how many possessions a team has in a given game or given season (just ask Basketball Value). A more interesting question is how many possessions each individual player on the floor is responsible for and what percentage of team possessions is taken up by each player (in other words, who hogs the ball).

The way I see it, a possession ends in one of four ways: (1) a made FG, (2) a missed FG that is rebounded by the opponent, (3) some made FTs, (4) some missed FTs that are rebounded by the opponent, and (5) a turnover. A player gets individual credit for taking a possession when he causes any of these events. I came up with a formula that approximates possessions based on this (the formula also splits credit for a possession when an assist is involved).

The Nuggets had 8279 possessions on offense over the course of this past season. Based on my formula, here is how they were allocated individually:

Allen Iverson...........1977
Carmelo Anthony.........1687
Marcus Camby.............787
J.R. Smith...............734
Kenyon Martin............726
Linas Kleiza.............698
Anthony Carter...........697
Eduardo Najera...........408
Yakouba Diawara..........144
Chucky Atkins............126
Nene Hilario..............99
Bobby Jones...............77
Von Wafer.................44
Steven Hunter.............35
Taureen Green.............12

This only tells part of the story. One can also calculate a usage rate, which is the percentage of possessions a player uses while he is on the court. Obviously, a "normal" usage rate is 20% (if the team split its possessions exactly equally among all five players on the court). No team works this way in the real world, especially if the team has two superstars who use a large percentage of possessions.

Here are the usage rates for the Nuggets last season:

Carmelo Anthony...........28.9
Allen Iverson.............27.7
J.R. Smith................24.5
Nene Hilario..............18.3
Linas Kleiza..............17.7
Anthony Carter............17.0
Chucky Atkins.............17.0
Kenyon Martin.............16.2
Steven Hunter.............14.4
Marcus Camby..............13.6
Yakouba Diawara...........12.7
Eduardo Najera............11.8

Again, these numbers represent the percentage of possessions a player uses while he is on the court. That is why Steven Hunter can have a higher number than Marcus Camby, who obviously plays significantly more.

It is amazing that only three Nuggets have usage rate higher than 20. This is because such a large percentage of plays are used by 'Melo and AI. When both of them are on the court, they use a combined 56.5 percent of the available possessions. This does not leave much for everyone else.

Now that we know how many possessions each player accounts for individually, we can calculate how efficiently each player uses his allocated possessions. I do that by calculating how many points a player accounts for and divide it by how many possessions he uses.

Here are the individual offensive efficiencies for the Nuggets players last season (points produced per 100 possessions):

Linas Kleiza.............116.87
J.R. Smith...............115.93
Allen Iverson............114.19
Carmelo Anthony..........111.23
Eduardo Najera...........110.93
Kenyon Martin............110.62
NUGGETS AVERAGE..........109.60
LEAGUE AVERAGE...........106.96
Yakouba Diawara..........106.34
Bobby Jones..............104.43
Anthony Carter............99.92
Marcus Camby..............98.89
Chucky Atkins.............97.70
Steven Hunter.............96.61
Taureen Green.............91.58
Nene Hilario..............84.94
Von Wafer.................59.81

It is mildly surprising that Linas Kleiza is the most efficient Nuggets player on offense. Three point shooters often look really good under this system because they have many possessions where they generate three points (a 300.00 rating). Also, he uses a relatively low percentage of possessions (17.7). It is not necessarily the case that Kleiza would maintain this efficiency if he used a higher percentage of possessions, because in that case, it would be likely that the defense would focus on him.

AI's numbers are remarkable. Defenses prepare for him, he uses a large percentage of possessions, and he averages over 7 points per 100 possessions better than the average NBA player. Needless to say, he is very valuable for this exact reason.

It is interesting to note that two of the Nuggets starters are well below average on offense (Camby and Carter). This probably helps explain why it is easier to defend the AI-Melo duo. Defenses can basically ignore two players and focus on the superstars. This is why the Nuggets lineups with shooters (Smith, Najera, and Kleiza) are significantly better on offense.