Digging in The Data: More NBA Stats That Stand Out
We're back searching for those sweet, sweet statistics
Woah! If you had told me two weeks ago that my NBA advanced stats piece Picking Cherries would become my most popular Substack to date, I would have said… “Okay.”
Because you all loved it so much, I will do it… again. Right now. With more stats, though. Different stats. Cooler stats that you’ve never even heard of. And a different name. But the idea is the same. Raw fuckin’ data or whatever I said last time.
Trae Young’s Passing Might Be More Impressive Than We Think
Or way less impressive… it all depends on your outlook. And isn’t that the beauty of this life after all?
Trae Young, as you may know, is averaging a league-best 12.2 assists per game, which would be the most in a season in about three decades. Somewhat stunningly, Young is doing that while passing the ball about 16 fewer times than Nikola Jokic — who passes the ball about 82 times to Young’s 66, and who is second in the league at 10.2 assists per game.
Young is even further ahead in potential assists at 21.5, meaning about 32% of passes that Trae Young makes are potential assists. Is that outrageous volume and efficiency, coupled with a player who is masterful at finding open players? Or is Young only making passes he thinks can be translated into assists?
I’m siding with outrageous volume and efficiency. Because even if Young does make sure his passes are going to a teammate with a chance to score… isn’t that kind of the goal of passing the ball? To help your teammates score?
Lovely pass here.
I will concede that assists don’t tell the full story of a player’s passing profile. Some wonderful passers don’t have huge assist numbers, while some average passers have inflated assist numbers because their teammates make shots.
But the Hawks can’t shoot for shit (24th in 3PT%) so Young blowing everyone out of the water in assists is astonishing no matter how you slice it. He’s a top-tier creator and a top-tier passer so of course most of his passes turn into potential assists — he also averages 16.0 drives per game, most resulting in a lob or a kick-out for a three-point attempt. This is a special passing season from Young.
Brandon Miller Commands Your Attention
Pay attention to Brandon Miller or else I’ll freak out… I’m serious, dude. Watch Charlotte Hornets basketball or I’m going to melt down right here.
Has the collective basketball fan world ever been more wrong about a draft prospect? Hugo the Hornet saw Hell when Charlotte drafted Brandon Miller over Scoot Henderson which was instantly the right decision and about 1.5 years in looks like one of the better Draft decisions of the decade.
Miller is averaging 22.1 points per game and has scored 20-plus in 12 straight games including four games of 30-plus. Bucket.
Even in an inflated scoring era, a 21 year-old putting up 20-plus a night on anything close to average efficiency (55% true shooting) without a real point guard or any other real scorers around him deserves props.
I must elucidate just how bad this Hornets roster is without LaMelo Ball. Outside of Miller, the best scorer on this team might be TRE MANN. And I hold nothing but goodwill in my heart toward Mann, who’s gotten his career on track in Charlotte……… butyouknowwhatImeanright?
Anyway, Miller’s ability to create for himself bodes extremely well for a future that will include at least one All-NBA selection. I’m that high on Miller. He’s already a pretty good wing and he’s gotten there in spite of his franchise, not because of it. To be pretty good at this juncture of his career is rare for people not named, like, Anthony Edwards.
Super tough.
CraftedNBA (a great site, by the way) has Brandon Miller in the 79th percentile of its “creation” metric which measures how well a player creates for others, and in the 90th percentile of “shooting quality” which attempts to measure a player’s shooting ability by combining a whole mess of shooting stats. His counting stats haven’t caught up to how good of a player he is, but they will.
In three years when Charlotte either builds a real roster or trades Brandon Miller somewhere that has one — probably door #2 — everyone is going to pretend like he came out of nowhere, but the growth is already underway. It’s just happening in Basketball Hell— can we officially pass that title to Charlotte?
Denver Has Sped Up… Does it Matter?
When you have the greatest half-court basketball player ever on your roster, there’s not much incentive to speed up. So, in recent years, Denver hasn’t. The Nuggets have followed a doctrine of patience, using their deliberate, basketball-genius center Nikola Jokic as a half-court offensive hub to create opportunities for himself and his teammates.
That worked wonders, too. Denver won the NBA Finals in 2023 while playing the sixth-slowest pace in the NBA.
So far, the 2024-25 season has included a stark change in play style from the Nuggets. After five straight seasons finishing in the bottom 10 in pace, Denver has hit the turbo button. The Nuggets are currently fifth in pace and first in fast break points (19.3). But has speeding up on offense benefitted the Nuggets?
Not really — but I get why they’re trying it. Denver has celebrated its yearly tradition of letting important players leave in free agency too many times, and now its roster is… a little thin. Theoretically, pushing the pace can cover up for some offensive deficiencies, and while the Nuggets aren’t deficient, they don’t have nearly the cache of weapons they did in years past.
Denver’s starting five is still really good (+12.5 net rating) now with Christian Braun instead of KCP at the two guard, and the team is seventh in offense rating so scoring hasn’t been a problem — but it was ranked in the top six the past five seasons so things haven’t gotten better, they’ve just gotten… different.
Denver is also 20th in points per possession in transition (and fourth in transition possessions) so this team hasn’t been a revelation on the break.
But again, seventh-ranked offense is fine. Good, actually! Nineteenth-ranked defense… not as good.
What I’m Listening To: Shabaka Hutchings
The new project from Shabaka is so damn good. Pandering to me with woods is going to work every time.