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12-20-2013, 10:35 PM
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Fun With SportVU: Time of Possession
 Image by Doug88888 via FlickrIn today’s installment of Fun With SportVU, we’re taking a look at a slightly different definition of usage. Usage rate is a fine statistic, but it has one overwhelming flaw in my opinion: it only captures who finishes possessions. That’s certainly an acceptable way of approaching the subject, but I think most agree that it would be nice if we had numbers for what goes on during the course of a play. To some extent, Tuesday’s passing numbers were related to that concept, especially when viewed through the lens of how many touches per Possession a player gets. But we can get even deeper into the numbers, thanks to the SportVU database. The player tracking data includes a Time of Possession metric, measured in minutes, which is (obviously) easily converted into Time of Possession measured in seconds. Using the per Possession numbers, we can then consider a couple of interesting measurements: How long does a player have the ball in his hands per touch? Per possession? With that in mind, I bring you two new metrics today: Time of Possession per possession, and Time of Possession per touch. While closely linked, they differ e**ugh that both are worth investigating. We’re using the same data set from the last two installments, the 116 players who’d played at least 2/3 of their team’s games and at least 27.9 minutes per game as of Sunday. To the numbers! For more methodology **tes, check out part 1 and part 2 of this week’s SportVU posts, and the spreadsheet for today’s data is available here. First, a quick look at the raw Time of Possession per game leaderboard, as well as those bringing up the rear. Top 25 Raw Time of Possession  Absolutely ** surprises on this list. The players who have the ball in their hands the most in terms of Time are the ball handlers of the league who play a lot. And that brings up an interesting point about quantitative analysis: it’s **t always about finding things that debunk common sense. Parsing the numbers often results in conclusions that match up With what we’d assume to be true or what our eyes tell us. That’s **t a bad thing, though, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the analysis is a waste of time. Being able to empirically confirm what one thinks to be true is valuable in itself. It shows that one’s thought processes are effective and accurate, and that the eyes behind the eye test are looking at the right things. Bottom 25 Raw Time of Possession  An interesting mix of names shows up on the list of players who have the ball in their hands the least amount of time. While this group is predominantly made up of power forwards and centers (15 of the 25 players), there’s a healthy number of wing players as well. Guys like J.J. Redick, Jared Dudley and P.J. Tucker tend to be catch-and-shoot types when they do get the ball, so they don’t hold onto it for very long. And when you’re Corey Brewer, there’s **t a whole lot of Time that elapses between leaking out, catching a perfect Kevin Love outlet pass and putting it in the basket. *Keep an eye on DeAndre Jordan. We’ll be seeing him quite a bit in the upcoming rankings. Since we have Time of Possession for each player, and the player tracking data makes touches per game readily available, it’s a simple matter to figure out Time of Possession per touch — which is to say how long a player has the ball (holding it, dribbling it, taunting Jason Terry With it) each Time that he ends up With it. Top 25 Time of Possession Per Touch  Once again, it’s a list of the ball handlers of the league. There are multiple takeaways from this list, though. The median average for Time per touch for ball handlers is 4.5 seconds; the ball handler With the lowest Time per touch, Avery Bradley, still has the ball in his hands for longer than any power forward or center **t named LeBron James. Perhaps we need to rethink the term “ball stopper,” too. Though they’re actively initiating the offense in most cases, point guards are the guys who truly have the ball the most when they touch it. Time per front court touch is available on the shared spreadsheet, though I’m wary of drawing too firm of conclusions from it because it’s **t a true measure of the Time of Possession for players in the front court, given that it uses total Time of Possession as the numerator. But the numbers for Time per front court touch are roughly the same as Time per total touches. With that data, we can glean some idea of how long it takes for a point guard to get into a team’s actions. It’s probably **t a coincidence that the point guards who are more playmaker than shot taker (Chris Paul and Tony Parker, namely) tend to have the ball for a shorter period of Time per touch than, say, Russell Westbrook. Those big guys, on the other hand, don’t hold onto the ball for very long once they get it: Bottom 25 Time of Possession Per Touch  Of all the data in all the world — or at least the data I’ve played With this week — this is my favorite part of the set. And it’s all because of DeAndre Jordan and his hot potato tendencies. I mean, really? 1 second per touch on average? We all k**w that DeAndre doesn’t have the ball for very long when he touches it; it’s either an alley-oop, an inbound pass after a made basket, a touch pass to Blake Griffin or a tur**ver. But 1 second per touch on average seems almost impossible. Even when we k**w something to be true, having a measurement of just how little DeAndre holds the ball can make for a fun conclusion. Once again, this list is a congregation of big guys and wing shooters. If Kyle Korver gets the ball, he’s getting rid of it almost immediately — and chances are it’s going into the hoop. The most surprising name on the list, to me anyway, is Dirk **witzki. Sure, Dirk’s a guy who can get his shot whenever he wants it, but as a superstar offensive player, it seems like he holds the ball a little longer than 1.4 seconds per touch. There’s likely a study within a study here, looking at the correlation between Time per touch and effective field goal percentage. For those curious, Dwight Howard just missed the bottom 25, at 1.62 seconds per touch. That’s probably a little long for Dwight; With more robust data, we might be able to see that when he catches the ball and immediately makes a move to the basket, he’s more effective than when he holds onto it for 2 or more seconds. Of course, some players touch the ball more often on a per Possession basis than others. Luckily, we can measure Time of Possession per possession, too. Top 25 Time Per Possession  A familiar list of point guards. The striking thing about this group isn’t the names, or the positions they play. It’s the numbers. To think that some point guards have the ball for more than a quarter of the shot clock is fascinating. 18 point guards have the ball for over 5 seconds per possession. It truly is a point guard’s league. Bottom 25 Time Per Possession  When you have a ball-dominant point guard, you probably aren’t going to get the ball for very long. Chris Paul has the ball in his hands more often than most anybody; as a result, his teammates don’t hold it for very long. 3 of the bottom 25 players in Time per Possession are Clippers starters (at least, when they’re fully healthy). Also of **te: while a lot of the big guys in the league appear on this list, and the median average Time per Possession for a big guy is 1.17 seconds, there are three centers who have the ball for at least 1.5 seconds per possession: DeMarcus Cousins, Tim Duncan and Joakim **ah. Once again, you can look at the data for yourself on this sortable spreadsheet. Tomorrow: What does all this data mean? 
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