Inspired by a comment from John earlier this week, I dove into the Four Factors worksheet last night. After the jump we'll slice and dice the advanced stats to see how the home court advantage really effects the Sixers.
You can check out the full
Four Factors worksheet here. Two trends jump out at me over the past 20 games or so. The Sixers are taking extremely good care of the ball. They've had a turnover rate of less than 0.100 in 10 of their last 25, which is superb. On the other hand, their defensive rebounding has been putrid, and only gotten worse. They've grabbed more than 75% of available defensive rebounds in only 3 of their last 13.
Now let's break this down by home and away games:
As you can see, the home court advantage doesn't really show itself on the offensive end (I guess bad shooting is bad shooting, no matter where you play). On defense, however, there's a night-and-day difference. I'm not really sure why.
They hold teams to 3% lower eFG at home, they force more turnovers and their fouls are down a tick as well. You'd think that maybe they get better calls at home, but the difference in the FT rate isn't that much, certainly not enough to warrant the other improvements. I suppose it could be a pride thing, who knows.
I put some raw stats in there as well, the Sixers average 12% more assists at home than on the road, which supports
this article from TrueHoop about the subjectivity (therefore, diminished value) of the stat.
The ultimate difference between the Sixers at home and the Sixers on the road is score differential. They're +4.4 at home, per game. -3.0 on the road. The points allowed differential is amazing, 100.3 ppg on the road to only 93.3 at home. If they could sustain their home point allowed on the road as well, they'd have the 3rd best scoring defense in the league.
Here's
a primer on the four factors, if you're interested.
If you're into some money mathematics,
check out this article from Basketball Prospectus (h/t True Hoop). Kevin Pelton attempts to gauge how much each team has spent, per win. Basically, which teams are getting the most for their money. The Sixers are the 11th most efficient spenders this season, even witht their most-expensive asset on the shelf. According to Pelton, they've spent $722,879 per win.
If you take the longer view, 4 seasons total, the Sixers' number jumps up to $1,149,942 per win, and places them 26th out of 30 teams.
Over the four-year period, the New York Knicks have spent $3,824,774 per win. And the Clippers are reportedly talking with Isiah. Awesome.
We need to keep Isiah in the East.
You are right there. Preferably in our Division. Nothing like an easy 3-1 for the season.
There's a lot of nonsense going on with the clippers and talking to /hiring isiah could just be a publicity stunt with a 'no power' job because sterling is getting sued by Elgin Baylor who alleges, among other things, that sterling is a racist ass.
Supposedly the meeting with Isiah was at Dunleavy's behest and nothing really came of it - but the clippers are a mess - and since Sterling is more worried about profits than titles - Isiah doesn't really fit the bill
Is there any site that tracks 'shooting fouls' vs non shooting fouls - i wonder if maybe at home the ssixers are allowed to be more physical on the perimeter - but not so much act of shooting and thus the decreased foul rate doesn't impact the FT rate - be interesting to look at specific players home and away i.e. does Sam have a lower foul rate at home than on the road?
It's possible that less whistles on the perimeter could have something to do with it, but I think there would be a bigger disparity in the FT rate, no matter where the fouls occurred. They add up and you get into the penalty, eventually.