The Bulls have done well despite Derrick Rose's string of injuries this season. (Mark Halmas/Icon SMI)

Before the season, Will Carroll, SI.com’s resident injury expert, warned in this space against assuming that the lockout — and the resulting lack of training camp and compressed schedule — would lead to an increase in the number of injuries to NBA players. Injuries might well jump over last year’s level, Carroll wrote, but such a jump could stem from randomness or some other factor, and not the lockout. The NFL saw no increase in injuries during its lockout-impacted 2011 season, according to Carroll’s work.

Now that the season is almost over, Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus and a couple of researchers have put together an absolutely must-read post charting the number of games lost to injury so far this season. And guess what? Here’s Pelton:

Conventional wisdom has it that injuries are up this season because of the schedule and limited training camp, a notion for which I found some support in mid-January. With a handful of games remaining for each team, however, that no longer appears to be the case. There have been an average of 3.2 games lost to injury per scheduled game — that is, about three players are sitting out due to injury between the two teams in any given game. That’s actually down slightly from the average of 3.6 per game in 2010-11 and 3.4 in 2009-10. The average minutes lost per game (73.9) is closer to last season’s figure (74.3) and up from 2009-10 (73.3), but the numbers I’ve compiled simply don’t back up the notion that players are getting hurt more frequently.

There is much, much more over at Pelton’s full post, including:

• More details on the rate of injuries this season

• A handy chart of how many games and minutes (based on a player’s average minutes per game when healthy) each of the league’s 30 teams have missed due to injury over the last three seasons. The data here shows how the number of injuries among the same general roster of players can fluctuate wildly from one year to the next, though it also suggests one team has either discovered something about injury prevention or is on a long run of extraordinary good luck. Find out where your favorite team ranks. Read More…

Grant Hill has taken 84.6 percent of this threes (44 out of 52) from the corner this season, the highest percentage among players who have taken at least 50 threes. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Avery Bradley took six three-pointers against the Knicks on Tuesday night. All six came from one of the corner areas, and Bradley is now 18-of-28 (64.2 percent) on corner threes this season — and 1-of-15 on threes attempted from anywhere else. Bradley is thus quickly emerging as one of the league’s most specialized three-point shooters.

The corner three is a straight-on shot, and the three-point line from there is 18 inches closer to the hoop than anywhere else along the arc. Players shot about 39 percent on corner threes last season and 34 percent on all other threes, and limiting corner threes has a strong correlation to allowing fewer points per possession on defense.

The corner three is really its own shot, one so-so shooters can use to turn themselves into effective floor-spacers. Bradley’s early proficiency from the short corner inspired some curiosity on Twitter on Tuesday night about which other players rely heavily on the corner three in their individual perimeter attack.

Via NBA.com’s stats database, here’s a list of all players who have taken at least half their three-point attempts from the corners this season, with some slight fudging to include a couple of Rockets who miss the 50 percent barrier by a hair. (Note: We’re only looking at guys who have taken at least 50 threes this season.)

Grant Hill: 44 corner threes, 52 total three-point attempts (84.6 percent).

Dahntay Jones: 58/71 (81.6 percent);

Shawn Marion: 52/66 (78.8 percent)

Bobby Simmons:  40/53 (75.5 percent)

Quincy Pondexter: 47/65 (72.3 percent)

Corey Brewer: 83/116 (71.6 percent)

Ronnie Brewer: 49/69 (71 percent) Read More…

Kenny Smith said Dwight Howard has "put in his time" after seven seasons in Orlando. (John W. McDonough/SI)

Kenny Smith is making the media rounds today on behalf Coke Zero, which has a March Madness promotion in full swing. But this is an NBA blog, and we shoe-horned Smith into talking NBA with us, even though he made sure to mention the University of North Carolina — his alma mater, of course — as many times as possible. Here’s an edited transcript of our chat.

SI.com: What did you think of the controversy that ensued after LeBron James passed to Udonis Haslem on Miami’s final possession against Utah two weeks ago?

Smith: The controversy comes from the guy passing the ball, so it’s a little overrated. When the criticism comes to Kobe for not passing the ball, the whole thing becomes a little overrated. What I always want to see from LeBron is him saying, “I’m gonna make a play,” regardless of whether he’s passing or shooting. So my antenna kind of went up even more when he took the shot against Indiana [on Saturday], Miami got the rebound, and he basically just called for Dwyane Wade, saying, “You take it.” That was more of an alert for me.

Wade hit the game-winning shot, so maybe [LeBron] knows more than we do. But I look for him to make plays on the biggest stage. I just think the ball should be in his hands.

SI.com: If you were Pat Riley, would you trade LeBron for Dwight Howard?

Smith: No. No way. He’s the best basketball player in the world. Why would you trade him? Read More…

Tony Parker has reached a high speed of 20.9 miles per hour in one stretch of in-game sprinting. (Alissa Hollimon/NBAE via Getty Images)

There was a bit of predictable, snarky chuckling about this piece on the ESPN.com’s TrueHoop blog Wednesday that imagined an NBA in 2022 in which teams could track, in real-time, all sorts of things about a player’s physical state — various chemical levels, changes in vertical leap, decreases in running speed, etc.

We’re a ways off from the reality described in that piece, but the league is headed in that direction, and one the driving forces is a state-of-the-art in-arena camera system developed by STATS LLC. A half-dozen teams purchased and installed the system last season, and 10 are using it this season; the league over the All-Star break made noises about adopting it someday for all 30 teams. (The 10 teams, by the way: Houston, San Antonio, Boston, Minnesota, Milwaukee, New York, Washington, Toronto, Oklahoma City and Golden State.)

We’re only scratching the surface of what this thing can do, because it tracks every movement on the court to a very precise level. It can tell you how fast a player was moving on a certain possession, how far a player runs during a game, how much Jose Calderon’s shooting percentage declines when a defender is within X feet of him upon release, how high in the air the ball was when Kevin Love rebounded it, whether Kevin Durant shoots better after taking one dribble or four, which player’s passes are more likely to lead to open shots, and lots more. The system, once refined even more, will produce so much data that the real challenge will be sorting it in useful ways.

The folks at STATS have been kind enough to send along a few examples of the kinds of data they can shake out of the system, though of course the data they’ll send to media will not be the kind of thing the savvy clubs using the cameras would ever want to share. Still, it’s interesting. Read More…

The Knicks decided to not foul when they trailed by five with 35 seconds left in OT. (Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images

• The Knicks and Celtics played another nutty game on Sunday, and ESPN.com’s John Hollinger says several coaching decisions in crunch time went against basic probability rules, showing how analytics guys in some franchises are far from convincing their coaches to consistently apply math in real-time game situations. Most NBA stats folks I know agree coaches wait too long to begin fouling when they are trailing late in games. New York’s decision not to foul down by five with about 35 seconds left in overtime was mathematically ludicrous.

• Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer suggested a couple of months ago that the city deserved to host the 2013 All-Star Game in addition to this year’s, because the Dwight Howard trade talks had robbed the city of a pure All-Star hosting experience. Houston got the 2013 game, but Orlando is prepping to apply for the 2016 game, per Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. Can’t wait to spend a few more hours in traffic shuttling from one distant event to the next!

• A new book sheds some light on the largely unknown personality of Greg Oden. Read More…

Derrick Rose & Co. rank third in points per possession, up from 11th last year. (Heinz Kluetmeier/SI)

The second half of the season starts Tuesday night, and SI.com’s Ian Thomsen already has the scoop on the major questions that will define the next few weeks and months – Dwight Howard’s future, the championship race, the MVP battle, the direction of the league’s aging lions (Boston, San Antonio, the Lakers) and much more. Below are some other trends to watch.

One note: I won’t mention the Knicks or Spurs much here, since I’ve covered both extensively in the last two weeks.

Chicago’s offensive ascension: Can it last?

The Bulls were an average scoring team last season, and their inability to get buckets consistently against elite defenses in grind-it-out games made them a clear underdog to Miami in the Eastern Conference’s new alpha-dog rivalry. But this season, Chicago ranks third overall in points per possession, up from 11th last season, and it’s managed this despite uneven play from its front-line starters and long-term injuries to three key players — Derrick Rose, Luol Deng and Richard Hamilton.

The Bulls have also done this with the league’s easiest schedule, though one with more road games so far than all but one team (the Kings). The Bulls’ offense has a little more spice and variety than last season, but not as much as it featured over the first month of the season, when the Bulls were getting more of their offense in transition than all but the league’s fastest hares. The numbers have trended back toward the mean since mid-January, and the Bulls at their core remain dependent on Rose pick-and-rolls, shooters (Hamilton and Kyle Korver) coming off screens and monster offensive rebounding. They’re also taking fewer threes and more long twos this season, a (very small) reason for worry.

The Bulls especially need time to re-integrate Hamilton and sort of their rotation at shooting guard. Chicago has averaged about 5.5 points more points per 100 possessions with Hamilton on the floor this season, but he has logged just 341 minutes, and the playoffs will be here before you know it.

The early verdict here is encouraging, especially with both Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah coming off strong months of February.  But let’s see where this story goes against the very best defenses. Read More…

DeShawn Stevenson is shooting an abysmal 26 percent from the floor. (Jim O'Connor/US PRESSWIRE)

Everyone knows scoring is way down this season due to the lockout and the lack of preparation time it wrought. Teams are averaging five fewer points per 100 possessions in comparison to last season, an even bigger drop than most of us expected.

One small way to see that in action: the number of players getting rotation minutes despite shooting percentages that would normally banish them to bench-warmer status. Last season, only 28 players leaguewide logged 1,000 minutes — about 12 per game over a full 82-game season — and shot worse than 40 percent from the field, according to Basketball-Reference. Only seven of those players shot worse than 38 percent — Aaron Brooks, Travis Outlaw, C.J. Watson, Rudy Fernandez, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Kidd and (bringing up the rear, at 35.9 percent) Steve Blake.

It is very hard to help your team while shooting below 40 percent, especially if you shoot a decent amount. It’s possible to pull the trick if you’re an elite defender, a dead-eye three-point gunner who shoots more threes than twos, or a bulldog who gets to the line a ton. Combine the latter two skills, and you can be a very productive offensive player despite a low overall shooting percentage. Chauncey Billups has done it for years.

So far this season, a full 71 players — up from 27 last season, remember – have logged a minimum of 200 minutes and clanked their way to a field-goal percentage under 40 percent. That is to be expected, with shooting percentage league-wide down about two percentage points. But the sheer number of guys missing a ridiculous numbers of shots — and still getting minutes — surprised me.

Of those 71 players, 45 are shooting worse than 38 percent. Remember: Only seven guys played rotation-level minutes and managed to shoot so poorly last season. More than six times as many players fall into the sub-38 percent category as we near the one-third mark of the season. A full 18 of them are shooting worse than Blake did last season. John Salmons is shooting 34.5 percent in huge minutes. Shane Battier is shooting 33 percent and just 30.6 percent from deep. Kidd is shooting 28 percent (!) overall, and he’s not even the worst rotation-level shooter in the league. That would be DeShawn Stevenson, sitting at 26 percent, with exactly one two-point basket all year. Read More…

The Wizards parted ways with Flip Saunders after a 2-15 start. (Chris Szagola/Cal Sport Media)

• Flip Saunders, hired in 2009 to coach a veteran team on the (alleged) cusp of something, has been fired after a disastrous start in Washington. Sean Fagan, writing at Bullets Forever, on the links between the dismissals of Eddie Jordan (in 2008) and Saunders:

However, one salient point gets lost amidst all the chatter: neither coach was ever given the tools to succeed at his profession. Despite all the criticism that Jordan received for not playing his youngsters, he ran a complicated system that necessitated the drafting of players with high basketball IQ who could come in and contribute immediately. Instead, Jordan was supplied with a series of long shot projects and low-IQ players who needed excessive amounts of development on what was at the time a veteran team. How Jordan was supposed to develop Andray Blatche and Nick Young while also keeping the team competitive within his system of play would eventually (along with the injury to Gilbert Arenas) prove his undoing. Bones were thrown to Jordan by supplying him with Antonio Daniels and Darius Songalia, but neither an impact player nor a draftee with a high-IQ pedigree was ever supplied. Instead, “we got buckets, son.”

Ownership has changed, but this same lesson has borne out with Saunders.

• The final lasting image of Saunders in Washington, found in the video clip at the bottom of this post, is fitting: Saunders, bashing his clipboard on the ground after Brandon Bass outworked Andray Blatche for a rebound.

Read More…

The Lakers’ offense hasn’t ranked worse than 11th in points scored per possession since 1994-95, but one quarter of the way through this crazy season, the L.A. offense ranks 18th, below the Timberwolves and the Nets. The Lakers are shooting an incredible 25.6 percent from three-point range, putting them on pace to be the NBA’s worst three-point shooting team since (basically) the league figured out how to shoot three-pointers in large volume.

There are lots of things wrong here, and Darius Soriano of the Lakers-themed blog has an absolute must-read post, detailing all of them – overlapping skill sets (the Lakers’ three best players all prefer to operate in the post area), cold outside shooting, the lack of a dynamic ball-handler other than Kobe Bryant and many others. Soriano also stresses some positives and explains, in precise terms, what the Lakers are trying to do on offense and how they are going about it. If you want to understand what’s happening to the Lakers, read this post.

Here’s an important excerpt:

The lack of capable shooters is truly hurting this team. As mentioned earlier the Lakers are last in the league in [three]-point shooting and this ineptitude in hitting the long ball has a domino effect on how good the offense can be. Kobe, Pau, and Bynum often deal with guards digging down in their lap and the paint is more congested than it’s ever been. On too many possessions the Lakers see a half-court defense with nearly every defender having one foot in the paint. The positioning of these defenders cuts off passing angles and denies driving lanes.

Read More…

• Deron Williams’ Turkish team is chasing so many NBA forwards and centers that it’s almost difficult to keep track — Kevin Love (turned down the club), Luol Deng (insurance issues), Carlos Boozer (ditto), Marcin Gortat (the most likely candidate, it appears) and now Lamar Odom, according to ESPN.com’s Marc Stein. Besiktas has been eager to pair Williams (who had a 50-point game Tuesday, with highlights in the video above) with a star-level big man, and it feels more urgency now after losing the Cavaliers’ Semih Erden to a thumb injury.

Let’s see what happens here. Besiktas had to find a sponsor to cover the costs of Williams’ salary and insurance on the point guard’s NBA contract, and paying someone like Odom comes with similar cost. As Stein notes, two members of Besiktas’ women’s team recently left after a dispute over late payments, and rumors are constantly flying over the team’s ability to pay the huge salaries it is offering NBA players.

Read More…