By Nacho Gamez
Introduction
Believe it or not, winning the FIBA WBC is really hard, if you want to win a tournament like this you must do it day by day, cause you may lose it any given day, it’s not only obvious examples like USA and Serbia defeats in quarterfinals win or go home games, in example, Greece deadly hurt its chances in an early game vs Brazil, just two games into the tournament, Lithuania was sent home after a bad call vs France and they were having a remarkable tournament up to that point, Turkey went toe-to-toe against USA and didn’t even make it to the second round. So we are talking about a mercy-less environment and, believe or not, it was plagued of really great teams, yeah, great teams … for FIBA basketball.
It’s not easy at all to identify why some things work in NBA and don’t in FIBA and vice-versa, that’s why great NBA players can struggle in FIBA or why is so difficult to anticipate how a great FIBA basketball player will do in NBA. It’s an elusive question, and there’s a lot of myths which probably have little to none to do with reality floating around it, so sorry but we are not solving this question in this article, we’ll just see some data and hopefully it will shed some light, and maybe we could identify some patterns that play in favor or against certain teams and players when they shift from an NBA environment to a FIBA one.
USA National Team
Objectively, USA NT didn’t have a bad tournament, we are talking about a 6-2 record, they were close in the first defeat and came back after a terrible start in the second one, so if you talk about “team X” having that kind of tournament it isn’t a bad one, of course, once you dress this team up as USA NT, and bring on expectations and the invincibility fallacy, the judgment is quite different and that’s ok, but don’t expect disastrous numbers from USA NT cause cold data doesn’t understand about expectations.
The reason why USA ended as 7th team in the World is the nature of this kind of tournaments, but in no way there were six teams better than USA in China, in fact, USA could have won it all perfectly, and they could very well be the best team in the tournament along with glass-chin powerhouse Serbia. It isn’t anything new at all, in example, the reigning World champion Spain experienced a similar route fifteen years ago in 2004 Olympics, they probably were the best team along with Argentina, Olympic champion that year, not to take anything off that Argentina NT but Spain were toe-to-toe with them, but after a great tournament they happened to face a disappointing USA NT in the first win or go home game and, well, they went home.
The question with USA NT is that they had weaknesses through all the tournament, what means that they could prevail over anyone, but they could lose against any FIBA powerhouse too, and unfortunately for them, those weaknesses arose against one of these powerhouses, France, and the timing was terrible. Let’s analyze USA performance in this tournament.
The first question to note is that USA was fantastic in the fastbreak, they scored every single shot including those beyond the arc, they scored more baskets than any other team in the tournament, twice as much as the tournament average. So here’s USA’s biggest strength, that’s the way they could dismantle opponents… too bad it didn’t happen often enough.
While these players are used to play in a league in which 35% of the shots are quick (eight seconds or less possessions), in China they only could make 8% of their shots so early. But make no mistake, that 8% is still over the average 7% of quick shots for the tournament. In the following picture, you can see the frequency of the quick shot for every team in the tournament, highlighted you’ll see the USA NT and the tournament average.
What the former picture shows is that FIBA Basketball looks like a far from a friendly environment for quick shots, powerhouses like Serbia, Greece, Argentina, Spain, and USA made around 8% of their shots in 8 seconds or fewer, while another great teams like France, Lithuania or Australia took even less quick shots. So there goes USA’s biggest strength, with a really limited impact in the game.
At this point, we all can agree that whoever was going to win the FIBA WBC was going to do it through halfcourt offense, so the question that arises is was team USA ready to win that battle? Halfcourt offense-oriented basketball can easily make the game looks like a trenches battleground, with no 3 seconds rule, looks like a good FG% beyond the arc is the only way to “open” defenses and gain some traction, some rhythm with your offense. Let’s have a look at USA NT shot chart for halfcourt offense, that’s to say, we have taken away quick shots from this shot chart.
We can see the weaknesses in this chart. First of all, close shots, just 40% of their shots come in the paint including the restricted area, and the FG% is really low for those spots. Next point of attention is beyond the arc, where USA NT takes 44% of their shots, as we said before, hitting three-pointers is key to open defenses in halfcourt offense-oriented basketball, well, let’s say USA had a lot of room for improvement in this regard.
So, let’s regroup, we are trapped in a slow basketball, sort of trenches battleground, we are not making treys in a consistent basis and finally we aren’t a threat close to the basket, what’s left? midrange game, offensive rebounding… and an outstanding defense that keeps you in the fight. Defense was always there, through all the tournament, as for offensive rebounding they were really dangerous, after three-pointers they got 36% of rebounds in play after midrange shots they got an outstanding 51% of the rebounds in play.
Obviously this scenario defines a vulnerable team, it can compete but if an opponent finds the way to stop their offensive rebounding we are talking about big big trouble, and that’s what happened when USA faced France, they got back just two offensive rebounds off midrange shots and 4 offensive rebounds off treys, c’est fini.
Space and Risk Shots
We have a piece left to look at; midrange shots. As we can see in the chart USA showed a good FG% especially from the center and the right side, and thanks to their outstanding offensive rebounding off those shots they really hurt opponents from there. But, as we’ll see right now they were vulnerable here too, lest talk about risk shots. First, let’s define what we’ll consider a “risk shot”, a risk shot will be for us a 2FG jump shot off a one-on-one play, we’ll consider every pull up, turnaround, step back or fadeaway jump shot a risk shot, let’s look at the weight of this kind of shots for USA NT players.
As we can see in the picture on the right, the USA NT took more risk shots than the tournament average, and three of their main players (Brown, Middleton, and Walker) were way over team’s average. Please, ignore Lopez numbers here, since he just took a few shots. If you remember, when USA NT was finally set, Middleton and Walker were the only all-stars remaining in the roster. Well, looks like their style of play didn’t fit FIBA basketball too well, Donovan Mitchell risk shots don’t look too much compared to his all-star teammates, but they are still over the tournament average. Let’s check whether these players use to take that kind of shots on a daily basis in a more familiar NBA environment.
We can see how the number of pull-ups these players took last season in NBA is, somehow, consistent with the number of risk shots they took in the FIBA WBC. Middleton and Walker “lead” the way, and while Mitchell (and Derrick White) takes fewer shots he’s still over the NBA average.
In fact, we can see comparing the last two rows how this group of players made more intense use of this kind of shots than the average. As a positive note, Tatum adjustment looks really remarkable, and his tournament-ending injury against Turkey undoubtedly hurt USA chances. As we’ve said, numbers in the NBA look consistent with numbers in the FIBA WBC, the reason why they are higher in the NBA could be because there is more space, due to the 3 seconds rule and other factors, and this kind of shot isn’t such a risk.
That space factor looks really important to explain USA NT struggle in halfcourt offense through the whole tournament, if we keep looking at its players numbers in the NBA we can see that their numbers are higher in the paint, especially in the restricted area, again the lack of space arises as a valid explanation for a worse performance in those spots through the FIBA WBC. In the following picture, we can see USA NT players FG% in the NBA by zone.
But if we pay attention to the first column, the above the break 3 one, we can see that this group of players probably weren’t the more suitable group to open that much needed space through three-pointers, we all know that they were almost the remaining 12 after an endless chain of withdrawals.
So we have a group in a far from ideal environment for their style of play with the need of finding solutions where they are not used to do it, in fact, it’s an environment in which they find way more difficult to get points where they are used to do it, quick and close shots, this along with expectations attached to the USA NT and certain lack of experience in win or go home scenarios, probably got in their heads and made things even more difficult. That could explain why 3FG% went from 40% and 39% in the first and second quarter to 33% and 26% in the third and fourth quarter through all the tournament.
Too much to handle for these players, cause in the end, it’s a different game out there.
