A 'jump-shooting team' will win NBA Finals; but which one?
Kevin PeltonESPN Staff Writer
ESPN INSIDER
I'll tell you which team will win the NBA Finals -- very likely -- if you just tell me one simple piece of information:<offer style="box-sizing: border-box;"></offer>
Who's going to shoot better from 3-point range?
As the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors get set to tip off Game 1 on Thursday (9 p.m. ET, ABC/WatchESPN), a key fact from recent Finals history will loom large.
Dating back to 2001, 14 of the past 15 Finals have been won by the team with the better 3-point percentage. The Los Angeles Lakers over the Boston Celtics in 2010 were the one exception.
Back in the 1990s, the Chicago Bulls could win six championships with relatively poor 3-point shooting. (The Bulls shot a better 3-point percentage in just three of those Finals.)
But as the NBA has increasingly made use of the 3-pointer as a weapon, the stretch of court beyond the arc has become a key battleground. And few teams make better use of it than the Cavaliers and Warriors.
Cavs have outshot Warriors in the playoffs
When these teams matched up in the NBA Finals last June, Golden State gained a huge advantage beyond the arc despite shooting 36.0 percent on 3s, relatively poor by the Warriors' high standards. A short-handed Cleveland squad mustered just 29.3 percent shooting from downtown.
The Cavaliers are back with reinforcements: healthy stars Kyrie Irving andKevin Love plus new addition Channing Frye, all dangerous 3-point threats.
So, remarkably, Cleveland has actually done the Splash Brothers & Co. one better in terms of 3-point shooting this postseason. The Cavaliers smashed the record for 3-pointers per game made leading up to the Finals (among teams that reached the Finals) -- as did the Warriors, surpassing their own mark from last season.
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</tbody></aside>Sorry, Charles Barkley: a "jump-shooting team" is going to win the title. The question is which one.
Intriguingly, the results to date in the playoffs may not tell us much about the 3-point battle in this series. There's almost no relationship between the percentage teams have shot leading up to the Finals and what they've shot once there.
Regular-season 3-point shooting is a better predictor -- good news for Golden State, which shot 41.6 percent on 3s this year compared to Cleveland's 36.3 percent -- but randomness dominates either factor over a seven-game series.
In other words, we don't know which team will shoot better in the postseason based on past results. But we're pretty sure 3-point percentage will be an X factor.
Cavaliers enter Finals hot
In large part because of the hot shooting, Cleveland has been outstanding in the postseason. Since the NBA playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984, the Cavaliers' plus-12.6 point differential en route to the Finals ranks fifth.
And while Cleveland didn't face an elite opponent like the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Cavaliers' playoff opposition was actually relatively difficult because their first-round matchup against a 44-win Detroit Pistons team wasn't a gimme. (The Pistons won as many games as the Portland Trail Blazers, the Warriors' opponent in the second round.)
When playoff net rating is adjusted for the regular-season net rating of opponents, weighted by games played in each round, Cleveland moves up to the third-best run to the Finals in the 16-team era, trailing the 2001 L.A. Lakers (who went 11-0 against West foes) and the 72-10 1996 Chicago Bulls.
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</tbody></aside>That's good news for the Cavaliers. When I studied past Finals looking for trends two years ago, I found two indicators above all others that explained the results: regular-season wins differential and playoff performance, adjusted for opposition.
Naturally, the Warriors' record-setting regular season gives them the edge in that indicator -- they won 16 more games than Cleveland. In fact, no team with such a large advantage in regular-season wins has ever lost in the Finals, with the greatest upset by regular-season wins coming in 1975, when a Golden State team that won 48 games knocked off a 60-win Washington Bullets squad.
Recipe for an upset?
To pull off their own upset, the Cavaliers will have to keep playing at the level they did in the East playoffs. And that almost certainly means staying hot from beyond the arc. Cleveland did already cool a bit in the conference finals, shooting a mere 38.9 percent against the Toronto Raptors, albeit while making 17 3-pointers in the deciding Game 6.
That 39 percent shooting seems like a good estimate for the Cavaliers' true shooting ability. They're better than they showed during the regular season because Irving was less accurate than usual coming off a fractured patella and because Frye joined the team midseason. But it's unlikely they'll keep shooting quite this well, especially given that player-tracking data shows Cleveland's 3-point attempts have been no better in the playoffs than the regular season.
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</article>The Cavaliers' quantified shot probability on 3-pointers during the playoffs is 55.8 percent, as compared with 55.9 percent (in the regular season), suggesting based on the shooters, location of the shots and nearby defenders that we'd expect Cleveland to have an effective field goal percentage of 55.8 percent on 3s. The Cavaliers are actually shooting an effective 65.2 percent.
Had Cleveland shot 39 percent from 3-point range throughout the playoffs, the Cavaliers' adjusted net rating would drop to a non-historic 11.2 -- slightly worse than the Warriors' adjusted playoff rating of plus-11.6.
Cleveland may be able to compensate by tightening things up on defense, as we saw in the Cavaliers' four lopsided wins over the Raptors. At other times in the postseason, Cleveland coasted defensively on the strength of its shooting.
Overall, the Cavaliers held their opponents just one point per 100 possessions below their regular-season offensive rating. Golden State, by contrast, held opponents 6.5 points per 100 possessions below their usual output in the playoffs.
That's bad news for Cleveland because the other, weaker factor I found predicted the Finals was that defense truly does win championships if a team's offense is good enough to get there.
Of the eight teams to win the Finals without home-court advantage since 1984, six had a superior defensive rating to their opponent during the regular season. Cleveland doesn't come close there, having ranked 10th in defensive rating while the Warriors were fourth.
Because the Cavaliers are unlikely to shut down the Warriors' offensive attack, they're probably going to have to outshoot them to make history. Cleveland may die by the 3, but won't live by anything else.
Kevin PeltonESPN Staff Writer
ESPN INSIDER
I'll tell you which team will win the NBA Finals -- very likely -- if you just tell me one simple piece of information:<offer style="box-sizing: border-box;"></offer>
Who's going to shoot better from 3-point range?
As the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors get set to tip off Game 1 on Thursday (9 p.m. ET, ABC/WatchESPN), a key fact from recent Finals history will loom large.
Dating back to 2001, 14 of the past 15 Finals have been won by the team with the better 3-point percentage. The Los Angeles Lakers over the Boston Celtics in 2010 were the one exception.
Back in the 1990s, the Chicago Bulls could win six championships with relatively poor 3-point shooting. (The Bulls shot a better 3-point percentage in just three of those Finals.)
But as the NBA has increasingly made use of the 3-pointer as a weapon, the stretch of court beyond the arc has become a key battleground. And few teams make better use of it than the Cavaliers and Warriors.
Cavs have outshot Warriors in the playoffs
When these teams matched up in the NBA Finals last June, Golden State gained a huge advantage beyond the arc despite shooting 36.0 percent on 3s, relatively poor by the Warriors' high standards. A short-handed Cleveland squad mustered just 29.3 percent shooting from downtown.
The Cavaliers are back with reinforcements: healthy stars Kyrie Irving andKevin Love plus new addition Channing Frye, all dangerous 3-point threats.
So, remarkably, Cleveland has actually done the Splash Brothers & Co. one better in terms of 3-point shooting this postseason. The Cavaliers smashed the record for 3-pointers per game made leading up to the Finals (among teams that reached the Finals) -- as did the Warriors, surpassing their own mark from last season.
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| TEAM | YEAR | 3P/G | 3P% |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLE | 2016 | 14.4 | .434 |
| GSW | 2016 | 12.5 | .402 |
| GSW | 2015 | 11.5 | .380 |
| CLE | 2015 | 11.4 | .359 |
| MIA | 2014 | 9.3 | .395 |
| DAL | 2011 | 8.9 | .388 |
| ORL | 2009 | 8.6 | .367 |
| HOU | 1995 | 8.4 | .389 |
| SAS | 2014 | 8.2 | .392 |
| ORL | 1995 | 8.1 | .413 |
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Intriguingly, the results to date in the playoffs may not tell us much about the 3-point battle in this series. There's almost no relationship between the percentage teams have shot leading up to the Finals and what they've shot once there.
Regular-season 3-point shooting is a better predictor -- good news for Golden State, which shot 41.6 percent on 3s this year compared to Cleveland's 36.3 percent -- but randomness dominates either factor over a seven-game series.
In other words, we don't know which team will shoot better in the postseason based on past results. But we're pretty sure 3-point percentage will be an X factor.
Cavaliers enter Finals hot
In large part because of the hot shooting, Cleveland has been outstanding in the postseason. Since the NBA playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984, the Cavaliers' plus-12.6 point differential en route to the Finals ranks fifth.
And while Cleveland didn't face an elite opponent like the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Cavaliers' playoff opposition was actually relatively difficult because their first-round matchup against a 44-win Detroit Pistons team wasn't a gimme. (The Pistons won as many games as the Portland Trail Blazers, the Warriors' opponent in the second round.)
When playoff net rating is adjusted for the regular-season net rating of opponents, weighted by games played in each round, Cleveland moves up to the third-best run to the Finals in the 16-team era, trailing the 2001 L.A. Lakers (who went 11-0 against West foes) and the 72-10 1996 Chicago Bulls.
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| TEAM | YEAR | RATING | RESULT |
|---|---|---|---|
| LAL | 2001 | 20.8 | W |
| CHI | 1996 | 17.6 | W |
| CLE | 2016 | 16.0 | ? |
| LAL | 1987 | 14.7 | W |
| LAL | 1985 | 14.7 | W |
| BOS | 1986 | 14.5 | W |
| Since playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984 |
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Naturally, the Warriors' record-setting regular season gives them the edge in that indicator -- they won 16 more games than Cleveland. In fact, no team with such a large advantage in regular-season wins has ever lost in the Finals, with the greatest upset by regular-season wins coming in 1975, when a Golden State team that won 48 games knocked off a 60-win Washington Bullets squad.
Recipe for an upset?
To pull off their own upset, the Cavaliers will have to keep playing at the level they did in the East playoffs. And that almost certainly means staying hot from beyond the arc. Cleveland did already cool a bit in the conference finals, shooting a mere 38.9 percent against the Toronto Raptors, albeit while making 17 3-pointers in the deciding Game 6.
That 39 percent shooting seems like a good estimate for the Cavaliers' true shooting ability. They're better than they showed during the regular season because Irving was less accurate than usual coming off a fractured patella and because Frye joined the team midseason. But it's unlikely they'll keep shooting quite this well, especially given that player-tracking data shows Cleveland's 3-point attempts have been no better in the playoffs than the regular season.
<article class="ad-300" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; overflow: hidden; position: relative; z-index: 1000026; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; float: right; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px;">
</article>The Cavaliers' quantified shot probability on 3-pointers during the playoffs is 55.8 percent, as compared with 55.9 percent (in the regular season), suggesting based on the shooters, location of the shots and nearby defenders that we'd expect Cleveland to have an effective field goal percentage of 55.8 percent on 3s. The Cavaliers are actually shooting an effective 65.2 percent.
Had Cleveland shot 39 percent from 3-point range throughout the playoffs, the Cavaliers' adjusted net rating would drop to a non-historic 11.2 -- slightly worse than the Warriors' adjusted playoff rating of plus-11.6.
Cleveland may be able to compensate by tightening things up on defense, as we saw in the Cavaliers' four lopsided wins over the Raptors. At other times in the postseason, Cleveland coasted defensively on the strength of its shooting.
Overall, the Cavaliers held their opponents just one point per 100 possessions below their regular-season offensive rating. Golden State, by contrast, held opponents 6.5 points per 100 possessions below their usual output in the playoffs.
That's bad news for Cleveland because the other, weaker factor I found predicted the Finals was that defense truly does win championships if a team's offense is good enough to get there.
Of the eight teams to win the Finals without home-court advantage since 1984, six had a superior defensive rating to their opponent during the regular season. Cleveland doesn't come close there, having ranked 10th in defensive rating while the Warriors were fourth.
Because the Cavaliers are unlikely to shut down the Warriors' offensive attack, they're probably going to have to outshoot them to make history. Cleveland may die by the 3, but won't live by anything else.
