Trending in Brooklyn: Synergy Edition!
To the joy of bloggers and NBA nuts everywhere, Synergy Sports has returned with stats now available on NBA.com.
[INSERT HALLELUJAH MUSIC HERE]
To celebrate, I’m doing a special Synergy edition of Trending in Brooklyn, so let’s go ahead and dive into some of the more interesting Nets Synergy stats from this season:
Iso Joe
Of course, the very first thing I wanted to look up with Synergy’s stats was how good ol’ Iso Joe fares in isolation situations.
Oh no.
Oh no. This is… not great.
Johnson ranks 17th in the NBA in isolation possessions with 141, but is tied for 95th in points per possession (PPP) in those situations. He’s shooting a hair over 43 percent on isolation shot attempts, and is scoring at a rate of 0.87 PPP, which is somewhat less than ideal. By contrast, when spotting up he scores 1.13 points per possession — the best mark on Brooklyn’s roster.
Two other Nets have been more efficient than Johnson in isolations this season. Brook Lopez is sitting at 0.89 PPP while Jarrett Jack is 13th in the league with 1.10.
Pick & Roll Success (From the Bigs)
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the pick and roll numbers are kind to both Brook Lopez and Mason Plumlee. Lopez is tied for 9th in the league with 153 points scored as the roll man in the PnR, and he’s clocking in at 1.09 PPP. Plumlee has less points and less overall possessions than Brook, but is also scoring a solid 1.09 PPP.
When looking at the Nets’ PnR ball handlers, the results are more mixed. Jarrett Jack ranks near the top of the league in points scored as the PnR ball handler, and those situations make up nearly 43 percent of the possessions Jack uses. However, he hasn’t been efficient, scoring 0.77 PPP. Shot attempts from the guard in the PnR are typically less efficient in general — the league leader with at least 100+ possessions is Lou Williams at only 1.01 PPP — a 0.77 mark is at least a little concerning. Jack’s put up solid numbers overall this season, but that’s a bad one.
Brooklyn Plays at a Snail’s Pace
It’s no secret that the Nets play at one of the slowest tempos in the league, ranking 25th in pace. Synergy brings an all new perspective to just how slow the Nets play with not a single Nets player ranking in the top 50 in transition points. You have to go all the way down to 64th before finding Jarrett Jack with 114 points, and then shortly after that Mason Plumlee is 70th with 110. Amazingly, Kevin Durant has scored more transition points than both of them despite all the injuries, totaling 127 points on the fast break in only 26 games played.
