El Niche Cache
February 12, 2020
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 4
The Niche Cast: Bill Walton’s Teepee (Parker vs Fa/Flying Kiwis)
Reading Menu
Monday Morning Dummy Half: The Funky Aotearoa Eels (NRL)
Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Breaking Down Warriors Business (NRL)
The Premmy Files – Men’s Premiership, Week 11 (Football)
Flying Kiwis – February 9 (Football)
Further Adventures In The Welly Nix’s Lack Of Goal Scoring (Football)
2020/21 Aotearoa Super Smash All Stars (Cricket)
2020/21 Aotearoa Women's Super Smash All Stars (Cricket)
Understanding Important Aotearoa T20 Cricket Ideas (Cricket)
27fm Weekly Niche Cache Playlist: February 8 (Music)
27fm Album Jukebox – January 2021 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
Defence.
Defence wins championships … right?
That is the fascinating sports experiment Sean Marks has found himself in with Brooklyn Nets. Marks was already in a funky spot in having flipped a Nets team with a mellow, hard mahi kiwi vibe into the Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving group and then with James Harden’s arrival it’s all gone bonkers in the fun way. With those three players, this Nets team is celebrated as having a mighty attacking team; Brooklyn Nets are 2nd in the NBA for points scored per game.
Brooklyn Nets are also 28th in points conceded per game. Only two teams concede more points per game than the Nets.
Sean Marks is the boss man of a team that is currently testing the idea that defence wins championships (or at least gets you very close).
I went around a few sports leagues to catch a vibe and none of this is perfect as one can pick and prod at these insights. In very simple, general terms it seems that having some kind of good defence does help win championships.
Last season in the NBA, Los Angeles Lakers won their title and were 3rd in points conceded per game. This season they are 2nd.
Liverpool won the Premier League conceding the fewest goals of any team. This season Manchester City are 1st and they are the only team who has conceded fewer than 20 goals.
Penrith Panthers conceded the fewest points in the NRL last season, Melbourne Storm were right behind them. Roosters won the 2019 NRL, Storm finished 1st on the ladder and they conceded the fewest points in the NRL.
Canterbury Crusaders won Super Rugby Aotearoa last year conceding the fewest points. Auckland Blues were far better than they have been, finished 2nd and with the Crusaders they were the only two teams who conceded less than 200 points.
Wellington Firebirds are in the Super Smash final having conceded 180+ runs in just two of their 10 games. Cricket defence!
Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 7th in the NFL for points conceded. Their last three games (all playoffs) they moved up to 3rd for that period and then they kept Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs to just 9 points in the Super Bowl.
Again, there are all sorts of ways we can break down how each of these came to be. Across multiple leagues in different countries there is some correlation between stopping an opponent score points and winning. Defence isn’t sexy though and all of this sparked a few thoughts about exploring the mystery of defence more as people tend to brush off defence, regardless of how important it is. Brushing off defence means there is no effort to understand it.
Brooklyn Nets may be a decent team defensively by the playoffs thus, we’ll have more evidence on the importance of defence in winning. They also may go the other route and dive deeper into attack at the expense of defence. All of the above suggests it’s pretty hard to win consistently and win championships without a good defence though.
Not related to Brooklyn Nets: in your favourite sport leagues, note who are ‘fake winners’ and who are the teams who win championships. Who are the teams that deal in championships or at least winning finals/playoff games and who are the teams that love to win regular season games but don’t actually win anything grandiose. I reckon defence has something to do with that.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Beautiful way to start any day with a New Zealand in Champions League action.
Incredibly, while there hasn’t been a gentleman from Aotearoa to play Champions League (we’re talking the proper comp here, not qualifying) since Chris Killen back in 2007 with Celtic, Bott just extended the streak of at least one kiwi lady partaking in the UCL every season for what’s now the last 10 in a row. Usually that was just Ali Riley... but as the tweet says there are now six NZ women to have played Champs Lge...
Ali Riley – 35 games (Rosengård, Chelsea & Bayern)
Ria Percival – 6 games (Frankfurt)
Katie Duncan – 2 games (Zürich)
Rosie White – 2 games (Liverpool)
Emma Kete – 1 game (PK-35 Vantaa)
CJ Bott – 1 game (Vålerenga)
The journey to get to this game was a wild one. It was postponed three separate times due to the difficulties of travelling between nations during a pandemic – even in the cash-loaded men’s club comps there are dramas with knockout ties having to be played in neutral countries. It might not be very far between Denmark and Norway but dramas still ensued. They were supposed to play over two legs in December and they ended up playing it over one leg in February. Unfortunately Vålerenga lost the game on penalties – having been 1-0 up when Bott was subbed – but on the positive side they won the league and cup double in 2020 so they’ve already qualified for next season’s edition.
Might as well chuck this in here too, took me twenty minutes to scribble it down so figure I should get some traction out of it. This is Ulises Davila’s shot chart from the Phoenix season so far...
I used it in the Phoenix attacking situation piece I published yesterday (give it a read, I spent a fair bit of time on that one and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out). Says a lot about how great Davila is that you can look at a static chart like this and instantly picture him cutting in from the right and unleashing on his left foot from any of those yellow dot situations (while the goals are surely vivid memories... there haven’t exactly been a lot of them).
That’s the amateur stat crunching. Now feast now upon some pro figures from the start of the NZ Breakers season, courtesy of the always fantastic SpacialJam.com...
I’m having to sit on my hands with the Breakers because not a lot makes sense about them at the moment so I wanna let things play out. The feeling coming in was that the roster was title-contention-worthy, that the distractions of last season were in the rearview, that the second year under Dan Shamir’s coaching (you don’t hear that ‘basketball director’ tag very often any more, aye?) would see a much more cohesive unit. Plus, while Corey Webster did have his avocado mishap and Dan Trist a covid breach, there haven’t been nearly so many injuries... to go with no NBA preseason games racking up the air miles on the brink of the season nor Tall Blacks World Cup exploits wrecking preseason.
Yet they’re 1-3 after the first few weeks, having needed a thrilling comeback to win that one and been blown out by the same team a few days later. Scarce moments of excellence surrounded by long trudging stretches of awfulness. Made worse for the fact the Adelaide 36ers and Cairns Taipans are the two teams they’ve played and they aren’t exactly the heavyweights of the competition (3-8 combined in their other games). It’s only going to get tougher from here, starting tonight against the Sydney Kings.
The most glaring part of that chart is that it’s ranked for Net Ratings and all the names at the top are the dependable kiwi blokes while the imports who are supposed to take them to the next level are both down near the bottom. In fact the guy was signed to lead the offence, Lamar Patterson, has the worse offensive rating of the lot of them which is an absolute recipe for disaster. Patterson has come in out of shape and is struggling. There’s a belief out there that he’ll play his way into fitness but how he was allowed to show up so off the pace is astounding. The whole reason they signed him and not Scotty Hopson (who is now playing for the 6-0 Melbourne United) was that they wanted the roster sorted early so they’d be ready for the season well ahead of time. Covid’s thrown a spanner in the works there but Patterson’s lack of fitness has nothing to do with that. Seems kinda negligent to me. And talk of letting him ease his way in just sounds like making excuses.
Lamar Patterson’s First Four Games As A Breaker:
ADL (L) – 16 points on 6/16 shooting
ADL (L) – 0 points on 0/6 shooting
CNS (W) – 22 points on 8/15 shooting
CNS (L) – 8 points on 2/6 shooting
Both double headers, so on more than five days rest he’s scored 38 points in 55 minutes (14/31 shooting). On less than five days of rest he’s scored 8 points in 41 minutes (2/12 shooting).
All combined Patterson is shooting 37.5% from the field. After going 1/7 from three-point range in the first game he’s only attempted six in the following three combined (all up he’s 2/13 which means 15.4%) and he’s also missed nine free throws already: 12/21 for 57.1%. The funny thing is the Breakers’ increasingly meme-heavy social media accounts made a big point after his great fourth quarter in the win over Cairns about how the bloke had answered his critics and all that... then he doesn’t even get to double figures in a heavy loss the next game.
With him playing as inconsistent as he is, the offence has looked straight up shocking at times. There’s nowhere near enough ball movement which leads to stagnant isolation options, hence why opposing teams are averaging four more assists per game than the Breakers are managing. Tai Webster’s therefore having to carry a huge burden of shooting – 82 field goal attempts, the next most is Finn Delany’s 48 – because he’s about the only guy other than Patterson who can regularly create his own shot off the dribble... and Tai still has more than double the assists of anyone else. His usage rate is, shall we say: excessive.
But while Tai Webster and Finn Delany form the best two-man combo for the Breakers, TW and Lamar Patterson have been the worst. Volatile as all hell is this team. Patterson and TW have both been bad shooting from range and both at their best attacking the rim on the run which is not a great mix. That could be helped with better spacing but that would require knocking down some threes and so far Tom Abercrombie is shooting them at 27.3%, Corey Webster is at 25%, and Jarrad Weeks has missed all 10 of his attempts. Finn Delany’s been the one bonus there... if he hadn’t missed a few too many corner balls then he’d be absolutely sizzling. As it is he’s still a healthy 34.8%. But you can’t only have one reliable triple-clipper on the floor and expect your offence to flourish.
It’s weird because we were promised this Euro-style game from Dan Shamir (and maybe that was just lazy stereotyping, dunno) but that’s not what we’re seeing so far. Again, they might well figure this out. There’s enough talent to make it happen and that’s exactly what they did last season. But last season they also missed out on the playoffs by a single game because all those early losses proved too much to overcome... now here they are digging themselves an early hole once more. Hopefully we see better tonight.
Quick moment of gratitude for Kiwi Steve, repping hard as of late…
Unrelated Pet Peeve: When sports commentators pointedly mention the referee’s/umpire’s/lino’s/official’s name after a controversial decision. As in: “Big appeals for a penalty there but referee Jerry Jerryson surprisingly says no”. Does anyone truly care who the ref is other than when it feeds into some childish conspiracy about how some particular joker always picks on their team? I doubt it. Anyone can check the match deets to see who’s refereeing but specifically naming them after a bad decision feels like it’s inviting abuse and little else. Considering what happened to Mike Dean in the Premier League recently, maybe don’t do that any more, aye? Praise them for good calls, sure. But keep it cool for the opposite.
Also, friends, I must announce that I’ve rediscovered Richard & Linda Thompson and those songs, they will not leave my brain. Nor do I want them to. It’s always the most amazing thing when you stumble on a piece of art that reaches you in that exact right way that it’s like a key unlocking a door in your mind. This is a perfect album...