Some interesting individual stats
- Against Phily, Dwight Howard scored 24ppg on 68.3% shooting
- Against Cleveland, through five games (ESPN hasn’t updated Dwight’s profile yet), Dwight scored 23ppg on 64.5% shooting.
Now for the interesting differences, Orlando’s overall officiency
Against Phily
- Game One — 110.1
- Game Two — 107.9
- Game Three — 104.4
- Game Four — 98.8
- Game Five — 107.1
So, Orlando’s offensive efficiency was a rough average of 105.7 per 100 possessions (not computed properly, just a rough average) in their series against Philadelphia.
Against Cleveland
- Game One — 118.9
- Game Two — 106.7
- Game Three — 107.6
- Game Four — 111.5
- Game Five — 110.9
Therefore, Orlando’s offensive efficiency was a rough average of 111.1 per 100 possessions (not computed properly, just a rough average) in their series against Philadelphia.
I didn’t use the game six numbers because Howard’s stats haven’t been updated on ESPN yet, and I’m too lazy to use a calculator. The team’s offensive efficiency mark was 117 in game six, so it would raise the team’s offensive efficiency by another full point (112 per 100 possessions) if included.
Thoughts
Anyway, the reason I brought this up was because I was irked at Mike Brown’s constant flinching on whether to double or not to double Dwight Howard. I thought they should have defended him straight up for the entire series and let him score as much as he could. Then try to shut down the shooters.
I thought his double teaming of Howard played into Orlando’s hands and fed the rest of the offense.
Did it stop Howard from getting a few more baskets and shooting a very good percentage on them? Sure.
Was stopping those Howard baskets more important than stopping the rest of the team from getting open looks? No, I do not think so. And the team’s offensive efficiency stats give some indication to that.
Posted on May 31, 2009 by Dave