Kings-Hornets - Defensive Analysis and Statistics

Tonight was actually a great effort by a team still getting familiar with a number of new players. Offensively, this team has a lot more flow and overall they are playing with a lot more heart. For anyone wondering what “addition by subtraction” means, the Kings giving up Miller and Salmons at the deadline is a classic example.

For a quick recap, I will be tracking Heavily Contest Shots (HC), Lightly Contested Shots (LC), Altered/Blocked Shots (ABS), Forced Turnovers (FTO), times a player was beaten 1 on 1 into the lane (BL), times a players gets posted up and scored on (PSO), times a player gets posted and the other team gets a clear advantage like a double team (PA), times a player gets posted up and gets a stop (PST) and uncontested shots allowed by the team (TU).

Let’s start with our defensive players of the game.

Andres Nocioni – This makes two straight for Noc. Before we even get to the statistics, I can tell you that Andres handled the pick and roll better than any of our other big men to the point that the Hornets stopped running it with his man. Nocioni was not the most active player helping to contest shots, but still had 2 heavy contests (Hornets shot 0-2) and 3 light contests (Hornets shot 2-3). However, Nocioni also forced 4 turnovers and while the Hornets tried to post him up 9 times, they only scored twice and were stopped 5 times. Even one of the two makes was a goaltend by another player that might not have gone in.

Spencer Hawes – Call this an honorable mention with a caveat. To start with the bad, Spencer got lost and abused on the pick and roll. Not that there are many big men in the league who can stay with CP3 on this, but Spence was constantly getting lost. This led to a number of the team’s uncontested shots. With that said, I did want to recognize Hawes’ activeness. Visually, you could see he was hustling a lot tonight on D and it shows in the stats. Hawes altered/blocked 5 different shots (Hornets shot 0-5), heavily contested 4 shots (Hornets shot 2-4) and lightly contested 7 more (Hornets shot 5-7). He also forced two turnovers. He probably also welcomed a facing two centers (Chandler and Marks) with 0 post game, which helped him as well.


And our defensive goat of the game:

Jason Thompson – Played limited minutes because of foul trouble, but sent the Hornets to the line plenty of times in the first half. As it turned out, fouling was his only attempt at defense too. Jason was beaten into the lane once and only lightly contested one shot. We would have been better off with him just cherry picking.

Other notes:

- Interesting break down of how the Hornets shot against different levels of pressure. With shots the Kings altered/blocked shots they shot 0-8 (0%), heavily contested shots 5-15 (33%), and on lightly contested shots 16-26 (61.54%). Next game I’ll track makes and misses on uncontested shots as well. I know this is partially using stats to prove the obvious, but hustling to the perimeter and protecting the rim is obviously very very important.

- Francisco Garcia did not have a lot of activity in this game (1ABS, 2 HC, 1 LC, 1 FTO); however, that was because he spent a large chunk of the game glued to Peja holding him to 2-7 shooting from three, so he gets a pass.

- Kevin Martin did manage to get his first heavy contest in three games since I started tracking the stat; however, he still frustrates me with his weak closeouts on the perimeter.

- Beno actually deserved kudos for his one on one defence against Chris Paul tonight. He actually did a better job than Bobby Jackson against him. He still got burned a lot on pick and rolls, but those were not all on Beno. He only got burned twice one on one all game and he was very active heavily contesting 4 shots (Hornets 2-4), and lightly contesting 8 more (Hornets 4-8)

- As a team we allowed the Hornets too many uncontested shots again. They got 27 total for the game (quarter breakdown 9-4-7-7). During our big comeback to start the fourth we gave up zero uncontested shots, but in the final 9 minutes with Paul back in the game we gave up 7 and the Hornets put the game away.

Player Min ABS HC LC BL FTO PSO PST PA
Beno Udrih 31 0 4 8 2 0 1 0 1
Kevin Martin 32 0 1 2 0 0 1 0 0
Jason Thompson 12 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
Francisco Garcia 43 1 2 1 1 1 0 0 0
Spencer Hawes 42 5 4 7 0 2 1 0 0
Bobby Jackson 22 0 1 2 2 2 0 0 0
Donte Greene 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andres Nocioni 32 0 2 3 0 4 2 5 2
Rashad McCants 10 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0
Cedric Simmons 6 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0