ZLock's Regular Season Wrap-Up

Well, folks, all 1,230 NBA games of 2016-2017 regular season have been played. It was a wild ride. There were spectacular performances by budding superstars and the old guard. Oscar Robertson's triple-double record was broken by a player who matched his mark of averaging a triple-double. In any other season, this player would be the second unanimous NBA MVP. But this season was different, and no one knows who is actually going to win the award. It has just been that amazing of a season league-wide.

I would, again, like to direct your attention towards the NBA History Project that I have updated to be complete for this season. Thank you for your views and support. If you have any feedback or suggestions, I will be working on it again this summer to see if I can better anything, so please let me know!

To begin, let's take a look in at the final leaderboards for offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency, and net rating:

If anyone besides Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, or Mike D'Antoni wins NBA Coach of the Year, there should be protests in the street. Popovich lost one of the greatest players of all time and still turned the league's second-oldest roster into its best defense while only dropping 6 wins compared to one season ago. Spoelstra orchestrated the greatest second-half turnaround most fans have seen and will ever see, even battling through injuries to nearly make the playoffs. Interesting: their record through the first half of the season, 11-30, was directly opposite of their second half, 30-11. Finishing at 10th in net rating is astounding. Mike D'Antoni came into a Houston team that felt like it was just on the verge of leaping into contention, but expectations were dampened due to his tendency to coach teams with poor defenses and Rockets star James Harden's tendency to not play defense. They finished a decent 18th in defensive efficiency, playing almost perfectly league average defense for the season. Combine that with an electric offense, and you have the third best net rating in the league.

In the 2016-17 NBA regular season, teams scored an average of 108.8 points per 100 possessions, which is the highest league-average offensive efficiency since the ABA-NBA merger. The average pace of play was 96.4 possessions per game, the quickest since 1992-93. By these measures, the average team scored 104.9 points per regulation game (no overtime) this season.

Other interesting facts:

• Players this season made their free throws at a rate of 77.2%, which is the highest percentage since the merger
• Offensive rebounding continued to fall, with the lowest average offensive rebounds per game recorded since the merger, even with the second highest average total rebounds per game in two decades
• Teams took an average of 27 three-pointers per game, the greatest volume ever
• The league also managed to make more than 50% of all two-point shot attempts for the first time ever

Next, let's revisit the Z-Score Percentile chart that was introduced in my explanation of team efficiency statistics, where the original chart can be found. This chart ranks each team based on where their ORtg Z-Score and DRtg Z-Score ranks as a historical percentile against all of NBA history. The darkest green section represents the most elite teams, the medium green section represents a typical playoff team, the yellow section represents teams that earn the lowest lottery odds, and the red section represents teams that would earn top-5 lottery odds.

Golden State had a legendary season, which was already obvious and is shown plainly here. Comparing this chart to the one made 5 weeks ago, the biggest mover was the Brooklyn Nets, who escaped the bottom-left corner of the league's worst teams ever and may have surpassed the Lakers, making Los Angeles the historically worst team this season. The Toronto Raptors made a large leap from the middle of the lighter green section to just inside the most elite section, thanks mostly to a late-season recovery from a full-team slump and the return of Kyle Lowry to the lineup.

If you recall the Defense Wins Championships... Right? post, we build several regressions and correlations to determine the connection between net rating and a combination of ORtg Z-Score and DRtg Z-Score to estimate the number of wins that a team would have in an 82-game season. Using this system and the full-season data from this year, I ran the system again to see how the league would shake out, as shown below.

The system predicted the season with a high level of accuracy. Of the 1,230 wins that it had to allocate, 94.3% were predicted correctly. It was, on average, 2.333 wins off of each team's actual win total. The system accurately predicted the win totals of the Spurs, the Mavericks, the Rockets, and the Knicks. It predicted the tie between the Jazz and the Clippers, and, given that there is no provision for tie-breakers, it can be said that it got the top 7 seeds correct of the West.

The system was most incorrect about the Minnesota Timberwolves, who would be expected to win 6 more games than they won this season. This is likely due to the loss of Zach LaVine to injury hampering their ability to win games in the last few months of the season. The Golden State Warriors were similarly expected to win 4 more games, which can be likely attributed to the early-season struggle to integrate Kevin Durant and his late-season injury.

On the other end of the spectrum, both the Orlando Magic and Boston Celtics won 5 more games than this projection system expected them to. The Orlando Magic are puzzling, but the Celtics beat expectations by having NBA-caliber depth and a great player in Isaiah Thomas, whose occasional outbursts helped Boston win close games. The combination of a solid team and the lack of a superstar lends itself to the good-not-great team statistics they recorded, which explains the underestimation. The Hawks (a good team with a great player in Paul Millsap but no superstar), the Lakers (Luke Walton), the Thunder (Russell Westbrook), and the Wizards (a good team with a great player in John Wall but no superstar) all outperformed their predictions by 4 games.

To finish the recap, let's look at some random bests and worsts of this season:

Bests

• FG% - Golden State Warriors - 49.5%
• 3P% - San Antonio Spurs - 39.1%
• FT% - Charlotte Hornets - 81.5%
• Pace - Brooklyn Nets - 101.3 Possessions per Game

Worsts

• FG% - Memphis Grizzlies - 43.5%
• 3P% - Oklahoma City Thunder- 32.7%
• FT% - Miami Heat - 70.6%
• Pace - Utah Jazz - 91.6 Possessions per Game

ZLock's Award Picks

I'm sure this is what no one came here for, but here it is anyways.

Coach of the Year: Erik Spoelstra. He did so much with so little. The Heat turnaround at the halfway point of the season is practically unprecedented. Even when faced with injuries, the Heat continued to push towards the playoffs.

Executive of the Year: Daryl Morey. He brought in Lou Williams, made the call to hire D'Antoni, and has proven that Moreyball can be a viable offense. Now, he just has to bring in a defender and a high-level spot-up three point shooter, and the Rockets will be in the title hunt next year.

Rookie of the Year: Malcolm Brogdon. He owes this award to Embiid's injuries, but his own impact on the Milwaukee Bucks has been undeniable.

Most Improved Player: Giannis Antetokounmpo. Not only did he make the leap to definite superstardom by improving almost every aspect of his game, but he got the Bucks above .500 and into the 6th seed in the East.

Sixth Man of the Year: Andre Iguodala. If it weren't for Lou Williams being traded to the Rockets and playing the same role as Eric Gordon, I would have Williams and Gordon above Iguodala for this award. When they ended up on the same team, it was hard for either to establish them as the sixth man, even though they won together and both succeeded in their roles.

Defensive Player of the Year: Draymond Green. I want to give it to Kawhi Leonard, but the Spurs defense is just so good no matter what. Even their bench is elite. The Warriors rely on Green to defend every position and direct the defense while on the floor like a middle linebacker.

Most Valuable Player: Russell Westbrook. He averaged a triple-double, broke the Big O's triple-double record, and forced OKC to win 47 games, just 8 fewer than they did in 2015-16 with Kevin Durant on the roster. That's amazing.

As always, all data is thanks to basketball-reference.com, one of the greatest websites known to basketball lovers everywhere.