Oh, so taking raw shooting percentage is "monkeying with stats" now? Or is "look at the bottom line" some sort of new lingo for "just ignore the facts and soldier on".
Our ranks in shooting percentage:
2008: 4th
2009: 2nd
2010: 4th
2011: 1nd
2012: 5th
2013: 6th
We've been a team that consistenty takes good shots. To me, that's a sign of good offensive execution and efficiency. I've never understood why an offensive rebound is not considered an extra possession.
If you look at it as "how likely is a team to score on a trip down the floor", it makes sense. Offensive efficiency is essentially a measure of how likely a team is to put the ball in the basket. Likewise, defensive efficiency measures how likely a team is to stop the other team from scoring. A "possession" only ends when the opposing team gets the ball.
Under our standard, we're very poor relative to our peers.
Right, and why is an offensive rebound not considered a "new trip down the floor"? In my mind, each trip ends with a shot, turnover, or a shooting foul. Not to mention that adding 0.44*PF to the number of possessions is a dodgy mechanic at best.
It's not a new trip down the floor because the same team is keeping possession.
It depends on what you want to evaluate.
The ability of a team to score the ball given one 24 second shot clock to work with, or the ability to generate offense over an entire game in totality. Getting more shots than the other team is certainly an offensive "skill" of teams.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that offensive rebounds should be a new possession. It separates out even better "possession creation" that otherwise is limited to steals and/or forced turnovers.
But really either way its all about how you organize the data, creating more shots for your team is a great way to get wins.
This is basically right. It depends what you're measuring.
If you're determining which team is most likely to make a shot, then FG% is the stat you'd look at.
If you're trying to get a flavor for how effective an offense is, though, offensive efficiency is the way to go. To determine that effectiveness, you look at trips down the floor, rather than separating out offensive rebounds.
Example: Which offense is better? (Assume no threes or FTs for the moment):
Team A: 50% FG%, grabs offensive rebounds 10% of the time
Team B: 45% FG%, grabs offensive rebounds 35% of the time
With team A, on 100 trips down the floor they'll score 105 points.
With team B, on 100 trips down the floor, they'll score a bit over 107 points.
For a given possession, then, you might prefer Team A, whereas over the course of a team, it might be Team B.
No one stat is ever going to tell the whole story, but Offensive Efficiency probably comes closest. The best method, though, is probably to look at the "four factors" as identified by basketball-reference:
eFG%: Celtics 11th
TOV%: Celtics 15th
ORB%: Celtics 30th
FT/FGA: Celtics 14th
That paints the picture of a mediocre offense that turns the ball over too much and doesn't get a lot of second chance points. That's not a recipe for success.