Has anyone ever seems statistics on conversion percentages on the last play after a timeout is called compared to no timeouts called? It’s an obvious thing to question after he doesn’t call one and they don’t score. People act like it was a guarantee they’d score if they call one. I’d love to see the stats.
This has been discussed many times on this forum. The only study I can find is this one, which found that it was in fact disadvantageous to the non-run team to call a timeout to stop a run:
The Causal Effect of a Timeout at stopping an opposing run in the NBA
In the summer of 2017, the National Basketball Association reduced the number of total timeouts, along with other rule changes, to regulate the flow of the game. With these rule changes, it becomes increasingly important for coaches to effectively manage their timeouts. Understanding the utility of a timeout under various game scenarios, e.g., during an opposing team's run, is of the utmost importance. There are two schools of thought when the opposition is on a run: (1) call a timeout and allow your team to rest and regroup, or (2) save a timeout and hope your team can make corrections during play. This paper investigates the credence of these tenets using the Rubin causal model framework to quantify the causal effect of a timeout in the presence of an opposing team's run. Too often overlooked, we carefully consider the stable unit-treatment-value assumption (SUTVA) in this context and use SUTVA to motivate our definition of units. To measure the effect of a timeout, we introduce a novel, interpretable outcome based on the score difference to describe broad changes in the scoring dynamics. This outcome is well-suited for situations where the quantity of interest fluctuates frequently, a commonality in many sports analytics applications. We conclude from our analysis that while comebacks frequently occur after a run, it is slightly disadvantageous to call a timeout during a run by the opposing team and further demonstrate that the magnitude of this effect varies by franchise.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11691
The PDF to the study (it is VERY technical and will be confusing to anyone who does not have a knowledge of statistics) is here https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.11691.pdf
A brief summary and conclusion from the report are below:
Whether to call a timeout during an opposing run is highly debated among professional coaches. There are two schools of thought when the opposition is on a run: (1) call a timeout and allow your team to rest and regroup, or (2) save a timeout and hope your team can make the needed corrections during play. According to Yousuf (2018), coach Rick Carlisle of the Indiana Pacers and recently with the Dallas Mavericks is known for calling timeouts in “an obvious situation, like stopping a run by the opponent ...” He tends to coach by the first philosophy. On the other hand, coach Mike D’Antoni, most recently of the Houston Rockets, tends to refrain from calling a timeout, citing his trust in his team’s ability to “break runs up with their stellar plays” (Yousuf, 2018). He tends to coach by the second philosophy. This paper investigates the credence of these two coaching philosophies by estimating the causal impact of a timeout in the presence of an opposing team’s run.
Runs are largely studied within the context of the hot hand phenomenon, or the belief that a player’s current shooting success is indicative of their short-term, future shooting success (Gilovich et al., 1985; Koehler and Conley, 2003; Avugos et al., 2013; Miller and Sanjurjo, 2018). The literature surrounding the efficacy of timeouts in the NBA exists but is relatively sparse. Saavedra et al. (2012) define a timeout factor to gauge team performance after a timeout relative to their average, allowing the authors to study the relationship between the timeout factor and the scoring dynamics. They found the timeout factor played a minor role in the scoring dynamics. Permutt (2011) studied the efficacy of timeouts at stopping an opposing team’s momentum, as defined by six unanswered points. To estimate the effectiveness of timeouts in these situations, the short-term performance of teams when a timeout was called was compared to that when a timeout was not called. This simple comparison fails to account for self-selection bias: bias attributed to the coach’s right to choose when to call, or not call, a timeout.
This was the conclusion of the study:
While the idea of a “run” is commonly used within the context of basketball, there is no formal mathematical definition. Part of the novelty of this work is formalizing the colloquial understanding of a run as it pertains to professional basketball, while developing an interpretable outcome which captures the relative performance of each team in a game where the score changes frequently. After proposing a framework with which to study runs, we employed causal
methods to estimate the potential gain (or loss) attributed to a timeout during a team’s run. We find that, on average, calling a timeout worsened the non-run team’s short-term performance compared to if no timeout was taken during an opposing run. In particular, the Indiana Pacers and the Utah Jazz short-term performance significantly declines from a timeout compared to if no timeout was taken, on average. No teams, on average, exhibit a significant gain in their short-term performance from a timeout compared to if no timeout was taken. This paper investigates the credence of these two coaching philosophies by estimating the causal impact of a timeout in the presence of an opposing team’s run.
One important variable which is not considered within this analysis is substitutions that occur when a timeout is called. These are reasonably assumed to have a positive impact on the outcome but cannot be included within the matching procedure since these substitutions occur after or simultaneously with the treatment. That said, more substitutions actually exist within the group of treated units, when a timeout is called, than in the group of control units, when a
timeout is not called. This suggests the effect of a timeout may actually be less than that estimated in this analysis.
If anyone can point out to any studies that say the opposite I would be very interested to look at it.
My opinion? I don't think there's conclusive data either way. Whether timeouts work or not is a matter of opinion amongst fans and coaches, and very firmly held opinions at that. Because if a coach calls a timeout and it doesn't stop the run, we tend not to remember it, but if he sits on his hands and the players don't stop the run, then we as fans have someone to direct our vitriol to. It really comes down to how active you want your coach to be - do you want him to be an old style micromanager like an NFL coach down to directing the players like chesspieces to execute plays on the court, or do you want him to be someone who sits back more like a soccer coach and just lets the players play within the flow of the game? If it's the former that you will hate coaches like Brad or Mazz, because what good are they if they're not doing stuff to help the team win? If it's the latter than you will hate coaches like Carlisle that don't "just let the players play".
What we tend to not judge the coach on, because we only see him for a couple of hours each night on game night, is his relationship with the players, how he manages them in practice and how he manages his cadre of assistants to implement his vision of the team as an offense and defense and ultimately help prepare the players to be the best versions of themselves come game day. Because we don't see any of that. But we WILL hold him accountable if the team isn't playing well, and that's the way it should be. Because he's ultimately in charge. I just think we should also credit him for when the team is playing well.
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