Furthermore, obviously a team like the Suns at that point will give up way more points than other teams because of the whole MORE POSSESSIONS thing.
What's more important, the amount of points the opposition scores in and of itself or the DIFFERENTIAL, or the POINTS PER POSSESSION, etc.
I mean, a Mike D'Antoni coached team could have 100 points and it could actually have been a terrible offensive night because it took you 100 shots to get there.
It's the same reason we don't judge players on PPG alone and say "Hey since Player A has a higher PPG than Player B player A is automatically a better scorer!" because it's just not true. If Player A gets his 30 PPG on 29 shots and player B gets his 25 PPG on 18 shots then Player B is the far better player.
That's what you have to take into account as well when comparing teams and offense and whatnot.
For example, everybody who watches our games knows that we get out-rebounded on a nightly basis. We never grab more rebounds than anyone.
But we grab an average of 41.1 rebounds per game, which is about average, so we're an average rebounding team!
No. We're not. Because our rebounding differential is a putrid -3.3, meaning the opposition grabs 3.3 rebounds more than we do on average per game. We grab 41.1 rebounds a game due to the increased pace factor. But the opposition also benefits.
If you want to talk Defensive Rating which is points per 100 possessions then D'Antoni's teams were 17th 16th, 13th, and 16th in the league in defensive rating. Factoring in the fact that they played in the tougher Western Conference, that works out to be an average to slightly above average defense for the number of possessions per game they had, factoring into account the strength of schedule (playing against the toughest teams in the NBA regularly) and the pace.
It'd be like saying we're one of the top offensive teams in the league and we don't need Carmelo because we're 2nd in the league in scoring.
That's not true even in the slightest. We're only 8th in the league in Offensive Rating. We're 21st in the league in Defensive rating, which makes us an above average team offensively and a below average team defensively. If we got Carmelo we'd probably be 2nd in the league in offensive rating, and we'll be below average in the league in defensive rating until we pick up a big man who can rebound and block shots.
Fun Fact: Despite the common opinion that Alvin Gentry is a better coach than D'Antoni because he emphasized DEFENSE, Gentry's Suns last year were 1st (!) in the league in Offensive Rating and 23rd (!!) in the league in defensive rating.
Yup. Last year's Suns basically shot their way into the playoffs.
