Points in the Paint

I might need some help with this one. I don’t have a Sportsvu account, and don’t plan on paying for one anytime soon, so I’m a bit at the mercy of the internet when looking up certain statistics. But according to Teamrankings.com I found some incredibly shocking stats concerning ‘points in the paint’. PITP is a relatively useless stat since it hardly predicts team success. A team can live in the paint and be an abomination. For example, according to this list Sacramento is 5th in PITP but that’s mainly because they have no ball movement on the perimeter. Their best shooter, Staukas, hardly plays and their next best shooter, Mclemore, has the tendency to take in-game siestas.

But that doesn’t mean that these stats can’t be telling: The big standouts from this ranking was seeing Portland at 29th in PITP, only in front of the Knicks. Holy cow- I knew that Rip City lives in the midrange and 3 point line but second to last?! Maybe they should think about giving TRob more minutes.

Another head-scratcher: The Clippers are 27th in PITP. This stat, if true, may actually represent something seriously wrong with this team. There is no reasons why this team shouldn’t work from the inside-out. I’ll have to do some more research on this, but from watching the Clips (which is actually thoroughly boring) CP3 and Jamal Crawford shoot way too much from distance. CP3 in particular is an amazing finisher through contact and this needs to be showcased much more. When you have Blake Griffin and Chris Paul and even Deandre ‘can only spell slam-dunk’ Jordan, there is no godly reason you aren’t in the top half of PITP. If this team remains in the bottom of the league in PITP, I will consider it a failure of Doc Rivers.

On a more positive note, the almightly Warriors are third in the league in PITP. Incredible. Shows how much elite shooting can open up an offense.