Chapter 17: Further Reading - Team Offensive Efficiency

Foundational Texts

Basketball on Paper: Rules and Tools for Performance Analysis

Author: Dean Oliver Year: 2004 Publisher: Potomac Books

The foundational text for basketball analytics. Oliver introduces the Four Factors framework that remains central to offensive efficiency analysis today. Essential reading for understanding the theoretical foundations of possession-based analysis and individual offensive rating calculations.

Key Chapters: Chapter 3 (Individual Offense), Chapter 4 (Team Offense), Chapter 9 (The Four Factors)

SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA

Author: Kirk Goldsberry Year: 2019 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A visually stunning examination of how shot selection and spatial analytics have transformed NBA offense. Goldsberry's work pioneered shot chart visualization and this book represents the culmination of his research on offensive efficiency and spacing.

Key Sections: The Geography of the NBA, The Three-Point Revolution, The Death of the Mid-Range

Basketball Analytics: Objective and Efficient Strategies for Understanding How Teams Win

Author: Stephen M. Shea and Christopher E. Baker Year: 2013 Publisher: CreateSpace

A rigorous quantitative approach to basketball analysis with extensive coverage of offensive metrics. Includes detailed methodology for calculating advanced statistics and their applications.

Key Chapters: Chapters 4-6 covering offensive efficiency metrics

Academic Papers

Characterizing the Spatial Structure of Defensive Skill in Professional Basketball

Authors: Alexander Franks, Andrew Miller, Luke Bornn, Kirk Goldsberry Journal: Annals of Applied Statistics, 2015 DOI: 10.1214/14-AOAS799

While focused on defense, this paper introduces spatial modeling techniques applicable to understanding offensive efficiency through the lens of shot quality and expected points.

Relevance: Foundational methodology for expected field goal percentage calculations.

A Multiresolution Stochastic Process Model for Predicting Basketball Possession Outcomes

Authors: Daniel Cervone, Alexander D'Amour, Luke Bornn, Kirk Goldsberry Journal: Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2016 DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2016.1141685

Introduces Expected Possession Value (EPV), a framework for evaluating offensive decisions in real-time based on tracking data. Revolutionary approach to understanding possession-level efficiency.

Key Concepts: EPV, decision trees for offensive actions, spatial value modeling.

The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences

Authors: Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, Amos Tversky Journal: Cognitive Psychology, 1985

Classic study questioning the "hot hand" phenomenon. Understanding this research is essential for interpreting shooting variance and shot conversion analysis.

Relevance: Foundational for understanding shooting variance vs. skill.

The Price of Anarchy in Basketball

Authors: Brian Skinner Journal: Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2010 DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1217

Analyzes how individual incentives can conflict with team offensive optimization. Relevant for understanding usage-efficiency tradeoffs and ball movement value.

Key Insight: Game theory approach to offensive decision-making.

Estimating an NBA Player's Impact on His Team's Chances of Winning

Authors: Sameer K. Deshpande, Shane T. Jensen Journal: Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2016 DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2015-0027

Develops methodology for attributing team offensive success to individual players, addressing the collaborative nature of basketball offense.

Relevance: Individual contribution to team offensive efficiency.

Technical Resources

NBA Stats Official API Documentation

URL: https://stats.nba.com/ Type: Data Source

The official source for NBA play-by-play data, tracking statistics, and play type breakdowns. Essential for any serious offensive efficiency analysis.

Key Endpoints: /leaguedashteamstats, /playbyplayv2, /shotchartdetail

Basketball-Reference Advanced Stats Glossary

URL: https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html Type: Reference

Comprehensive definitions of all advanced statistics including offensive rating, usage rate, and efficiency metrics. Invaluable reference for understanding metric calculations.

Cleaning the Glass

URL: https://cleaningtheglass.com/ Author: Ben Falk Type: Subscription Service/Blog

Premium basketball analytics site with garbage-time filtered statistics and detailed play type analysis. Falk's methodology represents best practices for offensive efficiency measurement.

Notable Features: Luck-adjusted shooting, garbage-time filtering, matchup data.

Second Spectrum

URL: https://www.secondspectrum.com/ Type: Tracking Data Provider

The NBA's official optical tracking partner. Their research blog and public presentations provide insight into cutting-edge offensive analytics methodology.

Historical and Contextual Reading

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy

Author: Bill Simmons Year: 2009 Publisher: ESPN Books

While not analytically focused, provides essential historical context for understanding how offensive efficiency has evolved across NBA eras. Useful for interpreting historical offensive rating comparisons.

The Midrange Theory: Basketball's Evolution in the Age of Analytics

Author: Seth Partnow Year: 2021 Publisher: Triumph Books

Written by the former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks, this book examines how analytics has transformed NBA offensive strategy with insider perspective on front office decision-making.

Key Chapters: Chapters on shot selection, spacing, and play type optimization.

Thinking Basketball

Author: Ben Taylor URL: https://www.youtube.com/thinkingbasketball Type: Video Series/Book

Analytical deep dives into basketball strategy and player evaluation. Taylor's work on offensive impact and spacing theory is particularly relevant to Chapter 17 concepts.

Recommended Videos: "The Dunker Spot," "How Spacing Actually Works"

Methodological Papers

Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus

Author: Joseph Sill Venue: MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, 2010

While focused on overall player value, the methodology for isolating individual contribution to team performance is directly applicable to offensive efficiency attribution.

Network Analysis of Basketball Pass Data

Authors: Javier Lopez Pena, Hugo Touchette Year: 2012 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1209.0490

Applies network science to basketball passing data, providing methodology for assist network analysis covered in Chapter 17.

Possession-Based Analysis in Basketball

Authors: Multiple Venue: MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (various years)

Annual conference consistently publishes cutting-edge research on offensive efficiency. Conference proceedings are freely available online.

Practical Implementation

Python for Sports Analytics

URL: Various GitHub repositories Type: Code Resources

Key repositories for implementing offensive efficiency analysis: - nba_api: Python client for NBA stats - basketball_reference_web_scraper: Data collection tools - py_ball: Additional NBA data access

R Packages for Basketball Analytics

Packages: ballr, nbastatR, hoopR Type: R Libraries

R implementations for basketball data access and analysis, useful for statistical modeling of offensive efficiency.

Conference Proceedings and Presentations

MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

URL: https://www.sloansportsconference.com/ Type: Annual Conference

The premier sports analytics conference. Archive includes numerous papers on offensive efficiency, shot selection, and play type analysis.

Recommended Papers: - "Counterpoints: Advanced Defensive Metrics" (2014) - "The Three-Point Shooting Analytics Revolution" (2018) - "Expected Possession Value" (2014)

NESSIS (New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports)

URL: http://www.nessis.org/ Type: Academic Conference

Academic-focused conference with rigorous statistical methodology. Papers often provide mathematical foundations for metrics discussed in Chapter 17.

Video Resources

Thinking Basketball YouTube Channel

Creator: Ben Taylor URL: https://www.youtube.com/thinkingbasketball

High-quality video analysis of offensive concepts including spacing, ball movement, and play type efficiency.

Basketball Index Podcast/Video

Creators: Pete Schottey, Caitlin Cooper URL: Various podcast platforms

Regular discussion of advanced offensive metrics and their application to player and team evaluation.

The Athletic NBA Coverage

URL: https://theathletic.com/nba/ Type: Subscription

Includes analytical deep dives from writers like Seth Partnow, John Hollinger, and Zach Lowe on offensive efficiency topics.