Insight on a Boxscore

Dateline: 01/15/97

Wake up in the morning, take a shower, and have breakfast over the boxscores. It's the perfect way to start a day. At least that does it for me. I can't watch as many games as I'd like, but I keep up with how teams and players are doing by reading the paper or, these days, by getting the story from ESPN's coverage.

The game recap gives you a few things: quotes on what the players and coaches perceived was important, the writer's take on the last two minutes of the game or the stretch of the game when one team made a run, and a quick rundown of leading scorers. Sometimes, they'll add something about Dennis Rodman or Michael Jordan just because it draws a few more readers. See, it caught your attention.

A boxscore gives you something else. It provides a summary of the entire game. It's a bigger picture than what a game recap typically gives. It cannot show a crucial run that "decided the game," as the popular press likes to say. It cannot show Joe Dumars going 3-3 in the last minute to seal a victory. It really tries to show the foundation of the game before that last minute or before that last run. It includes information on that last minute, but it doesn't emphasize it. Because it doesn't emphasize much of anything, the boxscore can be overlooked by people not interested in the whole game. For me, however, the boxscore is very valuable.

The boxscore summarizes one game, the unit of basketball time that is most important to coaches and players. A team can play great through three quarters then collapse in the fourth to lose. Those first three quarters don't matter. Just the big L that goes on a coach's record and into a player's reputation. Because the boxscore gives a picture of one game, it provides a valuable means of evaluating players and teams over an appropriate time span. No one can truly evaluate a player using just their performance in the last minute of one game. But a full game may be enough. A lot of times, one game is all that a scout can see of a team before making judgments on how to beat that team. Fortunately, one game provides all sorts of plays, all sorts of offenses, a large variety of player combinations -- much of the information necessary to understand a team.

So I'm going to look at a boxscore and show you how I read it: What do I look for and what does it tell me about what happened in the game? The game I will examine is the Houston-Chicago game of January 11. I didn't see this game even though I really wanted to. I'm embarrassed to say that I had to go grocery shopping. Besides, it wasn't on TV.

                  1st  2nd  3rd  4th   TOTAL
Houston           23   20   23   20      86
Chicago           20   20   34   36     110

Houston

-Rebounds-
Player Pos Min Fgm-Fga Ftm-Fta Off Def Tot AST PF St To PTS
Barkley
Elie
Olajuwon
Drexler
Maloney
Willis
Livingston
Mack
Price
Moore
Bullard
Harrington Totals
F
F
C
G
G







39
35
38
35
23
15
22
12
15
2
2
2
240
2-11
0-2
12-25
3-11
3-7
2-4
3-6
2-5
1-3
0-0
0-1
0-0
28-75
4-4
9-9
4-5
0-0
0-0
2-2
3-4
0-0
0-0
0-2
3-3
0-0
25-29
1
0
1
2
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
6
6
3
7
4
3
4
1
0
0
0
1
0
29
7
3
8
6
3
4
1
0
2
0
1
0
35
3
1
1
5
4
0
3
1
2
0
0
0
20
3
2
3
3
0
2
1
1
0
0
0
0
15
0
0
1
3
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
6
2
0
0
3
1
1
2
2
0
0
1
0
12
8
9
29
7
9
6
9
4
2
0
3
0
86
(.373) (.862) Team Rebs: 9 Total To: 12(10 PTS)

Chicago

-Rebounds-
Player Pos Min Fgm-Fga Ftm-Fta Off Def Tot AST PF St To PTS
Pippen
Rodman
Wennington
Harper
Jordan
Kukoc
Parish
Brown
Kerr
Caffey
Buechler
Totals
F
F
C
G
G







35
39
22
12
39
29
2
17
19
24
2
240
7-17
4-9
3-7
1-2
12-25
8-13
1-2
4-7
1-2
4-8
0-0
45-92
0-2
0-1
1-2
0-0
4-4
0-0
0-0
0-0
0-0
4-5
0-0
9-14
2
5
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
3
0
14
5
13
6
1
6
4
0
0
0
4
0
39
7
18
8
1
6
4
2
0
0
7
0
53
7
4
2
2
7
3
0
2
2
0
0
29
3
4
3
0
1
2
0
2
1
3
1
20
1
1
0
1
2
0
0
1
0
1
0
7
1
2
0
0
3
1
0
0
0
1
0
8
17
8
7
2
32
20
2
8
2
12
0
110
(.489) (.643) Team Rebs: 6 Total To: 9(8 PTS)

Blocked Shots
Houston - Olajuwon 2, Barkley, Livingston. Chicago - Pippen 2, Wennington, Kukoc, Brown.

3-Pt. Field Goals
Houston 5-18 (.278), Barkley 0-3, Elie 0-1, Olajuwon 1-1, Drexler 1-4, Maloney 3-6, Mack 0-1, Price 0-1, Bullard 0-1. Chicago 11-22 (.500), Pippen 3-7, Rodman 0-1, Harper 0-1, Jordan 4-6, Kukoc 4-6, Brown 0-1.

Technicals
Chicago - Rodman.

Officials
Gary Benson, Terry Durham, Joe Crawford.

A - 24,196. T - 1:58.

I chose this game because I am interested in what happened in it. It clearly was a blowout and I know from experience that a blowout usually means that one team dominated both offensively and defensively. This game proves that correct.

The First Thing: Pace of the Game

The first thing I do when I look at a boxscore is to get an estimate of the pace of the game. You can determine this by making a simple calculation (one that I've gotten used to making in my head) of the number of possessions the two teams used. Possessions are estimated as

92 = [(75-6+12+0.4*29)+(92-14+8+0.4*14)]/2

by using the field goals attempted, free throws attempted, the turnovers, and the offensive rebounds from the team's lines:

Team Min Fgm-Fga Ftm-Fta Off Def Tot AST PF St To PTS
Houston 240 28-75 25-29 6 29 35 20 15 6 12 86
Chicago 240 45-92 9-14 14 39 53 29 20 7 8 110

With 92 possessions each, the Rockets scored 86 points and the Bulls scored 110. This means that the Rockets' offensive rating, in terms of points per 100 possessions, was 93.5 and the Bulls' was 119.6. Given that the 1996-97 league average is about 102, this confirms that the Bulls dominated both offensively and defensively, playing well above the league average in both categories.

This procedure is similar to one used by Coach Dean Smith of North Carolina and his predecessor, Frank McGuire. Both coaches include such a routine in the introductions to their books as fundamental to their analysis of the game. McGuire says, "A quick glance at three figures (our points per possession, opponent's points per possession, and total possessions) helps the coach to determine any changes he must make." It's not just me who looks at this first. It is some of the great coaches of history. It just makes sense for getting an overall feel for the game.

Beyond these numbers, anything else you learn from a boxscore is gravy. I will always check the pace and the teams' efficiency numbers. The following things I do when I am more interested in a specific game and have more time.

Flow of the Game

All a boxscore indicates about the ebb and flow of a game is the score progression from quarter to quarter:

                  1st  2nd  3rd  4th   TOTAL
Houston           23   20   23   20      86
Chicago           20   20   34   36     110

This shows that the game was close until the final quarter. This is confirmed by the fact that the Rocket and Bull starters played a lot of minutes. They weren't taken out early because it was a rout by halftime.

Houston Min Chicago Min
Barkley 39 Pippen 35
Elie 35 Rodman 39
Olajuwon 38 Wennington 22
Drexler 35 Harper 12
Maloney 23 Jordan 39

Rebounding

In my book, rebounding is part of the offense and defense, but it still is worth looking at separately. In this game, the Bulls crushed the Rockets with 53-35 rebounds. A large part of this was just that Chicago forced a lot of missed shots and got the defensive rebounds. Actually, the Rockets did fine on their own defensive boards, rebounding two-thirds of Chicago's missed shots. Chicago just didn't miss a lot. The Chicago rebounding edge was associated entirely then with their defense.

Rebounds off Missed HOUSTON Shot Rebounds off Missed CHICAGO Shot
Houston Chicago Chicago Houston
6 39 14 29

Individual Offense

It is tempting to look at individuals and look for the players that scored the most points. It makes some sense to do this, but it is also important to keep in mind how the players' teams did. A high scorer on a team that got blown out probably didn't play all that well, but just had a lot of opportunities.

This is mostly true for Hakeem Olajuwon, who had 29 points, but took 25 shots for Houston. Charles Barkley complained after this game that Houston's game plan was too predictable: get the ball to Olajuwon. Apparently, it was Chicago's game plan to make Olajuwon beat them and he didn't. Overall, Olajuwon was not very efficient from the floor. One of the figures that I calculate when I have time is an individual's floor percentage, which indicates roughly the percentage of times a player contributed to his team scoring points. An average figure is about 50%. Olajuwon's floor percentage was about 52%, just above average:

Rebounds
Player Min Fg-Fga Ftm-Fta Off Def Tot AST PF St To Pts
Olajuwon 39 12-25 4-5 1 7 8 1 3 1 0 29

Michael Jordan had similar numbers, shooting the same from the field and the line, but his floor percentage was about 54% because his team rebounded more of his misses than did Houston of Olajuwon's misses.

Rebounds
Player Min Fg-Fga Ftm-Fta Off Def Tot AST PF St To Pts
Jordan 39 12-25 4-4 0 6 6 7 1 2 3 32

Toni Kukoc was outstanding with a floor percentage of 69%.

Rebounds
Player Min Fg-Fga Ftm-Fta Off Def Tot AST PF St To Pts
Kukoc 29 8-13 0-0 0 4 4 3 2 0 1 20

I typically don't really calculate any of these floor percentages for players. The procedure is too complex. But often a decent screening method for evaluating players is just to look at the number of points they scored and the number of shots they took. If points are greater than shots, that is a preliminary indication that they did all right offensively. Typically, I mentally weight this with how the team did to get a subjective feel for how a player did.

Individual Defense

A boxscore does a lousy job representing how players did on defense. The best anyone can do to get a feel for an individual's defense by looking at a boxscore is to guess who players guarded. We can guess that Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman played against Barkley. We know they are both good defenders and Barkley did have a bad offensive game. Other times, the matchups aren't so clear. And other times, man-to-man defense is not very strict. Double-teams of centers may make a weak defensive center look good because those double-team shut down the center he is guarding. But it is also allowing someone else to roam free.

Post Script

That is how I look at a boxscore. Usually, I don't look at one in as much detail as given here, but I will when I am really interested in a game. My perspective is very much a coach's analytical perspective and it isn't for everyone. If you want to know what color Rodman's hair was for the game, a boxscore can't tell you that and I don't look for it. But if you want to get a feel for the entire game -- as I did by finally looking more at the recent Rockets-Bulls game -- this is the way to do it.

The author wishes to thank Joseph Ottinger for suggesting this topic.