College Basketball vs. the NBA, using statistics.
It has come to my attention that there’s two things people believe about the NBA. One is that the pace of the NBA is way faster than the pace of the NCAA game, therefore making it impossible to watch. Another thing is that NBA players only care about the $$$ associated with the game, and don’t bother to play defense as well as the college counterparts.
Because you can’t accurately compare the two WITHOUT statistical evidence, I will be using Ken Pomeroy’s database that is much a typical NBA one. His database contains some cool things, so if you want to check it out and come to your own conclusions, go here. We will be looking at two things: pace and ORtg.
Pace is essentially how many possessions a team gets per game. Its determined NOT by watching the game and tallying the possessions, by a formula. The formula is FGA-OR+TO+0.475xFTA. Lucky for us, basketball-reference also uses that as their possession formula. Faster teams will have more possessions, slower teams will have lower possessions ect.
Lets look at the average possessions per game for both college and NBA. (We are comparing the NBA’s 35 games so far vs. the 16ish games played by a college team).
College team avg. poss.’s per game: 68.4
NBA team avg. poss’s per game: 93
Well, if you look at the raw data, its clear that the NBA is the faster league, as they have over 20 more possessions than a college game! Lets normalize the data a bit:
Per minute poss:
College: 1.71 possessions per minute in a game
NBA: 1.94 possessions per game per minute.
See there? The discrepancy falls off after we normalized the data to encompass the minute differential between the college and NBA games. An average game of NBA and College are virtually the game pace. I you account for the shot clock differential, they are really, really close to the same pace if you just look at pace by itself.
Now, on to the harder question to answer: Defense. Defense is so hard to answer because one cannot just look at points allowed per game..it simply doesn’t tell the whole story. Teams play at different paces at different nights, so ppga could be a red herring to determine defensive might. Lets first introduce those to DRtg, or defensive rating. DRtg is basically how many points Team A allows per game normalized to a convenient 100 possession mark.
College DRTG average: 100 points per 100 possessions
NBA Drtg average 106.6 points per 100 possessions
Since its already normalized to 100 possessions, a retard can look at this data and say “WELL LOOK THERE, COLLEGE BASKETBALL IS A BETTER DEFENSIVE LEAGUE THAN THE NBA BECAUSE WE SCORE 6 POINTS FEWER THAN THE PROS, SUCK ON THAT NORTHERN KID!”. Well Cletus, that stat by itself does not tell the whole story. College basketball offense could be worse than NBA basketball offense. Lets look at this better: Lets bring out the big guns…..Defensive 4 factors.
We’ll break each catagory down. 1st catagory: eFG% for a team.
College average eFG% is 49%
NBA average eFG% is 50%.
So far, both offenses look equal. Therefore, that 6 point differential can be looked at as college basketball being the better league defensively because if all things are equal, look at the differences and compare from there.
ToV% for both leagues, or the times they turn the ball over per 100 possessions.
College turns it over 20% of the time per 100 poss.
NBA turns it over 14% of the time per 100 poss.
So, here, we can either surmise that NBA defense is worse because it forces less turnovers, or that college players are more turnover prone than the NBA counterpart. Since the latter is aesthetically true, we can say its more player fault of being stupid than NBA players not forcing turnovers. On to the next one.
Offensive rebound rates for both leagues, or the times they get a O board during 100 poss.
College teams get a OR 30 times every 100 possessions.
NBA teams get a OR 27 times every 100 possessions.
One can blame the lack of a boxout here for defensive deficiency. This kind of goes against the “fundamentals” myth that college ball purists like to use. Its a clear fact that the best rebounders are in the NBA, and its a shame that college teams allow so many 2nd chances.
Lets look finally at FGA/FTA, or how many times a team fouls.
College FGA/FTA- 38%, again per 100 possessions.
NBA FGA/FTA – 23%, dittoized.
WOW. Those college kids sure do love to foul. Here’s another myth debunked….NBA games are NOT free throw contests like their college counterpart. This means more college players are getting to the line. That 6 point D diff isn’t looking too hot when you allow that many trips to the CHARITY stripe.
In conclusion, the NBA and NCAA games are as efficient as each other. The pace of the game is about the same per minute, and the defense of the game is about the same. Factor in that NBA players are far superior than their college counterparts, the data, and defensive 3 seconds, and both leagues play basketball at a similar rate. NBA basketball isn’t the offensive joke of a league that its made out to be, and college isn’t the fundamentally rich league that many people enjoy.
If you are a fan of college basketball, and not of the NBA, its not because of the quality of basketball being played.
