Meanwhile the gap between Embiid and Luka is as big as between Luka and Giannis and no one complained. Embiid and Giannis also had higher usage than him last year. This stat doesn’t actually matter.
Educational-Judge968
I hate how people use this against luka, like if you have luka, your gonna run the offence through him because it either leads to a wide open shot or a luka cooking everyone
TuckEverlasting89
Usage just means FGA, FTA, assists. Luka scores a lot and assists a lot so it’s high.
The discourse like that’s a bad thing is ridiculous.
Dbat19
Ridiculous take, Say your office have a worker that do everything and have a high production rate. Do you say he is a bad worker because he work so much that other do not need to work?
sercialinho
No, of course not. It’s just a way for people who already don’t like him/heliocentric basketball to use a number as a crutch.
There are numbers even worse than USG%: “time of possession” and “seconds of possession per touch”, especially when comparing Luka to Jokic. Per game Luka has the ball for 8.3min with 5.46 seconds/touch on average. Jokic is at 4.8min and 2.83 seconds/touch.
**tl;dr** for text below**:** *Anyone using time of possession, seconds per touch, dribbles per touch to compare a player that generally brings the ball into the offensive half of the court and another player that doesn’t generally do that — is full of it.*
*——————-*
What those who use it never explain at the same time is that — **bringing the ball across halfcourt is included in the time of possession.** While it’s very rarely seconds that are useful in any way (with the exception of loooong passes, [which Luka led the league in as of a few weeks ago](https://youtu.be/gu8NOLZQG-s?si=we10gk0vTTBlvX-g&t=29)).
Now let’s look at the leaders in time of possession per game this season:
They are all players who bring the ball into the offensive half. If you think a star PG plays 75 possessions a game (48min is ~100 possessions), brings the ball across on 60/75 of them, and takes 5 seconds on average to do so, that’s 300 seconds or 5 minutes spent in the back court. That’s the difference in time of possession. It means nothing at all when comparing Luka&Jokic. And the seconds/touch is of course massively inflated by that one really long possession getting across half court, as is “average dribbles per touch”. (Jokic does bring the ball across sometimes, that’s why he’s at 4.8min of possession rather than something like 3min.)
How often is Brunson criticised for his time of possession? Or seconds per touch? Ja? Maxey? Of course not, it’s a silly argument because it’s literally their job description to be in charge of bringing the ball into the offensive half.
(Could I be wrong and those are just frontcourt minutes of possession? Don’t think so, I did that sanity check. Mavs have registered 1623min of possession over the course of the season, out of 3941min played (half of which is 1970.5min). Much of the balance of the time has to be the ball being passed between players, towards the basket, or loose balls e.g. after misses. 347 minutes (4.2 min/game) simply does not account for bringing the ball into the offensive half, or they would have to do it, on average, within ~2.5 seconds — which they don’t.)
6 Comments
I mean yeah its noticiable.
Meanwhile the gap between Embiid and Luka is as big as between Luka and Giannis and no one complained. Embiid and Giannis also had higher usage than him last year. This stat doesn’t actually matter.
I hate how people use this against luka, like if you have luka, your gonna run the offence through him because it either leads to a wide open shot or a luka cooking everyone
Usage just means FGA, FTA, assists. Luka scores a lot and assists a lot so it’s high.
The discourse like that’s a bad thing is ridiculous.
Ridiculous take,
Say your office have a worker that do everything and have a high production rate. Do you say he is a bad worker because he work so much that other do not need to work?
No, of course not. It’s just a way for people who already don’t like him/heliocentric basketball to use a number as a crutch.
There are numbers even worse than USG%: “time of possession” and “seconds of possession per touch”, especially when comparing Luka to Jokic. Per game Luka has the ball for 8.3min with 5.46 seconds/touch on average. Jokic is at 4.8min and 2.83 seconds/touch.
**tl;dr** for text below**:** *Anyone using time of possession, seconds per touch, dribbles per touch to compare a player that generally brings the ball into the offensive half of the court and another player that doesn’t generally do that — is full of it.*
*——————-*
What those who use it never explain at the same time is that — **bringing the ball across halfcourt is included in the time of possession.** While it’s very rarely seconds that are useful in any way (with the exception of loooong passes, [which Luka led the league in as of a few weeks ago](https://youtu.be/gu8NOLZQG-s?si=we10gk0vTTBlvX-g&t=29)).
Now let’s look at the leaders in time of possession per game this season:
|player ([Source](https://www.nba.com/stats/players/touches?PerMode=PerGame&TeamID=1610612742))|time of possession (min/game)|seconds per touch|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Brunson|8.6|5.86|
|Luka|8.3|5.46|
|Trae|8.3|5.82|
|Ja (small sample, idc, it was same last year)|7.6|5.80|
|Lillard|7.4|5.61|
|Maxey|7.4|5.06|
They are all players who bring the ball into the offensive half. If you think a star PG plays 75 possessions a game (48min is ~100 possessions), brings the ball across on 60/75 of them, and takes 5 seconds on average to do so, that’s 300 seconds or 5 minutes spent in the back court. That’s the difference in time of possession. It means nothing at all when comparing Luka&Jokic. And the seconds/touch is of course massively inflated by that one really long possession getting across half court, as is “average dribbles per touch”. (Jokic does bring the ball across sometimes, that’s why he’s at 4.8min of possession rather than something like 3min.)
How often is Brunson criticised for his time of possession? Or seconds per touch? Ja? Maxey? Of course not, it’s a silly argument because it’s literally their job description to be in charge of bringing the ball into the offensive half.
(Could I be wrong and those are just frontcourt minutes of possession? Don’t think so, I did that sanity check. Mavs have registered 1623min of possession over the course of the season, out of 3941min played (half of which is 1970.5min). Much of the balance of the time has to be the ball being passed between players, towards the basket, or loose balls e.g. after misses. 347 minutes (4.2 min/game) simply does not account for bringing the ball into the offensive half, or they would have to do it, on average, within ~2.5 seconds — which they don’t.)